by Andrea Eames
‘What is wrong with you?’ he said as soon as he saw me. He had brought a present with him, wrapped and ribboned, obviously meant to celebrate my day of triumph. I remembered the presents that he had sent after Abel’s first visit to the kopje. I remembered how I felt when that shiny new red truck was broken and dirtied.
‘You did not go? After everything I have done for you?’
‘I am sorry, Babamukuru.’
‘Do you even know what it is you have done? There is no way I will be able to set up another exam for you. There is no way. This is not an easy thing to do.’
‘I am sorry, Babamukuru.’
I said it over and over, hoping that he would eventually stop shouting and I could get back to Hazvinei. My head rang, and my tongue was dry. I could hear flies buzzing in my head.
‘They have only just started to accept black boys into this programme. Do you know that?’
‘I know, Babamukuru.’
‘And you just do not show up! They will think you are no better than those animals out in the bush with their violent ways. They will think that this meant nothing to you.’
I closed my eyes.
‘What is wrong with you? Hey?’
‘I am sorry, Babamukuru.’
He clapped me around the side of the head. The flies buzzed louder. ‘You have thrown away this opportunity for nothing,’ he said. ‘Do you know what you have done?’
Of course I knew what I had done.
He wagged a finger at me. He was breathless with anger. ‘Your father was just the same. Do you know that, Tinashe? He was just the same.’
Baba. I started to shake.
‘I gave him everything, always. Yes, I got the scholarship, because I worked for it, and yes he had to stay home. Yes, yes, we all know that. But when I offered more to him, he did not take it. He preferred to be nothing. Just like you.’
We stared at each other. He raised his hand as if to hit me, but then shook his head and turned away. ‘You are as bad as Abel. Are you going to run into the bush, like him? Do you think you can change things with a gun? It is the educated men who change the world, Tinashe.’
He seemed to have tired himself out. He tugged at his tie, loosening it, and did not look at me again. ‘Come inside.’
I started to follow him. He stopped, and I almost collided with his broad, angry back.
‘And you need not think that I am paying for you to stay in school. Oh no. Not when I see how little you care about it. You are staying home now.’
I was in disgrace for weeks, trapped in the house, slinking around like a whipped dog as Hazvinei became rounder and plumper and filled with healthy light. Babamukuru did not know what to do with us, I could see. Tete Nyasha made us fattening, building-your-strength meals and cups of tea, looking after us as she could not look after Abel, but Babamukuru seemed to have forgotten that we lived with him. We were pale shadows to him.
Strangely, some part of me was at peace now. The spirits had let me exchange my own bad fortune for Hazvinei’s. Baba, I have done what you asked, I thought – but too soon. I woke one night to find Hazvinei gone from our room. The leopards growled at me, and I went outside.
The back of the house smelled of rotten vegetables and sickly-sweet decaying fruit. I saw Hazvinei’s shadow against the wall. She was talking to someone. I heard her voice rise and fall, riding the darkness as a muroyi rides on the back of a hyena, and the words she used were strange: neither Shona nor English. I walked towards her, making my footfalls as soft and harmless as I could, and I was about to call to her in a low voice when I saw the shape.
I would not have seen it if I had not glanced upwards. It was blacker than black, a hole in the sky, and I would have taken it for a shadow if I had not seen the sudden cessation of stars where the shape blotted them out. Once I had noticed, I could not stop noticing. I saw the slight movements it made; the breaths that made its sides rise and fall. I saw shadows against the dark, legs like human legs, arms like human arms, and a head that was nothing like the shape of any human head I had seen – and all the time there was the low rhythm of Hazvinei’s voice talking to this thing, a soft rise and fall as if she were singing a lullaby to a little baby.
I realised I had not taken a breath and I took one, a great, ragged whistling, loud in the darkness. I felt a sudden, focused attention: an animal awareness. Hazvinei’s voice stopped, and something came lumbering towards me, black on black.
‘Tinashe, get back inside!’
