Diamond Boy

Home > Other > Diamond Boy > Page 16
Diamond Boy Page 16

by Michael Williams


  The low-battery light blinked red. I had to hurry. I was running out of battery.

  NOT safe here. Soldiers r everywhere.

  I pressed Send and waited for the tick that meant my message had been sent.

  The screen went black. My battery was dead.

  From the shadows I watched the soldier rebuckling his belt and sauntering out of one of the classrooms at Junction Gate High School. It hadn’t taken long for the army to find the working women from Harare. One of the washerwomen, as Baba had called them, appeared at the doorway and called to another soldier leaning against the wall smoking with yet a third soldier. He threw his cigarette down, made a comment to his companion, who laughed, and disappeared inside. The washerwomen were in business; night school was in session.

  I moved slowly through the shadows, cautiously keeping the soldier in my sight, and headed toward the administration office. The front door was closed but with a little pressure I was able to force it open. The foyer was dark and quiet. At the end of the corridor I saw a glimmer of light leaking from under the door. I walked quietly down the corridor toward the photocopying room, aware that I was not the only person inside this building; behind each of the closed doors, people had made the offices their homes.

  I softly knocked on the door of the photocopying room, realizing that I didn’t know what to call Arves’s granny. “Mrs. Makupe,” I whispered. “I’m a friend of Tendekai.”

  There was no response, but I was sure I heard the faint sound of a metal plate being placed on a table.

  “Magogo,” I whispered again. “My name is Patson. Tendekai sent me to get his medication.”

  I knocked again, this time a little louder.

  The door opened partially and a small figure stood in the crack of the doorway staring up at me. “Go ’way. It’s late. This no time,” she said, closing the door.

  “Wait,” I said, sliding my foot across the threshold and digging my hands into my pockets. “Tendekai said you liked Footy Pops. I brought some for you.”

  The old woman hesitated. I couldn’t quite see her face, but in a flash her hand darted out, took one of the sweets, and popped it into her mouth. The door opened wider and I walked into the room, which was unlike any photocopying room I had ever seen at school.

  The room was dimly lit by several flickering candles: One burned upon a pile of rusted bolts, nails, and animal bones; another seemed as if it were being swallowed by a black mamba. Another was on top of the school’s safe, impaled upon one of the quills of a porcupine. Its eyes twinkled in the candlelight and it took me a moment to realize that, like the buck on the walls of the Kondozi farmhouse, the eyes of the snake and porcupine were also made of glass, the work of a talented taxidermist.

  Against one wall was a set of shelves, where once reams of paper must have been stored. Now it was filled with all the colors and textures of life itself, swept up and waiting to be bottled and bundled for her patients. Small and large jars lined the shelves filled with a rainbow of remedies: bundles of roots, piles of bulbs, heaps of sticks and bark, packs of bones, parcels of dried plants, all ready to be treated, scraped, boiled, and then swallowed or applied. In another corner, above a mattress, the shimmering brown ribbon from old tape cassettes had been strung like a tangle of music seaweed over the skull of a small animal. The room was permeated with the bitter scent of smoldering impepo, a veldt bush often burned by sangomas to appease the spirits. The contents of a black oil pot bubbled on a gas burner at the center of the room, giving off an odious smell.

  Once the old woman slammed the door shut she studied me with a pair of pinprick black eyes set deep in her wrinkled face. I recognized her immediately—she was the liver-chopping crone we met when my father came looking for Headmaster Ngoko. My stomach turned at the memory of her boiling liver and at the sight of my father collapsing against the wall. I remembered Jamu talking about a powerful spirit medium who lived at Junction Gate. This spirit medium must be Arves’s grandmother. No wonder he had easy access to marijuana. She had shelves full of the stuff. All the hair on the back of my neck stood up at the thought of being here alone with her in the dead of night. I would get Arves his meds and leave as soon as I could.

  “Tendekai is sick. He needs his medication,” I said.

  “The sickness. No good for nobody. Sit. Sit. I know you. I seen you before. Your father came here. Sit!”

