by J. L. Powers
I study her face, the way her jaw juts out, the way wrinkled skin sags around her eyes and mouth. It’s a beautiful face, so old and kind. “Gogo doesn’t know her birthday either,” I say. “That’s why we celebrate in October, because she likes the Spring.”
“That sounds like your grandmother.”
“So…you became a sangoma when you were my age?” I ask, keeping my eye on the road ahead, on Zi.
“I cannot say for sure, but I think I was older than you are now when I went through ukuthwasa,” she says, naming the illness that a woman experiences before she becomes a sangoma. “I became very sick, so ill, Khosi, that language left me! People thought I was mad!”
“What did you do?”
“I left my home and started wandering in the hills. I did not know where I was going or when I would come home, I only knew I had to go. I spent all those months hearing the voices of the ancestors and gathering herbs. Eh, one day, I wandered too close to the Thukela river and a serpent sucked me deep beneath the waters. It was no ordinary serpent, Khosi. It was one of my ancestors, coming to me in the form of a snake. I was underwater for many many months. Eh-he, I have no idea how long. Sho! it was lonely! But when I finally emerged, I knew how to honor those who went before us, the old ones who protect us from beyond the grave.”
“Why do you have to go through ukuthwasa before you can become a sangoma?” I ask.
“Because you must understand sickness before you can help others through it,” she says. “You must return from the place of death in order to heal.”
Zi reaches the turning point and looks back to see how far behind we are. She waits until we catch up with her, then she runs ahead again. I wish I could bottle her energy and sell it as muthi. I wish I could give some of it to Mama.
“Thank you for telling me your story,” I say.
“You will have your own story, Khosi.”
“What do you mean?”
She reaches out and touches my shoulder. “The calling on you is strong,” she says. “I think you’re meant to be a healer.”
“Mama would never give her blessing.” I feel like I’m confessing something. The truth is, I want to be a sangoma. I want to help people in the old ways. Even if Mama doesn’t like it.
“If the spirits call you, you’ll know it,” she says. Then she adds a warning. “But if they call you, you must follow them, otherwise, you can die.”
My limbs begin to tremble, faint at first, then stronger until Inkosikazi Nene notices that I’m shaking.
She examines me while I struggle to control myself. Then she asks something unexpected. “What do you plan to do to your next-door neighbor?”
The question surprises me. “Nothing.”
“You don’t plan to take revenge for her curse? You don’t want to hurt her back?”
This feels like a test. I hope I pass.
“Gogo and I are seeking protection from the ancestors,” I say. “I’ll let them deal with our neighbor.”
She nods. “Good,” she says. “And if you found out that your mother had really done this thing, stolen money, what would you do?”
“But Mama would never do that,” I protest.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she says. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Ever since I saw the lightning bird’s wings flapping away across the cement near our back door, I’ve been preparing for this moment. What would I do if it turned out Mama was a thief?
Inkosikazi Nene tilts her head to watch me, like a lizard sunning itself on a rock, its dark eager eyes seeing my every move before I see them myself.
“I don’t know, Gogo,” I say. “I think I would get her to return it. We don’t need that kind of money.”
Her wrinkled jowls relax into a smile. “There’s something very good in you, mntwana wam’,” she says. “I see it. You’ll see it, too. You’ll have to make some difficult choices to walk into your calling. But I’m sure you’ll do what’s right and good.”
We’ve reached the Nenes’ house. Zi’s waiting for us beside the gate. I look at Thandi’s window, wondering if she’s already left for school. My normal life seems so far away right now.
“What were you talking about?” Zi asks as we head back down the dirt road.
I take her hand and think about everything swirling around in my head. “She just wanted to know how Mama’s doing, that’s all,” I say.
Zi’s face screws up with a wish she’s afraid to speak. “Mama’s going to get better, isn’t she?” she asks.
