TEN YEARS - DISA

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It's locked up, mos. How are we going to open?'
'I should have asked for the key from that guy. He couldn't have
come here without one. They must have given him one at the
office,' Vusi said.
'What do we do then? Commit HB? It would be too risky.
Remember that the bloody house is under the control of those
sadists and boy, should they find you here!' I opined.
'You're speaking the gospel truth, my friend. They might return
in the middle of the night. It means our troubles are not yet over,
then. Let me sound the old lady.'
l Awu, women!' she said to the five or so matrons who were
crowded around her. The little ones are not lying when they sing
that the burden of our lives is heavy. A glimmer of hope in the
dark and you follow it. Before you're anywhere up crops another
problem. Vusi here asks whether it's safe to go back inside the
house since that boy, who is now the rightful tenant, wouldn't mind
us keeping the house.'
'Hey, my mother's child, that good child is not the
superintendent. You may make matters worse for yourselves if you
do that. Wait until you get permission to go back into the house,'
one woman gave as her sound opinion.
The neighbours offered to divide the furniture and other things
and to keep them until everything was back to normal. Some
wanted to give them a place to sleep in their own crowded homes,
but Mrs Nyembezi declined politely, saying that they had already
done enough for them by donating the fifteen rand and taking their
belongings for safekeeping. She would take one of the children to
her sister at Orlando East and the two little ones who still needed
their mother's care would go with the latter to Mofolo, to her sister.
The retarded one would be returned to the 'welfare' at
Krugersdorp. She turned to Vusi. 'Where will you go Vus'?'
'I haven't decided yet, ma. But I'll see. Maybe I'll go to uncle at
Klipspruit. But today I'm sleeping here at Mzimhlope. I'll find a
place somewhere with my friends.'
But we slept in that controversial matchbox that night with the
two blankets that Vusi had taken saying that he wanted to
contribute those at least wherever he was going to sleep — which
would have been at my place, only then he insisted on sleeping
'home'. He told me that the whole police force, let alone the
'blackies', would never stop him from sleeping there that night. I
couldn't help but sleep there, also. You might not care to know
that we remained on edge the whole night. The hard floor and thin