by Z. P. Dala
Royal African goddess.
By day, you cover your regal head with a dirty headscarf; the knees that I kiss are rough. You spend all your time on them, wiping the floors of rich houses. Did they ever know, Zenzi, that it was you those nights, who transformed into the sultry siren of their dreams, poured into your butter yellow sheath of a frock? You let out all that wild hair and in the halo of the backlit stage, all they saw was a crown. They did not see your face. They cried when you sang, they died when you pulled a note high up into the skies. Oh, and they desired every part of you when you growled a low note. But, by day, they tramped on your hands, and walked over your head, not seeing that they were walking on treasure.
“Hey, Tombi. Yes, you, girl. You missed a spot, Maid.”
I loved you, Zenzi. Your voice rumbling out a refrain. My voice, smoothing out your edges. We sang our songs like one monster, each of us a complement to the other, and a compliment too. We broke too many hearts. I did not know our desire was a burning flag, so evident and apparent that everyone could see we were lovers. I did not know that the jealous women would tell their tales to the ever-present secret police who would come for you in the end.
“What? Our Satin. Our man. With a Black. Never. Why doesn’t he want us Indian girls? We’ll show the Black what happens when she crosses the Divide.”
“Well, look. The N’tombi has to learn her place. Leave our men alone. Go dig in your own garden, washer girl.”
The show that night was an intoxicating drug. We both stuck that heady needle in our arms. We sang like nothing anyone had ever heard. That night, I was Satin in the spotlight; she remained the Voice in the back. But still, she shone and stole the show. I didn’t care; she deserved it.
And after she had sung and roared that voice into a crescendo that awakened angels and devils alike, she stepped out of her backlit place. In full spotlight, where she had been instructed not to show her face, because Blacks were not allowed to sing on that stage. But she walked into my spot of light and fell exhausted into my arms. Something told us this was a swan song. The dancers stopped their trots. Grown men cried. Swan song Zenzi. Swan song, my Queen.
I dragged you into that car. I craved your body even more than you craved mine. We had defied something, and when you act against the bars that jail you, erotic madness courses in your blood. Suddenly, your rebellion all makes sense, and you want to rip the very souls off each other.
“No, Sats. Not here.” Her protests were feeble. Zenzi ached for me, on fire from the thunder on the stage, where she had tilted her head up, thrown the floor-wiping maid to the floor, stood fully lit in the applause she deserved. Not everyone applauded. Not everyone was happy for her.
I wanted to ravage her right then, because maybe her bravery would somehow drip into me, and I could imbibe something of her strength.
“Zenzi, we were on fire tonight, baby. I gotta have you, baby. It’s dark, baby. It’s Tony’s car. No one will see us. Baby.”
Large, angry hands grab Sathie and pry him away from Zenzi’s embrace. They throw him to the hot asphalt, pushing his face into the stinking tar. Looking up toward Tony’s car, Sathie sees shadows of men, of the white policemen as they grope and fondle and take his Zenzi. As he is held down, he writhes and tries to escape, but he cannot. He cannot save her from being violated by the very men who think her skin color is filth but take her body anyway. What a man can see when pushed to stinking tarmac, looking up at a window of steam, is nothing that a man should ever see.
The policemen exchange places; the one who had been holding him down picks him up like a rag doll and throws him forward toward the one who had been raping Zenzi with a ham fist clamped over her mouth. Sathie had only heard her muffled screams and seen the hot steam rise onto the windows of Tony’s Chevrolet. Now, the policeman who holds him down smells of Zenzi, and Sathie cannot help but retch at the thought of it all. They take their turns with her, and soon she doesn’t even bother to make muffled screams, she just becomes mute. But the steamy windows and the moving shadows in the car tell her story. Sathie hates himself for not trying to save her, for not being strong enough to act with bravado, fighting like a street gangster with the policemen. He hates himself for thinking first about the scandal this would cause his singing career. He hates himself for saying and doing nothing. Nothing but lying on the street, the heavy foot of the policeman at his throat, telling him over and over again:
“Hey, Coolie! You banging a native, eh? Can’t stick it in your own curry, eh? Ja, your own kind wants you back, brownie.”
