into a storm – but he was startled. He had never seen his mother cry before. There was a knock at the front door. She brusquely wiped her face and got up to open it. Leaving his beer and his chopper on the table, Jacob haplessly trailed her again.
It was still early, the sun the colour of unripe mango flesh. The woman pouting her lips rudely at the door wore a grey trouser suit, the smell of perfume around her like a swarm. Behind her stood a big man in a brown suit with a short tie, his stomach straining his shirt buttons. And behind him skulked two men in dusty coveralls. The perfumed woman clearly already knew Jacob’s mother. She flung some words directly at her – squatting, bailiffs, thirty days – and stomped off in her heeled boots to a waiting taxi, which promptly drove away. Jacob’s mother put her face into her hands. The big man pushed past her into the house and pointed his workers towards the larger items in the sitting room – the settee, the coffee table.
Jacob turned to his mother. ‘Mummy,’ he said, and felt the strangeness of the word in his mouth. He tugged her hands from her face. ‘They cannot boot you from your own house.’
‘It’s Lee’s house,’ she choked. ‘He’s—’ She collapsed against the door frame as sobs overtook her.
Jacob backed away. Now he understood. Lionel Banda was dead and his family had come to collect. The workers were shuffling towards the front door, each holding one end of the sofa.
‘Stop,’ said Jacob, putting his hand on one worker’s arm. ‘We will move the things out.’
‘Too late.’ The big man strolled towards them, sipping Jacob’s beer. ‘She was given a month’s notice.’
‘Bwana,’ Jacob pleaded. Then he remembered that he had the money the General had given him for transport. He took it out and pulled out several bills and stretched them towards the big man. The man looked him over, then pocketed the money.
‘Go on,’ he winked. ‘Take what you can. I won’t tell.’
As the workers proceeded to carry the sofa out through the open gate, Jacob darted into the house and started gathering what he could and packing it into the back of Uncle Lee’s pickup truck in the drive. But the bailiffs had four hands and he only had two – his mother’s were busy holding her face as she wept. Neighbours and bystanders soon sniffed out the drama and started taking the things the workers had left in the road. Jacob chased them off but then someone set the pile on fire. Jacob dashed around rescuing valuable items – electronics mostly – trying to avoid the feeling that he always seemed to bring fire into his mother’s life.
She stood on the side of the road in her orange robe, screaming as the morning traffic honked and crept around the commotion. When all of the things in the road were packed in the pickup or gone or burnt up, Jacob guided her back to the house only for them to find the front door bound with a column of shiny new bolts. The bailiffs had changed the locks. His chopper was still inside. So were the keys to Lee’s pickup, his mother informed him forlornly. Jacob used the dregs of the transport money from the General to pay for a taxi to take them to Kalingalinga. He didn’t know where else to go.
* * *
The General had not kept his promise to send Solo and Pepa home. As the days went on, Jacob realised that the General was holding them hostage until Jacob brought him the chopper. He couldn’t call the police – just more men with guns – and the chopper was locked up in the Northmead house. Handling his mother’s business had left his pockets too dry to purchase a taxi ride to New Kasama to explain things to the General. She had taken over his sleeping mat at Gogo’s, so Jacob stayed at the woodyard with Ba Godfrey, waiting for his friends to come home.
Nearly a week passed before the hulking black SUV arrived with its halo of red dust. A back door clicked and swung open. Jacob and his grandfather approached the vehicle. In the back seat, where pale Pepa and sooty Solo were supposed to be, was a black and white box, labelled with a pointy-lettered word. Jacob made to climb in beside it, but the driver turned and glared, motioning for him