Soulparking

Wednesday, 28 June 2006

So Jasmin and I had a great night of dinner and were driving home.  At the robot by the CTICC downtown Cape Town, there was a little boy who was begging.  I immediately started digging into my pockets for something to give him.

“Don’t give him anything,” Jasmin warned.  “He is sniffing glue.”

And thats when I turned and saw the see through plastic bag.  The same plastic bag you put your vegetables in at the grocery store.  And he held it in a ball with a pocket of air pushing it out.  He shook his empty Coke can that had change rattling – and occasionally he would dip his nose in the direction of the bag and sniff.  And then his head would shoot up and his shaking of the Coke can would become more aggressive.

The boy was dead.  I mean – he was breathing – and he was moving – but his eyes were dead.  They starred but looked at nothing.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I felt hopeless.  I wanted to do something.  I wanted to give him the magic change that would break him out of this glue induced trance.

I am lucky.  When I drive home from work, I go against traffic.  Most of the suburbs drive into the CBD (Cape Bowl District) to work and then they take the N1 and N2 to drive out starting around 4 PM.  I live in the CBD and then drive out to the suburbs to go to work.  So I go opposite. I never have to wait for traffic.

But suddenly, yesterday there was four lanes of red brake lights in front of me.  And the opposite four lanes of headlights were crammed as well.  I slowed down – and I inched my way forward.  As I went over the top of one of the hills I looked down and saw there was the debris of an accident. 

And as I got closer, I saw a black man in the median pushing a grocery cart of his belongings.  He was tall and lean with no teeth and several torn jackets on – and tears were streaming down his face.  He was moving quickly.  Pushing his grocery cart as fast as he could.

Often, the poor who do not have cars – when they are in a hurry to catch a train or just running home  – they often cross eight lanes of highway traffic.  It’s like a living version of Frogger but instead of a frog its a person or group of people.  And if you are heading the speed limit of 120 KM, suddenly, you will see a person swish by – or fill up your headlights and you have to swerve to miss them.

As I inched forward, there was glass everywhere.  And a police car was on the scene with some cones moving people out of the lane.  They were people standing in the fast lane looking down on something.  And at first, I thought it was a piece of a car that was in the lane.  But then I saw the colored bare foot twisted on the highway.  And then I saw the leg.  Then I saw the body – contorted on the highway.  It was a young boy – probably eleven years old – wearing torn pants and half a t-shirt.  His body was lifeless on the asphalt.  A police man were standing over him.  There was not even a sheet put over his body.  And the traffic slowed down to look but then you saw them take off down the highway.

I looked over on the other side of the highway and saw a white woman crying.  She was standing beside a bakkie (truck).  And she was talking and pointing with another policeman standing there. 

And then it was gone and the traffic sped up quickly – and I was back in the normal flow of traffic.  It was surreal.  It was like I had watched a dog or cat get hit by a car and then I was off again.  But it was a human being.  A little boy.  A little boy trying to rush across the highway to get home.

And then I remembered the old man pushing the grocery cart.  Was that his father?   Why hadn’t he stopped?  Why hadn’t he waited around?  But often the poor kids were abandoned by their parents – and the kids would have to fend for themselves.  Maybe they were friends and they were going to cross the road together.

But the little boy wasn’t so lucky.

There was no news on it in the paper.  There was nothing about it on the radio because its such a normal occurrence.   

“Hey mother fucker, we are going to put a fire under your ass,” the voice slurred out.

“Hey man, you are talking to the answering machine,” my half-brother Phillip yelled out laughing and then it went click. 

My father just erased the message and shook his head.  It’s a shame that his sister and his sister’s son – the ones he had spent most of his life protecting and making up excuses for – to me – now got drunk or high and left nasty messages of hatred and ignorance.

“You should really meet them, Gary.” my dad would try to convince me – most of my life.

And when my biological mother was put into jail because of an outstanding warrant just after my grandfather’s death.  I begged my parents to not do anything about it.  “If she has done something wrong, she needs to fess up to it.  She needs to realize that she can’t keep getting away with it.  There are repercussions to everything.”

