Now the cameraman pounces on Godknows’s black buttocks. Bastard points and laughs, and Godknows turns around and covers the holes of his shorts with his hands like he is that naked man in the Bible, but he cannot completely hide his nakedness. We are all laughing at Godknows. When the cameraman gets to Bastard, Bastard takes off his hat and smiles like he is something handsome. Then he makes all sorts of poses: flexes his muscles, puts his hands on the waist, does the V sign, kneels with one knee on the ground.
You are not supposed to laugh or smile. Or any of that silly stuff you are doing, Godknows says.
You are just jealous because all they took of you are your buttocks. Your dirty, chapped, kaka buttocks, Bastard says.
No, I’m not. What’s to be jealous about, you ugly face? Godknows says, even though he can be beaten up for those words.
I can do what I want, black buttocks. Besides, when they look at my picture over there, I want them to see me. Not my buttocks, not my dirty clothes, but me.
Who will look at your picture? I ask. Who will see our pictures? But nobody answers me.
After the pictures, the gifts. At first we try and line up nicely, as if we are ants going to a wedding, but when they open the back of the lorry, we turn into dizzied dung flies. We push and we shove and we yell and we scream. We lurch forward with hands outstretched. We want to grab and seize and hoard. The NGO people just stand there gaping. Then the tall lady in the blue hat shouts, Excuse me! Order! Order, please! but we just laugh and dive and heave and shove and shout like we cannot even understand spoken language. We are careful not to touch the NGO people, though, because we can see that even though they are giving us things, they do not want to touch us or for us to touch them.
The adults have come from the shacks and are standing slightly to the side like they have been counted out of country-game. They don’t order us to stop pushing. They don’t look at us with talking eyes. But we know that if the NGO people were not here, they would seize switches or pounce on us with their bare hands, that if the NGO people were not here, we would not even dare act like we are doing in the first place. But then the NGO people are here and while they are, our parents do not count. It’s Sis Betty who finally gets us to stop by screaming at us, but she does it in our language, maybe so that the NGO people do not understand.
What are you doing, masascum evanhu imi? Liyahlanya, you think these expensive white people came all the way from overseas ipapa to see you act like baboons? Do you want to embarrass me, heh? Futsekani, don’t be buffoons zinja, behave at once or else we’ll get in the lorry and drive off right this minute with all this shit! she says. Then Sis Betty turns to the NGO people and smiles her gap-toothed smile. They smile back, pleased. Maybe they think she just told us good things about them.
We stop pushing, stop fighting, stop screaming. We stand in a neat line again and wait patiently. The line moves so slowly I could scream, but in the end we all get our gifts and we are happy. Each one of us gets a toy gun, some sweets, and something to wear; I get a T-shirt with the word Google at the front, plus a red dress that is tight at the armpits.
Thank you much, I say to the pretty lady who hands me my things, to show her that I know English. She doesn’t say anything back, like maybe I just barked.
After we get our things, it’s the adults’ turn. They stand in their own line, trying to look like they don’t really care, like they have better things to do than be here. The truth is that we hear them all the time complain about how the NGO people have forgotten them, how they should visit more often, how NGO this and NGO that, like maybe the NGO are their parents. Soon the adults get small packets of beans and sugar and mealie-meal but you can see from their faces that they are not satisfied. They look at the tiny packages like they don’t want them, like they are embarrassed and disappointed by them, but in the end they turn and head back to the shacks with the things.
It’s MotherLove alone who does not join the line for food. She stands there like a baobab tree, looking at everything from the side, in her bright gown with the many stars. There is a sadness on her face. One of the NGO ladies takes her sunglasses off and waves to MotherLove, but MotherLove just stands there, not waving back, not smiling, not anything. Sis Betty holds out some packages.
Hawu, MotherLove! Sis Betty shouts in a silly voice like she is coaxing a stupid child. Please come, bantu, can’t you see we’ve brought you gifts? she says. The NGO people hold out more little packages to MotherLove, and the two white women even bare their teeth like grinning dogs. Everybody is waiting to see what MotherLove will do. She turns and strides away, head held high, the bangles on her arms jingling, the stars on her dress shining, her scent of lemon staying in the air even after she is gone.
