Cleanman pulled out the half-jack of vodka he had in his pocket. He took a swig and shared it with the policemen. Mvelo knew that he had won them over, but she thought he was going a bit far when he asked them to help him fulfill Zola’s last wish by assisting him with finishing the job. She was astounded when one of them went to the security guard at the caretaker’s house and came back with three spades. The job took just over an hour to finish.
The humble coffin that Zola was buried in had been uncovered. There was silence. Cleanman looked at Mvelo and said, “Young one, you better walk away. I don’t want you to see this. Trust me, I will wrap your mother in this blanket and send her back to God, content.”
Mvelo was relieved because she didn’t want to see.
The moon was out and the stars were shining. She was at peace and felt that what had just happened must have been with Zola’s help.
After the job was done, Cleanman called her back.
“You never saw us, we never saw you. What just happened here never happened at all,” said the officer who was not an Ndlovu, looking sternly at Mvelo.
“What just happened here?” asked Cleanman.
The other two broke into a laugh. Then they shook hands with him and drove off.
Mvelo and Cleanman sat by the mound of Zola’s grave, where she was now wrapped in a blanket, and offered a last prayer.
At dawn they made their way home, both of them caught up in their own thoughts. The baby was kicking in her stomach, reminding her of the battle that was still ahead. Perhaps because of all the excitement of digging up her mother, the following night she had the kind of pain that made her walk the four corners of her lonely shack until dawn.
When Cleanman came to check on her in the morning, he did not have to ask, he could see her tears. He ran for the wheelbarrow, bundled her onto it, and went towards the taxi rank, but it was a police van patrolling nearby that ended up taking her to King Edward Hospital. The sirens rang all the way from the shacks to François Road. If you want to see a grown man scared, show him a pregnant woman about to give birth with nobody but him there to help her deliver. Cleanman was speechless and shaking. The policeman driving the van put all his weight on the accelerator. The van flew past red robots.
The baby was the last thing Mvelo wanted, but it came and made its presence felt. After ear-splitting screams of pain from Mvelo, Sabekile came out screaming blue murder of her own. Mvelo knew then that the baby had inherited her lungs. The nurse dragged her little kicking legs, and with one hand she shook her slimy body upside down for a while, then put a fat finger inside Sabekile’s mouth to pull something out.
Mvelo looked at the snake-like umbilical cord, connecting her to the baby. The ugly memories of that day in the tent came back to her. She tried not to look at the baby, steaming with life, covered in white slime and Mvelo’s blood. The nurse snipped off the cord and wrapped the baby in a blanket. Mvelo drifted off to sleep, exhausted, and relieved that the baby was finally out.
She woke up in a panic thinking about what to do with the baby, because she was determined not to subject her to shack life. Then she remembered her dream from when her mother died, and she was calmed. Everything would work itself out.
On the day she was told to leave the hospital with the baby, she went to Manor Gardens, to the house without a wall, and she placed Sabekile there at the front door. At least there she knew Sabekile would have a fighting chance.
She had chosen this house because whenever she came here looking for scraps, the owners never chased her away. It was the only house she had seen in Manor Gardens that didn’t have a high wall. It was vulnerable, and yet protected, because the tsotsis thought something more dangerous that they couldn’t see was on guard, so they didn’t take any chances.
“All right, God,” she said, fiercely daring him as she walked away, “if you are out there, here is a baby who needs a home where she will grow up without being hungry and where she will be loved. If you can’t provide that, then let her die. If you give me just that, I will never ask anything of you again.”
Then she willed the baby to live and be found by good people.
She had named the baby Sabekile which means “Frightening,” because she knew fear the day a man of God plunged into her shocked body. It felt like an icy hand gripping her heart. It left her shivering, a shivering that got her angry. It made her reckless. But someone with nothing to lose has a chance to arm-wrestle with God, and maybe to win.
