The White Shadow

by Andrea Eames

  Quiet. Polite. I tried to be.

  ‘What is wrong, Tinashe?’ said Hazvinei after a few days of silence.

  Part of me was surprised that she did not know. This was Hazvinei, after all, who had talked to the njuzu. Part of me thought that she and Abel had taunted me with this; that they knew I had followed them; that they had put on this show for my benefit.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Something is wrong.’ She kicked at my ankles under the table. ‘You are upset about missing school?’

  ‘No.’ I had almost forgotten about school. ‘I told you, I am fine.’

  Babamukuru spent longer and longer at the shebeen those days. To forget about Abel? To forget about his niece and nephew? So many disappointments from which to choose. When he came home, he smelled of fresh vomit and stale beer. Tete Nyasha made her voice quieter and quieter in the mornings, so as not to disturb him. We started to take our shoes off when we entered the house so that the noise of our feet on the polished floor did not send him into a rage. Tete Nyasha started to wear her dhuku knotted lower over her forehead to hide the bruises.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ said Hazvinei. We sat on the stoep, whispering. Babamukuru was asleep in the kitchen chair, his jaw spinning a long silver thread of saliva that dampened his collar. The kitchen stank.

  ‘And what do you think we should do?’

  It was hard for me to talk to my sister. I forced my suddenly too-large tongue to shape the words – forced my eyes to look into her face. All I could see was that pale streak on the back of her leg.

  ‘We can go to Abel,’ she said. She watched my face for my reaction. ‘I know where he is.’

  ‘I know you do,’ I said.

  Hazvinei was silent. I felt her eyes on me. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I saw you.’

  ‘Saw me when?’

  ‘I saw you and Abel. Together.’

  A change in the air. Hazvinei shifted her weight; sat with her legs crossed, as a man would. She said nothing. I let the words hang between us, blue and hazy, smelling of woodsmoke and burning flesh.

  ‘Then you know that he is nearby,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ I did not look at her. ‘Hazvinei, why did you do it?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Did he make you? Did he hurt you?’

  ‘No!’ Leaping to Abel’s defence, of course. ‘I am sorry I did not tell you.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘How long what?’

  ‘I made a vague gesture.

  ‘Months.’

  ‘Months? How many months?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘But why, Hazvinei?’

  ‘He is a mukomana. Or he is going to be. And I am a spirit medium like Nehanda. He told me so.’ Her eyes glittered, feverish. ‘It is how it is meant to be.’

  I dropped my head into my hands. ‘Hazvinei, you do not know what you are doing.’

  I felt her anger hot on my skin. ‘You are a fool.’

  ‘It is not allowed, Hazvinei. You are cousins. The spirits will not allow it.’

  ‘You are telling me about the spirits?’ She almost spat the words. ‘You?’

  ‘You know it is true, Hazvinei. You are family. You cannot do this.’

  ‘What about Nyamhika?’

  The terrible knowledge felt like fire in my belly. Nyamhika, the king’s daughter. The princess who produced a son with her half-brother, and who became possessed by the Nehanda spirit.

  ‘Hazvinei. What have you done?’

  The most powerful of all the spirit mediums. Forged in fire and incest.

  Hazvinei turned one slim shoulder to me. I could see the curve of her cheek lit by the evening sun. ‘You do not understand, Tinashe.’

  ‘I understand that you are crazy.’ I swallowed the tears that threatened to overwhelm me. ‘Do you know what I did for you, when I didn’t go to the examination? Everything I have done has been for you, Hazvinei. Always. Please.’

  She shook her head. My sacrifice evaporated like a bead of sweat on her cool, smooth forehead. ‘School is a waste of time.’

  I closed my eyes and saw the sun red on my eyelids.

  ‘We can go to him.’ She moved towards me, her eyes bright with wanting. ‘There is nothing else for us here, Tinashe. Babamukuru is not going to pay for you to go back to school. We can go to Abel.’

  I scratched at a mosquito bite on my knee until I saw a bead of blood. I did not want to think about school.