Her hand in mine is so small and trusting. What is she going to do without Mama? What am I going to do? Suddenly, the only thing I want is to call Baba, ask him to come to Imbali, ask him to take care of us. But Baba’s sick, too. He just hasn’t faced it yet.
“Everything will be all-right, Zi, I promise.” I clutch her hand. I’ll take care of her, of course. I’ll take care of everybody.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE FIGHT
Mama gets upset when she sees I’m not going to school. “Not only is this foolishness,” she says, “but you’re missing school, too.”
But she’s too weak to complain much. Her lips are cracked and dry, even though I rub them with balm that the sangoma gives us. She lies half-in and half-out of bed all day, too feeble to get up but not wanting to admit it.
Because of the purification rituals, we’re not supposed to talk to our neighbors, or hang around our friends like normal. But on Thursday, we need milk and bread, so Gogo sends me to the tuck shop.
I hurry, not looking to the right or the left, afraid to meet someone and ruin my purity. That’s why I don’t see Little Man until he grabs me around the waist and pulls me off the road.
“Little Man!” I gasp.
“Hey, wena Khosi!” He grins.
His fingers linger on my hip for some few seconds before he withdraws his hand.
I’m that glad to see him, I smile back and let it all shine through my eyes, all the feelings I have for him.
And his eyes are shining with the same gladness.
“Where have you been, Khosi?” he asks, reaching out his hand to touch mine. “I look for you every day in school. You’ve been gone all week. Are you sick?”
He moves his hand from my fingers to my forehead, like he’s my mother, checking for a fever.
“My mother is really ill,” I say in a low voice, looking around to see if anyone can hear me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, suddenly sober. “Is she going to get better?”
We’ve been a house of lies ever since Mama got sick. But I can’t lie to Little Man. “I don’t know,” I say.
We start walking back to my house, shuffling through the dust. I notice how dirty his feet are in his flip-flops but they don’t bother me. Is this what love does to you? It’s mad to think some guy’s dirty feet are the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen but that is exactly what I’m thinking.
“Is that why you haven’t been in school?” he asks. “Are you taking care of your mother?”
Should I trust him? I ask myself. Then I think, Of course. It’s Little Man. So I ignore all the sangoma’s warnings about keeping this thing secret.
“We’re doing a purification with the sangoma,” I say.
“Who, your gogo and your mama?”
“Me, too,” I say.
“You’re taking muthi every day? Purging? Praying?”
“Every day.”
“Do you really think it’ll work?”
“It has to!”
He shakes his dreads, like he’s disappointed in me. “You’re the smartest girl I know. Why did you let your family suck you into this superstition?”
I choke back sudden tears. Did I make a mistake telling him?
“You sound like Mama!” I say.
“Why don’t you just take her to a doctor?” he asks. “They can really help her!”
“Doctors don’t know everything!” Now I feel defensive. I glance at his feet, which were
so beautiful some few minutes ago. Now they just look dirty.
“Well, they know more about disease than some stupid old sangoma.”
“Whatever happened to ‘it can’t hurt and it might help,’” I say, reminding him of our conversation a couple months ago.
“I meant in addition to doctors,” he says. “I only meant if doctors had failed.”
“Well, this is in addition to doctors!” I’m suddenly angry. “Doctors can’t help her anymore. And this isn’t about my mother’s sickness, anyway. This is about things doctors don’t know anything about.”
“Hey, Khosi,” he says, shocked and starting to back away, “I’m sorry!”
But it’s too late. I don’t want to hear all his blah-blahs of apologies. I don’t know where all the love I felt for him went or what what what but it is gone.
What does he know? What would he say if he knew that I keep hearing voices in my head? Would he say I was crazy? Would he tell me I must be imagining things? Would he tell me I’m just like those stupid old sangomas?
“Don’t tell me we’re not helping her when you don’t know anything about it.” My voice rises to a shout, almost a scream. Just before I take off running, I find myself yelling, “And don’t come running after me with stupid explanations or excuses. Just leave me alone!”
