The pizzas arrived on a three-tiered stand, and our hungry fingers were eager to grab at the pieces before they’d been placed down. I reached for the small tubs of fresh garlic and chilli to dole some on each of my pizza slices.
‘Wow, my kids would never touch chilli or garlic,’ Karen Parker, Michaela’s mother, remarked. ‘What mature tastebuds. I guess you are eleven now, after all.’
I felt flattered by the compliment, despite having done very little to receive it.
When the plates were cleared, it was time for presents. Michaela gave me an assortment of hair scrunchies and lip balms and a nail-polish kit, and Shamiso gave me a mega-pack of glitter pens. My favourite presents were those I received from Diana: a book titled 100 WACKY SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS FOR KIDS! along with a science kit that comprised a microscope, lab goggles, and even little beakers and test tubes.
The gift giving was followed, naturally, by birthday cake. Six wait staff came out, one placing the cake on the table, before they all burst into a rendition of happy birthday. It wasn’t the traditional ‘Happy Birthday’ – it was faster paced, and involved lots of dancing and clapping.
The song-and-dance ended with a big hip-hip-hooray, and I was left to blow out the candles on the ice-cream cake in front of me. In the rush to find my wand earlier that day, I hadn’t given any thought to what my birthday wish was going to be. I felt the pressure of the crowd of people waiting for cake around the table. I panicked and silently wished I could ace all my tests at school this year without studying. I kicked myself afterwards for opting for a wish that was simultaneously highly unlikely and incredibly boring.
As Mum and I left the restaurant, I was handed a balloon emblazoned with the St Elmo’s logo, tied to a plastic white stick. Inevitably these balloons would be disentangled from their sticks and used to play the don’t-drop-the-balloon-on-the-floor game, remaining around the house until they were dehydrated blue sacs of air that would get swept up by Gogo into the dustpan.
Mum asked me if I’d had a good evening.
‘Yeah, it was really fun.’
‘And all your friends came – that was nice.’
‘Yeah. I don’t think Diana likes Michaela though.’
‘Well, they were both here for you. That’s what matters, isn’t it?’
‘Yep,’ I agreed.
Later that evening, Dad called from Johannesburg and told me that my present would be on its way soon. I realised then what I really wanted to wish for: that one day I could celebrate my birthday with both of my parents in the same room.
7
The avocados closest to me were all emerald-coloured and hard to the touch. My eyes locked on a ripe, moss-green cluster just out of reach. Those were the ones I wanted.
I was on the farm for the mid-term break, and Grandpa had asked me to climb the avocado tree in the garden to pick some for a salad Nana was making.
I clambered up the tree as I had done dozens of times before. Extending my hand as far as I could, I managed to poke one of the ripe ones with my index finger, causing it to jiggle. I edged closer, hoisting my right foot onto a higher branch. I thought if I couldn’t grab it, I could at least knock it down. I shuffled along, loosening my grip on the trunk and gaining more leverage. As I swung my arm backwards, hoping to get the momentum to knock the fruit off, I lost my footing. I came crashing down to the base of the tree, scraping my limbs against the coarse wood as I fell.
Grandpa, who’d been watching me, rushed to my side as the shock of it all made me start to cry.
‘Hey, hey. Are you okay? What happened? I thought monkeys were good at climbing trees.’
I began to laugh through the tears, letting him pull me to my feet. I held onto his arm and hobbled back to the house.
‘What are we going to do with you?’ Nana asked, and patted my knee with cotton wool soaked in gentian violet, causing me to wince and turning the grazes a deep purple.
I shrugged, still gulping back a few residual tears.
‘I know. Wait here, and hold the cotton against your leg, okay?’
When Nana returned, Mum by her side, she was carrying a large chocolate cake with eleven candles burning brightly.
‘We were going to save it for after dinner, but I think we could use some now,’ Nana said.
‘I get two cakes?’
‘Well, your nana made this one, so I wouldn’t get too excited,’ Grandpa said.
