Mother to Mother

by Sindiwe Magona

  Then Lunga, the baby, came. For a while, the whispering stopped. I didn’t notice this at first. In fact, I only remembered that it was so following later events.

  When the baby was about three months old, Mxolisi began to wet his bed. This child who was dry and out of napkins by his first birthday, wet his bed. I scolded, I shamed, I ridiculed — all to no avail.

  Lungile came up with mice. The idea, that is. Folklore has it that making the bed-wetter eat mice will cure him. But first, we told Mxolisi that if he wet his bed one more time, we were going to catch a mouse, roast it on the open fire, and make him eat it. With everybody, all his friends, watching.

  His eyes grew large and round. We felt we had scared him enough. Lo and behold, if the same acidy stench did not greet our nostrils the very next morning. That weekend, Lungile made good his threat.

  And all the time Mxolisi choked and gagged and finally swallowed the bits we’d chopped the roasted mouse into, his eyes strayed often to his younger brother as though to say: why me alone? What about him? Sure enough, the bed was dry the next morning. But then, even as we were crowing with pleasure at the success of our plan, more awaited us.

  ‘Uph’ owam utata?’ Out of the blue, my son asked, ‘Where is my own father?’

  I could hardly believe my ears. The dish in my hands dropped to the floor while, mouth agape, I stared. Then, ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘Uph’ owam utata?’ Again, Mxolisi said. Clear as clear can be. I had not been mistaken. He who had not said one word in almost two years, had spoken. Such was my joy that I lost sight of the meaning of the words he’d uttered.

  Yes, that is Mxolisi. He kept silent for nearly two years. And when he did speak again, it was to ask me a question to which I had no answer. To which I did not know the answer.

  ‘Uph’ owam utata? Where is my own father?’

  But it is not what he said that gnaws the pit of my stomach — every single day. No, it is not what he said that day but what he did not say . . . the question he did not ask . . . has never asked, that has stayed in my mind. Stayed in my mind, from then and from long before to this very day. Yes, it did. That question he asked only that one time . . . asked it twice, within a minute. Never asked it again. Instead, there came a stoop to the shoulder and his suddenly-old-man’s hooded look frightened me more than I can say.

  ‘Where is my own father? Where is my own father?’

  Yet the bed-wetting stopped soon thereafter. But then, there is the terrible guilt I feel he carries. Mzamo and Zazi. But he never says a word about them. Those friends of his early childhood. Poor children. Died like dogs. Shot by the police. Nobody blamed Mxolisi, he was just a baby then. Nobody blamed him at all. Today, you can kill Mxolisi before he will tell on another. His own sins, he will readily confess. Not another’s, no. He would sooner lie than do that, even take the blame himself. But he never tells on someone else, not even his brother or sister. Never. Even with this thing of the Young Lions and the necklacing. Although he is very active in the business of the comrades, himself a student so long in high school, he has denied over and over again that he has had anything to do with necklacing. When Dwadwa and I pointed out, one day, that it was students who went about killing people in this terrible manner, Mxolisi said, ‘Not me!’ Yes, he said, some of his friends were involved. ‘But I am no murderer.’ What do those friends of his tell their own parents? As amaXhosa say, ityal’ alingomafutha, alithanjiswa, guilt is no cream with which one anoints oneself.

  Other things happened and time passed and cheer returned to Mxolisi’s face. Hugs and kisses, too, returned. And so did our whispers. Mxolisi, who wouldn’t finish a bar of chocolate or other sweet without insisting I take a bite. To this very day, of my three children, he is the most demonstrative. However, it worries me that all these years since, he has not once asked for those two boys who used to take him everywhere with them. When he recovered his speech, he did not ask: Where is Mzamo? or, Where is Zazi? Not once since that day long ago when he was all of four has he asked for either boy. Many many times have I asked myself why he has never done that. Why? It is as though he never knew them . . . never called their names . . . never cried for them not to leave him behind . . . never once woke up in the middle of the night crying out for their company. Before he’d said those terrible words: Nab’ewodrophini.

