“The landlord is on my back,” I say out on the office’s balcony, the only respite from the “jail cell” for fresh air, daylight and quiet. I take a bite of my chicken sandwich, and in between chewing, I add, “You two need to put in your half of the rent.”
“You’re our half of the rent,” they say, breaking into giggles. The joke’s lost on me. They always have these inside jokes, making my isolation more prominent. The combination of our salaries was meant for one person—not three. Each time, during my appraisals at work when I bring up the idea of a raise, my manager hushes me with “The company is currently undergoing financial difficulties. Once we overcome the adversity, we will look over your contract.” It’s been three years and no dice. So sharing the one-bedroomed servant’s quarter’s rent was the most economical way to go.
I don’t look forward to home though: the nocturnal twin-sisters and I sleep in the same room, but sometimes the proximity is too close: it feels as if they sleep in my body, in my mind. I. Just. Can’t. Breathe.
* * *
The evening traffic is slow. I stumble into my home and throw my clothes off. I can breathe now. I can exhale the ennui of work from my bones. I can bloom today. I can—my cellphone flickers a neon light, clingy, calling me back. I unlock it. A notification. A childhood friend across borderlines many rungs above the corporate ladder with towers of beauty and charm. How beautiful she looks. How glowing her brown skin is. She’s engaged. A romantic getaway in the Maldives. This is who I’m supposed to be. The light from my phone gobbles my face whole. My life is blatant today. It reeks in this small servant’s quarter, in the old walls, the leaking tap, the broken skin.
I am nothing.
Five years as an employee, a sheep. What have I been doing with my years? Where did I stack them? A knock. The landlord. I’m consuming too much electricity. The rent has gone up. I only have one income. Where the fuck is the rest supposed to come from? The room is too cold. There is no ceiling, only the bones of the exposed rafters. There is no one home to kiss me to ask me how my day was to tell me I’m beautiful. I can’t see myself anymore. I can’t feel my skin. Where are my lungs? The dark has taken my eyes. Again. Oh, no. It’s happening. Again. If I hold my breath, this will subside and I will be fine. I will see myself again. I will catch my sight. In my home, even I am invisible. Each second shaves me into invisibility, each thought dilutes me with the acid of its torment of its fervent belief that I do not mean to exist.
I have my own pet, Keletsô, but the twins have an insidious pet, Manyaapelo, they keep locked up in the wardrobe or under the bed. People who visit our city are confused at this breed of evil some of us talk about. I always wonder if it is jubilance or horror that will meet me. Manyaapelo always waits for me at home, waits for the shuffling of my shoes across the welcome mat, the key turning in its hole. Once I close the door, this creature, Manyaapelo, leaps onto my back. Sometimes it lives in the body, hanging on the spinal cord of your last hope. But those who don’t experience it love to discredit it, as if it doesn’t exist.
“But how is it born?” a colleague once asked. “How does this creature look like?”
“It shapeshifts from moody to ecstatic joy,” I say. “It has many mouths. It has many voices so you can’t focus. It makes you feel like you’re drowning in your own body. It comes unexpectedly. We’ve tried to burn it with muti. Nothing vanquishes it. Sangoma hands can’t bury it. Its terror lives as long as its owner.”
They shake their heads and laugh like we’re crazy.
Kakanyô steps out from our bathroom watching me envy my childhood friend’s fortune.
“Your years are passing you by,” Kakanyô says. “Your age mates are married. You’re letting your degree collect dust. Just what are you doing with your life?”
I sigh. “I was working Monday to Sunday. I wasn’t sleeping. I was stressed. I was going insane. I didn’t know what happiness meant anymore—”
“Is this what happy means?” she asks, circling my bachelor pad. “Living in this dump. Living paycheck to paycheck starving—starving for what? Wake up, man. You’ve no savings. What you going to do next year? What you gonna do if you lose your job? Like, is this this your life?”
“Cut me some slack,” I shout.
