“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.” And then I opened my mouth.
• • •
Are my parents in heaven?
I do not know for sure.
Are they watching over me all the time?
I do not know for sure, but I do not think so.
Are my parents buried alive?
No.
Do black people kill white people?
Yes.
Do white people kill black people?
Yes.
Will I go home to get my bike?
No.
Will Edith give me away?
No.
Will someone take me away?
I cannot be sure.
Did my mother love me?
Yes, though it may not have been in the way you wanted.
Did I kill my sister before she was born?
No, your sister was not meant to be a part of this world.
Are all black men bad?
No.
Are all black men good?
No.
Will Mabel come back?
No.
Does Edith love me?
Yes.
Do you love me?
Yes.
Do you love Cat more than me?
No. I love you equally because you are two halves that make up a whole.
Will you leave me one day?
Yes.
• • •
Cat climbed out of my stomach and lay down next to me. We were both resting on our sides facing each other.
“The snakes are leaving,” she whispered. “You’re going to get better.”
“I know.” I could feel it. They couldn’t live in a heart of truth because the truth was not a comfortable place to live. They began to slither away and took the heat with them. Beauty’s words came back to me.
I love you equally because you are two halves that make up a whole.
And I knew then what I had to do to heal myself and live a life of truth.
“Cat?”
“You don’t have to say it. I know.”
I looked at her, my sister. She was the best of me and the worst of me. I reached out to her and she reached out to me and we laced our fingers together.
“I’m going to miss you so much.”
There were no words left after that. Cat wiped the tears from my cheeks because she was my tears and she was my cheeks and then she was gone. She left in her place not emptiness or an absence, but a fullness I had never known before. I felt complete, like I was finally, finally enough.
Thirty-four
BEAUTY
9 SEPTEMBER 1976
Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
A week passes in which the man does not call again no matter how much I pray for it to happen.
Wilhelmina, however, has been true to her word and is back to check on Robin. After she has satisfied herself that the sleeping child’s temperature is down and that her color is returning to normal, she accepts my offer of a cup of tea.
“The penicillin has done its job nicely,” Wilhelmina says. “And you’ve done a wonderful job of caring for her, Beauty. You missed your calling. You would’ve made a wonderful nurse.”
“Thank you, Wilhelmina. Is that how you met Edith and Robin? In a nursing capacity?”
“No. I’m actually a social worker with a background in nursing. I received an anonymous call a few months ago reporting Edith as an unfit caregiver and I tried to investigate those claims. That’s how I met them.”
She relays the interactions with Edith and Robin that culminated in her being told to leave them alone after Edith reported Wilhelmina to her boss, saying that the woman had a personal vendetta against her.
“She provided documents proving she had a full-time desk job, but I knew there was something fishy about the whole thing. I just couldn’t prove it. What kind of a woman just abandons a child like this while she goes off to do her own blerrie thing? Huh?”
I go cold as my gratitude turns to fear. Now that this woman has given Robin medical treatment and is aware of the full extent of Edith’s treachery, will she take Robin away?
What have I done?
Wilhelmina sees the concern on my face and clucks. “Don’t worry, I won’t say or do anything in my official capacity. At least, not unless I have to, since I have to consider the best interests of the child. If Edith knows Maggie and Maggie has approved of these living arrangements, then I will respect that even if I don’t like the blerrie woman. But I will be keeping a very close eye on things.”
She reaches out and touches the Saint Christopher pendant around my neck. “It’s a small club we belong to, Beauty. It’s good to know there are others out there. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one. Regtig. I’m sure it’s the same for you sometimes.”
As we sit and sip at our tea, we begin to share stories. I do not know what it is about this woman, but I trust her despite the fact that she is white and an Afrikaner, and despite the threat she poses to Robin and Edith through her profession. She is a friend of Maggie’s and she saved Robin’s life. That is enough for me.
I tell her about my search for Nomsa, and she tells me about the social work that gives her a valid excuse to be in Soweto while she assists Maggie’s cause under the cloak of official business. She speaks some Xhosa and Sotho taught to her by an Afrikaner grandfather who she says was violently opposed to the apartheid regime.
I have never heard of an Afrikaner man who would fight against his own people to defend mine and I tell her so. “He sounds like a very brave man.”
“Jinne tog, ja. He was. He really was. But he died under very suspicious circumstances and so I’ve come to realize that bravery can be a very dangerous thing. Sometimes duplicity is a much better weapon.”
When she is finished with her tea, she stands to go. “Robin is lucky to have you, Beauty. I rest easier knowing you are here with her. Certainly this arrangement is better for her than foster care. And I have a feeling that you and I are going to become the best of friends.”
When I hold my hand out to shake hers, she bats it away and engulfs me in a hug. I am too emotional to say anything and so I just hug her back. I am learning that friends can sometimes be found in the most surprising places wearing the most unexpected disguises.
