When the school year began, Mvelo wondered how she would cope. Even though she was only turning sixteen, she felt so much older now. And she wasn’t prepared for the stares and meaningful glances that she got, particularly from the teachers. Her old friends were in higher grades now. But she told herself that she would simply work hard.
After school she spent most of her time in Manor Gardens. Sabekile’s first word was Mama, and she said it to Mvelo, who nearly fainted with excitement. She looked at Petra, who nodded at her, smiling. Mvelo squeezed Sabekile’s little body so tight that the baby squirmed under her weight.
While they were playing with Sabekile one evening, Petra said to Mvelo, “You know, I knew the first day you came here that you were her mother. But now, as she grows, there’s no doubt that she’s yours.”
Mvelo thought the baby looked like her mother, and she felt a stab of sadness that Zola would never get to meet her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nonceba had a wide circle of friends, and she liked entertaining at home. Mvelo usually felt a bit out of place at these gatherings; that is, until she developed her first serious crush. He was in his mid-twenties, and she was just twenty, doing her matric, but he made her feel that she was a woman, not a schoolgirl.
“Sisi Nonceba, you never told me that you have such a beautiful sister,” he said, charming Mvelo, taking her hand and kissing it. The sensation of his lips on her hand caught her by surprise, and she thanked God for her dark skin at this moment, so he couldn’t see her blush.
“What’s your name, beautiful?” he asked, looking at her with his big smiling eyes.
“Mvelo,” she said, watching him closely, trying to gauge his game.
“A perfect name for a perfect lady,” he said, and she smiled shyly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Cetshwayo Jama kaZulu,” he said proudly. “I worked with your sister when I was an intern. She’s a real taskmaster, but we do love her.”
Nonceba watched this spectacle with amusement. She didn’t correct him about them not being sisters. Mvelo was glad about that.
While others at the party discussed weighty issues such as democracy, Cetshwayo sat by Mvelo’s side and asked her about her plans after she finished school. No man had ever shown an interest in her like this, in what she thought and wanted to do with her life, and she found herself talking easily to him.
“I would like to make a career in music,” she said, voicing her dream for the first time.
He spoke about his love of the law and how much still needed to change. Mvelo thought how, if it hadn’t been for lawyers, she could have lost Sabekile. She was inspired by his passion.
They began dating, with permission from Nonceba, of course, and he opened Mvelo up to a whole new world: university talks about the African Renaissance, poetry festivals and readings. Some of it went over her head, but that didn’t matter, they were things she enjoyed doing with Cetshwayo. Some of the performances simply made her feel, she didn’t need to understand them, she felt them in her veins.
One evening Cetshwayo stood up and read. The words were so beautiful. Mvelo began to sing a soft melody along with him. He looked surprised, but smiled and continued reading. They were in perfect harmony.
On the way home they were silent, understanding that something had changed. When he dropped her off, he kissed her on her cheek. It was their second kiss.
Only after she had written her exams and passed matric, he told her he knew about what she had been through. Nonceba had called him aside and threatened to cut off his manhood if he ever did anything to hurt Mvelo. “I knew you would do well,” he said. And then he kissed her again, this time on the lips.
Sabekile was now a toddler and remained a great source of joy to Mvelo. She loved singing, in her own strange mix of Zulu, English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, and demanded that Mvelo sing to her too. One rainy Durban summer’s day, she ran outside with her little arms spread and said, “Look, Mama, God’s kisses.” It brought a lump to Mvelo’s throat, as it made her think of her mother. It was the kind of thing Zola would have said. She joined Sabekile with her arms outstretched, twirling in the rain.
After she passed matric, Mvelo registered at the University of KwaZulu-Natal to study journalism. Though she hoped to follow her dream of singing professionally, Nonceba had persuaded her to also study something practical, so that she would always be able to support herself. When they got home from registration, Nonceba launched into one of her long speeches about how proud she was of Mvelo. She hugged her, and didn’t let her go for a long time, until Mvelo felt Nonceba’s body begin to shake.
Mvelo stiffened and pulled away, and then she saw that Nonceba was crying. She was confused. “What is it?” she asked.
“Well, I have some news that I don’t think you’ll be happy about. I’m going back to the U.S. to do some studies on one of the Native American reservations. I’ll be gone for three months, but I promise that I’ll be back.”
Mvelo could see that Nonceba was afraid she was not going to take it well, but she had a family now. She knew she would not be alone.
She and Cetshwayo drove Nonceba to the airport and saw her off on her journey. “She is something else, that one,” Cetshwayo said as they waved her goodbye.
“That she is,” Mvelo said, finally realizing that Nonceba was feeling the pull of her other ancestors too.
“So when do I get to introduce you to my mother?” Cetshwayo asked, out of the blue.
Mvelo had moved from infatuation to a quiet, comfortable kind of love. They had shared furnace kisses, but when it began to go further, she always froze. The ghost of Nhlengethwa hung over them. Cetshwayo always stopped her from apologizing. “It’s not your fault, I know, it’s that bastard who took advantage of you,” he would try to reassure her, feeling frustrated, but with no one to vent to.
