by Gaile Parkin
Mrs Levine had Sifiso and two other children to help in their homes after school now, and she had bought a pale blue Corolla with money that belonged to Mr Levine, who could whistle.
Sitting up at the dam late one afternoon, Benedict tried to choose the best things that he could show to Nomsa when she at last had time to come up there with him. The frogs and tadpoles, for sure. The weavers’ nests hanging over the water, definitely.
When Petros came back, Benedict wanted to introduce him to Nomsa. Okay, he wasn’t supposed to be spending any time with Petros, but he didn’t think that Nomsa would tell. She seemed like somebody who knew how to keep a secret. Nomsa could speak to Petros in siSwati, and then she could translate into English for Benedict. Petros had so little English, and Benedict still had so little siSwati, but with Nomsa they could talk to each other so much better. Petros would be able to tell Benedict more about his ancestors, his girlfriend and his gold. Maybe all three of them could work together to understand Mr Quartermain’s map, and go on an adventure to follow it. Nomsa could ask the geography teacher at the high school about what the Kalukawe and Lukanga rivers were called now. She mustn’t show the teacher the map, though. The teacher might want some of the gold, and if it was real and not just pretend like Auntie Rachel said, it was already going to be shared between Benedict, Nomsa and Petros.
Eh, imagine if Petros and Nomsa were his brother and his sister! Benedict thought that might feel very good, better than having two big sisters who didn’t pay him much attention and didn’t even like animals, and better than having two small brothers who were only interested in boys who knew how to kick a ball and never wanted to talk about anything serious.
He wanted to talk to Nomsa about umcwasho, the new law for girls that the king had made on the Reed Dance day. Uncle Enock said it wasn’t a new law, it was an ancient law that was back for a modern reason. If a girl was between fifteen and eighteen, she had to wear a string of blue and yellow beads around her head with a long, thick woollen tassel in blue and yellow hanging down from it at the back, and that was to show everybody that she was a good girl who had never fallen in love with a boy or a man. If she fell in love with a boy or a man from now on, then her family had to pay a fine of one cow. If they knew who the boy or man was, his family had to pay the same fine, too.
Girls who were older than eighteen, up to twenty-four, they had to wear tassels of red and black, and they weren’t allowed to fall in love or marry, otherwise they paid a fine of one cow, just like the younger girls. The tassels were called umcwasho, and girls were going to have to wear umcwasho every day for the next five years.
The king said the umcwasho law was about stopping the spread of disease, but Auntie Rachel said it was about controlling women just as the hoopoe had advised King Solomon to do. Mama and Baba both said it blamed girls for spreading disease, but Titi said it meant a man couldn’t marry her by smearing her with red ochre, and she had decided to wear the red and black tassels even though she was a kwerekwere. Innocence Mazibuko had chosen to wear the blue and yellow tassels, even though she wasn’t yet fifteen, but Nomsa said she was never going to wear them, even when she got to the right age. Benedict wasn’t sure, but he thought that might be because of Mr Thwala.
Two of the dairy cows had been stolen on account of people needing to pay fines, so Uncle Enock had hired a Buffalo Soldier to guard the shed at night, and now the cows had to go out for grazing with two men instead of just one.
Benedict waved to the two men now as they went past with the cows on the far side of the dam on their way towards the milking shed down the hill. When the noise of the cows sent a large flock of red bishop birds up from the reeds, Benedict decided he would go and look for nests there as soon as all the cows had gone past. He would love to show Nomsa a red bishop. With its black face and bright red head, back and collar, the male looked very much like a priest from the Church of Jericho.
The female was dull and brown, and difficult to tell apart from so many other kinds of bird. It was like that with birds: the males were bright and colourful, and danced around to attract the females. Which was just the opposite, Benedict recognised, of how it was with people. For centuries male birds had been having a Reed Dance ceremony of their own.
