I imagine my surrogate father pushed back when his mother tried to tell him that the farmer was his father. I can see them in the lounge, him and Farmer Thornton, my surrogate grandpa. I can hear the War Veterans and self-proclaimed War Veterans already running through the arteries of the house, chasing down the house staff, staking claims to rooms, claiming valuables. But this confrontation would have happened alone. My surrogate grandpa seated in the gloom, on a deep, padded chair in the corner by the unlit fireplace, surrounded by his memorabilia, photos of his Sonny Boy First Generation standing proud and tall next to the Honourable Prime Minister of former Rhodesia, Ian Smith, in the uniform of Deputy Commander of the Independent Company Rhodesia Regiment, showing all of his teeth to the camera. On his lap is one of my surrogate grandma’s Kango cups. My surrogate father sees the Kango cup, squints at its chipped, yellow enamel body, and recognizes it as belonging to his mother. He starts, at the sight of the farmer with his mother’s Kango, the farmer he last saw some two decades ago, when he was here last and did what he did and vowed never to come back. Would this be a moment of compunction? Would he look involuntarily out the window, his stomach lurching at the memory of what he did to Mrs Thornton in this very house? Would he be pulled towards his Baba’s homestead, desire to see how the mopane tree where he had buried my inamorata and the charred bones and his baby was doing? Would this moment, with the Kango on the farmer’s lap, the sound of his mama’s footsteps hurrying down the stairs leading into the lounge, the thud-thud of her feet calling him back to his childhood, the farmer thrashing his brother meanwhile giving him a wedge of watermelon, knowing it’s his mother even before he turns around; would this be the moment of deepest regret? Asking himself why he had come back? Unwilling to face hi-story. Unable. Having run for so long from it all. For he’s a man who has always run, my surrogate father, that’s the one constant in his past; that’s what he knows how to do best.
My surrogate grandpa raises his eyes, their once vivacious emerald now filmy and moist. They settle on my surrogate father. He parts his old-man lips to reveal a loose set of dentures.
‘My son,’ he croaks.
My surrogate father jumps, as though he’s just heard a shot fired.
‘My son!’ he repeats, his voice stronger this time.
Winces as though he’s been shot.
‘My son!’ comes the answering voice of his mother, stepping into the lounge as if it were her house.
Watching her come down the stairs as though she were the madam of the house, a madam and not a mistress, would have made my surrogate father nauseous. He would have finally admitted to himself, then, what he had always known. He would have acknowledged, perhaps for the first time, his teardrop nostrils replicated on the farmer’s face, his second Bukhosi’s emerald eyes swimming in that watery film. I can imagine the anguish he felt; I too have lived through the dread of the glint of recognition. Of having to stare into a face and be faced with the truth of your own face.
‘Mama!’ he says, pushing her away as she tries to embrace him. ‘Ma? What is this, what is going on, what is happening?’
‘You’ve always known,’ she says, looking at him in a way that makes him want to bury his head in the soil. ‘You knew. Your yellow skin—’
‘I got it from my Indian great-great-great-great-grandma who had white blood …’
‘My son!’ croaks my surrogate grandpa.
‘I’m not your boy, you hear, this is not Rhodesia any more, we’re in Zimbabwe now, this is Zimbabwe!’
‘… my son …’
‘You crazy old fool! I’m not—’
‘He’s your blood, my son.’
After Mama Agnes had left, switching the light out after her, I ducked under the covers of Bukhosi’s bed and went online on my Nokia to reread a post I’ve brushed over before on the farmer’s blog, about ‘a new flame’ he rediscovered after the war, ‘the love that dared not speak its name finally being able to speak proudly in this new Zimbabwe’, his ‘grief at the loss of his Ennis soothed by the gain of this other’. I hadn’t paid much attention to it then, assuming he had fallen in love with some other white woman after Mrs Thornton’s brutal murder. But now, having heard that my surrogate grandma had moved in with the farmer … !