  ‘You know that it is the only thing we can do.’

  ‘I will think about it,’ I said.

  Hazvinei sat back.

  ‘I said, I will think about it.’

  ‘You would rather stay in this stinking house waiting for Babamukuru to throw us out like Abel?’

  ‘He didn’t throw Abel out.’

  She shrugged, irritated.

  ‘Let me think about it, Hazvinei, please.’

  ‘Fine. But do not think too long, or I will go without you.’

  ‘Not yet, Hazvinei. Not yet. Please, wait.’

  I said nothing more until the night that I caught Hazvinei climbing out of her bedroom window. I was taking a piss in the bushes – the indoor toilet made me uncomfortable, even after all these months, and I was beginning to think I would never get used to it – when I saw her pass me by, walking with a firm, deliberate step.

  ‘Hazvinei?’

  She froze. Against the moonlight, her silhouette was ringed with silver fire.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I am going out.’

  ‘You are going to see Abel.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Then I will tell Tete.’

  ‘No!’ She was at my side, her fingernails on my throat. ‘Do not say anything, Tinashe, or I promise I will claw your eyes out.’

  ‘Fine.’ I was sick of caring for her. ‘If you are not back in an hour I am coming to look for you.’

  ‘I will be longer than an hour.’

  ‘Then I will come and look for you.’

  She melted into the darkness.

  I lay awake, knowing that I should go after her, but feeling so angry that I almost wanted something bad to happen to her, so that she would know what it felt like to be afraid. I told myself that Abel was looking after her now; that I was absolved of responsibility. Then I felt ashamed for wishing bad fortune on my sister, and then I felt anxious about her, and scared. And then angry again. In the end I gave up on sleep, and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, waiting.

  About two hours after she left, Hazvinei reappeared. In the darkness I could not see her features, and she looked like the faceless ghost we had seen on the kopje all those years ago. She was breathing heavily, and smelled strange.

  ‘Where did you go?’ I asked.

  She did not reply. When I went to her, I saw that she was shivering. It was a hot night. ‘Are you all right?’

  She said nothing. I led her back through to her bed. She lay like a dead person, and did not move her limbs even when I struggled to get the blankets out from under her so that I could tuck her in. When I had finished, I bent to kiss her on the forehead. Her head was so cold it burned.

  ‘Hazvinei,’ I whispered, ‘should I get Tete to look after you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, the first word she had spoken. Her breath came out in a smoky plume, as if it had been a cold night rather than warm and humming with crickets.

  I could not sleep for a long time after that. I was filled with superstitious dread, and every noise was a spirit coming to find me. I do not know if Hazvinei slept, either. I did not feel as though she was asleep. I felt as if we were both staring at the dark, in different places, thinking different things.

  Hazvinei went out every night for seven nights. When she came home she was exhausted and pale. I dipped a flannel in cold water and sponged her down. She did not protest. As the cold water moved over her body, her skin
stood up in little bumps like the skin of a raw chicken that has been plucked. Her muscles shivered and spasmed under my hands.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked her every night. And every night she shook her head and said nothing.

  I noticed something different each night. On the first, I saw scratches on her arms and legs, as if she had been pushing her way through acacia bushes. I helped her to clean them with strong-smelling violet mercurochrome that I stole from Tete Nyasha’s bathroom cabinet. On the second, I smelled something on her clothes – a sharp, herbal scent.

  ‘What is that smell?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I said it is nothing.’

  On the third, fourth and fifth nights, I found strange powder on her skin and red earth in her hair. On the sixth night I found a deep, perfectly clean cut on her palm, which I cleaned and bandaged. And on the seventh night, I noticed blood on her clothes. It was a strange, purplish colour, and smelled foreign.

  ‘Is that your blood?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Whose blood is it?’

  She would not tell me. But in the morning I found spots of it on the bushes outside. I followed them. When they stopped, abruptly, at our front gate, I kept walking. I knew where I had to go. This strange instinct led me deep into the bush behind the school, so far that I started to wonder if I should turn back.

