Cion

by Zakes Mda

  And here today Orpah is dismissing his nostalgia for the war he didn’t personally fight as stupid and boyish, and that no one in their sane mind would be happy for a situation that produced so much collateral damage. While Ruth shushes Orpah for talking rubbish about people who are fighting for America’s freedom, Obed makes an observation along the lines that every truth has its counter truth; one man’s collateral damage is another man’s slaughter of the innocents.

  Oh, yes, Orpah has changed! But nothing else has changed in Kilvert. Obed continues with his quest for the occult. He becomes Shawnee or Cherokee depending on the weather. He dabbles in everything that is remotely connected with his heritages, from the smoke scrying of the Native Americans to something he calls hakata, which he says is used by African witchdoctors. He does not believe me when I tell him that where I come from there is no such thing as a witchdoctor—that it’s a contradiction in terms. And as always there is a strong profit motive whenever he engages with mysticism. I never get to know what smoke scrying and hakata entail, although he does make a few bucks from the practices. But soon he gets bored with them and tries something else.

  He does not get bored with Beth Eddy though. I suspect something has developed between them, although we never get to see the lady. He does not boast about her as he used to with his previous conquests. Some awe seems to surround Beth Eddy’s name. His dream is that one day Kilvert will be declared a Native American reservation and he will have his own casino. And maybe, only maybe, someone like Beth Eddy will be with him to share the spoils when that happens. Ruth, of course, pooh-poohs such dreams. She declares: “That’s why them Indians don’t get nowhere and are always so drunk. They sold their souls to the devil with them casinos.”

  She continues to poke her nose into everything that happens in Kilvert and accelerates her fundamentalist campaign against Brother Michael, who stubbornly stands his ground on the slave quilts: enslaved Africans could not have been intelligent enough to devise such an elaborate code or any code whatsoever. An adulterer is bound to say such things, Ruth declares.

  She continues to sew her ancestral designs and to take her quilts to the farmer’s market where no one buys them. People don’t see any artistry in them. They see wonderful craftsmanship but no artistic vision. She is like a performer of traditional music who does cover versions of songs long composed by others in that genre, instead of composing new songs in the same traditional genre, or at least giving the old ones a new twist, a new angle, a new life. Yet she continues to destroy Orpah’s designs because Orpah’s designs are not part of the tradition and have no names since they are of her own origination.

  As for me and Orpah: I have given up on her, as I stated earlier. I think for her I am just convenient for defending her designs and hiding them from Ruth. I therefore no longer take it upon myself to hide them. Ruth is aware of this and our relationship has improved as a result.

  Orpah, on the other hand, continues with her obsession with ghost orchids. For a long time Mahlon searches for them in vain. I do not know if he is merely playing along or not, but he searches earnestly. Until Orpah begins to despair for him. He feels he has failed his daughter. Orpah does not understand why the ghost orchids are nowhere to be found. She has never seen them in the wild in all her life growing up in Kilvert, but she believes that the only reason is that the ghost orchids that grow in the wild are reputed to be very elusive. Perhaps it is the wrong season. She must find out when the ghost orchids are usually in bloom and the best source for that kind of information would be Brother Michael since she got her orchid from him. To her consternation she discovers that her father’s search is a futile one: ghost orchids do not grow in these parts. Mahlon would have to go to southern Florida to find any ghost orchids in the wild. Or perhaps sail to the Caribbean. The one she now possesses was confiscated from a thief who had stolen it from one of the glorious trees of the Fakahatchee.

  Instead of calling off the search, Orpah creates her own ghost orchids from thin plastic material and sticks them on the sycamore trees. Where else should ghost orchids grow but on ghost trees?

  I observe all these things silently. At first I don’t understand what is happening. But the saga of the ghost orchids becomes clearer as it unfolds.

  Orpah continues to bug me. She asks me to accompany her to the Silent Chinese Auction at the Center one Saturday morning.

  “Why don’t you go with Nathan?” I ask her.

  “He didn’t ask,” she says. “Anyway the auction is from ten this morning…to two. Nathan’s at work.”

  “Well, maybe you should go with your father,” I suggest.

  “I’m sure he’ll be there as well. I wanna go with you.”

  I was going to go to the auction in any event. And so Orpah and I walk silently to the Center. She would be exquisite if it were not for her heavy makeup that almost cakes her face and the loud, mostly plastic, jewelery.

  There are cakes, pies, hot dogs and sloppy joes on one of the long tables. I buy Orpah a hot dog and we walk from table to table looking at the wares. All these have been donated to raise funds for the Center so that it may pay its utilities and purchase more food from the food bank. There are children’s toys, boxes of cutlery, cookbooks, television sets and the ubiquitous quilt. There are also washing machines, sewing machines, a new bike and a number of other household items. Next to each item there is a sheet of paper where one writes one’s bid.

  Mahlon is glaring at me, sans the smile. I did not know he was capable of not smiling. I have seen him smile at the worst of times. Why, even when a fight was imminent between Nathan and Obed he was smiling. But here he is, looking at me with a smileless face. He certainly does not approve of my “date” with his daughter. Hard luck; I am with her now. And to emphasize that point I grab her hand, which takes her by surprise. But she does not draw it away. She greets him and he responds with a smile. But his face becomes stern again when his eyes shift to me. Orpah adopts the voice of a little girl when talking to Mahlon. I find this very unsettling.

