‘They thought they were fake,’ Mum said with a faint smile, when we found them after the robbery. Mum told me that pearls were valuable because they’re so rare, and it was even more rare that something so valuable was not taken. And I could tell by the way her voice cracked when she said ‘valuable’ and she clutched at the jewellery like rosary beads, that she wasn’t talking about pearls, but about our lives.
In the numerous retellings of the story over the years, the pearl detail is always there. Sometimes, most of the time, she skips over the violence; the curtain they wrapped around her neck after they climbed through the window, leaving purple-and-blue bruises on her skin. She doesn’t mention the way they plucked hockey sticks from a tub near the front door, threatening to beat Oscar Wilde if he let out another scared yelp. But, always, she mentions the pearls.
Sometimes, even now, when Mum is stressed or anxious her hand will reach up to her neck and she’ll twirl the smooth, white spheres between her fingers.
The day after the robbery, Mum called Nana and Grandpa to tell them what had happened. I could hear the audible gasps of horror coming from the other end of the receiver as Mum tried to placate them, insisting that she was fine, I was fine, and that, no, it wasn’t their fault for leaving. She recounted a list of everything that was taken and lamented that the wooden mallards Nana left behind weren’t part of the inventory.
‘… No. Sorry. I know. It is serious,’ Mum continued. ‘But we’re alive. And we were lucky. When Therese … when Therese was robbed, she was tied up, wasn’t she? Along with the kids? They didn’t lay a finger on Hannah. We were lucky. And … you know our Hannah, she’s such a brave girl. So brave, my beautiful child. We are so lucky …’ Mum turned to face me, saying she needed a minute to talk to Nana and Grandpa in private.
I walked away, but hung behind the door to hear what she had to say.
‘… I think you made the right choice. I know we were toying with the idea of us joining you but I didn’t really … I mean. I wasn’t sure I was ready to go. I think I am now … I can’t bear the thought of leaving but … Anyway, look, I’m fine for now. Okay. I love you, Mum. Tell Dad I love him too. We’ll call you again tomorrow, okay?’
I had a Shona exam scheduled two days after the robbery. Mum told me I could get out of it if I wanted to; that I could take the rest of the week off school and I could take it at a later date. But I didn’t want to do that. So I sat at the dinner table and went over my notes. Writing and rewriting lists of the vocabulary we had to memorise, then highlighting and underlining the words.
School continued as usual. But I felt weird being there, and listening to people talk about what was on TV last night or how unfair it was that we had to start school swimming when the weather was still too cold.
At break-time, I sat with Diana beneath the shade of the great pine trees that formed a thick green wall around the perimeter of the sports field. I swapped my peanut-butter-and-butter sandwich for her container of chicken and rice and told her about the robbery.
‘We were robbed once,’ she said, through a mouthful of bread. ‘I mean, we never saw them. But I went into our lounge in the morning and we didn’t have a TV anymore.’
‘Maybe your sister stole it to watch Gilmore Girls without you. The TV’s probably still in her room,’ I joked.
‘Yeah, probably,’ Diana said. ‘Why are you back at school anyway? You could’ve definitely missed the Shona bvunzo. It’s a pretty good reason.’
‘Mmm. I’d fall behind though, if I took time off.’
The idea that skipping a few school days would impair me academically wasn’t entirely believable. Truth be told, I didn’t know why I was back at school; Mum was taking time off work. Perhaps I did want to be in a place where people spoke about swimming and TV and studying for tests and what was on the menu for lunch.
‘Besides, who would you have to read with? We’re the only people in our class on purple.’
‘Lucky you’re here then,’ said Diana before popping the last piece of buttery bread into her mouth and licking her fingers. ‘Heaven forbid I’d have to read a yellow book with someone else.’
After school that day, Mum and I stopped in at IB’s, where we ran into Karen Parker. When Karen heard the news of the robbery, she repeated the same piece of advice she had dispensed at the wedding: ‘It’s time to get out.’
