House of Stone

by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

  ‘Is this all there is?’ she wondered, scowling.

  It was so hot that her lilac blouse, which usually hung loose on her frame, clung to her back and refused to let go. Father Reuben stopped and gazed down at her through eyes that squinted against the glaring sun.

  ‘You’re unusually bright, for a girl,’ he commented.

  Mama Agnes blushed. She had heard this many times before, but now, coming from Father Reuben’s lips, it hit her with a sacred iridescence. She opened her mouth to say something, and the next moment Father Reuben’s lips were on hers.

  O sweet Virgin Mary, virgin that you are, virgin that young Mama Agnes is but virgin that she no longer wishes to be!

  There she stood trembling with moist sweetness, with sweet moistness, for how moist was the sweetness, how sweet was the moistness, ’twas sweet, ’twas moist, the lips of holiness impressing themselves upon her. And the light, O, that overly bright light that made the landscape wriggle before her eyes like a siShikisha dancer, how it flooded her, how it wriggled, how it consumed! She swears, even to this very day, Mama Agnes, how that kiss ushered the moment when she looked up and saw the face of God.

  Banished from her mind was Bhalagwe! To Father Reuben she concentrated her energies.

  ‘See you at the next service,’ said Father Reuben, pulling away.

  That week was the longest week in Mama Agnes’s young life. The days dragged by, accumulating into boring, painful hours whose only purpose seemed to be to torment her. Sunday arrived at last; she wore her best outfit, a shimmering dress that she usually reserved for weddings, but when she got to the church, Father Reuben was not there – he was attending a service in a neighbouring village. Rage and disappointment formed an unpleasant concoction that left a bitter taste in her mouth. It was Father Chipato, the rheumy-eyed priest, who conducted the service. He forged through the scripture in a loud, aggressive tone, thrashing the congregation to submission with his Shona. Each time he said ‘Hallelujah!’ the congregation groaned ‘Hameni!’, even though everyone from the village was Ndebele. His language paralysed them, and reminded them of the apparitions in the red berets. They, too, had spoken Shona, as they blessed the villagers with a horror such as they had never known possible. And so, there they stood, wailing ‘Hameni!’, but the louder Father Chipato preached, the more their bodies twitched, flinching against the memories of things they felt but had tried to forget.

  When Mama Agnes saw Father Reuben the Sunday after Father Chipato’s visit, she hissed, ‘How could you keep me waiting last Sunday?’

  To which he whispered, ‘Meet me by the river, right before the spot where the boys swim, after lunchtime devotions.’

  Mama Agnes was torn between anger and excitement. A part of her told her to skip the river rendezvous, just to spite Father Reuben. But the fear of putting him off for good tore at her thudding little heart, so that, promptly after the lunchtime devotions, she found herself sitting on one of the polished rocks that jutted out of the riverbank.

  Father Reuben had chosen their meeting place well; large boulders rose one on top of the other on either side, converging to form a crevice where they could not be seen. Several uninterested livestock nibbled at the grass, their lolling bells going nkende nkende in the heat. A dog could be heard barking in the distance, from one of the homesteads sprawled intermittently across the terrain.

  She dipped her feet in the water and kicked gently, so as not to make a big splash. This part of the river was shallow and clear. There were several such pockets along the Mpopoma River, where the water flowed with a gentle, almost imperceptible current. From where she sat, she could hear the boys splashing in another pocket of water around the bend. Further down the river was the girls’ spot. Sometimes the boys planned mischievous invasions, during which they’d creep up on the girls and hide their clothes, then begin throwing stones and delight themselves with the sight of a dozen semi-naked, squealing females splashing about in the water.

  The afternoon shadows began to lengthen. Mama Agnes was beginning to think that Father Reuben would not come when he appeared among the rocks, like Jesus by the Sea of Galilee.

  She wanted to pout and say, ‘You’re late.’

  Instead, she smiled shyly and berated herself for being so obvious. She did not know what type of courting game they were playing. He was not bold and abrupt, like the village boys who professed bottomless pools of love and beat you up if you tried to be cagey with them.

