by J. L. Powers
Mama hobbles to the door, looking old and grey and tired. She pushes us aside and limps outside. “What is all this yelling?” she asks.
Inkosikazi Dudu grins at her, barring old yellowed teeth. “Eh-he, I told you, you would suffer because of your sins. See how thin you have grown? See how sickness takes over your body? God is punishing you for what you have done.”
“Go back inside, Elizabeth,” Gogo murmurs. “We should ignore her.”
But Mama grows angry, and an angry Mama doesn’t ignore things. We all know this. Mama gathers up all her strength and marches over to the fence separating our yard from the Dudus’ yard.
“If I took your money, where is it, hah?” she shouts. “Look at our old house. Look at that sagging roof. See how the paint peels? If I had money, do you not think I would do something about this place we live in?”
“Oh, you are just talk talk talk,” Inkosikazi Dudu says. Her eyes glitter fury as she stares at us. “But the house of the loud talker leaks. You can’t fool me. You are like a bird, hiding things in your nest. That money is somewhere and I will find it.”
“You are an old, foolish woman,” Gogo says. “You will bring evil on all of us with your anger.”
“No, I am not the one bringing evil on us,” Inkosikazi Dudu says.
“Wozani,” Gogo says, opening her arms wide as if gathering me and Mama inside and sweeping us into the house.
I lean against the door as Gogo sinks onto the sofa, trembling. Mama stands in the middle of the dining room, as if she is so tired, she doesn’t even remember that she should sit.
The next day, the drunk man is lounging against the fence when Zi and I get off the khumbi, his arms crossed, his entire posture casual. He grins and starts walking towards us. “Let’s run,” I tell Zi.
He doesn’t bother chasing after us but his laughter follows us down the road.
On Tuesday, we stay on the khumbi instead of getting off at our usual stop. We stop near Thandi’s house instead and circle back around in a different direction.
We avoid him that day but on Wednesday, he’s lurking at our gate when we arrive.
“Can’t you just leave me alone?” I scream.
The noise brings Inkosikazi Dudu to her front yard. She laughs to see me trying to figure out how to get into my gate without that drunk man grabbing me.
“I told your mother,” she calls. “I told her, your sins follow you.”
“What sin have I committed?” I ask her, fuming now, glancing from him to her and back to Zi, calculating. How quick do I need to be to get us both safely inside the yard?
“Not you,” she says. “Your mother.”
“Am I paying for my mother’s sins?” I snap.
“We all pay for our mother’s sins,” she responds.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe we have sinned. It seems obvious we’ve done something so that the ancestors have lifted their protection. Or, if we’re innocent, something has been done to us to block their protection.
The thought makes me so furious that I become bold. Shoving Zi behind me, I march right up to that man and shove him aside, slapping his hands away from my hips as he reaches out to grab me. As I unlock the gate, he grasps me and twirls me around until I’m facing him, staring at his rotten tooth in the center of his mouth, noticing how his rotten tooth and the witch’s gold tooth are the exact same tooth.
“Get inside the gate, Zi,” I shout, wrenching myself out of his hands and dashing in, slamming it shut in his face.
“I will come for you just now, Ntombi,” he calls as he walks away. “I will come for you.”
The words sound familiar, dim echoes from something said to me long ago, but I can’t place it.
I glare at Inkosikazi Dudu and finally say what I should have said weeks ago. “If it’s true that we’re punished for our sins, you and that man had better watch out. You are opening the door for evil to slip right inside.”
“Are you threatening me?” She spits on the ground. “Any sins I commit are nothing compared to your mother’s.”
I grab the fence with my hand and shake it. But that’s all I dare do.
Once inside, I remember suddenly why the drunk man’s words sound so familiar. Why, it’s the same thing the witch said to me some few months ago, the day our neighbor buried her husband.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LYING TO MAMA
Uncle Richard comes home the following weekend, the week of Little Man’s party. I wait until Uncle has a nice, full stomach before asking if I can go to Thandi’s for the evening.