CHAPTER FIVE
Zola, in her youth, was a rising star of Hope School in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. She ran like lightning and the school had a proud display of trophies to show for it. Though her given name was Nokuzola, the spectators at competitions shortened her name to Zola—“Zo-la Zo-la Zola,” they would chant as she approached the finishing line—after Zola Budd who had run in the Olympics.
Nokuzola could not afford running shoes and, like the other Zola, she loved to feel the ground with her feet. She developed a relationship with the grass, or the soil, or the tarmac wherever she was competing. Her feet communicated with the ground. She loved the feeling of her pulse increasing just before the whistle blew to set her and her competitors off.
Her first love was really horseracing. She loved watching the horses, and her greatest wish was to be one of those small men who squat on top of the majestic animals and spur them on to run like the wind. She had never had the chance to be up close to a horse, so she chose to do the next best thing, to run like them. She pretended to be the fastest horse in the race. Her heart would pound and adrenaline would surge through her when she shot from the start to the finishing line, and she felt as light as a feather. As the shouts began, things slowed down in her mind, she would feel the wind pass through her, and a sense of peace would engulf her as she approached the winning point.
One day her rebellious Aunt Skwiza came to visit and told her about winning a jackpot from betting on a horse named Sweet Apples. After that Zola thought of Sweet Apples each time she raced.
Zola was the pride of her mother, but her father was not happy. He didn’t want his daughter wearing those tiny running shorts that he said looked like panties. “It’s exposing her body to everyone including perverts, maSosibo, and she is growing,” he would protest.
MaSosibo would plead with him, “Just one more year, Baba, and then she will stop. I promise.”
He would agree, reluctantly. Secretly he was proud of his daughter, who he thought ran like a possessed mule.
Zola ignored most of the attention coming her way, but she felt compelled to notice Sporo Hadebe. He was unusually dark with a strong jaw and a smile that lit up his face. He was also the most popular soccer player in the school. But it was his unique smell that made her notice him. It was a confusing smell that wasn’t a perfume or sweat from practice, but emanated from him alone.
She knew when he was approaching before she saw him appearing around corners, or when he had entered the classroom. Her new interest in Sporo drew her to the game of soccer, just to watch him play.
Her eyes zoomed in and took him in, section by section. She noticed his perfectly toned calves, and that his right leg was slightly crooked at the knee, giving him a unique run. The muscles in his thighs separated like the pictures in a biology book. When the boys took off their T-shirts after practice, she saw that each muscle on his stomach was sculpted, with not an ounce of fat in sight. His arms were strong, and when he smiled, dimples revealed themselves on his cheeks. Could this boy be any more beautiful and unaware of it than he was? She would try not to stare, but failed completely.
At first Zola thought she was dreaming when Sporo made advances towards her. Not only was he fast on his feet, he was also smart in class and funny too. But despite all of this, he was not arrogant. Zola had promised herself that she would stay away from boys as it was a matter of life and death if her strict father found out. But she couldn’t do that with Sporo. There was a sense of urgency in her.
They t
alked after PE classes and on trips to and from school during athletics competitions. She even began to follow soccer, which pleased and puzzled her father. They made quite a pair, Zola and Sporo. The envious ones looked on with contempt, while others openly admired the two. They became inseparable, and were very sweet together. Even the teaching staff looked the other way from this budding romance instead of reprimanding them like they would usually do. “They seem mature enough to be responsible,” said the life skills teacher, Pearl, who took an interest in the lives of her students.
“If you say so. Just don’t forget that these are teenagers with raging hormones,” said Mr. Zondo, the English teacher, who objected mostly because he couldn’t stop thinking about Zola himself. The thought of her with someone else turned him into a jealous schoolboy.
Mr. Zondo would sit by the window and watch her during lunch breaks. He hated it when he saw her laughing at one of Sporo’s jokes. As much as he loved soccer, he began to hate Sporo’s easy manner. He hated how Sporo put his arm around Zola’s shoulders, and the way he looked at her, the confidences they obviously shared. He knew the day Zola lost her virginity to Sporo.
