Just The Streets

We scurried to our sleeping place, an old underground parking lot. Each of us had a pile of flattened cardboard boxes which we placed on the floor so we could sleep on them. A couple of us tucked in underneath the cardboard boxes and the rest had old sleeping bags with them. These were some of the few things which we could claim ownership of. 

The parking lot had no lights, but we were quite well protected from torrid weather changes our town experiences often, the underground parking lot provided us with shade and kept away rain throughout the nights. But to our rear, we were dangerously exposed. If anyone drove inside the parking lot, they would be bound to drive right on top of us. But this was the best we could find. Even if it meant that every day, we closed our eyes and fell asleep we ran the risk of waking up dead. "This is no good," somebody muttered. "If it is really that bad, why don't you find us another place to sleep?" The protestor did not bother to respond. We all know that the place is not good enough,but hell, it's the best we can muster. 

In the days and nights that followed, there were quite a few moments when my morale dropped to rock bottom. This was one of them. A wave of loneliness swept over me as I realized that I was entirely alone. I was starving, cold and tired. I thought it could not get any worse. "If things get on top of you," my mother always used to say, "have a good cry." So, I lay there on the boxes and tried crying, but I could not. Instead, my face crumpled up and I started laughing with tears slowly coming out from my eyes. I daydreamed about the glorious foods my mum used to cook – particularly her crumbled maize porridge – uphuthu, her beef stew, cabbage, sugar beans, sweet pumpkin, and sometimes amasi – fermented milk that tastes like plain yogurt, thick and creamy. I could have done with a helping of that, there and then. 

The air was still icy cold, and I was shivering. I lay on one side with my hands between my legs and my face resting on my knees in a fetal position, tucked in under a thick pile of cardboard. Smaller piles of cardboard shielded my feet, and my head was pillowed on other smaller piles of cardboard. 

My legs jiggled up and down. I shifted from sleeping on top of one shoulder to another. My feet were cold, almost as if they were frozen solid. From time to time, I dozed off, but I always woke with a start a few minutes later, shaking all over. Bringing me around like that was my body's defense. If I had not kept waking, I would have drifted off and been gone forever. 

 I woke up at first light, a freezing morning breeze swept through the parking entrance.My brother's body leaning against my back was the only warmth I could feel at that moment. I watched the sunlight stretching wider and I listened to car noises growing louder. He was still asleep, so I did not move, even though my stiff muscles longed to be stretched. 

"How did you end up in the streets?" The old man sitting with his back against the wall probed.

The man's question repeated in my head several times, a single tear slid out of my left eye as I recalled the scene when I was still a kid. I would throw myself into my brother's room at night, demanding to go play hide and seek with mum and dad. "They are fighting again", He would say. He would get out of bed and go peek through the door, and I would follow him, with eagerness, and do exactly what he did, not knowing what the game was all about. My mother would run by the room, and we would watch her lock herself in the bathroom. Then turn our faces to the sound of my father's footsteps. He wore a knitted Christmas jersey, and he held a brown paper bag in his hand. He passed the room and was followed by a putrid decaying smell. 

He'd bang on the door, demanding to enter with a stream of expletives, "Open up woman!" His curses were broken by sips he took from the brown paper bag. 

I could also recall the day I last saw my mother's face. But it was not her own face that I saw, it was a picture a police officer held in front of my face for identification. The side of her face leaned on the steering wheel, with blood all over it. "The accident was caused by faulty car brakes; airbags were deactivated, and she had no seatbelt on," I remember the officer saying.My brother moaned and turned away and buried his face under his arms. The sadness of our mother was lost to us, maybe forever. 

 "Hide and seek gone bad," I responded to the old man. 

My brother woke up immediately after I responded to the old man. His eyes looked at the others sleeping for a minute before he spoke, "It's still true." His voice was dejected. "Mother is really gone."