When Dad looked up from his paper and noticed I had made my decision, he took hold of the catalogue and placed it on top of the business section. After briefly peering at the picture of the scooter, circled three times, he handed the catalogue back, telling me to be more reasonable with my choices.
‘Three and a half thousand rand, for a kid’s bike. Hannah, that’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s a scooter, not a bike.’
‘Well, that makes it even less sensible. And where would you ride your scooter anyway? Up and down the driveway?’
‘Yeah. I would. Or at one of my friends’ houses,’ I retaliated, but his glasses were pushed back on his nose and he was already reading the newspaper again. I thought that if he didn’t want me to choose a Super Scooter, he should have said, ‘You can choose anything in this catalogue unless it is a Super Scooter.’ Or, ‘You can choose anything, as long as it is less than three-and-a-half thousand rand.’ That’s the thing with adults: they don’t tell you things but expect you to know them anyway. Maybe if it had been an Italian scooter carved in marble, he would have at least contemplated the request.
I ended up deciding on a computer game called The Magic School Bus Explores inside the Earth for eighty-two rand. Dad said this was a better choice because I might end up actually learning something valuable – and what would I learn from a scooter?
‘But don’t you already have a Game Boy?’ he inquired.
I explained that this was different.
‘Okay. I’ll buy you the game when I’m in Johannesburg next for work, then send it over to you. How does that sound?’
‘Thanks, Dad!’ I beamed, still happy with this outcome, even though it wasn’t a Super Scooter.
He smiled back at me, then put down the first newspaper and picked up a second.
I had tried reading a newspaper along with Dad once but I hated how big the pages were, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn them properly without other sections of the paper falling out. Dad, however, thought that I looked like a real grown-up when I did this and had taken a picture of me sitting on the sofa, holding an empty mug of coffee as a prop, pretending to read the classifieds.
I watched him now as his blue-grey eyes danced along the printed page he had rested on his crossed legs. His wire-frame reading glasses often left little red dents on the bridge of his nose. Dad’s nose was quite big, which was probably why the glasses pinched, and also why Mum called him Pinocchio that one time.
I reached for the paper he had abandoned and tried to recreate the pose he’d so enjoyed previously. Putting on a news-anchor tone, I read the headlines out loud.
‘US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, Condemns Mugabe – Urges SA to Do Same. My name is Hannah Reynolds, reporting live from Avondale, Harare.’
Dad started laughing. ‘You have a real flair for the dramatic arts. That was pretty spot-on.’
‘Mum’s putting on a show,’ I told him, seizing the opportunity. ‘You should come. I’m in it.’
‘What’s the show?’ he asked.
‘It’s like a bunch of songs from different shows,’ I said. ‘I have three parts.’ I outlined them all in detail: how I was in the chorus for the ‘Seasons of Love’ song from Rent; that I donned a crab costume when they performed the hit Disney classic ‘Under the Sea’ from The Little Mermaid; and lastly, a singing role, where I played Liesl from The Sound of Music. My duet was with Zayn, a long-time friend of my mum’s. We were going to sing ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen’; I would be Liesl, and Zayn, in spite of his mixed Indian and African heritage, would take on the role of Rolf.
‘So, yeah. You should definitely come,’ I insisted.
‘I don’t know … We’ll see. Anyway, listen, I’ve just got a bit of work to do. Are you okay to read something or watch TV? Then we’ll have lunch shortly, sound good?’
I nodded, not because it sounded good, but because it was one of Dad’s many rhetorical questions that I was expected to agree with. And with my apparent approval, he left the room.