“We have a school project,” I lie, my stomach feeling empty even though I’m filling it with a big plate of phuthu and chicken.
“Hawu! A school project on a Friday night?” Uncle Richard asks.
“Thandi won’t be home tomorrow so we need to work on it tonight.”
“Khosi, it isn’t safe for you to be out alone after dark,” Mama says. “Think of that drunk man who accosted you when I was home two months ago.”
“Thandi’s father will walk me home.”
Uncle Richard puts his plate on his lap and stares at me, as if he knows I am lying. He’s a big man, with a big belly. Even though he’s bald, his face has always reminded me of Mama’s. “You’re not like your mother when she was your age, eh?” He jabs the air with his fingers. “You’re not sneaking out to meet some young man, eh?”
“Richard!” Mama says. “Don’t make her think about doing these things.”
I’m relieved for the distraction. “Baba told me you were wild, Mama! Did you sneak out to meet young men?”
Mama looks ashamed, and then she laughs, a laugh that turns into a cough. We wait patiently until she stops coughing and regains her breath. “Only once,” she says at last. “My brothers caught me and gave me a beating I’ll never forget.”
“We’re too soft on girls these days,” Uncle Richard says.
“Perhaps you mean I’m too soft on my girls,” Mama says. She smiles at me, and the smile is warm. “Khosi’s a good girl. She has never needed a beating and even if she did, I couldn’t do that to my child.”
Should lying be so easy? I wonder.
“Anyway,” Mama continues, “Khosi’s too young for men.”
“Because she’s the daughter of our household, we think so,” Uncle Richard says, “but there are many men who will not think she’s too young for these things. They’re ready now to take advantage of her innocence.”
“It’s true,” Gogo says. She’s eating with her hands and now she shakes a food-covered finger at Mama. “And if I remember anything about your childhood, Elizabeth, it’s only going to get worse when Khosi decides she likes men.”
Mama laughs. “Hey hey! What a thing!” She shakes her head. “Don’t you let any young men fall in love with you, hey, Khosi?”
“Don’t worry, Mama,” I reassure her. “I’m too young to fall in love and get married.”
“Who said anything about getting married?” Mama asks.
My face turns warm. It’s true, at night I dream about a big church wedding with a white dress and a big white cake. And of course, Little Man down at the altar. I’m always grateful for sweet dreams, the kind that don’t wake me, sweating and shaking, afraid to go back to sleep.
Mama hands her plate to me. “Ngisuthi,” she says.
“But you hardly ate,” I protest. There’s a mountain of phuthu left on her plate.
“Ngisuthi,” she repeats and begins to cough.
I’m not supposed to question my elders, so I scrape her food into the rubbish bin. But we all stare at her while she coughs and coughs and coughs. She holds her hand to her mouth like she’s afraid her lungs are going to fall out if she doesn’t keep them in.
“Sisi, it isn’t like you to eat nothing,” Uncle Richard says. “And this coughing, I don’t like it. You must go to the doctor.”
“I’ve been to the clinic in Greytown,” Mama explains. “I waited and waited for hours and I never even saw a nu
rse. I grew so tired waiting, I slept all the next day and missed a second day of work. I can’t do it again.”
“I’ll go with you, Mama,” I say. “Then you don’t have to wait in line. You can sit and rest while I wait.”
“We’ll see,” she says.
“Did you have to wait long to see the doctor when you were young, Gogo?” I ask.
Gogo laughs—hee-hee-hee—like what I said tickles her. “There were no doctors in my village when I was a girl,” she says, “so we went to the sangoma instead. There was a missionary hospital a few hours away. Sometimes they would send a doctor to our village for a week. The line would stretch all the way through the village and beyond!”
“It was a hard life,” Uncle Richard says. “You and Zi are lucky to grow up in the new South Africa.”
“I don’t think we’re so lucky, Uncle Richard.” I’ve washed the last dish so I take Zi on my lap and we sit together on the chair near Gogo. “People still have a hard life these days.”