“A devil could put better use to your body.”
“This is not working out. I’m going to look for a place and move out.”
She laughs. “Good luck getting rid of me, babes. Easier to get rid of your skin than me.”
The many mouths of Manyaapelo reiterate her: You are useless. You will lose your job. They will find you’re an impostor. You don’t deserve your job. You don’t deserve to live. The words, the syllables are so meshed into each other I can’t single out individual statements; my heartbeat senses the language of terror and dwells into the sludge of negativity.
Kakanyô pulls Manyaapelo by the leash from my wardrobe. I could ask her why she’s doing this to me, but it could either be her or me, and she’s choosing herself. Standing on the tall feet of anger, of shock, of this miserable life, Manyaapelo seeks to possess me. My knees buckle. The creature spins me around, working a web around my form with its teeth. It drags me into bed, heaving and panting. Its tooth is strung into my neck; the blood in me, the life in me is siphoned hour upon hour.
* * *
When daylight returns, I wake up. It is morning. The creature’s web is gone. I stand on shaky limbs and sprinkle sweat all the way to the bathroom. Cramps crawl up and down my legs. My period must have started. My pupils are still alive. I hate going to work on my periods; the first three days consist of a tsunami of pain down my thighs. Pain medication helps barely. My mind is always hazy, scuttling unsteadily all over the place, making my hands jittery. Appearing stable and normal is an exhaustive task. But I have to get ready for work and rely on changing every hour.
The mirror shows me the caves and convex planes of my face. The creature left no flesh behind. Dark prints stand beneath my eyes, turning them bloodshot. I just have to eat and I will be fine. My hands tremble as I splash my face with cold water. Eight hours of work ahead of me. I haven’t even started the first hour and I am a zombie lugging the corpse of me around. How am I going to trek through the apocalyptic eight hours of this job I hate? How will I maneuver the misogynistic jokes that light fire to my body?
Matshwênyêgô’s reflection appears in the mirror. “Leloba, if you don’t go to work, you’ll get a bad report, a warning. You’ll lose your job. You have no money, no savings. Nothing to live on.”
“You could ask to work from home today because you’re unwell,” my pet says, stretching its back against the wall.
“Haven’t you seen how the other editors stare at me when I request something?” I say. “I don’t want to be any more difficult. They’ll replace me with a less difficult person. And I need this job.”
It purrs. “Well, if you fed me, gave me—”
“Don’t start. Not today.” And I shut the bathroom door on my pet.
* * *
Today at work, the male editor is jostling around with his ego. He’s eagle-eyed and scanning the office wanting to pin someone and watch them scuttle under the burning gaze of his jaunts. I tend to ignore him, so I’m not his favorite victim. This morning, as usual, his target is Tshiamo, a twenty-year-old intern, who’s been here for three months’ plus. She places his morning coffee, phaphatha and gizzards by his laptop as he remarks something about her outfit. She stirs uncomfortably. She’s not on payroll. It shows in the fading quality of her clothes. A work-for-free exposure and experience, they say.
I check my phone to set an alarm that will notify me in an hour to change before I stain myself. It’s happened before; being under the onslaught of articles to edit, time just flows by and suddenly your pants are stained and everyone stares at you like a freak, an alien, when you’re really just a person who’s a woman. I’m wearing thick underwear, a pad and a tampon, the former two serving as back-up plans, and I hate it
because it makes me feel like a baby wearing a nappy; I’m overdosing on pain medication which tends to blur my eyesight. So much armor all for the purpose to survive the day.
“I’m still waiting for your article,” the male editor says, leaning onto his elbows.
“Eish, sir, I have an issue,” Tshiamo says. “My source invited me to his place. At night. I told him I couldn’t; now he’s dodging my questions.”
“He plays an important role in your article. Why didn’t you go to his place then?” he says, a laugh tickling his lips. “Sometimes you have to do everything and anything to appease your source. You women have it easy. If I had your body”—he catches me staring—“if I was a woman, hell, I’d get away with anything.”