She began falling apart, not submitting homework, and her running slowed, ever so slightly at first, until the day she fainted in the field. Mr. Zondo wanted to scream out loud like somebody had broken his heart. “You know, now that I think about it, it’s not even that I was in love with that girl. A part of me wanted to just preserve her and keep her out of harm’s way,” he confided to shell-shocked Pearl.
Zola had confessed her private fears to Pearl, who had listened with a combination of sympathy and relief. She had her eyes set on Mr. Zondo, who seemed to have his set on Zola, who had hers firmly on Sporo. Pearl was relieved to hear that the girl had no interest in Mr. Zondo. Instead, she was terrified that she could be pregnant from her liaison with Sporo, and that she would surely be killed by her father. This meant that Mr. Zondo would be Pearl’s when he realized that the girl had no interest in him. Pearl bought a pregnancy test and asked Zola to pee on the stick so that the line could confirm if she was or not.
Pearl comforted the girl the best she knew how when the line came out pink. Zola cried until she had no more tears left. Pearl made motherly sounds. “There there, Zola, it is not the end of the world. You will live through this difficult time. Do you want me to speak to your mother, or would you prefer to tell her yourself?”
This question brought more tears to Zola’s eyes. It stung her back to the new realities she had to face. She didn’t know how she was going to face her parents. “No no no, please. I will speak to them myself,” she told Pearl.
But first she had to tell Sporo, and they would decide what to do. The thought of having him by her side gave her hope. She would not be alone. It gave her the strength to get through the weekend at home.
On Monday at lunchtime, she and Sporo sat under their tree. She was more quiet than usual. Sporo was puzzled, but he was his usual cool self.
“Sporo, I fainted at practice on Friday,” she said finally. “Teacher Pearl and I talked about us, you know, what we did.” She paused and searched his face.
He simply smiled and nodded.
“Well, we did a test, Sporo, and it confirmed that I am pregnant.” She looked at him closely, trying to gauge his reaction.
Again just a smile, which sent her into a new wave of panic.
“Sporo, this is not a joke. My father is going to kill me, and probably you too.” Her voice was shaking.
“He won’t, you are his child. He will calm down in time. You’ll see. And if the baby is a boy, he will be a soccer player, and if it is a girl she will be beautiful like you.” His response did not surprise Zola, but it did nothing to alleviate her anxiety.
He was the kind of boy who never seemed to be rattled by anything. Even the righteous fury of Zola’s father didn’t scare him. “Look, I can leave school and find work so I can look after you. I will tell my parents to come and speak to your parents. If they throw you out, Zola, I would be very happy for you to live at our home.” He was getting carried away with his elaborate plans.
“Hang on,” said Zola, catching her breath. “I haven’t told my parents anything yet. We are close to writing exams. I am planning to delay telling them as long as I can. Maybe I will wait until they confront me, because I can’t face doing it.”
One day at a time, they finally agreed. Then they ate their lunch in silence.
As 1990 ended and the clock struck midnight, fireworks lit up the sky. From the townships to the villages, screams of jubilation rang out and prayers were sent up to God. What was uppermost in the minds of many was the promise of a new year.
Along Durban’s Golden Mile beachfront, beer was flowing and the revelers floated in the smoky cloud of roasting meat, intoxicated by anticipation of better things to come.
Even the stingiest were encouraged to spend freely; to the delight of the children, sweets and cakes were in abundance.
In the midst of all this, nauseated Zola was gripped by fear and guilt. She felt alone. She locked herself in the tiny toilet at home, puked her guts out, and cried rivers. At sixteen, she had lost her innocence. “Your father will kill you before he allows you to give birth at such a young age,” a voice inside taunted her.
Her father’s temper was legendary. It was not for nothing that he was known as “Pure Chilli,” the hottest spice in Durban, that land of assfire curries.
In this solo misery, Zola entered the New Year, while keeping up appearances in front of her parents. Even when she tried to forget, the pit in her growing stomach made her sick with worry. She began wearing oversized jackets, T-shirts, and elastic-waisted bottoms. They did not raise an alarm as both her parents encouraged her to hide her body from prying predators.