“Well,” Mvelo said, “before we count our chickens, perhaps meeting your mother should be after a trip to a New Start clinic.”
Mvelo had grown very wise in her twenty years, and she knew that whatever happened, she would have the strength to deal with it.
THE LOVABLE LOTHARIO AND THE SHACK LIVES
Afterword
by Futhi Ntshingila
We Kiss Them With Rain was inspired by many things but two incidents stand out for me.
One happened years ago when my aunt’s lover passed away. He was a flashy taxi owner, a self-made man who loved women as if they were his religion. His house was always full of boys hanging out with him and hanging on to his every lecherous word. Unlike most characters who are self-made business people, he wasn’t ruthless. He was likeable, funny, and very generous with his money. With the advent of HIV-AIDS in the 1990’s, he got ill. Soon, he became a feature in a long blue gown on the side wall of his house, soaking in the sun and just hanging out with the boys who continued to visit and care for him.
In a bid to keep normalcy going, they would still make him laugh with lewd jokes even though the laughs were unnaturally louder and hollow, hiding the fear of what was to come. A few days before he passed away, he was weak but still laughing with the boys. He told the boys that at his funeral, he wanted all the females who came to the service not to wear underwear. He said he wanted this because he would be lying down and when they lined past to view his body, he would be smiling like a cat that got all the cream because his eyes would be feasting on what was under their dresses and skirts. The boys laughed but he cried and insisted they promise him to at least announce his wish.
Well, that was the talk of the township and a cause for many guffaws. Of course women didn’t do it but it remained in my mind. Years later, I thought, What if women did it? What if they agreed to do it? So I sat down and wrote an unreal story of a man who was so loved by his women that, even after infecting them with HIV, they still worshipped the ground he walked on. They indulged him even in his death by stripping off their undies. I don’t know what it all means to feminists, conservatives, moralists or whoever else but I
know that when I wrote his story, I learned and felt something about love that is unconditional but dangerous too. I felt, at least in my imagination, a kind of surrender which I see some women do. The way women love men who can endanger them is something that normally gets me angry but with this experiment of mine in writing, I came close to seeing their perspective of being smothered to death by love laced with poison.
The second incident that inspired this story was about a decade ago when I worked as a reporter for a newspaper in Durban where, in summer, there can be fearsome flash floods. While rain may be a source of joy for farmers and innocent children to jump around and dance in it, for those living in shacks, it spells death and destruction.
After the rains, I went there in search of a story and a by line. I found women cleaning up and salvaging bits they could, while men were drinking their worries away. One family’s grandmother and grandson were washed off by flash floods and their bodies found five kilometers away under a bridge.
Music was blaring from the shebeens, taxis were zigzagging through the streets and collecting people to go to town, a group of Indian neighbours were dishing out biriyani. I stood there looking and not knowing where to start. Two people had just died; shacks were knee deep in slushy mud; but people there were determined to keep the normalcy going. Of course, the dead would be buried, shacks would be cleaned out, and life will be lived. I can’t remember what kind of article I wrote but I just knew that people like that—with lives and circumstances lived on the margins of society—should be known.
Q&A
with Futhi Ntshingila
1.You’ve stated in the past that you see your work as “converting oral stories into a written form.” How do oral stories inform your writing?
In the Zulu tradition, we are steeped in a rich history of oral tradition. Oral traditions in the continent were marginalized by the hegemonic processes of colonization. But in the margins, oral tradition continues to impact African lives and identities. My surname has seven sub-names; and in those sub-names lies the history of where my people came from, the characters of my people, including their tempers and funny anecdotes. Then we have folktales of fiction mixed with facts. Squatter camps are full of stories about people that are not written down. This is where I feel I come in—mixing facts and fiction to tell the stories of those whose stories would otherwise never be told.
2.Both of your two novels are about women who learn to empower themselves in particularly disempowering circumstances. Can you talk about why this is an important theme to your work?
Ever since I can remember, I have been surrounded by women, starting with my mother and my three sisters, five aunties, and countless cousins, friends, and church ladies. My dad was the only male figure around really. We lived in the margins of society during the years of racial discrimination. Socio-economic environments were not in our favor. Men went to work in the mines and cities far from home and women had to make do mostly working in kitchens for white people. I don’t remember hearing complaints but scant food was produced and stretched to fill our tummies and lives were lived. My writing is a way of honoring them for the many sacrifices they had to make.
3.Can you tell us more about the situation in South Africa that leads to squatter towns? How are women and children particularly vulnerable in these squatter camps?
During the apartheid government, black South Africans were moved miles away from the cities. There was a policy that demanded black people to have a special permission to live and work in the city. Democracy allowed for free movement which led to people putting up shacks to live and have easy access to the city to make a living. The structures of these shacks are not very strong.