My parents disagreed.  Even my mom – who usually stands behind me – told me Cathy had changed.  And that this was an unfortunate situation – and they needed to do something.  Again, I told them not to.  But my father tried to ease my conscience, “Don’t worry if we pay the $5000 bail to get her out – she will pay us back.  She promised.”

“How about Phillip?  Can’t he help out?”

I could tell my father was nodding yes over the phone.  “Yes, he also agreed to help out.  So see.  Its okay.”

I still didn’t believe it.  I had never believed anything that my biological mother had said.  Ever since the day when I was seven and she said she was going to kidnap me and take me away from the only stable home I had ever had.  At seven years old, I knew that a woman who would lie to her own brother – and steal her brother’s son – was evil.  And throughout my life, her life was the illustration of dead.  No purpose except destruction, mayhem, confusion, and pain.  She knew nothing else.  She cared for no one.  She often threatened to kill herself in front of me and Phillip (biologically my half brother but in law my first cousin) and I had secretly wished she had not been such a coward or liar and did it.

I had always hated her and it was my parents that would constantly tell me not to.  That without her, they would not have been given the greatest gift they had ever been given – me.  They were forever in her gratitude.  And forever, my dad would always make sure she was okay and protect her.

So my parents took out a loan for money they didn’t have and bailed Cathy out of jail.  And on my parents 30^th anniversary Cathy told my dad – that my mom tried to seduce and marry my grandfather.  An utterly perposterous lie.  She went on to say more horrible things about my mother which completely shocked my father.  This woman (my mother) who took a child that was not her own at three years old – who cried at the sound of a lawn mower, was afraid of everything, and  loved me unconditionally.  A woman who did not hide her feelings but believed like my dad had that Cathy was changed person.

I never believed it. 

That was the day Cathy died to my father.  And he cried.  Like he had cried when his own dad had died.  The only person who had shared his life with him – from the day they themselves were abandoned by their own mother when Cathy was a baby and my dad was three.  And Cathy to his face had betrayed him.

Because of newly passed United States legislation, my parents social security and medical aid money was taken away.  When I arrived home at Christmas, my parents were stressed but they wouldn’t tell me why.  After a lot of prodding and digging around, I found out they were worried because they were almost out of money.  I was also telling my parents that Phillip was worth his word.  That he would not be a liar.  Phillip just hadn’t got their messages about his promise to pay for his own mother’s bail money.  But when I saw the messages my father had sent on his computer to the same email that Phillip had emailed me from a day or two earlier, I was so angry.  Or left multiple messages on his mobile in front of me – to ask him to just call my dad back.  I was ashamed of him.

My parents who had finally got me to believe them – that Cathy and Phillip were not what I thought were.  Now we were all finding out – yes – indeed they are.

And from my own money – I started paying in Cathy’s and Phillip’s place the loan amount that got my the most evil person on the planet out of jail – in order for them to be able to pay their mortgage, pay their medical bills, and basic living expenses.  While a woman who had tried to dupe the government for money was free to manipulate her son and anyone that believed her to hate, hurt, or anything that caused confusion. 

The woman who bore me in her womb for nine months – and left me alone at the daycare center when I was three on Christmas Eve when all the other kids were being picket up – the woman who let me fall off the top of a moving car in my car seat – is not worth the air she breathes.

And the hell she put my half brother through.  And how much my parents had loved and believed he would break the cycle his mother was living – and tried to convince me to have a relationship with him – was now calling my parents at 1 or 2 in the morning via his friend Fuzzy drunk or high – to hurl insults at them.  And he goes on to buy a new pickup truck with money that he should be using to help pay my parents back for getting his mother out of jail. 

This is my Ricky Lake / Jerry Springer side of the family.

Dead.  They are more dead to me than the boy who was sprawled on the highway – hit by the speeding bakkie (truck).  More dead than the boy high on sniffed glue begging for change at the robot.