The White Shadow

Home > Literature > The White Shadow > Page 10
The White Shadow Page 10

by Andrea Eames


  Hazvinei snorted. ‘Fine. I’ll deal with it on my own.’

  Being a woman was a dark and mysterious thing. Boys were straightforward. We had all seen one another’s mboros, when we were having pissing contests in the swept dust of the yard. Whatever women had underneath their skirts was hidden from us. I had seen Hazvinei in the bath years ago, but I knew that it was not the same any longer. Something different must have grown under there, and it fascinated all of us. The boys in my class took to flipping up girls’ skirts in the playground, but all we saw was their knickers. I heard a rumour that Chipo would show her privates for a Coke, but I did not want to ask her in case the rumours were not true.

  Hazvinei did talk to Amai, in the end. I knew, because I saw Amai helping her to cut clean cloths into little strips, and I saw them having conversations in low voices. Hazvinei was one of Them now – one of the women.

  ‘I am a mhandara,’ she said with pride. She walked differently, stood taller.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that I am a woman.’

  ‘You are not a woman.’

  ‘I am!’ she slapped me. ‘Mai says so. We are going to have a party.’

  ‘A party to celebrate you messing in your pants?’

  Another slap on the arm.

  ‘No. But the relatives are coming for a party. Amai told me. And they will see that I am a woman now.’

  ‘Even Babamukuru is coming?’ She had impressed me now.

  ‘Yes.’ She stuck out her tongue and ran back to the house, pausing only to shout over her shoulder, ‘See, Tinashe? You do not know everything after all.’

  Amai impressed upon me that I was not to speak of the blood ever, to anyone, as it was taboo, but Little Tendai and I debated the business. Neither of us knew what it meant, really, for Hazvinei to be a mhandara; but neither of us wanted to admit it.

  ‘It means that she can get married,’ said Tendai.

  ‘She is only twelve years old.’

  ‘I have heard of twelve-year-old girls getting married.’

  ‘Not Hazvinei. Baba would never allow it.’

  ‘Who would want to marry her, anyway? She would bite your mboro right off.’

  ‘She does not bite anymore, Tendai.’

  ‘Still.’ He shook his hand as if he had burned it. ‘She’s too much.’

  ‘Too much for you, maybe.’

  ‘No one will pay ro’ora for that one. She is not worth even one cow.’

  I saw the way Tendai stared at my sister and I knew why he spoke like this.

  ‘Someone will pay a whole herd of cattle for her one day,’ I said. ‘You wait and see.’

  The party was going to be one of our biggest yet, and Babamukuru was coming. Baba had told me so. I begged Amai to cut my hair and to take special care with my smart white shirt so that I looked my very best when my uncle and cousin arrived. When Hazvinei and I saw the silver car winking from the bottom of the hill, we did not know whether to run towards it or run away from it. The other kopje kids had no such worries, and ran shrieking to chase the car’s dusty wake and wave in the windows. I saw Chipo and Little Tendai down there. Hazvinei called for Baba.

  ‘Baba is at work, Hazvinei.’

  She stood on one leg, poised to run.

  ‘Stay here.’

  ‘I want to see Abel.’

  ‘Abel might not even be in the car, Hazvinei.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  The car huffed up the hill. As usual, it wore a skirt of red dust, and the bonnet was splattered with flies. When it halted, Hazvinei ran to the door, but jumped back when Babamukuru stepped out. He wore little round sunglasses clipped to his spectacles, and I could not see his eyes.

  ‘Tinashe. Hazvinei.’

  I shook his hand. It felt dry. The passenger door opened with a click and Abel stepped out.

  ‘I am going to talk to your uncle,’ Babamukuru said to him. ‘You stay here.’

  Abel stood next to his suitcase. We looked at him, still paralysed. He was taller, thinner, especially around the face. His hair was cut shorter, barely covering his scalp, and I could see the bald shine of his skin through the whorls of hair. He looked like a man now, with a dark shadow on his upper lip and new strength in his jaw.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Hello.’ His voice was deeper. In six months, Abel had grown into someone that I did not recognise.

  Hazvinei hugged him. This was rare. She did not like to touch or be touched, but she wrapped skinny arms around his back and dug in her nails – half-hug, half-attack.