Zenzi, I am a coward. I failed you.
“This Black is a hot jungle girl, eh? Let’s see. Let’s feel. Come here, let me try. Hey, Coolie . . . who is she to you?”
The policemen finish, they throw Zenzi out of Tony’s car into the alley. They bear down on Sathie, cowering in the gutter. Suddenly Sathie can see it splashed over every newspaper in Durban, this affair he is trying so hard to hide. Suddenly he can see the patronage of all the rich Indian women go flying out the door, turning him into a nobody. He had his music, his voice, and his good looks. He had his security in his place in the lavish world that he surreptitiously enjoyed, his little married secrets strewn all over the large mansions of the city who plied him with the expensive things he had grown accustomed to. He hated himself, because he knew that he could never give that glittery world up, not even for Zenzi. In a split second, Sathie knew who he was. And he was a coward.
What a man can deny standing away from a window of five-fingered steam is what a man eventually becomes. A coward. It surprises him how easily he denies Zenzi, all for the fragile protection of his manicured life as a crooning heartbreaker. It was Zenzi’s heart that he broke after all.
“Who is she to you, Coolie? This black woman?”
“She is nobody, fellas. Just a girl. You know how these shows get; they throw themselves at me, these unknown women . . .”
I love women.
I always will.
Afroze. Afroze. You clean, pure column of light. You stood up today like a rising phoenix, and maybe your bravery will somehow leak into me.
CHAPTER SIX
She agreed. Afroze said yes. She had spent too many long nights and holidays drowning herself in work at the architecture firm, so surely she could just take as much time away from work as she needed. It surprised Afroze how she didn’t really care what happened at the firm, yet just a few days ago, every waking moment had been consumed with the place.
“I’ll stay. Just for a little while longer. Because you asked me to, and because I want to see that building destroyed.”
The khaya held too many lace-curtain ghosts for her; she could not resist.
She imagined the beautiful catharsis of taking a lead hammer to its rotten walls, swinging at its foundations with every cell of strength. She itched almost immediately to smash the decaying horror to pieces. The image of her body covered in filthy dust and the powder of mortar, bleeding from her knuckles and fingerbeds, crushing every particle of that two-roomed artifact, smoldered into her dreams that night. And in those dreams, here she was again, trying to bite off pieces of wall, breaking teeth, tasting salt. She would relish this particular destruction. Because when Afroze was visited that night by an apparition of her six-year-old self, she realized that it was the derelict tin-roofed building that had stolen everything away from her. It was the voice of the khaya that she had heard whispering a roar into the party-line telephone.
“Take her. I won’t keep her. Come tomorrow. Take her now.”
Of course, such angers and such vitriolic memories always fade with sun. They linger in deeper, more silent places. But what wrapped her limbs in the sweat of sheets in a dark night was greeted with insipid reality when she rose and splashed cold water on her face. And put on lipstick. Always. Put on lipstick.
Kindle fire, tinder wood. Her eyes were new this bright morning.
She sat across from her mother; this disgusting old nobody-woman in a stupid w
ig and a ruffled burgundy morning gown. Abrasive lace caressed her sagging old-old throat and reached toward her eyes with a mock.
“So, you want to build a school, do you? One with your name on the door?”
“Rosie, your sarcasm is very unbecoming. I know that I did not give birth to a bitch.”
“Ah, Mother, you are correct. But then, what did you give birth to?”
A knife is required. One that can cut through the cloying fat of tension. Ever efficient, Halaima appeared, handing a butter knife to Sylvie.
“Doctor, your toast will get cold. And you know how much you hate that.”
Sylvie felt the spell break. She looked away from Afroze’s challenging eyes, and calmly began to butter her bread.
Sathie sat silently eating. He began to wonder if he had created a situation that was just a bit too much for him to handle. He had settled very comfortably in this household of the doctor.