“Khosi, you can’t know what it was like to live here when ‘black’ was a curse word,” he says.
“That’s true.” I don’t know what it was like to live under apartheid. I only know the history. And the aftermath—what it’s been like to grow up in the new South Africa.
“You don’t know all the problems we suffered for so many years,” he says.
“No, I just see all the problems of today.”
“Khosi,” Mama rebukes me. “Don’t be disrespectful.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” I apologize.
“No, Khosi’s right,” he tells Mama. “The past is important but so is today.”
I don’t say it, but I think today is even more important than yesterday. Yesterday’s gone—but what problems have we conquered? In the past, we lacked freedom, there weren’t any jobs, and people were dying because of the liberation war. But there still aren’t any jobs and now we’re dying because of AIDS. As for the future? I wish I knew what it might bring. Its blankness stretching out before us scares me.
Maybe Gogo knows I’m holding back. She leans forward and takes my face in her hands without a word exchanged between us.
“You can go to school, mntwana wam’,” she says. “You can be a teacher or a nurse or even a doctor. There will always be trouble in this life. But your life will never be so hard as mine. You are indeed lucky.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
LITTLE MAN’S PARTY
Uncle walks me to Thandi’s house. “If Thandi’s baba cannot walk you home, call me when you are done, and I will come fetch you,” he says at the gate.
“Yes, Uncle,” I agree and go inside.
“Oh, aren’t you so excited?” Thandi greets me. “Your first party!”
Actually, Thandi is more excited than I am. My emotions are a nest of troubled snakes, slithering and sliding around in my stomach.
When we are certain that Uncle Richard is far away, we leave for Little Man’s house. Thandi’s baba isn’t even home to bother us, to ask, “Where are you going?” and “When will you return?” It is nothing like my house.
“Where is your baba?” I ask as we walk through the already darkened streets. Even though I am not alone, I feel skittish, hoping we don’t meet the drunk man who likes to bother me, or a tsotsi, or—well—anybody who might give us trouble.
“He’s off to see his girlfriend,” Thandi says.
“And your mama?”
“She’s visiting her sister in Ulundi.”
I would not be so casual if I knew my baba had a girlfriend. But it’s true, what Thandi said to me some few weeks ago, what do I know? Baba lives with his mother, and we only see him some few times a year. He could have another family—other daughters, maybe a son—and how would we know?
I shake those thoughts off. If Mama doesn’t worry, why should I?
People are spilling out of Little Man’s yard and have overtaken the road. A car is trying to pass. The driver beeps his horn but people are slow to part.
I’m not used to seeing so many men gathered in one place with so few women to entertain them. Some few lucky men have found a girl and are dancing to music in the center of the yard. The rest stand in little groups around the perimeter, holding drinks.
“Mfaaan’,” Thandi drawls, speaking to the man who attaches himself to her side as soon as we arrive. “Khosi, this is Honest.”
Honest is short with big fat cheeks, handsome but flabby. Even though he looks young, there are telltale wrinkles, barely visible, just around his eyes. Yes, this man is definitely too old for Thandi. I wish she would listen when I tell her things like that.
He nuzzles her neck and whispers to her and then they disappear.
Now I’m all alone. As I scan the yard, looking for Little Man, three men surround me. “Do you want to dance?” one of them asks.
I look from one grin to the other. They have big mouths with big white teeth.
Go away, I think. Remembering the lie I told my family so I could come to this party makes me feel suddenly homesick. I just want to go home.
A man comes up to me from behind, slips his arm around me, and steers me into the circle of men and women dancing. When I look up into his face, I realize it’s the drunk man by the tuck shop.
“Hey,” I shout, startled.
He grins, revealing the big rotten tooth in the center of his large, toothy mouth. “Your mama’s not here now,” he says, “so we can have a good time.”
“I don’t know how to dance,” I protest, slipping out of his arms and moving off to the side.
