My father greeted him, and I added, ‘Hello, my name is Hannah. How do you do.’
‘How charming,’ the man said to my dad. ‘Hello, Hannah, my name is Mr Mbofi.’
‘Okay, Hannah, Mr Mbofi is here to talk about some business with me. If you could go back upstairs for a bit, we won’t be long.’
I dragged my feet as I left the room, knowing this would irritate Dad, but once I was out of sight I bounded up the stairs and flicked on the television.
Their meeting lasted till just before seven p.m., which was when Maria usually served dinner. As Dad guided Mr Mbofi back to the front door, the tail end of their conversation travelled up the stairs to me.
‘Alright now, let’s keep in comms,’ I heard Dad say. ‘You have my personal cell.’
‘I do.’
‘Great. Okay. Speak soon.’
Mum picked me up from Dad’s on Sunday, and we set off for the Avondale flea market, where we would search for a get-well present for Grandpa. As usual, Mum asked me how my visit with Dad had gone. I told her it was fine, but that much of yesterday afternoon I’d spent alone because Dad had been downstairs having a meeting with a Mr Mbofi. I expressed my annoyance that the first time I’d seen him in over a month he was preoccupied with something else.
‘Mbofi … Mbofi … Where do I know that name from?’ Mum pondered aloud.
‘He works with Dad. Maybe you met him when you worked at the bank?’ I offered.
‘Hmm. Maybe.’
We arrived at the Avondale flea market, which was always a bustling hub of activity. VHS tapes were laid out on colourful kikois or blankets, everything from Dumb and Dumber to the latest Bond film. There were tables covered with jewellery, clusters of leather handbags hanging from the tops of stalls, masses of shoes crammed into brown boxes tucked under tables that you’d have to patiently sift through to find your size.
My favourite pieces at the market were the ones made out of recycled materials. Wire tortoises with beer-bottle tops for shells; Sprite cans sliced and rearranged to form the green stalks of large flowers with Coke cans carefully moulded to provide the red of the petals.
When Mum and I walked through the space, we were called at from every direction, as though we were celebrities on a red carpet.
‘Sister, sister, come here. I’ll give you good price, very good price. Sister.’
‘Hello, missus, I am an artist … come in, just one minute.’
‘Good afternoon, ma’am, how has your day been? Very good, very good. If you could, I have very nice things for sale. Most customers I charge twenty thousand – but for you, special price.’
You were expected to haggle at the markets. The merchants charged you triple the value of the product, so you had to offer less than what you thought it was worth and eventually you would get a reasonable price. If you realised they were trying to rip you off, you would simply say Bye, bye, shamwari or See you later, my friend, and begin to walk off until they started chasing after you. That’s what Dad told me to do anyway. Mum always paid the first price she heard. Dad said people who did that were chumps, and that all the stallholders would be laughing to the bank with their stupid-white-people money.
I pointed to one of the wire tortoises with a Castle shell, Grandpa’s favourite beer. ‘He would love that,’ I suggested to Mum.
‘Good idea, Hannah.’ She turned to the woman sitting on a stool beside the stall, braiding the hair of her daughter who was sat on the ground in front of her. ‘Excuse me, how much for one of these?’
‘Fifty thousand dollars,’ she replied.
Mum counted out the cash from her wallet.
The woman, her hands still busy braiding, signalled with her head for Mum to place the money on the table. ‘Thank you, madam,’ she said.
‘Tatenda,’ Mum replied, clapping her hands together. ‘You’re very talented.’
26
Grandpa was still in hospital. Three weeks had passed since his diagnosis. Nana was almost always at his side, up until the exact second that visiting hours came to an end. And Mum was in endless meetings. Meetings for work, meetings with lawyers. Meetings at home, meetings in the city.
It was five p.m. on a Thursday, and I was making a fort in the living room. There was something comforting about being closed off, in my own little world, where the only objects in sight were things that I chose to put there.
