by Andrea Eames
‘We have done nothing.’
‘I cannot help you,’ he said.
‘Please. I just want to know what to do with my father.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and closed the door.
It was up to me to grasp Baba under the armpits and feel the slither of his dead skin under my hands as I dragged him off the bed. I could not let my mind look at what I was doing. I felt that if I looked into his face, saw the drying fluid in his nostrils, his congealing eyes, the indecent life of his still-growing hair, I would go mad. I pretended Baba was a chicken meant for the pot, one that I could carry by its scrawny legs without feeling.
I did not know what to do with him – it – once we were outside. There was no one to help me. I dragged the body as far away from the hut as I could, making sure that it was well out of Amai’s sight, and carried armful after armful of straw from the chicken run to cover it. I kept going until I could see no skin. I did not tell Amai what I had done.
On the day she died, Amai was imbued with magical strength. She got out of bed and scrubbed me until I shone. She pulled a comb through my tangled pelt of hair, ignoring my yelps and holding me firm until they subsided. She often held me in that death-grip; usually when I had done something wrong and was in for a smack.
She knew she was dying, and she wanted to leave everything clean. She swept the red dust in the yard, leaning on the broom after every few steps, and polished the tiles on the floor. Then it was my turn. She had not scrubbed me clean like this since I was a little boy. Even though I was now taller than her by a head, she could still pin me under her arm and go to work on me. When she finally released me I was more red than black.
She made me put on the suit I wore for church on Sundays. I sat in my uncomfortable suit in the stifling heat; sat by her bed as she struggled for breath. The air was as thick and damp as a lick from a dog’s tongue. I felt my own breath move in time with hers. It was a strange night, spent sitting in funeral clothes while the spirits prowled around our house. I could hear a difference in the night sounds: there were the usual distant barking of dogs, cries of night birds and creaks and snaps of small animals in the bushes, but there were also heavier footsteps, and great, slow breaths that circled us and our tiny haven of electric light, waiting for my mother to join them. At about three in the morning, she succumbed to the disease with a mad rattle of breath and a great sighing that spread like ripples in water over the kopje.
When she had finally gone, the world was rinsed clean, and the air felt cold and pin-sharp. I carried Amai’s body outside, as I had carried Baba’s, and covered it with straw from the chicken house in the same way. I lined them up, side by side. There were flies around Baba now. Their senseless buzzing was comforting in a way. The tiny, relentless noise said no, you will never be able to understand. There is death, it said, and then there are the flies and the dust and the hyenas, and there is no reason for it.
I went into my sister’s room once again. ‘Hazvinei,’ I said.
She moved her lips, but no sound came out. She licked them with a dry, white tongue and tried again. ‘Tinashe.’
‘Amai and Baba are dead,’ I said. It was a relief to say it; to not be the only person in the world to know.
Hazvinei turned her face away. I did not see her cry.
I sat in my sweaty Sunday suit, which I had not taken off since Amai died, watching Hazvinei breathe. When I could bear it no longer, I went outside to sit on the stoep.
Little Tendai was sitting in the dirt road, making patterns in the dust with a stick. I could see the knobs of his spine through his dusty skin. I could see the hole in his red shorts, the rubber peeling away from his takkies. Only his face was different: swollen and purple, the eyes bulging unnaturally. He had not spoken to us since his fits began, and I knew that he was angry. He had kept our secret, yes, lest he get into trouble as well, but he was angry.
‘My parents are dead,’ I said to him, feeling the words with my tongue, testing the taste of them, as if they were a new and unfamiliar sweet from the corner shop.
‘You will have to go to the Salisbury Children’s Home,’ said Little Tendai.
‘No we won’t,’ I said. ‘We are going to go to Babamukuru, or one of the aunties.’
‘They won’t want you,’ said Little Tendai. ‘You’re carrying cholera.’
‘We are not!’
‘Your sister is.’
‘She’s better.’
‘She’s carrying cholera. And she’s mad.’
‘She is not mad.’
‘She talks to people who are not there. She brings curses on us.’
