by J. L. Powers
Zi isn’t so respectful. She’s sucking her thumb, the scarf we managed to tie on her head last night clinging to a single knotted plait. “Were you having a nightmare?”
“No!” I deny it quick quick. But I know this much: dreams don’t come out of nowhere. They are signs, sent from the ancestors as warnings. They’ve bothered me for two nights in a row now. What is it they’re trying to tell me?
I close the door to the toilet and sit on the edge of the bathtub, looking down at my feet, following the cracks in the linoleum from one end of the room to the other, trying to forget what I saw.
CHAPTER FIVE
VISIT TO THE SANGOMA
Gogo has trouble getting out of bed the next morning, sore from her walk up the hill to go to Umnumzana Dudu’s funeral.
“Why don’t you stay in bed, Gogo?” I suggest. “God will understand if you miss church just once because you are so tired.”
But no matter how tired she is, or how sick, Gogo always goes to church. “God never says, ‘I’m too much tired, I don’t think I’ll forgive your sins today,’” she says now as she struggles to sit up.
I glance quickly down at her swollen knees. Gogo gasps as she tries to stand and I reach forward to give her support. We hobble into the dining room, where Gogo collapses on the sofa and Zi sits beside her, patting her arm. I pull a little table forward and lift Gogo’s feet to help bring the circulation back.
“I’ll go to the sangoma after church and get some muthi to bring the swelling down,” I say. I need to see the sangoma myself—to talk to her about the dreams…about what happened yesterday…about the drunk man who looked like he turned into a crocodile…
Mama stands in the doorway of the kitchen. “She needs to go to the doctor, Khosi,” she says.
“The sangoma’s herbs always work, Mama.” Please, Mama, I need to go.
“A doctor’s medicine will work even better,” Mama says.
“But when can she go to the doctor?” I ask. “She can’t go alone and by the time I’m back from school, it’s too late, the clinic is closed.”
Mama closes her eyes at the impossibility of it all. She leaves early Monday morning and comes home late on Friday night. After helping Inkosikazi Dudu last week, she can’t miss another day of work—we depend on her small salary for every last penny.
“I can stay home from school and take Gogo to the clinic this week,” I offer, sinking inside.
Mama shakes her head. “School is too important.”
Anyway, if I stay home from school, Zi has to stay home from school, too. She is too young to walk through Imbali by herself or to catch a khumbi to go into the city, where we are lucky enough to go to a private school because we have scholarships.
“Then let me go to the sangoma and get some herbs. It’s brought the swelling down in the past, Mama.”
Mama sighs. “It’s the best way. For now.”
I sit down beside Gogo and put my arm around her. “There are people from the parish who will come and let you celebrate mass here at home,” I say. “I’ll ask them to come this afternoon. You stay here and rest. Next week you’ll feel better.”
So Gogo stays home from church, for the first time I can remember. While Mama is in the toilet getting ready, Gogo calls me to her side. I lean in close. “Don’t forget, tell the sangoma about the witch,” she whispers.
“That will be expensive, Gogo,” I say.
She fiddles around in her pockets and hands me fifty rand. “If you can only pay for one thing, forget my muthi. It is not so important as blocking that old woman’s evil.”
Mama locks the gate behind us, and we start walking up the hill toward our church, the Catholic one, which is just behind the water tank covered in bright, bold graffiti. Zi dances ahead of us, calling hello to the people we pass.
We walk past house after house, past the tall buildings of flats, tsotsis hanging out on the top floors, smoking dagga, shaking their dreadlocks, and shouting insults at us.
“Yah, Ntombi,” they scream at me. “Come have a good time!”
Mama shakes her fist at them but they just laugh and stare at us. At me. “I don’t like the way men are looking at you, Khosi,” she says.
“I never come this way alone,” I say. I’ve already learned to avoid the places where tsotsis hang out. I don’t like the way they approach, slow, like they have all the time in the world. They pass by me, staring, their faces a mask but their eyes lit up with—with what? Something I don’t want to see. I’ve never seen a tsotsi smile, though surely they must, somewhere, sometime…right? Maybe they smile at their mothers.
