by JL Powers
Somehow those words take Auntie from one thing to another, and in seconds, she is screaming. “We’ll get the house back, you little witch,” she yells. “You don’t deserve it! You killed her!”
“Phumzile!” Uncle Lungile shouts. “Quiet! You can’t say these things, Mama is just now buried… Please, let this thing rest.”
“Auntie,” I say, pleading with her. I try to catch her eye but she refuses to look at me. “We are family. We are blood. Please, let us just let this thing go away.”
But she won’t stop. She’s in my face, shouting. “It will never go away!”
Suddenly, I’m no longer afraid. None of the others can see Mkhulu or Gogo in the corner, but I can. They are shaking their heads—at her behavior, yes, but also at me, warning me to let this go, not to retaliate. So it’s true, I’m not afraid. But my calm seems to convince her more than ever that I am guilty. I reach out to touch her forearm, to soothe her.
She jerks her arm away and raises her hand to slap me. “Hheyi, wena, you think we don’t know what you have done? Hah!”
My cheek tingles from her slap. But the hurt feels good. Not like this thing of Gogo’s death, a sting that will never go away.
“What is it you think I have done?” I say.
She spits in my face. “You killed her! You killed her!”
Uncle Lungile grabs her by the arm and hauls her outside. She’s still shouting, and all the neighbors are gathering to watch. “Haibo! Go away or we will give you something to talk about,” Auntie yells at them.
They move further up the hill but none of them stop watching. It is too good, this scene of family disarray. Even MaDudu stands and watches this thing of my aunt accusing me of witchcraft.
There are people who think it is powerful for others to believe you have a witch working for you, and I know there are those people who will seek my services if they believe that is what I do. But it is dangerous. It is not some game to play.
A long time ago, around the time Mama got sick with the disease of these days, MaDudu employed a witch to curse our family. She did it because she was angry. To our shame, my mama had stolen the insurance money after MaDudu’s husband died, something we did not discover until after Mama died and I found the money she had hidden in a secret bank account. It has sometimes made me wonder if Mama can even be an ancestor, the way my Gogo and Mkhulu are. Yes, I watched her join the rest of the amadlozi when she died, and I often see her in the crowd that follows me around, but she never speaks to me. I never ask her for help to heal. I wonder if she even can help? Do the things we did or failed to do on earth prevent us from being fully what we should be on the other side too? I wish I knew. It’s something I’m working out.
Auntie and Uncle stand a long time in the yard talking. Uncle holds her by the arm as if trying to prevent her from running away. She is talking so angrily, she doesn’t even notice that her turban has come askew.
Her husband arrives in a borrowed bakkie and Uncle Lungile comes inside and says, “Khosi, the house is yours but you must leave just now. She will not come inside if you are here but it is our tradition for her to take her mother’s things.”
So Zi and I stand in the back yard, near the washing bins where we wash our clothes, while Auntie and her husband haul away the sofa and the table and chairs. They pack away most of the kitchen items, but leave us some few plates and forks and a pot for cooking. They leave us the beds and mattresses, for which I am grateful. And the TV. Perhaps they leave the TV because it is old. Their TVs are all new and this one wouldn’t even fetch a good price if you tried to sell it in the streets.
And then they leave, all of them, they do not even come to the back to say goodbye or tell us they are done.
I wonder if they will be back for more or if we have seen the last of them.
CHAPTER FOUR
LUCKY
When they are gone, Zi and I clean the mess. The women did dishes and packed up the remaining food—at least Zi and I have plenty to eat for the next week—but they left big piles of rubbish in the yard, which are already attracting flies. Zi and I pile the rubbish into several bins and cover them with a tarp. I can handle snakes or fleas or monkeys, even flies I can live with, but I hate rats.
“What do you suppose Gogo is doing right now on the other side?” Zi asks.
I shake my head. I don’t have to suppose. I already know. “She and the other amadlozi are sitting around gossiping about the funeral,” I say. “Gogo is laughing about how many people came for a free meal, people who never visited when she was alive.”
Zi shakes her head. “That isn’t funny,” she announces. “I’d be angry. What good is it to come pay your respects after somebody dies if you never visited when they were here with us?”
“The things that matter to us when we are alive are not so important when we are dead,” I say. “Gogo is glad they had a good meal. And she’s touched by how many of them brought money to give to us.”
Neighbors and friends, far and wide, gave what they could. 10 rand here, 50 rand there—it adds up. Most of it already disappeared to pay for the funeral expenses. What is left, Auntie and Uncle took a share of and left some few rands for me and Zi. They must feel they couldn’t leave us with nothing, and yes, they were her children so they deserved something, probably the lion’s share, which in fact they took. But it showed us, Zi and I are now on our own. We won’t see any help from them for school fees or any other such needs.
“But don’t you think Gogo is sad not to be here anymore?”
“She doesn’t even miss us,” I say. “She sees us anytime she wants. So if you ever want to talk to her, just say, ‘Sawubona, Gogo!’ Even if you can’t hear her, she’ll hear you!”
The look on Zi’s face is one of pure horror. “No thank you,” she says. “Does she really see everything?”