I wish I had the juicy details of that amorous affair. I have only these oblique references on the farmer’s blog. I imagine they met at a spot that had not been named but had been arrived at through a tacit understanding, as is the way of rural encounters. Would it have been the same spot where they used to meet all those years ago while my surrogate-surrogate grandfather was away in the Second World War fighting for King George VI? The perfect place to rekindle old memories! My surrogate grandma wouldn’t have looked the farmer in the eye, no, that was not how rural women behaved. She would have angled her gaze deliberately away from his, perhaps somewhere just above his head, enough to keep track of his movements without having to look him straight in the eye. Was he taken by her attire? She wouldn’t have worn the usual rural clothes to meet up with a man she wished to impress, no, none of those long, shapeless skirts that flow all the way down to the ankles, with nothing exciting to show off, neither shapely behind nor curvaceous hip. She would have met up with him in something that flattered her figure, like a knee-length, African print dress, even taking care to oil her hair and tie it back, instead of wearing a doek, which wouldn’t at all have been becoming. I imagine her Vaselined face glistening like a mature gingerbread baked to perfection, and as my surrogate grandpa beheld her he silently asked his Ennis to forgive him.
She would have needed some convincing before finally accompanying him to his farm. Rural women aren’t forward like these town ones whom you can proposition and lay with on the same day without even knowing their names. No, she would have played it coy, protesting even as she finally climbed into his truck.
And what about my surrogate grandpa? He would have eventually invited her to move in with him. But she wouldn’t have done it immediately, no, even though the land around her had been watered by the blood of her husband; mulched by the bones of her grandchild. She would have moved out of Baba’s homestead gradually, bit by bit, first taking this and then that, leaving a dress at the farm, and then maybe a cup, some plates, and before long, a whole suitcase. This would have pleased my surrogate grandpa, to have his amour living with him, to be able to live with her freely in a new Zimbabwe, although I’m sure village gobs gabbed, as village gobs are wont to do. And then, perhaps, once in a while, he would visit Mrs Thornton and his first Sonny Boy and his forebears at the bottom of his fields and prattle on about the days of yesteryear, when this country was still theirs. And afterwards, he’d sit with my surrogate grandma in his lounge in the dark enjoying her company and they would talk about their future in this new country that now belonged to her and her people, that perhaps belonged to him too, that, perhaps, could belong to them both.
Farmer Thornton, though he mentions neither my surrogate father nor his mother by name, writes bitterly, on his blog, about being kicked off his land in his beloved Zimbabwe. He professes, at the same time, to have loved Rhodesia. To have loved what it stood for. At least then they had had a place they could call home, he writes. Before the munts came and destroyed everything they had worked so hard to build! They just woke up one day in 1980 and it was all gone. It didn’t go to the marauding veterans who evicted them that grim day in 2000, oh no, but to a fat-cat minister who added the farm to his personal collection of three others. Three! And they were the ones accused of greed? They weren’t allowed to cry, weren’t allowed to grieve for their home, to at least say goodbye. Go back to Britain, they said! What did he have in Britain? Living now as he was in a council flat in Yorkshire with his Sonny Boy, who was reduced to working the till at Marks & Spencer? He was not British! Everything he had was back in his beloved Zimbabwe! Everything, his life, his hard work; the munts had stolen everything from him! (O surrogate grandpapa! How I wish you would stop calling us munts!
You did, after all, fall in love with one of us!)
The Reverend Pastor
It has been seven dreadful days, during which I had to record events by hand in an A4 exercise book, in my ugly handwriting that brings back terrifying memories of my grade one teacher, Mrs Moyo, who used to rap me on my knuckles with a ruler whenever I didn’t shape the letters of the alphabet correctly or, worse, got my English spelling wrong, yelling all the while that I was a savage, did I want to be associated with the savages, heh, who couldn’t write properly? Was I a human being or was I a savage? Human being, I would answer timidly, my voice shaking, to which she would say no, I was a savage, because look at the nonsense I was writing! I have been reduced to such crudities, this scribbling by hand, having to be insulted by my own handwriting, without the delight of beholding my neat Times New Roman 12-point font on the sleek screen of my Mac, the most pleasing evidence of my progress in the world, far away from the triggering memories of my grade one class. All of this because that Reverend Nobody forcibly took away my laptop seven days ago and gave it to his IT guys.