Male birds would never put on bright colours like umcwasho to tell females to stay away. No. For them, wearing colours was a way of marking themselves out and making themselves more attractive; that was entirely what a peacock’s big, beautiful tail was for. Benedict wondered if the colourful umcwasho tassels might not make girls look more attractive to boys, too.
He didn’t go to the far side of the dam very often: the cows trod a well-worn path there on their way to and from the field on the part of the plateau that was on the other side of the clump of trees, so there wasn’t much grass to sit on. The plateau ended a little way behind where the cows walked, and the trees and bushes there were thick and wild as they extended up the steep mountainside. Benedict squatted there quietly, waiting for the red bishops to settle back into the reeds at the edge of the dam.
While he waited, he wondered how long Petros would stay on the farm before he went back to Nhlangano again for his wedding. If his own family was still here, Benedict would ask Mama to make the cake for Petros’s wedding.
Something pushed against his back.
Eh!
Jumping up in fright, he leapt away from the bushes, landing in a wet round of fresh kinyezi from the cows.
Krishna jumped up at him.
‘Eh, Krishna! Look what you made me do!’ Pushing the dog away, he looked around for a patch of grass where he could scrape off the kinyezi. But everywhere was just mud, soil and even more kinyezi. Krishna moved away from him and ran a small way into the bushes before turning back to him and whining. When Benedict walked away to look for some grass, she came at him again, jumping up and wagging her tail.
She must be missing Petros even more than Benedict was. The dairy manager was inside the dairy office or the milking shed all day, he didn’t come up here with the cows like Petros did. Krishna was probably lonely for Petros. Down in Nhlangano, was he lonely for her, too?
‘What is it, Krishna? Do you want to play?’ Benedict looked around for a stick to throw for her, but she wasn’t interested. Instead, she went into the bushes again and turned to look at him, whining. Thinking she might be hurt in some way, he went towards her. She ran ahead a little then turned to look back at him.
‘Okay, we can play catch.’ Following her, he plunged into the bushes.
Fighting his way through the thick undergrowth, he chased her quite some distance up the steep hill until he tripped over something and arrived head-first on the ground in an area where there was much more space between the trees. As Krishna barked at him, he looked around, leaping to his feet in fright before his mind had fully recognised that very near to his face was a snake!
Eh!
But no, it was only half a snake!
Very carefully, he nudged at it with the edge of a kinyezi-covered shoe. It didn’t move. With Krishna still barking at him, he looked back and saw that what he had fallen over was a spade. Had Samson been up here, killing snakes? Krishna didn’t give him time to think about whether or not it was a safe place to be. Hurling herself up at him, she barked right in his face then ran forward, wanting him to follow. As he did, he realised that something smelled very bad.
A small square of muddy white paper on the ground caught his eye, and he bent to pick it up. It was a black-and-white photograph that he had seen before, and it set his mind racing. Staring at it hard, he could almost hear Baba’s voice telling him to check that he wasn’t adding two to two and getting six instead of four, but his heart began to beat at the rate of a humming-bird’s wings, and, seeming to leave his mind behind, his legs took him back through the bushes and all the way down the hill and into the Mazibukos’ lounge without even wiping his feet or knocking, where Auntie Rachel took one look at him and wrapped him in her arms until he’d told her everythin
g. Uncle Enock came home at once and organised some men from the dairy. They had to go right away, it didn’t matter that it would soon be dark, and Benedict had to show them where, he was the only one who knew. But his legs didn’t want to work, and Uncle Enock carried him on his back all the way up the hill. He didn’t have to go into the bushes with them, though, Krishna was waiting there to show them the way, and Mavis from the other house was suddenly beside him, out of breath and holding his hand way too tight.
And when the men emerged from the undergrowth with a heavy shape entirely wrapped in a blanket and Mavis began to sob, Benedict knew for sure.
And he wanted Mama.
EIGHTEEN
NOT THE NEXT MORNING BUT THE MORNING AFTER that, Mavis opened her eyes slowly and began to focus on the wall that she was facing, curled up in her bed. There was something unusual about the wall, but she couldn’t quite understand what it was. She lay still for a moment staring at it, confused.
