Rotten Row

by Petina Gappah

  The younger relatives, particularly Melody, Precious and the other nieces, began to call her ‘Miss Manchester’ because M’zukuruTryson, who had been deported from England but lied to everyone that he was back because he was tired of the British way of life, had told them that the weather in Manchester, which he and his wife MaiKuku pronounced ‘Men Chester’, was more predictable than Washington’s wife. Less charitably, Washington’s mother called her MaininiKwindi or VaMasvanhikongonya, nicknames that mocked the way her mood just changed without notice. ‘Kumudhura kani, MaininiKwindi vedu, kumudhura VaMasvanhikongonya,’ said Washington’s mother.

  It had been so from the moment she arrived at Washington’s mother’s house in the Chicago suburb of Kwekwe. As Washington’s mother told the story, ‘She came, just like that, very suddenly without warning in the middle of the night …’

  ‘It was actually around eight, mhamha,’ corrected her daughter, Washington’s sister Winnet.

  ‘Midnight, after eight, what does it matter. The news on ZBC was over, wasn’t it? The news was over and I was sitting there with Winnet going through my Planning Book, this year I am teaching dunderheads like you won’t believe, vanongoimba chinamira disappear vakamirira kukohwa maU. So different from Washy who passed just one time, with six As and two Bs, one for Shona, one for English. And I was sitting there just thinking baba’ngu Madyira imi, very soon the power will go out, and sure enough, just as I had said that very word, the power went out because it always goes after the news, it is the same all over Kwekwe even for us here in Chicago who are well up and there was a loud banging at the gate, and I said to Winnet, nhai Winnet, zvatichapindirwa nembavha takam’ka, and there was more banging. Winnet looked for the torch but it had no batteries, ari mabasa aCaritas it was all thanks to that foolish maid of mine because she forgot to get them. Mazuvano vasikana havashandiki navo, so she went out in the dark to see who was at the gate and there she was, all on her own, with just one bag and she said, I am pregnant, and it is Washington’s, just like that, no how are you, no whose daughter am I, no nothing, she did not even sit down. Ko, iko kungotushura-tushura mapundu pane vanhu?’

  As she had come to know her daughter-in-law’s ways, Washington’s mother found there were many things wrong with Washington’s wife. Of course, no one could ever have been good enough for her First Born and One and Only Son Washy, the first person in his family on his father’s side to go to university, but such a daughter-in-law was not the wife she had hoped for for her son.

  First, there were the O levels, or rather, the lack of O levels. Washington’s mother was a teacher of the Old School. She had been trained and taught in the time that VateteMa’Kere referred to as mazuva aSmith. Washington’s mother would certainly have agreed with VateteMa’Kere’s often-repeated statement that ‘Hoodenga Smith waiva nomwoyo wakashata, asi mazuva aSmith vana vaitsvunha, Keresenzia!’ For more than thirty years, Washington’s mother had known the power of walking into a class to have the entire body of children stand up and chant ‘Good Morning Mistress’, before she waved them to sit with their backs straight, and, for the girls, their legs closed.

  Washington’s mother had firm and uncompromising views on a number of things, like fancy hairstyles on schoolgirls and haircuts with lines and patterns in them on schoolboys. She believed these hairstyles, together with Zimdancehall music, the introduction of the bottom-focused kongonya dance in Traditional Dance competitions at schools and the fact that children now started school at Grade Zero, without first showing whether they could put their right arms above their heads to touch their left ears, had a pernicious influence on standards. Taken together with the government’s increasing censure of teachers who used corporal punishment, it was no wonder that the national O level pass rate had not reached thirty per cent in the last ten years. So Washington’s mother disapproved of Washington’s wife because she belonged to the failing seventy per cent: she had attained nekunongera just four Cs, two Ds and an E achieved over three sittings in two years. ‘Can you believe she got two Us for maths in every exam?’ Washington’s mother said. ‘Kutokundwa nesu mamistress emazuva aSmith?’

  Being an unschooled girl, Washington’s mother had expected her to at least make a greater effort in the housekeeping department. But though she was neat and tidy enough, and seemed to have an eye for order and organisation, Washington’s mother considered Washington’s wife’s cooking abysmal.

