7: A Bed Of Stones
Quartz Street is cut in half by Highpoint. A husk of an apartment building atop a husk of a shopping centre, with a supermarket that is incredibly easy to shoplift from -if, like me, you are white. On the street above – Highpoint is in Hillbrow, just before the brow of the hill, on one side Quartz is a walkway, with stalls down the middle and hastily occupied and abandoned shops down the sides.
This pedestrian mall littered with unshaped scraps, people who will buy anything you have to sell after the long walk up, for much less than needed, goes down toward, more Hillbrow, hotels abandoned even by the merchants, and then up past the public hospital and then down, the long walk down to Killarney Mall, fertile ground for the two finger boys when the streets around Quartz are too aware. To the other side, where I nurse my downs, underneath the airconditioners, behind a security fence, next to the Hollywood Bets, opposite Highpoint, on the city side of the brow. This is my day job, nyaope is a hungry child.
Plastic plates with tomatoes placed to trip up the thronging flow through and past the purple betting franchise. The two finger boys weave through the press of people going to drink, to work, from work, to beg, to ask, to bet, to collect their pension grants, passing to get to the taxi home, tata ma chance, it is a thick river of opportunity and it is five meters away from the shanty town two meters wide behind the security fence, under the aircons, and about twenty meters away from the dealers. I am stuffed up in this shanty strip, making my daily smack from placing bets for the dealers. Once, weeks ago, I bet a ten rond and got back a hundred and the word is out, the mlungu is lucky. So they bring bags of heroin or pieces of crack to predict numbers for them on the UK 49s. Occasionally someone wins something and my reputation holds, but it has been long since someone has won and the calls for “mlungu bet” are diminishing. It is on one such diminished day that I fall in with the two finger boys.
Here in the tunnel stream of perhaps valuable things mined from bins it is dim in the day and alight with the flash of indanda and meth pipes at night- against hatred of the sun, light. It is here they find me. A white person occupied with desperate need to avoid the bone splitting pain of the opiate withdrawal that comes every eight hours, who will face less scrutiny when the tapping of a card fails. Their principle targets, those without their wits about them, are found leaving or entering taverns, the most lucrative are pensioners on SASSA payout days.
We can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable.
Sleeping in a circle around a nightly makeshift fire, out in the open, another twenty or so meters away, further down the hill. The morning cold awakes us, and spurs us to the early foot traffic. We share proceeds. Everyone does what they can when they can.
There is a central person, the divider of spoils, the decider of what I tap for, and – I cannot quite remember his name. To designate his position he literally retains a position above us. Next to where we sleep is a pile of old building rubble, stones mostly, and when we sleep, he sleeps on this pile, his bed of stones.
There are many names I hardly remember.
Thulani, perhaps Thando, when I first got to the streets of Hillbrow, welcomed me into his hokkie, reconstructed often in a small park next to a parking lot, next to the dealers on, the name of the road escapes me, Bertha maybe – near Nugget, anyway – reconstructed often in cardboard after the Metro cops raid and burn everything down. At some point he contracted TB and was near death, so we saved up what we could and sent him home to maybe Eldorado Park, to see his people, by minibus taxi. He returned a few days later, his family had refused him entrance to the home, they did not believe he had TB, and anyway he is still using. It takes a few days, he dies in the night, a slow wheezing fading away gurgle. In the cardboard home we had just that day remade on the bed of ashes left to us. Thulani, perhaps.
One night we are returning with our spoils to the fire circle at the corner of Esselen street and the pile of stones is empty. The divider of spoils never returns. Due to my power of tapping without scrutiny the bed of stones becomes mine, soon it is the most comfortable night’s sleep.
A wallet is lifted with two finger feathers from a pocket of a sleeping passed out man near a tavern near sunrise, the blueness in the sky an unending tone merging with the concrete around us, and inside this wallet is not only a card but a scrap of paper with a scrawled pin code.
At the ATM to take what is there is, a spitting child is blocking, as best he can, anyone from using the machine, he is twelve or fourteen, the age of the average member of the two finger gang. He is spitting warnings.
“Don’t trust this machine. It will steal you.”
Asking him to move, “Do not talk to him, he is mad,” from the queue behind me.
A security guard nearby, “He is just another of you paras, another thief, trying to take people’s money.”
Someone mutters, “fokken tikkop”.
His clothes are a broken nest, he is a compilation of tears and holes, one of the boys ask him if he has eaten and he says, “Don’t trust the machine.” And so we take him back to the street corner where we live and we feed him. Perhaps he can work with us. He is another thief.
He cannot work with us. He does not know how to steal. He spends his days at the ATM trying to warn people and, when we can, we get him to come with us for food.