When the NGO lorry finally leaves, we take off and run after it; we have got what we wanted and don’t care how they want us to do. We wave our toy guns and gifts in the air and shout what we want them to bring us next time: shoes, All Stars, balls, cell phones, cake, underwear, drinks, biscuits, U.S. dollars. The groaning sound of the lorry drowns our voices but we continue to run and shout regardless. When we get to Mzilikazi, we stop because we know we cannot get on the road. Sbho screams, Take me with you! and we’re all screaming the words, screaming and screaming, like somebody said the lorry would turn around and take whoever screamed the loudest.
We watch the lorry get smaller and smaller until it’s just a dot, and when it finally disappears we turn around and walk back towards the shanty. Now that the lorry is gone-gone, we do not scream anymore. We are as quiet as graves, sad like the adults coming back from burying the dead. Then Bastard says, Let’s go and play war, and then we take off and run to kill each other with our brand-new guns from America.
Real Change
The adults are preparing to vote and so for now everything is not the same in Paradise. When we wake up, the men are already parked under the jacaranda, but this time they are not crouching over draughts, no. They sit up straight, chests jutting out, and hold their heads high. They have their shirts on and have combed their hair and just look like real people again.
When we pass, they smile and wave like they can actually see us, like maybe they like us now, like we are their new friends. We are surprised that they still remember how to smile, but we don’t smile back. We just stand together and carefully look at them, at the hairs peeping through the tops of their shirts, at the foreheads that we know can turn to ridges anytime, at the eyes that we have seen become lightning whenever they’re angry, at the bricks in the arms that have clobbered us before, and we know that this smiling at us means nothing.
Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.
They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder. We listen, and then we grow tired of listening but we know, from the men’s faces, from their voices, that what they are talking about is supposed to be a good thing.
The women, when the women hear the men, they giggle. Now there is something almost lovely in the women’s eyes, and from the way they are looking, you can tell that they are trying to be beautiful. Painted lips. Made-up hair. A pink ribbon pinned to the dress, just above the left breast. A thick figure belt. A bangle made from rusty, twisted wire. A fur coat, most of the fur fallen off. A flower tucked behind an ear. Hair straightened by a red-hot rock. Earrings made from colorful seeds. Bright patches of cloth sewn onto a skirt. We haven’t seen the women look like this in a while and their beauty makes us want to love them.
What happens when the adults go and vote? Godknows asks. We are busy putting up the Change, Real Change posters like Bornfree and Messenger told us to. We are supposed to put one on the door of each shack, to remind people they need to go and vote on the twenty-eighth.
Weren’t you even listening to the adults? S
bho says. There’ll be change.
Yes, but what exactly is it, this change? Godknows says. He has just finished putting up a poster and is now looking into it like it has eyes, like it is a person. Sbho starts to speak, but then bends down to pick up a broken mirror and smiles into it, admiring herself.
We continue putting up the posters; the thing is, we don’t even care about any change, we’re doing this only because Bornfree says he has some Chinese yams for us when we finish the job. Maybe we’ll go to Green Zonke and buy something with the yams. I’ve never seen Chinese money before, but what I know is that their shoes are plain kaka; I wore them just four times and they turned to rubbish.
You know, one day I’ll become president, Bastard says. We have put up most of the posters and we’re now doing the last of the shacks, towards Heavenway Cemetery.
President of what? I say.
President of a country, this country, Bastard says. What do you think I’m talking about, you dumb donkey?
But you have to be an old, old man to become president, Stina says.
Who told you that? How do you know? Bastard says, slapping a poster onto a door. He does it so hard that the tin trembles, and a voice inside says, You, you damage my door and I’ll make you wipe your asses with razor blades, fools! and we look at each other and giggle, hands covering our mouths. In reply, Bastard raises his fist and makes like he will pound the shack. His poster is tilted, but he doesn’t try to fix it. He turns to look at Stina over his shoulder.
