floor, where she let out a series of loud, brokenhearted moans and spat out a stream of blood. People in the waiting room calmly shuffled their chairs out of the way. Easy lifted her by the shoulders, pressed some gauze in her mouth, wrapped her school sweater across her chest to stop the blood from further staining her yellow shirt, and marched her out of the clinic.
In New Rest, Princess’s table was covered with bottles of lemon soda. The walls and couch were blue, the shelf dotted with a few pictures: a young girl in a school portrait, a man and woman kissing. The TV was blaring, connected to speakers with a heavy bass beat.
“See how we living?” a guy piped up, handing his cigarette to the person next to him. “Socialist.”
Princess flashed me a wide smile. She was bone-tired and lonely, with close-cropped hair, no front teeth, and teary eyes. Her husband had died, followed closely by her only son, who, undone by grief, overdosed before he turned twenty-one. She worked in a factory all day and invited everyone to drink in her living room at night, beneath a blowup print of her late son at his dad’s funeral. A few years earlier, the cops came to Princess’s house and punched her in the face when she opened the door, but it turned out they had the wrong address. She got her picture in the paper, a sixty-year-old lady with a bloody lip, but never a payout like she wanted. Once I glimpsed her walking home from the train station after a long day. Every step, it seemed, caused her pain.
“Don’t you need somebody to work as domestic, sisi?” she asked me, hopefully. This was our little routine, every time we saw each other. “A few days a week?”
“I’m sorry, Princess, but I don’t need.”
“What about your husband, your boyfriend?” a young guy, a relative of some persuasion, asked. “Does he have a job for me?”
“Justice is from New York,” Easy said.
“Can I take a train to New York?” Princess asked.
After Easy and Masana had topped up, and Easy had offered, weakly, to cook me an egg, I decided to leave. Easy and Masana hitched a ride, since they had plans to pick up supplies for further boozing. Easy folded into himself in the passenger seat and Masana helped me navigate the road and told me to stop just before the overpass and let them out. I pulled up onto a curb and put on my hazards. My wipers were flying frantically back and forth.
“I need fifty rand for bread, my sister,” Masana said.
“Bread is eight rand, Masana.”
“I need money, my sister.”
I sensed that Masana was a person who had no qualms about slipping a knife to someone’s throat as a way to settle a difference of opinion.
“Hayi, Masana,” Easy protested mildly.
“I have some change here,” I said, motioning to the ashtray, where I kept loose coins to tip car guards. “I guess if you want it, it’s yours.”
As Masana reached for the change, Easy’s hand flew out and grabbed Masana’s wrist. Masana tried to pull away.
“No, no,” Easy said. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Take the change.”
“I don’t like it,” Easy repeated, shaking his head, slow motion, and then he let go.
Masana scooped up the coins and put them in his pocket. “Thank you, my sister,” he said, getting out of the car. “Bread money.”
Easy followed, and stood unsteadily on the sidewalk in the pouring rain. A settlement built on a dirt patch stretched behind him, people in mud-caked shoes making their way between the shacks, followed by mud-caked dogs.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Easy said, leaning into the car. His face had collapsed into that of a child on the verge of tears. Masana was counting his take, pleased.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Me? I’m okay.”
“Well, Easy, take care of yourself.”
“Yes, yes. I’m strong, Justice.”
He patted the roof and moved away. He and Masana pushed against each other, waving—two small, dark silhouettes in the middle of a downpour—as I headed out of Gugulethu.
On a whim, I called the PAC offices. They were located, as far as I could tell from the party’s paltry website, in some guy’s apartment in Cape Town. It was a waning group of radicals, garnering 0.21 percent of the vote in national elections, but its members seemed hopelessly dedicated.
A man answered on the first ring, confirmed that his home phone served as the provincial PAC official line, and listened