I hate his crude jokes. It’s his conversation filler that blitzkrieg the dignity of any woman.
“All fun and games, I suppose,” Kakanyô says. “It’s just a joke. Take it easy.”
“Find an alternative source,” I say, “and please send me your article soon.”
Sighing in relief, Tshiamo hurries out to her cubicle. The editor, displeased with my interruption, mumbles something. The editor and I both have senior roles except we’re separated by two decades or so of years. I’m a young woman, so all these factors plus me “cockblocking” his attack is covered silently under his vibrating ego, a landmine awaiting any unaware footsteps. He continues staring at me, but I do not buckle. In this office place, you must always be on your guard.
Besides writing articles, I proofread articles for the other newspaper and radio. Now some of these newsreaders-cum-journalists can’t string some sentences together and don’t know the language of writing enough to play with style as they’re used to working with speech in radio content. It was the only way for the media organization to keep costs down: turning newsreaders into journalists. But they fuck with typos and grammar. I want to throw the articles out. They need to be re-written. But my job is to proofread ASAP and send the stories to the graphic designers. There’s no time to rewrite their articles, and I’m not getting paid enough to be motivated to do so. So every deadline day consists of myself and the male editor calling in the journalists to question them about what they’re trying to convey to ensure that, as we’re editing, we aren’t misconstruing their intended points to the reader. So that involves educating the journalists on content writing and how to approach sensitive material. As usual for demonstrations, the other editor enjoys using me as tinder for his fire.
This morning, the crime journalist stands by the editor listening to the developmental edits of his story, which is missing some significant content.
“Imagine if Leloba is raped,” the editor says jovially. I freeze, caught off-guard by the casual approach of this subject.
“Imagine if Leloba is raped,” the editor repeats, a smile creeping at the edges of his lips like a snake.
I am paralyzed. I am Leloba and right now they are imagining this terrifying thing happening to me.
The editor continues his visual elaboration, “Imagine she is assaulted. Imagine her clothes are being torn...”
The testosterone in this room is chloroform placed to my lungs. My voice is muzzled. It takes a span for my mind to wrap itself around this. This is happening. I am literally in a small room where two men are imagining me getting raped, imagining me naked, casually having a conversation about it. There are other ways to illustrate his teachings. Just not this. I look down and all my clothes are gone. I am naked. I yank my laptop bag, conceal myself as I run to the toilet and beg the cleaners to buy me clothes from the shops on the lower ground floor. As I wait, I wash my skin in shame. I run my nails against my neck.
“You just don’t joke about shit like this,” I shout to myself, starring at my reflection in the mirror replicating into three people. I blink to ease the blurriness of my eyesight.
“If they’re so casual about it, then there’s nothing wrong,” Kakanyô says, touching my shoulder. “This is the norm, you have to keep reminding yourself of that, instead of becoming overly emotional about it. Your voice doesn’t matter in this place—only your labor matters.”
That’s what words are in this place: they are not just empty things floating listlessly around; words have arms and weapons to do as they please. People who migrate to our city don’t understand the concept that words turns into objects, they turn into thieves, they perform the purpose of its statement. It’s a highly acceptable patriarchal part in our society, and everyone moves around with no opposition against them, so I have too as well.
Words have power. And that day, the editor’s words undressed me. His words abused my thighs.
* * *
I’m trying to move on, but trauma sits on my back making it difficult to walk. When I get home, my pet welcomes me with a wagging tail and a hungry stomach. I got my pet shortly before I started first year in university. I lived with it in my dorm room as I worked on coursework and shortly working on it. Every time I walked in, it’d wag its tell looking brand new and fresh. Now it’s looking old and frayed, with a little sparkle in its eyes. During a span of overwork and exhaustion, it caught rabies and faced a near-death experience when I started my first job and spent nights and weekends at the office.
In the kitchen is a small roundtable where unpack the groceries I bought.
