by Andrea Eames
We sat together in church that Sunday, Babamukuru, Tete Nyasha, Hazvinei and I. Hazvinei’s eyes were swollen and purple with crying; a soft, shadowed colour beautiful in its own way. I saw the curious glances and heard the whispers, but no one approached us. Babamukuru sat tall and grim in his seat, his spectacles winking in the light from the stained glass window and obscuring his eyes. Tete Nyasha fluttered the pages of her hymn book with nervous hands.
Hazvinei did not look at me during the service, although I stole glances at her. I could see the beating of her pulse in the hollow of her neck and the rise and fall of her breathing beneath her lacy church dress. She did not sing the hymns or say the prayers, but she stood, sat and knelt with us at the appropriate times, her face far away.
When the service was over, Babamukuru led us out. The witch-smeller stood against the back wall of the church. He was picking his teeth, and smiling.
‘Mangwanani,’ he said to Babamukuru and Tete Nyasha, who greeted him. He smiled at my sister.
I was the last to leave. I walked past the witch-smeller, avoiding his eye, but he was too fast for me. He left the church by my side, squeezing my shoulder in friendly greeting. ‘Have a good day, Tinashe,’ he said, and stepped out into the sunshine like a man for whom life is rich and full of blessings.
The whispers of gossip reached long and splayed fingers into our house. I felt them run through my hair, investigating my ears, nostrils, mouth. I felt them creeping to my bed as I lay awake in the dark; drawing back my blanket and crawling beneath my mattress. I knew that Hazvinei felt them too. The rumours clung to us like blackjacks to a cow’s hide, just as numerous and just as uncomfortable. Where had Abel gone? What had happened to him? Some of the neighbours had seen him leaving for school bruised and bent over the years, and they had their suspicions. And why were the country cousins still there when the son of the house was not? The preferred theory was that he had joined the vakomana. They must be in the area, people speculated. They were coming into town. Perhaps they were recruiting, as they were said to recruit in the villages. Perhaps they walked among us even now – and if the son of a rich man with a comfortable house was not safe, who was?
VaStephen and Njiri walked our street, asking questions; I saw them through the iron gates. They did not look at me, but I saw them glance towards the high walls of the house.
And there were whispers about Hazvinei – of course there were. There were always whispers about Hazvinei. She had bewitched Abel, people said, and driven him away. She had killed him somehow by sapping his manhood. She had brought bad luck to the family.
VaStephen came to visit Babamukuru one evening. He did not have his usual smile for me, and he greeted me in English. ‘Get your uncle, please.’
I scurried to obey.
VaStephen’s conversation with Babamukuru was long. I stayed outside until it was over. When they came to the door, I stepped back into the shadow of the bushes.
‘Good night,’ I heard, and ‘Thank you.’ I watched the white man walk to the gate and settle his hat more firmly on his head.
The policemen might be satisfied, but Babamukuru, Tete Nyasha and I stayed indoors as much as we could to avoid the questions of our neighbours.
‘Abel will come back,’ said Babamukuru. ‘When he is hungry, or needs money. I know it.’
Tete Nyasha twisted her apron in her hands and said nothing.
At dinner times, Babamukuru ate without speaking. When he had finished, he pushed back his chair and went into the bedroom, and we did not see him until morning. He did not look at me. He looked at Hazvinei, though – long looks that she did not return.
‘Babamukuru,’ I said one night when I could no longer stand the silence. He looked at me. His eyes stung me, making me smart and glow as if I had run through the sharp grass in the yard. Tete Nyasha flicked her eyes to me, to Babamukuru, and then down to her plate. Hazvinei had not moved. Her fingers were listless and uncaring as she squashed the sadza into balls and lifted it to a slack mouth. Our family looked drab and dead in the light of the single bulb over the table. I pushed back my chair and left the room, glad to be out.
I remembered when I had believed that Baba patrolled the house at night. There was no one to protect us now. The bad luck was getting in: I could see its claws in every crack in the walls; I could smell the sweet, greasy smoke of burning flesh.
