The Wall

58

Sandi was standing in her room. She was convinced at least twenty minutes had passed. Maybe more. The phone was still in her hand. Sweat trickled down her back.

The room was small. Bed and wardrobe and kitchenette in less than twenty square meters. Toilet and shower in an old supply closet. She wasn’t complaining. Some of her friends had it even worse. Communal kitchens were shit. Communal bathrooms were shit, in the literal sense. Above all, when the boys used them. She gazed at the small photo of her and Moses that she’d pinned up over her bed.

What had Moses gotten himself into now?

Wrong question. She shook her head. Disloyal. A betrayal to their relationship.

Once more from the top. What had actually happened to Moses? The car, his phone, the gated community—why would anyone want to live in such a hell hole—the two white men, and then the break-in.

What could I do? she wondered. Nothing came to her. Just like a few minutes ago, and the time before, and the time before that. But there was always something you could do. Right?

So once again. Sandi sat down on the bed and pulled her shoes on. It gave her the feeling of doing something. Go stand at the entrance to that gated community, she thought. But how? With whom? With what?

With guns.

Ridiculous. She didn’t know anyone who had any. Except for her uncle in Mthatha. Just go in. Search. Take Moses by the arm. Walk out.

Sandi rummaged around under her bed. Pulled out a shoebox. Opened the lid. Pulled out a few maps. Flipped through them. Zimbabwe. Lesotho. Durban.

She left her room and knocked on her neighbor’s door. Laura opened right away.

“You have a city map, don’t you?” Laura had moved from Zambia three months ago. And had her own car. How else would she find her way around?

“Sure.”

“May I borrow it?”

Two minutes later, the map was stretched out on the bed in Sandi’s room. She was kneeling beside it. Here was Abbotsford, situated at a highway intersection. Mostly small single-family homes and a few newer gated communities. And there was Dorchester Heights, larger homes, a subdivision stretched along the Nahoon River. Suburbia lifted out of a dictionary, and not even a single shop where you could just buy a loaf of bread. The map didn’t show her where The Pines was located. But there couldn’t be all that many possibilities. The river was here, Dorchester Heights was there, just as it was printed on the map.

There weren’t many other open spaces. She could envision quite precisely where Moses was. What she couldn’t envision was how she was going to actually help him.