Mama and Nto were in the corner of the kitchen hut, folded over a wide, reed sieve, almost flat like a tray, which they held between them, each gripping an edge, shake shaking it from side to side. Dried kernels of maize rattled in the sieve, a cloud of husks billowing in the morning light. She watched, Mama Agnes, out of the corner of her eye, as the debris that was too heavy to float slipped through the holes of the sieve, into the bucket squatting beneath. A separation of the things that were to be kept from those that would be discarded. Her mama’s limbs were sturdy and a deep, glistening brown, the soles of her feet and the cheeks of her palms toughened from a lifetime of use. Her movements were quick and efficient, her buttocks big but firm, contained in every movement. Nto, on the other hand, kept teetering this way and that with the sieve, her skinny arms jostling awkwardly with the air. Nto, as her mama liked to say, was going to make an embarrassing wife one day. She had neither buttocks nor poise, unlike Mama Agnes who, her mama liked to say, had buttocks but lacked poise. But better one than none.
Mama stopped sieving and said, brightly, ‘Hmmm, and uyazi, we have a very important person coming to visit us at the end of this week …’
‘A man from the city!’ said Nto.
‘A man from the city,’ repeated mama.
Mama Agnes’s face remained impassive, for she could feel them watching her now; she continued to frown at the cracks on the mud floor, as though there was something interesting to be contemplated there. But her heart was galloping, trying to drag her with it, and she almost tumbled to the ground.
‘Hmmm! I wonder who is the lucky girl he has come for?’
They giggled, mama and Nto, their laughter at once wise and girlish. Something rattled inside of Mama Agnes, and she couldn’t help it; she grabbed the bucket of discarded things and made a dash for it.
She fled to the well. She knew how much the possibility of a wedding meant to the family; it would be a fresh start, which would cement their determination to forget the past. But who could ever forget? She asked herself, plunging her face into the mouth of the well, staring into its murky depths. She wondered just how bottomless its bottom was? How long before one could hit the dark, mysterious liquid with a splash? If the water would suck you to a deep dark down where you could never be found? If the sensation of liquid ballooning your lungs hurt?
She screamed into the well. But there weren’t rippling echoes, only a bottomless-bottom timbre to her voice.
She had to tell Father Reuben to make his approach before this dreaded suitor made himself known. She dropped her pail and ran, cutting across her father’s homestead and sprinting along the path to the priests’ compound. When she arrived, out of breath, she asked one of the priests where Father Reuben was.
‘He’s gone.’
Her heart attempted to leap out of her chest. ‘Gone where?’
‘Don’t you know? He has finished his apprenticeship with our congregation. He has gone back to his district. He left before the cry of the first rooster, so he could catch the bus to Bulawayo.’
Mama Agnes fell into an indeterminable illness. Because she could not see it, did not understand how a heart could be broken (like an arm or a leg or even a nose), but felt, somewhere inside, a pain of spiritual depths that was strangely almost physical (because a heart could be black, and sag heavy, but it had no bone, and therefore could not snap), she simply claimed she had a headache and then a stomach ache, and spent the rest of the week in bed. When my surrogate father arrived five days later, she rejected him, refusing to be impressed by his yellow Peugeot 504, which farted into her father’s homestead laden with all sorts of town goodies. She snubbed the multicoloured dresses and shiny stilettos, eyed the assortment of sweet, cloying perfumes with a feigned nonchalance. She had resolved that she did, after all, want to see the better world, and Massachusetts sounded like a good place to complete her studies. There were all her black brothers and sisters over there, those slaves or once slaves. She would join them, and forge her path in the great United States of America.
‘Why will you not have him?’ her mother demanded.
‘He’s too old.’
‘He is wealthy, he can look after you.’
‘He’s ugly.’
‘Beauty never mattered in a man.’
‘What shall I call him – grandpa?’
‘He’s not that old. Besides, you know your father will never stand for this.’
‘I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t want him. And what kind of name is Abednego?’
‘Abednego is a biblical name, it means “servant of Nebo”, and Nebo was the Babylonian god of wisdom. He’s a man of wisdom, my child, he will be good for you.’
‘Well, they should have named him Reuben or something.’
