“This place is just stink and noise,” I say to this other boy I talk to at the dump.

The scarf I wear tied across my nose and mouth doesn’t help much; the fumes still come through. I don’t just smell them; I can taste them. It’s the scarf I used to see wrapped around my mother’s head early in the mornings when she’d wake us to get ready for school. It’s dark red with a goldy-yellow pattern. Lately I’ve noticed little holes in it, maybe from the poison in the air. It gives me a sore feeling to think the material is rotting, but it was all I could find to use.

“Who says it’s poison?” Toothpick Sibiya asked once when I said something.

I just shrugged, but hey, I do science, I have an idea what I’m breathing here, looking for things for Toothpick and his business partner to recycle. Mostly it’s heavy metals like lead and chrome they want, but another month it might be any big plastic containers I can find. They come in their bakkie and wait until I’ve loaded it full; then they drive away again and I’m left to scramble over or dig through great mounds of the strange stuff people throw away, to be ready with a new load when they come back. A lot of times, things get stolen from a new pile I’ve started while I’m looking for more to add to it.

“Burning toxins,” I say when the boy just looks at me. “Not surprising my boss’s regular man gets sick so much. This stuff can kill us.”

I have to shout; he’s been working the dump so long that he’s going deaf from the grinding noise of the machines and different kinds of vehicles, all of them with something to do here.

“More like we’ll get mashed under a truck or picked up in a forklift load or taken for crushing,” he jokes in this way he has. “Like my brother.”

I don’t like to ask which of those three things happened to his brother. His name is Mseni, and he’s a bit younger than me, but there are even little kids here, mostly looking for something to eat or wear. Men and women too, all coughing, with their eyes red.

“Damn dogs!”

I throw a broken plastic bowl at the skinny animal. Black and white crows kwaark as they fly over the dump. Small creatures squeal and skitter, hidden among the rubbish. I don’t want to have to see them and know what they are.

“I think hell could be like this,” I tell Mseni.

“No, my bra, this is hell,” he says.

I think about what Toothpick said when I tried to get out of coming: “I let you stay in my back yard out of kindness, for your dead mother’s sake. You get away with that pathetic joke of a rent because I know you need the grant for the little ones. But everyone has to live, nê? And live some place. You want to look for somewhere else?”

“It’s just … school. I’m missing so much.” I still say it, every time, I don’t know why.

“What for does a clever boy like you need school? But send your brother if you want to. He looks strong.”

“No!” I almost shouted it. “I’ll be there.”

No way do I want Wandile seeing the things I see here, breathing this air that isn’t air.

“More hell for you than me,” I say to Mseni now, because I know how lucky I am compared to him.

“You being part-time,” he agrees. “And your boss, like he doesn’t beat you.”

“There are other things he could do.” I’m thinking ‘the shack’. I’m thinking ‘Amahle’.

At least I can sometimes negotiate with Toothpick, on days he’s in a good mood. That’s how I can mostly get myself marked present at school, because he doesn’t much care what time we start and finish as long as I give him the right number of bakkie loads. He and his partner take tavern time between loads and at night; that’s part of it, I think. It’s just some days he wants me to start early, probably when he hasn’t been drinking the night before.

I stare at the smoke rising from maybe twenty different places all over the dump.

Tomorrow. Friday. Please. It’s like I’m willing Toothpick to be in the right mood to agree to me fitting my work around the early afternoon science lesson at Khethi’s school. I could hook up with my science class while they’re walking over there. The dump isn’t too far, if I run most of the way.

Or maybe he’ll even let me stop for the day and have the afternoon off; then he can start early with his Friday evening drinking.

I start to feel good about myself, thinking these things. I’m the man with a plan. I feel even better when he comes for the day’s last load.

“This flexi-time thing?” he jokes when I ask about tomorrow. “Sharp. The number of loads is the thing, not the hours you work or when you do them. You see how generous I am to you? Just because you think school is important.”

Or because he doesn’t want the school telling the social worker I’m missing classes.

His partner has knocked off for the day, but Toothpick doesn’t offer me a lift in the bakkie, just tells me to put a big rusty container on the seat beside him.

He drives off and I jog home. The bakkie isn’t back when I get there; he’ll be unloading at the place where they keep everything from the dump.

The Sibiya children are crying as usual, and Mrs Sibiya is in the yard, still in her work clothes, putting a bag of rubbish in the plastic bin. I greet her, but she just looks at me, and I think how empty her eyes always appear. Being married to Toothpick can’t be any fun, that’s for sure.

Or maybe she’s too disgusted to greet me because I stink.

“So thank your husband for that,” I mutter, but so she can’t hear.

She goes inside and I head straight for the outside tap. I’m still feeling good, now that I’ve got tomorrow sorted out. My stomach is quiet – well, except for some nervous tightening whenever I think of Khethi, and that’s a lot. It’s good to be a family in the evenings, watching Ntando’s antics, thinking how crazy it is I’m her uncle, helping Wandile with homework, me and Amahle joking around, teasing each other.

Then it comes. The bang on the tin door. My heart crashing. Has he changed his mind about tomorrow?

It’s always the same. The smell of drink, the toothpick, the eyes looking for Amahle.

“Mrs Sibiya and I have to go out tomorrow afternoon, four o’clock until I don’t know, late. You can still do that school thing, just also the right number of loads. Tell your sister we need her to watch the children. That’s her work for us, so it’s not only you. I like to be fair.”

He goes away. Amahle and I look at each other, and I can see the same fear that I’m feeling making her mouth shake.

***

Tell us: What do you think about Cebo being forced to work by his landlord, Toothpick Sibiya? What are Cebo and his sister afraid of?