She’d probably lived in the town her whole life whereas I’d only just returned to a country that was as wholly changed as I was. How could I profess to know my country as a prodigal daughter returning after all that time?
I was startled by a black face that suddenly loomed at my side window. Knuckles rapped against the glass and I flinched. The light had turned green and I accelerated, looking into my rearview mirror to ensure that I was putting distance between myself and the man who’d approached me. That’s why I didn’t see the pothole in time to swerve. There was a loud bang followed by a jolt. I felt what had happened by the sluggishness of the steering: I’d damaged one of the tires. There was nothing to be done for it but to pull over onto the shoulder of the road.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zodwa
28 April 1994
Big Hope Informal Settlement, Magaliesburg, South Africa
Zodwa locks the shack, tucking the key into her bra. On her way out, she passes the meager vegetable garden she’s been trying to grow, as well as the shrine her mother built to Dumisa. Three thousand, five hundred, and eleven. That’s how many stones now lie heaped in a pile; one for every day since Dumisa has been gone. Zodwa touches it briefly, the mass as solid as Dumisa’s absence, and thinks about all the time she and Leleti have spent searching for him.
Their first outing together after Zodwa arrived in the township was meant to be for buying school supplies. They could have just gone to the shopping center around the corner, which is why Zodwa was confused when Leleti made them catch a minivan taxi into Johannesburg.
“Don’t you want to see the city?” Leleti asked when Zodwa inquired about their destination.
Zodwa did but also knew that the taxi fare there was more than they could afford. It was only once Leleti consulted instructions written on the back of a pamphlet to get them to a block of flats in Hillbrow that Zodwa realized her mother’s true agenda: she wanted to interrogate an ex–Inkatha Freedom Party Youth Brigade member for any information he might have about her son and his role in the Zulu youth movement’s anti-apartheid struggle. The trip had been fruitless—they hadn’t even gotten the schoolbag she needed—and it marked the first of many such trips mother and daughter would take, some by themselves and others with people like Mama Beauty, fellow seekers whose hearts had similarly been broken.
As Zodwa now makes her way down the lane between shacks toward the main road, she’s assaulted from all sides by music blasting from boom boxes, radios, and car speakers. Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson compete with Miriam Makeba, Rebecca Malope, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and Brenda Fassie to be heard. Eddy Grant’s anti-apartheid song, “Gimme Hope Jo’anna,” throbs from the shack closest to the tap as marijuana smoke drifts out, mingling with the woodsmoke from cooking fires.
Everyone is in celebration mode. Yellow, green, and black signs have been appropriated from lampposts and strung up along fence posts. Mandela for President. The People’s Choice! Vote ANC! People spill out of shacks and into the lanes. Some are draped in ANC flags, and some are clutching beer bottles while others hold gourds of sorghum beer, umqombothi, or cartons of fermented mahewu.
“Here, sister,” a neighbor says, passing Zodwa a bottle of Black Label. “Drink this. Beer is good for the baby. It will make him big and strong.”
Zodwa smiles and thanks him for the offering. She wishes instead that he would give her some of the sheep’s head that he’s roasting on a grill over a drum. The smell of the meat makes her stomach rumble.
“Viva, Mandela! Viva, freedom!” The cries ring out from all sides.
She keeps walking, skirting the shack that stands all by itself on a corner. It’s the only one in the squatter camp that doesn’t have three or more other shacks pressed up against it. The woman who lives inside it, Gertie, is rumored to have the killing sickness, ingculaza, or AIDS as the whites call it. As bad as Zodwa’s luck has been of late, at least she’s not an untouchable like Gertie, who’s wasted away, gone from being over a hundred kilos to looking like a skeleton the last time Zodwa saw her.
The sun is setting as Zodwa steps from the muddy, littered lane into the main road, and it lights up the clouds in the pinks of cosmos flowers, and the greens and purples of cabbage leaves. It sometimes amazes Zodwa that beauty can exist in a place like the township. With all its shacks thrown together from things the white man has found no use for, or hasn’t been vigilant enough to guard, it’s a festering pile of scrap metal. And yet as unsightly as it is, as fragmented and desperate and temporary, all it takes is seeing it in the reflection of dusk’s forgiving gaze to realize that the discarded can be beautiful.
Zodwa heads for the spaza shop, counting her change to ensure she has enough. She doesn’t know where Leleti has been all day. Her mother left before sunrise but no longer has a job to go to and no one in their right mind would hire her looking the way she does. Zodwa wants to surprise Leleti with a meal when she gets home. She’s leaving the shop with a small bag of Iwisa when a commotion across the road catches her attention. A car is pulled up on the verge. Its presence bothers the taxi drivers, who hoot and wave emphatic arms out of windows to express their displeasure. A white woman sits inside it, ignoring the newspaper seller who is rapping on her window and motioning for her to wind it down so he can talk to her.
“I want to help you,” he says, while pantomiming changing a tire. He calls to other men in the vicinity, asking them to assist so they can get the crazy mlungu back on the road and out of the way.
