Triangulum. Masande Ntshanga

his deodorant, and he was smiling, looking down at me. I dropped the tabloid and walked out down another aisle.

      I took a corner table at Munchies, where I ordered a Coke and waited for a slice. I was eating pizza to spite my aunt—the way she’d held my wrist between her fingers and called me a stick. I didn’t want her thinking she knew who I was, even if it made me ill.

      Like this would.

      I looked down at the ground beef. I pierced the lemon slice in the Coke with my straw, pushing it down to the bottom below the ice-cubes, and sucked on it hard enough to make my forehead numb. Then my vision doubled.

      It was possible to forget about Tata, I thought with relief.

      Then I made myself vomit in the public toilets, and walked home.

       RTR: 009 / Date of Recollection: 05.30.2002 / 3 min

      The garage feels like a cardboard box that’s been left out in the sun. The lights don’t work, so I’ve brought a flashlight. I let Part and Litha in, spread an old mattress on the floor, and open a window.

      I drop the package between us, raising a cloud of dust, while the rain makes a soft patter against the panes. Hold on, I think. I find an old rusted cardboard cutter. Holding it close to the blade, I draw a line on the tape sealing the box, from the top to the bottom. It sighs open. There’s another, smaller box inside, with a different address. I open that, too, spilling the contents across the mattress.

      There’s a smooth, rounded stone, and an exercise book with newspaper clippings jutting from the edges. Between Part’s knees lies a locket that’s snapped open, revealing a black-and-white photo of a middle-aged woman. I look at everything on the mattress.

      “I don’t know what to make of this.”

      Part reaches for the locket. “Me neither.”

      I flip through the exercise book. Most of the clippings are still glued to the pages, but some have started to peel, the paper yellowed with time. Then I realize what the headlines all have in common. I look at Litha and Part. “It’s all missing persons.”

      The book slips from my hands and opens to the middle, where I see four articles about the Yugoslav Wars. In one of them, a family credits a strange, glowing presence for its survival. Next to it, there’s an article on post-traumatic stress disorder.

      The three of us go quiet. Litha reaches for the book. “Let me hold on to this.”

      I pick up the smaller box again and look at the address.

       Stanfel Petrović. 10 Jameson Street, Quigney, East London.

      I stop to think. It seems possible.

      I turn to Litha and Part and tell them this is it: “This is the sign I’ve been waiting for. There’s a connection between Kiran and the girls. And I know what to do. I’ll wait for the machine.”

      “And then?” asks Part.

      “If it comes back, then we should start looking for them.”

      “The girls?”

      “The girls.”

       November 16, 1999

      I didn’t expect what followed next. Things took a different course, that summer. It started with a fire in a small garment factory downtown, a blaze that left a hundred people out of work and colored our skies black for three days.

      There were the PPMs, too, as reported in The Daily Dispatch— small prepaid power meters that were being rolled out in our neighborhoods that year. Most people were suspicious of the devices—imagining themselves trapped in blackouts until they got paid—but we were powerless against the change. The government had decided on installing the machines as far back as 1993. Tata wasn’t pleased; he spoke on it often. He liked to lament the government’s wasteful expenditure, and their eagerness to trammel their own people.

      My aunt and I listened.

      Having watched the smoke rising over our backyard that summer, the three of us were bound to spend the following weeks discussing the fire at breakfast. Or Tata was. He commiserated with the workers, he told us, given the negligence of upper management and how the government had failed to assist them. Then he’d move on to the prepaid meters, before my aunt and I could catch a breath.

      Most of the time, we would follow his argument in silence, a familiar one-sidedness. I don’t doubt that Tata cared about the fire, and the power meters, and all the other things he talked about, but the complaining itself seemed to return his strength to him, I thought, and that’s what encouraged him to keep on with it.

      For this reason, although we never spoke about it, my aunt and I stopped ourselves from showing impatience with his complaining. Each time Tata brought up a grievance, the two of us would begin our morning ritual, which was to absorb his unhappiness at the breakfast table.

       RTR: 010 / Date of Recollection: 05.30.2002 / 3 min

      I still need a sick note for Mrs Linden. I think of Rohan, who could help me with it, but whose number I’ve never dialed.

      I remember when Litha introduced us. I’d headed to Mr Movie to find him. He was standing outside the entrance with a guy I didn’t know, pinching the tip of a dead cigarette. I crossed Alexandra to join them.

      “This is Rohan.”

      He was tall and stooped, with hair that grew down to his neck. He wore a white t-shirt with loose-fitting jeans, and thick, frameless glasses.

      Litha flicked the cigarette on the road and watched it get chewed under the wheels of a flatbed. “Rohan was telling me about this new game he has. It’s on Game Boy. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.”

      “I think I’ve heard of it.”

      “I got it at a pawn shop in Maritzburg, but it’s the best one.”

      Litha placed a hand on his shoulder. “Tell her about the plot.”

      Rohan grinned. “It all starts with a shipwreck,” he said. “There’s a storm and Link, the lead character, washes onto an island called Koholint. He meets these characters, Tarin and his daughter Marin, who take him in. The daughter’s fascinated by Link, having spent all her life on the island; but Link has to set out to look for his sword. Then he meets up with an owl that tells him he must wake the Wind Fish if he wants to go home.”

      “It sounds like most RPGs.” I knew that much from Litha and Tom.

      “I know, but that isn’t the best part. The best part is that Koholint Island doesn’t exist. It’s all in Link’s dream. He’s still floating on a piece of driftwood in the ocean. That’s after 30 damn hours of game time.” He grinned, revealing his braces, and I laughed.

      “Right? I sometimes think this town is Koholint Island,” he said.

      “I like that.”

      Rohan offered to lend me the game and we exchanged numbers. Later, Litha told me he was good at school, like I was, and that his dad was one of the doctors I’d been to. I nodded, but I never called.

      Now I scroll through the contacts in my phone and text Rohan that I need his help. There’s no response, the message pending.

      There’s no call from Kiran, no visit from the machine. I listen to music until I fall asleep.

      When I wake up, hours later, I hear a bulletin about the missing girls on the radio, meaning my aunt’s back.

       November 19, 1999

      My grandmother, who we all called the matron, died without her right leg when I was too young to recall most of who she’d been. It was from diabetes. She was living with us then, but we drove back to Zeleni for her burial. I was nine years old.

      The village was silent during the funeral. Walking back