  I jumped at her command as she pulled up a stool and patted it with her hand. I sat down and she leaned over me, holding out her other hand and wagging it at me. I fished around in my pocket and gave her all the Footy Pops I had.

  “These soldiers say I am witch. Their words make me angry, hah! Well, I’m sitting and suffering through the war of liberation! Years and years I work in the bush with the boys who fight the white man. I heal them. Dr. Muti fix them up. Hoh! They say, ‘You’re casting spells!’ No way. Mm-mm. I say, ‘Ah! And yet all these problems, they’re coming from greed. Your greed,’ I say. ‘You kill the people of the soil. Why? For the stone that shines.’ Hoh-hoh,” she exclaimed, clicking her tongue and shaking her head.

  I tried to interrupt her but she moved around the room still chattering, never looking in my direction.

  “It’s better if I go to a tree and hang myself. I die! In shame! Forget everything of those days. Forget all the voices that visit me. When you hear suffering all night, all day. I’m these years old, and I’m eating tears. Aah! I say, ‘I want to be at peace, but you soldiers bring trouble.’ Mmm. Well, my heart is angry.”

  I didn’t understand half of what she was saying. It was clear where Arves got his motormouth from. All the while she sucked on her Footy Pops, stirring her oil pot, tearing up bits of bark, grabbing stuff from the shelves, smelling it, discarding it, finding something else, and then, as if realizing there was a stranger in the room, she turned and pointed a stick at me.

  “You. The Moyo boy. I remember now. T’kai told me you found a girazi. Hoh-hoh. Big trouble now for you. Bad and good together,” she said, walking up to me and laying her hand upon my head. “But your totem is strong.” Her fingers felt like the claw of a bird that perched upon my head. I shifted uncomfortably at her proximity, her body odor, and the pressure of her hand.

  “Mmm. Hoh-hoh,” she muttered, her voice now almost a whisper, and then, as if her breath had suddenly been drawn from her, she went very still.

  I couldn’t see her face, but felt the nails of her fingers lightly pressing into my skull. The candle on the pile of rusted bolts and nails sizzled; its flame fluttered and died. A wisp of smoke twirled upward into the darkness. My chest tightened at the sudden change of atmosphere. It was as if there were another being in the room, unseen, but unmistakably present.

  “Your shavi is strong too. She watches. Mmm. Shuumbaa,” she said, her voice clear now, and strangely altered, somehow younger. “Mmm. My half-and-half, my little lion. Now is the time to be strong.”

  I went cold; the voice sounded familiar. A tingling sensation rippled down my neck, right through to the core of my body. Only one person ever called me “half-and-half” and “little lion.”

  “You must look to Grace,” she said, her voice light, almost lyrical. “You are the best thing that ever happened. Mmm. You will need to have the heart of a lion.”

  I wanted to reach out, to see the face of my mother, but I was afraid that if I moved, the moment might be broken and the sense of calm would be lost. I felt the bird lightly release its grip as the old woman stepped back, exhaled forcefully, and drew in a long, slow, shuddering breath.

  “Hoh-hoh,” she exclaimed, turning back to her pot and shelves as if nothing had happened. “They come when I not ask. Heh-heh. You are lucky, boy. Mmm. T’kai he was brought up by me. Not so lucky. Well, at first, he stays with his mother and father. They die; I stay and I raise him. Mmm. He was still a little child. I carry him on my back. He grows up. His uncle bring him here. I grow corn, I buy clothes for him, and I wash him. He grows a little. His uncle goes away.
Mmm. I send him to school, but the sickness. They not want him. Mmm. Indeed, he grew up here, he was raised by me. But he will leave soon. He will not grow more. The doctor gives him medicine. We both try. You came for this?”

  She handed me a red tin. Still dazed, I took it without a word and stood up. She laid her wrinkled hand on my arm gently.

  “You be careful, boy,” she said, looking into my eyes. “These soldiers are dangerous. Tell T’kai to come home. The camps are no good.”

  I nodded and, for no reason I could think of, I hugged her.

  The third girazi came to me because of a dream.