Hazvinei did not protest at her imprisonment. She sat cross-legged in the dust behind our house, tracing patterns with her finger on the ground while the chickens, usually so full of nervous flutterings and squawks, pecked around her as if she were one of them.
‘Hazvinei.’ I sat beside her. Her skin was as grey and flat as our pewter pots.
She made a circle in the dust, but did not talk to me. When she turned her eyes to me, I saw that they were yellow at the edges. Her frailty and the helpless, nervy tracing of patterns in the dirt made me angry at her. I wanted to shake her until her neck broke, or punch her in the nose and watch the red blood run. I wanted her to become Hazvinei again.
‘This is Abel’s fault,’ I said.
I watched her spit and hiss into life. She pushed me so hard in the chest that I fell backwards into the mess of chicken poo and dirt.
‘Benzi!’ she said.
The blue sky seared my eyes. I blinked, and caught my breath.
‘You don’t know what you are talking about, Tinashe,’ said Hazvinei in a low, urgent voice. ‘You don’t know anything about Abel.’
‘And you do?’
She spat. It evaporated almost before it hit the dust.
‘Hazvinei …’
She was gone in a whirl of bare, grubby feet and blue cotton. I did not sit up until one of the chickens began to peck at my head, and then I went around the house to the neatly swept front yard.
The noon sun was a wide white circle in the sky. It made everything look like an illustration in a book, flat and highly coloured against a white page. I sat on the kitchen step, freshly polished by Tete Nyasha, and felt its film of red grease slide against my skin. A lizard appeared from a crack in the wall. It was not afraid of me. An inch from my hand, it reared up along its blue-green length and tasted the air with its tongue.
‘Tinashe!’ Little Tendai, standing in front of our house with his hands on his hips. He was grinning, but kept his distance. I knew that he was not really there – that he was something my mind had created out of the heat and confusion – but I could see every crack on his dusty heels, and every whorl of hair on his head.
‘Go away, Tendai.’
‘What’s wrong with Hazvinei? Why has she not come out?’
‘She is sick.’
‘Again?’
I tasted vomit on my teeth. I did not know if I were angry or afraid. ‘Tendai, go away.’
He laughed. I watched the lizard flatten itself against the hot concrete. Its tail twitched. It swivelled one bead-black eye at me, and started to move towards the crack in the wall. We were friends now, this lizard and I.
‘Muroyi, muroyi.’ His voice was low and taunting.
I put my hand out to touch the lizard. I knew its skin would be soft and cool, and my hands were burning.
‘Muroyi!’
The lizard shed its tail with a casual flick, leaving a raw and wriggling stump in my hand. I looked up, holding the tail. Tendai was gone.
Hazvinei had not been well since the night Abel left, and she grew worse. She became bloated and thicker about the waist. Her skin hung yellow on her bones. Her ripe beauty became the stink and horror of a decaying fruit.
Tete Nyasha and Babamukuru took her to the clinic. They told me that she screamed and thrashed and had to be held down. I shuddered. I remembered the neighbour who had closed his door to us on the kopje. Bad fortune surrounded us like a cloud of flies, buzzing in our ears and landing anywhere it could.
‘You just need to eat more,’ said Tete Nyasha, and gave Hazvinei extra helpings of sadza. She thought that food cured everything.
Tete Nyasha took to her bed early in the evenings, and rose late. Babamukuru spent more time at the shebeen. And Hazvinei grew worse. I begged Tete Nyasha to let her move into the second bed in my room, so that I could watch her while she slept, and it was a sign of her sadness and confusion that she agreed to it. I lay awake for hours in the darkness, listening to my sister breathing and watching the shadows on the wall.
Once again I was to be punished for my anger towards my sister.
‘I will pray for her,’ said Tete Nyasha. ‘And so must you, Tinashe.’
‘I will.’
Hazvinei did not think that prayers to the God of churches and priests would have any effect.
‘I need to find a N’anga,’ she said to me, staring through hollow eyes.
‘Where am I supposed to find one here? How am I going to bring one to you without Tete Nyasha finding out?’
Tete Nyasha believed that church was the only place in which to seek supernatural help.
