When Hoopoes Go to Heaven

by Gaile Parkin

  ‘They followed a map to the treasure,’ said Benedict, taking the book from her and finding the right page.

  Auntie Rachel looked at the map. ‘Hey, I remember this! We used to do this!’ She turned the book so that the map was upside down. ‘What’s it look like?’

  Benedict examined it carefully. It looked like the map, only upside down. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The map?’

  ‘Ag no, man. Forget it’s a map.’

  Benedict tried again. After a few seconds he saw it. ‘Eh! It’s a face! These are the eyes,’ he pointed to the circles labelled Sheba’s Breasts, ‘and this is the smile.’ His finger traced the semi-circle labelled koppie.

  Auntie Rachel laughed. ‘We used to see two breasts here,’ she indicated Sheba’s breasts, ‘and this little triangle of mountains down here was... Ag, never mind, you too young for this!’

  ‘Is it in South Africa, Auntie Rachel?’

  She gave him an odd look. ‘What?’

  ‘The mine. King Solomon’s mine.’

  ‘Ag, it’s not real, hey? It’s a made-up story.’

  ‘No, but it says here koppie and kraal. Those are words from South Africa.’

  ‘And it says here Sheba’s Breasts.’ She tapped at the map. ‘Sheba’s Breasts are just down the road, but there’s no treasure cave here! It’s a made-up story.’

  Benedict couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Sheba’s Breasts are down the road?’

  ‘Ja, didn’t you know?’ Benedict shook his head. ‘Just after the Malagwane Hill, down there on the right.’

  ‘Eh!’

  ‘Ag, don’t come with your eh, Benedict, it’s not real! Don’t you think a thousand men have gone looking for King Solomon’s mines since this book? And why do you think Rider Haggard wrote it? Thousands had already gone looking.’

  ‘But a Portuguese somebody found it!’ Benedict tapped at the book. ‘He’s the one who drew the map. Baba says Portuguese people used to live next door to Swaziland in Mozambique—’

  ‘Ja, they colonised it. And ja, some of them came here in the gold rush hoping to get rich. But no one has ever found the treasure in that book and no one ever will, because it doesn’t exist!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts!’ Auntie Rachel stood up, pulling him up with her. ‘Come down the hill with me and see if the chickens need feeding, then we’ll have some milk. Okay?’

  Calling to Mavis to keep an eye on the little ones, she led him out through the side door, next to the big added-on room where Grace and Faith were listening to music with Innocence, and through the garden where Moses and Daniel were playing a running and chasing game with Fortune. Benedict wasn’t sure Auntie Rachel was right about the treasure being just a made-up story. Things that seemed just pretend could sometimes be real.

  They fed the chickens together, Auntie Rachel laughing as she threw handfuls of seed close to Benedict’s bare feet, and Benedict squealing and giggling as he danced around the chickens, trying to avoid being pecked by their beaks and tickled by their feathers. Then when one of the dairy workers came to her with a problem, Auntie Rachel sent Benedict back up to the house by himself to ask Lungi to give him a glass of milk.

  Walking up the driveway and waving to his brothers and Fortune as he passed the garden, he wondered what the dairy worker’s problem was. He hoped it wasn’t something about Petros being sick and needing more medicine. It wasn’t nice to be sick, he knew that himself. He didn’t know what dementia was, but it must be something to do with a person’s throat or chest. Petros had had his cough for so long! Auntie Rachel’s medicine didn’t seem to be helping him much.

  Or maybe the dairy worker wanted to complain about Mrs Levine telling him what to do, even though it wasn’t her farm.

  He found Mrs Levine in the narrow strip of garden that was near the Mazibukos’ front door, opposite the garage. She was on her knees with a spade, filling a large pot with soil. Benedict had never seen a Mzungu doing gardening work before: Wazungu usually just watched while gardeners like Samson did the work for them. Perhaps he should offer to help her.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Levine.’

  ‘Hi there, Bennie.’ She looked up at him and smiled. Over her clothes she wore an apron that was messy with soil and mud.

  He didn’t like the short cut she made with his name: it made him sound smaller than he was. But he didn’t say. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Ja, just pass me the ice-cream, hey?’