As more men approach the car, the woman appears to grow more fearful. She stares at the gathering crowd with widened eyes and Zodwa shakes her head at the woman’s stupidity. There’s a group of people wanting to help her, but her fear of the black savage doesn’t allow her to see that. Finally, something appears to get through to the woman, who tentatively winds the window down and begins talking to the newspaper seller. Within a minute, she nods and pops the boot open, and the men spring into action, getting to work on taking out the spare tire to change it for her.
The woman gets out of the car and steps to the side, her arms wrapped around herself as she watches one of the men jack the car up. After a moment, she begins engaging with them, and whatever they say to her makes her smile. Zodwa is just about to turn and leave when she spots her mother and Mama Beauty getting out of a taxi that has pulled up.
They start to cross the road when Leleti turns and notices the commotion. Her mother does a double take when she sees the woman and something in her expression changes. She waves Mama Beauty on and turns to walk toward the car, a tentative smile on her face.
Zodwa is surprised when her mother addresses the white woman. They chat for a minute and then Zodwa watches in disbelief as Leleti throws herself into the stranger’s arms, embracing her as though they are long-lost friends. Their voices rise up into the night but Zodwa can’t hear the actual words over the sound of the traffic. What she can see is her mother smiling and laughing, wiping away tears as she holds the woman at arm’s length before pulling her back, time and again, into an even tighter embrace than before.
After a few moments of conversing, the woman reaches into the car’s boot and removes a few plastic bags. She holds them out to Leleti. When Leleti refuses them, the woman takes Leleti’s hand, holding it up and pressing it to her own heart before forcing the bags on her. The encounter is abruptly ended when the tire change is completed and the taxi drivers begin furiously motioning for the woman to move out of the way.
The woman gives the newspaper seller some money. As she pulls away, she winds down her window and waves and smiles at Leleti. “Goodbye, Precious! It was so wonderful seeing you!” Precious. It’s Leleti’s English name.
Leleti waves and smiles back, an expression of wonder on her face. Zodwa doesn’t know if it’s because of the windfall of groceries or the effect seeing the woman has had on her.
Zodw
a smiles timidly as she greets her mother after she’s crossed the road. “Hello, Mama. Where were you today?”
“With Beauty in Soweto.”
Zodwa is taken aback. “Soweto? Why?”
“We were making inquiries about Nomsa and Dumisa.”
“Mama . . .” Zodwa shakes her head. That Leleti has traveled so far in her weakened state is worrying. At least she was with Mama Beauty, who would have looked out for her.
“What? I need to know what happened to him before I die.”
“Mama, you’re not going to . . .” Zodwa trails off when she sees the expression on her mother’s face. “Who was that you were with now?”
“Someone I used to work for very long ago when we were both just girls. The good Lord brought us together then and still He works His wonders today.”
Zodwa doesn’t share her mother’s faith. From what she can tell, it’s a quirk of fate or a spin of the wheel that decides who must suffer and who will be spared. Still, it’s more comforting believing that than thinking God chooses which of His lambs to torture and which to reward. If Zodwa’s rape and Leleti’s suffering were God’s will rather than something random, how much worse would that be? Still, she knows better than to say as much.
“You were hugging her,” Zodwa says accusingly.
Leleti smiles in admission.
“I thought you said all white people were demons.”
“Not that one,” Leleti says. “That one is God’s child.”
“What did she give you?”
“Groceries. Have I not always told you that the Lord provides?”
As the laneway narrows, Zodwa is forced to trail a few steps behind her mother. She wants to remark that it was the white woman who provided and not God, which makes it charity rather than a blessing, but that is a sacrilege her mother would never allow.
Zodwa’s curiosity about the woman may not be sated but at least her hunger will soon be.
Praise God.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ruth
5 May 1994
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
Dee walks into the lounge and eyes the cardboard box next to me. “What are you doing?”
“Packing up ahead of selling the farm. What does it look like?”
“You’re wasting your time. I’m on my way to a lawyer now to revoke the power of attorney. We won’t be selling.”
I ignore her and just keep on sorting through Ma’s giant kist of mementos.
“Ruth, did you hear me?”
I hum a few bars from Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” but, of course, Dee doesn’t get the reference. She’s never had any use for music unless it was the background to some Bible verse wrapped up as a hymn.
“Ruth? I’m talking to you. Could you please listen?”
I open a photograph album and turn the pages. “Do you know,” I muse, “there was a time when I really wanted to hear from you. All those times I wrote to you telling you how much we needed you, how much I needed you . . . pouring my heart out, begging you to come home and help me . . . But you were silent then, sending a very clear message of how little we meant to you, and now after all this time I find I don’t much care what you have to say anymore.”
“The farm was left to both of us,” Dee insists stubbornly, though she has the grace not to meet my eye.
“Then all the debt was left to both of us as well. Except, again, where were you for that? Not here. Not paying the bills. Not pouring money into the farm just to keep it afloat. Not paying Sarie and Stompie a monthly salary to take care of the property.”