‘You must help me.’
Of course I had to. Of course, of course. But some bitter part of me hardened into a stone in my stomach, like the pip in an avocado.
I should have been grateful, in a way, for the lack of distractions. I had all this spare time to study and work, with no one to look over my shoulder and scoff at the diagrams, or remind me that I would never make it as a black boy in a white man’s school. It was natural to worry about Hazvinei, yes, but should I not also feel somewhat relieved that Abel was gone and that she was safe indoors? When the day of the examination arrived, I did not feel relieved. I felt afraid. Half of me expected Abel to appear, to take his rightful place. No one mentioned Abel’s name, but it hovered in the air like a mosquito looking for blood.
It was all arranged – I would take the bus to the big college while Babamukuru was at work, and he would collect me afterwards. I studied late into the night all that week, stuffing my head with knowledge until it felt like a fat belly filled with too much sadza. I felt that, if I moved, it would spill out of my ears.
Hazvinei watched me from her sickbed, her eyes huge and hollow in her face.
When the day arrived, Babamukuru came to wish me luck before he left for work. As he embraced me, he looked over my shoulder, and I knew he was looking for Abel. Perhaps he thought that his son would materialise on this special day, filled with remorse and ready to atone for his sins. But there was only me.
‘This is a great opportunity,’ said Babamukuru. He rested his hand on my shoulder. It was heavy and uncomfortable.
‘This is a great opportunity,’ said my teachers.
‘This is a great opportunity,’ said Tete Nyasha as she gave me an extra helping of porridge for breakfast.
Babamukuru had given me some of his own smart clothes to wear: a shirt with collars and cuffs starched so heavily that they cut into my skin, and a pair of grey trousers that were a little too long for me. Tete Nyasha stitched them up, holding pins in her mouth and crouching down so that she looked like a strange sort of porcupine.
‘You can keep these,’ said Babamukuru. ‘I’m sure you will have need of them again.’
When I looked in the mirror, I expected to see a changed reflection. I expected to see a smart young man, neatly dressed and well-groomed, the kind of person who could go to a good school and then to university. I was disappointed. The shirt was too big for me, and already had little creamy sweat stains under the arms. My neck had made the edge of the starched collar grubby. Despite Tete Nyasha’s efforts, you could see that the trousers had been taken up.
A bright morning! A great opportunity! I said these things to myself as I left the house. I remember the sun warm on my head when I stepped outside, and the clean, dusty smell of the air. I picked up my school bag (still holding a rotting lunch that I was meant to take to school the previous week) and the few coins that Tete Nyasha kept in a peanut-butter jar in the kitchen. I got to my feet and ran, ran for the bus that would take me into town, to the school and to the exam. It was good to run, to feel the hot, painful life in my lungs and my legs. I saw faces behind the windows, watching me as I ran, and I felt powerful.
‘Wait!’ The bus was just leaving. Its exhaust coughed and scared the chickens in crates on the roof. They squawked at me, and the people on the bus grinned. Crazy boy, shouting in the dust!
‘You are lucky to catch me,’ said the bus driver as I scrambled for my coins. I stumbled down the over-stuffed and moving bus, feeling the metal floor hot underneath my shoes and sat next to a fat woman with a basket of oranges who made sucking, disapproving noises when I sat down.
I looked through the back window and watched the bus plough through the dirt road, sending up two furrows of dust either side as if it were unzipping a dirty brown shirt. I thought of Hazvinei at home, breathing quietly on her bed. I thought of the exam, seeing numbers and letters on the page. I knew my work, I did. I knew I would do well. I was getting out. Away from Hazvinei. Away from Abel. Away from Babamukuru, even. I was free.
When the bus turned the corner, something hollow and dead settled in my chest.
‘Sit still,’ said the fat woman.
‘I am sorry, Amai.’
‘What is the matter with you?’ She elbowed me with one fat arm, took a banana from her bag, and peeled it. The hot yellow smell filled the bus, overpowering the body odour.
Stop the bus. I had not said it aloud.
‘Stop the bus!’