He knew that her illness had softened her—she allowed him into her deepest world because her vulnerability seemed to grow faster than the tumors that ate her. He was lucky. He knew how, like a stray dog, he had sneaked into this house, hoping that he would go unnoticed until the time when he was loved so much that noticing him would mean nothing at all.
Now, maybe his comfort had been shattered by his own hand. These two warring women might just shoot him in the crossfire. Perhaps he should not have persuaded Afroze to stay. He looked across the table. Afroze sat in a pool of sunlight. Red and copper brushstrokes appeared in that mane of hair. The slight plumpness of 42 softened a face that had once been too angular. She was beautiful. She did not merely glow; she blazed. Sathie swallowed a lump of poorly chewed egg. How possible was it for a man of his age to fall in love? Women would be his ruin, yet again in his life. Mother and daughter.
“Well, Mother. There is no point in arguing. I personally think that what you plan to do is very noble, and building a school here for the community is certainly going to uplift this entire town. From what I can see, this old town needs a face-lift.”
“I’m doing it for Bee,” Sylvie replied and flashed a wonderfully soft smile to the little girl.
“Bee . . . of course. Our Bibi.” Afroze muttered.
“Shall we go and look at the state of this khaya?” Afroze stood up and dusted her hands. All too ready to begin.
Sathie sprang up, ready to follow Afroze, who was marching with a determined chin, jutted out in the direction of the piece of hell-history she was about to destroy.
“Sathie,” Sylvie growled low, an almost inaudible approach of thunder.
He turned around, the change of face remarkable. The masklike smile again applied in thick paste where just a second ago were licked lips and eyes aglow. Rehearsed in body, Sathie elicited his little kowtow.
“Yes, my beloved,” he said with exaggeration.
“Come help me to the front room, Sathie. You promised you would read the newspaper to me. I am finished with breakfast.”
Sathie made a cartoon of swiveling his head back and forth.
War goddess daughter, in her fetching pair of jeans, marching to battle concrete-and-brick history. Crone-goddess mother, in her outstretched painted nails, watching his face with the expression of a woman who knows when her man looks toward another. Clever old minx.
“Of course, of course, Sylvie. My sweet, lovely Sylvie. Come, Halaima, take the doctor to the front room. I will join her in a tick.”
Afroze turned around. Her eyes asked him, “Coming?”
Halaima picked up a teacup and rooted her feet to the ground. “I have to clear the table,” she announced and mocked Sathie with her clever eyes. And although she would normally bustle and flutter at her tasks, she stood with just one teacup in her hand, throwing a challenge.
Sathie realized where he was in the game of queens; he pawned his immediate desires.
“Come, darling Sylvie. Let me help you up. And off to the news of the day we shall go.”
The pair of them tottered slowly away. Sylvie rested her wigged head on his strong shoulder. They murmured little familiar stories to each other. Sathie had heard them so many times, he sometimes heard them in his sleep.
“Yes, Sylvie, yes, I remember. Yes, Sylvie, of course it was a very bad time for you. Yes, Sylvie, you told me about the rats. Yes, Sylvie, no one will ever forget. Yes, Sylvie . . .”
That proud woman, that majestic teacup holder with eyes that held a world of seens and unseens, stood frozen in a pose. She looked directly at her rival in the doorframe.
The other proud woman. Blazing flames of hair. Not a filly any longer, not a pasture mare just yet.
“Well, clear up the table then,” Afroze said.
“I’ll do it later,” Halaima answered, and sank down on a stool near the kitchen door, making a show of examining her nails.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Where is it written that one who has suffered has to be long suffering? Sylvie, reaching her seventies, had hidden the greatest secret of all from her own child.
Sylvie, not just a cruel, evil witch-mother. Sylvie, who began as a reluctant activist, morphed with the hard years into a rampant activist of the anti-apartheid struggle in a land that was running with blood. Now, she lies silent in a dry town, and no cares what she threw away so that she could be a warrior. Who made the rules that silenced the activist? Sometimes, when the fight has been fought and the day has been won, all the fighter would like is for someone to immortalize their struggle. A book would be nice. A plaque, perhaps. A street name would be just first prize. A bust or bust.