Her body grew, filling in to cushion the life growing inside her. MaSosibo fought her female intuition. She tried to allow herself to believe that her daughter’s body was simply changing from a girl’s into a young woman’s. But lying to yourself has a way of making you sick. MaSosibo woke up night after night in a cold sweat. She lost sleep as she agonized over what she knew, but did not want to acknowledge.
CHAPTER SIX
Life in Durban’s Mkhumbane township was buzzing with new hope, and the shebeens were making more money than ever. Patrons were in jovial moods with the promise of imminent riches. Those with lively imaginations spoke of living in mansions with servants, fleets of cars, and travels to countries they had only heard of.
A fermented pineapple drink, and isqatha, the lethal homebrew that sometimes included battery acid, fueled dreams of an imminent new land of milk and honey. Under a cloud of intoxicating marijuana, patrons sat from midmorning till dusk, drinking and dreaming of a life where their wealthier selves would be realized.
Skwiza, Zola’s aunt the shebeen queen with a string of taverns across Mkhumbane, looked on with satisfaction as her patrons used their meager salaries, earned from tending suburban gardens, to drink and fuel their dreams. Like many of the women in her family, she was tall. In addition, she had large breasts that burdened her with back problems, forcing her to lean forward when she walked. This leaning accentuated her large behind and pushed it even further out. Her knock-kneed twigs for legs carried the heavy load that was her two-meter self. Her stature was both comical and fearsome. She was very warm at the sight of money, and terrifyingly icy when her patrons couldn’t pay their debts.
She was the opposite of Zola’s mother, who was matronly towards her children and a submissive servant to her dominating husband. Zola loved her aunt and was in awe wherever they had the rare opportunity of visiting her.
The feeling was mutual. Skwiza loved Zola because she was beautiful and young, and reminded her of herself when she was Zola’s age. Young people kept Skwiza alive.
It was obvious to Zola that once her secret was uncovered, that was where she would go for shelter. Skwiza was the only woman who stood up to her father. In fact, she towered
over him in her stilettos. Pure Chilli did not like Skwiza for this reason. It was clear to Zola that something about her unsettled him, and he did not want his family near this woman.
When school opened, Zola had three months to go. Her muscles were no longer pronounced and toned. She was rounder, but youth with its inexperienced eyes did not suspect anything. Pearl and Mr. Zondo, however, knew what was going on underneath the uniform. She no longer took part in practice, but sat on the side and watched. It drove the coach mad, but she chalked Zola’s reluctance up to the fickleness of teenagers. “She had been slowing down anyway. A new Zola Budd will emerge from the new batch. You watch and see.” The coach was ever the optimist.
Sporo was distracted from his game since the new term began. He could not stop worrying about the secret he and Zola were keeping. He wanted to tell his parents, but he knew that they would immediately show up on Zola’s doorstep to report the matter. So he became her accomplice.
Deep in thought about Zola, he did not see the speeding taxi as he and the team crossed the road from practice. The screams were too late and all went blank. Sporo and two other teammates were cut down by the runaway taxi. Zola with a baby in her arms was the last image he saw before he surrendered.
His muscles softened. The bloodied ball rolled away from him. The coach crouched and called, “Sporo, Sporo!” His eyes were open but not registering the coach, who was frantic, crying, swearing, and cradling Sporo’s head. Some boys ran towards the school to tell the principal, and others began to stone the taxi. The driver was dazed. He had been rushing to pick up an extra load of people who would pay him and not the owner of the taxi.
When Zola saw the bloodied boys crying openly, coming towards her class, water began to leave her body, coursing down her thighs. At first, when she felt this warmth coming out of her, she thought she was peeing, but the water kept coming. She stood up, her eyes wide with shock. Teacher Pearl took one look at her and knew she could not wait. Pearl met the boys at the door as she shouted for Mr. Zondo to help drive Zola to hospital. The nearest was Marianhill.
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