by Andrea Eames
‘I do not care,’ I said. ‘Baba told me to look after you, Hazvinei. You know that. I cannot have you fooling around and getting yourself into trouble.’
Hazvinei held my gaze. ‘You would rather stay here? Go to school like a good little boy?’
‘School is what will get me a good future. Not fighting. Not the spirits.’
‘And what about me, eh, Tinashe?’ Hazvinei stood. ‘Married to some fat old man. Having a child every year until I break in half. Will you write to me sometimes, from your fancy school?’
‘It will not be like that,’ I said. But she had gone.
The next day, Hazvinei went alone to the camp, sneaking out before I could notice. I did my homework in the unaccustomed silence, and then followed, walking slowly, kicking at stones. When I arrived at the camp, greeted by Hazvinei’s baleful stare, I told Abel about the policemen’s questions. VaStephen and Njiri stopped me often to ask if I had heard anything, and I had started to worry.
‘Good,’ said Abel.
‘Good?’
‘I want them to hear about us. I want them to know about us.’
‘Why?’
‘So they can be afraid.’
‘Of us?’
‘Of course of us. We are vakomana. They should be frightened.’
I sat in silence. I did not want to point out that we were still playing the old game we had invented on the kopje – that nothing had really changed.
‘We all have to start playing our part,’ said Abel. ‘You said you would bring us supplies, and you have brought us nothing.’
‘I do not have any money.’
‘What about the money Amai gives you for the tuck shop?’
I had hoarded my coins as much as I could, and we ate what little food we could scrounge – usually fruits that we collected from the ground, fat and bursting with flies. After a while, though, Hazvinei became more enterprising.
We went to the corner shop near the school – the one that was run by a fat Indian man who smelled of onions. A corrugated iron roof shaded a few scrawny chickens and the old men who leaned against the walls. The sweets were in jars on the counter; bright, artificial colours that still attracted us as flowers attract bees, even though we were teenagers now and not scruffy kopje kids.
‘Masikati,’ said Hazvinei as we walked in. The Indian man glanced at us, then returned his attention to a fly buzzing inside the ice-cream fridge.
Hazvinei walked along the rows of sweet jars, letting her long fingers trail over them.
‘What are you going to do?’ I whispered.
‘Shush.’ She turned and walked back down the row. ‘Can we have a bag?’ she asked the shopkeeper.
‘Let me see the money first.’
Hazvinei proffered her grubby coins, still hot from her fist. He spread it out on the counter.
‘Fine.’
We filled a plastic bag with more sweets than we could eat in a week.
‘Get some of the Freddo Frogs.’
‘I don’t like them.’
‘I do.’
‘They are not for you. They are for Abel.’
When she had finished, Hazvinei gave the bag to the shopkeeper to be weighed. He gave her the bag and her change.
‘Now voertsek,’ he said.
Hazvinei hovered.
‘Either buy something else or go home,’ said the Indian, and turned his back to shoo out one of the scrawny neighbourhood pigeons that had wandered in hoping for a few grains of meal from one of the overflowing sacks.
Hazvinei watched him go. She saw him stop to exchange a few words with a man who was leaning his bicycle against the wall outside. Her hand flashed out as quick as a black mamba and grabbed three packets of cigarettes.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Abel likes cigarettes,’ she said, and tucked the packets inside her jersey. She spun on her heel and walked out of the door into the sunlight, haloed bright against the open doorway, so that I could see every stray hair on her head and every ball of fluff on her jersey as if they were on fire, and she was gone. I followed.
‘Hazvinei!’
The shopkeeper stood with crossed arms, watching us go. ‘You not buying anything else, then?’ he asked me. I shook my head.
‘Bloody piccanins,’ he said. ‘Don’t come in here wasting my time again.’
‘No, sir.’ I stood on one foot, ready to run, and as soon as he turned away I sprinted after my sister.
