I cannot look away from the woman’s eyes, but I’m ashamed that she is seeing us up in her tree, ashamed for her that we are seeing them being taken away like that. The black shadow remains on her face, and she keeps looking, like maybe she wants to pluck us out of the tree with her eyes, and I begin to think we will fall out from being looked at like that. We know from the look, because eyes can talk, that she hates us, not just a little bit but a whole lot. She doesn’t say anything; they move her past, and we exhale.
Where are they taking them? Godknows says, sounding like himself now.
Maybe they are going to kill them, he answers himself. Maybe they’ll take them to the forest so their screams for help are not heard, and kill them there.
When we are sure they are gone-gone we quickly climb down the tree and head straight for the house. It’s the first time we are entering a white people’s house so we pause by the door, like we don’t know how to walk through a door. Godknows, who is at the front, wipes his feet on the mat that says Wipe Your Paws but then just keeps standing. Bastard comes from behind, pushes Godknows aside, and steps in like he is the real owner of the house and he has the keys. We all pour in after him.
Inside, the cold air hits us and we put our hands on our bare arms and feel goose bumps. We look around, surprised.
How is it cold in here when it is so hot outside? Sbho says in a whisper, but nobody answers her, which means we don’t know. Around us everything is strewn about and broken. Chairs, the TV, the large radio, the beautiful things we don’t know. We stand in the wreckage; nobody says it but we are disappointed by the senseless damage, as if it’s our own things that they have destroyed.
In the sitting room, we stand before the large mask on the wall and stare at the black face, the eyes gouged out. It is a long, thin face, white lining the eyebrows and the lips. The forehead is high and protrudes a little, and yellow dots divide it in half. The nose is long, and the round mouth is open, like it’s letting out a howl. And finally a horn grows at the top of the head.
Bastard picks his way through the strewn furniture and unhooks the mask from the wall. He covers his face with it and starts barking like the white people’s dog.
That’s what pagans do, they wear things like that, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro said so at church, I tell Bastard, but he keeps the mask on and continues barking and barking and barking. It’s not funny so nobody laughs. We leave the sitting room and go to the next large room with the long table that’s now broken and the many chairs that are lying all over the place. Dangling from the center of the ceiling is a large light, part of it smashed.
Why do they have two sitting rooms? Godknows says.
This is not a sitting room, it’s a dining room, Bastard says. And get out of my way and stop asking kaka questions. We poke our way through the room, then we stop by one end of the wall to look at the pictures that have been left untouched.
Why do white people like to take pictures? Godknows says.
It’s because they are beautiful, Sbho says.
The pictures?
No, the white people.
In the pictures we see women in long dresses and funny hats. A boy rides a black horse; he looks happy, the horse doesn’t. A man stands next to a long rock, pointing a gun. He bites his lower lip in concentration, like maybe he is constipated and he is trying to push it out. Another man is dressed in a soldier’s uniform and carries a red beret. His left breast is flashy with metal thingies. He looks at the camera like he doesn’t know where to look. A man dressed in khaki stands in front of a field of maize. A man and woman are getting married, surrounded by happy people carrying drinks in their hands.
It’s like a museum, Sbho said. This is what they do in a museum, look at pictures and things.
It’s called a gallery, Stina says.
In a very large picture that takes up a big part of the wall, a tall, thin man with graying hair parted at the side is dressed in a suit that matches his kind of blue eyes. He holds a cup and saucer in one hand. His free hand is raised slightly, like he is speaking with it. At the bottom of the picture are the words The Hon. Ian Douglas Smith; Rhodesians never die. In the next picture, a little toddler stands holding hands with a monkey. They are dressed in identical blue thingies that are half shirts, half vests, like they are twins.
And in another photo, next to the twins, a nice-looking woman with a round face smiles. She is all bling: a sparkling crown sits on her head, with a necklace and earrings to match. The picture is not even interesting, and she is not even crazy beautiful, but we all stand there and lift our eyes to her like maybe we are looking at a flag.
Why does she look like that? Bastard says.
Like what? Sbho says.
Like that thing is heavy, Bastard says.
It’s called a crown, I say. And she is called a queen. I know her.
How do you know her? Bastard says.
She was at our house. A long time ago.
You’re lying. What would a white person even be doing at your kaka house? Bastard says.
Yes, she was. Under the bed. Under Mother of Bones’s bed.
The queen was under your grandmother’s bed? Godknows says.
Mnncccc. Sbho sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes.
Her face was on this British money that Mother of Bones kept in her Bible under the bed. That’s how I know her, I say.
That crown on her head is very heavy, that’s why she is smiling like that, smiling like she just ate a whole bunch of unripe guavas. It’s heavy because it’s made of gold, Godknows says.
I thought crowns were made of thorns. I saw a picture of it in the Bible, there when they were killing Jesus, Sbho says.
Maybe you saw another Bible. In the one I saw myself, Jesus had a real crown made of gold too. I mean, his father owns the whole world, Godknows says.
You are both lying, gold is not heavy, and you wouldn’t carry it on your head, Bastard says.
How do you know? Godknows says.