  ‘So you are staying again,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He pulled a plastic packet from his pocket. ‘I brought sweets.’

  The sugar cigarettes we loved. We puffed on them, pretending to be grown-ups, and Abel’s suitcase lay forgotten in the dust.

  ‘You have titties, now, Hazvinei,’ said Abel, and made a grab for them.

  She shrank away. ‘No.’

  ‘You do. Like a fat ambuya.’

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  ‘Next you will be having babies.’

  ‘Shut up, Abel!’

  He laughed and went inside to put his things in the bedroom.

  It was a good party. The women brewed sweet mahewu from mielie meal, and I was allowed to drink some. Amai gave Hazvinei a necklace of bright white beads that she had bought from the store, and they looked like bubbles of river-water against her long, dark neck. Babamukuru talked and laughed with Amai and Baba, his anger seemingly forgotten. As usual, Tete Nyasha had not come and so Babamukuru sat in magisterial state on a stool, surrounded by admiring relatives.

  ‘She looks pretty,’ said Abel. He had managed to acquire a whole chicken leg, and was not sharing any with me.

  ‘She looks all right.’ I watched Hazvinei laugh.

  ‘She is growing tall,’ said Abel. ‘Soon she will be taller than you.’

  I shoved him – my height was a sore point – and then I looked at the fire, where the men sat. Baba and Babamukuru were talking in low voices, gesturing vigorously.

  ‘What do you think they are talking about?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Abel tore off another strip of chicken. ‘Politics, probably.’

  It was possible. I knew that Babamukuru and Baba did not agree when it came to such things as the vakomana. But, from the way Babamukuru kept glancing at us, and at Hazvinei, I was not so sure.

  Hazvinei came running to us. ‘Abel! Dance with me.’

  ‘I am eating.’

  She tugged at his arm. ‘You have to dance with me.’

  She pulled him to his feet. Abel went, reluctantly, to dance with the others around the fire. Hazvinei was glowing, triumphant, her feet covered in ash and dirt. I watched them. When Abel returned to his seat, he was breathless and dripping.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is Babamukuru still angry with you?’

  Abel shrugged. ‘No. I do not talk about the vakomana any more. Babamukuru thinks I am concentrating on school.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Abel did not answer me. Instead he stared into the fire for a moment and then said, ‘Portuguese rule has ended. In Mozambique.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Don’t you know anything? Don’t you listen to the news?’

  I pushed him, stung. ‘I do. I listen with Baba.’

  Abel’s teeth flashed in a smile. ‘It means that we are next.’

  I clutched the bullet in my pocket and felt it smooth and cool against my palm. Excitement rose up in my stomach and I had to run to sluice my head under the water from the pump, so that I would not be sick from nerves. Something was changing and, that night, it felt as if Hazvinei’s blood and Abel’s deep voice and the news from Mozambique were all part of the same terrible and wonderful thing.

  Babamukuru left the next morning, but Abel stayed with
us. After the party, Hazvinei’s breasts filled out even more; and with them grew the curve of her cheeks and lips, so that even her face changed shape. The aunties took her away from the house to instruct her in different aspects of womanhood. When this happened for the first time, Hazvinei was sleeping in late, and the auntie sent me to fetch her.

  ‘Hazvinei.’

  She stirred. Her cheek was creased into lines by the pillow. ‘What?’

  ‘Auntie Yevedzo is here to see you.’

  She did not seem surprised. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. ‘Just let me get my shoes.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She did not answer me, but tied her dhuku across her head in silence. Without a head-covering, she looked like a dangerous animal, but as soon as she put on the dhuku, she blended in with the other girls. As much as Hazvinei could ever blend in anywhere.

  She went to the door, where Auntie Yevedzo was still waiting.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. She was so rude. If I had said that, I would have felt the flat of an avenging auntie’s hand across my ear. Because Hazvinei said it, Auntie Yevedzo smiled.

  ‘Come.’ She beckoned and, to my surprise, Hazvinei followed.

  ‘Hazvinei!’ I called after her.