I said, how do you know? Bastard says again.
I know, Stina says. I saw a picture of the president in a magazine. He was also with the president of Zambia and Malawi and South Africa and other presidents. They were all old; you have to be like a grandfather first.
Bastard’s poster falls, and he picks it up and tears it into two. He stretches out his leg and rolls one piece on his thigh to make like it’s a cigarette. He puts the rolled-up paper in his mouth, reaches into his tracksuit, and takes out a box of matches. We all watch him light up his cigarette and smoke it.
What are you doing? I say.
Can’t you see he’s practicing? Godknows says.
It doesn’t matter, Bastard says. It doesn’t matter that I’ll be old and white-haired, as long as I’ll have money. Presidents are very rich, he says. He laughs like the men, takes a drag on the cigarette, and the smoke chokes him he coughs and coughs and spits. Nobody asks him for a smoke.
When we’re finished, there’s a poster on every shack, except Mother of Bones’s because she told us she would kill us if we ever put our nonsense on her door. Now, with all the posters, Paradise looks like a colorful thing. We are proud of ourselves; we clap and we dance and we laugh.
Let’s sing a Lady Gaga, Sbho says.
No, let’s sing the national anthem like we used to do at school assembly, I say.
Yes, let’s sing, and me, I’ll stand in front because I’ll be president, Bastard says. We line up nicely by Merjury’s shack and sing at the top of our voices, sing until the little kids come and gather around us, but they know they must not join.
Wayyyt, wayyyt, wih neeeeed tuh tayke a pictchur, whereh ease mah cemera? Godknows cries, making like he is the NGO man, and we laugh and we laugh and we laugh. Godknows runs and picks up one of those bricks with holes in them and holds it like it’s a camera and takes and takes and takes pictures. We smile and we strike poses and we look pretty and we shout, Change! Cheese! Change!
I am not sleeping. It’s just that Mother expects me to be sleeping, that’s why my eyes are closed like this. Mother of Bones tells me that because he is always hunted, the hare sleeps with his eyes wide open. This is to fool everybody; when his eyes are shut, he is actually awake. Right now I am the hare but I have to be careful not to be found because Mother is busy parading all over the place. She paces a lot, as if we live in a Budapest house.
We didn’t always live in this tin, though. Before, we had a home and everything and we were happy. It was a real house made of bricks, with a kitchen, sitting room, and two bedrooms. Real walls, real windows, real floors, and real doors and a real shower and real taps and real running water and a real toilet you could sit on and do whatever you wanted to do. We had real sofas and real beds and real tables and a real TV and real clothes. Everything real.
Now all we have is this small bed that sits on some bricks and poles. Mother made the bed herself, with the help of Mother of Bones. The inside of the mattress is made of plastic and chicken’s and duck’s feathers and old pieces of cloth and all sorts of things. That’s our parents’ bed, but Father is not home to sleep on it because he is in South Africa. He does not return to see us or bring us things, which is why Mother is sometimes worried and sometimes mad and sometimes disappointed in him. Because Father does not do anything for us, Mother complains. About our tinned house, Paradise, the food that is not there, the clothes she wants, and everything else.
Mother is sitting on the bed now, I can tell by the noise of the mattress. It makes different noises, depending on how a body is positioned on the bed. Mother is silent; I wonder what she is thinking. Sometimes she is just silent like that, with her head held like a heavy melon in both hands, like somebody told her, Be careful or your head will fall on the ground and smash into red, impossible pieces.
Now there is a very soft tap on the door. It’s that man again. I don’t know his name but I know it’s him and nobody else because he always knocks five times, not four, not six, just five, and so softly too, like he fears he will make dents in the tin. Mother pulls the blankets over my head and then blows out the candle before opening the door. But what she doesn’t know is that I am always awake most of the time this happens, because I am the hare.
I hear the door creaking open, and Mother whispers something to the man and he whispers back. I cannot hear the words properly; they are speaking like they are stealing.