Hazvinei carried the sweets and cigarettes in her skirt as we ran down the hill. She did not spill one, even when I pretended to bump into her by accident. Sure-footed and quick, she regained her balance, and it was I who stumbled and tasted dust. When we – breathless and giggling – spilled from the brown bush into the camp, Hazvinei let her booty fall, scattering a rainbow into the brown-and-yellow of the bush. Abel laughed as he scrambled to pick up first the cigarettes, then the chocolate, and Hazvinei grinned at him, glowing with triumph.
‘For you,’ she said.
‘How did you get it all?’
I coated my tongue with Freddo Frog, preparing for a lie, but Hazvinei was too quick. She told the story. ‘And I stole the rest.’
Beaming, on fire, shivering with glee. A small, wicked animal.
‘She is exaggerating,’ I said, but Abel was not listening to me.
He laughed and touched Hazvinei’s hair. ‘Good girl,’ he said. He turned to me. ‘Of course, she has done it before.’
‘What?’
‘She does it often. Where do you think I got those bullets, hey? She has quick fingers, your sister.’
‘Where did she steal the bullets from?’
For the first time, Abel seemed to realise that I was not as relaxed and grinning as he was. ‘What are you worrying about, Tinashe? She did not steal them from you.’ He held out a cigarette. ‘Have one.’
‘I do not want one.’
What else were these two hiding from me? What else had they been doing without me? I watched them as they blew smoke rings and laughed like the two children they had been, and I left them there to walk the long walk back to Babamukuru’s house. I do not think they even noticed that I had gone.
My sadza tasted of bile that night. I looked across the table at Hazvinei’s smooth, shining face. She still glowed with the success of the day, and I wanted that light to go out. I hated the way that she and Abel smiled at each other, as if they had a special understanding that would never include me. I hated the way that a secret between my cousin and me had become a secret between my cousin and my sister, leaving me on the outside.
‘Babamukuru, Hazvinei stole cigarettes.’ It was out. Abel flicked his eyes to me, and then down to his plate. He would get me later, when we were alone in our room. I knew it.
‘Don’t tell stories, Tinashe.’
‘I am not telling stories. She still has some in her dress pocket.’
‘Tinashe,’ said Tete Nyasha. She put her fingers to her lips.
‘She has! Look.’ I tried to put my hand inside her dress pocket. Hazvinei looked at me, eyes big with betrayal, then grabbed my hand and sank her teeth into it.
‘Iwe!’
In the commotion that followed, Tete Nyasha got inside Hazvinei’s pocket and found a single slim cigarette. Still Hazvinei said nothing.
And then Babamukuru struck Hazvinei with the flat of his hand.
‘Babamukuru! Stop!’
He did it again and again, his lips pursed in concentration, his brow only faintly furrowed, as if it were a problem he was trying to solve. Tete Nyasha let out a wail, but although her mouth was expressing surprise and horror, her eyes were not. Abel too. He sat still and said nothing, watching his father hit Hazvinei. I had caused this and I could not stop it.
‘Babamukuru! Please!’
I shook off my horror and ran to grasp his arm, but Tete Nyasha stopped me and held me back. ‘No, Tinashe.’
Abel sat and did not move. His face had no expression. I caught his eye, hoping to
see my own horror reflected there, but I saw nothing.
Once more I struggled to get free, but Babamukuru had finished, and Hazvinei was crouched on the floor. She did not cry. Tete Nyasha rushed to her, and Babamukuru clasped Abel and me by our shoulders and drew us outside. I shrank, fearful of a beating, but he clapped me on the back. He seemed energised, refreshed.
‘Now, Tinashe, Abel, I will take you to the shebeen, and you will see what being a real man is like.’
Abel looked at me, but once again I could not read his expression. Babamukuru could not be serious, I thought. But he was.
We left my sister there, crouched on the floor with Tete Nyasha bending over her. We followed Babamukuru as he walked the dimly lit streets with a long, smart stride, the heels on his shining shoes hitting the pavement with a firm clip. At the shebeen, he ordered beers for him and for Abel. Here in the bright lights and noise, the horrors of the evening seemed far away and floating. Hazvinei’s dark eyes stared up at me from the puddles of spilled Chibuku on the tiled floor.