  I came across something that looked like a cooking fire. A ring of stones had been laid around it in a perfect circle, and the ground around the fire was scuffed and trodden. The air smelled strange – something like charred meat, or ash and woodsmoke – but there was another scent in there, sickly and poisonous. I felt a crunch under my feet, and looked down. A tiny skeletal foot was crushed beneath mine. Some kind of rodent, perhaps. The bones were picked almost clean, but the few rags of flesh wrapped around the bone were soft and wet.

  I knew with a great certainty, suddenly, that spirits had been here. Were possibly still here. The air seemed heavy, as if a storm was coming, but the sky was blue and perfectly clear. I smelled water; the slick, green skin of a njuzu. I backed away, crushing more tiny bones, but I could not take my eyes off the altar. As I stared, the patch of ash inside the circle grew darker and seemed to spread.

  I turned and ran.

  After this, I tried not to catch Hazvinei’s eye during the day, and I spoke to her as little as possible. I was not ready to talk to her. When I heard her climbing back into her bed at night, I rolled over and made my breathing slow and even, so that she would think I was asleep. She was not fooled. I kept my back turned to her, even when I heard her stumbling. Even when I thought I heard her sniffing, as if she had been crying.

  I could not ignore her on the last night, though. She came stumbling into the room and her voice was tangled in her ragged breathing, each word split in half by air rushing in and out of her lungs.

  ‘Tinashe.’

  ‘No.’ I pulled the cover over my head, which pulled it off my bare feet. Hazvinei took a big pinch of skin from my foot, and squeezed it in her sharp nails.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Be quiet! We don’t want to wake everyone.’

  ‘Me? You’re the one who crashed in here like a big hippo.’

  She put a hand across my mouth. I could taste her sweat, sweet and cold. I stopped trying to talk.

  ‘Here.’ Hazvinei turned around and picked something up from the floor. I could not see it clearly in the darkness, but I felt sick.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Help me get rid of it.’ She held the bundle in her hands. It was wrapped up in an old cloth, and looked like the pieces of meat the butcher folded up in newspaper.

  ‘What is it? I want to see.’ I grabbed at the cloth and pulled a corner back. When I saw the tiny brown and bloody mess inside, I recoiled. It was small and shapeless, but I knew what it was.

  ‘Hazvinei!’

  ‘Please, Tinashe.’

  ‘Is it Abel’s? Hazvinei? Is this Abel’s? What did you do?’

  ‘Help me, Tinashe.’ Her voice was low and urgent. She held her hands out to me. When I took the bundle from her, holding it as far away from my body as I could, she clapped her cupped hands together in the traditional gesture of thanks from a woman to a man. As far as I knew, she had never made this gesture before.

  I stared at her. ‘This is why you were sick. This is why you grew fatter. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did you …’ The full horror of it closed my throat. The altar. The strange smells. The spirits hovering above the ash. She had been leaving every night to do this – not to meet Abel, as I had imagined. ‘How did you do it?’

  Her eyes were dark and unshining. ‘I asked them. I asked them what to do.’

  That black shape against the sky; the mask-like face.

  ‘But what are we going to do with it?’ My skin seemed to crawl along my body, desperate to get away from the burden in my hands. I felt my fingertips go cold and numb as even the blood moved away from it.

  ‘We must bury it,’ she said.

  ‘But where? Someone will see us. Or stray dogs will dig it up.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘But Hazvinei, this is …’ I could not say it. ‘We cannot just leave it to be eaten by animals. We have to give it a proper burial.’

  ‘Where do you suggest we bury it, then?’ Her voice was sarcastic.

  ‘Listen!’ I was angry and scared, and uncharacteristically brave. ‘We will take it to the church. We will bury it in the graveyard. That is the proper thing to do.’

  Hazvinei stared at me. ‘Fine,’ she said.

  The church was a small wooden building, painted white. There was a Christian graveyard around it, with tombstones and – most importantly – a fence that would keep out the animals that wandered, even here in the city.

  ‘How am I supposed to dig a hole?’