Nana shot him a glare so icy it nearly extinguished the flames.
‘There isn’t any bicarb soda in it this time. I read the instructions four times over. With glasses. And I tasted the batter too. It’s good.’
This meant that I got another wish and, unlike at St Elmo’s, I had time to think about this one. I took a deep breath and blew out the candles.
The following morning, around seven o’clock, I went down to collect the chicken eggs with Grandpa. The coop was located just beyond the workshop, where Grandpa fixed up old farm equipment or crafted homes for his menagerie of birds. There were the chickens, or hukus, of course. There were also a cluster of bantam hens that ran freely around the farm, cheeky characters who would chase after you as though they didn’t come only halfway up your shin. There were Bip and Bop, two budgies adorned with beautiful blue feathers and soft grey vests. Grandpa had also recently inherited a handful of squabs, from Vinnie Nelson, who’d chosen to leave his farm before receiving a notice.
Approaching the hens slowly, I reached underneath them and pulled out their eggs, warm against the palm of my hand. Some of the eggs had a smidge of dry dung or feathers stuck to the shell, which I’d scrape off with my fingernail before carefully placing them in the basket. When we’d arrived, Grandpa greeted the fowls like old friends. And as we left he thanked them for their eggs and congratulated them on doing a good job.
Back in the kitchen, Nana fried up a few of the eggs we’d collected, along with thick rashers of bacon, button mushrooms, tomatoes and chopped banana while she warmed slices of buttered toast in the oven.
I helped set the table, putting down four placemats with elephants printed on them. In the centre of the table I placed the tomato sauce, salt and pepper, the porcelain butter dish and a carton of Mazoe Orange.
During breakfast, Mum was mulling over the details of the charity show she was putting on to raise money for people living with HIV.
‘So I think I’ll charge fifty mil’ a ticket – that’s reasonable, right? And let’s just say two hundred people come … I’ll rope in some Bishopslea parents, people from work. That’s … ten billion. Stella – you remember my friend Stella Hewitt, the nurse? – well, she was telling me their budget for this year was slashed in half, and antiretrovirals aren’t cheap. Twenty-two per cent of the country needs them, if not more.’ Mum was speaking at a hundred miles a minute, as she often did when she was discussing something she was passionate about, especially directly after downing an instant coffee. ‘I could use the printer at work to make up a few flyers or something.’
‘Your mother is such an overachiever,’ Nana said to me.
‘Takes after her father,’ Grandpa said, causing Mum and Nana to roll their eyes in unison.
Come early afternoon, we were out on the verandah again, drinking tea and eating leftover birthday cake. Nana was reading to me from Little Women, one of her favourite books. Mum was meant to be working, having brought a cluster of files outside, but I could see she was mainly listening to Nana. Grandpa had pulled his chair into the sun and fallen asleep with a bird-watching book on his belly, binoculars still around his neck.
Nana read in a slow and considered way, her lips drawing in as she rounded her vowels, her teeth visible as she enunciated her t’s and s’s. She’d often ask Mum to do the same: Jane, slower, I have no clue what you’re saying. Nana looked a lot like Mum, with their hazel eyes and soft, small noses. Mum shared Nana’s high cheekbones, but hers
were more angular whereas the apples of Nana’s cheeks were plump and rosy. The lines under Nana’s eyes and lips, and the smattering of liver spots that had developed on the sides of her face, marked the only other noticeable differences between the two of them.
I was distracted by a faint echo of voices in the distance – of men singing. But soon I was drawn back into the story, and the lives of the four March children.
Mid-sentence, Nana looked up from the book. Her body froze, her gaze fastened on something above my head. I turned around, searching the corners of the verandah. My first thought was that she’d spotted another wasp nest.
‘Graham,’ Nana said, reaching for Grandpa’s arm to disrupt him from his slumber. ‘It’s them. They’re at the gate. They’re here.’
Grandpa blinked a few times, disoriented, until he followed Nana’s line of sight. A group of men dressed in military garb were standing in a row at the gate. The noise grew louder, the one I’d heard in the distance before, but I realised then it was not singing – it was chanting.
