MY MOTHER DIED BEFORE I COULD MURDER HER

CHAPTER 11

A safe house.

My time at the new school looked as if it was going to be fun. Even though I didn’t know many of the other kids, I was relieved to be back in a co-ed school. I didn’t know why, but a mixed school seemed less threatening and I wasn’t afraid of the girls. My feeling of excitement was short lived. As soon as I walked into the science class, I knew that trouble lay ahead. It may have been worse than Wiggins. Leopold Rothstein, the neighbor from hell, was the science master at the school, and with my luck, the bastard was mine. I knew from the first moment he clapped those beady eyes on me that my life in this class was heading downhill. He never said a word, but as his eye twitched with some nervous tick, I knew he was singling me out for years of terror.

     We lived not far from the school. Taking it easy, although up-hill, I could ride there in about twenty minutes and be home in less than ten. Morris enjoyed the short walk and was soon my own personal fan at our cricket games. He’d wander over with Prince at his side on Wednesday afternoons when we had home matches. He’d sit on the top bench of the stands, “at the back of the bus.” If the stands were filled with parents and kids and other whites, he’d sit on the grass on the opposite side of the field. More than likely he didn’t like sitting with the whites. Sometimes I was sure I saw him take a drag on one of those suspicious-looking smokes rolled in brown paper. He couldn’t do so when he sat near the stands, so it was the open side for him. Mostly he’d attend home games because now distances were greater when we played away and it was more difficult for him to get to the match and home in time. The one game he said that he’d never miss was when we played the under-fourteens at my old school.

     We were to play Wiggins’s team twice that season, at home and away. The first game was away and a good few of my old school chums turned up to give me support. Wiggins was still as unpopular as ever, and I had become something of a legend following the condom-up-the-flagpole episode. Most of us rode to the game, and when I approached the main gates of the school, Morris and Prince were patiently awaiting my arrival. He walked next to me all the way to the bike shed and then to the field. In his own way he was making a statement: “This is my guy and I’m proud of him.”

     I felt great, but wished that my dad were here as well.

     Wiggins was the umpire and scowled at me when it was my turn to bowl. His team had lost three wickets for a mere twenty-one runs when my captain called me over. “Do your stuff,” he said, and handed me the ball. I bet Wiggins felt pretty miserable as I bowled an unbelievable first over. I took a wicket with the first ball and then one with the third and then the fourth. If I captured the next wicket with the fifth ball it would be a bloody hat-trick. Up to now I had the batsmen bamboozled by every ball, stretching, reaching, and swinging, yet unable to make contact with bat to ball. I knocked the stumps and bails off every time I took a wicket. No one was caught or leg before wicket. There was no chance of an umpire having to make a decision. The wickets were hit, the bails knocked off, and that was that. O-U-T out! I’m sure it was with help from all the sangomas in Africa.

     Each time the ball hit the stumps I turned to Wiggins, stretched my arms out and screamed, “How was that!” Then I waited, crouched over, for Wiggins to hold up his finger and signal an out. I had bowled out the last two batsmen in a row, one ball after the next. Now it was time for the third wicket, the hat-trick.

     The new batsman, Cedric Scarf, a blond, toothy kid walked in from the pavilion. As he headed for his position to face the next ball, he walked past Wiggins. I heard Wiggins order Cedric in a loud whisper, “Just block the ball, for Christ’s sake!”

     “You’re not allowed to talk to the players.” I turned on Wiggins. “You’re supposed to be neutral.”

     I could see the anger rise in his neck. He wished he could thrash this cheeky little bastard standing in front of him.