During the height of apartheid, when men were separated from their families due to the work situation, strong family structures got blurred, which led to many young single mothers heading households. They become easy targets for men who either enter the home as boyfriends but in the end break the trust by molesting young girls. Sometimes it is rape attacks and grooming that leaves women and children as targets. There was a period where it was believed that sleeping with a virgin could cure HIV-AIDS.
4.Can you tell us about the HIV-AIDS situation in South Africa?
In the 1990’s, HIV-AIDS became rampant in South Africa, claiming the lives of young people. Men in mines used sex-workers and infected wives in the villages. Young girls who slept with sugar daddies infected boyfriends and boyfriends who had more than one girlfriend infected more. Rapes of virgins by misled men who believed sleeping with a virgin could cure AIDS led to more lives ruined. It became a crisis.
With awareness campaigns and treatment, it has become a manageable disease now but it hasn’t stopped affecting people’s lives. The poor, young girls who fall in the claws of infected older men still face infections.
5.Though Mvelo’s situation seems hopeless, she ends up in the best possible circumstance by the end of the book, almost a fairy tale ending. Can you talk about your choice to give her a hopeful ending rather than what many would consider a more “realistic” ending?
The story is grim and it is realistic. The ending is hopeful and it is realistic too. Not everyone comes out of the cycle of poverty but, with determination, people do make something of their lives.
Fortunately, I do not follow literary formats when I tell stories. I wouldn’t have written this book if it had a grim ending. It would have been pointless for me. I think the ending is a fairy tale only if one believes every person who starts out poor ends up poor. I see this ending as a reality for many South Africans who are a growing middle class today. They claw their ways out of poverty, contrary to some people’s belief that most black middle class people today are successful through corruption. No, many school mates who struggled with poverty like I did succeeded by working. They worked hard and knocked on doors, sometimes literally walking from door to door. I know it of my personal experience. Hard work and luck met up and made my life and the lives of many others a reality that can be perceived as hopeful.
Discussion Questions
1.In what ways is We Kiss Them With Rain a classic coming-of-age story and in what ways is it different?
2.What does this story suggest life is like for a young poor black woman growing up in South Africa? List the things that surprised you and list the things that didn’t.
3.The back cover suggests that We Kiss Them With Rain uses elements of Shakespearean comedy to tell this tale. What does that mean? In what ways does this story remind you of classic Shakespearean comedies like A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream? In what ways is it different?
4.Futhi Ntshingila’s use of the supernatural is subtle in We Kiss Them With Rain. Where do the supernatural elements of the story occur? Is the supernatural a symbol of power? Why or why not and how?
5.Would you consider this novel a feminist text? Why or why not?
6.At her mother’s funeral, Mvelo reads her mother’s favorite biblical verse about love. (If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but have not love, I am nothing, etc.) How does this particular verse, and its meaning, intertwine with the characters’ fates during the course of the novel? What is the role of “love” in this book?
7.What are the sexual politics of this book? How is Nonceba’s sexuality displayed differently than Zola’s or Mvelo’s? What is the history and culture behind those differences? From this book, what would you guess sex education (whether that occurs in families or institutions) in South Africa looks like? How might it be different in North America?
8.Consider the relationship between Sipho and Julia, his mother’s employer. What are the power and gender dynamics at play in that relationship?
9.Both Johan and Zimkitha seemed to be with each other as an act of defiance. Was any part of their relationship based on love? Why or why not?
10.Is Johan acting out of contrition or selflessness when he agrees to adopt Mvelo’s baby?
11.Why does Futhi Ntshingila choose to tell this story from di
fferent points of view? How do these changing points-of-view in the story strengthen or weaken our understanding of Mvelo’s situation and her story?
12.Many women gather to honor Sipho, a man that they loved, after his death even though he had been the source of disease for many of them. What does this imply about the complications and depth of love? What does it imply about the women’s feelings toward AIDS itself?
13.Futhi Ntshinglia has written about her interest in how people with so little struggle to maintain normalcy in the face of disaster. In what instances and to what lengths do the people of We Kiss Them with Rain put forth the effort to maintain their normalcy? How has this focus on normalcy helped or hurt the situation?
14.Was there poetic justice in the death of the pastor and will his death allow Mvelo to find some peace?
15.What was your reaction when it was revealed that Mvelo stopped going to the virgin checks because girls had been raped by the men they were intended to trust?
16.Nonceba’s grandmother, Mae, felt a pull between her American and African roots that Nonceba also seems to struggle with. Both of these women seemed unsure of where they belonged. What reasons could these women have for such a strong feeling of displacement, and how did this feeling influence where they found themselves throughout the story?
17.We Kiss Them With Rain begins with poetry. Some of the poetic images are obvious in the story, but others are more obscure. What ideas exist in the poem but may not be quite as obvious in the text? How does this poem, and the title that comes from it, comment upon the text as a whole and provide perhaps the book’s main theme?
OTHER BOOKS FROM CATALYST PRESS
Dark Traces
by Martin Steyn
Sacrificed
by Chanette Paul
The Lion’s Binding Oath and Other Stories
We Kiss Them With Rain Page 12