“Oh, hello, Harriet,” Mum replied.
Most white settlers acquire a common look; weathered, but weathered. Too much, too fast, too young. I have the look myself, and I’ve lived only half my life under that southern sun; but it brands you. “Holiday?” Harriet asked.
“Yes,” Mum said.
It usually takes a few attempts to get passengers from the terminal at O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg to the correct plane, and there are always howls of good-natured laughter as passengers disembark one plane—“What, nobody going to Kinshasa?”—then climb back onto the hot, airless bus only to be taken to yet another plane, also not going to Lusaka. Mum loved O. R. Tambo for this and other reasons. It reminded her of the good old days of travel, “a little chaos, old acquaintances renewed, and South African Airways are very generous with their tots.”
Harriet indubitably belonged to Mum’s show-jumping days. She looked horsey, and as if she’d taken a spill or two. She was peering around now, though, searching; I knew she was looking for Dad, my parents traveled in a pair, like swans and fish eagles. There was nothing that could stop the next question from coming. I could feel it before she opened her mouth. She turned to Mum. “Where’s Tim?”
Mum didn’t skip a beat. “I’m afraid he’s on Bobo’s hip,” she said. I lurched forward; the driver was doing circles at that moment. Mum pointed at me. “Do you remember my daughter Bobo? No, of course not. How could you? She wasn’t middle-aged when you last saw her. And she’s an American now.” Harriet looked at me and frowned; I knew she didn’t recognize me. Of course I’d changed in the three decades since I’d been sixteen. “It’s her teeth more than anything,” Mum confirmed. “They’re very keen on their teeth in America.”
Then Harriet’s eyes slid to the box on my hip. It had been clearly marked on every side, and on the lid. HANDLE WITH CARE. HUMAN REMAINS. THIS WAY UP. I imagine it’s fair to say that however shocking the change I’d undergone since Harriet had last seen me, it was nowhere near as shocking as the change Dad had undergone since she’d last seen him. She went ashen beneath her ineradicable sunburn.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, Nicola, I am so sorry.”
Mum nodded, and smiled bravely. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s been quite a performance getting him through the X-ray machines.”
Harriet quickly brushed away her tears. “Oh, my God,” she said again. “Yes, of course. What a bore.”
“Very boring,” Mum agreed; then she’d lifted her chin and offered us all a profile in courage.
Almost all the passengers on the bus, minus the obligatory crying baby, had hushed to take in the show. I was half expecting an outburst of spontaneous applause, but at that moment the bus jerked to a halt once again, and we were ordered onto another plane, this time, the pilot assured us, almost unable to speak through his mirth, “to the correct destination, wherever that is.”
Then the air attendant sashayed front and center; he was born to shine, he had magenta hair. He gave his name as “Kitty, short for Kenneth.” He paused. “And I’ll be your everything on our short but sweet flight up to Lusaka.” He was fanning himself with the only safety instructions available to anyone on the plane. “Okay,” he said. “Safety talk. Listen up. Here goes.”
Mum loved Kitty at first sight.
“If we crash over water we’re very lost,” Kitty was saying. He also said, in the event of an emergency, “Take off your heels. Finish your drink. Then someone, for the love of Pete, save my hair.”
Then Kitty catwalked down the aisle, spanking men who hadn’t yet fastened their seat belts, swapping beauty tips with anyone whom he felt needed it, tending the wary. He stopped at our row, his eyes sliding straight to Mum. “Oh, honey,” he said. “As soon as we’re wheels up, I’m getting you a double.”
“How terribly thoughtful of you, Kenneth,” Mum said.
“Honey,” Kitty said, blowing Mum a kiss, “you’re my priority.”
Then the pilot announced we all needed to switch off our cell phones, strap in, and prepare for taxi and takeoff, at which a pastor in the exit row leapt to his feet, brandishing a Bible, and prayed over us all fervently. Kitty leaned down and whispered something to Mum. She laughed; they clasped hands.
Mum loved the gays.