  My mother was sitting in the sun, carving a stick in the shape of the letter Y. While she whittled, shavings flying from her blade, she sang a song I hadn’t heard since I was small. In the dream, the song was as clear a memory as I could have wished for. Her voice true and pure.

  Pretty baby, where are you going?

  Come here, come here, let’s play.

  I’m going to the clouds, Mama,

  To sleep and dream with my friends.

  She sang the song over and over, occasionally looking up at me and smiling. Once she was satisfied with her work, she lifted up the Y-shaped stick and planted it into the ground. I walked over to her and she took me by the hand.

  “What are you doing, Mama?” I asked.

  “Watch, little lion-heart,” was all she said.

  Green leaves started shooting from the stick, and a vine slowly curled around the Y-shape. Simultaneously, the stick grew into a baobab tree, which turned into a house, which became a building, which transformed into a gleaming skyscraper that soared through the clouds. I gazed in wonder at what had once been a simple Y-shaped stick but was now a towering edifice, breathtaking and radiant.

  “This is all for you,” she said, and then, while I gazed up at the mighty building, she floated away. I didn’t mind her disappearing as the large skyscraper’s doors swung open. Inside were many brightly lit rooms. I walked slowly toward the entrance, exhilarated by what I would discover inside. Then I woke up and Arves was shaking me.

  “Hey, Patson, get up! Come on, wake up! Sorry I ate your breakfast,” he said, without sounding the least bit sorry. “But you didn’t miss much. It was last night’s sadza fried up with tomatoes and onions. I took my meds as soon as I woke up and, man, did they make me hungry again. I’m feeling great! Why do you sleep with your shoes on, Patson? I like to let my toes breathe, otherwise I have bad toe-jam dreams. You should take them off at least once a week. You might get fungi-foot and that really stinks.”

  I groaned. “Arves, did anyone ever tell you that you sound exactly like your granny?” I sat up, looking around for the gleaming skyscraper that had seemed so real.

  “As long as you don’t think I look like her. I hope Magogo didn’t give you a hard time. No, don’t answer that. She probably did. We got to go. Look,” he said, hauling me to my feet, and pointing at soldiers herding miners onto the diamond fields. We were the only ones left in the tent and it wouldn’t be long before we were noticed.

  “I got so much to tell you,” I said to Arves. “Grace is fine, and I saw Jamu. He was at the sheds the whole time. I think he knew the soldiers were coming. He told me my father had been killed.”

  Arves looked away. “Yah, I know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “A lot happened around here last night after you were gone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “After the rain stopped, soldiers went out into the fields beyond the fence and were digging. It made no sense to me.”

  “Why would they dig for stones in the dark?”

  “Because they’re stupid enough to think that girazis float.” He laughed, and I was amazed at how pills in a small red tin had revived my friend’s sense of humor. Then he reached into his pocket and handed me a shattered pair of glasses.

  “Where did you get these?”

  At first I didn’t want to touch them. There was no mistaking their familiar shape.

  “Musi. Last night. He came looking for you.”

  “How did he get them?” I took the glasses from Arves, my hands trembling. “What did he say?”

  “He said I should give you your father’s glasses.”

  I had no words. No tears. Only dull helplessness. I had held on to the idea that I would somehow feel in my heart the moment of my father’s death. Now these broken glasses mocked that idea. Was I still so much a child that I was unable to even think about the possibility that my father had been killed on the first day the soldiers came? Everyone had been talking about the miners who had been shot trying to escape and how their bodies were buried in mass graves. Yet I had blindly believed that he was still alive. The memory of him polishing these glasses, pushing them up his nose, overwhelmed me in pain and confusion.

  If my father was dead, my girazi dreams were worth nothing now.

  I would have to tell Grace.

  “Patson, come on,” urged Arves, shaking me gently. “We’ve got to go. The soldiers are coming. Don’t think about it. Not now.”

  Dazed, I allowed Arves to lead me back onto the diamond fields of Marange.

