House of Stone

by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

  Company finally came this afternoon, when MaNdlovu brought some Formica chairs from next door, to help with the seating, for the house gets full every evening, these days, thanks to our superstar, the Reverend Pastor. He keeps asking about Bukhosi, wanting to read every Facebook message, pestering me about when the boy is coming back, saying his IT guys are still on standby, ready to help. It seems each time I make progress with Mama Agnes, calming her with a message from the boy, the man undoes my work with his incessant meddling, making her anxious all over again.

  What is it about him? What is it about him that makes people want to get close to him, to lap up every word coming from his mouth? I remember Mama Agnes telling me proudly, as though this was somehow her own accomplishment, that Blessed Anointings gets so full, attracting new sheep all the time, that they have to hold three services on Sunday and lunchtime prayers every weekday. I can almost admire the man’s powers. He seems impenetrable, standing up high on the pedestal his congregants have put him on, preaching down to the rest of us people, nje. But he’s only human, like all of us; I bet if you removed that haloed suit of his and took away his title and his glittering King James bible, he would become disappointingly ordinary. That’s why he’s always dressed to the nines, as though he’s on camera. I mustn’t get caught up in his costume, in the aura he tries to hide behind. He’s not God, after all. He’s just a man, and so he must have his weaknesses, like the rest of us.

  He arrives for the evening prayers with a flourish, his Ladies of the Church in train, having brought their yummy-smelling Tupperware bowls and skaftins, overbrimming with all the things that can’t be found on the supermarket shelves these days. They look enterprising, these women, even as they proclaim, ‘God is good!’ in answer to questions from the likes of MaNdlovu about where they got the rice or the mealie-meal or the pork ribs or the chicken or the peanut butter. They are gleaming, plump and round and healthy despite the times. I imagine some of them are cross-border traders, going weekly to neighbouring South Africa and Botswana to shop for groceries, coming back here to sell it at exorbitant prices in their secret little spaza shops in their backyards, or even from their car boots – I’ve seen such enterprises lined up along Lobengula Street, one person standing by the half-open boot hissing their wares to passers-by, the other behind the wheel, on the ready in case the police show up.

  Mama Agnes greets the Reverend Pastor, curtseying and rubbing her hands demurely, before helping the Ladies of the Church set up their food on the cobalt table, which has been moved out into the front yard, where my surrogate father’s car would be were he present. All over the house, and spilling out onto the strip of yard outside, friends, neighbours and relatives have come to show solidarity with the family. They quickly become the Reverend Pastor’s captive audience. His high notes are hitting their peak on this day, Monday 26 November, almost two months since our Bukhosi disappeared. He stands in front of the TV, modulating his preaching voice, which has given the Mlambo home the disco flavour of his Blessed Anointings church, looking like God himself in that white Canali suit. I’m trying not to listen, I don’t want to give the man my time like that, no. It’s Bhalagwe I can’t get out of my mind.

  I can see them huddled together, Mama Agnes and my mama, in one of the round asbestos holding sheds at Bhalagwe. I can feel their fright. They are sitting side by side. There’s hardly any space to move, no way of stretching their legs. Everyone is quiet, save for the incessant sniffles, and the occasional wail, which begins as a low, long moan, rising like the crest of a wave, before it comes crashing down into silence again.

  Today, the Reverend Pastor’s sermon is about the Israelites and their time in Egypt. I’m trying hard not to listen, but dammit I can hear every word, so commanding is his voice, booming over us like an indictment. He swings the King James high above his head, his voice expanding into a hululu, though I’m not sure if this is meant to be a lamentation or a rejoicing.

  ‘And therefore, the Egyptians did set over the Israelites taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens …’

  ‘Hallelujah!’ screams the captive audience.

  Hallelujah, how they were afflicted, Mama Agnes and my mama, sitting side by side in that small space, my mamas past and future, bearing the torment of that place with the fortitude of dignified women; but no, no dignity for two teenage girls with only hillocks for breasts; only wide-eyed fear.

