Mother to Mother

  For a while, she tossed, turned and mumbled, fitful in her sleep, if sleep it were. Soon, however, her breathing began to ease, her muscles relaxed. Satisfied she was asleep at last, softly, carefully, I crept out of the room. But left the door ajar.

  ‘Mama!’ The hoarse cry whipped me round. It took speech away from my throat. I looked at her. Why had she cried out? And why like that . . . in that tone of voice? Such heaviness of heart in that cry. As of one in darkest despair.

  ‘What? What is it?’ I barked out.

  ‘Oh, Mama!’ Now, long fat tears gushed out and galloped down her cheeks, chasing each other to her chin.

  ‘Siziwe, what is the matter?’ I yelled, getting no answer. My anxiety level was shooting up. Why had the child called me? What was troubling her?

  She shook her head. Then, as though her hands were rags, she scrubbed her face with them; first using the one and then the other. As though the first had become saturated and had to be replaced.

  I waited. Quite at a loss as to what I could do. Finally, she spoke.

  ‘The police . . . Mxolisi was here . . . he . . . he . . .’ then, she stopped; closed her eyes and stopped talking. While the tears gushed down and all over her face.

  Again I waited. Held my breath still . . . couldn’t breathe. As though doing that might frighten her very thoughts away. I held myself upright by the strongest of wills. STAND! I told myself, not saying one word, silently, I told myself to wait, to be patient, to listen to what the child had to say. Indeed, after a while, again she continued.

  ‘He came here, before Mama returned. Came rushing in, went to his hokkie, and then left. I think he went to the hokkie to hide something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mama.’

  ‘Why?’

  Siziwe was silent.

  ‘Who was with him? Was he alone?’

  Like a shutter, something came over Siziwe’s face . . . over her eyes. Now, other eyes in another face looked at me. She had not moved. Had not even changed the manner of her sitting. But it was another girl who now looked at me. Cagey as a fox.

  Sensing her sudden reluctance, her unwillingness to go on with the conversation, I thought I might be close to some important clue.

  ‘Who was with him, Siziwe?’ I coaxed.

  ‘Mama, I don’t know.’ I noticed that the tears had dried up. I said nothing. Silently regarded her. Steadily. For a long minute we remained thus locked in each other’s gaze; neither of us saying a word.

  At last, she broke the uneasy silence.

  ‘Well, I can’t say. I wasn’t there.’

  I knew then I would get nothing more from her. I was left to wonder what it was she had started to tell me . . . something that, obviously, made her very uncomfortable . . . or, scared. I decided to leave well alone for the time being. That is not to say the matter rested there. Siziwe’s words left a hollow feeling at the pit of my stomach. However, more than what she had said, it was that cagey look that had shuttered her eyes that plunged me straight to Hades.

  From the kitchen, Dwadwa called out he was getting ready to leave.

  I left Siziwe in our bed. In her bedroom, we put Lunga, whose bedroom, the hokkie, was a complete write-off. He was in the kitchen with his father.

  ‘Mama, wake me up at eight,’ he said, before going in.

  ‘Why, where are you going?’

  ‘To school.’

  ‘School?’ What could he be thinking of? School? In his condition? ‘Have you seen what you look like?’

  Lunga merely nodded and ambled towards the bedroom.

  ‘You should listen to me, sometimes,’ I shouted after the receding figure.

  He didn’t even pause in his shuffle to the little bedroom, where his sister usually slept.

  ‘You’re in no fit state to go anywhere, as far as I’m concerned!’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Ma!’ he said quietly and closed the door.

  Dwadwa had put some cream on his bruise, after washing it. Both children had been taken care of. Everyone was fine now, I saw. Everyone, except Mxolisi, of course. But right now, I was thinking only of the three people who had been here when the police came. Suddenly, all the fear and anger I’d kept in check since those men had come and woken us welled up and mingled with this new fear of what Siziwe had almost told me. Or what I feared, and refused to accept, she had been trying to tell me. The whole mystery drained my very bones and tore my heart to shreds. I flopped onto one of the chairs miraculously still upright in the dining-room, put my head down on the table and felt the tears I’d suppressed till then wash my face and fall on the stiff arms beneath it.