Thirty-five
BEAUTY
20 DECEMBER 1976
Transkei, South Africa
As I walk the sandy pathway up the side of the hill, I am barefoot and I relish the sensation of warm dirt under the soles of my feet. It is this soil more than anything else that brings me back to myself. It is this sand in this place that gives me roots.
When I arrive in the village after my long commute from the Transvaal, the first thing I do is greet my two sons and pull them in close, and then I kick off my shoes. My Western clothes get folded away, and I tuck myself into the traditional ochre-dyed blanket wrap all the women in the village wear. It has become a ritual for me now each time I return for a visit, this shedding of the prickly city and slipping back into the familiar rhythms of my people.
Sometimes in Johannesburg when I struggle to see the stars, I also struggle to hear the voices of the ancestors. I think it is the same for all my people and that is why we are letting go of the old ways.
On the way up the path, I pause under an umNqwane tree to take shelter from the summer sun. My sons, who have been racing one another up the hill, stop here. They will not venture any farther and will wait for me to return as there are some things custom does not allow. A warm breeze stirs the leaves but does nothing to cool me down. As I catch my breath, inhaling the sweet scent of grass and baked earth, I look down over the valley and my heart swells at the beloved sight.
Long stalks of feathery thatch grass encircle the village; they dip and sway
in the warm breeze, whispering and sighing in waves of burnished copper. Winding streams crisscross between the village and the maize fields, while the pastures corral the grazing livestock. White smoke unfurls from the chimneys of the brightly colored beehive-shaped huts that cluster together to form the residential area, and women and children mill about between the rondavels while attending to chores or socializing.
I look out over the place of my birth and my spirits lift for the first time in many weeks. I am happy to trade in the electricity, running water and plumbing of the city for this rural landscape where water must be fetched from the stream, cooking is done over fires and only a candle can cast light into the deepest shadows. It is a place where time stands still.
There are no clocks here; there is no sense of urgency with everyone anxious to be somewhere else. Here, time is measured by the journey of the sun and moon across the sky, and there are no strangers, just clan members I have known all my life. After spending the past few nights sleeping on my mat on the baked floor, the pain in my back starts to ease from weeks spent tossing and turning on a soft mattress. It is good to be home even though the visit will be brief.
I turn and walk up the pathway once more towards the summit. When I reach the burial grounds, I tend to the sites as I do every visit. I kneel down next to them, ignoring the sharp pebbles that jut into the flesh of my knees, and begin by gathering the loose stones into a tight grouping. I begin with the grave of my firstborn son, Mandla, and then I move on to that of my husband, Silumko. I brush insects and dust from the simple tombstones with their sparse inscriptions:
MANDLA MBALI
04/09/1959–08/11/1965
and
SILUMKO MBALI
06/08/1925–19/04/1974
The ministrations are a form of prayer for my hands; they allow my body to speak its grief when words alone are not enough.
When I am done, I wind my way down the path again to the tree where the boys are waiting.
“Mama,” Khwezi says, “when are you coming home?”
Luxolo shoots him an angry look. They have clearly spoken of this before, and Luxolo must have warned his younger brother not to ask this question. I look at both of their faces, so serious and so changed in the six months that I have been away. Khwezi has lost the last of his baby fat, and a shadow of hair grows on his lip and chin. Luxolo’s face has hardened into that of a man. His jaw is always clenched and he is slow to smile; adult concerns have prematurely carved themselves into his features.
I sigh. I have missed out on their growing up. While I have been in Johannesburg failing to find their sister, my sons have donned the mantles of maturity; I should have been here to witness their informal passage from childhood to manhood. Though neither of them has undergone the ulwaluko ritual to officially make them men in the eyes of the tribe, after everything they have been through, I do not consider them boys.
“I promised you that I would bring Nomsa home,” I say. “And I cannot return until I have her with me.”
I just hope that when that day comes, it is not to lay Nomsa to rest with her father and brother. I will not tend to another grave.
Thirty-six
ROBIN
25 DECEMBER 1976
Melville, Johannesburg, South Africa
Edith says you’re not her boyfriend because you’re light in the loafers.” I was sitting on the champagne-colored brocade chaise longue in Victor’s living room. (I’d called it a gold couch as I first flopped onto it, but he’d set me straight.) Elvis was in his traveling cage next to me, and my luggage was still in the entrance hall where Edith had unceremoniously dumped it on her way out.
I was wearing bright orange velvet hot pants paired with a white sleeveless turtleneck and white knee-high lace-up boots. The pants were accurately named; even though they barely covered my butt, the velvet (coupled with the thirty-degree heat) made them very hot and uncomfortable to wear. The outfit was supposed to include a white beret, but I’d lost it in the rush from Edith’s apartment to Victor’s house after the call from the airline came through and she said there was a change of plans.