  ‘And the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigour …’

  ‘Hameni!’

  With rigour they cried, my mama and Mama Agnes, in that 12 × 6 asbestos holding shed; first, their feet touched, toes curling towards one another for comfort, and then a brush of the arms, a clasp of the hands; then sniffling, out of sync, wailing in unison.

  ‘They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour …’

  With rigour they made Mama Agnes dig grave after grave, day after day; with rigour my mama lay beneath Black Jesus, and also my many fathers the Men in the Red Berets; with rigour she screamed and squirmed and kicked; with rigour they thrust, with rigour they laughed. There was rigour everywhere, in every light breeze, in every grain of sand, in every blade of grass; rigour in the Bhalagwe hills walling in the concentration camp from the south; rigour in the Zamanyone hill demarcating the territory along the western edge; rigour in the crashing waters of the Antelope Dam in the east. With rigour Bhalagwe breathed, with rigour it pulsed.

  ‘… but the people thrived, and waxed very mighty …’

  ‘Praise Jesusi!’

  And he made the detainees sing praises to his name, Black Jesus; they broke out in song, in worship they thrust; into the dark pits of Antelope Mine they were cast.

  ‘And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son; and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months …’

  And there I was conceived, I, the bastard seed of the fatherland! But no, I reject all such association, I am fully repented, with the motherland I staunchly stand! Rather I be the casualty offspring of nationhood! Yes, I see her clearly in my vision, Mama Agnes. She nursed my mama through her pregnancy, gave her her measly portions of mealie-meal, which was fed to the detainees every second day, allotted her her daily half-a-cup ration of water. She was my second mama, or else I would never have seen the light of day in that Gehenna.

  ‘And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink …’

  ‘Jehovah Jireh!’

  Yes, it was a Jehovah Jireh miracle that stuffed me into my uncle’s backpack. I see her, Mama Agnes, angled between my mama’s legs, easing me out into the world, on that fated day in ’83. Oh, but why is it so dark? It’s a dark world into which I come; I’m greeted by a night sky in which the moon has absconded its duties. They’re behind the asbestos holding shed, Mama Agnes and my mama. Oo oO hoots an owl from a mopane tree nearby, swivelling its big head. Hearing this signal, my Uncle Fani slithers out of the bushes, backpack in hand. Mama Agnes cuts the umbilical cord, and hands me over to my uncle. Oo oO hoots the owl; ngwaa ngwaa wails baby Zamani.

  Sshh! hisses my uncle, sshh sshh sshh!

  But I don’t sshh; it’s as though I’m summoning the noose, summoning my many fathers to come and find me, and hand me over to the fate they intend for me, down the pits of Antelope Mine, where all newborn babies are thrown.

  Let me see him, says my mama, let me hold him.

  I can feel her grip; she holds me, raises me to her face. Her lips are moist on my forehead. See how I quieten down, see, I’m suddenly still. But he must go, my Uncle Fani; my many fathers are coming. Gently, he pries me from my mama’s arms and places me inside his backpack. Off he slinks into the night.

  ‘�
�� And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called him Moses … And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens …’

  But I’ve failed to live up to this lore, haven’t I failed? For he confessed on his deathbed, Uncle Fani, and me, what did I do? I fled the burning bush! Fled like a namby-pamby.

  She dieth behind that asbestos shed, mama, draweth her last breath on Mama Agnes’s lap. And when the Egyptians, those Men in the Red Berets, findeth them, they doth slappeth Mama Agnes and spake, why have ye done this thing, and saved the man-child alive?

  And she replieth, Mama Agnes, because the mother was lively, and delivered the man-child ere I come in unto her.

  And thus I was saved. And thus my mama died.

  Dammit, a dread creeps up on me, I can feel it. It enshrouds me, oh stop, please stop, but it won’t stop, the Holy Ghost, it pounces on me, and all at once I’m spasming under its spell. I’m falling, falling, falling – it’s the longest fall of my life. I come crashing down, and the floor comes crashing up; we meet each other halfway. The ground punches me in the back of my head. The world becomes a blur.