Dad had a housekeeper too, Maria, but I didn’t like her so I was determined to avoid her. She was different from Gogo in every way. She was a lot younger and her body resembled a wooden spoon. Definitely not akasimba. She didn’t wear brightly coloured dresses and bandanas, instead opting for a matching black skirt and shirt combination. Moreover, she never seemed happy when I was visiting and would regard me with suspicion, as though I had arrived with the sole intention of messing up her clean house. Credit to Maria, it was a very clean house. Not that ours was dirty by comparison – although I doubt Gogo was the most thorough of cleaners – it just had more stuff. There was very little stuff at Dad’s house. There weren’t any macaroni and glitter art pieces that had been left to dry on the table but were promptly forgotten about; no photo-frames or birthday cards cluttering the mantelpiece, no lost teddy bears, and you would never run the risk of accidentally stepping on a stray Lego block at Dad’s. If I was not currently sitting on the upstairs sofa and sneakily scoffing his stash of salted macadamia nuts, it would be impossible to know that he had a child.
Maria presented us our lunch at the marble table: a grilled fish fillet accompanied by brown rice and steamed green beans. Gogo usually made me a baloney and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch, with some crisps on the side – just one more way in which she was infinitely better than Maria.
‘So, tell me, Hannah, how is school going?’ Dad said, as he split a bean in half with his knife and scooped it, along with some fish, onto his fork. ‘Are you enjoying it?’
‘Yeah, it’s alright so far. My desk is right behind Diana’s, which is good.’
‘Who?’
‘My best friend, Diana? Anyway, that’s good, but this term’s sport is cross-country, which is pretty lame. And I’ve got a Shona test next week, so Gogo is helping me study for that.’
‘I don’t know why you’re learning Shona. No-one does business in Shona.’
‘Grandpa says that learning Shona is important.’
‘Well, yes, maybe for your grandpa and the sort of work that he does, Shona is necessary. But when you get older, you’ll get a real job – you’re smart enough not to work on a farm. And there, they’ll speak English. Honestly, if you want to get ahead, you should be learning Mandarin.’
‘They don’t teach Mandarin at school.’
‘Well, they should. The Chinese are coming here and buying up all the land. They’re the ones propping up the economy. That’s where the money is. Mandarin.’
The fish was dry, but I didn’t ask for any tomato sauce because I knew Dad wouldn’t have it anyway. Instead I started taking bigger bites, reasoning that if I managed to swallow it all in four goes, it would be better than taking multiple nibbles and prolonging the experience.
‘Hannah, slow down. You’re guzzling your food down like a fat little hippo.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, putting my cutlery down on the plate and counting to ten in my head before I swallowed my next mouthful.
While for Gogo akasimba may have been a compliment, for Dad, being fat was the greatest character flaw a person could possess. He often said it was a lack of self-control that led people to be fat and that this form of gluttony was not worthy of respect. Every time we saw a big person at a restaurant, or buying food at the supermarket, he would make a comment: ‘No wonder people are starving in this country, this old cow’s just bought up all the food.’ It made me feel weird because Gogo was akasimba and so was Rudo Rusere, and a lot of people I liked.
Eventually, Maria came to collect the plates. A look of displeasure crossed her face as she piled mine on top of Dad’s, the half-eaten food scraped to one side.
‘Miss Hannah does not like?’ she asked, while staring directly at my father.
‘No, I do … I’m just … I’m full,’ I assured her.
Her head remained still, but her eyes flicke
d over to me, as though she were surprised I’d been the one to reply. With only a blink in response, she carried the plates off to the kitchen.
I couldn’t seem to win here; damned if I ate, damned if I didn’t. I often felt this way at Dad’s house, as though there were a script I ought to be following, but somehow was never granted access to. I glanced across at his watch. It had only been three hours: thirty-three to go.
5
The night before my shona test, I perched on the kitchen countertop while Gogo was cooking. As she peeled the skin off our potatoes, she called out a random English word.
‘Milk?’
‘Easy,’ I said. ‘Mukaka.’
‘Chocolate?’
‘Chokoreti!’
‘What is … dinner?’
‘Muriwo ne nyama,’ I replied, pointing to the food on the bench.
Gogo began laughing.
‘Ahahaha … very clever, Hannah. Where are we now?’ she asked, inelegantly gesturing around the room with her left hand as she used her right to drop the potatoes into boiling water.