  She turned slightly. ‘Go back inside, Tinashe.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She flapped her hand at my words as if they were mosquitoes. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Hazvinei did not tell me what happened in those weekly hours. I tried asking Amai, but all she would say was, ‘It is forbidden.’ When I asked Baba, he told me not to speak of it at all. I knew that it had something to do with that strange brown blood, with childbirth and with the body parts that Chipo would show for a fizzy drink (the rumours were confirmed), but I had to be content with my ignorance.

  When Hazvinei returned from her time with the aunties, she seemed taller somehow, and a strange scent hung about her. She would go straight to the bedroom and lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling until she fell into a sleep so deep that neither Amai’s touch nor Baba’s voice could raise her.

  ‘Tired out from all her play,’ Baba said.

  I stood in the doorway of Hazvinei’s room and watched her; the gentle rise and fall of her suddenly fuller chest, and the faint smile on her lips. She was a stranger to me now – a mysterious guest in our house whom I did not understand.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘TIGHTER,’ SAID HAZVINEI. We sat in the red dust of the yard: Hazvinei with both arms raised above her head; me wrapping one of Amai’s old dhukus around her chest. We were going down to the river to swim, and she did not want her newly acquired breasts to stick out.

  ‘I can’t pull it any tighter.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘This is as tight as it will go.’ I found Hazvinei’s breasts both fascinating and repulsive; big mosquito bites with a dark circle in the centre of each. The nipples had little goosebumps around them, like lumpy sadza.

  ‘You are like our goat,’ I said. ‘We will be able to milk you to get milk for our tea.’

  ‘Be quiet, Tinashe.’

  ‘They are horrible,’ I said.

  ‘Mazvita tatenda. Your thing isn’t much better.’

  My hand cupped protectively over my mboro.

  ‘It looks like a chongololo.’

  ‘It does not!’

  She stuck out her tongue. ‘I have seen it when you are peeing. It wiggles around like a chongololo. And it smells.’

  ‘It doesn’t smell. How do you know so much about mboros, anyway?’

  ‘The zvidhomo tell me.’ Dwarf spirits – the ones Hazvinei blamed for every missing item in the house. ‘They do not have them themselves.’

  ‘Oh really? Then how do they piss?’

  ‘They don’t. They don’t need to.’

  ‘Everyone needs to piss.’

  ‘Not a chidhomo. They collect them from other people. If they come across a mukomana wandering in the bush by himself … someone like you, Tinashe …’

  ‘Yes, you are very funny.’

  ‘Chop chop!’ She brought the side of her palm down. ‘Like chopping firewood. And they keep it in their pockets.’

  ‘You talk a lot of nonsense, Hazvinei.’

  ‘Don’t worry. They only collect big ones. You are safe.’

  ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘Can you go tighter?’ Hazvinei stared at her chest.

  ‘No, they are flat. Any tighter and they will never pop out again.’

  ‘Good.’ She lowered her arms. ‘It is not fair.’

  ‘What?’ I got to my feet, brushing the dust off my bottom.

  ‘You don’t have to wear a shirt when we go swimming.’

  I shrugged. ‘That is because I am not a goat with udders.’

  Hazvinei kicked me on the shin, hard, and Abel arrived as the fight was starting. He slept in later these days, and spent a long time shaving in the mornings to keep his chin smooth. Secretly, I did not think that he needed to shave quite so often – he did not have that much hair – but he liked to stroke his jaw as the older men did and to tease me about my perfectly smooth face.

  ‘Are you coming to the river?’ he said now.

  ‘Yes.’ Hazvinei gave me one last bite on the wrist, leaving a jagged bracelet of marks, and ran. She was faster than me, with long, graceful legs, and I knew I could not keep up. She made fun of me when I ran. She called me Rock Rabbit. ‘First sign of danger, pffft,’ she would say, and mimed with her fingers the bounding action of the little rodent as it bounced away.Abel caught up with her and I trailed behind, feeling the sun hot and angry on the top of my head.

  We reached the river. My river. Sleek and vicious as a mongoose. It greeted me with a smile, rolling onto its back and letting the sun catch its smooth pelt. It smelled of dust, of rain, of warmed river stones.

  ‘Eh-eh, Tinashe!’ Abel grabbed me by the arm. ‘Your sister beat you here.’