We knew one gay when we were growing up, if you don’t count the lesbians, which no one did. Also, Robbie—not his real name, there was trouble enough for him as it was—wasn’t known to be gay when we were growing up; he was the son of a poster-child Rhodesian. He had been expected to be a soldier, a rugby player, a hunter. Instead, Robbie went in for costume parties, mildly alcoholic divorcées, and my mother. He’d waited until he got to England for his obligatory gap year abroad to announce his passion for a London cabbie named Neville.
By then we were living in Zambia. My mother had recently inherited a tiny unexpected windfall from a Scottish aunt, and she’d been waiting for someone with whom to spend it frivolously. Robbie was manna from heaven. It was the first time in our experience anyone had ever come out as anything. On the whole, we’d rather have died—and killed—than have been who we really were. Mum had been thrilled to the hilt. “I’ve always been very fond of Robbie,” she’d insisted. “What a brave boy.” She was on the next plane from Zambia to London. She bought a dozen Ascot hats and two tickets to every show in the West End.
“Robbie,” she’d announced, showing up on his doorstep looking fabulous, with duty-free champagne, cigars, and chocolates. This was back in the late 1980s. “I don’t care if you do have AIDS. Put on an Ascot hat, and come with me to The Rocky Horror Picture Show!”
“But I don’t have AIDS,” Robbie had said.
“Oh,” Mum had said, marching into his apartment. “I thought you all did.” She’d paused in each room, as if inspecting billets, landing at last in the kitchen, which overlooked a tiny terrace garden. Then she’d shrieked her approval ecstatically: “What a sweet little flat. Where does Neville keep his teddy bears? We’ve all been hearing all about his teddy bear collection.”
* * *
—
IT’S NOT A LONG FLIGHT from Johannesburg to Lusaka, three hours or so, a little more if there’s weather. It can be bumpy; wind shears in the dry season, stormy in the rains. It’s impressive, those thunderheads stacking up and up, towering like gigantic fists into the blazing clear-blue sky above. The pastor in the exit row was praying loudly and sweating on all our behalves. “So thoughtful of him,” Mum said. “Meantime, we can keep enjoying ourselves.” She waved Kitty down the aisle. “I couldn’t have another one of those sweet little miniatures, could I, please, darling?” she said. “It’s been a stressful couple of weeks.”
“You’re telling me,” Kitty said, resting for a moment on the back of Mum’s chair. “It’s one bloody thing after the other, isn’t it?” He slipped Mum a couple of little bottles, a can of mix, a fresh glass of ice.
“Kenneth,” Mum said, glancing at me significantly. “You’re very tactful.”
Kitty smiled and swanned back up the aisle, riding the turbulence like a dancer. Mum took a sip of her drink, licked her lips, and looked out the window; it’s a straight shot north from O. R. Tambo to Kenneth Kaunda International Airport. It’s arid, the towns tiny and spread out, Zimbabwe blameless and placid at this distance. “From here,” Mum said, “you’d never know the place was run by a bloody dictator, would you?” The plane gave a stomach-lurching plunge. The pastor upped his prayer volume. We laughed. “What fun,” Mum said. “It’s not bad, is it, Bobo?”
However, the closer our plane got to Lusaka the more Mum’s attitude solidified from hilarious joie de vivre to dignified Dowager Duchess, a BBC widow, say, played by Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren. It was as if the initial joy of getting close to home was beginning to settle into something more serious for Mum. And after all the travel, the exhaustion was wearing in, the adrenaline w
earing off.
“I’m returning to a widow’s farm,” Mum said, as the unmistakable Brachystegia forests of Zambia’s up-country rushed to meet us. “I can’t be seen to be soft, Bobo. People pounce on widows in this part of the world; I’ve seen it. They think you’re feeble without a man. But they’re not going to pounce on me. I’m going to mark my boundaries, and hold them.” She sniffed. “Anyone who tries any funny business with me is going to rue the day. I’m a widow, but I am not a feeble widow.”
She downed her drink then and waved her glass at Kitty. Kitty had given up with the miniatures somewhere over Botswana. He tore down the aisle now with a proper bottle, ignoring the pilot’s warning we were in for a bumpy landing. He sloshed a final tot in Mum’s cup. The pastor was praying in tongues. I held Dad on my lap. It was comforting in many ways to know that he wouldn’t have said much more if he were alive than he did now he was dead.
He’d have been amused, but quietly so.
