I looked at the handwriting in question and I couldn’t read it either. My writing was much better than his, and I’d only got my pen licence two years ago.
A day before the amended court date, Dad fired his attorney and hired new legal representation. As a result, an extension was agreed upon so that the new lawyer would have time to familiarise himself with the case.
‘Typical Steve,’ I said in response, parroting a phrase that was thrown around even more often than quips about Mr Wallace’s handwriting.
When the day came that I got to meet the infamous Mr Wallace, with the illegible writing, I was taken aback. I had expected someone older, with glasses and perhaps a greying beard. Instead, Mr Wallace was boyish and clean-shaven, a chin dimple residing at the bottom of his round face – a face that didn’t look weighed down by decades of practising family law.
I was in the offices of Wagner & O’Dwyer, in order to sign a document that affirmed Mum was my primary carer, and asserted my consent in the decision to emigrate.
Mr Wallace sat me down on a swivel chair and provided me with the stapled pages.
I hesitated. ‘I haven’t decided on my signature yet,’ I said. ‘I’m going to have it for the rest of my life so I want it to be something good.’
‘That’s okay. You can just write out your name on the dotted line. It doesn’t have to be a fancy adult signature.’
He handed me a pen to sign with. It was one of those expensive pens with a slim gold triangle at the top.
I grabbed it with my fist and tried to write but no ink appeared on the page. ‘I think it’s broken,’ I told him.
‘Here,’ he said, reaching for a blue biro at the corner of his desk. ‘Try this one.’
I popped the plastic lid off and wrote my name on the line.
‘That’s great, Hannah – you’re doing really well.’
‘Thanks.’
I had to sign again and again and again on a whole bunch of different papers until it got to the point where my name didn’t look like my name anymore, just a meaningless scribble on the page.
‘You’re a very strong girl,’ Mr Wallace said.
But I didn’t feel strong. I felt weak and helpless. Sometimes I still feel like that eleven-year-old girl in a lawyer’s office, trying my best to do the right thing but not knowing how to write with a fountain pen.
School broke for the Christmas holidays on the seventh of December. Without the farm to go to, or my grandparents to spend time with – and Mum dividing her time between work and lawyers – I had to find other ways to entertain myself, such as working my way through the 100 WACKY SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS FOR KIDS! book that Diana had given me for my birthday.
I wasn’t what people might call a latchkey kid, but I was an African-housekeeper kid. Because Mum had to work after hours due to lawyer appointments and court appearances during the day, I spent more and more evenings eating dinner with Gogo. She would still prepare two plates of food, one for me, and one for Mum, but she would place an extra, upturned plate on top of my mum’s and put it in the fridge for her to microwave when she got home.
‘Gogo, what do you think of my dad?’ I asked her one evening, as I picked up my fish fingers with my hands to eat. Mum always insisted I cut them up, despite their name clearly stating how they were intended to be eaten.
‘I think Steve is very smart, a very smart man,’ Gogo said.
‘Do you think he is a nice man?’ I asked.
‘I cannot say.’
‘You can,’ I insisted.
Gogo rolled her lips inside her mouth and pushed them out again before answering. ‘The man I have met? That man who is causing your poor mother so much trouble? He is not a nice man.’
I thought about this. Mum had called Dad a whole host of names over the years, but there was something in the simplicity of Gogo’s words that night that struck a chord with me.
Later that evening, around nine o’clock, I went into the kitchen to see Mum, dressed in her work pantsuit, holding a plate close to her chin in the kitchen and nibbling on some broccoli.
‘Sweetie, what are you doing up? Didn’t Gogo put you to bed?’
‘She did. I just heard you come home. Can I have some hot chocolate?’
Mum boiled milk on the stove, just as she’d told me Nana did for her when she was young, rhythmically stirring it with a wooden spoon before she mixed in the Nesquik.
‘Were you with Mr Wallace?’ I asked. Mum nodded. ‘How was it?’
‘Let’s just say I feel like I need a hot chocolate too.’