‘She does not!’ I picked up a stone to throw at him, but missed.
‘You’ll see,’ said Little Tendai, wagging his finger at me. ‘You are cursed, your family. And it is because of your sister.’
He stood up and walked back to his house, trailing his stick behind him. His mother was sick too, I knew, and I hoped that she would die.
I did not go back to the house straight away. I walked through the bush, towards the N’anga’s hut. I knew he did not like our family, and that he would be angry with me, but he was the only person who could explain what had happened, and why. He could help me. He could tell me what to do with Amai and Baba’s bodies, those straw-covered shapes in the yard, and he could tell me what to do with Hazvinei.
The buzzing of the flies became louder as I pushed through the harsh yellow grasses. I started to see flies before my eyes, as well. They had followed me from home, from where they hovered over Baba’s dead and hardening eyes, and now they danced, little black specks in front of my face. The heat haze seemed to make a throbbing, pulsing noise – high-pitched, like the half-heard, half-felt song of crickets. I burst out of the bush. For a moment I did not know where I was, and then I recognised the black chickens. I had reached the N’anga’s hut. His rooster extended a scrawny neck and cocked his head to one side, examining me with a red eye.
‘I am just passing,’ I said.
The rooster scratched at the dust. I felt like a fool for talking to a bird. Then I saw what the chickens were staring at, and I stopped.
The N’anga lay face-down in the dust. The ground around him was wet – from his bowels? Or was it blood? I looked at it without emotion. Caring for others is a luxury, I had discovered. I had only enough energy for my own family.
I stepped up to his hut cautiously. I half-expected a ghost to loom out of the doorway – after all, if anyone was going to come back and haunt the living, it would be the N’anga. His hut was disappointing, though. It had been neatly swept, and smelled of nothing more mysterious than urine. His bundle of bones and herbs sat in the corner, guarded by his medicine stick. No one had touched it. I carried the bundle and the medicine stick out of the N’anga’s house. I did not know if he had family who would come to clear out his belongings, or whether the villagers would pick him apart and carry him off as ants carry off a dead bird. I knew that I should not touch these things; that they were nothing to do with me. And yet I carried them into the bush and lit a fire.
I unwrapped the bundle. It smelled like an old man. There were a few jam jars filled with powders, and some herbs, and a few old, bleached bones. That was all. They smelt mildewed and sad. I unscrewed the tops of the jars and dropped the powders into the fire. I expected the flame to change colour, or some kind of explosion, but there was nothing. I thought of the old man crouching outside his hut, pounding up his potions in his old pestle and mortar, and I felt sorry for him.
I threw the medicine stick in last. The flames licked it, curling their fingers around the smooth ebony, but it would not burn. After watching it for a while, I stamped out the fire and let the stick rest where it was. Someone would find it, or not. It did not matter.
‘Hazvinei.’
She lay where I had left her. Nothing had changed. The pale shadows stretched and splayed across the walls.
‘I am back,’ I said, and my voice echoed in the empty house.<
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That night I lay awake, waiting to be haunted by the N’anga. I expected some kind of visitation; a ngozi, returned from the world of the dead to avenge the destruction of its beloved property. But there was nothing. The world was cool and still, the only noises crickets and the distant laughter of hyenas.
I do not know why I was the only one in my family to escape the cholera. I am not so conceited as to think that I was protected, somehow. I think it was Hazvinei who was protected; kept alive, for whatever purpose. If anything, I believe that I was too small and insignificant for the spirits to notice.
Chapter Thirteen
ALL OUR RELATIVES came to the funeral, except for the two that were most important: Babamukuru and Tete Nyasha. They sent flowers from their garden instead – flame lilies, birds-of-paradise and bougainvillea. Our own garden had been given over to vegetables – practical, edible plants – and I could not imagine growing these bright and slippery blooms. Babamukuru sent a note as well, on a card with a bowl of flowers on the front and a message inside: ‘Sorry to hear of your loss.’ He had signed his name underneath: flourishing and swirly and confident, the signature of a powerful man.
On the back of the card he had written, ‘Will come to pick you up next week.’ And that was all.
