Chanda's Secrets

by Allan Stratton

  Now, when I sit beside Mama at night, she doesn’t tell me to go back to bed. She just pretends she doesn’t see me.

  She pretends about a lot of things. For instance, she pretends everything’s normal. She never talks about Sara in front of Iris or Soly. She never mentions Jonah or her headaches either. It’s as if she thinks by pretending everything’s fine she can fool us into happiness.

  Well, she’s wrong.

  Soly’s started to wet the bed. At night he covers his eyes for shame while I wrap him in a rag towel and stick his legs through a plastic bag. Iris has been surprisingly kind, considering it’s her bed too. She’s only called him a baby once.

  She’s been mean about other things, though. Soly waits all morning to play with her. But when she gets back from kindergarten, she tricks him. “Let’s play hide and seek,” she says. Only once he’s gone to hide she doesn’t bother looking for him. Instead, she sneaks off to explore the neighborhood. Eventually Soly comes out of his hiding place crying. When I get back from school I head out to find her.

  It isn’t easy. Iris can be anywhere. The playground, the gravel pit, the junkyard at the end of the road...

  “Are you crazy, child?” Mama demands when I haul her in. “That junkyard’s a menace. Full of old iceboxes and trunks. Little ones like you get themselves locked inside and suffocate to death. As for that gravel pit—you could break your neck.”

  It’s in one ear and out the other. The next day Iris is off again.

  Yesterday I caught her at the back of the junkyard behind a pile of bicycle tires, peeking over the lip of the abandoned well. I grabbed her by the arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Playing with Sara.”

  “That’s a wicked lie,” I said. “Sara isn’t anywhere near this junkyard.”

  “Yes, she is. She lives here.”

  “Where?”

  “Sara says I’m not supposed to tell. It’s a secret.”

  I held her shoulders firmly. “Whoever, or whatever, you’ve seen at this junkyard, it isn’t Sara. Sara’s an angel. She doesn’t want you getting hurt.”

  “You don’t know what she wants. You and Mama don’t even love her anymore. You just want her to go away.”

  “No we don’t.”

  Iris stuck her fingers in her ears. “Do do do do do do do!” she cried. “Well, if Sara goes away, I’m going away with her.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Iris was possessed. But I do know better. In English class, Mr. Selalame talks a lot about the supernatural, comparing stories about wizards in Western folklore to our tales about traditional doctors. He says there are superstitions all over the world. For instance, in the West, some people use lucky numbers for lotteries. They think a magic number can make them rich.

  “People believe in superstitions to make sense of what they can’t understand,” Mr. Selalame says.

  I know he’s right. All the same, when Iris mentions her imaginary friend, I chant a prayer to protect against evil spirits. I feel silly, but why take chances? If this is an evil spirit, I’m terrified where it may lead her next. Especially if it decides to come at night.

  15

  WHEN MAMA’S UP TO IT, which is usually, we spend early Sunday mornings touring “the ring of death.” That’s what Esther calls the cemeteries circling Bonang.

  We leave at dawn in the Tafas’ pickup truck. Mrs. Tafa drives while Mr. Tafa stays behind to babysit Iris and Soly. He lets the two of them play in the mud and pretend to help him patch the holes in his tenants’ walls. Soly says when he grows up he wants to make houses, like Mr. Tafa. Iris rolls her eyes; she wants to be a foreman and give orders.

  Mama feels guilty that Mr. Tafa’s stuck with the kids.

  “But he loves them,” I say. “Besides, he’s probably happy to get Mrs. Tafa out of his hair. Even happier that he doesn’t have to watch her drive.”

  “Chanda,” Mama laughs, “you shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “Why not?” I laugh back. “It’s the truth. If he knew how she tears around in his company truck, he’d have a heart attack.”

  He would, too. Mrs. Tafa is the scariest driver in the world. She’s so busy nibbling treats from the bag on her lap that she hardly ever looks at the road. When she does, it’s to stick her head out the window and yell at whoever she almost hit. Meanwhile, we’re taking curves so fast I’m surprised we don’t fly to the moon.