But Mama isn’t done fretting. “No, you need to be very careful.”
It’s like Mama thinks I don’t know what those men could do to me. I may be young but I have friends all over Imbali and they tell me just what happens if you flirt with danger. Even one of them, Sibu, told me it can happen with men you know. Her own uncle crawled into bed with her one night! She didn’t dare tell her parents.
I’m glad my mother’s brother Richard is nothing like that. When he comes home on the weekend—hayibo!—the only thing I have to worry about is his dirty socks. He has never tried what what what with me. No, he is just like Gogo and Mama, always telling me not to be like other young women. “Wena uzihloniphe,” they say, over and over. “Respect yourself. Protect your virtue.” Though I agree with what they say, I don’t understand how you are responsible for protecting your virtue if a man attacks and overpowers you.
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” I say, impatient.
But of course, Mama isn’t comforted by my words. So I try again. “Mama, the farthest I go alone is to the sangoma’s house to pick up herbs for Gogo. That’s only some few streets away.”
“I wish you didn’t ever have to leave the house, mntwana wam’,” she says finally, smiling.
“That is impossible,” I say, treating her comment like a joke. But horror clamps around my heart. My world is small enough as it is—Gogo only lets me go from home to school, the tuck shop near our house, the vegetable market, or the sangoma’s. If I am gone even some few minutes longer than she thinks I should be, she gets so worried. One time last year, I lost our khumbi money. So after school, Zi and I had to walk from the city all the way back to Imbali. It took an hour. By the time we arrived, she was sending an entire impi of neighbors all over Imbali, looking for us.
Still, Gogo doesn’t have a choice. She is too old to go with us everywhere and she depends on me to buy food and run other small errands while Mama is gone. Like Mama, my uncle Richard works far away, and he comes home even less often than she does.
“Mama, don’t worry about Khosi,” Zi says. She has stopped dancing around in front of us and is holding Mama’s hand. “I’m always with her. I’ll protect her. Just yesterday…”
I look at Zi and shake my head slightly. Don’t tell Mama about that man that grabbed my leg yesterday.
But Mama’s laughing. “You’re right, Zi, why am I so worried? You’ll take care of her.” And she reaches out to smooth Zi’s hair.
Families file inside the sanctuary and sit in the pews. Some women are dressed in our church uniform, a white and purple gown. They prance down the aisle, looking special, like they belong more than the rest of us who just sit here in our ordinary Sunday clothes. We can’t afford the uniform. Some of these women can’t afford it either, but they scraped and saved for weeks, maybe months, to buy it.
Mama starts singing beside me and I join in, Zi dancing and whirling beside us, as the priests walk down the aisle holding high the cross with the crucified Jesus Christ. Alleluia. Alleluia. Amen. We stand as they pass, make the sign of the cross, then sit when they reach the front of the sanctuary.
When I was younger, I used to have trouble putting together all the different things we believe. There’s God, the ancestors, the saints, and Jesus. Who should I pray to?
“Pray to all of them,” Gogo told me. “The spirits of the ancestors are like the saints. W
hen we are in trouble, we can call on them. The Lord-of-the-Sky is in heaven but the departed are still here with us on earth.”
“Why don’t we just pray to the Lord-of-the-Sky?” I asked. “He’s the most powerful.”
“Sho!” she exclaimed. “God is too busy to be doing what what what every time we pray. With all the thousands of people praying all at the same time asking for everything, do you think that God can hear all of us at once? I do not think so. We worship God only but we are grateful for the people who can help us on earth. Your ancestors are the people who gave you life, Khosi. They will trouble you when you have misbehaved. They will help you when you do what’s right.”
Mama, Zi, and I stand as we join in collective prayer. I wonder if it makes a difference when thousands of us—millions even—are all praying to God for the same thing, all at once? Does he hear us then?
“For all those suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis, and cancer, we pray to the Lord,” the priest says.