Then it dawned on her.
The wall was bathed in light.
Sitting up quickly, she glanced around the room. Lungi’s bed was neatly made and the curtain above it hung open, letting in a stream of daylight.
Eish, what time was it?
As she reached for the alarm clock that sat on the small table between her bed and Lungi’s, her hand almost knocked over a bowl that was there, covered by a plate. It was after nine! Swinging her feet onto the floor, she looked under the plate. The bowl contained some lipalish, some green beans, a bit of meat. All of it was cold. What was it doing here?
The door opened and there was Lungi, handing her a cup of tea and telling her Madam didn’t want to see her in the house today, she was giving Mavis an off. Lungi took the bowl away, it was last night’s supper that Mavis hadn’t woken up to eat. Mavis must stay in bed, and Lungi was going to bring her something nice for her breakfast.
But Mavis had to get up, she needed the toilet. Afterwards, she splashed cold water on her face and did her best to flatten the side of her hair that was sticking up in the air, before she went back to bed to drink her tea.
She remembered everything now.
After the men had found Petros, she had spent the whole night wandering about outside, wrapped in her blanket, shivering and weeping, trying not to sob loudly enough to wake somebody. All that time! All that time she had thought he was in Nhlangano negotiating lobola, meanwhile he was lying on the hill, late. Maybe for some of that time he was lying there sick, calling for help. And she hadn’t heard. She hadn’t known. All that time!
When morning had come, she had washed and changed, her bed still not slept in, and she had gone to work in the house. She had managed all morning, she was fine until she was cleaning the step outside the front door, the one that was painted red and needed polishing. On her knees, rubbing the step with Cobra, she had suddenly felt moved to pray for Petros, and then, without even thinking about it, she had found her prayer shifting and becoming a prayer for her own boy, and when she realised that she had never prayed for her own boy before, not even once in almost seventeen years, she had lowered her forehead to the step and started to weep.
Madam had found her there on her way out to go and pick up the children from school. Her head was still on the step and she was crouched right down, her bottom jammed up against the back wheel of Gogo Levine’s car. Madam had called for Lungi to come and help her to take Mavis to her room, but Mavis could barely stand and Gogo Levine, who had been getting ready to go to her afternoon job, she had had to come and help, too.
Mavis had slept the whole afternoon and the whole night, not waking, not even once.
Now Lungi brought her a boiled egg and a slice of bread with peanut butter, and she ate hungrily. It was Madam who came to collect the plate and the mug from her tea, and she asked if Mavis didn’t want the doctor. But no. Mavis wasn’t sick, she was just shocked and upset from seeing Petros unexpectedly late. In any case, she didn’t want Madam’s doctor. Madam gave her another small bottle called Rescue, and told her to rest.
Not feeling like going straight back to sleep, and not comfortable with lying doing nothing, Mavis picked up her wool. Lately she was taking a break from crocheting to concentrate on making umcwasho tassels, there was a big demand for them at the market. They were quick enough to make, just simple thick bunches of long strands of wool without any knotting or knitting or crocheting, and with pompoms near the end. Mavis wasn’t good with beads, but that didn’t matter. Somebody she knew made the simple strings of beads for around the girls’ heads, and Mavis bought them from her before adding her tassels and having her friend sell them for her at the market.
Madam had bought one of the pale blue and yellow ones directly from Mavis for Innocence, though Innocence was still a bit young. Nomsa couldn’t wear umcwasho, it was only for girls who were still pure, and everybody could see, without asking, what the girls who didn’t wear it had done. Titi had bought one of the red and black ones for herself. Umcwasho wasn’t something for a kwerekwere, but Mavis wasn’t going to tell her not to buy.