I lifted the green lamp that was sitting on the table near the landline and placed one corner of my rainbow blanket underneath the base. I took the second corner and tucked it into the crease of the armchair nearby. The two remaining corners were held up by an array of novels positioned on top of the coffee table. I filled the space with cushions, some books (those that were not currently in use as fort-weights), a large pad of paper and my twenty-four-pack of crayons. I decided I would draw Grandpa another get-well card, adding to the collection that was starting to amass on the windowsill of his hospital room. I realised I’d forgotten to get my Pritt Stick, which I needed to glue the heart-shaped cut-outs onto the page.
I got up to crawl out of the fort a little too quickly and the side of the blanket supported by the lamp gave way, the lamp falling to the wooden floorboards and smashing into six big pieces. My breath felt trapped inside my throat – I was going to be in a world of trouble.
I rushed to place the bottom of the lamp back on top of the table and attempted to rebuild it, jamming the pieces together like Lego blocks and praying it would balance. And it almost did, before collapsing again. Realising there was no way of salvaging this, I plonked the jagged pieces in a pile on top of one another, and carried all my craft supplies back to my room.
I tried to focus on finishing off Grandpa’s card in my bedroom, but the anxiety induced by Mum’s imminent arrival home made it difficult. I knew Mum would be upset, and she was stressed enough already. In the past few weeks, she was always on the phone to her lawyer, Mr Wallace, and dealing with my dad. I overheard her tell Nana that she might have to prepare to go to court, and that because of the school-fee spike and Grandpa’s hospital stay, the fact she no longer received any maintenance was a huge financial strain.
I heard the electric gate chugging open and Chitty rolling into the driveway, then the sound of keys jangling as Mum opened the front door and stepped inside. My heart was racing. Maybe she wouldn’t notice straight away? No such luck.
‘HANNAH!’
I emerged from my bedroom, reluctant to return to the scene of the crime. I saw the broken ceramic bits in my mother’s hands as she stood in front of me in her black-and-white striped work dress.
‘Hi, Mum,’ I said.
She stared at me, waiting for an explanation.
‘Oh, the lamp? Um, I didn’t want to say anything, but I saw Gogo cleaning and I think she knocked it over.’
‘Is that right?’
I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t her fault – it was a mistake.’
‘So you didn’t do this – Gogo did?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, I’m going to get Gogo. Stay here.’
I stood in the same spot, using my index finger to pick at the dry skin around the cuticle of my thumb as I waited for them to return.
After what felt like aeons, Mum re-entered the room with Gogo in tow.
‘So, Ruth, Hannah told me that you knocked over this lamp,’ Mum said, her voice thick with accusation. ‘That was a very special, very, very expensive lamp and you should have been more careful. I cannot believe how careless you would be around one of my favourite pieces. I am angry, Ruth. So very, very angry.’
I felt a wave of guilt crash over me, though a small part of me was relieved that I was not the one being berated. I had never seen Mum talk that way to Gogo before. But the strangest part of the whole interaction was that Gogo didn’t ev
en try to deny it; she just nodded along as Mum was telling her off.
‘You know what? That’s it, Ruth. That’s it. You are no longer allowed to work for us.’
I felt my heart drop and shatter into twice as many pieces as the green lamp. ‘No, no, Mum, no, please. It wasn’t Gogo who broke it. It was me. I did it. I’m sorry. I lied about it. I promise it was me, not Gogo.’
Mum stared at me and blinked twice. ‘I knew that it was you, Hannah. All the furniture has been moved around. I didn’t think Gogo was making a fort for herself to play in this afternoon. She was busy shopping, preparing dinner, cleaning and looking after you. Listen to me carefully now. Don’t you ever try to blame Gogo for something she didn’t do, or treat her with that level of disrespect again. You have no idea how lucky you are.’
My head was swarming with a thousand thoughts as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.
‘Thank you, Ruth,’ Mum said.
