Mother to Mother

  She said nothing. Just looked at me as though I were something smelly the cat had dragged in. But I was not deterred.

  ‘Well, that has already happened,’ I said and, pointing to the bedroom, added, ‘There’s Hlumelo lying on the bed, inside there.’

  Mama’s eyes following my hand. Then, she pulled her eyes back and looked at Tata. When she saw that he was not going to say anything, she said:

  ‘It would still be the best thing to do.’

  ‘Why?’ China and his people had annoyed me greatly. He had turned out to be a lily-livered, spineless dog, who shunned his responsibilities. That had certainly cured me of any notion of love for him.

  Looking at Tata, Mama said, ‘Is this the last child she will ever bring to this house?’ She paused, turned her eyes to me, eyebrows raised to the ceiling, before continuing.

  ‘Or . . .’ again she looked at Tata, daring him, pulling him back into the argument, ‘. . . are we going to be raising a whole packet of Assorted Biscuits, here?’

  Tata coughed . . . or worried some phlegm, more imaginary than anything else, deep in his chest. Of course, the cough sounded hollow, as though he were dredging an old, dry, no-longer-in-use well. He shifted his weight from one to the other foot, looked around the room as though he had forgotten which way the door lay.

  ‘Mmhhm-mmhhm-mmhm!’ He loosened his shirt collar and scratched the side of his neck. But no word came from his mouth.

  I dug my heels in. I wanted to go back to school. We had discussed this and they had agreed. But that was when things looked bleak, as far as my getting married to China went. The negotiations had reached ugly. And looked as though they were going the way of all evil.

  ‘Mama, please think about this,’ I said fighting back tears. ‘What marriage do you think China and I can ever have, if he has to be forced into it? Asikokuzibophelela nenj’ enkangeni oko? Is that not tying oneself to a dog in a patch of nettles?’

  Mama looked at me as though I had suddenly sprouted horns. But I persisted:

  ‘Mama, what do you think the dog does each time he feels the sting?’ That started a heated argument, with Mama accusing Tata of siding with me. Which thing, of course, he denied vehemently, while I helped him do so. Now, we were all talking at the same time so that quite a racket resulted.

  Finally, after my impassioned plea, Tata spoke.

  ‘There is truth in what the child is saying, Mother of Khaya,’ he said.

  ‘If you say so?’ At that, Mama remembered she had something on the stove. Went to the kitchen, where she remained until Tata called her back.

  ‘Are we done, here?’ he asked her.

  ‘I think you and your daughter have made your decision.’

  ‘And you?’ Tata asked.

  ‘I do as I’m told,’ Mama said. ‘That is what my father taught me.’

  ‘I am not just taking what this child says,’ Tata explained. ‘But, you have to agree that these people have treated us shabbily. Time and again, they have broken their word. They have lied, prevaricated and accused us of being cheats, liars and worse. More and more I’m beginning not to see the sense of giving my child to such. Perhaps, she’s right and the thing to do is for her to go back to school.’

  Over Mama’s clear if unstated objections, Tata had agreed to my suggestion. That same week, had given me money and I went and enrolled for evening classes at St Francis Adult Education Centre, in Langa.

  But now, here was Tata, himself going back on his word. His brothers, and the whole clan, were opposed to the idea of my going back to school. Not when the Thembu clan, China’s people, were ready to make me a wife.

  ‘My hands are tied, my child,’ Tata said, seeing my distress. Custom dictated that he listened to the counsel of the clan. I was not his possession but belonged to the whole clan in good and bad times. And decisions affecting my life were not his to make . . . not alone or to the exclusion of what collective wisdom dictated.

  Hlumelo was two months and three weeks old when we left the only home he had ever known. For the home that vowed to treat us as their very own. China and I finally got married. Not in church. Not in the magistrate’s office. But only by mutual agreement between our respective families. Which is to say, his people gave my people lobola and were accepted by my people as in-laws; people who had taken the daughter of this clan to be their child.