  All morning I labored in the pits, tormented by the thought of the Wife dancing for Commander Jesus. Did she really care so little for my father that she could dance while her husband was shot dead by Commander Jesus’s soldiers and thrown into a pit? I knew the Wife was selfish but this was heartless and cruel. I lashed out at the earth with my pickax, blaming the Wife with every blow for my father’s death. She had forced us to come to Marange. Diamonds for everyone, she had said. If it weren’t for her, he would still be alive. We would still be in Bulawayo. Grace and I would be going to school and we’d still have our father.

  The Wife wanted, the Wife got—to the death of my father.

  I slashed and hacked away at the soil, tearing up the bank with my sorrow, losing all sense of time and place, grieving for my father. The doubt that I had lived with the past week turned now into a black pit that swallowed me whole as I tried to imagine a future without Baba. My father was dead and I would never see him again. My anger turned slowly into tears as I imagined him shot by the soldiers, his body thrown into one of the mass graves and the earth covering him, without any ceremony to mark his passing.

  And then, as I tore into the bank, pounding the earth with my pickax, I saw the exact same Y-shaped stick from my dream. I dropped the pickax, gripped the two ends of the root, and pulled as hard as I could. A part of the sand bank gave way, and a sky-blue girazi sparkled into the sunlight.

  My shavi must be the shade of my mother, and she brought me here to find this stone. But why today, Mama, why on the day that I learned of Baba’s death? What happened in the photocopying room last night hardly seemed real this morning. Nothing seemed real anymore. Had I heard the voice of my mother coming from the old woman? But she had called me “half-and-half.” She could not have known my mother’s pet name for me. And then she had called me “little lion.” That was even stranger still. Using one of the pet names might be a coincidence but her knowing two was just plain creepy.

  And she had said, “You must look to Grace.” What was my mother trying to tell me? I hated to think of Aunt Prisca pinching Grace and her sleeping at the back of the shed, with only her soft toys to comfort her and Boubacar’s tie to protect her. Had my mother led me to this diamond so that I could take Grace away from this place? With my father dead I was the only one who could look after my sister. I had to get her out of the sheds and away from Marange. I had three girazis now. That had to be enough.

  The more I thought about my mother’s presence in that photocopying room, the more bewildered I became, but I was certain that last night I had carried her back with me to the camp, under the wire and into my dreams. I shook off the rippling sensation down the back of my neck, quickly pressed the stone back into the soil, and tossed the root aside. I glanced around to see if anyone had seen what I had done and continued
my work: thrust pickax into ground, wriggle it free, pick up shovel, scrape ore into pile, load sack, carry it to sieve. And the whole time, I had to be sure not to lose sight of where I’d reburied the dream-stone.

  When I felt calm enough and ready to think about getting the girazi out of the mine, I knew I would have to plan it carefully, one step at a time, not let any of my tangled emotions get in the way. It might be small enough to slip inside my shoe, but with three in there I’d be sure to walk with a limp that would attract attention. Putting it into my pocket or under my tongue was out of the question, and I didn’t have any chewing gum to stick it to the inside of my clothes. The girazi was so close at hand, and yet so far from being mine. I scanned the mines, looking for inspiration, and saw Arves watching me.

  Our eyes locked.

  I tilted my head at him, and without acknowledging anything, he casually lifted a sack onto his small, bony back and headed toward me. He crouched down and emptied his sack into my sieve, and whispered, “Where?”

  “One hand-width up from your right foot,” I said, carefully watching the soldiers strolling along the mound directly above us and pretending to work.

  “How big?”

  “A large raisin. A sky-blue girazi,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow, and speaking to Arves as if we were talking about nothing more important than who was going to take the next break.

  He whistled softly. “You’ve been a miner for two months, Patson, and you’ve found two girazis. What do you have that all these other miners don’t have?”

  “I’ve found three, Arves. Three girazis.” There didn’t seem any point in lying to Arves now. “And I don’t know why I’m the one to find them.”

  “I feel the most amazing sick coming on. You’ll have two seconds to get it out. Will that be enough?”

  “Yah, but Arves—”

  “Then you give it to me and help me back to the tent.”

 

‹ Prev