He catches my arm with his hand and swings me back towards him in a tight embrace. “It doesn’t matter. You’re so pretty.” He squeezes my waist. “I know you want to have a good time.”
“No, I really don’t.” My protest feels feeble.
“If I was handsome, would you still say that?” he asks, blowing hot stinky breath towards me. He lowers his face close to mine and whispers, “I can be young and handsome in the dark.”
Somebody get me out of here.
“Let me go.” My voice is low but insistent.
His eyes are small and mean and hard and drunk as he grips me tighter, his groin digging and grinding into my hip. “Can I come visit you sometime?” He laughs. “Will your mama let me come inside?”
He doesn’t even know my name and he’s already making lewd comments. Am I that unimportant to him, just a warm body to squeeze? Just a bunch of meat that he wants to gobble up with his big crocodile teeth?
“Let me go,” I repeat, my voice louder as his hands grasp my hips, slipping low, then crawling back up again and clutching hard, his fingers tight like claws.
The men nearby laugh at the way I’m struggling against him, like this is all a game. What is wrong with them? Why don’t they help me?
Echoes of Mama’s voice sliver through my head. Don’t you ever let yourself be a victim, Khosi. If nobody is going to help me, I realize, I have to help myself. “You’re disgusting,” I shriek. “Leave me alone!”
He’s so startled, he lets go. I stumble backwards, smacking right into Little Man. His arms close around me, awkward, light, his voice against my hair. “Are you okay?”
Pulling back just enough to see his face, I smile at him, lips trembling with my voice. “This man keeps bothering me.”
“Hey, she’s with me,” the man protests. “We were dancing.”
“Go away, my friend,” Little Man says. “She doesn’t want to dance with you.”
He shoves Little Man and grabs me. “I’m not through with you, Ntombi,” he growls.
“But she’s through with you,” Little Man says, elbowing his way between us.
Suddenly, my rescuers are everywhere, glaring at my attacker, surrounding us in a close circle. He releases me and staggers off.
“You need to be careful, Khosi,” Little Man scolds me, like a big brother. “Some of these men have been drinking utshwala and beer all afternoon. They’re drunk.” He weaves around like a d
runk man, lurching into the wall, then sliding to the ground. He reaches up his hand and pulls me down to sit beside him.
And there we are, sitting next to each other, our hands still touching lightly. I’m conscious of each finger stroking mine.
“What’s your brother celebrating?” I ask, even though I already know.
“His new job, hey? He found one only six months after passing matric.”
“Congratulations. So you slaughtered a goat to thank the ancestors?”
“Yah,” Little Man says. “We already did the ceremony, going through the house, beating the drums. My mother spent the last week brewing utshwala. There is enough utshwala in the house for an entire impi to drink!”
Utshwala is more than just beer, it is ritual food. And when the men drink it at a party like this, they are drinking to thank the ancestors for something, in this case, the family’s good luck that Little Man’s brother found a job. But they also drink strong beer and that’s what makes them so drunk.
We’re silent again, nothing to say. I laugh just to break the silence, and then I feel stupid, laughing for no reason like that.
“You want to dance?” Little Man asks.
“I think I’ve had enough dancing for tonight.”
“We can just sit here and talk then.”
Maybe I would’ve agreed to that, but when I look up to smile at him, my eyes are drawn to the corner of the yard, where my stalker is sitting, glowering at me.
“I should go home,” I say. “My family doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“Oh, don’t go yet,” he says.
My heart speeds up at the tone in his voice, the pleading look he offers. “Okay, I’ll stay a little longer.”
“You’ll feel more comfortable if you have a drink.” He stands, reaching a hand out to help me up. He puts his hand on my waist and steers me through the door.
I like the way his hand fits right there, lightly touching the extra flesh on my waist. But what would Gogo do if she saw it? And what will Little Man’s mother say if she sees it? Surely she’s around somewhere. This thought makes me step away from him as we walk through the house, a sudden chill on my skin where his hand rested.