I was not allowed to drink, but I felt drunk anyway, as Babamukuru introduced me to friends and laughed so hard that spittle formed at the corners of his mouth. He was a different man, and I did not recognise him. I saw Abel drinking beer and saying nothing, his eyes dark holes in his face. He did not speak to me.
‘I warned your Baba,’ Babamukuru was saying to me. I saw his mouth opening and shutting like the mouth of a dying fish. ‘I warned him about her. She is a devil child, I said when she was born. We knew that such a one would come to the family. A N’anga had told our mother so, long before you were born. Or you, Abel.’
He clapped his son on the back. Abel looked down into his glass and said nothing.
‘Babamukuru?’ My head rang with the strangeness of the evening.
‘She is a muroyi,’ said Babamukuru. ‘The N’anga told him so, but he would not listen. He told Garikai that she would bring a curse upon the whole family, and look how it has happened.’ He wagged his finger. ‘The N’anga on the kopje knew, didn’t he? Didn’t he? He told your Baba as well. But he would not pay attention.’
‘No.’ I did not say this out loud, but I heard the word in my head as clearly as if someone had spoken it.
Babamukuru wagged his finger at me. ‘I warned him. The N’anga warned him. And now look what has happened, hey?’
Babamukuru rambled, mumbling into his beer, speaking beer-sodden thoughts through the moustache of froth that lined his upper lip, while Abel and I sat in silence and listened.
He told us that women are aliens within the family, always. They have alien blood, different from ours. They are unclean, because of the stubborn way they insist, every month, on leaking blood from their insides. And not the noble, proudly red blood that is shed by warriors and hunters and the beating hearts of prey, but a sluggish, brown blood that is messy and thick as sweet beer.
Alien blood is dangerous, he said. It is unpredictable. It is easily tempted to black magic, and seductive once it has succumbed. It is always on the lookout for magic, always ready to respond to it – and willing. Women have to fight this alien blood all the time, even when powerful spirits bring all their force to bear on them. Because when they do succumb to it, no matter how powerful the demon or spirit who tempted them, it is always their fault. It is the same way as in the Bible. If a woman who has been tempted by a demon then draws a man into sinning – into committing some delicious sin that he enjoys – it is still not the man’s fault. It is the woman’s. This is just something we know. It is something the women know. If they let themselves be drawn in, then they will have to pay, one way or another.
The more beautiful and intelligent and exceptional the woman, the more likely she is to be a witch. It is just in the nature of things.
He paused and took a final swig. ‘There is a saying,’ said Babamukuru. ‘Guyu kutsvukira kunze mukati muzere masvosve. From the outside a fig may look delicious, but inside it may be filled with ants.’
We helped Babamukuru home. He leaned his full weight on me, and I struggled up the steps to the stoep, to where Tete Nyasha was waiting to take him from me and put him to bed.
‘Mazvita tatenda, Tinashe,’ she said.
‘Good night, Tete,’ I said. I saw Babamukuru blink, his eyes bleary and malevolent, and I was afraid for her.
‘Abel …’ I tried to stop him before he went indoors.
He shook his head. ‘I do not want to talk. Go and see your sister.’
He followed his parents to the kitchen, where the remains of our dinner still sat on the table, and I went to check on Hazvinei. She was asleep. There was something dark on her pillow, and superstitiously I thought it was a spirit whispering in her ear while she slept – but then I saw it was blood. There was a sticky trail on her pillow, and a red dusting of it on the shoulders of her white nightgown. She looked defiant, even in her sleep. I touched her ear, lightly, and her eyes snapped open.
‘What?’
‘Were you asleep?’
‘No.’
‘Hazvinei, I am sorry.’ I started to weep, to my shame and embarrassment. ‘I am sorry. I did not know. I did not know that he would do this. I am sorry.’
She turned her face away from me.
‘I want you to be safe. We could be safe here. We could be safe from all the things that threatened us on the kopje, if we could just be careful …’
‘You call this safe?’
‘Babamukuru was just angry. He did not know what he was doing.’
Hazvinei sat up. ‘Have you ever noticed Tete Nyasha’s bruises, hey? Have you ever wondered why she has cuts on her head?’