  She receded, once again, into shyness. I understood perfectly; these were not the kind of intimacies a mother would share with her son. But she was in such a vulnerable, suggestible state, and I, I only wanted to connect with her!

  ‘You remind me of myself, when I was young, Mama A,’ I said encouragingly. ‘The things I used to say to my best friend’s sister! Why, I had no idea you used to be such a wildling in your youth.’

  She laughed, and immediately winced; the swellings on her face were too fresh. ‘I must go to bed,’ she said, suddenly sombre.

  I had pushed too hard. ‘Oh? Are you sure?’ I tried to sound casual. ‘I really don’t mind sitting here with you a little longer, if you like.’

  ‘No, you’ve done enough for me as it is. It’s late, and I’m so tired.’

  She stood up and shuffled to the sitting room door, and then paused, waiting for me to leave.

  ‘Zamani?’

  I didn’t want to go. I could feel my chest heaving. Something in there felt strangely tender.

  ‘I’m not going,’ I muttered defiantly. ‘I’m not leaving you alone in this house. What if Father comes back and you need me? I’ll sleep here, Mama Agnes,’ I said, as I plumped the cushions of the sofa and lay down.

  She seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘All right,’ she said, finally. ‘You can sleep in Bukhosi’s room. And Zamani? Please don’t – he’s not always this bad, and, I don’t want the whole township gossiping—’

  ‘I would never do such a thing, Mama Agnes,’ I said, trying to hide my joy. And then, I dared to add, as casually as possible, ‘After all, families protect one another and keep each other’s … secrets.’ I let that word, ‘secret’, slide deliciously off my tongue.

  For the first time, I spent the night in the main house, in those sheets that still reek of the boy. The warmth of it took me by surprise; I remembered this room when it was still mine, when I lived here with Uncle Fani. It was different then, coldly bare, without the mother’s touch that it now had, imprinting itself on the boy’s ironed jeans and tee-shirts bulging out of the old wardrobe; in a teenage boy’s impatient attempt to impose order, I imagined at a mother’s admonishments, as could be seen in his pile of dirty clothes hidden behind the door, and the rubber slippers and Nike trackies shoved beneath the wardrobe. There was the boy’s attempt at personality, too, in the glossy posters of Beyoncé and Kanye West caught in a beam of moonlight looming large on the wall to my right. And beside the bed where I had plomped myself, on an inverted crate that served as the dressing table, stood an empty bottle of Brut, and next to it a shaving stick, Lifebuoy soap, Axe roll on and an open tin of Ingram’s Camphor Cream whose minty scent was fighting a losing battle with the boy’s musky odour.

  I imagined myself sleeping here every day, the room reeking of me. The wardrobe filled with my clothes, fresh with the scent of Mama Agnes’s Sta-soft Lavender Fabric Softener, her sweet, motherly admonishments waking me up early on a Saturday morning to clean my room. I could feel my face breaking open, and I was so glad the electricity was still gone.

  Mama Agnes was standing by the boy’s door, and I imagined it must have been difficult for her to be there, without the boy. I smiled, imagining that my presence in the boy’s room soothed her, that she saw, in me, Bukhosi. I tried to think of something to say, of what she may like to hear, of what the boy would say to her, but before I could say anything, she had mumbled a ‘goodnight’ and disappeared into her own room next door.

  I didn’t go to sleep but sat on the bo
y’s bed, listening intently to her movements through the wall as she got ready for bed, trying to think up a ploy to get her talking again. I heard the creak of the mattress, and imagined she must have settled herself on her bed, and was now probably snuggling in her sheets. Soon, she would be asleep! I couldn’t let her slip away.

  I let out a loud sob, and then proceeded to weep theatrically.

  ‘Zamani?’

  She was back by the boy’s door! I stifled a sob.

  ‘Zamani! What is it? I’m coming in.’

  I waited for her to take a few steps, and then turned my face away from her. ‘I miss Bukhosi,’ I said.

  She sighed wistfully, as though catching a breath. ‘Oh, mfanami, I miss him too!’

  There, she had called me ‘mfanami’! And though this is but a generic term of endearment used by motherly women for any agreeable young man, those who do helpful things like carry their groceries from the supermarket to their doorsteps, it thrilled me to hear it. I even imagined she meant it literally. ‘My boy.’ Her son!

