by JL Powers
Under Water. Copyright © 2019 by J.L. Powers. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Powers, J. L. (Jessica Lynn), 1974- author.
Title: Under water / by J.L. Powers.
Description: First edition. | El Paso, Texas : Cinco Puntos Press, [2019] |
Sequel to: This thing called the future. | Summary: After her beloved grandmother’s death, seventeen-year-old Khosi is left with an empty house, her younger sister, and her promise to finish school but violence in Imbali may take even that.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018027161| ISBN 978-1-947627-03-1 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-947627-04-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-947627-05-5 (e-book)
Subjects: | CYAC: Coming of age—Fiction. | Healers—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Zulu (African people)—Fiction. | Blacks—South Africa—Fiction. | South Africa—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.P883443 Un 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027161
Cover and book design by Antonio Castro H.
Cover photo by Izak de Vries. Capetown, South Africa.
For Dumisani Dube
brother and friend
1960-2017
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: THREE YEARS AGO
CHAPTER TWO: PROMISE
CHAPTER THREE: ACCUSATION
CHAPTER FOUR: LUCKY
CHAPTER FIVE: THE CLEANSING
CHAPTER SIX: BREAKING PROMISES
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY
CHAPTER EIGHT: AFRAID THINGS WILL CHANGE, AFRAID THEY’LL STAY THE SAME
CHAPTER NINE: MEDICINE OF A SORT
CHAPTER TEN: WAR
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WALKING THERE AND BACK AGAIN
CHAPTER TWELVE: A VOICE AS THIN AS THE SKY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE FIGHT
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: PUTTING ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: UNDER WATER
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: INTRUDER
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SIFISO
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THUNDERSTORM
CHAPTER NINETEEN: JESUS ON MY TONGUE
CHAPTER TWENTY: CHOOSING THE POWERLESS
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: DO NOT EAT THE HAIR LIKE LICE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: DELIGHT IN HIS VOICE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: NOT SO SECRET SECRET
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: MY GIRL
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SEPARATED FROM THE HERD
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE RECKONING
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: HAMBA
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: THE END OF EVERYTHING
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: I’LL GET HER OUT OF THIS, MAMA
CHAPTER THIRTY: THE LIZARD WAS WRONG
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: MY OWN THREAT
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MY OCEAN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHARACTERS
GLOSSARY
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
CHAPTER ONE
THREE YEARS AGO
I don’t know how or when the amadlozi choose someone—if you are destined from birth or if, at some point when you are growing, they notice something, they point to it, they say, There, there, right there, that one—she is meant for us. She will be our voice to the people.
Chosen.
Chosen means you don’t choose. Somebody else chooses for you. In this case, all the people who come before you. Your ancestors. Your mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, all the greats backing up for all of time to the beginning of earth. They will not give up until you answer. And your answer must be “yes” or you will go crazy.
Mina, I was chosen three years ago. Mama was dying of the disease of these days. A neighbor sent a witch to curse us. A man was stalking me. And through all of that, they came. They spoke. Hamba, they said. Hamba.
They spoke the same word over and over until I obeyed, until I started walking—not in any particular direction, just wherever they said to go. Here, there—a circuitous journey that finally led me right back to my home here in Imbali, the place of flowers.
They led me to the mountains. I scaled boulders, slipped on icy slopes, froze fingers. They led me deep inside a bowl of sandstone rock that looked as though only the Lord of the Skies could live there in its cold, barren beauty. I soaked in its silence until they led me out again.
They led me into the forest. I sat at the foot of a tree, for days, waiting. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for. But then the trees spoke, not with human voices but something deeper that I felt through the earth and the trunk and the leaves. They told me which plants could heal bronchitis, which could give the sick an appetite, which could cure depression and loneliness. I gathered winter herbs, crushed and dried them, and stored them in bags that hung from the belt slung around my waist.
And then they led me to the river. The Thukela.
It was swollen with spring rains—the waters choppy, angry. I sat on the edge, knowing I could not cross. I do not know how to swim, and what about the crocodiles? This is what I told Mkhulu, the ancestor who first called me, the one who spoke to me more than any other. I imagined myself flailing around. Sucked under. Water filling my lungs. Choking me. Perhaps a crocodile grabbing me with its powerful teeth and making a meal of me.
Step into the water, Mkhulu said.
I sat very still in disbelief.
Go into the water, he said.
I will drown, I said.
You will not drown.
Tiny drops of water flicked up from the swirling rapids and rained down on me. A giant rapid swooshed directly toward me and drenched me. I retreated.
It was almost as if, the longer I sat there, the angrier the water grew. And then it was swelling and growing, overflowing its banks, little rivulets reaching me where I stood.
Go into the water, he said.
I wasn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t prepared that this might be the way I die. That after burying Mama, after leaving Gogo and Zi behind for this journey, that I might be saying goodbye forever. That my crazy, rabid ancestors were actually out to kill me.
A snorting, shuffling sound from behind. Hot breath on my ankles. A crocodile lumbering toward the water. Toward me. Dear God, hopefully it isn’t hungry, I prayed. I hoped it wouldn’t follow me into the water—because that was where I was going, even if I didn’t want to.