* * *
—
THE FARM’S DRIVER, Mr. Kalusha, met us at Kenneth Kaunda in Lusaka; he’s a river man, born and raised on the banks of the Zambezi, and he stands out from urban or agricultural men as such. He has the triangular body of a paddler, and the squinting thousand-yard stare of a person who has lived both in bright sunshine and among crocodiles and hippos his whole life.
“Welcome home,” Mr. Kalusha said.
I rushed past Customs and Immigration. “Oh, Mr. Kalusha,” I said. I stretched out my arms for a hug.
Mr. Kalusha looked politely at his shoes.
“Oh, Bobo, do try to pull yourself together. You’re making everyone very uncomfortable,” Mum said; she didn’t encourage fraternizing with the staff. She was unflinching.
“Our suitcases please, Kalusha,” she said, intercepting any further unsolicited theatrics on my behalf. “Can you manage, or do you need to get porters? It’s already been a very tiring journey.” She paused to glare at me. “And some of us seem rather overtired.” Then she threw back her shoulders, and marched out of the airport into the perfect up-country Southern Hemisphere spring morning. “And the farm, Kalusha. It’s waiting for me!”
“Yes, madam,” Mr. Kalusha said, following her with our suitcases, trying to fend off both my offers of help, and the porters angling for a tip.
“Ah, thank goodness.” Mum flung up her arms. “We’re home, Bobo. You can smell it, can’t you?” And I could. The dust, the woodsmoke, the manure, the garbage, the burning garbage, the diesel engines, the sunbaked grass; it was home. It would always be, I thought, my soul’s geography, this place; his place.
It was my stop too.
These were my people, because in the end, they were his people. He’d belonged nowhere and to no one, but he was coming home to them, to an unmarked grave in the heart of the Zambezi Valley. Who’d have thought? The aunts would be churning in their graves.
“Just drop a match on me,” Dad had said. “I should be pretty flammable by now.” He hadn’t been squeamish about the end; he hadn’t been squeamish about much by the end, except the same things that had discomforted Mum and Mr. Kalusha, public displays of emotion, unless the protagonists were drunk, in which case public displays of emotion were not only tolerated but deemed a necessary nuisance. “The reason I have been known on rare occasion to behave badly when I’m drunk is to make up for being a bloody little angel when I’m not,” Dad had explained.
* * *
—
WE DROPPED IN FOR TEA at the Rock on the way down to the valley from Lusaka; we always did. Roughly eleven dogs and about two dozen cats came out to greet us. One of Vanessa’s elder children was at the Rock too; he had a young, pregnant wife and a small baby. Mum had been doing her best to rise above her part in it all; she’d drawn the line at becoming a great-grandmother. “I like children as far as they go,” she’d said. “But they can go too far.”
We settled ourselves on the veranda. “Just a quick cup of tea, and then we must get back down to the farm,” Mum told Mr. Nixon. The closer we got to her beloved farm, the dogs, the more Mum sighed and looked at her watch. “Please tell the madam we are here, but hurry up, we won’t be here for long.”
There was a pause.
“If you could tell her to hurry.” Mum sounded almost desperate.
Then my mother’s great-granddaughter toddled up to her and put out a chubby little hand. After some hesitation, my mother grasped the child’s hand and shook it politely but firmly; she detests a fishy handshake. “Pleased to meet you,” she said loudly and slowly. “My name is Nicola Fuller of Central Africa.” She’d met the child before, of course, but she took the precaution of reintroducing herself officially. “And what is your name?”
The child collapsed; any child would, and had to be rescued by its mother. “I’m sorry,” Mum said, not sounding in the slightest bit contrite. “I thought it was showing off its manners. I didn’t realize it wanted something from me. What does it want?”
Serenity, the child’s name; it had seemed an optimistic and tranquil name to me. I’d liked it. Mum hadn’t liked it much. I could tell, because she’d pursed her lips and groaned when she’d been told. And she’d pursed her lips and groaned even more when she’d been told there was another one on the way. “Oh, dear,” she’d said. “I am still getting used to being a grandmother; it came as a shock. Lots of little shocks, actually. It’s not natural to me.” Mum had shuddered. “Age, I mean. I’m not one of those people who is thrilled by it all. I’m not the knitting, scrapbooking type.”
