The Wall

10

Start with the drawers. Utensils in the first one. Nozipho examined it closely, anyway. People sometimes hid their stuff in the oddest places. Lifted up the utensil tray. Nothing. She noticed that the forks didn’t match the knives and the spoons were different from the other pieces. Mixed patterns.

In the next drawer, plastic. Salad servers and soup spoons. Scratched up. Nozipho looked around. She caught sight of plates and bowls through the glass cabinet doors.

Another old, colorful mishmash. These folks were definitely not rich.

However, wealth wasn’t one of her criteria. Access was. The open window, the door with a decrepit lock, the decoy instead of the real alarm system. Her morning job with the realtors helped with this. Organizing emails and mail. Sometimes she knew a week in advance where it might be worth taking a look.

The next drawer was empty. The fourth one, too. There were four more, one on top of the other, at the other end of the custom kitchen. She started at the floor. Empty. Then, tablecloths and napkins. Old and faded. She wouldn’t find anything here. The third was a junk drawer. Toothpicks, cleaning sponges, a pile of folded rags, two new and two half-burnt candles.

Nozipho ran her hand through the drawer. Wait, here was something. A few bills. From Mozambique, worthless. A ring. Perhaps gold. A pen. A heavy watch. Stuff you’d stick in here if you didn’t have a better place for it.

This is what it had looked like at their place when Thembinkosi lost his job. Too much to starve, too little to enjoy life. And the two girls had still been living at home back then. One of them about to graduate. And college was expensive.

When Thembinkosi had told her that as a teenager he’d spent two years breaking into houses, she hadn’t believed him at first. The alcohol. And when he had suggested starting back at that, she’d said: “You’re crazy!”

But by the following morning, she had asked what he had in mind. Completely sober again. They needed money.

Nozipho opened the last drawer.

Wow, she thought. These people weren’t all that poor after all.