  To be fair, it was not that Washington’s wife’s cooking was bad in itself; it was mainly that she was unable to cook sadza to the exacting standard imposed by Washington’s mother. The ability to cook the staple maize meal so that it was not too hard, too soft or too sticky was such a crucial test of womanhood that a woman who cooked all other dishes like a Michelin-starred chef but cooked sadzambodza would be considered not just a bad cook but no woman at all.

  Washington’s mother also took exception to the fact that Washy often cooked together with his wife, husband and wife slicing onions, tomatoes and chicken as they listened to Fungisai Zvakavapano, Shingisai Suluma, or Delta Chadoka and the Voice of God. ‘Gore richitanga, richipera, tinoda makomborero! Anouya makomborero,’ they sang as they cooked. ‘Inga Jobhu muranda, muranda waBaba!’

  Though the Catholicism she had taken on when she married her husband discounted Chivanhu, Washington’s mother began to fear that his wife might have fed Washy an aphrodisiac that made him docile. And Washington’s wife’s languor sorely tested the energetic zeal with which his mother took on every task. Washington’s mother believed firmly that any woman who was still in bed after six in the morning was lazy beyond redemption.

  To the laudable qualities of the Virtuous Woman of the Book of Proverbs who rose before dawn, prepared the meal for the household, and who, like a merchant ship, brought food to her family, who girded her loins, strengthened her arms, planted a vineyard with the fruit of her hands, and whose candle goeth not out by night and was thus held as the model for the nation’s daughters-in-law, Washington’s mother added an extra quality: ‘Mukadzi wemunhu ndiye anotomutsa jongwe. A good wife is one who rouses the rooster so that it can rouse the household.’

  Then there were the novels. Washington’s mother simply could not understand how a woman who did not work had any business spending so much time reading. Perhaps if Washington’s wife had loved her books enough at the appropriate time, which was when she had been at school, she would have hit them hard enough that she passed her O levels.

  Washington’s wife bought the novels from the boys who sold them second-hand from the roadside pavements. They cluttered up the Chicago bedroom she shared with Washington, the Barbara Taylor Bradfords, Victoria Holts and Catherine Cooksons, the Irving Wallaces, Herman Wouks, Louis L’Amours and Harold Robbinses, cheap out-of-print paperbacks reclaimed from the detritus of dispossessed commercial farmers and the pitiful leavings of the estates of the white poor.

  Then there were the allergies. Washington’s mother did not believe in her daughter-in-law’s allergies. She simply could not fathom how anyone raised in the township of Mbizo Section One could afford to have the kind of allergies that Washington’s wife claimed debilitated her so severely. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ Washington’s mother said, ‘her father was a miner who worked for Lancashire Steel. Where would the allergies come from?’

  Rather suspiciously, the allergies seemed to operate in a manner that meant that Washington’s wife could not use those things that her mother-in-law preferred. Thus Washington’s wife was allergic to Washington’s mother’s favourite detergent, Cold Power. She preferred Surf or Omo. Washington’s wife sneezed like fifty ancestral spirits were about to descend upon her when Washington’s mother sprayed the air with her favourite Air Glade Pine Fresh air freshener. She preferred the Lavender spray. Washington’s wife was not able to use a mutsvairo hand broom to sweep the house like a normal daughter-in-law because she was allergic to dust. Washington bought her a vacuum cleaner.

  This was yet another black mark against W
ashington’s wife. Washington’s mother distrusted washing machines, vacuum cleaners and all labour-saving devices on the principle that any machine that worked that quickly could never do as thorough a job as the human hand, particularly, and preferably, if that human hand was female, and that female was Washington’s wife. ‘Allergic to dust, allergic to dust,’ Washington’s mother muttered whenever she heard the sound of the vacuum cleaner. ‘Pwallergic, pwallergic. Funny how she is never sneezing when she reads all those Pavement Books of hers. She may as well say she is allergic to work.’

  Finally, there was what Washington’s mother referred to as ‘This Church Church Business.’ Washington’s wife had managed to persuade her husband to leave the Catholic faith in which he had been raised and join her at the Celestial Church of the Power in the Blood International, Established 2012. When she raised This Church Church Business with him, Washington only said to her, ‘Mhamha, we don’t want to worship idols,’ and indicated the Virgin Mary who sat serene in white and blue Dresden porcelain, arms out in benediction, in the place of honour next to the enlarged portrait of Washington’s deceased father.