  There was no ceremony. The arrangements made, a day fixed, my dowry bought. On that day, Mama gave me a bag and said, as casual as you please:

  ‘I’d take my underwear, at least. And a sweater, if I were you.’ I gathered I was allowed to take a few of my personal things with me. Things from the girlhood I was leaving behind. The girlhood I had hardly had time to experience, never mind enjoy.

  Friday. Early evening, a little after dinner-time, Malume came, in a borrowed van. Malume, Tata, Khaya and Dumisani, Malume’s friend and the owner and driver of the van, packed the van.

  ‘Don’t’ forget your bag,’ said Mama.

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  As I was leaving, Mama suddenly said, ‘Will you let me know when you’re going to the clinic?’

  Puzzled, I looked at her.

  ‘He needs me,’ she said simply. ‘He’s used to me and I haven’t really taught you how to take him about,’ she stopped, slowly shook her head, sighed, ‘and now, it’s too late.’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ I said. Poor Mama. She had come not only to accept her Michael but love him too, I now saw. She would miss him.

  The men had finished packing the van. I stood in the middle of the dining-room unable to move. The thought that I was leaving had become intolerable. Unbearable. I did not want to do this. But, in this too, it was too late.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Mama said, her voice catching. Her words unglued my feet.

  As I left, I thought I saw a glint in her eye. Was she crying? But why? To see me go out, baby on my back? Yes, I thought to myself, that must be something to her . . . awful. The final admission. I had a baby. All and sundry could see that plain as day. There. I was actually carrying the baby on my back. Mama had accompanied me to the post-natal clinic the few times Hlumelo and I had gone, and each time she had had him on her back.

  The two new suitcases, big and packed to suffocation, and two enormous cardboard boxes took up most of the space at the back of the van. Malume was driving and he told me to sit next to him. There was only one other person, sitting on the outside, Tatophakathi, Middle Father.

  This would be the first time I would sleep with the baby. Mama had done that from the first day Hlumelo and I returned from the hospital.

  Once more, it was brought home to me what turmoil the coming of this child had brought to my life. Were it not for him, of course, I would still be in school. Instead, I was forced into being a wife, forever abandoning my dreams, hopes, aspirations. For ever.

  We stood outside the gate at Tooksie’s, where China lived with his aunt. Tooksie’s mother. A young man I recognized as one of the three present the day we had brought our case came to meet us.

  ‘I’ve been asked to ask you to please come inside,’ he said.

  Malume thanked him and we trooped in. As on the day I’d been brought to this same house so my family could claim damages, I led the little party.

  As we opened the door, the sharp, piercing sound of a sole ululant greeted us. At once, other women picked it up, and soon the trill filled the whole house and spilled out onto the street.

  KIII-II-KIIKIIIIKII! HALALAA! HA-AALAA-AALAA!

  I imagined surprised doors, left and right and up and down the street, jerked open as curious faces peered, following the ululation.

  We were in the front room now, the dining-room, the largest of the four little rooms. Four, including the squat kitchen to the back. Malume took me by the hand and handed me over to a small group of young women, Tooksie among them. These would be the daughters of the clan . . . my new sisters, who would induct me into wifehood, into becoming part of this clan. Tak
ing me by the hand, they led me away, to the smaller of the two bedrooms.

  ‘This is what she brings with her. Nantsi impahla eza nayo,’ I heard Malume say to the gathering from which I was being led away.

  The rest of the evening is a blur. Not because of the tears, expected of all brides as otherwise the woman is branded ‘a born-knowing’, umavel’ esazi, who came to her wedding day fully versed in things pertaining to wifehood. A curse to her mother-in-law, certain ruination to her husband, who would have to obey her rather than the other way round, as God long, long ago decreed. The marrow in every bone in my body seemed to have dried up. In its stead, filling the bones till they threatened to crack and split open, boiled all the resentment and anger and hurt and fear I had been experiencing lately. All this activity numbed me. Words were said, directed at me. My ears heard them. But they had little, if any impact on me. It was as though they were being said to another. Or to me at a time remote . . . a time still to come . . . or one long gone.

