Dust Devils (5 page)

She nodded. Led the way through the lobby to a pair of scuffed swinging doors, painted a pale yellow. Two small frosted windows stared at him like blind eyes. She stopped with one of the doors half-open and the smell of decaying flesh rushed out and hit Dell. He worked hard to hold down his puke. The cop looked like she was going to speak again, then she shook her head and let him enter.

A man in a stained white coat lurked near the back of the room, beside a wall of metal freezer drawers. He had skin the color of flat beer, four strands of black hair lying like tendrils across his bald skull. He came forward when he saw Dell, passing a fan that fought a losing battle against the heat and the stench. The wind of the fan lifted the hairs on his head, and they stood like antennae for a moment, until he moved out of range and they flopped down again.

There were five chrome tables in the room. Two of them were empty. Three of them were covered by black waterproof plastic. Dell could see shapes under the plastic. The man looked at the constable who nodded. He took the corner of the first cover and drew it back, in one practiced motion. Dell had to grab hold of the table to stop himself from falling.

Later, he remembered only flashes. Like jump cuts from a movie. Remembered the buzzing strip lights in the ceiling, the whirr and rattle of the fan. Remembered the sound the man made, a constant sniffing and swallowing, his Adam's apple a yo-yo beneath his wrinkled skin. Remembered the young constable looking away from the tables. Used all of these images to try to erase what he saw when each cover was lifted.

Tommy's features burned away. His right arm sheared off above the elbow, hanging by a piece of charcoal flesh. His one kid-size Chuck Taylor almost intact around a severed foot.

Mary's brain visible beneath a skull that had been shattered like an egg. A clump of dark hair still twisting from the side of her head. Her legs ending at the knees.

Rosie a torn torso with charred intestines. Beautiful hands gone, blackened stumps in their place. Legs twisted and broken. Eyes empty holes in scorched bone.

Dell turned for the exit, fell through the swinging doors, toward the sunlight. Stood on the sidewalk and sucked air. The world went on outside. Cars drove by. He heard the blare of hip-hop pumping from a sound system. Saw a man and two kids walking out of a KFC, carrying tubs of fried chicken.

The smell of his family's burned flesh was still thick in Dell's nostrils. He spewed. Vomit hot on his bare toes. Crouched with his hands on his knees, gasping, necklaces of drool dangling from his mouth. A woman in bright green hair rollers stared at him from inside a dented car, her face like a closed fist. Dell wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Stood up. Saw the young constable watching him from the morgue doorway. Looking like she wanted to cry.

A white Volkswagen with the South Africa Police Services blue and gold insignia on the door pulled up. A colored man in plain clothes climbed out, observed Dell for a moment, then went across to the constable. They spoke. The constable glanced at Dell, then back at the man. When she looked at Dell again, something in her expression had shifted.

The plainclothes walked over to Dell, flipped open his ID. "I'm Lieutenant Palm."

Dell nodded, waiting for the cop to give him information on that bastard in the black truck. The madman who had destroyed his life. Then he realized how strong the painkillers and the shock were, because he could have sworn he heard the cop reading him his rights.

"What?" Dell said. "What's going on?"

The cop cuffed Dell's hands in front of him. He hardly felt the pain when the metal gripped his torn and bruised flesh. The man grabbed his arm and walked him toward the car. Put a hand on Dell's bandaged head and pushed him down into the rear of the Volkswagen.

The cop was speaking. "You're under arrest for the murder of your wife and children. Do you understand?"

No. He didn't understand.

The car sagged as the cop sat behind the wheel. He cranked the engine and the Volkswagen took off. Dell looked up at the young constable as they drove by. An expression of loathing on her face.

As the taxi rattled down toward the village, Sunday's dead mother spoke to her. Told her to open the book. Sunday was used to hearing her mother at night, lying in bed in Ma Beauty's hut, the iron roof cracking like gunshots as it cooled in the sudden chill. But the voice shocked her in the brightness of the packed minibus, Sunday jammed in beside her aunt.

She squirmed forward, scratching in her bag, her nose almost touching the creased neck of the man in front of her, finding the torn spine of the book, easing it out onto her lap.

Ma Beauty's elbow jabbed her in the ribs. "Sit still, you." The miserable woman, as sharp edged and spiky as the aloes that blurred by.

Sunday opened the book, careful with the charred pages. It was her most precious possession. Too precious to leave in the hut when she went to work. Ten years ago Sunday, wandering among the bodies of her mother, father and cousin, had rescued the burned book from the smoking ruins of her hut. It had been a spiral-bound photo album, long ago. On what was left of the cover, smiling white people with hair like straw stood in the snow with planks tied to their feet.

Inside, two singed and crumbling photographs remained. One was taken on her parents' wedding day, her father just a shoulder in a striped suit. Half of her mother's beautiful, smiling face burned to ash. The other a blurred snapshot of Sunday as a fat baby, sitting on a woman's knee. The woman's head was gone but Sunday knew it was her mother. The mother who spoke to her. Told her fingers to go to the rear of the book.

On the inside of the back cover, trapped beneath warped and discolored plastic, Sunday felt the fragment of blackened cardboard. Like the printed cards Richard handed out to the tourists, advertising his services as a guide. This card was burned away except for a telephone number. Sunday had stared at it all these years, never knowing whose number it was. Or why her mother had kept it.