  ‘Being here, in his room with his things, it’s brought back memories …’ I said, keeping my voice soft still.

  ‘I know!’ said my Mama Agnes. ‘But don’t you worry, everything is going to be all right, OK? The Reverend Pastor still thinks he’s in South Africa. The Holy Ghost is never wrong!’

  ‘What was he thinking, running away like that?’

  ‘I don’t know, uyazi, I raised him in the church, not to be doing thug things, running away like a guluva…’

  ‘But then, who knows what the impetuous young think? I, after all, tried to run away with my best friend’s sister! And I’m sure you, too, Mama Agnes, could be impetuous in your youth. Couldn’t you? Just look at what happened with Father Reuben! What … what did happen? What happened, Mama Agnes?’

  Here she was quiet; she seemed far away. And then she began to chuckle. ‘Well…’

  And just like that, I found I had brought my Mama Agnes back to the conversation at hand! I can only surmise that she lay with Father Reuben. She spared me the embarrassing details of the act itself, only saying how, ‘afterwards’, he had left as soon as he could. And thus, it has been left to my own imagination, virgin that I am, to supply the details of what undoubtedly must have been, for a teenage girl, a clumsy, discomfiting experience of first-time coitus. Nothing pleasurable at all! What pleasure is to be found in a priestly finger prodding between virgin legs? What enjoyment is to be summoned by an ecclesiastical hand gripping a hillock breast? And what of coming face to face, for the first time, with that strange organ the phallus? What can a first-time glimpse of this body part, ebony and thick and erect, engender in the female mind except visions of unbecomingness? For, tool of pleasure that it is, even I know that the phallus is not a very pretty organ! It frightened even me the very first time I stroked myself with pubescent urgency and found it swelling and swelling until it became ramrod straight, demanding to be appeased! It does take some getting used to! So, imagine my poor Mama Agnes assaulted, for the first time, by this unruly body part, wondering how it will ever fit into her lady-parts, and confused also by the heat of her supple teenage body, when, before she knows what is happening, the feeling of something hard and sharp plunges into her, like the tip of a knife. What can she do but cry when she beholds the blood trickling down her thighs, what can she do but bury her sobs in the lapels of Father Reuben’s jacket?

  And what does that Father Reuben, fornicator after the priestly fashion, as has become so common over the years among the Catholic order, do?

  ‘Agnes,’ I can hear him saying. ‘Agnes. It’s getting late. I have to go.’

  And off he hurries, without a backwards look, tripping over the underbrush, his eyes instead flitting about for any watchers-by.

  This would have only made a confused Mama Agnes cry harder. She would have expected something of a love slap, would have wanted to hear Father Reuben say with that determination of men who are betrothed that he was coming to her home to speak with her father. But he didn’t do any of these things, that Father, and that is perhaps why ‘afterwards’, when she had calmed down and washed the slick from between her legs, Mama Agnes walked to the Father’s lodgings.

  What kind of man was this Father, eh?

  The priests’ compound, Mama Agnes told me, was behind the Catholic church building. It was a brick block with asbestos roofing that ran the length of the yard and was subdivided into bedrooms, with the privilege of a diesel-engine generator to power the electricity.

  She spotted Father Reuben seated on the stoep outside his room, a silhouette against the light spilling from his open door, his movements exaggerated by the shadows on the walls as he gesticulated to the other priests, who were clumped around a gas stove near the entrance of the compound. They looked strange to Mama Agnes without their priestly garb, so, so ordinary, so disappointingly mortal. But not Father Reuben, no. His hairy legs, protruding from a pair of faded shorts, were firm, the muscles of his calves well carved, the chunks of thigh disappearing into his shorts deliciously thick. When their eyes met, he did not make a move to get up. Instead he bent and scooped up a handful of roasted groundnuts from a dish on the ground.

  ‘Ah, if it is not young Agnes. You know with your enthusiasm for the Church, you ought to become a nun.’

  The other priests laughed softly.

  Mama Agnes could not meet his gaze. ‘I need to speak with you.’

