The Springbok: Part 6

Still Here

Canada was quiet in a way Johannesburg had never been. Not just because of the snow, though it muffled everything like cotton, but because the air itself seemed gentler. No gates clicking shut behind them. No dogs barking in the night. No distant pops that could be fireworks or gunshots.

Ben stood at the window of their new apartment in Toronto, staring at the unfamiliar street. The buildings were taller, the cars quieter, the faces more rushed. It was as though the world had turned down its volume and colour both.

Their apartment was on the third floor of a red-brick building. It smelled like varnished wood and old books. There were no burglar bars on the windows. No alarm system. No iron gates. Willem had walked through the front door on the first day and looked around, stunned.

“Feels... open,” he said.

Elsa nodded. “Exposed.”

Ben wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

The first week passed in a blur. Paperwork. School enrolment. Buying coats. Learning to layer. The cold cut through them like truth. Even with gloves, Ben’s fingers felt raw. The snow was exciting at first, something magical, but it quickly became background. Just another layer of difference.

His new school was large and clean and organized. But no one knew his name. They said it wrong the first few times: “Bean?” “Bain?” He didn’t correct them. He just let it happen.

He missed the chaos of his old classroom. The cracked tiles. The way Mrs. van der Merwe shouted over the fan. The smell of chalk and the sound of kids arguing in three languages at once.

Here, everything was quiet.

At recess, kids played in well-spaced clumps. The laughter didn’t feel the same. Ben walked the perimeter of the playground, snow crunching under his boots. He felt invisible.

One day, a boy with spiky hair came up to him.

“Where you from?”

“South Africa.”

The boy raised his eyebrows. “You got lions there?”

Ben shrugged. “Not where I lived.”

“Oh.” The boy waited. “Do you miss it?”

Ben hesitated. Then: “Sometimes.”

“Cool.” The boy walked off.

That night, Ben drew again. It had been weeks. He sketched a small boy standing in the snow, surrounded by tall buildings. Above him, ghost-like figures hovered; memories, friends, familiar shapes in fading ink.

He called it: Too Quiet.

Elsa noticed his drawings again. She held them differently now, not just as art, but as evidence. Proof that something lived inside her son still, even if he didn’t always speak it.

Willem started working at an auto shop out in Scarborough. He came home late most nights, his hands greasy and his back stiff. But there was something softer in him. He didn’t jump at loud sounds anymore. He slept more.

Elsa found a job at a community kitchen. She brought home food Ben couldn’t pronounce, smiling as she told stories of people she worked with; Syrians, Ukrainians, Haitians. “Everyone’s running from something,” she said once. “But they all bring something too.”

Ben started writing letters he never sent. To Tshepo. To Riyaad. To his old street. He tucked them into the back of his sketchbook. Sometimes, he’d reread them and add drawings, little maps, faces, places now unreachable.

One evening, he and Elsa walked to a park near the lake. The water was frozen solid. Children skated across it, bundled in layers of red and blue. Elsa squeezed Ben’s hand.

“You’re doing okay,” she said.

Ben looked out over the ice. “I don’t feel okay.”

“You don’t have to. Not yet.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out a folded paper. He handed it to her. It was a drawing of their Johannesburg home, surrounded by flames, but with one window still glowing.

Elsa unfolded it slowly. “What’s this?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. A memory. A hope.”

She smiled. “It’s both.”

Later, he drew himself again. This time, standing between two cities. One dark, one frozen. In both, he was holding a lantern.

He called it: Still Here.

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