The taxi skidded to a stop in a cloud of red dust and Sunday smacked her forehead on the seat in front of her. She looked up to see they were in the village, the passengers fighting their way out of the minibus.

Ma Beauty scowled down at her. "Come on, you. We are already late."

Sunday returned the book to her bag and followed her aunt out of the taxi.

Bhambatha's Rock was one short street, ending at an iron bridge that spanned the dry river. Low cinderblock buildings flanked the road in two uneven rows, some untreated gray, others painted in blues and pinks faded by the sun.

Sunday and her aunt dodged the cows and the goats and the drunks clotting the doorway of the liquor store, picked their way between vendors squatting in the dirt selling cigarettes and the cheap sweets that made your piss go pink. They arrived at a store, dwarfed by signs advertising Omo washing powder and Sunlight soap. A group of women and girls sat on the sand behind the store, in the shade of flat-topped thorn trees.

A big woman waited for Sunday and Ma Beauty, casting glances at the watch that cut into her fat wrist. She wore a floral blouse, a gray skirt hanging to her thick ankles, elephant feet overflowing sandals that had been made for a more delicate body. A blue beret was pulled low on her head and she had a big imitation leather purse slung over her shoulder. Auntie Mavis. The sister of the ugly dog who had bought Sunday. Come to see the inspection was carried out in the traditional manner. And that the results were beyond dispute.

The two women greeted one another. Sunday was ignored. Auntie Mavis spoke down her flat nose at Ma Beauty as she led the way to where around twenty teenage girls stood in line, chattering and giggling nervously. A young woman in too-tight jeans and evening shoes with rounded heels perched on a rock, writing the names of the girls in a notebook.

Sunday's aunt dug in her pocket and produced a coin. "Here. Go pay."

Sunday stood in line. Gave her name. The woman laboriously wrote it down, and pocketed the payment. Sunday joined the girls who waited but she didn't make conversation.

A girl was called forward and disappeared behind a tree where an auntie in black and white beaded ceremonial headdress sat on a grass mat. A group of older women formed a cordon around the auntie, protecting the girl from prying eyes.

A shout went up, and the women cheered and ululated. Calling out "
Imomozi!
" Vagina in Zulu. The girl stepped from behind the tree, proudly wearing a circle of white paste on her forehead that announced to the world that she was a Zulu virgin.

One by one the girls went forward. And the cheers and shouts followed. Then a girl disappeared behind the tree and emerged to silence. No white marking. No cheers. Just shakes of the heads and clucking from the older women. Tears on the girl's face, her disgraced mother scuttling off after her.

Sunday prayed that it would happen to her when her turn came. But she knew it wouldn't. Knew that the skin was still inside her, stretched tight as a little drum. Alone in the hut the night before, she had squatted over a piece of broken mirror, holding one of Ma Beauty's knitting needles, ready to shove it into herself and pierce that precious skin. Ready to make herself worthless. So the ugly old man would take his cattle back and go and find another victim.

But as the point of the needle brushed her thighs she'd heard her mother's voice:
no, my child. No.
Sunday had dropped the needle and sobbed herself to sleep on the dung floor of the hut.

Sunday was called forward. Ma Beauty and Auntie Mavis joined the group of watchers. Sunday approached the mat, set her bag down. Stayed standing. The inspector looked up at her and flapped her hand. "Come, girl, lie down. I don't have all day."

Sunday kneeled and slipped her panties down her legs, tears welling in her eyes.

Ma Beauty shouted, "What is wrong with you girl? Lie down!"

Auntie Mavis hissed like a puff adder, "You see, I'm telling you, this girl is a rubbish. She has been laying with men!"

Sunday rolled her panties off, sitting her backside down on the mat. She lifted her skirt and spread her thighs. The inspector opened her up and peered inside her, like she was checking bread in an oven.

"Nice. Perfect," the inspector said.

Sunday pulled on her panties and stood, staring at Auntie Mavis who half-heartedly joined in the cheering. Ma Beauty, as shrill as a shrike, screamed out, "
Imomozi!
" Sunday felt one of the women dab the white paste on her forehead. Another gave her the rubberstamped certificate that was like a death sentence.

Auntie Mavis snatched the paper from her hand and examined it. Then she folded it and hid it in the hills of her cleavage. "I will give this to my brother."

Auntie Mavis and Ma Beauty walked back toward the road, her scrawny aunt flapping alongside the fat woman like a tickbird after a cow. Sunday lagged behind. Heard Ma Beauty's wheedling voice, "So, Sis Mavis, when can I expect the rest of the
lobola
?" The dowry. The cattle and the money.

"So much money for such a skinny girl." Auntie Mavis shook her head at Sunday who had joined them. "He has spent too much money already, my brother. Look at this."

She pulled a stack of printed pages from her purse and flapped the Western-style wedding invites in their faces. A photograph of Sunday in the traditional outfit she wore to work, standing miserably next to the ugly old dog, dressed in a suit that was too big for him.

"Now that she has been pronounced worthy of my brother, I must post them out." She separated two invitations from the stack and handed them to Ma Beauty. "You better have these."

The skinny woman grabbed the pages, clutching them to her body. Auntie Mavis shoved the rest of the invites back in her purse and walked off toward the post office, her buttocks rolling like a cement mixer beneath her skirt.

Sunday followed her aunt to the taxi stand. She wished her mother would speak to her now, explain why the man who had killed her family was going to be allowed to kill her too.