House of Stone

by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

  I swivelled around, swinging my head this way and that, trying to locate Abednego. There – I saw him by the bopping beam of his flashlight, forging deeper into the land of the dead. I was afraid I would lose sight of him, and so I scampered after him, stumbling over small graves, surprisingly small, the graves of children, I realized; so many of them; how could so many of our nation’s children be dying? My temples began to throb as I stomped after my surrogate father, tracing him by his beam, my heart lumping my throat, for I felt at any moment that a spoko would surely rise from one of the graves, a boy spoko, and spook me to death.

  Finally, he halted by one of the graves, beaming his torch on the tombstone. And then he did the strangest thing: he plopped himself in front of it, the torch shining on the headstone. He seemed to be contemplating what was on there. I hesitated; I was not sure whether I should reveal myself. I had wanted to speak to him, to bring out a little more of that hi-story of his that made him such a volatile life-partner for Mama Agnes, but this, now, this was too creepy. I was about to slink back to the car, where I intended to climb back into the boot, when I heard sniffling. My surrogate father was crying! I felt a rush of tenderness and then, all of a sudden, a swell of guilt. What the hell was I doing! What was all this hornet-shaking business? What had I done to him and what was I trying to do to Mama Agnes?

  ‘You!’ he cried, making me jump. He had spotted me! ‘What are you doing here? What do you want? How did you get here?’

  I should have been asking what he was doing there – there was obviously no boy to be found. But this would have only antagonized him further. ‘I was worried about you,’ I said, helpfully. ‘You go out every night and … what is this? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I see you,’ he spat, suddenly vicious now. ‘Don’t think I don’t see what you are doing, trying to get yourself in with Aggie. Always Ma this, Ma that. Are you giving her the thing? Where is it?’

  I slipped my hand in my pocket to feel for the ubuvimbo; there, its plastic packet was cold against my fingers. ‘Of course not. I’ve only been a shoulder for the poor woman to cry on.’ He was jealous of my budding relationship with Mama Agnes, I knew, afraid she would begin to love me. ‘She’s a mess, all thanks to you. And look at you, mani! Sitting in the middle of the cemetery at night, busy crying.’ I made as if to turn around. ‘I think I will have to call Mama Agnes. Maybe she can talk some sense into you.’

  The response to the threat was immediate; he grabbed my hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  So, he was up to no good, a no good he didn’t want Mama Agnes to know about! A warmth spread across my chest. I appraised him, clutching my hand, looking up at me, his frightened eyes caught in the beam of his torch. ‘Tell me what you are doing here,’ I said.

  Sighing, he released my hand, his face withering, his eyes dropping to the ground. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’ve been coming here for weeks now. Surely, it’s not nothing.’

  His body seemed to deflate. He swung the beam towards the headstone. I was able to make out the engraving.

  ENNIS GRETA THORNTON

  Born 15/06/40

  Died 27/03/83

  MOTHER AND WIFE. DEARLY MISSED. LOVE YOU FOREVER. LOVING HUSBAND AND SON

  I was stunned. ‘But why are you here? Why have you come to Mrs Thornton’s grave?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  He sighed. ‘I just … I used to dream of building a life with Thandi, uyazi. I could see us, with our children, going on family outings to the Matopos. Coming home to her every day, it would have been enough for me.’ He cupped his head.

  I crouched beside him. I raised my hand to rub his back, but thought better of it. I was groping about for something useful to say. ‘But it’s not your fault, what happened.’ I swallowed hard, conscious of the Red Album under my pillow at home. ‘It’s that man, Black Jesus.’

  ‘Don’t you dare say that name!’ he snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, what I’m trying to say is, there isn’t anything you could have done.’

  ‘I should have fought the Red Berets, I should have—’

  ‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

  He slumped his shoulders. ‘I haven’t thought about Thandi in years. Aggie and I haven’t had such a bad life. She managed to give me back what I had lost, but now, it’s like it’s happening all over again and I’m wondering if I’m being punished for what I did.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  I was leaning forward now. But he only shook his head and continued sighing.

  ‘I’m a man, Zamani. You’re a man. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding in what I hoped exuded just the right manly temperament. ‘I’m a man. I know what it’s like. I understand what you’re going through,’ and then I added, ‘only as a man can.’