  Benedict looked around for an ice-cream, but couldn’t see one anywhere. Mrs Levine was now busy tipping soil from a bag into a long pot that was shaped like two shoeboxes end to end.

  ‘Um... What does it look like? The ice-cream.’

  She didn’t look up from what she was doing. ‘Ag, the pink and green, little specks of white.’

  Benedict knew that meant strawberry and peppermint, with a bit of vanilla. He looked again. He could see a box of cigarettes, a box of matches, a cell-phone, some plants growing in black plastic... But there wasn’t any ice-cream anywhere. Wherever it was, it must surely be melting.

  ‘I can’t see it, Mrs Levine!’

  She had stopped emptying soil into the long pot, and was levelling it off with her hands. She looked up now. ‘There! Just next to you!’ She pointed with a finger covered in dirt to somewhere near Benedict’s feet.

  But there really wasn’t any ice-cream there.

  With a loud tutting sound, Mrs Levine walked on her knees to where Benedict stood, and lifted a small bush with its roots encased tightly in a black plastic bag. ‘This is an ice-cream bush, hey?’

  His face feeling suddenly hot at his mistake, Benedict helped her to tear the black plastic away from around the roots of the bush. She was planting it in the soil of the big pot, and Benedict was admiring the different colours of its small, pretty leaves, when the cell-phone on the grass next to the box of cigarettes started ringing.

  Mrs Levine looked at her hands, and then at Benedict’s, which he had wiped clean on his shorts even though Mama kept telling him not to.

  ‘Should I bring it?’ he asked.

  ‘Ag, just look who it is for me.’

  Benedict squatted down and looked at the phone’s small screen. ‘It says Solly.’

  ‘Hah!’ she said angrily. ‘Solly can bloody whistle!’

  The phone continued to ring. Ignoring it, Mrs Levine picked up the spade and used it as a pointer in the same way that Benedict had used his ruler with his bilharzia poster. ‘Those little ones there, Bennie. And the other two smaller ones behind.’

  Benedict picked up those plants and brought them to her. All the time, the phone continued to ring. Benedict felt uncomfortable. Mama would never not answer her phone! What if it was business? What if somebody needed help?

  He helped Mrs Levine to fill the long pot with the little plants, and at last the phone was quiet. When they were done, he helped her to put the pots of plants where she thought they’d be best.

  Then Mrs Levine reached into the large pocket on the front of the skirt part of her apron, and brought out a small sign painted on an oblong of wood. The sign had an ice-cream-stick stand, which she pushed into the soil of the long pot. Bees and butterflies welcome, it said.

  ‘Eh!’ said Benedict, who had never seen anything like it. ‘Don’t they know they’re welcome?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Mrs Levine, dusting the soil off her hands and reaching for her cigarettes, ‘sometimes it’s nice to be told.’ She lit a cigarette, sucking hard on it. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, exhaling, ‘people need to make it clear that you’re wanted.’

  Her mouth settled into a tight, straight line.

  Benedict and Titi went with Mama on Sunday afternoon, Titi so that she could spend time with Henry, Benedict so that Henry could show him Sheba’s Breasts.

  Henry drove, on account of Mama not being supposed to have passengers until she got her licence, and they made their way slowly down the Malagwane Hill towards the tall distant mounta
ins, passing the beautiful green folds of the high hills on the left before they turned onto the old road through the Ezulwini Valley.

  ‘My friend!’ said Henry, eyeing Benedict in his rear-view mirror. ‘Your head is going to twist off your neck! I told you there’s no need to keep looking. The place we’re going has the perfect view.’

  ‘You can sit still,’ said Titi from the seat beside him, patting his knee. ‘Henry will show us.’

  ‘Why don’t you sing for us, my friend? Your mother needs cheering.’

  In the seat next to Henry, Mama said nothing.

  ‘Sorry Uncle went away, Auntie.’

  ‘The week will go fast, Angel. Pius will be back with you in no time at all.’

  Mama sighed.