  A hand, light as down, fell on my shoulder.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ my husband whispered softly. ‘Please, don’t cry, everything will be all right . . . just you wait and see.’

  A little while later, the hand on my back lifted. Footsteps. Uncharacteristically soft and quiet footsteps. Moving away. Going in the direction of the kitchen. Soon, came noises that told me Dwadwa was getting ready to go to work.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ a while later, Dwadwa asked, shaking me lightly by the shoulder. I tried to peel my eyes open. But the lids refused to cooperate. The lashes fused tight. They felt as though someone had sealed them with cement and it had dried, glueing them forever.

  ‘That tired?’

  ‘Well,’ I nodded in the direction of the voice and, with valiant effort, pried a few of the lashes apart.

  ‘There is that.’ Thinly, vaguely, I saw his brow shoot up in question.

  ‘I think I must stay at home. In case . . .’ Now it was my tongue that was lethargic. Or was it that it found what I wanted to say . . . what I had to say . . . too heavy a thing to say?

  ‘In case he comes home.’ In a gush, with a mighty effort, I pushed the words out.

  ‘What makes you think he will do that?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . but . . .’ He didn’t let me finish.

  ‘What if he doesn’t?’ My eyes popped wide open then. What did he mean? What did he mean?

  ‘Mxolisi always comes home,’ I retorted with a conviction that was fast deserting me.

  I could not decipher the look my husband gave me.

  ‘If he doesn’t come by lunch time, I’m going to go looking for him.’ The words were out of my mouth even before they were in my mind. They flew out of my mouth, shocking me more than they surprised Dwadwa.

  ‘I think you’re wasting your time, if you ask me,’ he paused, cocked his ear as though listening for something. Then, ‘In any event, the police are sure to get to him before you. And he isn’t going to come back here . . . wherever he is, he must know, by now, that they’re looking for him.’

  ‘Why?’ I jumped at him. Did he know something I didn’t know? something he was keeping away from me?

  ‘Why, what?’

  ‘Why are they looking for him?’ I trusted Dwadwa. He is one of very few people I know, who have no guile.

  ‘You ask me?’ His brows shot up, chasing the hairline. ‘You ask me?’ again, he said. ‘How long have I told you that this child will bring us heavy trouble one day because of this long foot of his?’

  I said nothing. What could I say? Anything I said would just irritate him more. I know my husband. For a moment we looked at each other — he, with one brow raised in query. Well, he could wait as long as he liked for the answer to that question, but he sure wasn’t getting the answer from me.

  ‘Also,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders, ‘let me see how the other two are doing.’ The excuse sounded lame to my own ears. The look my husband gave me told me that he saw through the lie.

  ‘No, don’t worry yourself about me and my stupid questions,’ he said. ‘In any event, I’ve got to be on my way, soon.’ Again he was all busyness, all the while mumbling and grumbling to himself. ‘Don’t say I never told you so, this son of yours . . . one shushu day, you mark my words, one shushu day, wait and see . . . he will come here dragging suc
h a thorny bush of a scandal, you won’t know what to do with yourself or where to hide your eyes.’

  10

  There is knowledge with which I was born — or which I acquired at such an early age it is as though it was there the moment I came to know myself . . . to know that I was. We sucked it from our mothers’ breasts, at the very least; inhaled it from the very air, for most.

  Long before I went to school I knew when Tata had had a hard day at work. He would grumble, ‘Those dogs I work for!’ and fuss about, and take long swigs from the bottle.

  Mama’s own quarrel with bosses often came on the day when Tata got paid. For some reason, her dissatisfaction with Tata’s conditions of employment seemed to deepen on Fridays.

  I remember when, one Friday, she exploded:

  ‘Sesilamba nje, beb’ umhlaba wethu abelungu! We have come thus to hunger, for white people stole our land.’ And, with a disdainful flick of wrist, threw the envelope down on the floor. Later, I was to hear those words with growing frequency. ‘White people stole our land. They stole our herds. We have no cattle today, and the people who came here without any have worlds of farms, overflowing with fattest cattle.’

  I never asked Mama what she meant by those words. Besides, who asks her mother what she means when, pointing at the round yellow eye of the blue sky, she teaches, ‘Ilanga! Sun!’?