  ‘We fix things …’

  ‘Yes, we fix things.’

  ‘That’s what we men do.’

  ‘That’s what us men do.’

  ‘When something is broken, we fix it.’

  ‘We are fixers.’

  ‘I don’t know how to just sit and do nothing. But I can’t fix anything, I don’t know how to find my son, how to make everything all right again. I’ve tried to ask Mama Thornton’s spirit to forgive me, maybe that’s why I can’t find my son, because she hasn’t forgiven me! All I’ve been doing in my life is running, just running all the time. I wish I could go back and fix things.’

  I dared grip his shoulder. ‘But what did you do?’

  He shrugged it off. We stayed in silence for several moments. I had retrieved the packet of ubuvimbo from my trouser pocket. He caught the glint of the plastic packet in the moonlight, and sat up.

  ‘What’s that?’

  He knew what it was. He leaned forward, grabbing my finger before I had fully immersed it in the brown root powder and sucking on it urgently. His hands were trembling. More. He wanted more. I fed him just another finger-laced dose, warning him that too much was dangerous.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. I waited till I felt his body slacken next to mine, till I could hear the grinding of his teeth, till the drug had loosened his tongue. ‘So,’ I said, trying to sound casual. ‘What did you do, Father? Why have you come to Mrs Thornton’s grave?’ He didn’t even mind, when he was under the euphoria of the ubuvimbo, my calling him Father!

  He stared at the tombstone. ‘Mama Thornton,’ he said.

  He began to sob, loudly, openly.

  ‘Father—’

  ‘Help me,’ he said.

  ‘Father, what did you do?’

  He sniffled. ‘Give me more of the thing.’

  ‘Father, you have to tell me what’s going on or else how can I help—’

  ‘I ran, all right? I ran!’

  ‘You ran?’

  ‘I ran.’

  He ran.

  Through the thicket of a wilderness that seemed like it would never end because it felt like it was inside him. Wire breaking the skin on his arm; he tried to swat the pain away. He was in a familiar place that brought him to a childhood memory involving a giant watermelon; but he was panting and everything stayed just out of reach. Suddenly, he was before a shadow, which morphed into a house, with yellow streams of light coming from the windows. He banged on the door.

  ‘Farmer Thornton!’ he yelled. ‘Farmer Thornton!’

  Silence.

  ‘Farmer Thornton, please, I know you’re in there! It’s me, Abed!’

  There is Fire on the Mountain, Farmer Thornton! A big blaze melting my future away, sir, won’t you come and run run run

  He could hear the scuffle of feet.

  ‘Please, Farmer Thornton! You have to help me save my boy! You have to help save the hut! It’s … the children, they …?! Thandi! She’s, the baby, they … and … and … and …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘You have t
o leave.’

  He could hear the hiss of urgent, hushed voices, shuffling feet, a thud, a tussle.

  ‘Please, you have to help me!’

  Surely you can save my family, Farmer Thornton? Surely you can put out the Fire on the Mountain and and and

  ‘Wait, son!’ Farmer Thornton’s voice yelled through the door. ‘I’m coming!’

  ‘Go away!’ came the woman’s voice. Mrs Thornton. ‘If they find you here, they’ll kill us all. Go away!’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I said foetsek!’

  ‘Open up, please! My family—’

  Silence, except for the croaks of a man weeping.

  He turned and fled. Back to his homestead in the adjoining Tribal Trust Lands. He saw it from afar as he ran, first the smoke from the burning hut, rising to the sky, and then the flames, now dying. The hut was a roofless, gaping ruin, the walls half-standing. His eyes fell on Thandi sprawled in the dirt, her abdomen now a black mass of flies. He let out a howl. A stray dog was sniffing the small body of his unborn child.

  ‘Fuseki! Get away from there, mani, fuseki!’

  He picked up a stone and threw it at the dog, which scampered off but did not run away altogether.

  He fell to his knees between them, Thandi and his baby. Put his arm around her, upsetting the flies, which swirled in a buzzing black murmuration. Wrapped a hand around his baby, careful not to press too hard, shuddering at the cold, mushy feel of it. He shut his eyes. He touched them. Felt them. Remembered them. He hummed the folksongs of his childhood. He wailed.