I have got my laptop back, thankfully, and now I can continue, with the help of my handwritten notes, recording my chronicles and inscribing everything I have missed. But I shouldn’t skip the order of things; I shall relate events as they happened, as I have scribbled them these past six days in my exercise book.
It all started the morning after my assault by the Holy Ghost. I woke up quite auspiciously to a bright Tuesday sun shining all over my face, my Mama A leaning over me, swinging open the window to let in some air.
‘Each time I come in here, it’s just,’ she said. ‘It’s like I’m going to see him, lying in bed as you are now…’ She sighed and tried to brighten up. ‘And how are you feeling this morning? Better?’
‘My head hurts,’ I lied.
‘Oh, you nanaza! Why don’t you lie down a little longer? Maybe I should call the Reverend Pastor to come and pray for you …’
‘No, no, no, I mean …’ I put on a smile. ‘I think I’ll be fine after a few more hours’ sleep.’
‘All right!’ (She did call the Reverend Pastor, though …) ‘Are you hungry, would you like something to eat?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I miss your scrambled eggs, Ma, the ones you cook with milk and margarine. That and toast.’
‘Bukhosi’s favourite!’
Yes, I knew.
‘Really, Ma?’ I said, laughing. ‘I didn’t know!’
She paused by the door, surveying the boy’s pile of dirty clothes beneath the posters of Beyoncé and Kanye West. Then she bent and picked up a lime-green sports shirt, ruffling the Nike tick on the left breast as she brought the shirt to her nose. She closed her eyes and inhaled. ‘He loved this shirt,’ she said. ‘He was always wearing it! Sometimes without even having it washed, can you imagine?’
‘Everything is going to be all right, Ma. He’s going to come back to us by Christmas. He just needs some time away from Father. You know how sons can be at a certain age.’
Later that morning, having had my fill of Mama Agnes’s fluffy scrambled eggs and perfectly toasted toast, I woke up reluctantly to go back to my pygmy room. As I left, I bent, picked up the lime sports shirt lying atop the pile of dirty clothes, scrunched it up and stuffed it into my trousers.
I had just stashed it among my own clothes when the Reverend Pastor arrived. Things started amicably enough. I came out to greet him, and Mama Agnes found us chatting outside my pygmy room, the Reverend Pastor talking me through a brochure from his church that explained how to answer the call of the Holy Ghost. I indulged him, and would have been happy to continue indulging him had he not started talking about Bukhosi. He began by asking, casually enough, whether the boy had finally called Aunt Nto. When Mama Agnes said he hadn’t, the Reverend Pastor turned to me, eyebrows raised, and then asked for the boy’s South African phone number, whipping out his BlackBerry, ready to punch the keys.
‘I don’t have it,’ I said weakly, already sensing what was to come.
The man looked up at me sharply. ‘What do you mean, you don’t have it?’
I tried to shrug like it was nothing. ‘We communicate through Facebook.’ And then, because he was still looking at me in a funny way, ‘It’s a young people’s thing, you wouldn’t understand.’
‘All right, give me his friends’ phone numbers, then.’
‘What?’
‘His friends. You told Mama Agnes Bukhosi is staying with friends in South Africa.’
‘He’s the one who told me he’s staying with friends,’ I said evenly.
‘OK. What’s their number, we can call them right now.’
‘I don’t have their number.’
By now, Mama Agnes had sort of moved away from me, and was standing quite still, beside the Reverend Pastor, looking from one to the other as we spoke.
The Reverend Pastor slapped his forehead. ‘OK, let me get this straight. You don’t have Bukhosi’s phone number, or any of the numbers of the friends he is staying with.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, my face beginning to break open in what I hoped was an encouraging smile, the kind that didn’t say, ‘Phew!’, but rather said, ‘Finally, you are catching on!’
‘OK, give me the address of where he’s staying, I’ll get someone to go and check on him.’
‘I don’t have an address,’ I muttered, my smile disappearing.
The man shook his head. ‘That’s it, give me your laptop.’
‘What?’
‘Something’s not right here. The boy hasn’t bothered to get in touch with Aunt Nto and the family is worried sick, his mother here can’t even sleep. Boys dzangu will have the address in no time, and we’ll be able to get someone to check on him.’