Gogo glanced at me and then walked back out of the room. I began to cry. And cry. But they were not the tears of punishment that I may or may not have shed had I admitted to accidentally breaking the lamp in the first instance. It was the hot, suffocating internal crying that came from knowing I had done something really wrong, that I had disappointed my mother and betrayed Gogo.
After one final round of tests, and forty-five days in Harare Central Hospital, Grandpa was told he was well enough to be discharged. As we were huddled around his bed, celebrating the good news, Nana dropped a bombshell.
‘Graham and I have been talking, and you’ve been so kind having us in your home, Jane, but we can’t be staying with you indefinitely—’
‘You know you can stay with me for as long as you want,’ Mum interjected.
‘Oh, please. You don’t want your two fuddy-duddy farm parents cramping the life of a hotshot city gal!’
‘Mum …’ my mum said and frowned.
‘No, no. Only joking,’ Nana said, with a smile to placate her. ‘The thing is … there’s no longer a life for us here in Zimbabwe. Your father knows some folks who moved to Australia and have a wool farm there. They would sponsor him, and we’d be able to go over. I’ve been looking into it and, well, frankly, it just makes sense.’
‘Australia? Why Australia? Where in Australia?’ Mum asked.
I could see her starting to get agitated, her eyes flicking back and forth between her parents, her left hand moving to rest against her cheek.
‘Western Australia, to be specific. The Friedemanns – Betsy and Tim – they live in a little town called … Oh, what was it again … Dalwallin … Dalwallinu. Besides, your aunt Margaret is also over there, so there’s family too.’
‘But Australia? Wool? What do you know about wool?’
‘Enough to know the Aussies have a big trade in it, and it’s a way for us to get out of Zim. We … we were waiting to see how things panned out here before we said anything.’ Nana gestured broadly around the draughty hospital ward. ‘But I don’t want you to worry about us, okay? Your father and I will be fine.’
‘You know me, Jane.’ Grandpa spoke for the first time in the conversation. ‘I’m not a suspicious bloke. I don’t believe in signs, or anything. But when it’s time to go – it’s time to go. The country doesn’t want us here.’
Nana nodded in agreement.
‘I just can’t see you living anywhere else. I just can’t see it. You can’t leave.’
‘Honestly, Jane, I’ve already left,’ Nana said.
Mum was silent for almost a full minute, staring at the clock on the wall above Grandpa’s bed.
‘Maybe it’s time for us to go too,’ she said, as she looked over at me. ‘Let’s not talk about this now though. Let’s go home. I know Gogo has been cooking all day in preparation for your return, so you better be hungry.’
When Grandpa walked through the front door, Gogo was waiting for him. She gripped both of his hands in hers and rested her head on the cave of his chest. When she pulled away, she lifted his hands up with hers and did a little dance on the spot with him.
‘I am so happy you are here today!’ Gogo sang.
‘Thank you very much, Ruth. Thank you. I’m so lucky.’
‘No, sir. You are not lucky. I prayed and I prayed and it was God who kept you safe.’
‘Well, thank you for praying for me,’ Grandpa said, with a grin that stretched right across his gaunt face.
27
Since his return home grandpa had reprised his role as the handyman-cum-pest-control-cum-removalist-cum-whatever-needed-to-be-done around the neighbourhood. Nana had been right; nothing short of a bout of a potentially fatal parasitic disease could’ve stopped him from working. Moreover, the hospital stay had depleted what savings they had and the fact they no longer had any tangible assets forced him into overdrive to earn anything he could before he and Nana emigrated.
During the school holidays the focus was to be on my grandparents’ preparations for leaving the country. That morning I’d walked into the lounge room to find Mum and Nana poring through cardboard boxes filled with various items overzealously wrapped in tissue paper.
‘Do you want these?’ Nana asked Mum, holding two wooden mallards up for her to look at.
‘Oh, no, Mum. You should keep those.’
‘What’s wrong with them? I’ll have you know they were very much a statement piece in the ’70s – everyone had them.’
‘I think “the ’70s” is the key phrase here, Mum.’