37
A few days before christmas, Mum decided we should take Gogo out for lunch at Sam Levy’s Village. Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ played through the speakers and larger-than-life cartoon reindeers were mounted between the palm trees.
It was partly a Christmas lunch, but mainly to thank Gogo for all the additional help she’d provided throughout the past few weeks. Her workday officially finished at seven p.m., but she was often around to care for me much later than that.
‘I will have this one,’ Gogo said, pointing to an image of two chicken drumsticks and a serving of chips. It was located down the bottom, in the kids’ section of the menu.
‘Ruth, you don’t have to be polite. Feel free to pick a bigger meal than that,’ Mum said, before turning to the waitress. ‘I’ll have the haloumi and beetroot salad, please.’
‘Can I have the tuna pasta bake, please. Oh, and a chocolate milkshake,’ I said. The waitress scratched this into her pad and looked up expectantly.
‘And what do you want, Ruth?’ Mum prompted.
‘I … uh … I don’t know.’
‘You felt like chicken, right?’ Mum asked. Gogo nodded. ‘They do a really nice chicken here. Can we have the chicken too, please?’
Our meals arrived in quick succession. They brought my milkshake in a frosted glass where you could see the chocolate syrup that had been generously drizzled on the inside. I relished the first bite of my pasta bake, the gooey cheddar cheese forming a string between my mouth and the bowl.
Gogo seemed less than impressed with the plate of food in front of her: a grilled chicken breast covered with herbs, a portion of Greek salad and a side of tzatziki. She used her fork to push the plump kalamata olives and the chunks of red onion to the side of her plate, swivelling it around so that the chicken breast was closest to her. She turned her fork sideways and cornered off a piece of chicken, chewing on it as though she were conducting a taste test on a daytime- television cooking show. Her nose and lips scrunched up, meeting in the centre of her face. Unsurprisingly, at the end of the meal her plate was the only one that hadn’t been scraped clean.
Following lunch, we headed to the supermarket. Gogo and I walked leisurely through the aisles of the Bon Marché, as Mum took the lead, stocking the trolley full of cooking oil, mealie meal, flour, sugar and the pink bars of Jade soap that came wrapped in a set of twelve. We passed by a section of ‘domestic uniforms’, sorted by colourful patterns. Gogo pointed out that she liked the pale-blue checked one with a white apron. After not finding her size on the shelf, Mum went off to ask someone who worked there for help.
Gogo and I continued meandering through the supermarket, surveying the barren shelves of the bread aisle as we went by. I couldn’t even remember the last time Gogo had made her usual baloney-and-mayo sandwich for lunch. We moved down the snack aisle next, which had largely been cleared of its contents but still hosted a handful of items: a few bottles of soft drink, and some packets of the crisps that I hadn’t been able to stomach since the incident in Greg’s car.
‘When I was a little girl, like you, my favourite drink was Coke,’ Gogo said.
‘It was?’
‘Yes, it was – it still is. My father used to buy it for me and my sisters. We loved it. Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,’ she said in a singsong voice.
I grabbed the remaining couple of two-litre bottles from the shelf and placed them on top of the toilet paper. I asked Gogo what her favourite food was, and she told me she had always liked sponge rolls, the ones filled with jam and cream. I went to the bakery section and tried to pick out a loaf that hadn’t lost too much of its inner contents to the plastic casing.
By the time I found our trolley again, Gogo had disappeared and Mum was making space for a giant tub of margarine.
When she spotted me, she took the package out of my hand to see what it was. ‘Sweetie, we’re just buying some necessities. Can you take this and the Cokes back, please?’
I asked her why we got to have treats like Jelly Tots or Romany Creams, but Gogo had to stick to boring old mealie meal and kapenta.
‘Well, we provide the basic stuff, and if she wants more, above and beyond that, she can buy it herself.’
‘But she wouldn’t buy that for herself,’ I pointed out.