The water was ice cold. Bumps sprang up all over my skin. The crocodile let loose a long, low growl.
I was in as deep as my waist, hesitating. You didn’t have to send a crocodile to push me in, Mkhulu.
It opened its mouth, snapped its teeth.
Or maybe you did.
I wanted to believe I wasn’t afraid of death. After all, I had seen my Mama cross the river and join the amadlozi on the other side—the ancestors, so numerous they were like a herd of black and white striped amadube crossing the plains. They welcomed her with joyous cries. My very bones were certain of this truth: that death is just the next thing after this thing.
But still…
Mkhulu, I said, as the crocodile nudged me deeper into the watery depths. I’m not ready to die.
CHAPTER TWO
PROMISE
My grandmother Gogo’s voice is in my head even before Zi throws the first handful of dirt on her grave. Don’t forget your promise, Khosi. Don’t forget.
Dust chokes my throat as I turn away. A speck of dirt flies into my eye and I rub until it’s raw. Tears drip down my cheek
s. Even the woman keening or the call and response of the others in the crowd, mourning the loss of my grandmother, can’t drown out her voice. The priest in his black robes stands in front of her grave, leading the people in prayer, and still, I hear her voice over the ancient words of the church, chanted by a hundred mourners.
You promised, Khosi. You promised. Don’t forget.
It’s true, before she died, I promised Gogo exactly two things. They seemed small at the time. If I’d known what it meant to make those promises, I would have kept my mouth shut. But I said yes. And now I can’t back out. The dead have access to me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They hound me with their commands. Do this. Do that. Go there. Fetch that. And Gogo’s dead now. So I have no escape. She will harass me until I do what I said I would do.
I take my sister Zi’s hand. She looks up at me, total trust reflected back in her eyes.
Zi’s nine. I’m only seventeen but I’m all she has left—Mama dead for three years and Gogo three days now. Baba has never been involved in our lives, even less so after Mama passed.
OK, Gogo. I’ll keep my promises. I’ll keep them, even if it kills me.
CHAPTER THREE
ACCUSATION
We make a procession from the cemetery to the house, walking up and down Imbali’s dirt roads. Winter is dry, the roads covered with a thick centimeter of reddish-brown earth. The morning haze has lifted, cold air gradually giving way to the heat of day.
Most of the neighborhood and all of my grandmother’s family are here, dressed in their funeral best. Mama’s sister’s family walks in front of us, Auntie Phumzile dressed in her Zionist church service finery—a white turban wound around her head, white blouse and green skirt, a maroon cape wrapped around her shoulders. My cousin Beauty, too, is dressed in an expensive new dress, and she walks with her head held high. She barely acknowledged me when she arrived. My mother’s brother is dressed in his finest suit and he carries Mkhulu’s walking stick, my grandfather’s staff that was passed down to the new patriarch of the Zulu clan when he died.
Zi and I are wearing simple, everyday clothes, like Gogo requested—white, her favorite color.
My neighbor MaDudu walks alongside us and clucks her tongue. “Didn’t you and Zi buy new clothes for your grandmother’s funeral?”
“We didn’t have the money,” I explain. “Anyway, Gogo chose these dresses for us to wear to her funeral. They were her favorites. She said she lived an ordinary life and she wanted her real life honored in that way.”
I remember her smile as she told me, “You arrive Mr. Big Shot but leave Mr. Nobody. I don’t need an expensive funeral, eh, Khosi?”
“Shame,” MaDudu says, agreeing with my decision, and nods her chin at Auntie Phumzile. “But that one, she will say you aren’t showing proper respect.”
Of course MaDudu is right. Auntie will say these things, but she will be wrong. This is how I offer respect to Gogo—by following her wishes. And by keeping my promises to her, even though, only seventy-two hours after her death, it seems impossible.
We turn the corner to our street and I stop for a moment, just to look at the people coming to mourn Gogo.
In the past week, our yard was transformed so that we could host the neighborhood—a neighborhood Gogo has lived in for some forty years. We erected a large tent where neighbor women have been preparing the funeral meal. Already, the neighborhood is queuing, a line of people stretching from the gate to the spaza shop two doors down. The scent of fried chicken, rice, phuthu, and cooked kale hits my nose long before I reach the yard.
It feels like a betrayal to Gogo to be hungry but it’s true, my stomach is growling. I need to eat now now. I have had just one or two slabs of phuthu with a little bit of amasi since she died, three days ago, a fact that Little Man has pointed out, worried that I’m going to collapse. “You need to eat, Khosi,” he urged me. “To keep your strength up for all you must face.”
But how could I eat, hearing all the rumors and accusations?
I grip Zi’s hand even tighter. I can’t forget Auntie’s face, her lips curling, her nose twitching in sudden sneezes as she demanded the right to go through Gogo’s things and take what she wanted. “I am her daughter, I should have her clothes,” she claimed. “It is tradition.”
As a sangoma, everybody believes that I revere and respect tradition more than anything else. But I must tell you, sometimes tradition cloaks thievery. Not that I cared about Gogo’s clothes, but I would have liked to keep the simple beaded jewelry and headdress, just to remember her.