  All the same, I shouldn’t complain. Mama and I are lucky our relatives share cemeteries with Mrs. Tafa’s, and that she’s willing to drive. Otherwise, our trips would be impossible. We can’t afford taxis, local buses are rare, and Mama’s legs aren’t up to biking. (It’s times like this I envy the white families who run the diamond mines. They can afford spots in the cemetery downtown, with marble headstones, a gardener to keep things nice, and plots big enough for all their relatives to be together.)

  Our first stop is the graveyard where Papa and my brothers are buried, along with Mrs. Tafa’s first husband. It’s near the mine. For a few years after they died, we came by all the time. But after a while we started to miss a week here and there, until before I knew it we were only coming on special occasions. I’m glad we’re visiting again. Everyone says, “Life goes on,” but it’s awful to leave the people who loved you, even if you remember them with stories.

  Papa and my brothers are buried a piece from the road. In the beginning, Mama took my arm to make it over the rough ground. Now she uses a walking stick she got from Mrs. Tafa. It was left behind by a former tenant. The handle is carved to look like an eagle. Mama thinks it looks so nice she’s started to take it everywhere, even to the store. “Be careful,” I say. “People will think you’re an old lady.” She tells me not to be silly.

  Anyway, at the graves we say a few prayers. Then I rake the ground until it’s tidy, while Mama and Mrs. Tafa share their stories from the mine. Mama’s too tired to laugh the way she used to, even at the story of Papa and the black beans. But she manages to smile.

  The next cemetery we go to is home to Mr. Dube and of one of Mrs. Tafa’s sisters. We pray and tidy there, too. Then we drive to the cemetery where Sara is buried, along with Mrs. Tafa’s son Emmanuel. As soon as we pass through the gate, Mrs. Tafa’s cheeks go tight. She daubs the crumbs from her mouth, turns right, and hums a memorial song from her village.

  We can see Emmanuel’s plot from a distance. Mr. Tafa built him a moriti on a base of brick and concrete. Every week Mrs. Tafa unlocks the miniature gate in front and adds another plastic flower wrapped in cellophane. The moriti was getting pretty full until last month when vandals took a machete to the nylon roof and stole them all.

  When she saw what had happened, Mrs. Tafa couldn’t get out of the truck. She just sat behind the wheel sobbing, “Why? Why?” The look on her face made me ashamed of all the awful things I’ve ever thought about her.

  Mama held her the way I’d hold Esther. “It’s all right, Rose,” she comforted. “Emmanuel doesn’t mind. He was always so generous. His flowers are with poor souls who didn’t have any.”

  After prayers for Emmanuel, we visit Sara. Her mound has barely settled. The plot number painted on her brick is still fresh. Mama and I can’t afford artificial flowers, but if a wild hedge is in bloom, we break a sprig for her. Otherwise we write a poem on a piece of paper and leave it under a stone. It’s not much, but it’s something.

  Once Mama’s ready, she and Mrs. Tafa get back in the pickup and I haul my bicycle off the flatbed. While they drive back home to get the others ready for church, I head twenty rows over to be with Esther at her parents’ burial site. She’s always there waiting for me. Since she doesn’t go to school much, it’s the one place we’re certain to meet. (I could always bike to her place, but she’s made me promise not to. She says her auntie and uncle would shame her.)

  Mrs. Tafa used to drive me to the Macholos’ graves. She and Mama would park at the side of the road while Esther and I said prayers. Only Mrs. Tafa was alwa
ys rude about the way Esther dressed. “No respect. Not even for her own dead parents,” she’d say. “You’d think the little tramp was going to a dance.”

  One day I finally had enough. When Mama and I got home, I said: “Don’t have Mrs. Tafa take me to the Macholos’ graves anymore. I’ll bring my bike and go on my own.”

  Mama frowned. “You won’t make it back in time for church.”

  “Being with Esther’s more important.”

  Mama got a troubled look. Then she sat me down beside the washtub. “I know you and Esther are good friends,” she said. “You’ve known each other since we moved to Bonang. All the same, I think maybe you shouldn’t see her so often.”

  My heart thumped into my mouth. “I hardly see her at all.”

