After nearly two months, Gift and I had become close. He got me talking more and reading and writing less, and while this upset me at first, I eventually got used to it. One evening while playing Crazy Eights in our bedroom, he explained to me why they said he had a bad hand. He said that for some unknown reason, every time something disappeared, he would get blamed despite no one ever having proof.

“Everyone always suspects me, even at school. I know I look like I’m trouble; I’m used to it,” Gift said, showing no sign of sadness or anger. It was either that he was truly used to it or he was lying.

I thought he was lying. We were close and all but I still didn’t trust him. Then a few days later, he came home drunk from a soccer game his team had won, and to me, that qualified as evidence that he was the person everyone said he was.

If there was one thing mom couldn’t tolerate, it was a drinker. Dad was a full time alcoholic and he was so abusive that mom either had to take self-defence classes or divorce him to get out of the marriage alive, she chose the latter. Like nearly every modern Zulu old woman, mom was a serious Christian. She claimed dad was a good man and that alcohol was the devil. Gift didn’t understand the risk of being caught drunk in our household, and instead of telling on him like I would have two months back, I decided to do him a solid. The next day, when his hangover had faded and he seemed to be in a good condition, we had a small chat. We stood on the pavement in front of our gate, an act I had despised before we became close but was very common among guys in the township. If you’re always indoors like I used to be, you don’t live in the hood, you live in your house. There’s a level of belonging, a level of gangsterness, a level of confidence and fearlessness that you can only achieve by standing on the street for at least an hour every day, and it feels good. While on the street, I enlightened Gift on the rules and regulations of our house, the do’s and the don’ts. He seemed to understand what I was saying, so we dropped the conversation and just chilled.

One morning, I woke up and saw Gift on his tippy toes putting my sneaker box back on top of the wardrobe.

“Gift, what are you doing?” I asked, though it seemed obvious.

“I’m looking for scissors,” he explained, as relaxed as he could be.

“Don’t… don’t ever touch that box,” I said, worried about what I thought he was doing.

“Ayt cool,” he said, as he continued looking through the closet.

I had lost count of the money I had in there, so I had no way to see if anything was taken and prove he had stolen from me. I really hoped he hadn’t stolen from me, but my mind went back to his ‘bad hand.’ After he was gone, I counted the money: the papers amounted to a hundred and seventy bucks and the coins, well, I didn’t think he’d steal the coins so I didn’t bother counting them. I also set a trap so I would be able to tell if someone took money the next time: I put a twenty on top of the coins and put the rest under the coins, knowing whoever stole would just take the twenty and go.

The next morning, I woke up and saw Pumpkin standing next to my bed staring at me.

“Hi uncle,” she said, and then she ran out of the room.

The worst thing about being a jobless adult in a place like this was that I had zero privacy. I shared a room with my little brother, and like me, he was antisocial and loved art, but he was worse than I ever was. Even with Gift in the house, Lars never broke, he continued to live his life like Gift wasn’t there, which might be the reason I grew closer to Gift, to dilute the unfriendliness of my little brother. Lars was almost always sketching and I had to beg and sometimes bribe him to get out of the room so I could have some alone time with my girlfriend. The interior doors were rarely locked, so everyone walked in and out of every room without knocking, and I was used to that. Despite all of this, Pumpkin had no business being in our room, but what was I going to say? When you don’t own shit, you learn to let things happen; let it happen and let it go. After Pumpkin left, I checked my box and my money was still straight. It was.

Tell us: Do you think Gift stole from the shoebox?