‘Um … the kitchen?’
‘Kicheni,’ Gogo corrected me.
‘Same thing!’
Numerous Shona words were almost identical to their English counterparts, but with a few letters jumbled around or a syllable tacked on the end; beer is beero, car is motokari, phone became foni. Despite this, I always studied diligently, mainly because of the fear my Shona teacher instilled in me. Mrs Muduma, with her oversized earrings and endless rotation of weaves, was incredibly intimidating. Every month students were individually quizzed at the front of the class. Standing there in your brown-leather lace-ups, looking onto rows of wooden desks and expectant faces, was one of the most petrifying experiences of junior school, close to running cross-country and spotting a black mamba.
‘Stove?’ Gogo asked.
‘I don’t know it.’
‘Yes, you do. Stove.’
‘Chitofu?’ I offered.
‘See, Hannah, you are a smart girl. Very smart girl.’
The class rose as Mrs Muduma entered the room, welcoming her with the sound of twenty-five chairs scraping against the tiled floor and a disjointed chorus of Mangwanani, marara sei? (Good morning, did you sleep well?) Followed by the standard reply of Ndarara mararawo delivered by Mrs Muduma. (I slept well, if you slept well.) Of course, the likelihood of a restful sleep before a Shona test was slim.
Mrs Muduma took her seat at the front of the class, smoothing out the creases in her leopard-print ensemble as she did so.
‘I hope everyone has done their revision because I am not feeling well and I don’t want to feel even less well. Who wants to go first?’ At this point, she reached into her bra and pulled out a small packet of tissues, selecting one with which to noisily blow her nose.
‘No-one?’ Mrs Muduma sighed. ‘I’ll have to select at random from the register.’ She made a point of closing her eyes and waving an acrylic-nail-adorned finger in the air, before setting it down on the piece of paper.
‘Shamiso Tekere,’ Mrs Muduma called out, summoning her forth to begin the interrogation. Shamiso walked to the front of the class, planting her feet parallel to Mrs Muduma’s desk. Being first in oral tests was always the worst and I felt bad for Shamiso. If you were lucky you would be one of the last people to get called out, at which point it was likely that Mrs Muduma had repeated the vocabulary a few times and you were able to remember it. Shamiso probed (incorrectly) at a few answers but for the most part was completely speechless. I watched as she cast her eyes to the broken ceiling fan in an unsuccessful attempt not to cry. The tension in the room constricted and wrapped itself around us as Mrs Muduma rose to her feet.
‘Do you really not know the answers?’ she spat.
Shamiso shook her head ashamedly, the multicoloured beads fixed to the ends of her braids clinking together in the silence.
‘Are you telling me, Shamiso, that you do not know the most basic words in your own language? What do you speak at home? Huh? English?’ The tirade continued. ‘Do you even know one single Shona word? Give me just one word.’
Failing to receive a response, Mrs Muduma picked up the faded one-metre blackboard ruler, striking the desk beside her. At the same time, a small puddle began to form between Shamiso’s feet.
6
Every year on my birthday I would climb into bed with Mum first thing in the morning to unwrap my presents and she would tell me about the day I was born. She always began with the fact I arrived over a week late or, rather, ‘was too warm and cosy to want to come out’. She would go on to describe the way she was given an epidural – ‘a big needle in her back’ – a part of the story that always left me holding my breath even though I knew the outcome. Because of the complications around the delivery, I was born with displaced hips. For the first six months of my life, I had to wear a brace that would hold my legs apart and outwards. Mum would then describe the way that Gogo cared for me when I was a baby, by securely fastening me to her back with cloth as many African women did with their children, and as Gogo would have done with hers. I’ve seen pictures of myself, neatly tucked against Gogo, held by a bright orange-and-red blanket, tiny pink toes peeking out either side of her waist.