‘She told me she cuts her own hair and sometimes the scissors slip. And she is clumsy. She walks into things.’
‘I knew you were stupid, Tinashe, but I did not know how stupid.’
‘I am not stupid!’
She looked at me with old eyes. ‘Yes, you are. Why do you think she never visited us on the kopje?’
‘She was busy, she said. She wanted to come.’
‘And why do you think she lost those babies?’
I covered my ears with my hands, to shut out this knowledge. I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Why do you think Abel always had bruises and scrapes when he came to stay with us, and Baba never said anything about it? Why do you think Baba and Amai never let us visit Babamukuru’s house?’
I rocked back and forth. ‘No, Hazvinei. You are wrong.’
She looked at me with pity. ‘Why do you think that Abel has a gun and wants to get away from his Baba as soon as he can, hey? Do you still think Babamukuru is a good man?’
I had no answer.
‘Go to bed, Tinashe,’ she said. ‘I do not need you here.’
That night I dreamed of Simba, my phantom brother. I saw him floating, his little fists and feet clenched together and his eyes screwed shut. I watched him turn and turn in the dim light, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing did. Simba’s moth eyes blinked at me from the laughing darkness, and, strangely, I felt at peace.
Chapter Eighteen
HAZVINEI WAS RIGHT. I was stupid. Now I saw how Tete Nyasha kept her eyes lowered when serving Babamukuru his dinner, and how she flinched when he coughed or put his drinking glass down on the table too hard. I saw that she had to ask permission to make telephone calls to her family. I saw the way that Abel raised his arms to his face when he argued with his father, warding off a blow, and I wondered that he had the courage to confront his father at all. I saw that neither his nor Tete Nyasha’s bruises ever quite went away.
Babamukuru behaved no differently after beating Hazvinei. He carried on as if it were a matter of routine – and for him it was, I saw. He smiled and laughed as usual. He patted me on the head and called me a good boy. He ate his dinner with a big appetite. When I looked at him I could still see the wealthy and magnificent Babamukuru of the kopje, the big man with the shining car who was all-powerful and generous as God. It was very difficul
t to stop seeing that picture – but slowly, slowly it began to fall away. I saw how the men of the town did not speak to Babamukuru unless they had to. I noticed for the first time that no friends visited him; that he drank alone. After church, no one came to shake his hand. I saw that Babamukuru was not the important man here that he had been on the kopje; that others knew the truth, as well.
‘Why did you not tell me, Abel?’ I said to him. ‘Or Baba? He could have helped you.’
Abel shrugged.
‘I would have helped you,’ I said. ‘If I had known.’
‘And what would you have done?’ said Abel. ‘The whole kopje thinks that Baba is the greatest man in the world. That is why he loves to visit, and leaves Amai at home so no one can see her.’
‘Still,’ I said. ‘You should have said something.’
‘It is not so bad,’ said Abel. ‘It is only when he drinks. And Amai knows to keep out of his way.’
I twisted my hands in my lap. I did not know what to say.
‘I will get out of his way,’ said Abel. ‘As soon as I can, I will be out of here. I am not going to be an old man in a suit that stinks of beer. I am going to live in the bush with the vakomana and work with my hands like a real man does. Like your Baba.’
‘Baba was not a mukomana.’
‘But he helped them.’
We sat in silence for a moment.
‘Why did you do it?’ said Abel. ‘Why did you tell on Hazvinei?’
It was my turn to look at the ground. ‘I am sorry for that.’
‘But why?’
‘I was jealous,’ I said. ‘Of you. And Hazvinei. I wanted her to get into trouble.’
‘Well, you got your wish.’
‘You know I did not want that.’
Abel stood, shaking his head. ‘I knew I should not trust you with my secrets,’ he said.
I pressed my fists into my eyes until they were red and sore, but it held back the tears. I deserved it, I knew I deserved it, but I had not known the truth about Babamukuru. I would never have done it if I had known the truth.
Perhaps it was not Hazvinei who drew the bad fortune to us after all. Perhaps it had been me all along.