  This Church Church Business meant that Washington and his wife did not just go to Mass on Sundays like normal people and confess sins that they sometimes had to rack their heads to remember. They seemed to actually live in church. Night and day they went to prayers. Unless they had to go to visit or bury relatives, This Church Church Business meant that they associated only with their church people. It was one church wedding and one church funeral after the other. It seemed to Washington’s mother that Washington’s wife had greater zeal in helping out when it came to people associated with This Church Church Business than she did in helping her out at home.

  ‘This Church Church Business is enough to make you think’, Washington’s mother said in the staff room, as she dunked pieces of bun into her chicory instant coffee, ‘that they are the very ones who raised Jesus from the dead while the rest of us were busy manufacturing the nails and the cross that killed Him. Shuwa vanoita sekuti isu vamwe tisu takatomurovera pamuchinjikwa! And since when has Maria Musande been an idol? Aren’t idols those golden calfs they had in those days, zvaana Baal Baal zviya? Saka nhasi Maria Musande ndiye ava golden calf? Ngavatibvire.’

  The situation might have been saved with the arrival of the first grandchild, Tinomunamataisuwenyasha, which meant ‘We alone worship a God of grace’, a mouthful that just about managed to fit the First Name space on the birth certificate without leaving room for a middle name before being mercifully shortened to Tino. Washington’s wife proved to be a competent and doting mother with a happy and suitably fat baby that gurgled its joy to every face, but even here, Washington’s mother found something to criticise. Mother, it seemed, had passed on her famous allergies, and, horror of horrors, Baby Tino was not allowed to eat peanut butter.

  This meant that peanut butter porridge, which, according to Washington’s mother, was the only healthy breakfast for every child born on this soil, and many an adult too, was never to pass the child’s lips. Washington’s mother did not hesitate to express her deepest shock. ‘Everyone knows that an early bowl of porridge is just what a child needs to settle the stomach in the morning,’ Washington’s mother said. ‘Especially if it has peanut butter. Chirumbi chenyu ichi. Mwana wepi asingadyi dovi?’

  She considered it a personal slight to her own cooking; she particularly loved peanut butter. As a girl pupil boarder at Gutu Mission School, she and her classmates had invented a treat they called chidoko, peanut butter mixed with sugar. Her mashakada peanut butter rice was famous in the family, as was her chim’kuyu chine dovi, dried meat soaked in water to soften it then cooked in peanut butter sauce. Legend had it that Washington’s Zezuru father had at first been disconsolate by the amount of bride wealth demanded for his Karanga wife, but having tasted these dishes, as well as Washington’s mother’s mutsine vegetable leaves with peanut butter and her mashed pumpkin nhopi with peanut butter, he had come to see that he had, in the end, not been unduly overcharged. ‘If mhamha would have her way,’ Washy and his sister Winnet often teased her, ‘she would cook just peanut butter on its own but with additional peanut butter.’

  The implacability of Washington’s mother’s resentfulness towards Washington’s wife was matched only by that felt towards her by her daughter-in-law. Each woman was equally convinced that her place in Washington’s life was more important than that of the other. Who was it who had birthed him, nursed him and educated him on her own after Washington’s father died and left her with nothing but debt; who was it who had made him the man that he was today if not his own mother? But who, if not his own wife, had given him his first son, with many more to follow, who was it who knew him in a way that no mother ever could; who was it who had a present and a future with him that eclipsed everything in his past?

  Things could have exploded quite spectacularly had Washington not moved from Kwekwe to Harare with his wife and child. Now, when they met, although they struggled to hide their mutual antipathy beneath a cold veneer of civility, enough had happened between the two women to give a frosty edge to every meeting, a barb to every compliment.

  To Washington’s mother’s combativeness, Washington’s wife responded with brittle defensiveness. She was practised in the passive aggressive way of talking called kuruma nekufuridzira where words of honey are dropped with just the right amount of poison. ‘That is a nice new dress: it is so much better than what you usually wear.’ ‘Oh look at you, cooking such a nice meal. It must be nice to have some money for once.’ And in response, Washington’s mother would apologise for the definciencies of her house in tones of sarcastic humility: ‘Such a pity I have so much dust and not enough novels. Or satellite dishes and DStv. Ndimika vekuturika tumasamburera-samburera pamba.’