“I’ll pay you back for all of that.”
“With what?” I laugh. “Look at you. You look like a homeless person. All you have in the world is a rucksack filled with shitty, threadbare clothes. You’re like those squatters at the camp down the road. Trying to claim something that isn’t yours.”
“I have savings, Ruth, and the farm is half mine.”
I shrug.
My indifference seems to be what sets her off. “And at least I wasn’t taking off my clothes, parading around like a whore for money. At least I was earning it the hard way.”
I look at her, surprised.
“Yes, I heard about what you were up to,” Dee says. “I know what you were.”
“So, you kept up with all the gossip about me, just not with me personally?” I smile though it takes some effort. To hell with her and her precious sanctimony. “I’m ashamed of nothing. I earned an honest living, though not an entirely legal one, and it paid the bills. If I wasn’t out there working my butt off, exposing my tits and ass”—I carry on speaking as she flinches—“then you wouldn’t even have this farm to come back to. It would have been repossessed years ago. So, how about thanking me instead of judging me?”
“I’m still seeing my lawyer.”
“Be my guest. I’ll see mine too.” I may not have that much money left but I know people in high places. They’re almost as helpful as those in low ones.
She slams the door on her way out and I wait ten minutes before getting up and propping it open again to get a breeze through the lounge. It’s hot and I’m sweaty, and silk probably isn’t the most practical fabric to do manual labor in. Also, quite honestly, the packing is boring. I’ve been doing it more to get on Dee’s nerves than to get anything productive done.
I’m so desperate for distraction that I almost consider actually talking to Vince when he calls for the second time in a week. I regret giving him the number. Clean breaks are so much easier than protracted ones. Besides, it hurts to hear his voice.
“Ruth, can you talk this time?” I’d told him I was on my way out the last time he called. “You didn’t phone me back.”
“If you want your car, you can come and get it yourself.” I might have stolen his convertible BMW M3 just to rankle him since I know it’s his pride and joy.
He laughs. “You haven’t taken a baseball bat to it, have you?”
“Don’t give me ideas, buster.” God, I miss these wry back-and-forths.
“I don’t care about the car, Ruth. You can keep the bloody thing for all I care.” It’s disappointing to hear him say that. I was hoping that his wanting to retrieve the car would make him come after me. What happened to good old-fashioned materialism? “I just wanted to see how you’re doing and to ask you to give Bill a call sometime this week, please.”
Bill is his lawyer. “Filing for divorce this soon? Jesus, you don’t waste any time, do you?” I feel such a stab of pain I wonder if I might be having a heart attack.
“No. Nothing like that. I just want to make sure that we get the maintenance sorted out while we’re . . . separated . . . and figuring things out.”
Typical Vince. Generous to a fault. “I don’t need maintenance, thank you.”
“Ruth, according to the prenup—”
“Fuck the prenup. I’ve never wanted nor needed your money, Daddy Warbucks. Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to go.”
“I was wondering if you’ve given any further thought to the treatment facility we spoke about?”
In response, I hang up the phone in his ear and get back to clearing the cupboards. When I find Ma’s old knitting basket on the top shelf of the storage cupboard, I yank the needles out, not prepared for the unfinished baby’s bootie they still cling to. I’m not prepared for the hot flood of tears either.
What little foot with its dimpled, tiny toes my mother was knitting it for, I have no idea. Probably one of our many fertile cousins. All I know is that if I were thirty years younger, I’d take the discovery of the blue bootie as a sign. Since it can’t be a sign, it has to be the universe mocking me. It seems to be doing that a lot lately. Still, the air crackles like it knows something. I wish it would share its secret.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Deli
lah
7 May 1994
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
In my past three attempts to go back to the hospital, I’d only gotten as far as town before turning around and heading back to the house in defeat. I told myself it was because Daniel was still in a coma and wouldn’t know I was there anyway, but really it was the image of the priest at his bedside; how he’d looked so assured in his right to be there; how he’d claimed Daniel in a way I never could.
It was late afternoon and Ruth still hadn’t risen. Based on the noise from the radio, which had served as accompaniment for her drunken singing until well after midnight, she’d clearly been on a bender. I’d tried to get her to shut up and go to sleep, but the bedroom door was locked and my banging on it had only made her sing louder.
Half-filled cardboard boxes were scattered all over the place though she didn’t seem to be making any progress with them. Ruth clearly still had the attention span of a goldfish. I was tempted to unpack the boxes, mostly to annoy her but also to give myself some distraction, but with her power of attorney revoked after my visit to the lawyer the day before, Ruth couldn’t sell the farm without my permission. And since I wasn’t going to give it, I looked forward to watching her unpack everything herself. Especially after she found the notarized document I’d propped against her gin bottle where she couldn’t possibly miss it.
When the telephone trilled half an hour later, I considered leaving it so the noise would wake Ruth, but after six rings, I couldn’t stand it anymore and picked up. “Hello?”
If You Want to Make God Laugh Page 6