  Orpah is fascinated by a gnome. She tops the last bid on it and I am amazed that people want this gnome so much that they are willing to pay a very high price for it. Orpah explains that this is not just any old gnome. It is a famous George W. Bush gnome invented by one Sam Girton, an Athenian no less, and it sells internationally on eBay and always creates a flurry of bidding. It comes with accessories: If you love Bush then you place an American flag in his hand. If you hate Bush you make him hold a bag of money with a dollar sign on it or a machine gun. The gnome is popular with Bush haters and Bush lovers.

  “I didn’t know you’d be interested in this sort of thing,” I say.

  “It’s not for me,” she says. “I’m buying it for you to give to Daddy as a present.”

  “Why would I give your father a gift?”

  “Because he don’t like you and you want him to like you.”

  “I don’t want him to like me.”

  “You staying at his house.”

  She says she is not going to move away from the gnome so as to outbid anyone who has the intention of topping her bid. And she does so. I have never seen her this happy before. She whispers to me why it is necessary to appease her father. For some time now he has been trying to sabotage my stay at the house. For instance, he was the one who “lost” the key to the cellar and I had to find a place to sleep in Obed’s room. I remember the night but didn’t know Mahlon had anything to do with it. She finds this very funny and laughs. Now I hear that he has done other things too, but they were always foiled by none other than Orpah. Obviously she is enjoying what she perceives as rivalry between her father and me.

  At the end of the auction I discover to my surprise that she has been writing my name on the bid, instead of hers. I am not amused at having to pay for the gnome but I don’t argue about it. Later that evening she gives it to her father in my name. In the morning I see it basking in the sun among other gnomes in Mahlon’s garden. The man never tha
nks me for it.

  I do not see Orpah after that for a number of days. But I hear her relentless sitar at odd hours of the day or night. The next time I set my eyes on her we are at the Appalachian Rising Bluegrass Festival at a farm outside Huntington, West Virginia. She is with Nathan, who is holding her sitar in a case. I am here with Obed and had no idea Orpah would be here too. I am not one for music festivals but Obed begged me to come with him. He had bought tickets for himself and Beth Eddy, but at the last minute she told him she couldn’t make it because of a family commitment. He also felt that Ruth would be more comfortable parting with her GMC for the better part of the day and night if she knew I’d be wherever the GMC was. Obviously the young man has an exaggerated impression of the esteem in which Ruth may or may not hold me.

  Orpah looks like a Gypsy queen in her fuchsia skirt, sequinned silver top and coin hoop earrings that almost touch her shoulders. She is ill at ease.

  People are enthralled by a band of five—a sliding guitar, a banjo, a seventy-string hammer dulcimer, a fiddle and an acoustic guitar—playing Celtic traditional music. When they play bluegrass it is heavily Irish-traditional. This prompts a group of men to mount the makeshift stage and begin clogging. There are yells of excitement when the champion fiddler takes a solo while he joins the clogging.

  This is my first bluegrass festival and I am enjoying it.

  “Bluegrass is human,” says Orpah. “It’s about people, that’s why.”

  We get pop and some hot dogs. The two guys are on their best behavior. I would have thought they would be drowning themselves in beer by now. Maybe it’s Orpah’s influence on Nathan.

  We walk to another part of the festival and here a different band is on the stage. In addition to the banjo and three fiddles this one also has a ukulele and a mandolin. A woman vocalist with a gravelly voice is very popular with the crowd. People are clapping their hands and stamping their feet.

  There are many other stages, but we return to the first one because there is an open mike at this time.

  After much persuasion from the three of us, with Nathan holding her to the promise she made before they left Kilvert that she would play for the public for the first time in her life, Orpah takes the stage with her sitar. Its whines bring everyone to attention.

  An old guy with a sliding guitar cannot help but join her. So does a flute, a lap dulcimer, a fiddle and a banjo. And soon the impromptu band is giving bluegrass standards a tone that has never been heard before. I don’t know what they call an event like this in the bluegrass culture. I would call it a jam session if it was jazz. And it is Orpah’s sitar that breaks from the standards in improvised leaps before it returns to them to find the graybeards just ready to reincorporate it in the song with their varied instruments.

  The audience doesn’t dance. Doesn’t yell. Doesn’t clap or sing along. Everybody is transfixed. Including us. I am just open-mouthed. We are all mesmerized by what we hear. When the song comes to an end there is utter silence for some time. Then an outburst of cheers and screams. There are tears in my eyes. Nathan is beaming with pride. Obed’s face displays disbelief.

  The crowd doesn’t want Orpah to leave the stage even after open mike time. Band members crowd around her asking for her contact details because they’d like to invite her to join them for this or that gig. At this point Nathan moves forward and takes charge of the situation. Anyone who wants to contact Orpah with any proposal should do it through him. But she dashes away in a huff, elbowing her way through the crowd. The three of us run after her.