I peek around the congregation. Everybody here—everybody—has a relative who has died or is dying of AIDS. But we never talk about it. No. Not in public.
“Lord, hear our prayer,” we murmur.
After church, my friend Thandi nearly knocks me down with her hug. “I have so much to tell you,” she squeals.
Thandi always has so much to tell me, even though I saw her in school just two days ago. Thandi is not what Gogo would call a “good girl.” She has had more boyfriends than I can remember, and most of them are sugar daddies, older men who buy her things. I think she has gone all the way with them, and she’s my age! One of these days, she will fall pregnant. One of these days, she may get sick from what they give her. I hope not, but it is a common problem. Two of my uncles died from HIV already. How does anybody think they will be the lucky ones to be spared?
“You have a new boyfriend?” I guess. Thandi can meet a man on the short walk from the khumbi stop to her house and by the time she’s reached her front door, he’s already proposed.
I’m not disappointed. She flips open her cell phone and shows me his picture. “He owns a jewelry shop downtown,” she boasts, holding out her hand to show me the slender gold band on her right index finger. “He’s already given me so much cellphone airtime, I can talk whenever I want.”
“Thandi, he looks way too old for you,” I say. Not that Thandi cares. She likes older men. And their money.
“He’s not that old.” Thandi frowns, grabbing the cell phone back. She inspects his picture.
“He has a beard,” I point out. “And it’s gray.”
“I don’t care. Girl, he has so much money.”
This thing isn’t worth the argument. “Anyway, is your grandmother working today?” Gogo and I like Thandi’s grandmother because she is honest. Some sangomas, they are just trying to make money and what what what. But if Inkosikazi Nene thinks you need to go to the doctor, or that she can’t help you, she’ll say so.
“Yo, she had such a long line waiting for her when we woke up this morning,” Thandi says. “That is why she isn’t in church.”
“Can I walk home with you? I need to get some muthi for Gogo.” I’m not about to tell Thandi about the witch.
“Yebo, let me tell Baba.”
I don’t want to be like Thandi, but I’m jealous of one thing: she lives with her father. I will never live with Baba. When I was Zi’s age, I wished Mama and Baba would get married. I didn’t understand then how expensive is this thing of lobolo. In order to marry my mother, my baba has to give Gogo a lot of money. Back when Gogo was a girl, men gave cows to the bride’s family. These days, they just give money instead. But still, it’s too expensive. That’s why not many people get married.
Baba is one of those men who can’t afford it. When he was a young man, younger even than me, he left school and joined the struggle against apartheid, training as a soldier in Mozambique. He came home after the government released Nelson Mandela and they started negotiating to become a democracy, so blacks could have the vote for the first time ever in our own country. But then he was too old to finish school and now he struggles to find a good job. Sometimes he works for a day here or a day there. But paying lobolo to marry Mama? It is too much money.
So Thandi is lucky, living with her baba, seeing him every day. I only see mine some few times a year.
Thandi runs off to find her father and I find Mama among all the people lingering at the door. She gives me permission to go. I watch as she and Zi begin the long walk down the hill, past all the tiny houses and the tall buildings, all the way to our little house, set on the edge of Imbali, where the houses bleed into Edendale, another township. There are so many of us, sometimes it seems like the houses go on and on forever, all the way across South Africa.
I sigh when I see the long queue stretching all the way from the round hut in the back to the neighbor’s yard. Weekends are a popular time to visit the sangoma.
As I wait in the queue, I finger the fifty rands Gogo gave me to pay for the medicine, winding the paper around my index finger. Mama thinks sangoma medicine—honoring the ancestors—is silly, maybe even wrong, but here I am. And so are all these other people. Why? Because we know something Mama doesn’t. She’s the smartest woman I know… but she hasn’t figured out that science doesn’t explain everything.
When it’s my turn to enter the round hut, I take off my shoes, smiling at the sangoma’s apprentice. I wish I could help people the way she will when she’s done with her training and working as a healer. But you don’t choose to become a sangoma the way you choose to become a doctor or nurse; you’re selected by the spirits of your ancestors. If they want you, they’ll make your life miserable until you say yes.