My uncle Jabu told me. He worked in the mine, remember? He said it was yellow and sparkling, but he never mentioned any heavy. He was going to bring it for us to see but then those kaka soldiers shot him down there, Bastard says, his voice starting to rise with show-off-ness.
We know the story. You’ve already told us, Sbho says.
Yes, but I didn’t tell you about how they tried to hide his body. It was in all the newspapers, Bastard says, but we are already moving to another room. I am thinking of my cousin Makhosi’s hands of rubble, when he too worked the mine. When I look behind me, Bastard is busy patting his Afro like there’s a crown there he wants to fix in place.
In the bedroom everything is smashed as well but we still get on the bed and jump on it, except Sbho, who stands in front of a broken mirror and paints her lips red, then sprays herself with this blue bottle of perfume. We jump and we jump and we jump, the springs lifting us so high we raise our hands and almost slap the white ceiling each time we go up. Then after we get tired of jumping we get under the sheets and close our eyes and make snoring sounds. The bed is soft and smells so nice I don’t even want to get up from it.
We are like Goldidogs, I say from under my sheets. The three bears are coming, I say, but nobody says anything and I know it’s because they never read the story back in school.
Let’s do the adult thing, Sbho says, and we giggle. Now her lips look like she’s been drinking blood, and she smells expensive. We look at each other shy-like, like we are seeing one another for the first time. Then Bastard gets on top of Sbho. Then Godknows moves over but I push him away because I want Stina, not chapped-buttocks Godknows, to get on top of me. Stina climbs on me and lies still and we all giggle and giggle. I feel him crushing my stomach under his heavy body and I’m thinking what I’d do if it burst open and things splattered all over.
We are lying like that, giggling and doing the adult thing on the white people’s soft bed, when we hear the ringing. We jump up and look around, unsure what
to do.
What is that? Godknows says.
It’s a phone, Stina says.
It’s a phone! It’s a phone! It’s a phone! we yell, running out of the bedroom towards the sound. We hunt for the phone in the living room and quickly find it under a towel. Stina flips the phone open and says, Hallo. Then he laughs and gives it to Sbho, who laughs and gives it to Bastard, who laughs and gives it to me. I am the one who speaks better English, so I say, Hallo, how are you, how can I help you this afternoon?
Who is this? a voice says on the other end. It is surprised, the way you sound when you find something you were not expecting.
It’s me, I say.
What? Who are you?
Darling.
Darling?
Yes, Darling.
Okay, is this a joke? How did you get the phone?
No, it’s not a joke, and I got the phone from Bastard, I say.
Bastard? Okay, wait, can you just give the phone to the owner?
The owner is not here.
Where is she? Where are they?
We don’t know. They took them away.
What? Who is we? Who took them away? I can hear from her voice that she is maybe frowning. I also remember that I haven’t been using the word ma’am like we were taught to at school and I almost want to start the conversation over just so I can do it right.
The gang, ma’am, I say, doing it the right way now.
What gang?
The one with the weapons and flags, ma’am.
Where did they take them?
I don’t know, ma’am.
Jesus, Dan, can you find out what’s going on here? I just called Mom and Dad and some weird African kid has Mom’s phone, the woman says to somebody called Dan.
By now everybody is looking at me like I’m something and as for me I’m just proud that I’m finally talking to a white person, which I haven’t ever done in my life. Not like this. Then a new voice, a man’s voice, comes on. When he starts speaking to me in my language I laugh; I have never heard a white person speak my language before. It sounds funny, but I’m a little disappointed because I want to keep speaking in English.
The white man asks me what has happened and I tell him everything, but I don’t tell him the part about us stealing the guavas. In the end he tells me that I should put the phone back and that we should get out of the house because it’s not our house and we have no right to be there. I close the phone and put it back under the towel, where we found it, but I don’t tell the others what the man said about getting out of the house. I am already thinking of how many people from Paradise can live here in this big house. Maybe five families, maybe eight.
In the kitchen, water gushes from opened taps and we stop them. The table and chairs have been overturned, and plates and cups and pots and gadgets litter the floor. When we open the fridge we find it untouched, which surprises us. We gorge ourselves on the bread, bananas, yogurt, drinks, chicken, mangoes, rice, apples, carrots, milk, and whatever food we find. We eat things we have never seen before, things whose names we don’t even know.
Wee fawgoat the fowks, wee fawgoat the fowks, Godknows says, sounding like a white man, and we giggle. He starts towards the cupboards and rummages and rummages and rummages, and then he is back with the glinting forks and knives and we eat like proper white people. When we miss our mouths we laugh, fling the things away, and go back to using our hands. We stuff ourselves and we stuff ourselves, stuff ourselves until we almost cannot breathe.
I want to defecate, Godknows says, and we all leave the kitchen to hunt for the toilet. Our stomachs are so full they could explode. We walk like elephants because we are heavy, and the food has made us tired. We find the toilet at the end of the long passage. There is a big white round thing where they bathe, then there is the glass shower, the soaps, the gadgets and things. There is also a terrible reeking smell, and we look at the other end, and there, near the toilet, we see the words Blak Power written in brown feces on the large bathroom mirror.