  Quickly, two of the younger sisters-in-law helped me get out of the clothes I wore while the ones who looked older directed operations. I was then dressed in two flannel petticoats, a blue, still-smelling-of-the-shop German-print dress, coming down to just above the ankles and a black headkerchief with a grey border pulled low down so that it almost hid my eyes. A towel around my waist and another over one shoulder, pinned under the other arm completed my new-wife mode of dress. It was time to be presented to my in-laws . . . presented to them as a wife, not the girl who had stepped in a little while ago.

  ‘Why,’ someone, a man, exclaimed, as we re-entered the dining-room, ‘the German-print has swallowed her up.’ I had been under so much stress during the pregnancy and after, I had lost a lot of weight. I had not been exactly heavy to start off with and now the German-print dress, tied around the waist, made me a veritable bean pole tied in the middle.

  ‘What are you calling her?’ asked someone else even as I was being led to a chair, in a corner of the room, to sit there all by myself. I waited, for I knew the ritual. Someone would bring me a cup of tea and call out a name. I could refuse the tea till a name I liked came up. On the other hand, if my in-laws wanted to be nasty, they could stop at some point and give me no alternative. Then, I’d very well be stuck with an unpalatable name . . . especially if they did not like me or thought I had refused names they themselves rather fancied.

  ‘Nohehake!’ said Tooksie’s mother, the sister of China’s father.

  A snake slithered down the furrow in my back. Hehake, an exclamation of utter surprise at some incredible, unimaginable monstrosity, some hitherto unheard of dreadfulness.

  Notwithstanding the turmoil raging inside me, my right hand calmly stretched itself out, accepting the cup of tea. Accepting the mockery of a name with which my in-laws chose to welcome me into their midst.

  I had expected the name of wifehood. It was the custom to leave all the things of one’s girlhood behind, including the name. But I was taken quite aback when my in-laws gave a new name to my son.

  ‘He already has two names,’ I said.

  ‘Molokazana,’ said Tooksie’s mother, ‘your family had no right to name our child for us.’

  ‘What name was he given?’ China’s father wanted to know. But before I could answer him, another man jumped in, ‘People seem to think naming a child is child’s play. All his life, this person will be known by the given name. And often, his personality will reflect that name.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Tooksie’s mother said. ‘What are these names? You did say he was given two?’

  ‘I call him Hlumelo but Mama calls him Michael.’

  ‘You? You call him?’ China’s father asked, eyes widened. ‘Are you telling us you named him yourself?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was no one else at the hospital and the nurses wanted a name.’

  A long silence followed my revelation. Children are named by grandparents, more often than not. Events around the birth of the child feature a lot regarding what name the child will be given: Mfazwe, was born during a war; Ndlala, during a time of famine; Ndyebo, during a time of plenty; Ntsokolo, strife; Mbalela, drought; even the towns where the father worked as a migrant labourer when the child was born are sometimes used. There are a lot of Capetowns, Funarhenis (Vereeniging), and Rhawutinis (Johannesburg). The history of the tribe, the state of the clan, the hopes the family harbours are other determinants that may go in naming a child.

  ‘Well, Molokazana,’ again, it was Tooksie’s mother who broke the silence. She seemed to be the group’s spokesperson.

  ‘We have decided to call him Mxolisi.’ A picture of a snot-nosed boy in my class back in Gungululu flashed before my eyes. My head dropped, my eyes smarting. Please, God, don’t let me cry. Not now. Mxolisi?

  ‘We hope, though his coming and your coming to us were so fraught with debate and argument, that he will bring the two clans together . . . that he will heal the wounds and bring us all some peace,’ China’s father said.

  Mxolisi, he was named that night. Mxolisi, he was baptised, a few weeks later. Mxolisi he became to all, including me, in due course. For some time, however, I’d just called him Bhabha. But eventually, even I would come to call him Mxolisi. He, who would bring peace.