  Then Tatomkhulu, Tata’s tata, came to stay with us after Makhulu passed away. Lucky me, that he chose to come to his eldest son.

  Tatomkhulu, small eyes in a small lean round face, always had a smile. But one day, soon after he came to us, he asked me what I had learned at school.

  ‘Jan van Riebeeck and his three ships and how he came to build a half-way station at the Cape of Storms and called it the Cape of Good Hope!’ As usual, I was showing off, giving more information than was strictly required.

  Tatomkhulu’s smile left his face. ‘Cape of Storms! Cape of Storms!’ he harrumphed.’ Go and change your clothes and get something to eat, Mzukulwana,’ he said. ‘Then come over here and Tatomkhulu will tell you the truth of what happened. Cape of Good Hope, indeed.’

  I did as I was told, wondering at Tatomkhulu’s displeasure. My learning was usually a source of praise, not scorn. Puzzled, I hurried and changed into my day dress, grabbed a slice of bread and a glass of ginger beer, gulped the lot down and went out.

  ‘Rinse the dishes you’ve finished using,’ Mama reminded me as I left the house.

  As fast as I could, without making her make me do them over, I washed the cup and side plate and put them away. I crept out of the house and went to the back garden, where Tatomkhulu sat on a wooden bunk beside my brother’s hokkie, sunning himself. That was the beginning of many ‘lessons’ I learnt, sitting at his knee.

  ‘What did they mean, the Cape of Storms?’ he asked.

  ‘Because the sea was often rough and broke their ships.’

  ‘Why then, did they change the name to Cape of Good Hope? Did the sea stop killing them?’

  The teacher had not talked of the sea in connection with the renaming of the Cape. Tatomkhulu saw me hesitate. He said:

  ‘Because the sea was no longer as important to them. They had decided to stay here. They were no longer travelling in their ships.’ After that, he went on, his voice soft and far-away, as though he were talking to many people, whose ears were filled with nothing else except the sound of his voice.

  ‘Long, long ago,’ he began, ‘in the times of our ancestors, when abelungu first came to this country, they called this the place of storms. They called it that because the great blue river without end ate up their ships. That was more than three hundred years ago. And the chief mlungu man who came with his group, one called Vasco da Gama, chose to call it that. The place of storms.

  ‘Did he not know that the biggest storm was the storm they themselves brought?

  ‘They came to find food and water. Then they liked the food so much they stayed. They found people already here. But that did not stop them from staying. And, having stayed, from taking the land from the people they had found here.

  ‘Yes, Mzukulwana,’ he sighed, ‘the biggest storm is still here. It is in our hearts — the hearts of the people of this land.

  ‘For, let me tell you something, deep run the roots of hatred here. Deep. Deep. Deep.’ He was silent, thereafter. Silent for a long minute and so I ventured:

  ‘Why, Tatomkhulu? Why is there hatred in the hearts of the people?’ But he wouldn’t say. Only patted me on the head. Told me to go and play with my friends before Mama found me something to do or the sun went home to sleep.

  ‘Do you remember what I told you the other day, Mzukulwana?’ another day, he asked.

  ‘Ewe, Tatomkhulu,’ I answered.

  ‘Have your teachers taught you anything about Nongqawuse?’

  ‘Ewe, they have, Tatomkhulu.’

  ‘And what did they say?’

  ‘She was a false prophet who told people to kill all their cattle and they would get new cattle on the third day.’

  ‘And did the people do that?’

  ‘Ewe, Tatomkhulu.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they were superstitious and ignorant.’

  Tatomkhulu shook his head, pulled long and strong on his pipe. ‘These liars, your teachers,’ he said. ‘But, what can one expect? After all, they are paid by the same boer government . . . the same people who stole our land.’

  He gave me a long look before saying, ‘Mzukulwana, listen to me. Listen and remember what you have heard, this day.’ Then, in the voice of an imbongi of the people, he recited:

  ‘Deep run the roots of hatred here

  So deep, a cattle-worshipping nation killed all its precious herds.

  Tillers, burned fertile fields, fully sowed, bearing rich promise too.