  Hazvinei wrenched at a branch of a tree. After some tugging, it came away in her hands. She glared at me and started walking. ‘Use this.’

  I followed.

  Hazvinei wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself. Her face was desperate and inhuman. I took the branch from her and gave her the bundle in return. She held it far away from her body, her lip curled in disgust.

  The night was very still. It felt like it should have been stormy, the sky boiling with clouds and spitting lightning down on us like the wrath of God. But it was a still, clear night – peaceful. Even the moths were flapping lazily, accepting their fiery death with calm resignation when it came, and folding their little furred hands on their breasts when they fell. It was a beautiful night, too quiet for screams or sobs.

  I scraped at the ground, bloodying it with the wet, red mud that was just below the surface of the earth. Water welled up between my toes.

  ‘Here.’

  I took the bundle from Hazvinei. Her face twisted in disgust, and she almost threw it at me. ‘Get rid of it.’

  I hesitated. ‘Should we say something?’

  ‘Like what? What should we say?’

  ‘Some words.’

  ‘Good riddance, those are some words.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Just bury the bloody thing, Tinashe.’

  I said some words in my heart, just in case, and kept my eyes screwed tight shut so that the words could get to God. Then I laid the bundle in the hole, which suddenly looked pathetically shallow and grubby, a stain of mud in the green grass, and covered it up. The wet earth soaked through the cloth and showed a grisly silhouette. I turned my eyes away.

  ‘Come on, Tinashe.’

  When the bundle was covered, it was obvious that something had been buried there. The grass was smooth and green, with occasional dry yellow patches, except for this.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  My sister looked at me. ‘I want to go to the river.’

  ‘That is a long walk.’

  ‘I do not
care.’

  We walked close together through the streets. No one looked at us. The town was a different place at night, filled with people intent on their own business, just like us. We stood on the concrete wall, looking down at the black gleam of water beneath us, so sluggish and greasy that it hardly reflected the light of the streetlamps.

  ‘It is the same river that runs through the kopje,’ I said. ‘It is hard to believe.’

  ‘It is not the same river,’ said Hazvinei.

  ‘Yes, it is. You know it is.’

  She shook her head. ‘It is not the same.’

  We climbed down until we were level with the water. We could not see the litter and floating debris in the darkness, and it was impossibly peaceful, softened by the night. I wiped my face and tasted blood.

  ‘We will have to go back home,’ said Hazvinei.

  ‘Shall we go now?’

  ‘Not yet. I am not ready yet.’

  We stayed crouched on the bank. I became aware of myself again. I remembered our days spent swimming in this river; the cooler, cleaner smell it had on the kopje, and its strong tea-like taste. I remembered Hazvinei’s stories of the njuzu. The sound of the river soothed me. My heartbeat slowed, and the long grass scratched my bare knees and shoulders. After what must have been an hour or more, Hazvinei stood and stretched long brown arms above her head, and sat on the bank, sliding her bare feet into the water. They were a different colour under there, a pale blue-brown.

  ‘Look Tinashe,’ she said. ‘I am a njuzu too.’

  The river rolled on its back and played at her feet. Hazvinei ran her hand through the water, and it lit up and danced at her touch. When I put my own hand in, it was just brown, gritty river water, but she brought it to life.

  I sat beside her. She felt my shoulder with fingers as light and loving as Amai’s. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  The axe forgets, but not the tree. The old proverb appeared in my mind. I could not help probing it with my thoughts, as you probe a sore tooth with your tongue.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Hazvinei.’

  She ran her hands through the water. The parts that she touched became silky and cool. I felt them against my tired feet. She was trying to comfort me. And then I felt something clutch at my ankles, something unnaturally strong and hot. I yelped, and drew my feet away. They were blistering; burned. The skin on my toes was almost white. Hazvinei stared at me, wide-eyed, but did not jump as I had. She withdrew her feet from the water slowly, painfully. Her toes curled under, and her perfect skin was swollen and shining, as if she had dipped her feet into the cooking fire.