  Mama ignored me. “I like Esther. She’s a nice girl. But people have started to say things.”

  “You mean Mrs. Tafa has started to say things.”

  “I mean people.”

  I looked at my feet. “What sorts of things?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

  “Things about boys.”

  “Esther flirts, that’s all.”

  Mama paused. “Chanda, folks judge other folks by the company they keep. I don’t want you to be Esther’s friend anymore. I’d hate for people to say things about you.”

  I was sweating all over. Even the back of my wrists and knees. “Mama,” I pleaded, “this isn’t you talking, I know it. You don’t care about what people say. If you did, you’d never have run off with Papa.”

  Mama took my hands. “This is different,” she said gently. “You’re my baby. I worry about you.”

  “Mama, Esther has no one. If I cut her off, what kind of person would I be?”

  Mama had no answer. She took a deep breath and gave me a hug so long and hard I thought she’d never let go. You see, she knew I was right. I can’t abandon Esther. She’s alone now. Her little brothers and sister are gone.

  It’s nobody’s fault. All the same, Esther blames her aunties and uncles. After the doctor saw her mama, Esther asked them for help. Her papa’s oldest brother, her Uncle Kagiso Macholo, spoke for the family. He said they’d send food and whatever they could, but they lived too far away to do much else. The exception was her Auntie and Uncle Poloko, from her mama’s people. They lived nearby in a section of Bonang even poorer than ours.

  When I first saw the Polokos, it was obvious they hated Esther’s whole family. She says it’s because they were jealous of her papa’s job at the mine. Sickness didn’t make them friends. Her uncle chopped a bit of firewood; her auntie fixed some meals. But they were scared of the rubber gloves, so they never came inside. Instead, they’d sit in the yard and pray.

  Esther did everything else until the funeral. Then the out-of-town relatives arrived. After the burial feast, they had a meeting in the main room to see who’d look after Esther and her brothers and sister. It went on for hours.

  I waited outside with Esther until her Uncle Kagiso called her to join the circle. As soon as the front door closed, I sat under the window and listened through the shutters. Esther’s aunties and uncles tried to be kind, but the truth was hard. “None of us can afford to take you all,” her Uncle Kagiso said. “We can barely feed our own. But there’s an auntie and uncle for each of you.”

  “No,” Esther said. “We have to stay together. We’re a family.”

  “We’re all of us family,” her Uncle Kagiso replied.

  “I know, Uncle. But my brothers and sister and me, we need each other. If nobody can take us all, I’ll look after things by myself.”

  “How? The mine is taking back the house, the sickness and funerals have eaten your savings, and there’s nothing to sell except some old dishes and furniture. Where will you live? How will you eat? Where will you get the money for clothes, shoes, medicine, school...?”

  Esther didn’t have an answer. There wasn’t one. And so her family was broken up.

  One brother went to her Uncle Kagiso, the other to an uncle who was looking for herd boys. Her little sister went to an auntie with cataracts who needed help with sewing. The family knew that Esther’s parents wanted her to finish school. Since the best one was in Bonang, and since she’d have a better chance to get married into families that already knew her, Esther was placed with her Auntie and Uncle Poloko. You could tell they didn’t want her, but they couldn’t say no.

  That night I stayed with Esther as her brothers and sister were taken away. They clung to her. They wouldn’t stop screaming. Her aunties and uncles had to pry them loose. If Soly or Iris were taken away like that, I’d die.

  I get just as upset thinking about Esther’s life with the Polokos. She’s supposed to go to school, but according to her, they keep her like a servant. After cooking and cleaning and yard work, she has to babysit her nieces and nephews. There’re six of them under ten. They hit her and scratch her and call her names, and if she does anything to stop them, they scream that she’s hurting them, and her auntie hits her with a fry pan.

  If she complains, her uncle gets mad. “You think you’re a big shot like your mama and papa, with their running water and their flush toilet!” he yells. “Well, you’re no more special than us. While you live under our roof, you do what we say.”

  Whenever she can, Esther sneaks off. It’s trickier on weekdays. Her uncle fixes shoes part-time on the pavement outside Quality Fashions, and her auntie does shift work at KFC. She has to wait till they’re both gone, and hope the monsters don’t tell on her.