‘Well, in the meantime, we’ve hired a guard,’ Mum told her. ‘Someone just to be there overnight, from six till six.’
The guard in question was charming but had flecks of grey in his black hair and I wasn’t sure he was spritely enough to take on any would-be burglars. Mum said this didn’t matter, just that he had a panic button that he could press if he noticed anything suspicious.
Karen took the finishing sip of her latte. Mum had not made a dent in her cappuccino, except for the spoonful of froth with chocolate dust that she let me have.
‘And your Ruth, do you trust her?’ Karen asked. She patted the corners of her mouth with a serviette, leaving a trace of peach lipstick and coffee behind on it.
‘Of course I do. Completely.’
‘You know, Jane, a lot of these things are also conducted from the inside. These robbers, they get tipped off. Someone says: I’ve got an easy target, single mother and young daughter, living alone,’ Karen said, as though we weren’t human beings but champion racehorses. ‘You know. They say something like: This is their address, this is how to get in, this is when you should come. It’s a sure thing. And I want a share of the goods.’
‘What are you trying to say, Karen?’ Mum lifted her cappuccino to her lips and put it back down again, forgetting to take a sip. ‘You know my situation. That it’s usually just me and Hannah in that house. As do most of the Bishopslea parents. Are they also all suspects?’
‘Jane, come on. We don’t need to be all politically correct here. Bishopslea parents aren’t exactly short of cash. You and I both know that. I am sure Ruth has been a good worker. But how many children does she have? Six? Seven? And how many of those have children of their own? A domestic’s salary can’t keep them all going. If I were you, sweetie, I’d be firing that Ruth of yours, and finding another maid. Maybe a young one, without any dependants. Even if … even if she’s not involved, it’s still not worth the risk.’
Mum opened her wallet and counted out a few banknotes, which she placed on the table next to her cold cup of coffee and stood up.
‘I would not be here today if it weren’t for Ruth. Okay? Have a good day,’ Mum said, her chair screeching against the tiled floor as she stood up.
Karen searched my face as though I could account for my mother’s bizarre behaviour.
But I rose up too. ‘Bye.’
‘God, Karen Parker is bloody insufferable,’ Mum announced later that evening. ‘Don’t you think? What an awful woman.’
I was sat up, resting on pillows, a book folded in my lap, watching Mum getting ready for bed. Since the robbery, I’d slept in Mum’s bedroom. This wasn’t out of my fear, but hers. She wanted to alarm the rest of the house. She wanted me next to her, to be able to wake up in the middle of the night and look to her left and see me breathing and dreaming in peace.
Mum pulled the curtains shut, took her work clothes off and slipped on an old, baggy t-shirt that she often slept in. It was black with HIFA 1999 written in red block letters on the front, the back featuring a list of all the acts that had played at the Harare International Festival of the Arts that year. She then punched a code into the security system by the door, before marching to the ensuite bathroom.
She returned with a red headband holding the hair away from her face as she applied a white cream under her eyes and down the bridge of her nose.
‘Do you think Gogo saved our lives?’ I asked her.
‘Yes … I think she did, sweetie,’ she said, as she rubbed the cream across her face.
‘I’ve been thinking about it. With everything that’s happened … I think it would be good to have a bit of security, some stability for you.’ She came over to my side and wrapped me up in her arms before kissing my cheek. ‘I just want to do everything I can to keep you safe.’
‘Ugh, Mum. You’ve made me all sticky,’ I said, rubbing away the cream she had inadvertently transferred onto my cheeks.
‘Oh no!’ Mum said, as she poked my sides with her fingers. ‘Am I going to get this face mask all over you?’
She started to tickle me and tried to rub her face against mine, and I squirmed and squealed and began to laugh so hard I couldn’t stop myself. And for a moment I forgot about that night and the men and the hatred in their yellow eyes and the knives they held against my mother’s throat and the fact that if Gogo hadn’t begged, pleaded, prayed, we would be dead.