I tried to turn, but now I could see a face like a vivid mask above my own, striped with colours, a mouth set in a smile at the bottom. Its eyes were holes. Its smile opened. It reminded me of the festival dances back on the kopje. The dancers would be normal people, people we knew – the man who ran the corner shop, the man with the chicken neck – and then they would put on the wooden dance-masks and become blank, terrible things. I knew that, this time, there would not be someone familiar and friendly beneath.
Hazvinei shouted something I could not hear over the rushing in my ears. The thing turned its face away, and the terrible pressure was gone. A moment later the night was empty again, with no movement but the pale whirring of moths.
‘Hazvinei, what was that?’
She was still. ‘Nothing.’
‘Hazvinei.’ I was still panting, and the ‘ha’ of her name came out on a ragged breath. My understanding felt sore and stretched.
‘It was nothing, Tinashe.’
‘I have never seen anything like that before,’ I said. ‘I have never … You were talking to it, Hazvinei.’
‘I was asking questions,’ she said.
‘Questions? About what?’ I grabbed her arm. ‘About Abel?’
‘No.’ She was angry, suddenly. ‘Let go of me.’
The wall against my back was cool and comforting. ‘It is not safe, Hazvinei. What would Babamukuru say, if he knew?’ I could not see my sister’s face. ‘You should come inside,’ I said. ‘Please.’
I felt her hand cool against my cheek and she drifted past me, a shadow with bare feet.
I kept quiet after that, but I watched her. Something was happening to her – I knew it. The bad fortune must not be allowed to follow us. I had to push it away. I had to keep her safe. Even her happiness and good health made me suspicious. I watched her eat more at dinner, saying she was starving, to cover up her growing belly.
‘You must not get too fat, Hazvinei,’ said Tete Nyasha, ‘or you will never get a husband.’
Hazvinei’s weight gain became more and more noticeable. Even her face grew rounder. And gold studs of earrings appeared in her ears.
‘What are those?’ I asked her.
‘What do they look like?’
‘Did you get your ears pierced?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘At Woolworth’s.’
‘Why did you do that?’
She touched them, and smiled. Her face was plumped up and buttery.
‘Where did you get the money?’
‘Where do you think?’ Hazvinei poured me a cup of tea from the little enamel pot. A drip formed on the spout and she licked it off luxuriously from her finger, closing her eyes. I watched her closely.
‘Who is he?’
‘Who is who?’ She stirred three sugars into my tea.
‘You know who. Who is the man who bought you the earrings?’
‘I told you, I bought them for myself.’
Babamukuru noticed the earrings as well. He could not help but notice them. Hazvinei kept turning her head this way and that, holding it proud as a snake’s, and touching her long fingernails to the little gold studs.
‘Where did you get those?’
‘I bought them.’
Babamukuru leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. Tete Nyasha stirred her tea, the spoon rattling in the cup more than it should.
‘With what?’
‘With my money.’
‘With what money?’
&nb
sp; ‘I have been saving.’
‘She has been careful with her money,’ said Tete Nyasha, fluttering her hands.
Babamukuru kept his eyes on Hazvinei, who continued to sip her tea. But he grunted and stood up, and did not ask any more questions.
I had my own suspicions.
Babamukuru agreed to let me leave the house, although he did not suggest that I go back to school. He kept Hazvinei indoors, and I saw her small, indignant face pressed against the glass as I left with a list of errands and strict instructions to be back within the hour.