I suppose that is a scary thought for those who do things they shouldn’t do. But I’m used to it.
The gate rattles and jangles. Little Man’s outside, shaking the fence to be let in. I send Zi out with the key to unlock the gate while I haul a mattress from the bedroom to the living room so we have something to sit on.
I look up and Little Man catches me in a hug. He’s like a Cape Holly or a lavender tree, he’s grown so tall—tall but very thin, while I am short with lots of curves. I like the way it feels as his hand slips around my waist. And I still love his dark blue-black skin, just as much as when I first noticed it three years ago. “S’thandwa, how are you?” he asks.
I sink into him. This man. “Ngikhathele. How are you?” I ask. Instantly, I feel better as I hear his heart beating against my ear. He drapes his hand around my shoulder, his face close to mine, cheek to cheek. Perhaps I am not so tired as I seemed.
“I was just that much sorry not to be able to help more with the funeral,” he says. He looks around the room. “Eish, it’s empty. Relatives stole your furniture, eh?”
“They are angry,” I say. “They think I killed Gogo.”
He shakes his head. “Wena, you killed Gogo? They’ve gone mad, Khosi. How could they even think such a thing?”
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit. I know it makes you sad, Gogo, but I think they will have very little to do with me or Zi after this thing. I am sorry, I wish I knew how to heal this rift.
“Where’s Zi?” I ask.
“She’s outside with a little surprise.” Little Man bursts out laughing. I’ve always loved his laugh. It booms out, like it’s coming from a place deeper inside him than words. “Something I’ve brought for you.”
“What?” I ask. Then, when he doesn’t answer, “What what what?”
And then Zi is there opening the door and giggling and then she’s running out into the yard with a little brown yapping thing biting her ankles and barking.
“What is this thing?” I ask. “A puppy? Why are you bringing me a puppy?” Gogo! You never let us have a dog and here you are, some three days gone, and I’m already breaking one of your ru
les. At least, this is not a rule you made me promise to keep.
Little Man has a sudden pleading look in his eyes. I already know what that look means, the content of his unspoken question.
When Gogo got sick, and we knew what was coming, it was something the two of us talked about, dreamed about. Being a family. Being together, all the time, living together. But Gogo made me promise to finish school before Little Man and I became serious.
But Gogo, how can you wait to get serious about somebody? Either you are or you aren’t. And we always have been serious about each other, from three years ago, from the first time we kissed.
Plus, we never talked about what I should do if I was unable to finish school. What if I can’t pay the school fees. What then? Am I never allowed to get serious about Little Man? Eh, Gogo?
“You know the answer is no,” I say. “You cannot live with us. Not yet.” I watch Zi, running after the little brown dog. She looks back at me, delight in her eyes.
“Eish, Khosi, do you think that’s all I think about?” he asks, but a small part of the light inside his eyes dies. “I know we must wait until after the cleansing, at the earliest. But could you promise to think about it?”
I keep my eyes on the puppy and Zi, not wanting to focus on his pain. I want it too. Mkhulu, can you talk to my Gogo and ask her why she made me promise this thing? “Ehhe,” I say. “Of course I will think about it.”
The ritual cleansing after a loved one dies takes place some few weeks or months after their funeral. During that time, there are some few things you should not do, like drink alcohol, or you will not be able to stop doing that thing. Even if you don’t want to do that thing, you will just keep doing it. You have no reason left, you are just an animal, doing what you do. So the cleansing has bought me some time to shield myself from Little Man’s request.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m giving you this dog,” Little Man says. “You and Zi are too much alone. She will protect you. And did you know this dog chose us?”
“Eh? Is it?” I kneel down and call the puppy over with my tongue, tch tch tch tch. She joggles over and sits in front of me, tongue protruding, head tilted to examine us. She licks my hand as I look her over. She’s nondescript, clearly a mutt, brown hair with black markings around the paws. She looks like she will grow up to be fat, one of those dogs that lays in the sunshine and barks ferociously at whoever walks past but then, if someone actually comes in the door, she’ll waddle over to lick their hand. “Why do you say she chose us?”
“I was driving to Maqongqo to visit Baba yesterday,” he says. “I was sad, thinking about your grandmother’s death, and the funeral today. I didn’t have my mind on driving. You know that part in the road when there’s nothing but bush surrounding you as far as the eye can see? One of those bends in the road when you know you’re kilometers away from where anybody lives—and you think maybe just now a lion will jump out in front of the car?”
“Yebo,” I say. I love roads out in the middle of nowhere like that. It makes life seem wide-open with possibilities—not the closed-off feeling I sometimes get here in Imbali, with so many houses and people, you can’t even see past your neighbor’s house.
“Well, it was just then that I realized I had a flat.”
“Haibo! Did you have a spare?”
“That’s why I stopped. I got out to change my tire. And there she was, on the side of the road, poking her head out from the bush.”
“Shame! How did she get way out there?” I ask.
“Who knows? Maybe somebody abandoned her. Or she walked there, but it must have been 50 K to the nearest house. Let me ask you, why did my car stop just then? At that exact spot? I will tell you why. Because she was waiting for me. For us.”