We have spent the day hustling down at Killarney Mall, the long walk up, through the Quartz traders open air arcade, trading, swapping, tapping. We pass Highpoint, shoplift at the supermarket, it is perhaps midweek, perhaps midnight, we have plastic bags bursting with things for the corner nightly redistribute. There are three of us, as we are about to cross the stream of cars and human traffic, we pause, the least vulnerable, the most brave of us, sprints across, through the melee. A white SUV barrels down toward him and he dodges it adeptly. A car backfires. It is too loud. People are ducking, screaming. From the SUV disappearing we hear, “Fucking paras, fuck you.” On the road, shot, dead, is… whoever.
The vans arrive fast, his body is blocking traffic, the mpusa ask where we live, and we point to our corner. No, they need a registered, a proper address. Without an address or a family they will not investigate. Not even with those.
ATM boy will only eat certain foods, specific, no reason to it. This is the unique pressing burden of him, I take him to Hillbrow clinic -stocked with nyaope to fend off the withdrawals, ATM boy does not nyaope, not even meth. The security guards wave their beeping wands over us, an iron fence, a walkway bordered by a dusty garden, late afternoon golden sun dancing off the dead palm pot plants, thin enamel white painted poles hold up a sort of cover above, provincial. A queue passes a faded green felt notice board, out of date HIV warnings, announcements of long gone opportunities. The queue stretches down a long corridor toward night, an unhurried fuss.
Further into the night, a woman dozes, a child on her lap, wailing sporadically with hurt arm, a trickle of blood on his temple. She passes out, the child falls. From somewhere, in hushed tones, a nurse picks up the child, takes him away. The woman looks around, “I don’t know what is going on.” ATM boy gives her the sandwich he didn’t want. She bites down on it absently. A name is called. “That’s me.” She drops the remains of the bread onto the floor and moves down the corridor towards a beckoning shadow. Bodies move to fill the empty seat.
From the depths of his pockets he hands the intake nurse a square of blue cardboard, she reads the name. “Oh you, yes.”
She points down a side corridor, “You know where the sister is, she was asking about you a few weeks ago.”
ATM boy leads me a complex route to a door and knocks. The sister greets him by name, enthusiastically. She has his meds, he should have picked them up weeks ago. No word from his mother, she tells him. She hands me the meds, tells me that they should make handling him easier. What are they for? Schizophrenia. And his mother? When she brought him here, she left to go fetch some money, for food, from the ATM. Never came back.
The medication made him useless. He would sleep directly after taking it, often pissing in his pants, unable to get out of the stupor in time. When the medication ran out he returned to the ATM. Disappearing one day, the security guard nearby says he has been arrested for being a public nuisance.
Behind the supermarket, behind Highpoint, there was a metal air expulsion kind of funnel, a heating vent perhaps, and a hole in the fence, and me and Dain, Dane, would sleep there on cold nights, or any night really when we needed the safety of the space behind the warm horizontal tube of the extractor. A third person joined us at some point, I cannot even guess at his name. And we would move together in the day all three of us. We would take turns, draw lots really, fight mostly, over who would sleep closest to the warmth of the metal, tucked as close to the tube as possible, snuggling under. Often the other guy would claim to be more vulnerable to the cold. We were sleeping in an opiate daze when the power went out, the whole of Hillbrow plunged into a deep cold darkness. In the morning he would not wake, cold to the touch, the power still not returned, but our, Daine and myself, our downs were pulling on us, and so we left him cold, tucked under the extractor. Dead in our minds.
Eventually, downhill in Durban, this occupation has exhausted me, because I have the luxury of the life I destroyed, can be rebuilt.
People with undestroyed lives, that provide me with daily help, need to relieve themselves of the burden of me. The suggestion is made that I lie to get into the psych ward at Addington to get methadone.
A tunnel of security guards waving their beeping paddles, the particular shadows of public health, peeling posters, faded instructions, a tone of cream paint scuffed and grimed., muffled sobs, the shuffle of gowns. Out into tall windows letting in the summer light, a dying palm pot plant, a white concrete amputated crescent moon bench, upon which sits a yellowed paper man, in a robe and stained vest and maybe underwear, pinching an unlit cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, squinting as he drags on it. His head lifts slightly, as if he has the desire to eye me suspiciously, but not the energy.
Orange metal walls, the cancer section, more stairs, “psychiatric” printed on A4s, in plastic sleeves, peel off walls, point in opposite directions as part of some test or experiment or other cruelty. One more cream flight of steps, round a corner, an alcove opposite the toilets. Wooden, wooden top, a cavalcade of files in green sleeves, nurses briskly harassed, two uncalm doctors in white and worn stethoscopes, residents festooned with bright new stethoscopes, all packed into maybe three by five hushed meters. A nurse is trying to explain the medication times to a howling woman. A man hugs, pleading and admonishing in quiet tones, the toilet wall abutment. There is no queue. The only movements in the ward dazed, uncomfortable in their beds.
She grabs a moment, makes sure to tell me she is only grabbing a moment, that she has to leave now and what can she do for me. Crisp, her sleek black hair, her rings, her teeth, even her name badge shines through the murk. I tell her that I am suicidal and I am going to hurt myself, and I need to book in now.