I walked rather than taking the bus. The bus was faster, but when I had time, I preferred to walk through town, smelling the hot tarmac and petrol fumes. I enjoyed the crowds. It was so different from the kopje, where every face was familiar; here, one face shifted and melted into another, until I saw eyes, mouths and teeth, and nothing else. The women passed in bright, swaying colour, patterned and fragrant. The men wore grey and brown and blue, and smelled of sweat. I liked to feel the press of unfamiliar bodies against my own, and feel the warmth of new voices in my ear. I walked as if in a trance, too slowly for the businessmen who had somewhere important to be – ‘Kurumidza! What is wrong with you?’ – and inhaled the melting tarmac, the petrol fumes and the sweet stink of rubbish in the gutters. Street vendors tried to sell me bananas, bruised mangoes, sugarcane and green mielies. I allowed myself to buy a stick of sugar cane, and ran the gritty, sweet fibres through my teeth, letting the chewed plant matter fall to join the hundreds of others that littered the pavement. Preoccupied with my sugar cane and the colours and faces of the crowd, it took me a moment to realise that someone had grasped my arm with a strong hand. I turned around, expecting red mbanje eyes and a dirty knife.
‘Tinashe.’ The witch-smeller.
I let out a breath. ‘You scared me.’
‘I did not mean to.’
‘I am busy.’
He fell into step beside me.
‘What do you want?’ I said at last.
He smiled. ‘Your sister. She is walking at night again.’
‘No. It is not true.’
‘I have given you plenty of warning, I think.’
I trudged on.
‘It is too late,’ he said. ‘Your time has run out.’
I stopped. ‘Tell me. Tell me what you are going to do.’
‘Me? I am going to do nothing.’ He spread his empty hands.
‘You swear?’
‘I do not have to do anything.’ He smiled. ‘Your sister has done it all to herself. Her curse is coming upon her, and there is nothing that you can do.’
I pushed him, feeling his fat shoulders give way under the pressure of my hands. He stepped backwards, laughing. ‘Do not ever speak to me again,’ I said. ‘Leave us alone. Do you hear?’
I walked until I could no longer feel his eyes on me, and then I ran the rest of the way home. Even though I could no longer see his face, I could feel his smile.
That night in bed, I heard water running outside. I managed to surface from the deep, underwater comfort of sleep and stumble into the moth-studded darkness. It was Hazvinei. She was crouched next to the tap, glistening and silver in the black, as if she were splashed with moonlight.
‘Why are you out here?’
Hazvinei tied her dhuku over her head. The tip of each wiry hair held a pearl of water, and her scarf was soaked and darkened. ‘Washing.’
‘At this time of night?’ I looked to the stars for guidance. ‘It must be past midnight.’
She shrugged, and water shivered off her bare shoulders.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘You are walking at night again? Hazvinei, you know that it is dangerous. You know that the witch-smeller is watching you. I have told you this.’
Silence.
‘You have been meeting someone?’
‘No one.’ She reached her hands up to touch the damp cloth on her head. ‘I was hot. I wanted to cool down.’
‘You have been out, I know you have.’
‘I went for a walk.’
‘Did you climb over the gate?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were meeting someone.’
‘I told you I was not.’
She was deceiving me again. I knew it. She knew where Abel was. She was seeing him – or she was seeing someone else. Why did she keep secrets from me? Yes, I had betrayed her once, but only once. On every other day, for all the other years that we had been a family, I had done nothing but look after her.
I watched her the next morning as she ate her breakfast. I saw her smile; saw the way she touched the gold studs in her ears.
I followed her the next time she left the house. I kept my distance. Knowing Hazvinei, she would sense me behind her, and turn. I half-expected her to – but she did not.
A figure stepped out from the bushes. A tall, strong figure, with the same easy, graceful power of movement as a lion. A suitable companion, then, for a little lioness.
Abel. Abel had been nearby all along, hiding. Why? And Hazvinei had not told me.
There was an alert, purposeful look in his eyes. When Hazvinei came out, she glanced at him from the corner of one eye, then started along the road, hips swaying. He watched her go, and waited. I got the feeling that he might even be counting under his breath. After a short interval, he followed.
I followed also.
We made a strange threesome. Hazvinei walked ahead, swaying her hips, never glancing over her shoulder. Abel followed at a distance, kicking at a pebble as if that were the only reason he was walking down the long pavement. And then there was me. I was invisible, I did not exist.