She gestures for me to enter the hut. “Ngena,” she says.
I squat down on my haunches to crawl through the small hole near the ground.
The entire hut smells pungent, bittersweet like strong incense. A small fire smolders in the corner, belching short billows of smoke. The ceiling is black with burnt ash. Bunches of dried herbs and a beaded cow’s tail hang from the ceiling, while an orange cloth sags across the wall. The floors are mud, smeared with cow dung in circular patterns.
There’s a sound like the wind blowing through a field of tall grass. I look around, wondering where the noise is coming from, but there’s nobody in the hut except for me and Thandi’s grandmother, the sangoma, who’s sitting in the central part of the round hut, her mouth closed.
“Sawubona, Gogo kaThandi,” I greet her, bowing low to the ancestral spirits inside her.
“Yebo,” she replies. Her long red beaded plaits clank as she nods her head at me.
As I tell her about Gogo and her sore knees, I peek at her wild outfit, wondering if it sometimes embarrasses Thandi to see her gogo dressed like this. Even though Inkosikazi Nene is a modern sangoma and believes in doctors and nurses, she is still very traditional in the way she dresses and the way she approaches the ancestors. Everything she wears connects her to the spirit world and protects her from evil: the red and black beaded cap with a strip of cheetah fur threaded through it, the piece of blue cloth with pictures of spears and shields tied around her waist, the red ochre she rubs on her body until she shines a dull muddy red.
“I will give you the usual herbal remedy for sore knees,” Inkosikazi Nene says, reaching up to the ceiling and breaking off big handfuls of dried herbs. She shakes them together in a small gourd, rattling the herbs inside. She pours the mixture onto some newspaper, wraps it up, and hands it to me. “Steep it in boiling water. She must drink it three times a day until the swelling goes down.”
When I take the folded up newspaper, her hand rests lightly on top of mine. “There’s something else, is it, Khosi?” Inkosikazi Nene and Gogo have been friends for many years. She feels like another grandmother to me. To know that she’s on our side and we can always seek out her help…it means the world to me.
My throat is dry. The rustling sound becomes a low whistle.
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br /> “As soon as you walked inside this room, the spirits started shouting all at once,” she says.
“Is that…is that the whistling sound?” I ask.
Her fingers tighten on my wrist. “You can hear it?”
“Only a little. What are they saying?”
“They’re saying you’re in danger, little Khosi. Tell me why. Do you know why?”
I swallow. “Do you know that old woman who lives in the two-story house at the top of the hill, near the water tank, just before you reach the Zionist church? The woman that everybody says turns people into zombies?”
She nods.
“Yesterday, when I walked Gogo to our neighbor’s funeral, she spoke to me. She told me she’s coming for me and nothing on earth can stop her. She dug her fingernails into my arm.” I hold out my forearm for Inkosikazi Nene to show off the shallow gouge, already scabbing over. “Do you think…do you think she’s cursed me? I had a terrible dream last night that she came and challenged me to a fight. I don’t want to fight her!”
Inkosikazi Nene reaches behind her and grabs a large stick of dried impepho. Lighting it, she waves the smoke in front of her nose, breathing in deeply, closing her eyes, and humming.
I start to speak again, but she holds up her hand to stop me.
At last, she opens her eyes. “It is almost true, what that old woman said,” she says. “Almost.”
“What part is true?”
“She is coming for you, that is true. And I cannot stop it. I do not know what is going to happen, Khosi. I can give you some muthi; I do not know if it will help. But my spirits are telling me that there is somebody who can stop her.”
I hold my breath.
“They are saying it is you, Khosi. With the help of your ancestors, you can stop her.”
Something claws and scrabbles inside of my stomach. “I’m like a rat which the cat plays with. How can I stop her? She’s a witch!”
She folds her hands across her stomach. “You must remember to honor your ancestors every day, to make sure they are protecting you,” she says. “Offer a little food and drink to them in the evenings and thank them for what they do for you. They will help you. That is what they are saying.”