When her form four results came, she discovered, to her dismay, that she hadn’t done as well as she’d expected. She did not even have a single distinction in Maths, Integrated Science or English, the Important Subjects that were the professed favourites of any self-respecting, forward-thinking pupil. Though in truth, she liked Ndebele the most. It was a singsong language suffused with subtle wisdoms. But too heavy. Not light enough, like English, to carry one on the wings of progress all the way to Massachusetts. The Catholic Church scholarship was awarded to another pupil, and Massachusetts came to lodge itself as another confusing ache in her heart. She turned from the mirror of her life to find that this large, clumsy man – with the yellow face and a prominent lower lip drooping beneath a caterpillar moustache – was the only option she had left.
We were both startled by the sound of the gate squeaking; it was eerily loud. And then my surrogate father’s red Peugeot 405 farted into the yard. Dammit! Abednego, why does he have such bad timing? Just when we were getting along really well, my Mama Agnes and I.
‘Goodnight,’ Mama Agnes said curtly, gathering herself and slinking out of Bukhosi’s room before I could say anything.
No matter, we managed to pass huge hurdles. She even let me sleep in the boy’s bed! I have Abednego to thank for all of this. If he hadn’t … No, that’s no way to think at all. But still, it’s just, I’ve been wanting so long to connect with my Mama Agnes and now—
I heard him come in, staggering down the passage that leads from the back door to the sitting room. Where was he coming from, anyway? He paused by Bukhosi’s door; I could hear his laboured breathing. I held my breath. I feared he would come in. I didn’t want him to find me there, in the boy’s room – he would surely kick me out. He stood by the boy’s door for what felt like forever. And then, he shambled on, and I could hear him stumbling into Mama Agnes’s bedroom. His voice reached me, a dull, mumbling, slurred speech; had he been drinking? I sat up and listened; would he beat her again? I would readily comfort her. But all I heard was grunting, and the sound of clothes being slipped off, and then, the next moment, raspy snoring.
I lay back in bed. I didn’t want him to hurt Mama Agnes again. Of course not. I just wanted, I just wished … I had enjoyed our talk, that’s all. It had felt so good to be there for her and have her open up to me.
I found I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed for a long time, thinking of what had transpired. I thought of Mama Agnes and how she must have felt meeting my surrogate father. She was sixteen then and he was, what, thirty-three? I can see how to a girl of sixteen he would have seemed incredibly old.
I can imagine her dragging herself reluctantly to her father’s hut to meet my surrogate father on the fated day. Her mama flanking her on her left, Nto on her right. Dressed in the white, frilly dress she is wearing in the wedding photo hanging on the sitting room wall next to the portrait of baby Bukhosi. Her hair having been fried with a hot comb to get it to stand in those thin, curled rolls, like half-fisted hands. She looks so frightened in that photo.
My surrogate father would not have gone to meet her alone; he would have needed someone, a male relative, to accompany him; someone like Uncle Lungile.
Was it really so easy for him to
move on from my Thandi, just like that? I feel as though I shan’t ever be able to move on from her, as though I can never love again. But perhaps it was the family that pressured him to remarry, to try and rebuild what he had lost.
I can see Mama Agnes blinking at my surrogate father through the haze of smoke spiralling from a dying fire in the middle of the hut. No longer is he the rural boy that my inamorata had to polish into a man of the city! No longer is he shy and inarticulate and naïve!
‘Do you know either of these men?’ her father asks, feigning a frown.
And she, Mama Agnes, she’s as bashful as a rural girl could be … To her this suitor is a large and yellow city man with a huge nose and a lower lip that sags as though from a mouthful of secrets—
‘Do you know any of these men?’ Her father’s voice cracks, as though something hot has been placed on his vocal cords.
Mama Agnes nods, shakes her head, nods, shakes her head, nods, shakes her head …
Gasp!
‘What is this?’ demands Uncle Lungile. ‘What, what is the meaning of this? We are the proud Mlambo clan, and this boy here is a virile young man, a freedom fighter, a hero who fought for his country. Any woman would be lucky to have him. We won’t stand for this!’