These nowadays everybody was talking about girls remaining pure. Mavis wished it had been like that when she was as young as Innocence. Maybe with umcwasho on her head she wouldn’t have fallen in love and conceived. But if she still had, the boy wouldn’t have been able to run away as he had, as if it was nothing to do with him. The girls in her age group would have gone to his family in their tassels and made them give a cow.
As she wove pale blue and yellow wool through the two rounds of cardboard she had cut from an empty Jungle Oats box, she thought about all the things that had brought her to collapse on Madam’s front step the day before. Number one, it broke her heart in pieces that Petros was late, it was like her own boy was late for a second time. Number two, she hadn’t slept for a whole night. Number three, eish, it was number three that had unravelled her like a fallen ball of wool and made her to weep.
Why had she never prayed for her own boy? How could that have happened? When she had gone home from the hospital without her baby, he had never been spoken about in her house, her mother and her sisters had acted as if he had never existed. Weeks before the delivery, her mother had crocheted a blanket for her baby, but when Mavis had come home from the hospital without him, she found that her mother had quickly added more squares all around it to make it bigger and to turn it into a blanket for Mavis herself.
Putting down the pompom she was making, she stretched both her hands forward and rubbed them over the central part of the blanket. Her mother had been so skilful, it wasn’t possible to tell exactly where the part for the baby ended and the part for Mavis began.
Then a thought came to her, a thought that put an ache inside her heart.
Eish!
Did her boy want his blanket? Was it him waking her in the night, asking for it?
Her family had always pretended that he never existed. They had done that to protect her. She was only a child, what would talking about her loss be for?
But nobody in her family had allowed themselves to mourn, they hadn’t allowed themselves to grieve. And they had never cleansed themselves of their loss. His blanket should have been burned, the ashes should have been mixed with the cleansing water. It should all have happened after just one month, and then her boy could have been released to be with their ancestors.
Eish.
When she went home for her Christmas, that was what she would do. Mavis, her mother and her sisters, they would all do what they needed to do to let her boy go.
NINETEEN
EVERYBODY WAS CLEAR ON WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO Petros: the snake had bitten him and then he had sliced it in two, most probably so that it wouldn’t bite his dog, too. Krishna would have been trying to protect him by attacking it. It was a puff adder, which Uncle Enock knew for sure because he had picked up its two halves to show to the police. Benedict knew from the book that it was a lazy kind of snake that didn’t like to get out of your way as most other snakes did. Its bite didn’t
always make a person late, but Petros was sick already and his body couldn’t cope with anything more.
Benedict remembered the stormy night that he had found Krishna in the garage. Had she been trying to tell him that Petros was lying sick further up the hill? Or was he already late then? Eh! How could Benedict possibly have known?
The night of the day he found Petros, Grace and Faith had fussed over Benedict at supper, which he had still felt too shaky to eat, and then again at breakfast, which Baba accused him of eating like a refugee who had survived on nothing but leaves for weeks. Daniel and Moses kept asking him for more details, and he knew that they were going to be telling everybody at school the story of what their big brother had done. It didn’t matter to his brothers and sisters that he hadn’t actually saved Petros: he was still their hero.
But it did matter to Benedict, and he didn’t feel very much like a hero at all. How could he, really, when he hadn’t rescued his friend while he was lying sick and hurt just up the hill? How could he feel proud of himself when his friend was late? Hurtling down the mountainside, he had been so panicked and afraid that he certainly hadn’t been able to imagine himself running in slow motion dressed as a fireman or a paramedic. It had all felt too real for that.
But still, he couldn’t help enjoying the attention and the praise.
He really was exhausted, though. Mama kept him home from school for two days on account of him having had a fright, and Baba said he deserved some days of rest as a reward for having been so brave. But it wasn’t either of those reasons that made him glad to be staying at home. No. It was entirely because of the question that had woken him in the middle of last night.
Yesterday he had spent the whole entire day in his bed, drifting in and out of sleep. Mama had said he was worn out by shock, but she didn’t know that he and Petros had been friends. She didn’t understand that he was sad, that being asleep felt easier than being awake.