  ‘Hallelujah!’ cries the Reverend Pastor.

  ‘Hallelujah!’

  The Invasion

  After my assault by the Holy Ghost, the Reverend Pastor, asking if I was saved, proclaimed it was a sign that the Spirit was beckoning me to his church. My poor heart was trying to take flight in my chest, and my toes were tingling … was this what transcendence felt like? Was this my overcoming? Had I finally conquered that Gehenna? Mama Agnes clucked over me, getting me a glass of water, bringing me a plate of the scrumptious food brought by the Ladies of the Church, insisting on feeding me, which I enjoyed thoroughly. And though I was feeling better by this time, I pretended to faint all over again, following which she insisted that I spend the night in Bukhosi’s room. She and the Reverend Pastor helped me onto my feet. I could walk perfectly well by myself, but I leaned heavily on the Reverend Pastor who, loving as he does to play the role of Father, rose to the occasion, calling me ‘son’ as he gripped me firmly around my waist, to which Mama Agnes said, ‘Are you all right, mfanami?’ (Did I enjoy having the man call me ‘son’? I don’t know. I felt a twinge of pleasure, that’s for sure. But it’s nothing compared to the thrill I have felt when my surrogate father has called me son.)

  I must thank the Reverend Pastor for unwittingly bringing me and Mama Agnes closer together, for, instead of driving him home again like she did the other day – he hadn’t brought his car – she elected instead to stay with me. The Reverend Pastor had to ask for a lift from one of the Ladies of the Church. Even better, when my surrogate father finally crawled home, Mama Agnes didn’t hide me from him! He paused by the boy’s bedroom door upon arrival, appraising me through slit-eyes. My Mama A told him in firm tones that I had been overcome by the Holy Ghost and, quite unused to its power, had fallen sick, and she was not about to leave me to die in my pygmy room. I played my part well, blinking weakly at my surrogate father, even going so far as to mumble the gibberish I have heard my Mama Agnes spout whenever she’s speaking the language of the Holy Ghost, what she calls ‘speaking in tongues’. My surrogate father watched me coldly. And then, he opened his mouth and began to laugh, harder and harder until he was bent double, barely able to breathe. Mama Agnes and I both reached for one another’s hands at the same time. ‘He’s crazy,’ she whispered. He lurched down the passage, still howling with laughter as we heard the front door squeak open and then slam shut, gone again into the night.

  I told her I feared for Bukhosi’s safety if – when – he came back home, and Mama Agnes, looking worried, admitted she had seen my surrogate father like that only once before. She told me about an incident that happened in November 2000, when my surrogate father came home in a jittery mood and again unleashed his belt on her. It seemed to come out of nowhere, she said, in the midst of a relatively tranquil family life. ‘It turned out,’ she said with a world-weary sigh, ‘that it was just after he finally found out that the white farmer was his father.’

  My whole body tensed – I was being let into family secrets! Of course, I had already guessed my surrogate father’s patrilineage from his stories, but to hear it confirmed by my own dear Mama Agnes!

  ‘Of course, everyone already knew,’ Mama Agnes continued. ‘We all knew that white farmer was his father. Everybody in the family knows, his whole village knows, I myself was told by his own mother. Heh! And can he pretend not to have known? Mccm. He knew! Deep down, he always knew. Just look at his yellow skin! He was just in denial, nje, coming here to perform for me, beating me, am I the one who said that white man should be his father?’

  ‘How did he find out?’ I asked, deflated to learn that I was probably the last to know this particular family secret. ‘How did he find out that Farmer Thornton was his father?’

  Here she curled her lower lip. ‘He had got wind that the War Veterans were going to invade the white man’s farm, and he decided he wanted it for himself. Baba’s family had lived on part of the farm, before the whites came to this part of the world and kicked them off the land. So, he felt it was rightfully his, and he wanted to stake his claim before anyone else did.’ She began to cackle, Mama Agnes. I had never seen her this way. ‘Had he faced the truth earlier, he would have known that he had zero right to that farm. Helping the War Veterans kick his own father off the farm and then trying to claim it as his own! Ha.’