We look at each other and then we look at the dog. And this is the thing: she looks guilty, like we’ve caught her out or something. Like she has chosen us, as Little Man says, but we weren’t supposed to figure that out.
Gogo, I know you didn’t like dogs. You said they were dirty creatures and belonged in the wild, on the savannas, not in our homes. Dogs and Zulus, you said, do not belong in the same hut. But I always felt vulnerable the way we lived, an elderly woman alone with two young girls. And now you’re gone. What am I supposed to do? I need protection.
I know that tsotsis could just shoot a dog and come inside two seconds later and we’d have to face them. But I hate most the idea that I will have no warning, that death will be a surprise. I’d rather know I’m in danger than never see it coming.
“Will you take her?” Little Man says. “And it will make me feel you are safer, until the day when you say yes, and I can live with you.”
Zi comes over and stands by the puppy. She tangles her fingers in the puppy’s fur, looks at me with dark pleading eyes. How can I say no?
“Her name is Nhlanhla,” I say. Lucky. She is lucky after all. Just because Little Man came along the road that day, she escaped certain death in the bush. She would have starved or been eaten by something bigger than her.
“Zi, don’t just stand there,” I say. “Go get her something to eat.”
So her first night with us, Nhlanhla feasts on funeral food. “Don’t get used to it,” I tell her. “This is not how we normally eat.”
She seems so smart, and her brown eyes—they look just like yours, Gogo.
“It’s time for soapies,” Zi says, hopeful.
So we turn the TV on. The three of us sit on the mattress, backs against the wall, the light flickering as we watch Generations, Isidingo, and The Bold and the Beautiful. Nhlanhla cavorts around the living room as Little Man reaches behind Zi’s back to hold my hand, and I sit there with his hand in mine, feeling not quite so alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CLEANSING
The empty house feels even more barren, stripped of most of the furniture and all the wall decorations and the crocheted lace that Gogo draped in various spots around the house. I hope Auntie is enjoying everything she took in her already over-decorated house.
When I think enough time has passed and I still haven’t heard from them—not about the cleansing, not about life, not about school fees or help with what what, nothing—I visit my teacher, Makhosi. We must talk about launching my healing practice, especially if I must begin to earn a living.
Outside of the hut, her granddaughter Thandi stands in front of the washtub, plunging her arms deep into the sudsy water, apparently washing a load of clothing. She drips water on my shirt as she gives me a quick hug.
Thandi’s little girl Hopeful is running in circles in the courtyard just inside their yard. Her mouth is sticky, stained red with some kind of candy.
“Are you coming to see me or is this a professional visit?”
“I’m sorry, I came to see your grandmother.” I smile ruefully at her.
Thandi used to be my best friend. She and I have known each other almost our entire lives. But then she fell in love with an older man, Honest, who was anything but honest.
In truth, I haven’t been the best friend to Thandi since Hopeful was born. First, I was training with her grandmother and going to school at the same time. Then Gogo got sick and died and now, it’s just me and Zi, so I don’t see how it’s going to be different—I’m going to be responsible for a whole lot more now that Gogo isn’t the adult. All this time, I’ve been trying hard just to manage everything. Besides, Thandi’s entire life is so different than mine now. She quit school long before I did to take care of her baby. She and Honest stayed together for a short while but then he returned to his wife so she came back home. And now she’s raising Hopeful alone, with her family’s help, of course. It sometimes feels like we’re both hiking a steep trail but the path is taking us up two completely different mountains.
“I’ll tell Gogo you’re here,” she says.
“Ngiyabonga.”
“Maybe after you can stay for a cup of tea and play with Hopeful?”
“Yebo.” I nod my agreement.
&nbs
p; Makhosi taught me everything I know. She trained me to be a sangoma. When she gestures, I enter her hut and breathe in the rich scent of impepho.
“Makhosi.” I greet her with the honorific title.
“Makhosi.” Before I became a full sangoma, when I was her junior, her student, she called me thwasa. Now she greets me as makhosi, her equal. Sometimes, now that people greet me the way they greet all sangomas, with a strong “Makhosi!,” it feels as though my given name “Nomkhosi” with the nickname “Khosi” was nothing more than a prediction of my calling, of what I’d become someday.
I wait a few seconds in silence, out of respect. I expect her to ask me what I’ve come to ask her. But before I can talk to her about launching my practice, she reminds me that it’s time to do the cleansing for Gogo.
“It’s your duty,” she says. “You must perform ukugeza. Then you can start your life. Your grandmother is waiting for this to be done. I can see her, can’t you see her? She is crouching behind you, ashamed that her children have forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say. “But I haven’t heard from my aunt and uncle in three weeks. What if they don’t want to do it? Or don’t want to do it with me?”
“You do it on your own,” she says, simply.
So I try calling Auntie and Uncle but neither answers the phone, nor do they call back. I text—We need to do ukugeza, I am planning to do it, are you both coming?—and hear only silence in return.
But you can’t wait forever to cleanse the hut. At some point, life must return to the living. Even sangomas know this, we who are always with one foot in that world and one in this.
What should I do?
Go to her, my child, Mkhulu says. Your Gogo is here with us but she must have peace. Your Auntie Phumzile has forgotten tradition.