  Sundays, escape is easier. The entire family goes to church at Bethel Gospel Hall. In the beginning, they made Esther come along too, but she wouldn’t sing the hymns or pray. So now, for the sins of pride and blasphemy, they make her stay home and scrub the outhouse. Of course, she never does. Instead, she takes off to the cemetery to be with her mama and papa. And me.

  Luckily, we get to visit for a long time, on account of Bethel Gospel has the longest services in town. From early morning to late afternoon everyone’s singing, dancing, and speaking in tongues. Sometimes they fall down, “slain in the Lord.”

  Once when her mama was sick, Esther got a performance in her own front yard. The Polokos brought over their congregation for an exorcism. I was helping with her mama when they danced up the road swishing their robes and thumping their tambourines. It was like a parade and a circus all at once.

  The priest made a hullabaloo about sin and disease. “It’s Satan has brought sickness to this house!” He blessed a tin cup of holy water and mopane ash, and said the fiend would be cast out and Mrs. Macholo would be saved if she’d come to the door and drink it. Esther said her mama couldn’t move, much less come to the door; she was on her deathbed.

  “That’s the devil talking,” said the priest. “With God, all things are possible.” No sooner had the words left his lips than he was seized by the Spirit. He pushed his way inside and tried to force the holy water down Mrs. Macholo’s throat. Esther felt dirty. I can’t imagine how her mama felt. It was like the priest was blaming her for dying.

  It’s because of that that Esther doesn’t pray or sing hymns anymore. Once she stood on her mama’s grave and shouted: “If God could save Mama and Papa and didn’t, I hate Him. And if He couldn’t save them, He’s useless. Priests and church ladies should go straight to hell.”

  “Don’t say that! Don’t even think it!” I said. “Not all churches are like your auntie and uncle’s. Our priest talks about joy and peace and everlasting love.”

  “Blah blah blah.” Esther made a face. “God-talk is just superstitious mumbo jumbo.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is so. Priests are no better than spirit doctors. The only difference is that you believe in one and not the other.”

  I wish Esther wouldn’t be like that, but I try not to judge her. I don’t think God judges her either, not after what she’s gone through. She doesn’t have a home, a family, or anything to believe in anymore. No wonder she likes to get her picture take
n at the Liberty. It’s the one way she gets to feel important.

  16

  AS USUAL, THIS SUNDAY ESTHER’S ALREADY WAITING for me when I roll up. She’s lying on her mama’s grave daydreaming, in those lime capri pants she picked up at the bazaar. They’re filthy and torn. But that’s not what I notice first. It’s her right eye, all purple and swollen shut.

  I hop off my bike. “What happened?”

  Esther looks up with a lopsided grin. “Last night Auntie threw the iron at my head.”

  “Why?”

  She roars with laughter. “She told me to do the laundry. I told her to shove it up her ass.”

  “That’s not funny. You’ve been beaten before. Next time call the cops.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Esther stretches. “Auntie’d say I was lying and I’d get another whupping from my uncle. Either that or they’d kick me onto the street. Then what would I do?”

  “You could live with us.”

  Esther groans. “Your mama doesn’t want me around.”

  “That’s not true,” I lie.

  “It is so. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.” She cartwheels in my direction.

  I leap out of her way. “You’re worse than Soly and Iris put together!”

  “I hope so,” she winks. Or tries to wink.

  We walk to our favorite spot, an uprooted tree stump by a bend in the road. As we go, we collect flat, smooth stones. Once we’ve arrived, we hunch on the stump and take turns tossing them at the pothole on the far side of the bend. It’s a game we started weeks ago. In the beginning, we thought we’d have it filled by rainy season, but at the rate we’re going I wouldn’t count on it.

  I tell Esther about yesterday, and how Iris claims she’s playing with Sara.

  “If you want my opinion,” Esther says, “you should bring her to Sara’s grave.” She lands a stone perfectly. “I mean it. Seeing where Sara’s buried would make it real for her. Then maybe this imaginary friend would go away.” She lands a second.