  Benedict tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. If he and his brothers and sisters hadn’t come to live with Mama and Baba, Baba would soon be retiring from his university job in Dar es Salaam instead of having to work hard as a consultant in different countries on account of consultants being paid much more money. Mama and Baba would be relaxing at home together over the weekend instead of Baba driving to Johannesburg after church and Mama staying behind with the children for the whole entire week.

  But Mama was sad about more than just Baba being away, Benedict knew that. Just as he had expected, Mrs Zikalala had not ordered an expensive cake. A plain vanilla sponge baked in Mama’s tin that had the shape of a heart, it had been boring for Mama to decorate, and it had ended up just plain ugly to look at. White. Pure white. And on top of the smooth white icing on the top, Mama had had to pipe Queenie’s name in more white and surround it with a sprinkling of tiny white flowers. Eh! At least if there had been two layers, Mama could have put icing in a lovely colour between them. But no, Mrs Zikalala had wanted one layer only.

  When Mrs Zikalala had collected the cake on Saturday afternoon she had been very excited, opening her mouth and flashing her tongue from side to side, ululating loudly enough to make the cows lift their heads from their drinking at the dam. Mama had tried hard to feel happy about that, and she had told anybody who would listen that the most important thing in any business was for the customer to be happy. But that evening she had gone down to the other house to get a headache tablet from Auntie Rachel.

  Henry adjusted his rear-view mirror to get a better look at Titi. ‘A song, Titi! Please!’

  Titi looked down, smiling into her lap. Quietly, she began to hum one of the hymns they had sung at Mater Dolorosa that morning.

  Two bars into the hymn, Henry readjusted his mirror, said a loud eish! and began to slow down and pull off the road. Two motorbikes then five, six, seven, eight big black cars with dark windows sped past them, their lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  ‘Eh! Where is he going in such a hurry on a Sunday afternoon?’ asked Mama.

  Henry laughed. ‘Anywhere he wants to go!’

  They were quiet for a while as Henry pulled back onto the road and picked up a bit of speed. But the noise and rush of the king’s cavalcade seemed to have shaken Mama from her low mood, so that when they passed a small group of worshippers ambling home after a Church of Jericho service, she clapped her hands together and said how beautiful they always looked in their bright red robes with their wide collars of royal blue.

  ‘Titi would look too nice in that red!’ Henry adjusted his mirror again to look at her.

  ‘Me, I prefer the full blue,’ said Titi.

  ‘Ah! You say that only because you know I’m a Zionist! You should come to church with me one day, I’ll get someone to borrow me a lovely blue robe for you.’

  Titi looked down into her lap, but Benedict could see that there was a very big smile on her face.

  Henry turned off the road and entered the large, open-air car park of The Gables shopping centre, where there were very few cars. The supermarket there was still open but almost empty. There was a lazy, Sunday-afternoon feel to the couple of restaurants, and there was very little activity in the car park. He pulled his Corolla into a parking bay far from the other cars, and they all got out.

  ‘Right, my friend,’ he said to Benedict. ‘See that mountain to your left?’

  Benedict looked. ‘It’s Nyonyane. Execution Rock.’

  ‘And what did I say was opposite?’

  Benedict swung his head the other way and breathed in sharply as he saw the mountain there. ‘Is that...?’ He had no breath to finish his question.

  ‘Yebo. Those are Sheba’s Breasts.’

  Benedict stared at the mountaintop. ‘But I see only one!’

  Henry opened the boot of the Corolla and took out a number of orange traffic cones. ‘They’re side-on, nè? The other one lies behind.’

  This wasn’t the perfect view that Henry had promised, but Benedict hid his disappointment. ‘Do you see, Mama?’

  ‘I see.’ Slipping her hand down the neckline of her blouse, she pulled out some folded emalangeni notes and peeled off a couple, handing them to Titi. ‘You two have some sodas while you wait.’

  Henry stopped positioning his cones and reached for his wallet from his back pocket. ‘There’s a nice place behind the butchery across the road, nè? Get some meat for a braai tonight while you’re there.’ He smiled at Titi as he handed her some money.

  ‘What kind of meat?’ Titi slipped the notes inside the top of her dress.

