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didn’t want me anymore. She said the social worker must take me away. But I ran far so they couldn’t find me. Then a boy at Park Station gave me iglue to help me sleep.”
    Joseph settled himself down next to Sipho. Without stopping to think anymore, Sipho put the bottle up to his nose and took a couple of sharp, deep breaths.
    “Take some more, man!” whispered Joseph.
    Sipho sniffed again, until suddenly his head felt quite light, almost dizzy. He didn’t like the feeling but lay down, resting his head again on Jabu’s shoulder. With Joseph now on the other side of him, he felt warmer. It was good being close to somebody else. Joseph’s mother hadn’t wanted her son, and his own ma didn’t care about him anymore. But now he was remembering how good it used to feel when as a very small boy he had slept alongside his grandmother. Her bed had always been so warm. Well, now he was a little boy once again with someone taking care of him, and he and Gogo were together in a warm place, floating, floating…

7. A Test for Sipho
    S ipho woke up with someone shaking him. For a few seconds he was startled, not knowing where he was. He was not on his mattress between the packing-box table and the stove. Instead of the dimness of the shack, light was attacking his eyes. Instead of his mother urging him to get up, in a soft voice that would not disturb his stepfather, it was Lucas silently shaking the boys who were still sleeping. Although the sun was up, the hard earth was still cold beneath the thin cardboard, and Sipho’s whole body was stiff. No one spoke much as they prepared themselves for the new day, slowly stretching their limbs and crossing to another corner of the plot where a small bush served as a toilet. Boys sat smoking their stompies, waiting for the sun to sink into them. Sipho rested his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands. The night before his head had felt so light; now it felt terribly heavy. Was it the effects of iglue? Surely not. He had only had a little. Hemust be getting a cold. If he had been at home Ma would have taken a few drops of oil from her special little bottle and rubbed it on his chest and back to help him breathe. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the picture. He was aware that Joseph was half sitting, half lying, also holding his head in one of his hands. Was he feeling bad too, or was he just trying to remember his dream garden?
    Sipho wasn’t aware of any signal but, without anyone saying a word, the gang got up as if part of a single body, even Joseph. Jabu and Matthew stacked the cardboard in the corner of the plot before following the others toward the gap in the fence. Once out on the pavement they walked in the opposite direction from the one in which Sipho recalled coming the night before. A few cars were parked in the road, but apart from a man carrying a package and a couple of figures walking ahead of them in the distance, the street was still quiet.
    The boys’ silence was only broken when they reached a wire fence alongside a railway siding. No railway workers were in sight.
    “It’s fine,” said Lucas. “Let’s move!”
    Slipping through a hole between the fence and the ground, the boys made their way to a tap at the back of an old brick building. Removing a loose brick, Vusi produced a piece of soap. It waspassed to each one in turn as they ducked their heads under the water.
    That seemed to bring people alive. When it was Jabu’s turn, he came out from under the tap shaking the water off his head and sending a flicker down his body. Sipho was reminded of the puppy Gogo had got him. Once, when he was meant to be watering the garden, the farmer’s son, Kobus, had got him to turn the hose on the puppy. They had laughed at the puppy’s surprise and how it shook itself afterward. But ducking under the tap himself and feeling the icy cold shower hit his head brought Sipho firmly back to where he was…and his own head, which was still hurting.
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