The family whispered about Babamukuru’s absence – perhaps he was afraid of the infection, they said, or perhaps he had not been allowed to leave his work. I did not know what to tell them.
Hazvinei and I stayed with the same neighbour who had refused to help me with Baba’s body. The village could not leave two orphaned children alone, even if it suspected that those two children were bad luck for the entire kopje, and so this man had been told to look after us. Perhaps he also felt guilty – I do not know. I do not remember much about those days. Grief was a sickness worse than the cholera. It ate our days and our nights, leaving only crumbs of memory that I still cannot quite piece together.
‘Your uncle is coming to get you,’ said our neighbour. He had telephoned Babamukuru once the risk of infection in the kopje was past, and I could see in his face that he was glad to be rid of us, the remnants of that cursed family that had produced the muroyi.
On the day that Babamukuru was to arrive, Hazvinei sat with her arms wrapped around her knees and said nothing. I smiled and said a few words to our neighbour, to be polite. When he moved away, I touched Hazvinei on the shoulder and she jerked away from me.
‘Hazvinei.’
Nothing. She glared straight ahead.
‘It will not be so bad, living with Babamukuru.’
Nothing.
‘You will see Abel again.’
A fly landed on her arm, and she did not bother to shake it off. I wondered why my voice kept talking on and on, telling these big lies.
Amai and Baba were in the ground now. I had seen them lowered into the two fresh-dug holes, their faces covered demurely with cloths and their graves coloured with the petals of Babamukuru’s flowers. I had watched as the hollow reed was inserted into the crumbling red soil of both graves, and I remembered what Baba had told me.
‘They will look after us,’ I said to Hazvinei, who stood silent within the curve of my arm. ‘Amai and Baba. They are ancestors now.’
Hazvinei said nothing. She was thin and grey from the cholera, her teeth too big for her face, and her breath stank of sweetness. I wanted to stay – to wait for the white worms of soul to crawl from my parents’ graves. I wanted to know that they were not entirely gone. But there was no time for this. We were leaving. We were to live with Babamukuru in town.
I remembered how excited I would have been to visit Babamukuru, before all this.
We heard the hoot of a car horn.
‘Here he is,’ said the neighbour. He sat on the other side of the yard, reluctant to come too close in case he caught our bad luck.
I stood and grasped our bag – an old canvas one that belonged to a friend of Amai’s. Our family had never owned a suitcase, because we had never travelled anywhere.
Hazvinei stayed seated.
‘Come on,’ I said.
She looked up at me, but did not move.
‘Fine.’ I went and stood by the side of the road. I looked over my shoulder and saw my sister’s spindly, unhappy shape, bent over as she stared at her bare feet.
She has caused all this, I heard myself think. This is her fault.
No. It was mine. Look after your sister, Tinashe. I had not done a good job.
Babamukuru emerged from his silver car. He wore a grey church suit, suitable for the solemnity of the occasion, dusty on the trouser-legs, and carried a black hat in his hand. We looked past him, trying to see through the glare of the windows, but the car was empty. No Abel.
‘Mangwanani,’ said Babamukuru. He looked us up and down. I studied his face for resemblance to Baba, and I found it in the wide flare of his nostrils and the way his eyebrows grew uneven towards their outer edges.
‘Mangwanani,’ I said. Hazvinei said nothing.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘We are all very sorry about your father and mother.’
Silence. From me, a polite, grieving silence. From Hazvinei, a rude, staring silence.
‘I am sorry that we could not come to the funeral,’ said Babamukuru. ‘It was impossible for me to change my plans.’
We said nothing.
‘You are thin,’ said Babamukuru. He did not say ‘and dirty’, but I could see his distaste. Truthfully, we had forgotten to wash in the days following Amai and Baba’s funeral. It did not seem important.
‘Where is Abel?’ said Hazvinei.
Babamukuru did not answer her. ‘Your Tete Nyasha is looking forward to seeing you both,’ he said instead.
I muttered something that I hoped would satisfy him.