  Black Jesus’s continued rise to prominence must have stoked my surrogate father’s anger and led him to answer the call to invade that Thornton Farm. This call followed years of disappeared dreams and disappeared monies – for like any country overbrimming with the abundance of platinum and diamonds and such like, we were vulnerable to plunder from all and sundry (especially our own, like our Minister of Mines the Hon. Mvelaphi Mpofu, once upon a time The Rebel in a Césaire play in a long-ago life). And in the early 2000s, with the birth of a new opposition party, with a robust urban following that threatened to topple from power our fossilized leaders, our government, under the one true leading party of the nation, began to crack down on our TV viewing and the whole of our cultural life. Gone from our screens was the fatty diet of American movies and TV shows that every urban kid gorged on! No more Friday night sitcoms! No more Oprah for poor Mama Agnes! They were all banished from our screens, the heroes and superheroes, stars and superstars, everything that our Minister of Propaganda deemed the worldwide domination and glorification of Western egotism.

  Next, following an alarming defeat in the Constitutional Referendum that had been put to a vote to The People, said defeat of the ruling party which bolstered the opposition, our government declared a War on Terror, with us zombie, TV-watching urbanites as the recognized threats, and called upon the ruralites to action-pack the white-owned farms and take back the land By Any Means Necessary.

  I can imagine my surrogate father eagerly answering this call after learning that the Thornton Farm was one of the farms the War Veterans intended to take back By Any Means Necessary. I can see how he would want to stake his claim, especially since deep down he knew that Farmer Thornton was his father. The state of things in our country, especially after 2000, when our government started controlling every facet of our lives, including what part of our history to remember and what part to forget, is proof that it’s not what’s true that matters, but what you can make true. He, Abednego, was only living out this reality. Had he managed to lay claim to the farm in Baba’s name, this, then, would have become his official history, this and not his Thornton patrilineage; he would have had concrete proof that he was Baba’s son, via the act of publicly reclaiming Baba’s ancestral land, the kind of proof that could be officialized and concretized through inscription, through official lease deeds and other such documentation.

  My surrogate father, like me, was only trying to reinvent himself.

&n
bsp; I can picture him lurching into the Thornton Farm at the back of one of those government-sponsored War Veterans trucks, catching his breath as the farm comes into view, set on the brae of the Dongamuzi Mountain, the bushveld scrambling up its incline, its igneous blades ruffled by a doting breeze, just like all those years ago he told me about when he first brought my Thandi to his village.

  There would have been a ZBC TV crew to film the whole thing. Who hasn’t seen those angry War Veterans and self-proclaimed War Veterans on TV ringed around the white farms? Who hasn’t seen them banging on the doors of the white farmhouses?

  ‘We are taking over this farm!’

  ‘Get out, you colonial imperialist!’

  ‘Get off our land!’

  ‘Get out or we will burn this whole place down!’

  ‘Get out or we will set fire to your crops!’

  ‘Get out or we will set fire to your house!’

  My surrogate father would have been shouting the loudest, because of course he had something to prove, to everyone but especially to himself.

  ‘But how did he find out that the farmer was his father?’ I asked Mama Agnes.

  ‘Was there anything to find out?’ she replied. ‘Eh. Apparently, he found his mother there, at the farm. He had helped to kick down the door, and found his own mother behind it. Yes, she was living with the white man. Her thing with him had been going on for years – over ten years, in fact. The story is that after the white man’s wife died – raped and murdered by some monster, poor thing – she began to take on with him. Heh! Imagine, the scandal of it! Busy over there in the big house! Me, I say good for her, she was moving up in the world and she didn’t care who said what. But you know, Abed says he didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, because he never went to his village, you know, he has never even taken me there, he refuses to go, so I don’t even know what he was doing there busy invading the white man’s farm. She’s the one who told him, when he tried to take the farm, that he was stealing from his own father. Heh! Where have you ever heard of such a thing?’