  At some unguarded moments, however, I have seen the knowledge in his wounded eyes. I have seen the searing knowledge.

  When he started talking, Mxolisi had a few months left before he had to start school. However, once he did, it was as though the power of speech had never left him. In school, his progress brought to fruition the earlier promise. Invariably, Mxolisi was top of his class. The only problem, in primary school, came the day he was given corporal punishment because he had not paid his school fees. He was in standard five then. The caning upset him so much he refused to go to school. I cajoled, and pleaded and promised him things I had no business promising him. In the end, though, he agreed to go back.

  A few months later, however, Lungile skipped the border, to go and train as a freedom fighter. Once more, I was alone. Difference was, now I had two children. It was not long after this that I discovered that Mxolisi had left school. I came back from work one Friday, to find a brown envelope on my bed. Inside, two crisp twenty-rand notes.

  ‘Where did this come from?’ I asked, turning the envelope over. And there, in large black letters hand-written, was Mxolisi’s name. As well as the name of the company that had paid him.

  He had got sick and tired of being caned for nothing by his teachers, he told me. He didn’t have all the books they wanted him to have. Moreover, some of the ones we had bought at the beginning of the year had been stolen. ‘Besides,’ said my son, ‘with Tata gone, I can see how tough things have become for you, Mama.’

  Long and hard did I talk to him that night, explaining that he was too young to work. I would manage. I would leave my domestic worker job and start a business or take chars instead of the one steady job with one mlungu woman. He had to stay in school, I made him see. Were he to leave school before finishing high school, he would be sorry for the rest of his life. He would be part of the thousands upon thousands of young people who roam the township streets aimlessly day and night. That is how Mxolisi stayed long enough in school to become a high school student.

  Unfortunately, it is in that high school that serious problems started. Mxolisi got himself involved in politics. Boycotts and strikes and stay-aways and what have you? Soon, he was a leader in students’ politics and many who didn’t know his face knew his name.

  These children went around the township screaming at the top of their voices: LIBERATION NOW, EDUCATION LATER! and ONE SETTLER, ONE BULLET! And the more involved in politics he got, the less we saw him here at home.

  I now had three children, with the arrival of the girl, Siziwe. I had married Siziwe’s father, Dwadwa, a home body. The kind of man that, in my younger days, we used to laugh at and call imurhu or a ‘skom van ver! — despising him for his being new in town, his being unschooled in the devious ways of urban living. However, with experience, it was exactly that type of man I wanted in my life. The salt of the earth — solid, steadfast, predictable as the movements of the sun. Might be overcast sometimes, too hot at others, but always there at the set time. There, doing what it has always done, what it was meant to do — from time immemorial. However, the harder we tried to bring Mxolisi closer home, the harder he ran. But then, a thousand, thousand other students his age were doing exactly what he was doing. Here, in Guguletu, as well as all over the country.

  And in spite of all this politics, two-three weeks ago I could hardly walk anywhere in the whole of Section 3 without being stopped by people whose mouths had no other words to say besides singing Mxolisi’s praises. To everyone, he was a hero. People I didn’t know from a bar of soap stopped me. Young and old, they stopped me on the street to tell me:

  ‘Mother of Mxolisi, your child
is really a child to be proud of. In this day and age, when children do everything but what is decent. We really thank the Lord for you. Yes, we really thank Him because of the son He has given you!’

  This Mxolisi! He can make one so proud sometimes. Apparently, he’d gone to the shops over at NY 110 the previous evening to get Dwadwa some fruit. He was gone a long time, a very long time. Of course we scolded him when he eventually returned. It was not till the next morning that we got to know the reason for his delay.

  Before five, the next morning, there was a knock at the door. A man and a woman walked in. Both strangers. Before we’d even heard who they were, they began praying and thanking God and Mxolisi and us, his parents.

  When he’d got close to the shops, onlookers’ stares told Mxolisi something was afoot behind the building. Curious, he asked one of them what was happening.