At that moment, Gogo emerged carrying multiple packs of chicken thighs. ‘I thought I would get a lot now, and freeze them. They are a good price,’ Gogo said to Mum, indirectly asking for her approval before she put them in the trolley.
‘Yes, that’s a good idea, Ruth. By the way, do you like Swiss rolls?’ Mum asked, showing her the dessert in her hands.
‘Yes, madam, ever since I was a young girl.’
‘Great, well, let’s buy you some.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, madam.’
We shoved all the holiday groceries into the boot and clambered back into the car to head home. Mum had just exited the Sam Levy’s car park onto Borrowdale Road when something caught Gogo’s eye from the passenger seat.
‘Madam, wait, stop the car,’ she instructed. ‘Stop. I know her.’
Mum swerved to the side of the road, causing the vehicle behind us to honk twice. Gogo flung the door open and strode towards a woman who was sitting on the ground and appeared to be crying into her hands.
‘Should we get out too?’ I asked.
‘Let them talk for a bit in private first.’
I sat up straighter in my seat and noticed that alongside the woman, and atop a large rug, lay a pile of broken earthenware – a jumbled mass of clay pots and bowls and vases that had all been smashed to pieces.
After a few minutes, Gogo returned to the car, asking Mum through the window if we could give her friend a ride to the nearest bus stop. Mum obliged and soon the woman was gathering up her blankets and some plastic travel bags and piling into the back seat with me. She closed her bloodshot eyes and buried her face into the crook of her arm.
‘Hi – is everything okay?’ Mum swivelled her head round to ask.
The woman seemed unable to answer, choosing to communicate with only Gogo in muffled Shona until we reached a bus terminal a few kilometres away.
‘Where is she going?’ Mum asked Gogo. ‘We can drop her off.’
‘No, we can’t, madam. She’s going back to Chinhoyi.’
At the bus stop, Gogo helped the woman unpack her things and said her goodbyes before returning to the car.
As we headed back to the estate, Gogo explained what had happened to her friend, Chipo. A group of policemen had turned up that morning, smashed the pottery she sold to earn a living and destroyed the temporary housing she shared with another group of roadside sellers. Only afterwards did they explain that she wasn’t a licensed vendor, and that she was squatting illegally. Without her home and her business, Chipo told Gogo she had no choice but to return to her family in the rural town of Chinhoyi.
Mum and I were puzzled by this story. There were hundreds – thousands – of women and men just like Chipo, all over Harare, who made a living the same way.
‘This is all part of his plan,’ Gogo said, knowingly. ‘He wants to get all the poor people out of Harare. Out of the city. Harare hates Mugabe. They will not vote for him. If he forces them out, they cannot vote. They cannot riot. He will send buses for the people he knows will vote for him. Get those people in to vote at the election, send everyone else away, make them scared.’ Gogo shook her head in anger.
38
I spent christmas day at home with Mum. We didn’t have a Christmas tree, because Grandpa used to always cut down a pine, and besides, all the decorations were left at the farm. So, instead of gathering around the tree in the morning, we did presents in Mum’s bed.
I opened up the soft parcel she handed to me and pulled out a purple swimming cossie covered in blue jellyfish.
‘For when we move to Australia,’ Mum said. ‘Do you like it? I thought it was funky.’
I did like the gift but I didn’t like the uncertainty of when we would actually be able to move to the country at the bottom of the world. Nor the fact that Dad seemed to be doing everything in his power to prevent it from happening.
Without Grandpa around to braai an assortment of meats, or Nana to encourage a game of charades that became unnecessarily competitive, there wasn’t much structure left to the rest of Christmas.
Lunch consisted of bread rolls with cold meats and salad. Gogo had the foresight to freeze a half-dozen rolls before the wheat crisis really hit, so this was somewhat of a treat. There didn’t seem much point in playing charades with just two people so, instead, we watched an American Idol marathon that was airing during the day.
The earliest memory I have of Christmas Day is from when I was six years old. I’d walked out onto the verandah and spotted reindeer footprints left in a trail of snow.
