What We Lose(21)

“This is dangerous,” Lyndall said, putting the joint between her teeth. She led me up to the roof of our grandfather’s garage just like she did when we were kids. We hoisted ourselves onto the wall, then onto the storm pipe, and up onto the tin roof.

“Papa used to hate us doing this, hey?” Lyndall said with the joint still in her teeth, casting a cautious glance into the living room window. When we were little, our grandfather had a sixth sense for our mischief. As soon as we put a foot on the house’s whitewashed wall, he would be at the window, yelling threats at us to get down.

A dog barked. We lay side by side, blowing smoke into the air. We could hear pots clanging in the kitchen sink, our aunties cleaning up the funeral lunch.

“Do you remember when we were little,” Lyndall said, “when we used to pretend we were grown-up? You always wanted to be twenty years old and living in New York.”

“I did,” I said, chuckling. “We used to practice putting on lipstick and kissing our pillows.”

“I was going to marry a footballer,” Lyndall purred, drawing long on the joint. “I still can.”

We laughed.

“How you doing, really?” Lyndall asked.

“How do you think?” I sighed. “It feels like everything has fallen apart.”

“Your mom and I were close in a—different kind of way.”

My mother generally disapproved of Lyndall’s wild behavior, but there was some part of her that obviously identified with it. They called each other often to share gossip, and when Lyndall got in trouble, my mother would be the first to call and chastise her. But at the end of the conversation, they would end up laughing.

I looked over and Lyndall was crying. She wiped her eyes on her forearm, the joint in her fingers.

“Ahhhh!” She flicked the joint off the roof. “It’s time to get out of here and get drunk!”





From an article on a planned high-rise in Maboneng, the fast-developing neighborhood in Johannesburg, by London-bred Ghanaian “celebritecht” David Adjaye “I think it will be a double take with a lot of people, because you will look at this building and think that it is in some other city, and then you will realise its in Johannesburg; it’s in Africa,” he said. The aim is to “combine an African aesthetic with a contemporary vision.”

— But why do “African” and “contemporary” have to be incommensurate? Why (and to whom) is it appealing to think you are in another city besides the one, in Africa, that you are in?



An hour later, when the sun was setting pink along the palm tree skyline, a taxi pulled up in front of our grandfather’s house and took us downtown, to the new part of Johannesburg swept up and made trendy by a succession of developers and moneyed artists.

We were let out in front of a club with a line of anxious and bored-looking people and let right inside by a bouncer who smiled at Lyndall.

“Thank you, baby.” Lyndall reached up and patted the bouncer on top of his bald head. He grabbed for her arm, but she kept walking inside.

By the bar, Lyndall adjusted her top so that her small breasts, boosted to high heaven, erupted from her cowl-neck blouse. Within minutes, we were showered with free drinks. We accepted all of them; we danced with no one. Lyndall, halfway through the night, climbed atop a cocktail table and moved uninhibitedly, throwing her arms in the air, bending at the waist, and shaking her full mane of hair. It was the only moment when she was visibly having fun—the rest of the night seemed like a string of transactions.

A man approached me. He was from Zambia and staying in Joburg to study law at the university. He had a head full of locs that looked neat and freshly twisted. He wore wire-framed glasses and a collared shirt, and looked more like he was going to the office than to a nightclub. His friends were messily hitting on dancing women, but he was reserved and polite, biding his time by the bar. He smelled like cocoa butter. He had a kind smile, and I recognized, for the first time in a while, that I was interested.

We traded conversation, standing next to each other for a good long time.

“You’re with her?” He pointed to my cousin, flailing sexily on top of the table.

“She’s my cousin.” I smiled puzzlingly at him.

“Come home with me.” He leaned into me, putting a hand around my waist just as I felt Lyndall tugging at me from the other direction.

“It’s time for part two,” she said as she pulled me out of the club behind two men in stylish, slim-cut clothing. She led me out to a taxi and then to a hotel. From the modern, marble lobby up to the twentieth floor, to a hotel room laid with designer shopping bags, watches, electronic gadgets left about that suggested the carelessness of wealth. Lyndall could always smell money, even in the dark, in the midst of a crowded nightclub.

The room began to spin. I scarcely registered the number of drinks I’d had because they were all free, handed to me like candy. Both men had short dreads. One sported a leather bowler hat. The other wore thick-rimmed glasses.

The boy with the hat put one arm around my cousin. The other took a seat next to the bed, his lean shoulders hunched away from me, cutting three lines of different-colored powder on the dining table.

“Coca-Cola; my best friend, Tik Tik; and her cousin Special K.”

“Aye, I don’t fuck with your best friend anymore,” Lyndall said. She walked over and hoovered up the white line.