I’m glad my house is close. I reach it, panting, and look back. I already regret that I told him to leave me alone. I’m hoping he’s followed.
But the street behind me is empty.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
RED MUTHI
A week passes. I stay in the house, afraid to go outside and meet anyone again. Now that my anger is gone, I just feel hurt. Sometimes I look out the window, hoping that Little Man will be outside, lingering, but either he never comes or I never look out the window at the right time.
I even break the ban on socializing and call Thandi.
“How’s it?” I ask, hoping she’ll bring up the topic herself so I can tell her about the fight and ask her to find out if Little Man is really angry with me. Maybe he’s said something about it at school. If he has, Thandi will be the first to tell me.
But Thandi’s preoccupied. “I haven’t seen Honest in a week,” she says, bursting into tears. “Do you think it’s over with him?”
“How would I know?” I ask. “Did you fight?”
“Nooooo,” she says, so slowly I know she’s lying.
I don’t really want to talk about her fight with Honest. It’s a whole different level than my fight with Little Man. So I make up an excuse. Another lie. “Oh, my gogo is calling me,” I say, and hang up.
Gogo and I go to the backyard every morning with our mixture of nasty-tasting muthi. The red muthi tastes even worse than the black.
Shivering in the cold, we down the pot of liquid and purge in the big blue buckets that I leave outside. Then Gogo limps back inside while I wash the buckets.
Mama gets sicker. Sometimes she just lies in bed and doesn’t move all day. Her lips look like a butcher came and cut them all up with a long knife. The sores on her back weep until her sheets are soaked. Sometimes they dry to her skin and then I have to peel them off, listening as she quietly sobs.
I don’t notice the stench unless I’ve been gone for some time and I return home. Then I realize that our house is beginning to smell like the carcass of an animal, rotting on the side of the road.
She’s wasting away.
And Gogo’s weak too. She sleeps more now than ever before. Even during the day, she naps inside near Mama’s bed.
Yet she seems content.
I’m the opposite. All the time, I hear those whispers, and they’re still saying the same thing: purify purify purify. It’s becoming an urgent chant in my head, and even my worry about the fight I had with Little Man recedes in the face of that word. Over and over and over. Purify purify purify.
But that’s what we’re doing! I shout at the voices in my head.
Purify purify purify, they shout in response.
And then there are the dreams. Every night.
In one dream, I see the gold-toothed sangoma watching as Gogo and I purge the red muthi. Instead of vomit, a snake slithers out of my mouth as I bend over the blue bucket. She cackles as she watches and I wonder if her medicine is so powerful, it’s blocking ours.
In another dream, I see Mama standing in a long queue, waiting to see God. The queue is made up of all the people that need healing. I float up above the queue, up up up, above the earth, until I can see how it stretches all the way around the earth’s perimeter, coiling and winding and twisting from China to Europe to America. It’s a giant serpent, swallowing the globe.
“The purification isn’t working,” I tell Gogo.
But Gogo refuses to stop. “First we have to complete it,” she says. “Then we’ll see if it is working or not.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say. I try to explain, but I don’t have words. “I think there’s something else we need to be doing.”
“Hush, Khosi,” Gogo snaps. “You bite and soothe like a mouse.”
She doesn’t understand. She can’t hear the voices whispering in my head.
“It’s not working,” I tell Auntie Phumzi.
“Don’t let doubt stop you now,” she says.
So we keep going, even though I’m beginning to feel like anyone can look at me and see right through me.
Mama stays in bed all the time now. Nothing changes. In fact, the only thing that changes is where I sleep. Each night, I make up a bed for myself in the dining room on the sofa. In the morning, I fold the sheet and blanket and put them, with my pillow, back in the bedroom.
For the first time in my life when Mama’s in town, I’m sleeping alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
PROMISES
It feels like I’ve started to puke blood and guts every time I purge. There’s a small itch in my chest. And a raw feeling in my throat, like I’ve swallowed boiling liquid. Raging sores dot my tongue, the insides of my mouth.
