Deep-set, dark eyes peer through the window, and I feel utterly exposed in the back seat. Picking at my nails, I watch as my dad rolls down the window and says something to the police officer. He is calm – way too calm, considering we are not even a hundred metres out from the airport. This all feels so wrong, but I stay silent, willing my traitorous pulse to stop thundering inside my chest.
The police officer has a gun. The polished gleam of its dark metal surface stares back at me tauntingly. Our police in Australia also have guns, of course. But here, the threat is heavy. It hangs over our car like a constant shadow, a reminder that one wrong move could change everything.
I am so focused on the gun that I do not hear the police officer asking my dad to step out of the vehicle.
I feel nauseous. Mom would say it’s just from the plane, but there’s a heaviness to the weight that settles in my stomach and threatens to flip my insides.
The officer takes my dad around the back of the car, and I strain my eyes to pick up the ends of their conversation. It all happened so fast that I can barely even remember why we got pulled over in the first place. I hear the officer say “jail”, and that is when my dad speaks up.
“I know what you want,” he says simply and confidently, as if he has done this a thousand times – and hell, maybe he has.
Turning in my seat, I watch as the police officer’s eyes narrow suspiciously. I can’t quite make out what my dad says next, but understanding dawns on me as the police officer’s face visibly falls.
“He wants a bribe?”
“Be quiet,” Mom says, feigning nonchalance in the front of the car as she flicks mindlessly through a magazine she picked up from the airport. But I know her well. I can tell she is nervous, just like me, by the way her teeth tug on her lower lip and the way her eyes keep darting to the rearview mirror.
It is not uncommon for cops in South Africa to seek a bribe. I’ve heard countless stories growing up, but experiencing it in person is a whole different kettle of fish. I’m worried the officer will be mad or arrest my dad anyway – for what, I’m still not sure. But here, it appears the law is malleable. Those in uniform have the power to do whatever they see fit.
The police officer is talking again. My pulse is hammering in my ears, loud enough that I cannot hear what is happening. But the next thing I know, the door to the driver’s seat of the car is opening and Dad is getting in. I watch in both relief and confusion as the police officer walks away, his hand resting on his holster. Dad is whistling a tune, as if he just stopped to fill up gas at a petrol station.
“What happened?” I ask with a frown.
“Never mind that, we’re going to be late for supper,” Mom says, closing her magazine with a sigh and placing it on the dashboard.
Dad says nothing, but as we pull back out onto the main road, I can see his lips press together in a tight line. We never speak about what happened.

Johannesburg unfurls before my eyes in a landscape of orange and brown. The horizon itself is bathed in a hazy, orange glow as we keep driving on, past open fields of dry, barren grass. When we come to a stop at the traffic light – or “robot” as Mom and Dad call it – several people immediately flood the road, weaving in between the stopped cars and knocking on windows in an attempt to sell their wares.
A black man taps on my window, and I jump in my seat. He’s holding a display of sunglasses, beckoning at me to wind down my window. I’m young, but even I know better.
“You can never trust them,” Dad had told me. “As soon as you wind your window down, you could have a gun to your head.”
I think again of that police officer and the gun at his side, and a shiver passes through me. I look back out the window, and this time there is a different man peering in. Unlike the others, he doesn’t appear to be selling anything. His lips are cracked, and his hands are simply outstretched, as if he is pleading. He walks to the driver’s window and makes the same gesture, but my dad waves him off with a scowl.
Our doors remain firmly locked as the traffic light finally changes. The sellers and beggars move off the road, and we speed off, kicking up dust behind us.