‘Come here.’ He grasped my shoulder and embraced me. I felt the rough, male scratch of his beard, smelled his aftershave and sweat. I felt a shameful bulge of tears in my throat, and swallowed it, as a mombe swallows her ball of grass, saving it for later.
‘Hazvinei.’ Babamukuru held out his arms to her. She did not move. ‘Come.’
I stood safe within the circle of Babamukuru’s arm, watching. Hazvinei moved forward, reluctantly, allowing herself to be embraced – and then stepped back.
Babamukuru took off his little rimless glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief from his suit pocket. ‘Yes, yes, it is very sad,’ he said. ‘Now, you must help me load up the car.’
He strode into the house. I followed. Hazvinei stayed where she was, staring at nothing.
Babamukuru whistled through his teeth as he sorted through the kitchen cupboards, stacking pots and plates. ‘There are cardboard boxes in the car, Tinashe,’ he said, giving me the keys. ‘Get some for me.’
The keys were cold and unfamiliar in my hand. I went to the car and put them in the lock. The little knob by the window popped up with a sound like a gunshot, but when I tugged at the door handle, it came off in my hand.
‘Ee-ee,’ said Hazvinei from behind me, shaking her hand as if she had burned it on a hot stove. ‘You’re going to be in trouble.’
‘Be quiet, Hazvinei.’ I tried to put it back.
‘What is Babamukuru going to say?’
‘Be quiet, I said.’ I held the handle and stared at the car, as if I could fix it with sheer willpower.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Babamukuru had come up behind me. He snatched the handle from my hand.
‘I am sorry, Baba …’ I began, and stopped when the grief rose up in my stomach. Babamukuru’s eggplant cheeks went a deeper purple, and his eyes bulged behind his glasses.
‘Sssst.’ He blew air out between his front teeth. ‘This is not a good start, Tinashe.’
I helped Babamukuru to remove the boxes in silence, then followed him indoors and helped him to pack. Our cutlery and plates, our bedding – that which had not been burned to cleanse it of the cholera. There was also a photograph of all four of us in a plastic frame that Amai had bou
ght from Simon’s shop. I did not see my own reflection very often, as we had no mirrors, and I remembered how often I had taken the photograph frame down to look at my face.
‘Here, let me keep that,’ said Babamukuru. He took the frame from my hand and tucked it into his coat pocket. ‘I’ll look after it, hey?’ He touched my hair. His hand was heavy, with too-long nails that scratched my forehead.
‘Yes, Babamukuru.’ I watched as he stowed the photograph in the box, piling Baba’s clothes on top of it. His work overalls. His smart church clothes that smelled of mothballs. Bile rose in my stomach, and I thrust my hand into my pocket to clutch the bullet that Chenjerai had given me. It sat cool and round in my palm, protecting me from the bad fortune that still hovered in the air of the house like a cloud of tsetse flies. Hazvinei did not help us at all, but sat on the back step, picking at her toes.
‘Is that all?’ said Babamukuru when we had finished.
‘Yes, Babamukuru.’
‘You are both free of the infection?’
‘Yes, Babamukuru.’
He sighed and took a last look. ‘Eh-eh, what has happened here?’ he said. ‘What has happened here?’
We did not answer, and he did not seem to require an answer.
The car smelled of hot plastic when we climbed into it.
‘Boys ride in the front. All set? Put on your seat belts.’ Babamukuru showed me how to pull the uncomfortable length of material across my chest. The buckle was almost too hot to touch, and I left a layer of fingerprint on the metal.
‘Is there anyone you want to say goodbye to? Your friends?’
I thought of Chipo. Little Tendai. ‘No, Babamukuru.’
‘Good.’ He started the car. ‘Let us go.’
The people of the kopje watched from their doorways and windows as Babamukuru’s car trundled down the dirt road. I could feel their relief. I saw them smile. One or two waved. Simon-from-the-bottle-store did not wave, but watched us, unsmiling, as we passed his shop.
Babamukuru shuddered as the smell of stagnant water and sickness floated to us from the kopje. He rolled up the car window. ‘Soon we will be out of this place,’ he said.