‘Sit down.’ The fat woman poked me in the ribs.
‘Stop!’
The driver whistled through his yellow teeth and told me I was the son of a dirty goat, but he stopped.
‘Mazvita tatenda.’ I pushed my way through the crowd again, getting many slaps and cuffs.
‘Holding up the bus.’
‘Benzi!’
Someone tripped me at the door, and I fell, missed the step, and landed on my hands and knees on the gravel. When I stood, I left two knee-shaped dents on the road.
‘Enjoy your walk!’ said the bus driver, and laughed.
A fine film of white powder coated me. I held my pencil in my hand, but my other was empty. ‘My bag! My bag is on the bus. Throw me my bag!’
The fat woman in the window seat pretended not to hear.
‘Please! Please, Amai!’
The bus moved away, taking my bag with it. But that was the least of my worries. This was a part of town I did not know – but then, I supposed, that meant that no one here would know me. Perhaps this was the perfect place.
I approached many people on the street, asking where I could find a N’anga. They looked at me suspiciously – what did this skinny boy want with magic? Finally, though, one showed me to the house of a local N’anga, one who was only too glad to perform tricks for money.
This witch doctor was not like the one on the kopje. He wore jeans, and behind his thin frame in the doorway I could see children running on a dirty carpet.
‘It will cost you,’ said the N’anga when I had explained my mission.
‘I have money.’ Thank goodness I had kept my coins in my pocket and not in my bag.
‘Good.’ He packed his bag of medicines and bones. ‘Then let us go. Where is your car?’
‘I do not have a car. I walked.’
‘From where?’
When I told him, he whistled. ‘That is going to cost you extra.’
‘It is fine.’ I was anxious to get this over with. ‘Come.’
It was a long walk. When we reached home, finally, I had to bring the N’anga to the house through the sanitary lanes behind the back fence. I waited until I was sure that both Babamukuru and Tete Nyasha were out, then led him to Hazvinei’s room, where she lay yellow and sweating on the bed. The N’anga had been talking to me about the many women that he had known – as if I were interested, or wanted to imagine this old, smelly sack of bones with a woman – but he stopped as
soon as he saw my sister. He closed his eyes and a shudder ran through him.
‘What is the old fool doing?’ said Hazvinei.
The N’anga opened his eyes, his jaw still hanging slack. He raised his arm and pointed one bony finger at Hazvinei. ‘You have brought this on yourself,’ he said.
‘No.’ Hazvinei shook her head, so violently that beads of fever-sweat from her forehead landed on my hand.
‘It is you,’ the N’anga repeated.
‘N’anga, is there something we can do?’ I tried to keep my tone respectful.
The N’anga slid his yellow eyes to me. ‘The spirits are angry with her.’
‘There must be a way that we can make them happy,’ I said. ‘There must be a way to make her better.’
‘There is not. The bad fortune dies when she dies, and not before.’
‘No, old man.’ Hazvinei was still. ‘You are wrong.’
The N’anga shrugged, and held out his hand. ‘The payment.’
I did not want to give it to him. All he had given us was bad news and worse news. But I owed it to him. I pulled the money from my pocket and watched him close his claws around it. How it hurt!
‘I am sorry,’ said the N’anga, and got to his feet. He was unsteady, and I caught his elbow.
‘Is there nothing you can do?’ I asked him. ‘Nothing you can give us?’
He sidled his eyes over to me again. ‘Here.’ He gave me a small, greying bone. ‘Take this. Grind it up and put it in her tea. It will help, but it will not cure her.’
I closed my hand on the bone. It felt like a thin finger. ‘Mazvita tatenda.’
The N’anga shrugged. It is no use, his shrug said. But you have paid me, and I do not care.
‘You will not tell anyone?’ I asked him. ‘About my sister?’
‘I am an old man. Who would I tell?’ He gave a yellow grin, and left.
Chapter Twenty-one
I SAT ON the stoep until Babamukuru came home. Tete Nyasha had phoned him at work and told him the story – I could tell from the sharp clip of his stride. I stood, hands clasped behind my back.