‘Oh, you’re so rude. Maybe Ruth will like them. RUTH!’ she called out.
Gogo, who had been cleaning the bathrooms, walked into the living room with a mop in hand. ‘Yes, madam?’
‘What do you think of these? They’re nice, huh?’ Nana said, rotating the wooden ducks back and forth in her hands. ‘Do you want them? You could put them in the kaya as a decoration … or even just a doorstop. What do you think?’
‘Ahhh … It’s okay, madam,’ Gogo said, shaking her head.
Mum barely managed to contain her laughter.
‘Well then,’ Nana said, as she placed them to one side.
‘Actually, Gogo, while you’re here – would you mind putting on a pot of tea?’ Mum asked.
‘Yes, madam.’
I settled into the couch and continued to watch my mother and grandmother rifle through things, dividing them into piles for Mum to keep, for Nana and Grandpa to take to Australia, and to give away. They reminisced on the items as they sorted, the sound of masking tape being stretched and cut and the shuffling of boxes punctuating their conversation.
‘I keep wishing I had packed the print of the ellies at Mana Pools. That was a lovely photograph, and so beautifully framed … why did I bring these instead?’ Nana asked, gesturing to a pile of coasters and a few wineglasses.
‘There wasn’t time … and it would’ve been too big anyway. Don’t feel bad, Mum, okay?’
They continued this process of reflecting and sorting and folding and talking until Gogo entered the room with the tea tray.
‘Let’s take a break, shall we?’ Nana suggested. ‘We’ve got all these photo albums here. I bet Hannah hasn’t seen some of these. Come on, sweetie, sit between your mum and me.’
I did as told and squeezed into the space between them.
Nana lifted up a thick, leather-bound album bursting at the seams with pictures.
‘There’s your mum’s graduation ceremony,’ she said, as she gently opened it to the front section.
I stared at the image of a woman whose dusty-blonde perm was piled so high her graduation cap appeared to be hovering far above her head.
‘That doesn’t look anything like Mum.’
‘The perm was very fashionable in the ’80s. We all looked like that. I was lucky since my hair was naturally thick and curly. Poor Sharon Steinbeck with her straight hair; she w
ould sleep in curlers every night, and it wouldn’t make so much as a dent.’
‘But now you straighten your hair all the time,’ I remarked.
‘Fashions change, I suppose. Not that country Zimbabweans ever received the memo.’
‘Oh, you’re such a snob,’ Nana jibed.
Most of the front pages of the album were filled with solo shots of Mum in her flowing gown, clutching a cream roll of parchment, followed by several of her flanked by Nana and Grandpa, both beaming. The fifth page hosted a large picture of around a dozen students, gathered on a set of steps, posing with arms akimbo and caps flying in the air.
‘Those are the Jameson steps – the Jammie steps – at the University of Cape Town. We used to hang out there in between classes. That’s my honours group. Sharon Steinbeck, Carol Adams, oh, and little Reggie Carmichael!’ Mum’s finger traced over a scrawny young man with bright-orange hair and bottle-glasses. ‘You know I saved Reggie’s life, once.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it was when there were student protests … the police had tear-gassed the library. Reggie, bless him, was blind as a bat on the average day and with the gas, well … I saw him struggling, I had to run and grab him, get him to hold onto me, ended up having to half-carry him outside.’
‘Wow,’ I said, aghast. ‘You’re like Superwoman.’
‘Oh, please. Hardly. No. Besides, Reggie wrote good notes that he shared with me,’ Mum said, deflecting the praise.
‘But why were the police gassing the university anyway?’
‘Remember, Hannah, this was during apartheid. Black people weren’t allowed to go to university – well, not UCT at least.’
I looked back at the pictures of my mother and her classmates. I’d thought something was off kilter but presumed it was the grainy quality of the old photographs, combined with the distracting perms and excessive ruffles on clothing. When I looked again, I realised that none of the people in the pictures were black. Reggie Carmichael the redhead was the greatest point of disparity among all the students.
Little Stones Page 15