  ‘Some boys’ve dragged a girl over there,’ the man told him. But the girl was not screaming, he said. Therefore, no one thought to intervene. Because the girl was not screaming. Thanks to Mxolisi, the girl had escaped certain rape. ‘And who knows what they would have done to her after that?’ the mother asked.

  ‘This boy of yours has a good heart,’ the girl’s father said. Unashamed tears ran down his cheeks. They wanted to give Mxolisi money, but Dwadwa felt that was wrong. Mxolisi had only done what anybody would have done.

  ‘No,’ the girl’s mother said quietly. ‘There were many people there. Looking. Some were even laughing. None stopped the crime, none. Until your son arrived on the scene.’

  But now, some of those same people look at me as if I am the one who killed your daughter. Or expressly told Mxolisi to go and kill her.

  9

  6 am - Thursday 26 August

  At the departure of the police, a host of questions assailed us: Why would the police have come and raided our house at such an ungodly hour? What did they want from Mxolisi? Where was he? Why had he not come home all night? What did the neighbours think of the commotion?

  Then, as though the terrible questions were not unsettling enough, hot on their heels an army of answers came flooding us into a state of psychotic paralysis. All at once we knew everything. We had all the answers. The knowledge plunged us into despair, for everything we knew was bad . . . or worse.

  Of course, the police had not told us a thing. Why would they tell us why they were looking for our son? When have the Guguletu Police been known for being reasonable, to say nothing of polite? Courteous? HA! Don’t make me laugh.

  We were still torturing ourselves with our new-found knowledge, no end to the insights, suggestions, proposals and guesses gushing out of our mouths when, early as the hour was, our very concerned neighbours descended upon us.

  ‘Hey, Mmelwane,’ Skonana’s eyes were fairly popping out of their sockets. ‘What is this lawaai, in the middle of the night?’

  ‘As you, no doubt, saw,’ replied Dwadwa tartly, ‘the police paid us a visit.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said curtly.

  Skonana took a step back.

  ‘Said they were looking for this boy, Mxolisi.’ And before she could say one word more, Dwadwa added, ‘And now that you know as much as we do, may we try and put ourselves together without further interruption? We’ve had enough of that for one day, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I know when I’m not needed,’ in a huff, Skonana stormed out. But not before she had flung back, over her shoulder, ‘I only came because I thought I should let you know what people on the street are saying!’

  ‘Don’t pay him any mind! Sukumhoya!’ I shouted at the retreating figure. But I didn’t get as much as a reply. Skonana did not halt or falter in her step. She did not look back. Her back stiff as though starched, she just kept on walking till she reached the door, opened it, and closed it ever so gently, so softly, you knew she was taking extra care to be civil, making it clear she would not stoop to our level.

  I turned on Dwadwa, ‘You didn’t have to be that crude.’

  ‘Your neighbour can be trying, sometimes,’ he retorted. ‘Anyway, what does she want? Couldn’t she wait, give us some time . . . God! the police haven’t even got to the police station yet!’

  ‘What did she mean by that?’

  ‘By what?’ asked Dwadwa crossly.

  ‘What people are saying?’

  ‘Go and ask her, if you really want to listen to gossip.’

  That shut me up. That’s my husband for you. But the piece about ‘Your neighbour’ annoyed me. As with the children, if any of our friends or neighbours annoys Dwadwa, he will immediately donate that person to me. ‘Your child’ and ‘Your friend’ or ‘Your neighbour’. His uncaring back increased my annoyance. There’s nothing more irritating than taking offence when the person who is the source of that is oblivious of your anger. Right now, Dwadwa was busy going about his business, while I fumed.

  ‘She is your neighbour too,’ I threw at him as I left the bedroom, where the exchange had taken place. I had to see to the children.

  Dwadwa did not take me on. And my mind turned on the one child for whom, at that moment, my very arms ached. Where was he? Where was Mxolisi? What had happened to him? And what did the police want him for?

  Thank God, Lunga’s cuts and bruises turned out to be superficial, more ugly than deadly: a cut lip, a loose tooth, a bump on the forehead busy turning red and blue even as I looked, and what promised to be a king-sized shiner in a couple of hours. The important thing, however, was that we all realized that, no bones broken, he would survive.

