We leave P Section in a different direction from the one we used coming in. I am shell-shocked. The storm picks up several notches. We stop at a stormwater drain. Uncle Vusi and Mkhulu Mlondi take off their raincoats and discard them in the drain.

“Take off yours as well, Mthunzi,” says Mkhulu Mlondi.

I hear him but it’s like I’m paralysed. I can’t move. They take off my raincoat and ditch it the drain.

“You shouldn’t have followed us, Mthunzi,” Uncle Vusi growls in my face.

We tread on home; we are soaking wet. We take off our clothes and shoes in the outside-building bathroom. We shove everything into a black refuse bag. Uncle Vusi douses the refuse bag with petrol and burns it behind the outside building.

Mkhulu Mlondi pours muthi into the water in the bathtub. “Don’t dry it off with a towel. Let it dry by itself. If you dry it with a towel the thing you saw today will forever be on your mind.”

They tell me to be strong because the muthi stings but I am numb, I feel nothing.

We hurry into the main house after the muthi has dried. The tripe broth I had been salivating over the whole afternoon doesn’t smell so delicious anymore. I slurp only two spoons and feel sick.  Mkhulu Mlondi and Uncle Vusi eat as if nothing has happened. They wipe their bowls clean. I close my eyes and see slit throats. I start trembling.

“What’s wrong?” Ma shifts her seat closer to mine.

“I think I’m coming down with flu,” I lie.

Mkhulu Mlondi leaves early the next day. Uncle Vusi stays locked in his room for days. After a week he leaves us to stay in a flat in town.

“I’m being promoted into management at work so I’ll be very busy. I need a place closer to work,” he tells us.

One day I visit him in his flat and find him drunk and high, out of his mind. His pupils are dilated, he looks at me with a faraway, forlorn stare. His forced smile fails to disguise the pain he feels inside. His wiry frame has become just skin and bones. His nostrils are caked with white powder.

“I haven’t slept in five days,” he says at the ATM after withdrawing money he wants me to give Gogo.

“Why?”

“It’s because of the thing we did. I see their faces when I sleep.”

Mkhulu Mlondi fares no better. He beats a close friend to within an inch of his life, and is jailed for attempted murder.

Uncle Vusi’s reckless behaviour sends his life on a downward spiral. He burns through the payout from Mkhulu’s life insurance policy by snorting mountains of cocaine. We get word that he is close to getting fired at work.

We plan an intervention. He arrives drunk and high out of his mind. He takes one look into the lounge, recognises that it is an intervention, gets back into his car and leaves. He stops answering our calls.

Soon it all comes to a head. He falls asleep at the wheel. The car accident is bad. He breaks his legs and back. His life is spared but he has to use a back brace for most of the day. He is in constant pain. He can no longer drive.

“Help me get my disability claim sorted, Mthunzi,” he says when I pick him up on the day he is discharged from the hospital.

I push him in his wheelchair. His flat is as dirty as he left it on the day of the car accident.

“Get me the blue file from my desk. Everything is in there,” he says.

He wheels himself into his bedroom. I find the file.

“Got it, Uncle Vusi.”

I find him staring at nothingness out of the balcony sliding door.  “Uncle Vusi!” I tap his shoulder.

Deep pain has descended over him. “Just look at me, Mthunzi. I should never have done what I did. I should never have killed. Now I’m dying, piece by piece.”

“Come on, Uncle Vusi. Please don’t speak like that.”

“Use me as a lesson. I remember clearly Uncle Mlondi told me to dig two graves when plotting to kill. I dug this grave.”

I almost cry when I help him to the toilet. I drop my cellphone when I help him back onto the wheelchair. I kneel to pick it up and look at Uncle Vusi. Remnants of white powder are on his nostrils. He was not in the toilet to relieve himself but to snort cocaine. He recognises my disappointment. He looks to the ground, ashamed.

“It takes the edge off. It helps me forget, Mthunzi. Otherwise I keep seeing their faces every time I close my eyes.” He is pleading, apologising and crying for help. “Take it right now and flush it down the toilet. I don’t want to depend on it anymore.”

I let out a sigh. I wonder what I can do to help him out of the grave he dug for himself when he decided to kill Mkhulu’s killers.

I take the cocaine and flush it down the toilet. I remember Mkhulu’s words. I remember he named me Mthunzi, the shade that will shelter my family. I know right there and then I will do everything in my power to help Uncle Vusi fight his demons.

*****

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