If You Want to Make God Laugh

by Bianca Marais

  She looks to be in her early twenties and is a whippet of a thing with long blond hair that’s about ten shades too white to be natural. Despite the gloom of the bathroom, she’s wearing big sunglasses. They mostly cover up her bruised eye, but not when you look at her from the side. She has a nervous energy that I recognize. I used to have it once too when I was around her age and getting the shit kicked out of me regularly. Ma had it too, now that I think about it.

  As she washes her hands, she casts quick looks at Mandla, who’s smiling at her. She doesn’t smile back. When she catches my gaze in the mirror, she spits out, “And what are you looking at?” She speaks in Afrikaans but I answer her in English.

  “I’m looking at that shiner. Let me guess, you walked into a door?”

  She seems taken aback and mutters an unconvincing, “Mind your own business.”

  “Fair enough. Let me just say from personal experience that doors that hurt you don’t ever stop. No matter how many times they say they’re sorry and they’ll change. The only way to stop them is to leave.”

  With that, I pick up Mandla and walk out.

  Once we’re back at the table, the waitress returns with our order of a juice box for Mandla and a glass of wine for me. I’m aware, while unwrapping the straw and sticking it into the silver-foil circle, how we’re attracting attention. People try to pretend they’re not looking, but Mandla and I make an odd pair, and eyes flit over to us more often than they do to the playground.

  Mandla squirms in the high chair. I pull him up out of it and set him down on the paved floor, handing him his juice in the process. He reaches for my hand with his free one and the gesture makes me smile as he leads me toward the track with the plastic motorbikes. None of them are free just then and children whiz by, legs pumping against the ground to give themselves momentum. Mandla watches, fascinated, as the kids do their laps, some of them crashing into each other, making each other shriek.

  After a few minutes, a little boy who looks to be about five breaks away from the pack and comes to a halt in front of us. He has curly brown hair and is picking his nose unabashedly while staring at Mandla with fascination.

  He doesn’t say anything, just continues attempting to tunnel into his brain until I finally say, “Hello.”

  “Hello.” He sounds nasal, which is to be expected considering how far up his nose his finger is.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kyle.”

  “Have you found any yet?”

  “What?”

  “Diamonds. Up your nose. Isn’t that what you’re digging for?”

  He blinks and pulls his finger out, staring at the snot on the tip of it like a jeweler appraising a stone, trying to decide how many carats it’s worth.

  I stifle a laugh and point to Mandla. “This is Mandla.”

  “Is he your baby?”

  “Yes, he is.” I try to ignore the emotion that has unexpectedly welled up in my throat.

  “Was he born like that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was he born brown or did he change color?”

  I laugh. “He was born that way.”

  “Oh,” he says, unimpressed. “I’m thirsty.” He reaches out and snatches Mandla’s juice box.

  Before I can react, a woman rushes at us. “Leave it, Kyle. I said leave it.”

  “But I want juice,” the child whines, and I’m about to tell the mother it’s fine, that Mandla hasn’t even had a sip yet, when the woman grabs the juice from his hand. She’s one of the patrons I caught staring earlier.

  “It’s okay,” I say to his mother. “He can have some.”

  The woman ignores me and speaks to her child. “This one is yucky. You’ll get sick if you drink from it.”

  Kyle starts to screech and another mother nearby plucks a juice box from her own child’s hands and gives it to him. Kyle’s mother doesn’t say anything in protest as he takes big gulping sips from the straw even though the girl who unwillingly donated it looks like she has a cold judging by all the gunk crusted around her nose.

  “I beg your pardon but what did you mean by that?” If word of Mandla’s HIV status has somehow spread around town, I need to be aware of it.

  She finally speaks to me directly. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, actually. I don’t. My child isn’t sick but that girl is. And yet you have no problem with your child sharing her germs.”

  “God alone knows what kinds of germs he has,” she says, indicating Mandla. “Kaffirs are dirty. Everyone knows that.”

  The slur renders me speechless for a second. It’s so utterly vicious and directed with such venom at a beautiful, innocent child that I feel sucker punched.

  How dare she speak that way about my boy? How fucking dare she?

  I’m about to give her a piece of my mind when the woman from earlier, Michelle, speaks from behind me. “Since you’re so concerned about protecting the health of other children, you probably shouldn’t have come here with a child that has impetigo. That’s really contagious.” She points at the scabs on Kyle’s chin.

  All the mothers near him suddenly reach for their children to pull them away from his infectious scabs. Kyle, startled by all the activity around him, begins to cry again and his mother swoops in to comfort him.

  “Not so nice when it’s your child being ostracized, is it?” I ask, picking Mandla up and walking away with Michelle. She pretends not to notice the tears that stream down my face as I kiss Mandla over and over again, telling him what a wonderful boy he is, how kind and sweet and precious.