Serenity was mollified; scarred for life, but mollified. Then Mr. Nixon brought a tray of tea for us; he’d added a plate of Scottish shortbread imported from South Africa, as well as slices of fruitcake, Dad’s favorite. “The madam is coming, madam,” he reassured Mum. He’d thought of everything. We thanked him. He bowed and scraped backward off the veranda.
“Thank you,” he insisted. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Then Vanessa emerged onto the veranda from the bedroom wing, enveloped in shawls and scarves. “Oh, huzzit, everyone,” she said, bestowing air kisses. There were effortless tears streaming down her cheeks; she swanned here, she wafted there, she settled like a large gorgeous butterfly in front of Mum. “I’ll bet you’re feeling a bit glum, Mum,” she said. She paused. Mum stiffened, as if fearful Vanessa might be about to bestow a kiss. “I brought you something to cheer you up,” Vanessa said.
“Oh?” Mum loves surprises, but only nice ones. She sounded suspicious. “Will I like this surprise?”
“Yes,” Vanessa said. Then, like a Victorian medium, Vanessa’s entire presence seemed to billow and swirl; with a flourish she presented from beneath her many scarves and shawls a small, squirming, perfect puppy. “Isn’t she the loveliest color you’ve ever seen in your whole life?” Vanessa asked, holding the creature up for us to see. She was the loveliest color; blue-grey slate and shiny, like a sunlit grape, I’d have said, or like an ancient rubbed coin.
Vanessa plopped the puppy into Mum’s lap. “She’s going to be big when she grows up,” Vanessa said. “Look at those paws. She’s a mix of something and something else; I’ve got the papers. But don’t worry. She had very proper parents,” Vanessa explained. She took a breath and then added quickly, “American parents.”
There was a momentary pause while Mum absorbed this unfavorable disclosure. “Not missionaries, I hope,” she said at last. She’d had bad experiences with Baptist missionaries in the past, or maybe one of them was Seventh-day Adventist; they were American anyhow. “There’s nothing worse than a Full Metal Jacket Bible Thumper. I’ve paid through the nose for their dogs before, and they’ve been duds.”
It was strong language, for Mum to single out a dog as a dud.
But this puppy was wiggling on Mum’s lap, and making hypnotizing yellow-green eyes at her, and Mum was having a hard time resisting her considerable charms. She picked her
up; the creature deboned obligingly. “Well,” Mum said, cocking her head this way and that, and staring deeply into the puppy’s nascent soul. “You’re very, very lovely whatever you are, such a lovely blue color.” She kissed her new puppy on the nose; the puppy licked Mum’s face. “Oh, yes, you are, and very intelligent. I can always tell.”
Vanessa cleared her throat and said to Mum, “I thought of you right away when I saw the advertisement in the Lowdown. The Americans said they expect she’ll make an excellent guard dog. She’s had her shots, and whatnot. She’s very official.”
Mum beamed up at Vanessa.
Vanessa beamed back.
The puppy passed out from all the excitement.
“What will you call her?” Vanessa asked.
Mum tilted the shiny, limp little creature this way and that. “Oh, something very special,” Mum said. “It will come to me. But it’ll have to be something very special.”
* * *
—
WE LEFT THE ROCK SOON AFTER TEA, the new blue puppy asleep on Mum’s lap. Mum shut her eyes for most of the drive; I didn’t blame her. Mr. Kalusha is an excellent driver, the best, but he isn’t Dad, and it felt strange, out of place, disloyal even, to be driven home by someone else. Dad had flown down the curves on the escarpment past all the piled-up, gaping, broken-down lorries; then there was the first baobab, an indication we’d hit low elevation. “Tsetse flies, heat, and not so many people,” Dad used to say.
He’d loved baobabs for that reason.
And after that, the little bridge with the crumpled guardrails a dozen miles west of the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The bridge was choked with goats, as usual. Mum opened her eyes then, all the bleating; Mr. Kalusha was leaning on the horn. “Oh,” Mum said.
I didn’t say it, I couldn’t say it, but I thought it. “Nearly home.”
I knew Mum was thinking it too.
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