  I struggled, but he was stronger, and threw me into the brown water. I surfaced, mouth full of bitterness and grit, laughing. There were worse things than being thrown into cool water on a hot day. We had reached that mysterious age when we were not meant to swim together anymore – boys and girls – but we did it when the adults were not around and watching us. This was one of those days. Hazvinei kept the tight cloth tied around her chest.

  ‘Eh-eh, Hazvinei!’ Abel shouted, ‘You hiding your titties now?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  The boys kept teasing her and the loudest one was Abel. He called her all kinds of names, but the one that annoyed her the most was ‘mombe’, cow.

  ‘Careful your udders don’t squirt milk into the river!’ he said.

  Hazvinei stuck out her tongue, and dived into the water in one long, fluid movement. I held my nose and ducked beneath the surface into the muddy translucent world below, feeling the relief as the eternal burn of the sun became a dimmer, softer heat. We were careful to swim in the fast-moving parts of the water, to avoid bilharzia and the mosquitoes that skated on the surface. I opened my eyes, just for a second, to get my bearings, and saw Hazvinei. She was cross-legged on the riverbed and her eyes were wide open. I could only keep mine open for a few seconds before the grit and tang of the river water closed them for me. I swallowed a lungful of foul-tasting water and spluttered to the surface.

  ‘Where’s Hazvinei?’ called one of the older boys. She had not appeared.

  ‘She is fine,’ I said. ‘She can swim better than any of us.’

  I watched the others splashing, the sun turning the churned river into fire. Flies hovered above them, waiting for an inch of skin to emerge from the water. Hazvinei had still not surfaced. Abel was splashing and laughing with the other boys, and did not notice.

  I ducked underwater again and struggled to stay down. Deeper, deeper; and then I found her again, still sitting on the bottom, cross-legged, eyes closed. Her mouth moved as if she were talking, and air bubbled out of her lips. When I t
ugged on her arm she opened her eyes and looked at me with annoyance, but followed me to the surface. I broke through the water gasping and half-sobbing in relief, but she did not even take a deep breath of air.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked me.

  ‘I thought you had drowned.’

  She shrugged me off. ‘You worry too much.’

  ‘I do not. I just don’t want you to kill yourself. Baba would be angry.’

  A snort from Hazvinei.

  ‘What were you doing down there, anyway?’

  ‘I was talking.’

  ‘Talking? Who were you talking to?’ I asked. I was afraid, but I smiled so that she would not know I was afraid.

  ‘I was talking to a njuzu,’ she said.

  Amai had told us stories about njuzu – spirits with the body of a fish and the head of a beautiful woman. They lived in rivers and pools and pulled down their prey to an underwater prison. Njuzu knew all kinds of magic, good and bad. They could drown you or teach you great lessons. It was said that the witch doctors learned their wisdom from njuzus.

  I examined Hazvinei for telltale signs of lying – that little smile that she could not hide.

  ‘They do not exist.’

  ‘Yes, they do.’

  ‘No, they do not, Hazvinei.’

  ‘What are you two doing?’ Abel appeared, damp and steaming in the sun. He shook his curly head, spattering Hazvinei with oily water. She pushed him.

  ‘Iwe! Get away.’

  It took only a few seconds for us to dry. When we first left the river we glistened, slick and wet, but after a few steps the sun had eaten all the water and our skin once more crackled on our bones like paper.

  ‘Don’t do that again, Hazvinei,’ I said.

  She stuck her tongue out at me. ‘At least I can hold my breath longer than you. You would have drowned.’

  ‘It is not funny.’

  We walked back to the kopje. Abel stayed behind with the older boys, but Little Tendai ran to catch up with us, and Hazvinei strode off, leaving us to follow. Little Tendai admired the sway of her slim hips beneath her cotton dress as she walked away.

  ‘Your sister is strange,’ he said.

  I pushed him. ‘No, she is not. You are an idiot.’

  He pushed back, and we shoved each other and laughed as we turned the corner into the main road. Simon-from-the-bottle-store leaned out of his door to shout to us. Did we want something? Yes, we did, but we had no empty bottles to exchange for goods. Simon flapped his hand at us. Voertsek, then.

 

‹ Prev