  Meanwhile, Siziwe, whom the police had hardly touched, was a wreck. Dwadwa took one look at her and opted for the easier task of tending to Lunga, although he himself sported a nasty bruise on the lower right arm, a little above the elbow. Must have got it when he’d fended off a blow aimed at his head.

  Just as I was getting myself ready to see to Siziwe, there came a knock, accompanied by: ‘Vula, ndim! Open up, it’s me!’

  ‘Me, who?’ asked Dwadwa in a voice thick with irritation. ‘And is your own house on fire that you should go about waking people up from their sleep?’

  ‘Are you asleep?’ came the swift response. From her voice, the woman was genuinely startled. The voice also helped me identify the caller, another of our neighbours, Qwati.

  Dwadwa opened the door to admit her, bandaged legs and all, ‘I didn’t think you would be,’ she wheezed as she walked in.

  In her early sixties, years of hard toil had left her a legacy — a network of varicose veins so pronounced her legs looked liked the trunks of ancient trees, twisted and gnarled roots choking the life out of them. The veins were perpetually on the brink of bursting, hence the bandages. Chain smoking and heavy drinking hardly improved the situation. Qwati, a very amicable woman, confessed to being diabetic and asthmatic. We all suspected she was alcoholic as well.

  ‘Mother of Siziwe! My Sister, what is this commotion so early in the day?’ But before we had answered her, she rattled on. ‘Nibanjelwa ntoni, ngenj’ ixukuxa? What are you being arrested for, at dog-wash-teeth time?’

  If Dwadwa had been abrupt with Skonana, he was downright rude to Qwati and sent her packing in less time than it takes to say How Do You Do! The poor woman hardly got an answer to her first question. Although I didn’t necessarily agree with Dwadwa’s harsh manner of dealing with our meddlesome neighbours, nonetheless, I had to agree that his method was effective. We certainly had enough on our hands with Mxolisi’s absence . . . and his being sought by the police.

  I walked to the door with her and said, ‘Come back later in the morning, Qwati. We have to straighten everything now, as you can see.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, leaving me standing at the door, holding the door open till she went out of the gate. I returned to the business at hand, tending to the two children and putting the house in order again . . . whatever could be righted, those things not broken beyond repair, that is.

  In the kitchen, Dwadwa was seeing to Lunga. S
iziwe was in the dining-room, and that is where I headed.

  Eyes big and round, pushed out as those of a tadpole in a drying ditch, Siziwe squatted on the floor, right in the corner of the room furthest from the door and on the inside wall, the one adjacent to that of the main bedroom. Elbows to knees, she crouched and from deep down her throat came this panicky cooing of a frightened dove. No lifting upward trill. Just a deep dull growl, a trembly sigh, filled with blind despair. On and on and on the terrible wrawl, shoulders heaving horribly. But no tears came from those grotesquely protruding eyes.

  Gathering her in my arms, I helped her up and, half-dragging, half-carrying her, took her to my bedroom, where she flopped onto the bed.

  Shaking her by the shoulders, I tried to stem the haunted, tearless cry. However, she would neither stop nor answer my call.

  ‘Siziwe! Siziwe! d’you hear me?’

  No answer came from her. She just lay there on the bed, shivering. Although the room was far from cold, I took a heavy shawl and covered her with it and went to the kitchen, where I made her a strong cup of black tea.

  She took the tea, piping hot as it was, and gulped it down in one go, as though the tea were ice cold or her throat were beyond scalding, nothing living that could burn.

  After that, she sat up and, thinking she was about to say something, I waited. Watched her closely and waited.

  But she just went on staring, unblinking, quiet as though she had lost her tongue. A few minutes later, she flopped back onto the bed, lay stretched full out, and closed her eyes. Whether or not she was asleep, I couldn’t say.

  I put my hand against her forehead. No fever there. Relief. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to go . . . to leave her alone. Instead, I stood there watching over her as though she were a baby only hours old.