Instead, I have the house to remember her by, which presents a different problem.
For now, though, all I must think about is making it through the funeral.
Zi and I stop first at the washing station to clean our hands before we enter the house after having visited the gravesite. Inside, family members are already feasting. I scan the queue for Little Man and his parents. To me, and to Gogo, Little Man is family but I understand that nobody else recognizes that—yet—so he must stay outside with the others. Maybe someday the rest of my family will understand that even if we are only 17, we have been together for three years, ever since Mama’s death. He is much more than a boyfriend.
Inside, there are no places for us to sit except the floor, so we take a corner and wait for one of the ladies to bring us plates of food. I suppose we better get used to sitting on the floor. Auntie also claimed the sofa in the living room and the table in the kitchen. I’m hoping my uncle will step in and tell her no. No, no, you cannot leave Khosi and Zi with nothing. This is their home too… that is what I hope he will say.
Auntie flounces over to the floral sofa she wants. She sits with a big plate of food balanced on her lap, glancing at me from time to time as she chews the meat off a bone.
“Mm mm, I’m just saying, why did my mother die so suddenly after she made a will and left the house to Khosi?” She is talking to Gogo’s niece from the Free State, who drove all night to get here for the funeral.
“Sho, is it?” The niece bites into a hunk of meat.
I put my plate of food down on the floor, stomach churning. What’s going to happen after all the food is eaten and the neighbors go home? What will Auntie say then? Or do?
“I’m sure Elizabeth’s daughter would never harm a soul,” the niece says. “I know Khosi is a sangoma but she doesn’t practice this thing of witchcraft, does she?”
“I never thought so, not while Mama was alive.” Juice drips down Auntie’s wrists as she mixes gravy with phuthu and scoops it into her mouth. “But you never know with sangomas, not these days. It is very suspicious that my mother died so soon after she wrote that will.”
“What what what, you really believe she is umthakathi?”
I can’t listen to this. “Come, Zi,” I say, and we stand and walk out of the house. As we pass, my aunt cackles under her breath, knowing she’s scored a point against me.
I slink outside, an unwanted dog in my own house. The crowd of people waiting to eat is as long as ever and the yard is already festering with trash and flies. This is going to be some clean up job… I only hope my family members, the vultures who have descended for food and a chance to take all of Gogo’s things, will stay long enough to help me clean up.
I wait in the yard, saying goodbye to neighbors and friends as they leave. “Hamba kahle,” I tell yet another neighbor, who looks satisfied by his big meal.
“Sala kahle,” he responds.
The priest who spoke at the funeral takes my hands gently in his. Droplets of sweat glisten in his short, wiry hair. He must be sweltering in those dark priest’s robes.
“Baba,” I greet him.
The fact that I am a sangoma lays between us, unspoken. I have never felt that I couldn’t be both Catholic and a sangoma, I have never felt there was a contest between God and the amadlozi, but I am not sure that he—or other priests—feel the same way. And it is true that God is silent and the amadlozi speak to me all the time.
Why would God choose to be quiet when I know he could speak? So perhaps there is some contest after all. I am not sure what to do with this split in my heart.
“Khosi,” he says. He lifts a hand and lays it on Zi’s head. “I trust that we will see you and Zi at mass on Sunday, like always. That you will be as faithful as your grandmother was all her life.”
“Yes, Baba.” I skirt his eyes to look at the sky.
Zi gives him a hug. He makes a rumbling noise in his throat, a little sound of love and affection, and perhaps some sorrow too.
“I’ll be praying for you,” he says.
“Hamba kahle,” I say, in return. I’m glad for his prayers. We need them more than ever.
After everyone is gone, Auntie sends her husband to borrow a friend’s bakkie so they can take Gogo’s sofa with them now now.
“It’s OK, Auntie Phumzi,” I say. “It is late. Come back tomorrow. The sofa will still be here. It is not going to disappear overnight.”
She laughs. “Oh, no, by then you will bewitch it. I must take it now, before you do something evil like you did to my mama.”
“I would never hurt Gogo,” I say. I look from Auntie to my cousin Beauty and then to my uncle Lungile. “Beauty?” My cousin and I have always been different, in many ways, but she and I are close in age and played together growing up. I would like to think she is an ally. “Uncle?”
The awkward moment stretches out like a pot of phuthu and amasi that must feed too many mouths.
“Let us just focus on the future,” Uncle says finally. He scratches his head, as though trying to distract us from what he is saying. “Let us leave this thing behind us.”
“What thing?” I ask. “This thing of Auntie accusing me of something I would never do? Do you really think I would hurt Gogo? Gogo, the only mother I had after my own mama died?”
“Nooooo,” Uncle says. “But you must listen to your auntie.”
It is nonsense, what he is saying. If I did not kill Gogo through witchcraft, but that is what she is saying, why must I listen to her? I can see I have lost my family through this.
“Take what you want.” I am angry now. It burbles up in my chest, the same anger I once felt towards Mama when I realized she stole money before she died. “I do not care about things. I have Gogo’s spirit with me, which is more than you will ever have. And I have the house, you cannot take that.”