Edith had bought the clothes during her last trip to New York and said they were the height of fashion. It was the first time I’d been able to wear the hot pants and boots because Beauty had forbidden me from going out in them, saying that I looked like a child prostitute. I’d wanted to look the word up in the dictionary, but Morrie told me that prostitutes were people who’d left the Catholic faith to start their own religion. I didn’t know why Beauty would have a problem with that, but I respected her opinion and only wore the outfit that day because it was Christmas and Edith insisted. Victor was nattily dressed, as always, and his mauve fedora perfectly matched his bow tie and socks.
“I didn’t know what ‘light in the loafers’ meant,” I continued, “and so I looked it up in the dictionary.”
Victor laughed, but he sounded nervous. “And what did it say?”
“It just said that loafers are shoes, which didn’t make any sense so I had to go back to Edith to ask her to explain it.”
“And?”
“She said you and her aren’t a couple because you’re a homosexual.”
“Well, yes and no. I do love Edie, but I don’t think I could’ve been her boyfriend even if I wasn’t queer. But don’t tell her I said that.”
“She says homosexuals are men who have sexual reproduction with other men.”
“Well, there’s no reproduction involved per se, but there certainly is the . . . ah . . . sex.”
“She says I can’t tell anyone because it’s illegal and you could go to prison.”
“Well, yes. The law is rather draconian, wouldn’t you say?”
“What’s ‘draconian’?”
“Something that’s very severe.”
“You mean like the apartheid laws?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“We’re not allowed to tell anyone about Beauty either. If people know she lives with us to look after me, she could also go to prison.”
Victor’s brow crinkled. “You have an awful lot of secrets you have to keep, don’t you? That’s a lot of responsibility for a nine-year-old.”
“I’ll be ten next month.”
“Still.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind keeping secrets.” I looked around the living room. It was the most beautiful room I’d ever seen. A crystal chandelier was suspended high above us and every surface—including the walls and floors—was covered with the kinds of luxurious fabrics you want to wrap around yourself and go to sleep in.
“Is Liberace your boyfriend?” I asked.
“Liberace? No, why?”
“Because Edith said your house looks like a scene from a Liberace wet dream.”
Victor spat out the sip of champagne he’d just taken. “Pardon me,” he said as he wiped at his chin.
“What’s a wet dream?” I asked.
“Err . . . well . . . What do you think it is?”
“Is it when you’re sleeping and you’re dreaming and someone pours water over you?”
“Well, there you go.”
“Oh wow, look at your tree!” I’d only just noticed it in the dining room and I jumped up to take a look.
I’d never seen anything like it. It was tall but not that wide, and each of its black twisted and curling wrought-iron branches held multiple glass candleholders that were forged in the shape of stars. Flames from tea lights flickered inside them so that they looked like shooting stars burning up from the inside.
“It’s meant to be avant-garde,” Victor said. “I’m not sure if I like it. I’m hoping it will grow on me.”
It was nothing at all like the traditional Christmas tree my parents used to put up, but it brought to mind the rituals we’d followed every festive season for as long as I could remember. The fake spruce t
ree would be hauled out from storage in the garage, and there’d be a frantic search for the metal base until someone would remember that it had been broken a year or two before. My father would then find an empty flowerpot, cover it with Christmas wrapping paper and fill it with soil from the garden, and the tree would be wedged into that and put in the corner of the lounge.
Untangling the lights was always the most volatile stage in the decorating process, and if that didn’t go well, the rest of it would have to be abandoned for a day or two until tempers had settled down sufficiently for us to continue.
“What the fuck?” my father would say every December, tugging at the knotted cords. “Who put this away last year?”
“You did, Keith,” my mother always replied.
“Impossible. I would have made sure they were rolled up properly. This is a gigantic whore’s nest.”
If the lights managed to be detangled without a dozen globes breaking, or my father having to cut the cord and then re-fuse the wires, we could drape them around the tree and move on to the next step, which was putting up the tinsel. It was usually my second favorite part of the process because I loved the silky texture of the garlands, but it could be fraught with as much tension as the lights.
“Where’s the rest of the tinsel?” my father asked one year, holding up only two mangy strings.
“That’s all there is,” I said, peering into the bag.
“What do you mean ‘that’s all there is’? We should have at least a dozen strands of this stuff. Where are the silver and gold ones?”
I didn’t dare say that I’d taken them without permission to jazz up a particularly dull angel costume in the nativity play, and that I’d then cut them up to use as glitter for the Christmas cards we made in class. I just shrugged as my father had scratched his head muttering about a scourge of fish moths. That year, the tree had been greatly lacking in pizzazz.
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