For Real
The singing is so distant it’s like the voices have been buried under the earth and they are now trying to get out. We’ve been waiting for it all afternoon, so when we hear it we stop all play and make a dash for the big tree right in the middle of Heavenway. We climb the tree double-fast, and within a few minutes we are high up. Me, I prop myself nicely, find a good strong branch for support, and make sure I am well covered by the leaves.
Look over there, now they are coming, Godknows says, and we see the mourners bursting from behind the big anthill and coming towards Heavenway. They are here to bury Bornfree even though they were told what would happen if they were found doing it. We are watching it this way because we can’t go to the funeral since children are not allowed inside Heavenway. But what the adults don’t know is that we sneak in whenever we want to watch funerals like this, or just to roam around or even play.
Heavenway is mounds and mounds of red earth everywhere, like people are being harvested, like death is maybe waiting behind a rock with a big bag of free food and people are rushing, tripping over each other to get to the front before the handouts run out. That is how it is, the way the dead keep coming and coming.
And on the red mounds, the artifacts memorializing the dead: Smashed plates. Broken cups. Knobkerries. Heaps of stones. Branches of the mphafa tree. Everything looking sad and clumsy and ugly. I don’t know why people don’t try to make the place look pretty—for example, by painting the crosses and weeding the khaki grass and planting nice flowers—since the dead cannot do it themselves. That is what I would want if I were dead. For my grave to look nice, not this kaka.
I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth. My favorite part about Heavenway are the crosses bearing the names of the dead. If we are not watching funerals we sometimes walk around reading the names on the graves. I always try to imagine I knew the people and make up stories about them in my head, or I tell them things that have been happening while they have been under the earth.
When you look at the names together with the dates you see that they are really now names of the dead. And when you know maths like me then you can figure out the ages of the buried and see that they died young, their lives short like those of house mice. A person is supposed to live a full life, live long and grow old, like Mother of Bones, for example. It’s that Sickness that is killing them. Nobody can cure it so it just does as it pleases—killing killing killing, like a madman hacking unripe sugarcane with a machete.
The coffin men appear first, marching ahead of the rest of the mourners. They pass right under our tree, shouldering the coffin, their long shoes, brick-colored from the earth, punching the ground and lifting at exactly the same time—up-down, left-right, up-down, left-right—like the feet are playing marimbas tucked just beneath the red, callused skin of the earth.
That is how they move, the six men with faces of rock and lightning in their eyes and zero nonsense in their march—up-down, left-right, up-down, left-right. It’s nice, the way they are marching, and so we all look at one another and smile. Bornfree’s coffin is draped by a flag with black, red, yellow, and green stripes, with a white heart on the front. We have seen quite a few coffins like that lately; it’s the Change people, like Bornfree, in the coffins.
And next comes the throng of mourners. This is the first time we are seeing this many people at Heavenway; it’s just bodies all over, clogging the narrow paths. Many of them are wearing the black T-shirt with the white heart at the front or with the word Change. But these ones are not like the mourners we have seen before. These ones do not cry; they do not wail. They do not lower their eyes to the ground; they do not cross their hands behind their backs. They do not measure their footsteps. These ones rush after the coffin. They whistle; they raise their fists. They chant Bornfree’s name like they want him to appear from wher
ever he is. These mourners are angry.
In the sea of bodies are some of the adults from Paradise. There is Mother, there is MaMoyo, and Mother of Bones even. MotherLove. Dignity. Chenzira. Soneni. The men. The Holy Chariot Church people. Almost all the adults are here, but now they don’t look the same, they look like bones after you have chewed away the meat.
In the days right after the voting, after the party at MotherLove’s shack, Paradise didn’t sleep. The adults stayed up for many nights, dizzy and restless with expectation, not knowing how to sit still, not knowing how to bend low inside the shacks, not knowing how to sleep, not knowing how to do anything anymore except stand around fires and talk about how they would live the new lives that were waiting for them.
The first thing I’ll do is get a house where I’ll stand up to my full height. Ya, a real house fit for a big man like me.
I’m going back to finish my final year at university. I’ll go and get my children from those ugly streets, you know, call back those who have gone abroad, tell them to come back home. Have my family again, you know, like a human being, you know?
We’ll start living. It won’t be the same again. Come, change, come now.
They talked like that, stayed up night after night and waited for the change that was near. Waited and waited and waited. But then the waiting did not end and the change did not happen. And then those men came for Bornfree. That did it, that made the adults stop talking about change. It was like the voting and the partying and everything that had happened had not even happened. And the adults just returned quietly to the shacks to see if they could still bend low. They found they could bend; bend better than a branch burdened with rotting guavas. Now everything is the same again, but the adults are not. When you look into their faces it’s like something that was in there got up and gathered its things and walked away.
Messenger is there too, among the mourners, and there is so much anger and pain on his face you almost cannot tell it’s Messenger, you almost cannot tell it’s even a face you are looking at. If Messenger were to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound; it’s all there, on his face, the pain. I don’t know what he will do now without his Bornfree because they went everywhere and did everything together, like maybe they were a pair of ears.
We Need New Names: A Novel Page 10