  Thus it continued, an uneasy ceasefire that did not acknowledge the war, a détente achieved without acknowledging that there had ever been any hostilities.

  On the morning of Melody’s wedding, when Washington’s wife heard that his mother had volunteered Washington’s car without first consulting its owners, and that she was to be replaced by Washington’s mother in the passenger seat, she did not say a word. After she finished picking at her pimples in the second lounge, she walked to the upstairs guest bedroom where she and Washington slept, picked up Hold the Dream, the Barbara Taylor Bradford novel she was reading, collected the keys to the Honda, went out to the car, opened the door, sat in the front passenger seat, and read her novel. She would not let her mother-in-law get away with such a public humiliation. She would not budge, and was not budging for anyone on earth, not for fifty thousand rural aunts.

  When she realised what had happened, Melody’s mother went out to the car. From the locked interior of the car, Washington’s wife looked up from her novel and glared out at her through the window. ‘Did you not understand the arrangements?’ Melody’s mother said, as she knocked at the window. ‘VateteMa’Kere and the others will travel with Washy. You can follow on later.’

  ‘I understood them perfectly,’ Washington’s wife said through the open window, her eyes on her novel, ‘but I am not moving.’

  ‘But Washington’s mother said VateteMa’Kere …’ said Melody’s mother.

  ‘If there are those who want VateteMaiKere to go to Melody’s wedding in a car,’ Washington’s wife said as she turned a page in her novel, ‘then it would be a very good idea for those ones to buy their own car and not use other people’s cars without their permission.’

  She turned away from Melody’s mother and focused her attention on Hold the Dream. Melody’s mother threw her hands to the skies in defeat and walked back into the house. After a short consultation, a deputation of vanyarikani, the small group of the senior relatives before whom Washington’s wife could not afford to be seen losing face was sent out. In their wedding finery, they knocked at all the windows and asked her to leave the car.

  Washington’s wife responded by raising Hold the Dre
am from her lap to face level in an ostentatious show of reading. To drown out the voices, she put the keys in the ignition and turned on the radio. It was pre-set to play Oliver Mtukudzi’s ‘Totutuma’. The celebratory song, a staple at all weddings, graduations and other occasions celebrating achievement, was to have accompanied the beeping horns and ululating women as Washington’s balloon-festooned car moved in the long triumphal procession from the house to the church.

  ‘Rwendo runo wadadisa, inga watipembedza. Kupembedza dzinza rese. Dzinza rese rotutuma,’ Oliver sang as Washington’s wife glared at the vanyarikani above her novel.

  The vanyarikani surrounded the car and knocked at the windows.

  ‘Nhasi ndezvedu,’ sang Oliver’s back-up singers. ‘Itai makorokoto korokoto kwatiri. Wedu wadadisa.’

  ‘Open the door at once,’ an impatient munyarikani commanded.

  ‘Haa, wandinzvaka,’ Oliver sang.

  ‘Wazvinzvaka iwe!’ agreed his back-up singers.

  Washington’s wife turned in her seat and completely hid her face behind Hold the Dream. It was at this point that a munyarikani asked that Washington, who had been upstairs showering, should be called to come out to talk to his wife. On hearing what was happening below, Washington rushed to the car, he had had only time to put on a pair of trousers and receive a loud and heated explanation from his mother. With his hair still wet and trickles of water going down his back, he addressed his wife by her formal title, as the mother of his son. ‘MaiTino, please open the door. This is embarrassing for all of us. Please, MaiTino.’

  ‘Hona muzukuru Kandondo, hona sahwira wotamba bopa!’ Oliver sang.

  Washington decided to appeal to her not just as the mother of his child, but also as his best beloved. ‘Bhebhi, sha,’ he said. ‘Please bhebhi. Please, sweetheart. Vhura door sha.’

  This appeal might have worked and the coming implosion been avoided had Washington’s mother, who had followed Washington, not chosen that moment to say loudly, ‘Bhebhi bhebhi chinyikovo iwe! Kujaidza makudo neanokamhina. What sort of nonsense is this? What sort of daughter-in-law behaves in this manner? You would think she made that car with her own two hands, the way she goes on about it. Kushaya anorova uku!’