  He shrugged. ‘Some chops, some wors. Whatever you think. Enough for two, nè?’ He winked at her, and she dropped her head and smiled.

  ‘Be careful crossing the road!’ said Mama, who was buckling herself in to the driver’s seat.

  ‘We will, Mama.’

  Benedict turned and gave her a small wave as he and Titi headed towards the gateway out of the car park. Part of him wanted to give her a hug as he always used to when saying goodbye to her, but hugging her was starting to feel a bit awkward these days. Of course, he still did it when he was ill or upset. But he certainly wasn’t going to hug her now in front of Henry, who saw that he was big.

  Titi took his hand as they waited to cross the road, and he let her. He didn’t want to get an accident when he was so close to finding where the treasure might be. Auntie Rachel thought the treasure was pretend, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be real. He wasn’t exactly sure how he would go about finding it, but he knew from a storybook that there was a way of finding water that just needed you to hold two sticks, and the sticks knew where the water was buried. Maybe sticks knew treasure, too. Baba would be so proud of him if he came home from the conference and found the dining table covered with gold and diamonds! It wouldn’t matter that Mama’s business wasn’t doing well, and Baba would be able to retire without worrying about the children. They could all go home to Tanzania, and Mama and Baba could relax. Imagine!

  Inside the butchery at the end of a small row of shops next to the Why Not Disco Night Club – where people said ladies who weren’t polite took all their clothes off as they danced – Titi took her time choosing the meat for the braai she would enjoy with Henry that night. While he waited, Benedict looked around. The large chunks of fresh meat hanging up on hooks behind the butcher, and the smaller cuts of dried beef, kudu and ostrich suspended above the counter reminded him of the shrike’s butchery he had found one day in a tree near the dam. The bird had killed a lizard and hung it up on a thorn for later.

  Braai was another word from South Africa, and it was the same as saying barbecue. Behind the butchery you could braai your meat over a fire inside half of an old oil drum lying on its side on top of the metal frame of an old school desk. Then you could sit and eat it at one of the plastic tables in the shady courtyard.

  Benedict and Titi knew without discussing it that they should drink their Cokes at a table some distance from anybody else. That way they wouldn’t be too close to somebody who might be drinking too much beer or too close to somebody who might hear their Swahili and shout at them for being shangaans or makwerekwere. Only two of the tables were occupied anyway, so it was ea
sy enough to find one that stood apart under a shady tree.

  Benedict picked up a couple of the small sticks that had fallen from the tree and played with them as he chatted and giggled with Titi, hoping that they might point to the treasure, if it was real and if it was here. But they didn’t work, and he soon lost interest, tossing them to the ground and concentrating instead on a lone hadeda ibis that stalked nearby, pecking at the ground with its long, curved beak. When some ducks flew very low overhead, quacking loudly, the hadeda took flight clumsily, its large grey body seeming awkward as it squawked its loud racket into the afternoon air during take-off.

  He looked up at the ducks. Black with orange legs and grey bills, they were the same kind as the duck that he had rescued. He imagined that his duck was amongst them, strong and happy, together with family. If she had come back to the dam, he hadn’t recognised her – or she hadn’t recognised him.

  They were chatting about how exciting it was that at Baba’s conference there were going to be people from all over Africa, including Tanzania, when they noticed a man moving from table to table with a large black plastic bag. When he got to them he put the bag on their table, pulling it open to reveal a large quantity of chopped pieces of meat. With an anxious expression on his face, he asked them a question in siSwati, switching to English when he saw that they didn’t understand.

  ‘Does this look like a cow to you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘This!’ He opened the bag a bit more to reveal more of the meat. ‘If you saw all this being served, would you think it was a cow? A whole cow?’

  ‘Eh, I don’t know,’ said Benedict. He looked at it carefully. ‘It’s hard to see when it’s all chopped. Maybe half a cow? What do you think, Titi?’

  Titi stood up and assessed it carefully. ‘Half,’ she said.

  ‘Eish!’ The man looked distressed.

  ‘It’s not even half!’ called the butcher, who was smoking a cigarette outside the back door of his shop. ‘I told him he needed to get at least half.’