Mama Agnes grimaces. I, too, would grimace, were I her! Boy? Boy is her brother Trymore, with his firm (remaining) limbs, why, not even Father Reuben can be called a boy but rather a young man. But this funny, yellow man who looks not at her but through her, with eyes big and brown and woeful, why, he’s almost like her father … She scrambles to her feet and flees. She heads for the kraals, where she crouches behind one of the wooden posts and peers at her father’s hut, just like my surrogate father used to do when trying to listen to that brother read the bible to his own surrogate father.
I can see Mama Agnes’s father unbuckling his belt as he limps out into the late afternoon, his eyes rotating wildly in their sockets. There is her mama, right behind him. She sees Mama Agnes first, and shuffles ahead of her father, whose cracked voice bellows for her to come to him.
‘I’ll teach you a lesson, what do you, what is, what …?’
‘Please, my king my life my love, let me talk to the girl,’ her mama pleads.
Mama Agnes glares at her father, and at my surrogate father who has emerged, and now stands by the entrance of the hut, staring at her, quiet, unmoving.
‘My daughter, please, Agnes, Agnes—’ She turns to her mama, who cups her face and slaps her cheeks gently. ‘What are you doing, why are you doing this, why are you embarrassing your father like this, why are you? Listen, listen to me. I was fourteen when I married your father, yes fourteen, and he was not much younger than this man who has come for you – listen, are you listening? – he was about twice my age, and I was so afraid of him, the first day in his compound I cried, yes I cried, but look at me, look how happy I am, how good our life, do you hear me, are you listening? You are no longer a child, Agnes, and this day was always coming, listen, are you listening?’
And though she wants to cry, Mama Agnes, something hard and hot has lodged itself in her chest, clogging her tears. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she mumbles. ‘I don’t want to leave you and Nto and Trymore and Father and … Please don’t make me go.’
‘I know, I know,’ her mama says, and begins, suddenly, to cry, a long, loud wail that frightens Mama Agnes. ‘I know. But it’s the way things are meant to be …’
Behind her mama, her father is being solicitous, murmuring apologies to my Uncle Lungile, who is hissing about being greatly offended. Behind them stands my surrogate father, arms folded, his gaze still fixed on Mama Agnes.
‘Come,’ yells my uncle, trying to yank him by the arm. ‘We will not stand for this. We are the proud Mlambo clan. Come! We are leaving.’
‘No,’ he replies. ‘No, Uncle! It is you who dragged me all the way here. Did you not say, my boy, the family needs your seed, we need to replace what you lost? Did you not say, my boy, I have found you a wife, she is a blot-out-sun, just you wait and see. So. We shall finish this. And look at her! Isn’t she an Angela Davis?’
And so it was that Mama Agnes was wedded to Abednego, who must have demanded that she respectfully call him ‘Baba’, like I always hear her refer to him. And then she found herself, Mama Agnes, several months later, in that two-bedroomed house in Entumbane, the house meant for my Thandi.
The Prayer Meeting
Mama Agnes crept into Bukhosi’s room early this morning and shook me awake, hissing at me to get up and go back to my pygmy room.
‘Why?’ I said, rather petulantly, although I knew why. But I wanted her to stand up for me. Would she have kicked me out like that had I been Bukhosi, even if my surrogate father hadn’t wanted him there?
‘Camun,’ she said. ‘Get up. Camun, chop chop.’
Her voice was cold. She averted her eyes while I slipped out of bed, picked up my shirt and slinked past her without another word. She couldn’t have humiliated me more if she had tried! I have been sitting here since, cross-legged, on my put-me-up bed in my pygmy room, clickety-clacking away on my MacBook, trying to fight the urge to go to her, and beg her to talk to me, to show me some of the tenderness of last night, the same tenderness with which she talks about Bukhosi, softening her consonants, her voice taking on a husky timbre. I yearn to see this from her, for me, to be as we were last night, just the two of us, without that drunkard coming between us. My Mama Agnes. But I dare not go to her today; she won’t tell me anything with my surrogate father there. I want to talk to her about that concentration camp, Bhalagwe. I want to bear some of her burden and share in her past. I want to know what it was like for her – and what it must have been like for my real mother, too. I have been doing some calculations: Mama Agnes said last night the Men in the Red Berets first came to her village in Kezi in ’84; Uncle Fani said it was ’83 when they first came to Tshipisane Village – it would have been around January, for I was born in that Gehenna in October. So, Mama Agnes and my mama probably never met, although their experiences would have been one and the same. My mama. My Zodwa Nsele Khathini. My most gracious Virgin Mary. To thee I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.
