If You Want to Make God Laugh

by Bianca Marais

  “What can I help you with, dominee?” I ask as I put the tea and rusk down on the table in front of him.

  His eyes flicker to something behind me, probably just so he doesn’t have to look at my defiant face, and I see them widen as he spots what’s hanging on the lounge wall. It’s my old magazine cover that I had Vince ship from Cape Town. It seems he either can’t take his eyes off the snake draped over me or my naked body. Definitely one of the two.

  “So, it’s true what my father said,” he says. “About you and the . . .” He trails off there, clearly at a loss to find a polite enough word that will encompass all the debauchery I personify, and then settles on “dancing.”

  “I was actually less of a dancer and more of a stripper,” I say. “But how lovely that your father still remembers my show so many years after he sneaked in to see it.”

  He puffs himself up like a bullfrog. A large, menacing bullfrog. His father was an imposing bastard too. “He didn’t sneak in. As a man of God, it was his duty to go and see for himself if the rumors were true.”

  “Hmm. Yes. And once he’d confirmed for himself that I was, in fact, dancing naked with a snake, you’d have to assume that he’d leave immediately.”

  He squirms.

  “Or at least after a few minutes,” I amend generously.

  “He had to see for himself the degree of degradation—”

  “You know that he stayed right until the very end?”

  “It was his duty as a man of God to bear witness!” he splutters, and sloshes some tea into his lap. I hope it’s burned his crotch.

  “How strange that he didn’t tell you and the rest of the congregation, during that particularly malicious sermon he gave about me, that he took my hand and put it on his penis to show me how very hard I’d made him. Perhaps he was proud that a man his age could still get it up.” I laugh. “But that was how most of the men in this God-fearing town went about trying to make me see the error of my ways, so don’t feel too bad, dominee. Your father wasn’t the only one.”

  “You are a lying slut!” He stands so quickly that he knocks the table over.

  “Ah, yes,” I muse. “Isn’t it funny how a bitch is a woman who won’t sleep with you, but a slut is a woman who’ll sleep with anyone else except you, which was your father’s real issue with me, I suspect.” I stand and walk to the door. “Now, is there anything else I can help you with before I ask you to leave?”

  Suddenly remembering the mission he’s been sent on, and clearly nervous that he’ll be tossed out before he can fulfill it, the dominee straightens his tie and clears his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about this nonsense I’ve heard about you bringing a kaffir baby to come live with you in your home.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s unnatural in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Really? It offends the Lord that an orphaned child is going to find love and comfort within these walls?” He nods warily and begins to reply but I cut him off. “Well, you know what I think is unnatural in the eyes of the Lord? Hypocrisy. This whole damn town stinks of it. And you know what? You can shove it up your sanctimonious asses.” I walk to the door and open it for him. “Oh, and on the way out, could you please take that black bag with you? It has a poor decapitated animal inside it, one of many that your devout congregants have left for us, because apparently disgusting cruelty to animals, harassment, and intimidation are all natural in the eyes of the Lord.”

  I pick up the bag that I’d had Stompie put the poor civet into and hand it across to him. He instinctively reaches out for it.

  “The baby won’t be safe here,” the dominee says, a note of desperation in his voice. “Who knows what might happen to him.”

  “Don’t you dare threaten me,” I say, pointing my finger at his face. He flinches and steps back, and I force a sickly sweet smile. “Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, dominee, but you can all fuck right off.”

  And then I slam the door in his face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Delilah

  10 October 1994

  Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

  Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, dominee, but you can all fuck right off.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. It was the first time I’d done so in months. I stepped away from my door where I’d been eavesdropping and sat down on the bed, rubbing Jez’s back.

  Four months after Daniel’s passing, I still couldn’t shake off my malaise. I was in limbo, unable to grieve him properly and yet also unable to move on. How did you mourn someone you’d never known but had always loved? How did you let them go when they’d never been yours?

  I kept telling myself I had no right to any kind of grief at all—that what I was mourning was what might have been if things had been different—but still I felt as though his death had gouged a hole in me. I could feel the wind whistling through it, the sound so forlorn that it kept me awake at night as I stared into the darkness.

  Ruth had tried to make me go to Daniel’s funeral after she’d found me curled up in bed, staring at the last photograph I’d received of him.

  “He’s so handsome,” she’d said, taking the Polaroid from my hands as she sat down on the bed next to me. “He looks like you.” I didn’t see the resemblance. I thought he looked like his father. “Are you going to the funeral?” Ruth asked, handing the Polaroid back.

  I shook my head.

  “You could never tell anyone you were his mother when he was still alive. Surely now that he’s passed on, and you’re no longer in that secular life, you can go and talk to his friends and congregants. Tell them that you’re his mother. I’m sure they’d love to talk to you about him and you can get to know him through them. Even claim him as your own.”

  Claim him. As if such a thing could ever be that easy.

  “Okay,” she continued through my silence. “At least think about going to visit Daniel’s grave. Maybe get some closure. It couldn’t hurt. And if you’re not ready now, wait until you are.”