I turned away from the fly, to address Mama Agnes. ‘Do you want the boy to disappear again—’
‘Iwe, why don’t you want to hand over your laptop?’ he buzzed before she could answer. ‘We’re all on the same team here, finding the boy is top priority. I’m not interested in anything on your computer except locating the boy, whatever you have in there is safe. Now, hand it over, mhani, I have people waiting for me at church.’
‘I really don’t think—’
The man swatted me out of the way, like I was a fly, and barged into my lodgings. I stormed in after him, trying to block him from going through my things, yelling that his bullying tactics would scare the boy away, the boy was communicating to the family through me, the boy trusted me, the boy was all right, this was illegal, would he put my laptop down, put it down—
He pushed me to one side and stepped out of my pygmy room, one hand clutching my Mac. I followed him out, shouting still, but no longer daring to try and wrangle my machine from him, already sensing that it would be of no use. He was taller and bulkier than I and had already manhandled me without any problem. He spoke to me as though speaking to an irrational child, assuring me in soothing tones that I would have my laptop back by the end of the day. Then he placed his free hand on Mama Agnes’s shoulder, reassured her everything would be all right, he would locate Bukhosi in no time, and with that, turned and walked away. I watched him climb into his Mercedes Benz, at which point I began shouting at him to take my laptop – even though he had already taken it – he should take it, take it and let us see, take it!
When I spun around, practically in tears now, I found Mama Agnes gaping at me. I cannot describe the look on her face. I have never seen that look before, not even when she told me about my surrogate father’s most despicable acts. I knew, then, that if I didn’t get rid of this Reverend Nobody, and fast, my days with the Mlambos, my dreams of becoming their son, my whole project of self-reinvention and thus the felicitious future I was trying to shape for myself, away from the shackles of the past, would all come to a painful, disastrous, irreparable end.
As soon as he left, I logged onto Facebook via my Nokia and deleted all of the boy’s fake messages. Believing the problem solved, I concentrated on t
he bigger issue of how I would rid myself of our holy man. I consulted my Red Album, leafing through the photos, staring into those beguiling eyes. The longer I stared, the more an intense rage bubbled in me. But I was not a killer, no. I may have had fantasies of squishing the fly, but I doubted that when push came to shove, I would have the stomach for it. Killing the fly would only destroy my project of reinvention in another more subtle way; it would confirm to me the very thing I was trying most to avoid, that I was like Black Jesus, that I could not escape my patrilineage, and all the work I had so far done to fashion myself into somebody else, somebody new, somebody better that the Mlambos could love, that I could live with, would be nullified. I was not about to cut off my foot and give over my whole body to gangrene.
I needed an elegant solution.
I set about writing down, by hand, begrudgingly, what I knew about the Reverend Pastor, trying to remember if there was any crucial titbit about him I may have missed. I hadn’t paid him any mind the first time I met him. He hadn’t seemed important to our lives then. I should have paid attention! It was the Sunday after Bukhosi disappeared, when I accompanied Mama Agnes to the Blessed Anointings morning service, tacking up missing posters of the boy along the way.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?
BELOVED SON MISSING.
We tacked him onto street photos, around the City Council bins, on the walls of the Chronicle offices, on top of the life-size cutout of the commie-thwacking Rambo displayed outside the Vine Cinema, and on the windows of the Columbia Night Club, glinting at us in all its pure-liberal strobe-lit glory. We tacked him on the walls of the Buscod Supermarket, where I paused to savour the aroma of blooma bread coming from inside. My tummy began to groan. Blooma bread is the most tasteless tasting bread I have ever tasted, with no yeast no sugar no cooking oil no butter nothing, and sometimes only a little salt, but at that moment, I would have sold my soul to the devil for just one bite. But alas, the devil was off that day, he had gone to church to sing Hallelujah with the other angels. My eyes followed the rod of sunlight slithering through the restless crowd blocking the entrance of the supermarket. I looked up and saw Mama Agnes glaring at me, and quickly turned and followed her into the Marion Court Building next door. Off we clattered, up the steps, to Blessed Anointings on the second floor.
House of Stone Page 27