Born a Crime

walls for playdates I wasn’t invited
to. I’d hear people laughing and
playing and I’d get off my bike and
creep up and peek over the wall
and see a bunch of white kids
splashing around in someone’s
swimming pool. I was like a
Peeping Tom, but for friendship.
It was only after a year or so
that I figured out the key to making
black friends in the suburbs: the
children of domestics. Many
domestic workers in South Africa,
when they get pregnant they get
fired. Or, if they’re lucky, the family
they work for lets them stay on and
they can have the baby, but then
the baby goes to live with relatives
in the homelands. Then the black
mother raises the white children,
seeing her own child only once a