I’m beginning to feel like I am all emptied out of everything. All I’m doing is the next thing and then the next thing after that.
Is this how Mama feels?
Strange things have started to happen. I feel this strong sense that somebody is watching me, that I’m being tested. Sometimes, dizzy after we expel muthi into the bucket, those dim, distant voices break through the fog and roar like lions.
Clearly, yes, the ancestors are trying to give me a message. And I’m sure, whatever it is, it’s important. But I have no idea what they’re saying anymore.
I’m just hoping for something to happen that makes me feel whole again.
“You’re losing weight, Khosi,” Auntie Phumzi observes while we’re standing at the foot of Mama’s bed.
Mama is so sick now, she doesn’t even try to clean her own bloody cloths. We put them in a big tub with bleach and let them soak for a long time before we clean them, just in case.
We’ve moved everybody out of the room—even Gogo and Zi are sleeping in the dining room with me. I’m the strongest, so I help Mama during the night. Auntie Phumzi comes during the day so I can get a little rest. I haven’t gone to school in two weeks. What’s going to happen to my studies? My good grades in biology? And if my grades go down, will I lose my scholarship? I try not to think about it.
Mama starts to speak through her cracked lips. She has almost no voice, so we have to lean in to hear her. “You need to stop,” she whispers.
“Mama, today was the last day of muthi,” I protest but even as I speak, my voice gives out, just like Mama’s, cracks and breaks and bleeds. “The only thing left is a feast for the ancestors.”
“The expense,” Mama moans.
“How do you feel?” Auntie asks, looking at me with concern. She looks in my face, puts her hand on my forehead. “Khosi, you’re burning up! Are you well?”
Mama suddenly sits up, then falls back on the pillows because she is too weak to sustain
herself. “I don’t like this,” she murmurs. “You must stop it.”
“I’m fine,” I insist, my voice hoarse and deep. “It’s not the muthi, I promise, Mama.” I’ve never before felt my vocal chords but now each word I speak feels like I’m pushing on a blister deep inside my throat. “Angiguli. I just feel a little weak, that’s all, not sick.”
Mama grabs my hand as I start to walk out. “Khosi,” she whispers. “I want to tell you something.”
My stomach hurts as I sit on the bed beside her. She wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand, then reaches under the blankets and brings out a sheaf of wrinkled papers, clutching them in her hand. “I’ve been saving money since you were just a baby,” she says, still coughing.
“Mama, do I need to hear this just now?”
“Yes,” she says. “I need to tell you before it’s too late.”
She shoves the papers towards me, thrusts them in my lap. “This money, it’s not much but it’s enough to pay your school fees at university if you’re careful. So you can go to college.”
I glance down at the papers in my lap. “That’s so many years away.”
“Keep them someplace safe,” she says. “Don’t tell anyone about the money. If you tell anyone, they’ll want to use it. We always need money for this, for that, for nothing, sho!” She shakes her head. “It’s better if they don’t know about this thing, hey, Khosi?”
“Where is this money?” I ask.
“It’s in a bank account in Pietermaritzburg,” she says. “Those papers have all the account information. It’s in your name. Nobody can withdraw that money but you. Nobody.”
“Why, Mama? Why are you giving this to me now?” I already know the answer but I want to hear her say it. Mama, please talk to me.
She ignores the question. “You like biology,” she says. “Become a nurse. If you become a nurse, you’ll always have a job.”
“What, practicing medicine with this thing of HIV running around our country like elephants that have gone crazy?” Yes, I’m mad. I don’t even bother to keep the anger out of my voice. I’ve never spoken like this to Mama. Of course, I’m not angry at her. Or maybe I am. Yes, I guess I am. Why did she wait so long before she went to see the doctor, and here she is, urging me to go into medicine? “That sounds like a death sentence, Mama! It’s only a matter of time before—”