The Wall

25

White dolls. White pop star girls on posters. He didn’t recognize any of them. The room was stuffed full of bright things. Yellow sheets, red rug, stuffed animals in every color imaginable. Moses picked up a pink elephant from a shelf, which declared “I love you” in a high-pitched voice when he turned it over. Momentary fear. Had anyone heard that? He set the elephant back down and listened hard once more for any noises in the house. Opened the door to the living room and looked through the terrace door to the outside. That’s where he’d just come from. He then walked to the front of the house.

The vehicle whose siren he’d heard was sitting almost right in front of the door, its lights flashing. The guard he’d seen just a little while ago, the frog, was sitting at the wheel and talking to the white man who liked to swing his club so much. The two of them didn’t look like the best of friends. Moses couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he could tell that they were only exchanging short sentences. The man in the car nodded curtly, as did the man with the stick. After that, they just stared down the street. What plan had the two of them cooked up?

Did they even have one?

He walked back into the living room in search of the kitchen. Opened the fridge, took out the orange juice, and drank straight out of the bottle. After that, he stuck his head under the faucet.

No aluminum foil in the drawer. Nor in the pantry. Maybe they’d just run out of it. Or it was kept somewhere else.

For the first time, he felt safe, since nobody could see him in here. But how long would this feeling of safety last? Only until the owners returned. Until they started searching the houses.

Moses put the juice back up. No, they wouldn’t do that. Private property was sacred in South Africa. Every thief in the government swore by that. The houses would remain untouched for the time being.

Cheap furniture, but expensive appliances. A monstrous flat-screen TV hung on the wall. Speakers large enough to fill a stadium with sound. Two MacBooks on the desk. How careless was that? Sitting next to an old telephone that you couldn’t even buy anymore. Moses briefly considered going up to the second floor, but he had other concerns. He crept around the first floor and quickly opened all the doors. The only locked door was a steel one. The garage, Moses thought. The ladder, an afterthought.

Through a street-side window, he saw the old woman he’d just seen on the phone. She was talking to the two men. Pointed at her house, then at the ground—he was lying in my yard. She gestured to the side—and ran off. Now she shook her head—this country wasn’t safe anymore. If she had been alone with the white guard, she would’ve added that things had been better before. He’d understand what she meant.

An old man walking a small dog on a leash approached them. He kept looking all around as he drew closer.

Moses groaned. Only old people and whites, and old white people, lived here. He thought about the phone.

He went over to the desk and lifted the receiver. A dial tone. Why hadn’t he thought about this right away? He could finally call Sandi.