‘Look, Hannah. Santa came last night!’ Mum had exclaimed.
Later, I’d overheard Gogo asking my mother why she had poured all the baking flour onto the floor. Mum couldn’t explain why.
I celebrated Christmas with Dad on Boxing Day. Over a small portion of roast chicken and vegetables, he asked me what I had been up to during the holidays. I told him about the science experiments and the new book I was reading. I also told him about Oscar Wilde at the golf club, and how, upon reflection, I thought his out-of-character reaction could’ve been a result of the swing of the club triggering a memory of the robbers with raised hockey sticks.
‘Which golf course was this?’ Dad asked, and I instantly regretted feeding him that piece of information.
‘Uh … I … um, I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember? Surely not. How many golf courses are there in Zim, hey, Hannah-Banana?’
I shrugged and cut up my chicken into smaller and smaller pieces, individually stabbing them with the fork and bringing them to my mouth.
‘Was it the Wingate Golf Club?’
‘No.’
‘Was it Borrowdale Brooke?’ Dad asked, and I knew I had to say yes. ‘That’s a nice club. Which one of Mummy’s friends lives in Borrowdale Brooke?’
‘John Hewitt,’ I said, uttering the first name that came into my head, regretting it immediately, given that Dad knew John and Stella.
‘Oh, really? So John and Stella have sold their place in Alexandra Park? That was a nice house. Lovely house. That big gazebo and the beautiful wood fireplaces … lovely. I wonder why he’d move to the Brooke, especially since they just finished doing renovations. I suppose I can ask the next time I see him.’
I didn’t know what to say to this, so I gave Dad a cursory smile and continued eating.
‘Hannah,’ Dad began, and for a moment I thought he was preparing to change the conversation. ‘You know I’ve taught you never to tell fibs. I didn’t raise a liar, did I?’ He put down his knife and fork. ‘Did I raise a liar?’ he repeated.
I shook my head.
‘Who lives in Borrowdale Brooke? Does your mummy have a boyfriend? Is that who you were visiting, her new boyfriend?’
‘No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend,’ I said, relieved to finally be telling the truth. After the Greg debacle, I had asked Mum whether she�
�d fancied any men at all since she and Dad had got divorced. Her response was that men were the ‘absolute last’ thing on her mind.
‘Alright. Alright,’ Dad said. ‘What about a special male friend of hers? Does she have a really close friend?’
‘She’s good friends with Zayn Spencer. Remember how I told you that he and I sang from The Sound of Music, I was Rolf and he—’
‘Zayn doesn’t count. He’s about as bent as a two-hundred-dollar coin.’
‘We don’t have two-hundred-dollar coins,’ I replied.
‘Hannah. Listen to me. Are you listening?’ Dad said, the veins in his temple twitching. I watched his Adam’s apple jump as he swallowed before speaking. ‘Tell me, tell your dad, what you and your mummy were doing at Borrowdale Brooke – and don’t tell me any porkies, okay? Only bad girls tell porkies. You trust me, don’t you? I’m your dad. Hannah? Hannah-Banana?’
I didn’t want to look at his eyes, but I could feel him leaning forwards to try to get me to do so. I fixed my gaze on a glass container of olive oil and balsamic vinegar: it had two spouts, plugged with cork. The inside of the bottle was balsamic, and the oil covered it from the outside, which I thought was pretty cool.
‘I … I wasn’t meant to tell you, but Mum and I … moved. We live there now. In Borrowdale Brooke.’ I finally looked over at Dad as he expelled the breath he’d been holding in.
‘There … that’s all I wanted to know. Don’t you feel good now there aren’t any secrets between us?’
I nodded, but I didn’t feel good at all. I knew I would have to tell Mum about this, but I didn’t want her to get mad at me. I’d already got in trouble once today with Dad and I didn’t want it to happen again.
‘Okay, then,’ Dad said with a smile. ‘Let’s finish our lunch and then we can do something fun. What do you want to do?’
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