  When we’re in the parking lot half an hour later and I’m strapping Mandla into his car seat, a bakkie that’s leaving suddenly accelerates toward us, missing the open passenger door, and me behind it, by mere inches. There’s glare on the windscreen, so I only see who it is as they swerve to miss us and shoot past.

  The girl with the black eye and the sunglasses is in the passenger seat. She’s sitting next to Klein Maynard Coetzee, the right-winger Afrikaner who’s been directing threats at us for over a year. He watches me in the rearview mirror and the hate in that reflected gaze makes me shudder.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Delilah

  1 October 1995

  Verdriet, Magaliesburg, and Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, Johannesburg, South Africa

  The song that was playing on the radio the day I left Daniel behind at the convent was “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers. It’s something I’d never forgotten because the ballad about loss and regret felt like it was being sung especially for me as Father Thomas drove me to the airport.

  So when I woke up on what would have been Daniel’s fortieth birthday to the sound of Ruth singing along with it on the radio, I knew it was my sign. It was time to finally claim my son. I briefly considered calling Riaan and asking him to make the drive with me, but quickly decided against it. Things had been strained between us since the night in the tent three months before when he’d kissed me and I’d reacted so strongly. Besides, how would I possibly explain Daniel’s existence to him?

  I was surprised and then touched by Ruth’s response when I told her where I was going. “I’ll come with you. You’re going to need some moral support.” And then she winked and smiled. “Just so you know, I offer immoral support as well, in case you ever need that too.”

  “What about Mandla?”

  “I’ll get Zodwa to come in and look after him.”

  “It’s Sunday, Ruth.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll pay her overtime.”

  Zodwa kindly agreed—looking happier than I ever would have been to look after a child on my only day off—and Ruth left a long list of instructions with her for Mandla’s care. Considering he was sick with a bad cold and that Ruth was so paranoid about his health, I was touched that she was prepared to leave him for
the day.

  We pulled up outside Daniel’s church, Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, just after the second service had cleared out.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Ruth asked, eyeing the church as though she might burst into flames if she set foot inside.

  “No, I think I need to do this by myself.”

  She looked relieved. “Okay. There’s a restaurant just across the road. I’ll go sit there and have lunch while I wait for you. Join me when you’re ready. Go claim that boy of yours.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Though I’d never set foot in Daniel’s church before, being there felt like a homecoming. It had been a lifetime since I’d stood within the walls of a Catholic church and yet it was as familiar as breathing. My being there required no thinking, no effort at all.

  Christ was nailed on the cross before me, dying for my sins. His hands and feet were bleeding, and his head, with its crown of thorns, was dipped low. The stained-glass windows depicting various biblical scenes cast yellow, blue, and red shadows onto me, making me think back to the day I first saw Father Thomas.

  I knelt then in Daniel’s church, the place where he’d given hundreds of sermons and blessings, where he’d married hopeful young couples and eulogized those whose days of hope had passed; where he’d blessed and forgiven and worshipped and prayed.

  I looked up at the pulpit and tried to imagine my son there. I wondered what the timbre of his voice had sounded like. If it was gruff and pitched low like his grandfather’s or if it was more melodious like his father’s. Did he gesture when he spoke, drawing the congregation in, or did he stand still as a statue, trusting that his words would find their mark?

  I hoped that he had been kind and quick to forgive. I hoped he had empathized rather than condemned. I thought he would have but I was also aware of how easy it would be to canonize him. I bent my head then and prayed for the first time in four decades. The last prayer I’d ever uttered was on that day forty years before, after Daniel was born and I handed him across to the Reverend Mother. Then, I’d prayed for God to watch over my son and protect him from harm. Now, I prayed to my son for forgiveness for ever entrusting that job to anyone but myself.

  I have no idea how much time passed, but the shadows cast by the stained glass had lengthened across the room by the time I rose. When I turned to leave, I saw a nun sitting a few rows behind me. She wasn’t praying. She was staring at me intently.

  I smiled a greeting and she smiled back before rising and walking toward me.

  “It is you,” she said. “I knew you’d come, but I thought it would be sooner.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  She looked to be in her sixties and was thickset with rounded cheeks and a florid complexion. I was about to shake my head but suddenly I was back in the convent on the day of my arrival, changing in front of a novice who looked at my bruises without uttering a word.

  “Ah.” She smiled. “You do.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I remember you from the convent. Sister Marguerite, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and you’re Delilah. Come,” she said. “I’ll show you his office and his grave.”

  “Whose?”

  “Why, Father Daniel’s of course. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”

  Without another word, she led me from the church and to a small building that stood to the side of it. “Another priest took over after Father Daniel’s passing, but I assigned him other rooms so I could keep Father Daniel’s intact in case you came. It wasn’t difficult getting Father Michael to agree, considering what happened there.”

  I realized that she was referring to Daniel’s attack and wasn’t sure I was ready to see the scene of it. I stopped on the stone path, and as if reading my mind, Sister Marguerite turned and said, “There’s nothing in there now that can hurt you. Come.”