  He didn’t know for how long he stayed there, prostrated between them. Baying. Humming. He was losing his mind. He wanted to die.

  It was when the shadows of the vultures circling in the sky above flickered over him that he finally got up. He picked up the foetus; it was covered in ants. He brushed them off. Its delicate, half-formed flesh was now purple. It no longer looked like a foetus, like a baby, like anything. But it was his baby. It was his. He said this over and over as he placed it on top of Thandi. As he tried to put her arms around it. It was his. They were his. His family. What was happening?

  He carried them to the front of the homestead. There he lay them down, beneath the mopane tree. He removed his shirt and spread it over them. Then he turned and began to dig a grave, in the shadiest part of the tree, where his Baba used to love to sit. He had meant it to be a relatively shallow grave; but he found he couldn’t stop digging. He worked steadily, through the rest of the afternoon into the early evening, until the grave had almost swallowed him. Then, he lifted himself out of the hole. Trudged to the now smouldering hut. He moved through the rubble slowly, looking for any sign of recognition, anything; but there was nothing left except charred little skeletons and dismantled bones. Which one was his Bukhosi? He felt he would know when he came across his bones. He threaded his way through the rubble, and then again, and again, waiting for a sign. And then, finally, he gathered all the bones and little skeletons he could find, gathered them all in his arms and carried them back to the grave.

  The farmer had refused to help him save his family. How could the old man and his swine-wife refuse to help him?

  He lay Thandi and his child beside the little bones and the charred skeletons in the mouth of the grave. He lifted the shirt and gazed at them. My Thandi. He couldn’t bear to look at her face. Her features were contracted as they had been when the scythe sliced into her. He shifted the baby in the crook of her arm.

  He went to work, flinging shovelfuls of soil into the grave, swinging his arms steadily, without pause, until he was drenched. His heart was the loudest thing he could hear. He focused on it; it kept his mind from fleeing.

  He did not stop or take a rest, not until he had covered the grave. Then, he climbed on top of the mound, and lay down, hugging himself, though he did not go to sleep; he stared at the stars and the smouldering hut and thought of that Farmer Thornton and how he had refused to help him.

  The sun was angled right above his head when he slinked back into the Thornton Farm the following day, staggering beneath the oppressive weight of the heat and the buzz of green-bomber flies around his stiff and bloodied clothes. The farmhouse was as quiet as death; he couldn’t hear voices coming from anywhere, not inside the house, not in the yard. Farmer Thornton’s truck was not in the driveway, and those of the farmhands who hadn’t already fled the massacres, he knew, were probably out in the fields. He would make himself at home in the house, then. Eat whatever there was to eat, take what there was to take, break what he couldn’t; teach that farmer a proper lesson. He broke a window at the back, near the toolshed, and scuttled in, oblivious to the jagged glass slicing at his skin.

  He found Mrs Thornton in a floral dress and a Farrah Fawcett flip, angled over an ironing board in the kitchen. A rotating fan was whrr-whhring in the corner. The grainy tones of a BBC presenter blasted from a car radio on a shelf above the sink, next to a bottle of pickled mangoes. A tangle of wires twirled from the radio and into the car battery beside it.

  He hit Mrs Thornton across the head with the stove iron – blacker than Black Jesus, with a rusty copper handle – and watched as she crumpled to the floor. Her forehead blistered with an uncivilized bruise. He settled down to wait for the farmer, and decided to help himself to the tray of Beef Wellington steaming atop the coal oven. He wolfed all of it down, found he was still hungry, and swallowed a jug of milk sitting on the windowsill. He gagged when a frog slushed into his mouth along with the last gulp of milk, no doubt dropped into the jug by Mrs Thornton to keep the milk from spoiling.

  He chomped one of the frog’s legs off as he spat it out. It flapped clumsily in a puddle of milk, and gave up after a while, its abdomen ballooning and collapsing in irregular beats.

  He settled down next to the unconscious Mrs Thornton, watched the wheezing frog and waited.

  As the minutes ticked and the hours tocked in that old Thornton Farmhouse with its floors that creaked as though under the weight of phantoms, rage gave way to retribution; what better way to punish a man than to take away the thing that he loved the most?