I heard Mama Agnes, when I crept in to use the loo, telling my surrogate father that the Reverend Pastor is coming this evening to pray for Bukhosi, and that the Ladies of the Church will be accompanying him. My surrogate father wanted to know why they had to come here and my surrogate mother replied – I imagine pointing to her face – that as she can’t go to the Reverend Pastor at the moment, the Reverend Pastor is coming to her. This shut him up. But a mere beating won’t shut Mama Agnes up – she is determined to go on interceding for Bukhosi. Why couldn’t she intercede for me with my surrogate father this morning, instead of kicking me out of the boy’s room like that?
Still, I can’t sulk. She’s under a lot of stress at the moment; what kind of son would I be were I to abandon her at this time when she needs me most? Which is why I have made myself available this evening at the prayer meeting led by the Reverend Pastor. There has been a lot of hustle and bustle in preparation for his arrival. I don’t know why Mama Agnes is so excited – you’d think we were hosting Jesus himself – busy putting up fresh curtains, polishing the floor, adorning the sofas in her special covers; she even went next door to ask MaNdlovu for some of her scented candles.
At the appointed hour, with a knock on the door and a procession of neighbours, we gather in the Mlambo living room: myself, Mama Agnes, the Reverend Pastor, the Ladies of the Church and all of the Mlambos’ neighbours and friends who have come to pray for Bukhosi. My surrogate father, as to be expected, has slinked off on his lonely late-night searches. Doesn’t Mama Agnes wonder where he goes to? Does she know? I doubt it; she’s probably just relieved that he is out of the house. I look around at the congregation and marvel at how everyone has pooled together in a mass effort to find Bukhosi. He is loved. I wonder if there is anyone who would care today if I went missing.
I can’t see Mama Agnes and I suddenly feel panicked, but then I spot her, turned away from me, away from the frisky bulb light, and hovering instead in the murkiest of shadows, right by the Reverend Pastor’s crotch. For she’s on her knees, her pillowy frame gathered in ruffled becomingness, in a floral, green veldt-coloured dress, which matches the doek on her head. Her divine countenance bob-bobs next to the Reverend Pastor’s trousers, which, because Canali suits are made to measure, bulge rather obscenely in the shape of a banana lying flat against his right thigh. He keeps bringing her face dangerously close to his banana, rattling Satan out of her head with his huge paw and shouting, ‘Can I get a Halleluuuujah!’
The neighbours give him a ‘Halleluuuujah!’
‘Can I get an Aamen!’
‘Hameni!’
He’s a famous man, the Reverend Pastor, scandalously famous. For the past months, he’s been making the front news of the independent papers, which has been happening more frequently what with the presidential elections next year. He’s been writing sermonic articles in which he pleads with the current government to step down, to leave the job of running a country to better-suited scoundrels, even praying, in one article, for God to intervene, to send a flood, to send a plague, to send the UN troops, to send America to invade us like they did Iraq and Afghanistan! To show who is God!
But he shan’t get a Hallelujah out of me, and certainly not an Amen. I’m sitting on the floor in the shadows, opposite this spectacle, wedged between Bukhosi’s sofa and the small, narrow bookcase. My face is tactfully angled away from the light; it is not to the light that I turn, not the shackles of that arresting light that I seek tonight, but the shadows.
As any discerning soul will have already guessed, Reverend Pastor Reuben is that same Father Reuben who took Mama Agnes’s virginity all those years ago when she was but a lassie. I spent the afternoon online doing due diligence on him, this man from my Mama Agnes’s youth who is back in her life playing the role of Father. The things I found out about him! He was kicked out of the Catholic order several years ago after it emerged that he had long since been submerged in sin, plugging his joy stick into many a female outlet and spasming with electric bliss. His proclivity had been for the married woman; he may have even blessed a man’s house or two with child. But then, having since repented, he started his own church, Blessed Anointings, after the charismatic Pentecostal fashion, and made it his business to preach not only about the sins of the government but also those of the Catholic Church, which, he now claims, has always been a little too concerned with matters of this world rather than the next.
House of Stone Page 18