Mum liked to tell me – or anyone else who cared to listen to the story – that I hated wearing the doctor-assigned leg-brace and would cry every time she placed it on my body, yet felt comfortable wrapped up and sleeping against Gogo’s back with my legs curved around her. Mum says that this is the reason I outgrew my hip dysplasia. I wasn’t sure whether this was medically accurate, or in the same vein as Grandpa’s wild yarn that I was plucked from the bush and raised as a human, but I liked the story either way.
The plan for my birthday this year was to watch the premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and have dinner at St Elmo’s. Diana, a few other girls from school, and some of Mum’s friends were invited. I was beyond excited. Since the film’s London debut I had reread the book three times. At the cinema there would also be a best- costume prize, which I was determined to win. But, minutes before we had to leave, tragedy struck as my authentic Harry Potter wand was nowhere to be found.
‘Are you sure you haven’t seen it anywhere?’ I asked Gogo. ‘It’s about this big … and brown, and a little bit crooked.’
Trying to be helpful, Gogo, acting as Zimbabwe’s MacGyver, butchered an old duster of hers, plucking out the feathers and gluing white cardboard around the top and bottom. I tried to explain that Harry was a wizard not a magician, attempting to describe his wand in greater detail while Mum ushered me into the car.
‘Just take the bloody thing. We’ll miss the film!’
I reluctantly fastened my seatbelt, whispering ‘muggle’ under my breath. As the electronic gate peeled open, I caught sight of Gogo running down the driveway. She was waving a thick, metre-long branch, cut from one of the msasa trees in the backyard. She caught up to the car and snapped the branch over her knee, before passing one half through the window to me. I smiled.
‘Thank you, Gogo. This is perfect.’
We pulled into the Avondale shopping complex car park. From here I could see the 7 Arts cinema sign in giant lettering plastered atop the building.
We snuck into the theatre, noticing that the lights had been dimmed and the trailers had already started. Mum found the adults and I spotted Diana in the middle, using a large witch hat to save my seat. I did a quick wave down the aisle to the other girls from school before the black curtains pulled back further to signal the commencement of the film.
The movie outing was everything I had hoped for, even though the costume prize went to a stout red-headed boy who had brought his pet rat along with him. As we left the cinema and moved to the restaurant downstairs, Diana grabbed hold of my wand and inspected it.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t find my real one.
The proper Harry Potter one.’
‘No, it’s cool,’ Diana assured me. ‘Those ones are made of plastic anyway. Real, proper wizard wands are made of wood.’
Michaela Parker joined us as we descended the stairs. She had teased her long, mousy-brown hair into a fluffy mess, and was sporting the glasses she usually only wore during school hours.
‘Happy birthday, Hannah! I mean Harry. I like your wand,’ she said, as she bounded next to me. ‘Who are you meant to be, Di?’
‘Hermione,’ Diana replied.
‘You don’t really look like Hermione,’ Michaela said.
Diana hoisted up the phonebook she had covered with brown paper and written Potions on in cursive black ink. I knew Diana and Michaela didn’t get along that well, but I also knew that, because of Dad, I had to invite Michaela to my birthday. I found that my friends were segregated into Mum-friends and Dad-friends. The friendships connected to Mum were the children of our neighbours at Fleetwood Road, most of the girls from Bishopslea, and her co-workers’ kids. Michaela was a Dad-friend. Although I knew her from school, it was Dad who had fostered the friendship, after Michaela’s father was employed as his subordinate at Standard Chartered.
We slid into one of St Elmo’s green booths, our appetites awakened by the smell of dough heating up in the wood ovens. Sometimes the staff would let you play with the dough – you could mould it into fun figures that they’d cook in the oven for you. Most of the time the shapes would come out as indistinguishable white blobs, but sometimes they looked kind of cool. I would take them home as ornaments until they grew stale and became a snack for Oscar Wilde. The best one I ever made was a dough snowman I dubbed ‘The Abominable Dough Man’.
Little Stones Page 4