‘Just … Just stay here. I’ll go down,’ he said, and got to his feet.
‘Come on, Hannah, let’s go inside,’ Mum said, also getting up from her seat.
I grabbed the tray of cake and followed her, with Nana behind me. We moved into the kitchen, where we could observe the faint outline of Grandpa talking to the men through the fence. I clambered up onto the counter to get a better view, resting my feet in the sink.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
Mum shushed me, as though she was trying to listen to the conversation happening over two hundred metres away.
After several tense minutes, Grandpa turned away from the group of men and started walking back up to the house. The men stood watching until he had reached the verandah and then began to walk away.
Grandpa came into the kitchen, the corners of his face drawn down, his eyes heavy. He went to hug Nana.
‘They wouldn’t take money. They wouldn’t listen to me. They want us out by tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? When tomorrow?’ Nana said.
‘We need to leave today,’ Mum announced. ‘You don’t want to risk running into them. And we should go before it gets dark.’
‘Are you serious, Jane? This is my home we’re talking about. I have all my things …’ Nana tailed off.
‘And I have Hannah,’ Mum replied.
‘Jane’s right,’ Grandpa said. ‘We need to move soon. And these aren’t the sort of buggers who stick to their word, so who knows when they’ll be back. It’s two o’clock now, I say we leave in convoy at four.’
Nana’s eyes darted between the faces of her daughter and husband.
‘I don’t … Okay. Okay,’ she said, as she moved towards the half-eaten cake on the counter. ‘Let me just put this in the fridge.’
‘Love …’ Grandpa took the plate out of her hands and placed it back on the counter.
‘Oh, right. Of course. Stupid. Sorry.’
‘We knew this day was coming,’ Grandpa said.
‘But not today. I just thought …’
‘Look, at least we’re here,’ Mum said. ‘We’re an extra car. We’ll be able to fit most of the important stuff in. Okay?’ Nana nodded in response. Grandpa led the way out of the room, and she followed.
‘What can I do?’ I asked.
Mum squeezed my shoulders, crouching down so that we were face to face. ‘I know this is scary, but we’re going to be fine.’
‘But what can I do?’
‘Well, my car keys are on the bedside table in my room. You can pack up all the things we brought, and collect any toys or books you’ve left here, and put them in the car while I help Nana and Grandpa.’
‘Got it,’ I said, and darted off, relieved that I had been given a task and was able to help.
The wall clock that had once hung in my grandparents’ living room, but was now precariously balanced atop a dusty suitcase next to the boot of the car, showed that the time was 3.56. I knew that if we left soon – and if there were no roadblocks along the way – we would be safely back in Harare before seven p.m. when the sky turned black.
Grandpa loaded the back of his Nissan up with all the big items that could fit, securing them in place with rope, as though we were going on one of our bi-annual camping trips. We put the remainder of the possessions in Mum’s old Mazda.
Nana rushed out of the house with fistfuls of silver cutlery, which she shoved into the open glove box, already crammed with a scattered clump of rings and bangles and beaded necklaces. She went back inside and returned a minute later holding a blue vase with a white egret painted on the side, and a tattered red-and-gold rug tucked under her arm.
‘Mum, please, I’ll buy you new things. Let’s just get moving,’ my mum said, as she helped tuck the vase in between two suitcases and a laundry basket filled with linen.
‘From Egypt. My honeymoon,’ Nana retorted, and Mum pursed her lips, rapidly tapping the top of the open car door with her fingers.
I knew our final departure was just minutes away so I sprinted back into the house. I ran my hands along the cabinets in the kitchen, across the great wooden table that was too big to take with us, over the heavy walls of the hallway, into the master bedroom. I touched the teak dresser where Nana would sit me down and comb my hair, where she displayed all her lipsticks and bottles of perfume with big atomisers attached. I went into the office where Nana kept paperclips and pins in old tins of jujubes, which I would open with disappointment every time. I ran into the bedroom Mum and I shared, grazing my fingers along the two bed frames that had been stripped of their linen. I ducked inside the bathroom that ran off the spare bedroom, which Nana had decorated just for me. I touched the walls where she had stencilled jumping frogs in green paint and the bin adorned with the same frogs, and the little green soap holder that was also a frog, all a result of the time – at age five – I’d told her my favourite animals were frogs.