“What’s that on your back?” my pet asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
“You can’t keep letting them get away with this.” My pet hops onto the counter. “You know if you feed me once in a while, I could grow into something. We could get out of this crappy place.” It wags its tail in the direction of the ceiling-less kitchen. “You could live in a place with a garden, a view—the interior with good aesthetics. If you fed me, you wouldn’t have to worry about the rent being too high, about waking up and forcing yourself to shit to get to a job only to kiss ass to earn a living. You could have dignity, you could travel, work on your own schedule, get yourself something pretty. And laugh once in a while.”
I stroke its fur. “But how long would I have to feed you for?”
It tilts its head as if shrugging. “Days, months, years. I don’t know. I’m no fortune teller. I’m just here because there’s something in you—a talent, an idea—that you want to get out. And the world needs that.”
“I’m inconsequential in this universe of ours.”
“Just feed me. You got me this far, didn’t you?” It purrs. “I know it doesn’t matter to people like you who have a law that protects their lives. People give birth to us, their passion. But then they forget about us, which aborts us. I’m dying here. If you take care of me, I can take care of you.”
I dish food into its bowl. “Here you go then.”
“What is this,” it asks, sniffing its bowl.
“Tinned cat food,” I say.
“This looks like someone’s vomit.” It pushes the bowl away with its paw. I try to avoid eye contact, so it leaps onto the counter with a glint in its eye. “You know what I consume.”
“I don’t have time, I’m tired.”
“Take a nap then. It’s only 7PM.”
“I have a long day tomorrow.”
“Excuses, excuses. You’re slaving away at a job you hate, yet you can’t slave away for yourself.”
“You can’t keep nagging me every time I come home.”
“I’m starving. I. Am. Starving.” It licks its paw. “Please.” I lean against the counter, and crumble into tears. “Now, now,” it says in a soothing voice, patting my shoulder with its paw.
* * *
A week later, periods have stopped, and things feel slightly lighter. It’s no surprise you call to meet me for I am finally useful to you when I’m no longer “leaking from your vagina,” you once said jokingly as if that lightened the blow.
“You are a slum,” Kakanyô says when you pick me up at the office. You wait outside like a delivery man come to collect a package. You check the sparkle of your watch and can’t hear the whisper of m
y hello.
You are a slum.
(she repeats when I enter your car)
You are a slum.
(she continues when I wrap your seatbelt around me)
You’re a place stray things can’t even call home.
In times like this, the signal to my pet connects, and its message transfers to my mind: “There are people who walk into your body with promises. There are people who see the value in you, who scrape inside you, trying to break you, trying to steep themselves in pleasure and in power. They empty you to fill themselves. Why do you let this happen?”
You. Are. A. Slum.
I shut my eyes to cancel the noise in my head.
“I can’t stay for long,” you say, breaking my attention from Kakanyô’s words.
I nod. Your wife can’t know of the drug you smoke away from the house, the drug that sleeps in my vagina.
You drive through roads to somewhere isolated from humanity. I am your vagina-on-call. I lay back, thighs around you, feet pressed to the ceiling of your car and wait for the end. I do this to murder my loneliness, only I’m more lonelier than ever. I’m fucked in the bundus, in hidden-away spots in the village areas. At first, it’s different, adventurous, and spontaneous. “You’re not like other girls,” you say, admiring me. Then I realize how cheap it is, how cheap I am, like ordering a fuck like take-away from a street vendor.
I’m a take-away fuck.
This is what I do to murder my lonely, but I murder myself.
Maybe if I were like those beautiful girls like my other friend Dikeledi, I’d ask you to start paying me, buying me things, paying my rent. But it’s not me as much as it’s who they are. We go again. As usual, you come at the witching hour, it jilts me, the moon slashes its eye in half, it spills on my thighs, a luminous light, and you rest back, panting, uncaring of my pleasure. What about me? I think. Every week I see and I know this is all I will ever have.
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) Page 27