Born a Crime

there’s “Wait, I’m eating worms.” Mopane worms are the sort of thing where even people in Soweto would be like, “Eh...no.” They’ ...

adventure, but then over the course of weeks, eating them every day, day after day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ll never forge ...

sleep in some car, wake up, wash up in a janitor’s sink, brush my teeth in a little metal basin, brush my hair in the rearview m ...

mistakes being made on the business level that were making it hard, so it just felt like a hard situation. But eventually I star ...

quit her job at ICI and stepped in to help him run the workshop. She brought her office skills to the garage full-time and start ...

had had enough. She was willing to help him, but not if he was going to drink all the profits. She had always been independent, ...

end of that. — Growing up I suffered no shortage of my mother’s old school, Old Testament discipline. She spared no rod and spoi ...

little stick. He’ll break. But you, God gave you that ass for whipping.” Even though she was kidding, I could tell that the reas ...

grew up in. She bought me the books she never got to read. She took me to the schools that she never got to go to. I immersed my ...

them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and ...

The first time Abel hit me I felt something I had never felt before. I felt terror. I was in grade six, my last year at Maryvale ...

She said I should have just asked her; she would have signed the form anyway. Then Abel, who’d been sitting in the kitchen with ...

and then my mother would handle it. And this was the middle of the afternoon. He was completely sober, which made what happened ...

ribs. My mind flashed: It’s a trap! I’d never been in a fight before, had never learned how to fight, but I had this instinct th ...

in close and he kept hitting and hitting, but I was in too tight for him to land any solid blows. Then he caught on and he stopp ...

It didn’t feel like something that would end with me learning a lesson about forging my mom’s signature. It felt like something ...

He chased me. I ran out of the house and jumped over the gate, and I ran and I ran and I ran. The last time I turned around he w ...

wall to climb over, every fence to slip through. I was ducking through traffic, cutting through yards. I have no idea when he ga ...

was in one corner, I was in the other corner. If he walked into a room, I would get up and act like I was going to the kitchen, ...

being nine years younger than me, Andrew was really the eldest son in that house, Abel’s firstborn, and that accorded him a resp ...