THE PAINTED DEBT

The yellow wall

CHAPTER 5: The Yellow Wall

The morning air was too heavy to breathe.

Lindi didn't walk, she ran. She had to get away from the small house, from the smell of Rooibos tea still hanging in the kitchen, from her mother Miriam's eyes - red, tired, guilty - because even Miriam didn't want this wedding, but she didn't know how else to save them from Mr Dlamini.

Her slippers hit the dusty street hard. It was only 9am but the sun was already biting. School was closed for the holidays so Vilakazi Street was full - little kids chasing a flat ball, gogos hanging washing, taxis shouting for passengers.

But Lindi didn't hear anything. Her heart was beating too loud.

She stopped where she always stopped when the world was too much.

The abandoned house at the end of the street. Most of it was broken, windows cracked, roof gone. But one wall was different.

When she was fourteen, she had taken yellow paint left over from school and painted it. A woman with no face, her hair turning into birds flying away. She named it "Freedom." The yellow was bright like the sun.

That yellow wall was the only thing in Soweto that was truly hers.

She slid down against it and finally broke. Not small tears - big, shaking, angry tears. She was nineteen. Nineteen and being forced to marry a man she didn't love, and even her own mother couldn't stop it.

"Lindi?"

She froze. She knew that voice before she even looked up.

Thando.

He stood there with his backpack dusty from the road. Thando Khumalo. Her best friend. Her person. The only person who knew that she hates onions, that she laughs when she is about to cry, that she wants to be a painter more than she wants to breathe.

He saw her face and his smile disappeared. He dropped his bag and sat in the dust next to her, shoulder to shoulder, the way he always did.

"Hey," he whispered. "I'm here. What happened?"

Lindi wiped her face fast. "Nothing. It's just dust. This morning air..."

Thando looked at her. He didn't believe her. He knows her too well.

He looked at the yellow wall. "You haven't come here in a long time. You only come when it's really bad."

Her bottom lip started shaking. "I feel like I will never paint again, Thando. Like this street will be all I ever get."

Thando was quiet for a second. Then he opened his backpack and took out a small, old sketchbook. It was hers. She had given it to him in Grade 8.

"I kept it," he said softly.

He opened it to a drawing - a woman with hair made of birds. The same as the yellow wall.

"Last week I showed your sketches to my father's cousin in Rosebank - he is an artist," he said. "I showed him THIS one. He said you are gifted, Lindi. He said paintings like this sell for R2,000 in his gallery. He wants to meet you when holidays end."

Lindi couldn't breathe.

Last week? R2,000? A gallery in Rosebank?

"You... you did that for me?"

Thando's cheeks went red. Thando's family has money, everyone in Vilakazi knows it, but he never talks about it like that. He is humble.

"I told you we will get out," he said, his voice shaking a little. "You with your painting, me with my numbers. I love you, you know that? As a friend. As more than a friend. I've loved you since we were kids."

Lindi laughed through her tears. "I love you too. As a friend. Just a friend, okay?"

It was a lie. They both knew it was a lie. They had been more than just friends for a long time, they were just too scared to say it properly.

She leaned in and hugged him tight. For one minute, Mr Dlamini, the debt, the wedding, all of it was gone. There was only the yellow wall and his arms. Safe.

She didn't see the black Toyota Quantum driving slowly through the holiday traffic.

She didn't see the man in the passenger seat - one of Mr Dlamini's boys - lift his phone and aim it at them.

Click.

In Lindi's pocket, her phone started ringing loud. Miriam. Again and again and again.