  Readers of Nature’s Signs, allowed themselves fallacious belief.

  In red noon’s eye rolling back to the east for sleep.

  Anything. Anything, to rid themselves of these unwanted strangers.

  No sacrifice too great, to wash away the curse.

  That deep, deep, deep, ran the hatred then.

  In the nearly two centuries since, the hatred has but multiplied.

  The hatred has but multiplied.’

  He stopped. Looked at me, a smile playing around his lips, twinkling his eyes.

  ‘Mzukulwana,’ he said, ‘mark my words. The storm we talked about the other day? About the Cape of Storms?’

  I nodded my confirmation.

  ‘Well,’ he continued. ‘The storm in the heart of a person is more dangerous than howling winds and raging waves. You can run from those and seek shelter elsewhere, perhaps escape them altogether. How does one run away from the heart, one’s own or that of another?

  ‘UmXhosa to part with his cattle, is no small matter,’ Tatomkhlulu said. ‘No small matter, remember that!’

  And, old as I am, those words of my grandfather Marhwanana ring fresh in my ears. His words on the matter of umXhosa and his cattle. Grandfather, his bones long white under the green blanket of the most serene sleep, said to me, that day, a very long time ago:

  ‘Child of the child of my child, a cow or an ox is no trifle. When one is hungry, there is corn in the field or enyangweni, amasi in the gourd, iinkobe in the pot, amarhewu engqayini. Cattle are not for food, something with which to tickle one’s teeth at slightest whim. If meat you must have, there are chickens, pigs, goats and sheep, but in truth cow or ox is no playing thing.’

  ‘But then, Tatomkhulu,’ I said, ‘why do we keep cattle, at all? Only to give ourselves work, herding them?’

  Tatomkhulu laughed, a deep growl of a laugh that came from deep down his enormous, trembly belly.

  ‘Ah, Mzukulwana,’ he chuckled, the ridges of his belly jiggling up and down. ‘What questions you ask.’ Then, appearing as though he were deep in thought or absentminded, he slowly ruffled my hair and said:

  ‘You are correct in what you say,’ he smil
ed. ‘It is no easy work to look after one’s herd. Remember though, Mzukulwana, remember, cows give us milk. From them, too, we get dung with which to smear the floors of our huts. We also use the hide from these same beasts to keep us warm and make implements and adornments with their horns.’ As he said this, with his one hand, he turned the bangle on the wrist of the opposite arm.

  Again he smiled. And then, bending down and ruffling my hair, he continued, ‘Wouldn’t you agree then that cattle pay for their keep?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Tatomkhulu,’ I replied. ‘Yes, I suppose they do,’ I said, more to dispel the doubt that wouldn’t leave me than convince him of his truth.

  ‘Suppose?’ he shouted, but there was the gentlest smile on his kindly face. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘let me give you more reasons why I say cattle are important in our lives. These are reasons more important than the milk, the dung, or the hide we get from cattle.

  ‘And here they are, Mzukulwana: First, we keep cattle for a man to offer lobola to his in-laws, who in turn, hlinzeka him — the blood coming to his family from his intended’s a sign, a bond cementing the union; we pay homage to our chiefs, applauding their wise decisions and good governance; we bid farewell to our revered departed and greet and remember the ancestors who protect us; and, in times of war, we give cattle to our enemies in exchange for those unfortunate victims taken by the other side. Cattle are also used as umlandu for the services of the healer.’ Tatomkhulu was beaming, eyes sparkling with laughter.

  ‘Quite a load there, you will agree. Quite a load that cattle carry in the life of amaXhosa,’ he said.

  ‘Imagine then if the whole nation — yes, after much debate, wrangling and verbal mastication — agreed to slaughter all its cattle. Agreed to such an abomination. How deep the resentment to have spurred them to such terrible sacrifice. How deep the abomination, to trigger such a response. UmXhosa, again I tell you, does not lightly part with his cattle.

  ‘However, in 1857, the Xhosa nation killed all its cattle. Not for food. There was no feast or ceremony. No reason at all for the slaughter of even one beast. But all the herds in the nation were killed. The goal was to drive abelungu to the sea, where, so the seer had said, they would all drown. All, to the very, very last one.