cruelity of the universe

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The smell had been lingering for a while now. I am quite sure passers thought it was a cat.  Cats die frequently in Hilbrow, Johannesburg. I am sure it was not just here. It was all over South Africa. Where I come from Limpopo, was a naturally beautiful province. We had cats there normally wild cats. They died all the time. They were hit by cars or killed by other cats. It was normal, cruel, but normal. Many say it’s the universe’s way of balancing life in the animal kingdom. I simply say its cruelty of the universe. It was also very normal to have such smells in Hillbrow, after all, this suburb is known for high crime, prostitution and drug abuse, but above it all was pollution.. I don’t think I had breathed a breath of fresh air since I got here. The air was dense, heavy with the life around this place. Limpopo’s air was clear and fresh, but a man must go out into the world and find his purpose. With my highest academic achievement being a mere high school certificate I had set out to Johannesburg to find a job. This city is known as the city of gold, city of dreams; the USA has New York City. South Africa has Johannesburg; the biggest economic city in the country. It sounds all glamorous when you don’t live in it, but this place, I have learnt, is the wide road to hell that is mentioned in the bible.

I stood there in disbelief. It was not a cat. It wasn’t even a dog. It was a baby; a dead baby. The lingering smell was the smell of his tiny body rotting in the flat trash storage bins.  He looked…I don’t know. I simply cannot find a word to describe that sight without being disrespectful of the dead. It is custom in the South African black community to respect the spirit of the dead no matter how young. I looked at him. He did not look like he was resting. The looked tired of screaming. He looked like he was calling out and no-one seemed to hear. Well, not until now. His eyes where filled with blood and his gut cut wide open. Who in his right mind would do this to a child? He looked no older than a year old to me. But I wouldn’t know: I had never really seen a kid grow in front of my very eyes.  What do I do with a dead baby?  If he were alive, I could take him in; try to give him the love he needs because I felt like he had died too young. I felt he had never really experienced the love a father can truly give to a son.

And then I looked around me. I was in Johannesburg. What would happen to me if I reported this to police? The police would find its mother and she would be questioned.  If she knew I had reported this, she would probably try to kill me. I know I sound paranoid, but this is clearly a woman that had killed before. Maybe I am being too quick to judge. Maybe the child was abducted from his mother and she didn’t know where he was.  I felt a chill down my spine. I was never a man of fear, but today, right now was different. I felt scared. The abductors could be watching me right now. They could be aiming a gun at me. I could turn around and find a man with a knife. I could be dead in the next minute; all because I tried to call the cops on a dead baby. I turned around, hesitated a bit, but moving on. As I moved away from the bin I felt slight relief. I was escaping the danger. Every step I took felt safer. My father had always told me to always do the right, humane thing, but my father was not here now and the child was dead already, I convinced myself. What good could I be to him now? This was Johannesburg and it was no place for a man like me. Someday someone would find him and maybe they would do the right thing for me.  I couldn’t help the child. I simply couldn’t.

It still haunts me today. Twenty years later. I still wonder to myself. Did anyone ever find the child? What if he had truly been abducted? Has the mother found peace? I really wonder if I could have helped her find her child. But what if it was her that had killed him? Was she ever prosecuted? Does the child’s DNA still linger in that place? Did another man find the child? Did he call the police or did he submit to fear the same way I did? I will never know neither will I forgive myself.