Oh, look, books are written about famous freedom fighters now. Memoirs filled with stories told by people who knew people, sometimes written by gnarled old hands that had pulled triggers or detonated bombs, mouths filled with speeches, those jailed days, those broken rocks, those pins pulled from grenades. Because now, after it all ended, the struggle had become glamorous. And women of the struggle, rampant female banshees who stared apartheid in the face and spat, had become fashionable to know. Especially the ones who were still alive. Of them there were few. Back then, when politicians were raping and imprisoning them, frightened grannies warned their girls never to turn out like them.
What you want to go to high school for, girl? You stay at home and learn to cook or you’ll end up in jail like a black woman. What you think, Nelson going to find you a husband after you done shaking your ass at black rallies? In your dreams.
Doctor Sylvie became notorious for dreams. She had them and she lived them. And when it all was over, and the country was one, she just never made it into the hall of fame. In a book of a thousand pictures, where was this one?
Why had this face lost the privilege of becoming another black-and-white portrait of the Resistance in an overpriced coffee-table book to be bought by patriotic expats? One needed to ask these questions. Heroes only became their archetypes when the smoke had cleared, when someone decided to shadow them around asking the right questions. How did you and why did you and when did you and now what will you and . . .
Oh, Sylvie, the writers have not come knocking at your bright green door. The photographers, the biographers, the chronographers, oh, Sylvie, purrty Sylvie . . . you are not even a footnote. Forgotten you, they have.
Quite a slap in the face. Even when the ones who you fought for never saw your face, and the soldiers who you stitched together with rough twine died before they opened their eyes, and the place where they finally took you was so dark that even when you were allowed into the light with the moles who ratted you out, they were too blind to view your face, you hoped for a day when your story would be made into song.
Not every fighter in that war selflessly and coyly declined medals. A medal in a glass cabinet would do nicely. Thank you very much.
A declaration of who you are and how large a role you played in the struggle would be a good thing. Someone had to know it all. It was not just the final nod of a medal, a ministership or even a government struggle-hero pension
plan. Someone had to finally care, to sit and listen to your tales of your prison days.
Sylvie.
When I get out of here. If. If. When. If . . .
When I get out of here I will wear lipstick. Red, bright red. The brightest red to be found. Red like the color I cannot see.
Red I can feel.
Blue I can smell.
Green I can taste.
Orange, purple. Are there more? I know there are more. A spectrum of others. Shades and hues, tints and tinges and tones and myriads and many. I know they are out there. I saw them once. I see them in words. I see them in memories. I catch them. They fall on me. A shawl of colors. Find them. Keep them. They are there. They were there once.
Inside the jail cell all you see is gray. Stark, bleak gray. The walls are the same color as the floors. You lie suspended not knowing if your feet are in the air. Windowless cube. A naked bulb buzzes, and you will never know if the sun has risen or the sun has set. The filthy clothes are gray. The rough blankets are gray. Gray exudes from your pores into gray buckets. Food tastes of gray. Ashen. Maybe your hair is gray now.
Sounds become sights. Women play one-two, tappity-tap. One woman has seen a ray of daylight through a crack in her cell. She tells us. One tappity-tap, soft like her inner thigh, and one tappity-tap spreads like gossip from cell to cell. So soft, you hear it because you have been trained to hear what the guards and matrons have been trained not to hear, and you mark the passage of one day.
Someone sees dark night through a drafty hole. Two tappity-taps. How else would you know that time has passed? How else would you know there was life beyond your gray? Others marking walls, others marking time, pacing in bare feet. Four women-sized paces this way, five women-sized paces that way. And stop.
We are sisters. All inside this mother’s gray womb. We all scream when one of us is dragged by her hair, for they have figured out the tappity-tap. We may never see her again. But watch . . . her sister starts up the tappity-tap. Glorious music, sister camaraderie. We will not stop our tappity-tap. It is our language and our only salvation. When one goes, one immediately takes up where she left off. Because this is how we have been trained.