  “How will I know when I’m ready?” I whispered.

  “You’ll get a sign, of course.”

  Ruth thought it was callous of me not to go and lay my son to rest, but how could I, when Father Thomas would be there conducting the service? What kept me away was cowardice. Say what you wanted about Ruth, she wasn’t a coward and didn’t take crap from anyone. There was a lot about my sister that drove me crazy but I had to admire her courage. More than admire it, I was envious of it. Her audacity in standing up to the dominee was more than a mere act of defiance, it was completely taboo in the Afrikaner culture, which emphasized respect for male elders and community leaders above all else.

  As little girls, Ruth and I were taught to always defer to the most senior white male at any gathering, and then to view the pecking order down from him according to age and social standing. It didn’t matter if you didn’t know the men at any given event, you had to go and greet them all, kissing them on the lips, before you were able to run off and play with the other children.

  If a man wet his lips too much or opened his lips a fraction too wide—perhaps touched you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable or made you sit on his lap just a bit too long—that was no excuse to avoid him the next time. In fact, if you did, it was viewed as being extremely bad mannered, and there was no greater indictment of a child, or their parents, than declaring them to be lacking in manners. It was a girl’s duty to grin and bear it. No matter what any man did, she absolutely wasn’t to make a fuss.

  It was a dysfunctional way to be raised and judging by how I’d allowed Father Thomas to treat me, first at the convent all those years ago and then recently at the hospital, it was a way of thinking that I hadn’t grown out of. I had so many regrets since Daniel’s passing, but not standing up to the priest and asserting myself was the greatest of them. I to
ok vicarious pleasure in hearing Ruth rage against a system that had always made me feel so powerless.

  Her sudden knock at my door startled me.

  When she stepped inside, Jezebel immediately ran out of the room as though desperate to be free of me and my melancholy. “Riaan’s here again to see you,” Ruth said quietly. “Are you coming out?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure? You’ve been cooped up for ages. A bit of company might do you a world of good.”

  “No, Ruth. I’m not up for visitors.” My voice was scratchy from lack of use.

  “Okay.” She sighed. “Can’t say I don’t wish it was Vince knocking the door down every day. I’m tired of lying to the poor man and making excuses for you, though,” she said before leaving.

  I could hear her murmuring an explanation.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Riaan asked. “Is she upset with me?” I felt a stab of guilt at that, that he’d think he was to blame for anything.

  “No,” Ruth said. “It’s not you.” After that, I could only make out fragments: “she’s had some bad news . . . she lost someone close to her . . . isn’t taking it well.”

  I was grateful to Ruth for her rare diplomacy as I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Zodwa

  19 November 1994

  Big Hope Informal Settlement, Magaliesburg, South Africa

  Stubble scratches against Zodwa’s neck, rough like sandpaper. She turns over, wincing at the stab of pain in her forehead. On her back, staring up at the shack roof, she can smell the stale beer on Ace’s breath.

  He’s lying on his side, snoring with his mouth wide open. She shrinks away from the stench of it, and her elbow connects with the empty Black Label bottles standing sentry next to the mattress on her makeshift bedside table, a milk crate loaded with books. Their clinking wakes Ace up and he grumbles as he glares at her. “Why are you making such a noise?”

  “Sorry,” Zodwa whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

  Zodwa checks to see if beer spilled on her books. Since she doesn’t have a proper fixed address, she doesn’t qualify for library membership, not even in the new South Africa. Instead, she begs and borrows textbooks from Mr. Tshabalala, her old high school English teacher who’s taken pity on her, and then buys the others if Mama Beauty isn’t able to source them for her.

  Since Zodwa considers the books necessities, as essential as food and water, she doesn’t feel guilty about the money spent on them. Besides the math, science, and biology textbooks, which she’s studying from so that she can write her exams to finish high school, she also has Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, The Communist Manifesto, and three books by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  The only fiction books Zodwa owns are Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan and Beloved by Toni Morrison. She’s read both books multiple times and often looks at the author photographs to remind herself that black women are fit for more than labor, that they can have ideas and thoughts and dreams worthy enough to be committed to paper, compelling enough for strangers to read.

  Assured that her books are fine, Zodwa checks her wristwatch and curses, stands up, and then curses again as her toes sink into mud. It must have rained during the night because the shack has partially flooded. Zodwa doesn’t want to think about how drunk she must have been to have slept through the drumbeat of rain against the roof. She sighs and lights the primus stove to put the kettle on to boil. She missed the appointment she had at the children’s sanctuary and now may even be late for work, but she can’t leave without making Ace his usual breakfast: kota and sweet tea to wash it down with. Zodwa pulls the loaf of white bread toward her, cuts it in quarters, and then scoops the guts of it out.

  She fills a quarter with some fried cabbage and then reaches for the Vienna sausages and chips left over from last night’s meal. Waiting for the kettle to boil, Zodwa looks at the newspaper that had wrapped the sausages. It’s a luxury she can’t usually afford and so she skims through one at every opportunity. These pages aren’t articles or anything interesting. They’re just legal notices in the classifieds.