  The negotiations preceding my joining China as his wife were stormy, full of recriminations and mud-flinging. Where marriage and marriage negotiations are to bond two families or two clans — these were set on cleaving, sealing our families in a never-dying bond of enmity. Had Father Savage, under whom China’s father served as a lay preacher, not insisted that China ‘do the right thing as a Christian’, I doubt the marriage negotiations would have started at all. But then, how they dragged on and on and on! And, strangely, it was China’s people who, after the baby was born, turned around and now wanted the marriage more than anything else in the world. However, by then, by the time they were hell bent on it, I no longer was interested in it at all. Only the insistence of my extended family, their pressure on Tata, forced me to go through with it at this point.

  On the day of the wedding itself, by the time we eventually went to bed, all my doubts had resurfaced, multiplied a thousand times. The renaming of Hlumelo upset me. Shocked me. It was as though I had lost a child. What joy can there be in a mother’s heart even when the dead child is replaced? Hlumelo. Mxolisi? Thank God, no one thought to give him a school or Christian name. When he started school, I would use Mama’s Michael, I vowed.

  The snide remarks I’d overheard during my induction (and perhaps overheard is not quite accurate, as these were said loud enough that I should hear them) cropped up at bedtime.

  ‘How could you bring such a miserly dowry,’ said my husband. ‘I hear the girls’ skirts are some cheap material; the doeks of the grandmothers, too small to wrap in any but the most simple style; and only one bottle for the vat of beer?’

  ‘You should talk!’ I retorted. ‘Your people haven’t even finished giving us lobola. I shouldn’t even be here, lying next to you.’ We spent our wedding night with backs to each other.

  That was the beginning of a pattern: argument and counter argument formed the basis and back-bone of our marriage.

  The next morning, like all good makotis, I jumped out of bed at four, my day had begun. Half an hour later, took in coffee to Tooksie’s parents and China’s father, in the two bedrooms. China and I were in one of several hokkies in the back-yard. Instead of a garden, the back-yard had two rows of hokkies.

  I soon got used to the gruelling routine: last to bed and first to rise. I was perpetually so exhausted I took naps during the day. Naps of sorts. Sitting up, I would pretend I was feeding the baby while both of us were fast asleep. He, in my weary and aching arms. I had come to my wedding thin. In three months, I was skin and bones. When Mama passed by one day, she asked:

  ‘Do they hang you in the rafters when they eat?’ And the next time she came, she had a message for me from T
ata. ‘He said to tell you to mind you don’t go out of doors on windy days as you might be blown away.’

  We laughed but Mama said, ‘Seriously though, Tata is worried. He said to tell you, don’t forget you can always come home.’

  China got a job working at the Cold Meat Storage in Cape Town. He got in at seven in the morning and knocked off at seven at night. There was a big break, from twelve to four in the afternoon and his mlungu said he could sleep at the back of the storage, during that lunch break. But although he needed that sleep, as he left the house at six, China wanted to get out of that place each moment he could.

  ‘Place makes my clothes smell of blood,’ he complained.

  Thus, China too suffered from lack of sleep. However, when he came back from work, he could take a nap. Actually get into bed or lie on top, close his eyes and snore should he chose. No pretend sleep for him. I was filled with envy.

  Before the baby had come, if you’d squeezed a whole bush of aloe and put the juice into a large pail, that pail would not contain half the bitterness in my body. Bitter. For the tadpole that was growing in my stomach when I had kept myself pure. Now, I was bitter for another reason. The fires that had so tortured China and me when we were not supposed to quench them in each other . . . now that we were man and wife . . . with everything else going wrong between us those treacherous and torturing fires were gone. Dead. I don’t know about China. All that tortured me at night, with him lying dead right next to me, on the same, same bed, were the vicious memories of our stolen nights together . . . long, long ago, it seemed now. Then, everything I could ever desire, was right there in his eye. All he’d ever thirst for, he found in mine. It was like that between us then. Which is why we could slake the burning thirst in each other’s knees.

  But now, with all Canaan open before us, we were suddenly struck blind to whatever beauty lay in the other. I was very familiar with China’s stiff back.

  ‘Don’t breathe on me,’ I would snarl, whenever I sensed he wanted to come close. Most nights, I confess, I wanted none of that. Too tired. Just simply too tired. All that work they made me do as a new wife, umakoti, just killed me. Soon, we got used to being together like that. Two dead dry logs.