  ‘At this late hour? You should come tomorrow.’

  ‘I need to speak with you now.’

  Father Reuben got up, stretched and said something in Shona to one of the priests. There was a ripple of laughter. Finally, he turned to a squirming Mama Agnes, and, grabbing her arm, hastened her to the gate.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he hissed. ‘Go home! It’s late and your family must be worried by now.’

  ‘You have to speak with my father.’

  ‘Speak with your father about what?’

  ‘About my lobola, of course! This afternoon, you made me your wife.’

  (I wanted to blurt out here, ‘His wife, Mama A? But you know priests can’t …’ But I dared not interrupt.)

  Father Reuben held her firmly by the shoulders. ‘Agnes, listen to me. Go. Home. We will discuss this tomorrow. Now, go home, please.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  Mama Agnes folded her arms and eyed him defiantly. Tears were welling up in her eyes. ‘Everybody will know what I’ve done.’

  ‘No one will know what you’ve done unless you tell them! Now, go home. It’s dark, no one will see anything, and first thing tomorrow morning, I will come to your father’s homestead.’

  ‘You are lying.’

  ‘Agnes, please! Do you want your father to kill me? These things must be done properly. I cannot escort you at this late hour to discuss such an important matter with your father. Are you crazy, woman? Go home!’

  ‘You promise to come tomorrow?’

  ‘I have said I will come! Now go!’

  She slinked into her father’s homestead just as her mama was dishing supper. She looked up at Mama Agnes, who was hovering in the shadows, away from the light of the fire. ‘Eh, what is it? You look like a ghost, has the hare finally been eaten by the lion?’

  ‘Ah, nothing, Ma. Just evening prayers.’

  ‘You need to stop with this church of yours, your father will not be happy. Here, take his food to him.’

  ‘It’s that priest she likes, Ma,’ Nto blurted.

  Mama Agnes whacked her sister on the head. ‘Shut your dirty mouth! S’phukuphuku. It was just night prayers, Ma.’

  ‘It had better be, because we have an important visitor coming at the end of the week.’

  Mama Agnes didn’t care about any important visitors. She begged a headache and retired to the hut she shared with Nto. She lay awake for a long time, staring into the dark, trying to imagine Father Reuben’s impending arrival. She would make sure to stay well out
of sight, until she was called to identify her visitor. She had witnessed the ritual several times before, most recently when it had been her cousin’s turn when she was wedded to a Kalanga from Tsholotsho. All the young girls would be called to gather outside her father’s hut.

  They would be asked, ‘Do you know any of these men?’

  For the suitor would not travel alone. The girls, feigning surprise, would gasp riotously, and the cheekiest of the group would say, ‘I think that one has been eyeing me from a distance.’

  Mama Agnes would keep her eyes on the mud floor as she pointed at Father Reuben and acknowledged him as her suitor. Then the group of girls would be dispersed and the lobola negotiations would begin.

  Her reverie was broken by Nto. She had not heard her sister come in.

  ‘I saw you,’ she whispered. ‘By the river with that priest of yours. I saw you.’

  Mama Agnes sat up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You had better not have done what I saw you doing, because there’s a suitor coming for you at the end of the week. A rich man who has a house in the city.’

  ‘You’re lying! Father Reuben is coming to speak to our father tomorrow. I’m going to be his wife.’

  Nto laughed, making the heat rush to Mama Agnes’s dark face. ‘You know, sister, you may be good with the books in the class, but where life is concerned, you are just stupid. Father Reuben cannot wed you even if he wanted.’

  ‘Yes, he can,’ Mama Agnes spat back. ‘And he will! He loves me. Yebo, he’s a priest, but he loves me and he’s going to leave the Church for me and—’

  ‘Oh? Is that what he said?’

  Mama Agnes glared at her sister, who forged ahead, ‘Besides, you know he’s a Shona, you know Father will die before he gives any of us to a Shona. So, you had better stop dreaming. And you had better not have done what I saw you doing with him.’

  The next morning, Mama Agnes heard the whispers between her mama and her sister in the kitchen, about the suitor who was coming all the way from Bulawayo, the City of Kings, to discuss lobola with her father.