“My goodness, look at you! How you’ve grown!”
I grimace as my uncle squeezes me in an embrace far too tight to be comfortable. He is sixty, a bit older than my father, with balding hair and one eyebrow pulled taut across his forehead at an awkward angle. It’s from a motorbike accident, my mom tells me, and I shouldn’t stare. But it’s difficult not to when it makes one half of his face look perpetually angry.
My uncle lives in a gated community in Edenvale. The houses here are all protected with brick walls, electric gates and even barbed wire. Compared to Australia, the houses feel like prison blocks.
And then there’s the dogs. My uncle has two German Shepherds, Astro and Sheba; huge dogs that will bark at anyone who gets too close to the gate. They let me pet them, and I tell my uncle how cute they are, to which he laughs and says, “They’re not made to be cute little lap dogs.”
He’s right, of course. In South Africa, they’re bred as guard dogs. We also used to have dogs, I remember. One of them was a German Shepherd called Rex. When I was about five, the little girl who lived next door to us jumped the fence to play with me. When Rex saw her, he went crazy. The little girl was forced to run for her life, screaming until my parents came outside to see what all the fuss was about. Thankfully, she escaped unharmed, but it served as an important reminder to my younger self that our dogs were not simply play buddies.
Astro takes a liking to me and follows me around the house until my uncle gets tired of tripping over him and kicks him outside. While we eat supper, Astro lies outside with his dark face pressed up against the glass. I feel sorry for him until I see the size of the bone he’s getting for his own supper.
Pap and wors is what we’re eating – a traditional South African dish that is essentially porridge and sausage. I’m not a big fan of it, but I know better than to say anything by the look my mom gives me from across the dining table.
The adults chat amongst themselves, and I pass the time by studying my uncle’s shelves in the living area. He’s an animal fanatic, especially when it comes to African animals, and there’s proof of that all over. There’s framed photographs of lions and elephants that he took himself in the Kruger Park, along with little wooden statues that look like the kind you buy in souvenir shops. Several of them snag my attention, and upon closer inspection, I realise the little wooden animals are depicting what’s known as the Big Five in Africa – the lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino.
Except there’s only four on the shelf. Understanding dawns on me, and I realise the little black rhino statue I have at home is the missing piece in my uncle’s collection. He must have given it to me as a child before we left South Africa.
The adults are still talking. They’re speaking in Afrikaans now, which I struggle to understand, seeing as I mostly grew up in Australia and didn’t have any use for the language.
My attention is still fixed on the animal statues. They fit in nicely on my uncle’s shelves, almost like a tribute to the African wild. In contrast, I think of my tiny little rhino and how out of place it looks back at home on my own bookshelf. 
There is nothing remotely African about my room at home, and the little rhino sticks out like a sore thumb.

I’m startled when I enter the kitchen the next morning to see a black woman washing up last night’s dishes. Her name is Patience, and she works as a domestic helper for my uncle, she tells me. I smile kindly at her and then quickly make myself scarce.
My uncle takes my mom and I out driving again, and though I am expecting it this time, it’s still strange when our car comes to a stop at the traffic lights, and people pour out onto the streets again in an attempt to sell their wares. At one point, I have my bag on the empty seat next to me in the back. When my uncle catches sight of it, he immediately scolds me.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he tells me, surprising me by the serious tone of his voice. “If they see you have valuables, they’ll smash the window open to steal them.”
“With what?” I find myself asking out of curiosity.
“A brick, usually,” my uncle replies, honking at a few stragglers in the middle of the road as the light turns green. “But anything they can find, really.”
I don’t bother asking where they’d get a brick from.
We keep driving, and in the distance, on the other side of the road, a cluster of houses catches my attention. Well, if you can call them houses.
“That’s a shanty town,” my uncle says, wrinkling his nose at the corrugated iron shelters. “Filthy places if you ask me.”
The judgement in his voice is harsh, as if the people living there are there by choice.
Across the road from the shanty town, we pass by another gated community. It strikes me how close the two are, and yet seemingly a world away – black versus white.

The house is clean, and Patience is gone by the time we get back.
Dinner is roast tonight. The dogs are still inside, and I secretly feed them bits of chicken under the table when no one is looking.
The adults are watching the news as we eat, and my uncle suddenly scoffs.
“Those bloody kaffirs,” he shakes his head as he stuffs a mouthful of roast vegetables into his mouth. “They think they know better than us, but they’re completely ruining this country.”
“Absolutely,” my dad nods in agreement. “This place has gone downhill, that’s for sure.”
“At least during Apartheid everyone still had jobs,” my uncle continues, and suddenly I’m glad Patience isn’t here. “Nowadays, good luck to you if you’re white.”
“Have you heard about the murders on the farms?”
I try to zone out of the conversation, busying myself with rubbing Astro’s head under the table. The distraction is short-lived, as my uncle soon catches sight of him and angrily kicks him away.
“Voetsek!” he yells – one of the few Afrikaans words I understand. Astro scurries away with his tail between his legs, and I don’t know what to do with my hands anymore.
“You should consider leaving,” Dad says to my uncle, and the words hang heavy in the air. “There’s nothing here for you.”
My uncle says something in Afrikaans before replying with, “It’s a good country.”
I pick at my nails and stare at the bookshelves again, thinking of my little black rhino.