30
Mum wasn’t sleeping. i had not seen her sleep in the two weeks since the robbery. Of course, it is difficult to fall asleep when you are busy wearing out the bedroom carpet from pacing back and forth each night.
We had lived at 20 Fleetwood Road, Alexandra Park, for ten years. And Mum couldn’t stand to live there a minute longer. Zayn’s boyfriend, Matt, had recently officially moved in with him, freeing up the property Matt owned in the Borrowdale Brooke Estate. Matt offered to lease it to Mum and – eager to move – she accepted without hesitation. Gogo, who had lived with us at Fleetwood Road the whole time, also embraced the move. I may have been the only one harbouring a quiet reluctance. I had been to the Brooke once before, for Rudo Rusere’s birthday party. We were forced to wait for several minutes at the front gate, as the guard double-checked we were on the approved visitors list, before he permitted us to drive inside. I knew that level of security and a change of scenery would be a comfort to Mum, but with all the changes over the past few months, my source of comfort lay in the things that stayed the same.
Leaving behind my childhood home and moving into a gated estate happened so fast it felt like a repeat of the farm departure, saying rushed goodbyes and trying to capture every inch of space with snapshots in my memory and through my fingertips.
Mum told me that I wasn’t allowed to tell Dad about our move.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes it’s better for everyone when people don’t know everything, alright, sweetie?’
This didn’t make sense to me. When Shamiso didn’t know her Shona verbs, she got in trouble. When the two American tourists didn’t know that you weren’t meant to take photos of Mugabe’s mansion, they were killed point-blank. Irrespective, I agreed with Mum and promised I wouldn’t tell Dad about our new house.
‘But where’s he going to pick me up from?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry about that. I can drop you off.’
The move to the estate came with several adjustments, bad and good: I had to wake up half an hour earlier for school, but we no longer had to drive past Mugabe’s mansion, spending most of the commute cruising down the long Borrowdale Road highway.
On arriving home, the barrier at the entrance to the estate would lift and a man dressed in a green uniform at the gate would solemnly nod in our direction. Then we would drive up the street, round the bend and down the driveway to our house – all without stopping. There were no fences anywhere. At our old place, we endured the forty-five-second wait as our electric gate chugged open, and the same amount of time after we pulled in and watched it close behind us. The wait had always been slightly stressful but after the robbery it became chilling.
The Borrowdale Brooke Estate boasted a golf course and a restaurant, as well as a communal pool that went unused as most of the homes had their own. Our new house was smaller than the one we’d left, but its size correlated with a sense of safety because Mum was never more than a few feet away. And although the garden was little more than a patch of manicured lawn, it was comforting to look outside knowing there were no bushes or shrubs or trees that could conceal the bodies of trespassers.
There was, however, one large downside to Borrowdale Brooke: the lack of substantial physical divisions between properties meant our new neighbour, Ann Hamilton, could easily discern whether we were home and free for tea and stale biscuits.
The first time Ann invited us over, she spoke endlessly about the glory days of Rhodesia while I fished rogue tea leaves out of my cup with my index finger.
‘I’m telling you now,’ she began, as she always did when she had something serious to say, ‘those were the good days. I have nothing against the blacks, not all of them anyway, but they just weren’t ready to run a country.’
Mum nodded politely while I stuffed a biscuit into my mouth lest she was tempted to call on me for a response to her overt racism.
‘It’s a damn shame is all,’ Ann muttered under her breath, as her housekeeper came to clear away the teapot.
Despite the increased sense of security, and even though the house had two bedrooms, Mum and I continued to sleep in the same room together. Mum had developed a routine before bed each night. She would go round and check the locks on all the doors and windows. There were twelve in total. She started with the deadlock of the front door, the garage door, the door that led from the garage into the kitchen, and the two doors with a vertical latch on the top and bottom that led to the garden. Then she’d reach for the ring of smaller keys she used to lock the kitchen, lounge room, bathroom and bedroom windows. She would go round again, checking them a second time, closing any necessary curtains or blinds. After this, she would set the burglar alarm and lock us both in the master bedroom together.