  While she fills a tin mug with four teaspoons of sugar, she catches sight of the letters under the sugar canister. They’re all from her grandmother, beseeching her to come home and explain herself, and they’ve all gone unanswered, though Zodwa goes to the building society to do banking as often as she can to send money home to her gogo. It helps assuage the guilt and she hopes it tells her grandmother what she can’t: that she loves her even though she’s lost; that she misses her even though shame keeps her away.

  Once Ace’s breakfast is made, Zodwa gently shakes him awake and leaves before he can pull her down onto him. The man’s sexual appetite is insatiable. It’s bad enough having sex with him when she’s drunk and partially anesthetized to it. Doing it when she’s hungover is its own kind of hell.

  Zodwa heads out of the shack, finds another stone in the laneway, and adds it to her brother’s shrine. As she touches the mass of rock, a vivid image comes to her of the very last time she saw Dumisa. He was impeccably dressed in their deceased father’s best suit even though he would be walking for hours on dusty roads ahead of two days of travel to Johannesburg. Her brother maintained, like their father before him, that a man who looked sharp was one who garnered respect. A well-dressed man, even if forced to his knees, had dignity.

  Dumisa had bent down so he was at eye level with Zodwa and she’d blinked as his hat cast a shadow across her face, briefly blocking out the sun. Everyone said he looked like their father but since Zodwa didn’t remember him at all, she had to take their word for it. Dumisa wasn’t only strong and handsome, he was also clever and successful. Being his sister bestowed a special kind of status on her that she feared would weaken in his absence.

  As Dumisa removed his hat and tucked it under his arm, Zodwa wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and beg him not to go. No one who left ever came back, including their mother, who’d gone away to work in the city two years prior with promises that the arrangement was only temporary. Dumisa was Zodwa’s protector and best friend. He was what made both the separation from their mother and their father’s death bearable. She couldn’t imagine a world in which he didn’t bring her red lollipops from the shop in town, or one in which he didn’t charm the white ladies at the church so he could dig through the charity bins for shoes that wouldn’t be two sizes too big for her.

  “You must be good, little sister, do you hear me?” Dumisa said.

  Zodwa nodded, eyes cast down at his wing tips that shone even in the dirt.

  “Look at me,” he instructed gently, chucking her chin so that she met his gaze. “You are a Khumalo, just like me. We are a great people, proudly Zulu. We meet the eyes of the world. And if we do not like what we see when we go out into it, then what do we do?” he asked, repeating a refrain that Zodwa had heard many times.

  “We change it.”

  “Yes, we change it. We make it better. Now is my time but one day it will be yours. When that time comes, make me proud, little sister.”

  Dumisa is another person that Zodwa has let down, which she prefers not to think about, but in keeping Leleti’s ritual alive, she ensures that she starts every day thinking about her brother and mother whether she wants to or not. She’s an orphan now since both of her parents are dead, but is there even a word for someone whose whole family is dead?

  Yes, there is. Cursed.

  But maybe her whole family isn’t dead. She needs to go call the children’s sanctuary again from the spaza shop pay phones to apologize and set up another appointment. This time, she’ll keep it.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Ruth

  2–17 December 1994

  Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa, and Turffontein, Johannesburg, South Africa

  I snatched up t
he phone when it rang. “Hello, Ruth speaking.”

  “Hello, Ruth. It’s Lindiwe.” I’m so relieved to hear the social worker’s voice, I could cry.

  “Please tell me there’s good news.” I don’t want to be rude but I’m also not in the mood to make small talk. The fostering process has been dragging on, each phase stretching out longer than the one before, and if this is what an expedited process looks like, I don’t want to see a slow one. I’m hoping for some finality now that all the medicals have been completed along with the other mounds of paperwork.

  Lindiwe, to her credit, gets straight to the point. “Something has come up. I think you should come see me so we can talk about it.”

  “Oh? What is it?”

  “As I said, I think it would be better for us to chat face-to-face,” Lindiwe says.

  “Okay, you’re scaring me now. Please just tell me what it is or else I’ll only imagine something worse.”

  Lindiwe sighs deeply and then clears her throat. “Okay. The thing is . . . I’m looking at Mandla’s medicals . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “And . . . we have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Ruth, but Mandla has tested positive for HIV.”

  “Oh my God.”

  No, please no.

  * * *

  • • •

  We start the Saturday morning off in a tiny training room near Turffontein with scarred wooden tables and uncomfortable plastic chairs set up in a classic U-shape. The room doesn’t have air-conditioning and it’s sweltering in the December heat. I wrestle a tiny window open for fresh air.

  I’m here out of desperation because I don’t know where else to go or what else to do. All I know about HIV and AIDS is what I’ve been reading in the newspapers and they make it sound terrifying.

  When I told Dee the news of Mandla’s status, she cringed, looking horrified, and then said, “Well, that’s that then.”