653289528350

music, lift weights, make the CDs. Around ten or eleven, the drivers would start coming back
from their morning routes. We’d take the CDs and head out to the corner for them to pick up
their stuff. Then we’d just be on the corner, hanging out, meeting characters, seeing who
came by, seeing where the day was going to take us. A guy needs this. A guy’s selling that. You
never knew what it was going to be.
There was always a big rush of business at lunch. We’d be all over Alexandra, hitting
different shops and corners, making deals with everyone. We’d get free rides from the
minibus drivers because we’d hop in with them and use it as an opportunity to talk about
what music they needed, but secretly we were riding with the guy for free. “Hey, we want to
collect orders. We’ll talk to you while you drive. What do you need? What music are you
looking for? Do you need the new Maxwell? Okay, we got the new Maxwell. Okay, we’ll talk
to you later. We’ll jump out here.” Then we’d hop on another ride going wherever we were
going next.
After lunch, business would die down, and that’s when we’d get our lunch, usually the
cheapest thing we could afford, like a smiley with some maize meal. A smiley is a goat’s head.
They’re boiled and covered with chili pepper. We call them smileys because when you’re done
eating all the meat off it, the goat looks like it’s smiling at you from the plate. The cheeks and
the tongue are quite delicious, but the eyes are disgusting. They pop in your mouth. You put
the eyeball into your mouth and you bite it, and it’s just a ball of pus that pops. It has no
crunch. It has no chew. It has no flavor that is appetizing in any way.
After lunch we’d head back to the garage, relax, sleep off the meal, and make more CDs.
In the afternoons we’d see a lot of moms. Moms loved us. They were some of our best
customers. Since moms run the household, they’re the ones looking to buy that box of soap
that fell off the back of the truck, and they were more likely to buy it from us than from some
crackhead. Dealing with crackheads is unpleasant. We were upstanding, well-spoken East
Bank boys. We could even charge a premium because we added that layer of respectability to
the transaction. Moms are also often the most in need of short-term loans, to pay for this or
that for the family. Again, they’d rather deal with us than with some gangster loan shark.
Moms knew we weren’t going to break anyone’s legs if they couldn’t pay. We didn’t believe in
that. Also we weren’t capable of it—let’s not forget that part. But that’s where Bongani’s
brilliance came in. He always knew what a person could provide pending their failure to pay.
We made some of the craziest trades. Moms in the hood are protective of their
daughters, especially if their daughters are pretty. In Alex there were girls who got locked up.
They went to school, came straight home, and went straight into the house. They weren’t
allowed to leave. Boys weren’t allowed to talk to them, weren’t even allowed to hang around
the house—none of that. Some guy was always going on about some locked-away girl: “She’s
so beautiful. I’ll do anything to get with her.” But he couldn’t. Nobody could.
Then that mom would need a loan. Once we lent her the money, until she paid us back
she couldn’t chase us away from her house. We’d go by and hang out, chat, make small talk.
The daughter would be right there, but the mom couldn’t say, “Don’t talk to those boys!” The
loan gave us access to establish a relationship with the mom. We’d get invited to stay for
dinner. Once the mom knew we were nice, upstanding guys, she’d agree to let us take her
daughter to a party as long as we promised to get her home safely. So then we’d go to the guy
who’d been so desperate to meet the daughter.