Now Mother is laughing. I like it when she laughs like this. It’s like how she used to laugh when we lived in a house. I don’t know what he said, this man, to make Mother laugh like this. I also don’t know what he looks like because I can never see his face in the dark. I don’t even know his name, but I know that I don’t like him. He never asks after me, like I’m just a country that is far away. He also never brings us anything. All he does is just come in the dark like a ghost and leap onto the bed with Mother.
Now Mother is moaning; the man, he is panting. The bed is shuffling like a train taking them somewhere important that needs to be reached fast. Now the train stops and spits them on the bed of plastic, and the man lets out a terrific groan. Then Mother and the man are still; I hear nothing more, only some heavy breathing. Maybe they are sleeping, but in the morning the man will be gone; he gets up and sneaks away during the night and when day comes he is gone, like something too terrible to be seen in the light.
Now I am counting inside my head; this way I will not sleep. Nobody knows that sometimes I do not sleep. I am the hare. Even if I want to sleep I cannot because if I sleep, the dream will come, and I don’t want it to come. I am afraid of the bulldozers and those men and the police, afraid that if I let the dream come, they will get out of it and become real. I dream about what happened back at our house before we came to Paradise. I try to push it away and push it away but the dream keeps coming and coming like bees, like rain, like the graves at Heavenway.
In my dream, which is not a dream-dream because it is also the truth that happened, the bulldozers appear boiling. But first, before we see them, we hear them. Me and Thamu and Josephat and Ncane and Mudiwa and Verona are outside playing with More’s new football, and then we hear thunder. Then Ncane says, What is that? Then Josephat says, It’s the rain. I say, No, it’s the planes. Then Maneru’s grandfather comes sprinting down Freedom Street without his walking stick, shouting, They are coming, Jesus Christ, they are coming! Everybody is standing on the street, neck craned, waiting to see. Then Mother shouts, Darlingcomeintothehousenow! but then the bulldozers
are already near, big and yellow and terrible and metal teeth and spinning dust.
The men driving the bulldozers are laughing. I hear the adults saying, Why why why, what have we done, what have we done, what have we done? Then the lorries come carrying the police with those guns and baton sticks and we run and hide inside the houses, but it’s no use hiding because the bulldozers start bulldozing and bulldozing and we are screaming and screaming. The fathers are throwing hands in the air like women and saying angry things and kicking stones. The women are screaming the names of the children to see where we are and they are grabbing things from the houses: plates, clothes, a Bible, food, just grabbing whatever they can grab. And there is dust all over from the crumbling walls; it gets into our hair and mouths and noses and makes us cough and cough.
The men knock down our house and Ncane’s house and Josephat’s house and Bongi’s house and Sibo’s house and many houses. Knockiyani knockiyani knockiyani: men driving metal, metal slamming brick, brick crumbling. When they get to Mai Tari’s house she throws herself in front of a bulldozer and says, Kwete! You’ll have to bulldoze me first before I see my house go down, you dog shit. One ugly policeman points a gun to her head to make her move and she says, Kill me, kill me now, for you have no shame, you could even kill your own mother and eat her up, imbwa! The policeman does not kill Mai Tari, he only hits her with a gun on the head, because all eyes are on him and maybe he has to do something important. Blood gushes from Mai Tari’s head and turns the policeman’s boots red-red.
When the bulldozers finally leave, everything is broken, everything is smashed, everything is wrecked. It is sad faces everywhere, choking dust everywhere, broken walls and bricks everywhere, tears on people’s faces everywhere. Gayigusu kicks broken bricks with his bare feet and rips his shirt off and jabs at the terrible scar running across his back and bellows, I got this from the liberation war, salilwelilizwe leli, we fought for this facking lizwe mani, we put them in power, and today they turn on us like a snake, mpthu, and he spits. Musa’s father stands with his hands in his pockets and does not say anything but the front of his trousers is wet. Little Tendai points at him and laughs.
We Need New Names: A Novel Page 5