Hazvinei swerved and ducked into the bushes behind the school. Abel followed. I waited a few minutes, so that they would not hear me making my way through the undergrowth, and then went after them.
I could hear voices. A low voice, then a higher-pitched one, and then a laugh. I crouched where I was, and inched my way forwards.
I still don’t know what I expected to see – what I wanted to see. The sweat was trickling from my forehead into my eyes, and I dared not reach up a hand to brush it away.
Abel was arched above my sister. She watched him moving inside her with a detached, dispassionate stare. She arched her neck backwards and sighed, bit at the air. Abel pushed himself forward like an eager child. He thought he was in control – he was excited by that thought – but I knew Hazvinei well enough to know that she was completely in charge of what was happening here today.
When Abel finally pushed through the barrier he was straining against, Hazvinei’s composure slipped a little. She gasped and pushed her palms out in a small, helpless movement, as if she would push him away. I started forward slightly, involuntarily, to help her, but before I could, she clenched those palms into fists and smiled defiantly into Abel’s face. He was the helpless one now, red-faced and flip-flopping like a fish pulled out of the river. Hazvinei unfolded her fists and grasped his buttocks. Her nails dug in, creasing the flesh. Abel looked like he was in pain. His eyes closed.
When he was finished, he pulled himself out. He left a white, shining trail on the red earth, as if his mboro were a snail that had been crawling inside her. I felt a shiver. The air filled with a rich, swampy smell.
Hazvinei was still smiling. She folded her legs into herself, neatly.
Abel left. He walked right past me, moving deeper into the thick bush of the hill. I thought for a moment about jumping out from my hiding place and confronting him. I could see it happening in my head: see my fist curl around itself and find a resting place in the smooth skin of his jaw; hear my voice shouting. It did not happen.
Hazvinei watched him go, her lips curled and her eyes half-closed. When he was out of sight, she picked up her dress and wrapped it around herself. I saw her wince. A thin slimy trail wetted the back of her knee.
I knew I should go. I wondered why she had done it. To see what it was like? I had known Ha
zvinei to do things for less reason. Was it because she really wanted to do it; because she felt the strange stirrings I felt that were relieved quickly and efficiently under the blankets in my bed, or against the wall of the house if I were outside? I knew I would not ask her.
Hazvinei finished cleaning herself, and threw her dhuku away. Without it, her head was bare and brave. She looked like a woman as she walked back towards home. I felt sure she would stop, look at me and say, ‘Tinashe, I knew you were there.’ But she did not see me, and she said nothing.
Why were she and Abel doing this? Did they not know what it meant?
I crouched in the bushes for what must have been an hour after Hazvinei left. I was ashamed that I had stayed there and watched her. I went home. I did not speak to Hazvinei that day. I pushed the whole thing away. I could not push Abel away, though – I saw his face when I slept. And his eyes looked just like the ghost-eyes of my lost brother.
Chapter Twenty-two
THE GREY-GREEN DAYS of the cholera were back. I woke gasping and clutching at my throat as it filled with the sweet, stultifying fluid of sickness, and the air was like soup, too thick and rich to breathe. Suspended above my bed, the eyes of the N’anga woke me each morning with their blank stare. I heard the buzzing of a thousand flies, and the scraping of claws against the walls.
I tried not to see Hazvinei. Yes, I spoke to her, and helped her with her chores when she asked, and I even smiled at her now and then when she smiled at me. But I had also turned my gaze away, somehow, like a chameleon that swivels his pointed eyeball in one direction while staring in another. It was peaceful, living without Hazvinei. I did not have to read her face, predict her moods; I did not have to watch her strange ways and disapprove, or collude with her, or try to hide them from our aunt and uncle.
I got along better with Babamukuru while I was trying to ignore Hazvinei. He must have sensed that there was space between us two now, because he was more affectionate with me.
‘You see, Tinashe,’ and he rubbed my head with his closed fist, ‘being a quiet, polite boy is a good thing. It is better not to be like your sister, saying everything that comes into her head without any respect.’