“Nyaope,” she states.
“Yes.”
“Don’t do it,” she leans forward whispering. I am left with no response.
“There’s no methadone.” She looks from side to side, “Just go.”
“But I need help.”
“If you must, come tomorrow in the morning. It’s too late to admit you now.” She reels off a long list of various tests and other clinics I must get referrals from before I can be admitted to Psych Ward. Queues I need to pass through.
Doc is a high functioning addict, with inherited wealth. Doc either studied at med school or was an actual Doctor. Doc will know where to go, what to do. His car is at the back entrance to the drug house at 24, which means he’s at 26. I walk up the road in the fading light, and outside 26, recognisable from his shoes, is Chilli Bite, slumped against a tree, under a black plastic bag, obviously smoking. The residents in the flats opposite often complain about Chilli Bite, smoking outside, as do the people inside the drug house, Chilli Bite says it’s his right. Often misquotes Mandela. I greet him, he doesn’t reply. The black plastic breathes in and out in the wind.
Inside Doc, surrounded by people indulging his meth rantings – Doc is prone to, if he senses the attention of the crowd waning, handing out free drugs – and try to get his attention.
There was rain recently and the floors still have a half inch of water, mud, little drug baggies. Jenny the pitbull jumps up at me, and I take her through to Ncosy, who is fighting with Nicole over a missing something, as usual, and I say, “Has Jenny been fed.” Nicole says Doc will feed her later. I ask for a loan of forty so I can get a cap, and they say Boyo just came right, and I go to Boyo and he makes me a hit, I laugh about Chilli Bite passed out outside. “Oh, he passed, got hit by a car, I covered him”.
King George Hospital, Doc says, they have a good programme, but lie, he says, lie, lie, lie until you get into the psych ward, INSIDE, lie to get inside, only once you are in a bed, only then tell the truth. And go early in the morning.
First light, on the way up the first hill I contemplate making the lie real and stand on the edge of one of those steep downhills and watch the trucks barrelling down towards me. I attempt to step out into the path of one of them, but my body refuses.
Ten am I arrive. The corridors are wider at King Dinzinzulu? King George, whatever, but still those particular shadows. I pass broken vending machines, tables of cheap snacks, empty hand sanitiser dispensers, to emergency intake.
It takes two hours to be called to register that I am even there. Twelve noon. And I join the queue to wait to see a resident, to be assigned to whoever I must see.
Before the resident I must see a nurse. It is six pm when I get to nurse and the fever has begun, a thousand cold sweats and hot deliriums, my bones are pushing into my skin, and my hands have begun cramping.
“Nyaope,” says the nurse.
“No,” I say.
“Okay,” she says smiling, “so no medication then.”
And points me to another queue. People sit next to me for hours, disappear into the corridors, do not return.
Time has lost all meaning. I cannot control my limbs. A thin stream of waxy shit is making its way down my leg, but I cannot walk to the toilet, only around and around in circles. Sitting down, sitting up, standing up, slumping, I have begun trying to talk my way through the pain. My elbows feel as if they are outside the skin, screeching on passing chalkboards.
“Suicide, I just tried to kill myself, “ biting, sucking in breath through the pain.
The young resident contemplates me. “Did you try, or did you just think about it?”
I describe standing on the edge of the road and trying to.
“It might be enough.” Hands me back my folder.
“Doctor will see you when he does his rounds in the morning. Take a seat.”
I am doubled over in gut pain when they finally find me a bed to wait on. It is a gurney in bright corridor. No bedding, not that I need bedding, my legs would kick it off. I need shielding from the light that is in itself pain embodied, my eyeballs are on fire and I keep drifting in and out of consciousness. There will be no sleep. My sides are aching and my heart is breaking out of my chest.
The last time I was like this was when my meds vanished at my sister’s place and I was rushed to a private clinic and told had I waited any longer I would have died. And yet I am here, climbing under the thin blue rubber covered foam, thin like prison sponges, to hide from fluorescent as searing as the midday sun.
Around seven am my resolve crumbles. Hoist myself up and start walking toward the exit. Reaching the double doors, tackled to the ground by two security guards and dragged by my feet screaming back to my gurney, I fight and I fight, I need to go, I need relief, give me relief or let me go find relief, I refuse to get on the gurney, a resident picks me up from behind, my arm around his neck. They are holding me down and contemplating handcuffing me to the gurney when a doctor intervenes.
“Nyaope,” he says.
“I’ll discharge him, fucking paras, lying to get a comfortable bed.”
Outside the hospital, from the brow of a hill, I spot some paras under a tree in an abandoned lot.
I take the stethoscope from out of my pants, clean off the waxy shit, and trade it for a cap of nyaope, cover myself with the garbage bag, slump against the tree – the black plastic breathing in and out with the wind.