  When we reached a room at the end of the hallway, she unhooked a chain of keys from her belt and used one to unlock the door. “This is where he spent most of his time.”

  The room was just as I’d imagined it, with its scarred wooden desk taking up most of the space and its walls that were covered in rows and rows of books. A large crucifix hung on the only bare wall, opposite the desk, and a threadbare carpet and couch took up the rest of the space. Dust motes twirled through the air and the scent of pinewood polish clung to everything.

  The desk was bare except for a blotter made of paper, a globe, a lamp, and a few framed photographs, which I picked up. One showed Daniel graduating from seminary school as a young man. He stood next to Sister Marguerite, who was beaming, her face half turned toward his. In another he was holding a baby at a christening, while in another, he was shaking a young black man’s hand.

  “That’s Shaun’s christening. Daniel was his godfather. And that young man is Vusi. Daniel mentored him in a youth program.”

  “Can you tell me what happened? The night he was shot?”

  She was quiet for a while and then said, “They came in to rob the place and weren’t expecting to find him here in the early hours of the morning. He must have given them a fright.” She was quiet for a moment, remembering. “He was an insomniac. And when he couldn’t sleep, he’d come here to work on his sermons or to read. He hadn’t been sleeping those few weeks.”

  “You knew him well.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Oh, my. Yes. I helped raised him after you left.”

  And all at once, I realized who she was. Father Thomas’s words from the hospital came back to me.

  Take a look, Delilah. That’s Daniel’s mother. She’s been his mother ever since you left.

  As I was still processing that information, she continued, oblivious to my surprise. “And then when he was ordained and was assigned here, I moved with him as a kind of secretary-slash-housekeeper. I should have been here that night as well, but he’d bought me a bus ticket to East London so I could visit with an ailing friend for a few days. He was that kind of man. Selfless and thoughtful. I didn’t want to leave him, knowing what he was going through, but he insisted that he was fine.”

  “What he was going through?” She opened her mouth to speak, and then paused and cleared her throat. Her eyes flicked away before they were drawn back. Something about the gesture—her obvious reluctance to say what she was about to say—made my stomach feel fluttery. “What was he going through?” I repeated, throat dry.

  “He’d just recently found out, you see.”

  “About what?”

  “Who you were.”

  “Who I was?” I asked, confused.

  “Yes, that you were his mother.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Zodwa

  1 October 1995

  Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

  It’s the first time Zodwa has gotten to spend more than half an hour unsupervised with her son. She has no idea what the emergency was or why the sisters had to suddenly go to Johannesburg, nor does she care. The day has been an unexpected gift.

  Mandla sits on the couch next to Zodwa, fighting sleep as he gulps from his sippy cup. He’s exhausted from a frenetic morning spent chasing her from room to room. Each time he caught her and she lifted him up in a celebratory swoop, he squealed and then demanded to go again just as soon as his feet touched the floor. Zodwa winced when each scream of excitement was coupled with a bout of coughing that rattled Mandla’s lungs, but she didn’t cut the playtime short because of it.

  She knows she shouldn’t have let Mandla exert himself so much considering that he’s had a cold for the past month, but she loves the sound of her son’s laughter so much that she can’t say no to him. Zodwa also can’t bring herself to force the medicine he hates so much down his throat.

  The pink syrup may smell like fruit but it tastes like chalk and makes him gag. Zod
wa can’t blame Mandla for not keeping it down or for his hysteria when he sees her coming at him with the liquid-filled syringe. She has so little quality time with him that she doesn’t want to ruin it by being the one to enforce rules and make him swallow bitter medication. He also hates her constantly wiping at the mucus that runs from his nose into his mouth.

  Once he’s finished with the rooibos tea, Mandla passes the cup to Zodwa. He usually calls her “Dwa,” since he can’t pronounce her full name, but now as he reaches for her hand, he says, “Mama.”

  Zodwa doesn’t know what prompted it, as she’s never tried to get him to call her that. While she’s desperate for her son’s love, the last thing she wants is to confuse him. Still, it’s as if he sees through the charade of what she’s doing there and can see into the truth of their relationship.

  “Mama,” he says again, grabbing her index finger.

  Zodwa doesn’t realize she’s crying until Mandla reaches up and wipes a tear from her cheek and then brings his hand to his face to inspect his fingers. Once he’s made sure that the tears don’t stain, he turns and tucks his head into Zodwa’s chest so he can rest against her. That’s how he falls asleep, listening to his mother’s heartbeat.

  For the first time since she’s been there, Zodwa wonders: If she ran with him, how far would they get before Ruth came for them?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Delilah

  1 October 1995

  Johannesburg, South Africa

  Are you okay? You’ve gone terribly pale,” Sister Marguerite said, her brow scrunched in concern as she steadied me.

  “He knew . . . he knew I was his mother?”

  “Yes, he’d gone looking for you at your last-known address. I’d helped him find your admittance records so we could track it down. It was a farm in Magaliesburg but you weren’t there.”