I went to the lounge room where I had spent all my Christmases, sitting on the floor in my pool of presents as Barry White played through the hi-fi that was now sitting in the boot of the car. I went outside to the garden. I could hear Mum calling for me, but I had to say goodbye. I ran as fast as I could to the mango trees at the very end of the garden and tried to touch as many branches as possible without climbing them. As a young child I had spent hours perched on their branches, pretending to be Rapunzel or a mad adventurer attempting to hide from a pride of lions down below, my imagination needing little more than the bit of height a few branches provided to concoct incredible situations.
When I returned to the driveway, Grandpa was already in the front seat of the truck and the engine was humming.
‘Quick sticks, get in the car, Hannah,’ Nana called.
I jumped into the back seat, the beak of a wooden mallard poking my bum. I instantly regretted not saying goodbye to more things; I didn’t go down to the chicken coop or the tobacco sheds or the small storage room – just off the office – where Nana kept the ironing board and the sewing machine and was a good place to hide in a game of hide-and-seek.
Nana got into the driver’s seat, and Mum sat in the back with me. I found this odd, because Mum regularly said of Nana that she took speed limits as a suggestion, not a rule, and that if Nana couldn’t read the text on a packet that labelled the contents as bicarb soda and not baking flour, then she shouldn’t be behind a wheel. But this time was different. Mum sat in the back of the car and squeezed my hand and kissed my head. Nana started the engine and followed closely behind Grandpa’s truck.
Usually after reaching the end of the farm’s driveway we would stop, and Grandpa would hop out – and sometimes I would too – to thread the chain around the fence and lock it behind us. But now we just kept driving. I looked out the rear window, through the open gates, to the farmhouse, and saw every Christmas and summer hol
iday of my childhood. We were heading from the farm to the city for the last time ever.
Sitting in the back seat with me, Mum initiated a clapping game we often played to pass the time. We would sing the names of rural towns, clapping each other’s hands on each syllable: ‘Mas-vin-go, Gwe-ru, Bu-la-wa-yo, Che-gu-tu, Ma-ron-de-ra …’ finishing with an extended ‘Muuuuutare’ and a triple clap. But I wasn’t in the mood today. I didn’t want Grandpa and Nana to leave the farm. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the chickens. I didn’t want to leave Ephraim and the other workers. I didn’t want to leave my bed and the mango trees and the tyre swing and the tractors. And I didn’t want to give it over to the War Vets, whoever they were. I told Mum this and she mouthed a ‘sorry’, her voice cracking as she wrapped my special rainbow blanket around me.
8
It had been three days since Grandpa and Nana left the farm. Though ‘left’ was not the word they used. Chased off. Evicted. Stolen. Those words were more common. In the past seventy-two hours I had seen them drink more cups of tea than in the past year combined. Gogo was permanently stationed with a teapot in hand, Nana permanently sporting her tortoiseshell reading glasses and Mum permanently displaying a furrowed brow. We’ll put on some tea and make a plan was a phrase thrown about with regularity.
Today I was sitting on the front steps with Grandpa and Oscar Wilde, who had recently become infested with ticks.
‘There’s another one, there, by his leg,’ I alerted Grandpa, as I watched him work.
Oscar lay still, panting, as Grandpa skilfully used Mum’s tweezers to pluck the plump critters off his body. I watched with fascination as he combed through Oscar’s fur and removed the blood-filled parasites, putting them down on the cement before squishing them underneath a jagged red brick. If I squinted, I could have been convinced they were mulberries and Grandpa was making a rustic fruit juice for breakfast.
Little Stones Page 5