I didn’t want to point out that the men who burgled us weren’t opportunists who simply came in through a carelessly unlocked door. They had burrowed under the durawall to avoid the electric fence and smashed the windows with a hammer. No amount of locking and checking was ever going to keep us completely safe. But Mum seemed calmer having repeated the routine, and so I never said anything about it. And although she had developed some rigorous policies around locks and doors and windows, almost all her other standards fell by the wayside. If I suggested we get a takeaway pizza for dinner, she agreed. She never hassled me about doing my homework, let alone interfered with the stylistic choices of my research reports. After years of not allowing me to watch adult programs, or television at all past seven p.m., Mum cut me some slack. I developed a taste for British murder-mystery capers: Midsomer Murders and Inspector Morse and Poirot. Common sense dictates that I should have avoided crime shows, considering everything my mother and I went through. But they felt so far removed from reality that they provided an escape from my daily life.
The estate was a band-aid solution. And as Nana and Grandpa were getting settled on their new farm, Mum began talking seriously to me about the possibility of leaving Zimbabwe and starting a new life in Australia. The first discussion ended in tears as I thought about what I stood to lose: my friends, the country I called home, everything I knew. Mum reminded me that next year would be my final year at Bishopslea, when I would be studying for my high-school entrance exams, and I would be moving to a new school with an almost entirely different cohort anyway. I protested, scared I wouldn’t be able to get into a good school in Australia since I didn’t know the system. I didn’t know which languages they taught, or what they’d covered in history or maths. Mum reassured me that few of the high schools in Australia required entrance exams, and the prospect of emigrating became infinitely more enticing.
The more we spoke, the more it made sense. Nana and Grandpa had returned to farming; Mum and I would live in the city. It would be just like the old days. Most of what I knew about Australia came from watching episodes of The Crocodile Hunter with Steve Irwin, but considering my budding career aspirations as a veterinarian, this niche area of knowledge was e
nough for me.
One day, we went over to John and Stella’s to use their computer. The four of us gathered around the sturdy Windows 95 PC, the screech of the modem dial-up filling the room as we waited. A tourist information page about Perth, Western Australia, loaded, line by line, revealing after five minutes several pictures of sandy seashores and bustling cafe strips. The header featured an outline of the country wearing a cork hat and a big smile stretched across the landmass.
‘Wow!’ I said, staring at the pristine coastline. ‘Zim doesn’t have beaches like that.’
‘Zimbabwe doesn’t have any beaches, sweets,’ Mum said.
‘Well, it has sand next to water – aren’t those technically beaches?’
‘No, since those are just lakes. We are landlocked.’
‘Or locked to the land, perhaps,’ Stella quipped.
31
The discussions i had with mum about the move to Australia increased in frequency, and we spent nights poring over school brochures that Mum had requested be mailed to her from Perth. One of the schools ran an IT program through which students were given personal laptops. A photograph featured a group of girls sitting together on a couch, balancing little orange and aquamarine machines on their laps, which looked more like lunch boxes than computers. Under the picture was the text: Year 7 students using Apple iBooks to create PowerPoint presentations for their Great Barrier Reef project. Everything about that photograph spoke to something deep within me. And suddenly moving to Australia didn’t seem like a loss, but an opportunity.
Mum spoke endlessly about the schools, about suburbs and houses, and how Oscar Wilde would love running up and down the beach. She had conducted extensive research, with reams of printouts sorted into folders and divided by coloured tabs, our emigration plan becoming her full-time job. On the phone, Nana told Mum she was behaving like an actor preparing their Emmy speech before even getting an audition call-back. She said this because I needed Dad’s approval before I could be granted a visa for Australia.
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