  “What’s up with you, Orpah?” demands Obed when we catch up with her.

  “Where do you get off being my owner?” she asks, glaring at Nathan.

  “Someone’s gotta look after you, Orpah,” says Nathan. “You know how they exploit artists here. ’Specially if they’re naive like you.”

  “I ain’t no one’s artist,” she screams. “And no one made you my agent or manager or whatever else you think you are.”

  Nathan is taken aback by her vehemence. He was only trying to look after her interests, he says. He accuses her of being ungrateful. After all, she didn’t even want to come to this festival and he persuaded her. It was also his idea that she bring the sitar along to play during open mike. And now that she sees fame beckoning she is turning against him. This annoys Orpah even more. She demands to be taken back to Kilvert. Not by Nathan, but by her brother and me. But Obed is reluctant to leave because he is still enjoying the festival.

  “There’ll be other festivals, Obed,” I say. “Please do take your sister home.”

  “Who asked you?” Nathan screams at me. “This ain’t Africa. You don’t think I know you’re into her? You don’t think I don’t see the way you’ve been eyeing her?”

  A surprised Orpah looks at me questioningly.

  Obed is sulking as we walk to the parking area. No one utters a word in the two hours it takes us to get to Kilvert. It is about 8 P.M. when Obed parks the GMC and walks away, perhaps to kill time with a friend.

  “You don’t wanna come to my room?” asks Orpah.

  I do not show her that I am taken aback.

  “Was Nathan right?” she asks. “Was he telling the truth?”

  “What if your father finds me there?” I ask, ignoring her question.

  “He don’t come at this time,” she says. All so innocently. “Anyways, he don’t come if we don’t plan it that way,” she adds, I suppose as a way of assuring me that we’ll be safe.

  Curiosity gets the better of me.

  Orpah’s room is a shrine to Marilyn Monroe. There are posters of Marilyn Monroe on the pink walls. Pursed lips blowing into the mike. Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe. Many posters in different sizes. Some mounted. Others framed. The wind blowing her skirt. There is a framed picture of a much younger Orpah—maybe a high school Orpah—standing on an air vent with air blowing her dress in a Marilyn Monroe pose. Norma Jean in two larger than life cardboard cut-outs. There is even a coffee mug with the face of Marilyn Monroe.

  I find the presence of this dead woman in Orpah’s room unsettling.

  The only chair in the room has piles of pine-scented laundry so I sit on the bed. For a while we don’t know what to do with each other. Then, as if on cue, we simultaneously reach for each other and kiss.

  “Oh, I am going to smudge your makeup,” I say. “But what the heck, you only live once.”

  I have not been with a woman in the biblical sense since the death of Noria almost two years ago. She is still very much in my mind because I never mourned her. My people have a saying that a doctor cannot heal himself. When a lawyer is charged with a crime he needs another lawyer to defend him. Likewise a professional mourner cannot mourn his own loss. My hope has been that in my wanderings I would find another competent professional mourner who would mourn Noria for me. Until she has been mourned she will continue to be very much part of me. Or so I thought. Until I saw Orpah and heard her sitar. Now my body is raging with desire.

  We undress each other in a manner that speaks only of lust. And there in front of me stands the most beautiful thing in the world. But what strikes me about the pubic hair is that it is blonde. Almost golden. And it is gleaming in the light. She notices my astonishment and turns away as if in shame.

  “It’s the fuckin’ mark of the fuckin’ Irishman and I’ve got to live with it,” she says vehemently. It’s beautiful, I assure her. It is not, she retorts. Her hair is black. Her armpits are black. Why should it be “fuckin’ blonde”?

  She will never know that I have never looked at a pussy before. Never seen it and its intricacies. Never explored its various corridors. Years back, when I broke my vows of celibacy and gave up my life as a monk of my own order of professional mourners for Noria, I plunged into her without ever looking at it. She used to tease me about that: “What if there’s nothing there…that I have tricked you with an artificial one made of plastic?” And I would respond: “Guess I will never know. It’s fine that way.”
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br />   But Orpah is now withdrawn. She rolls herself in a fetal position. I hold her in my arms. We cuddle on her pink duvet. Nothing happens beyond that. I just rest my member on her thighs until the fury is over. And we both drift into a deep sleep.

  8

  Medium Man

  Dawn is a whisper away and soon the birds will chirp. The medium man treads lightly in the forest looking for ghost orchids. Broken limbs of trees are scattered on the ground. His socks in his shoes are soggy and the lower legs of his pants are wet with dew. Before entering the forest he walked on the grass dotted with yellow dandelions waiting to unfold their petals with the rise of the sun.

  The medium man has spent many days and many nights looking very closely at the trunks of trees. He hopes nighttime will bear fruit in the form of a gleaming ghost orchid. Perhaps they come out in the night and sleep during daytime. They are, after all, ghosts. That may be the reason he has failed to find them in the day. He imagines they transform from the shape of a frog that has been flattened by a car to a tiny ball particularly to hide themselves from him. And when they think he is fast asleep or he is performing his memories for the spirit child they unfold themselves and spread out and become the ghost orchids they were meant to be.