  She had tanned freckled skin, Mrs Thornton. Delicate, with a growing red gash where he’d hit her with the stove iron. His hand hovered above her head, and then plunged into her thicket of fine, reddish hair. She had such thin lips. Faintly red. Or pink. What did her lips taste like?

  He placed his palm on her breast. It was soft. It fitted easily in his hand. He could feel the beat of her heart underneath. He moved his palm further up and cupped her delicate throat. She had a mole just beneath her chin. He rubbed it playfully. He angled himself above her. Such a thin nose. A forehead free of worry. Brown dots from the savannah sun on her cheeks. A sharp jaw. Such angular features. He traced her face with his fingers. Patted her Farrah Fawcett flip.

  Swallowed a sickly-sweet lump back down his throat.

  He lifted her skirts, peeling back the pleats and then the skirt’s petticoat and then yet another layer of petticoat beneath, and bunched them around her waist. Caressed her dimpled, doughy thighs. Spread her legs, and pulled her panties, moist where they hugged her, to the side. Sucked his breath at the sight of the orange, glistening tufts of pubic hair. He was already swollen as he unbuttoned his overalls. He thrust into her. The violence seemed to jolt her awake. He watched intently as her eyes popped open, the shock blistering when she looked up to find him heaving atop her. Deeper he thrust, clamping her thin lips with his palm; deeper he dug, but there was no solace to be excavated. Only shame. He wouldn’t let shame win. He looked up. There was a chequered kitchen towel hanging by the stove. He reached out, gyrating still, and grabbed it with one hand. Thrust deeper and faster. He was wheezing as he wrung the towel taut around shame’s ivory throat.

  How delicate was its skin! How easily it bruised. How fragile, like a china doll.

  She died as he climaxed, her eyes untamed like the savannah.

  Panting, he got up.

  He saw the boy standin
g by the kitchen door, in a pair of muddy shorts, a beach ball pressed to his chest. He was staring right at him, no more than six or seven, his flaxen hair so much like Farmer Thornton’s, his face a piece of streaked porcelain.

  He was about his Bukhosi’s age.

  He hesitated.

  Then he turned and fled, his limp, wet penis slapping against his thighs as he ran.

  The Outing

  I have been thinking about my surrogate grandpapa’s blog post, the one that went viral, about how he found his Ennis lying on the floor one day in the ’80s, during the time of the Gukurahundi Genocide, having been raped and strangled by the dissidents. O surrogate grandpapa! How can you ever forget that day when you fell to your knees next to your Ennis’s body and buried your face in her prolific hair blazing scarlet in the late afternoon sun? Even me, I cannot forget it! I cannot get my surrogate father’s confessions out of my mind!

  He didn’t know for how long he knelt, Farmer Thornton, my surrogate grandpapa, cradling his Ennis, weeping, whispering I’m sorry I love you. On the shelf above the sink, the car radio, with its wires entangled like an electric hazard, was spitting static. The milk jug, which she’d placed on the windowsill that morning, now lay on its side on the floor. The frog was burping next to it, having splattered itself across a tile with its legs stretched out on either side. One of its legs was missing. He caught sight of it on the other side of the jug, near the stove, overrun by a regiment of ants. It was only when he straightened up from her body that he noticed that her legs were spreadeagled, that her chartreuse taffeta skirt was bunched up around her waist, that her cream cotton panties were torn, and that the hairs of her pubis, glaring apricot in the sun, were caked with a white discharge. He clamped his hand over his mouth.

  ‘Papa.’

  He whipped around, to find Sonny Boy seated by the door stoep, his face streaked, his bare chest muddy, a beach ball lolling between his feet. How long had he been seated there? How much had he seen?

  ‘Come, my boy.’

  They buried her in the north-west corner of the farm, where the pumpkin patch ended, next to the remains of my surrogate great-grandpapa, Captain William Thornton Junior, and also the body of my surrogate great-great-grandpapa, William Thornton Senior, and the memorial for the first Sonny Boy. Later, when the War Veterans came, in that millennial year 2000, to take his farm away from him, my surrogate grandpa was forced to exhume all of them, his grandpapa and his papa and his first Sonny Boy and his Ennis, and move them to Athlone Cemetery in Bulawayo.