by JL Powers
But what Mkhulu doesn’t say, is this thing of accusing a relative of witchcraft—that is also tradition. Not real tradition. Not like a wedding or a funeral, where you can say, This is how things are done, nee? You have the food so, and the people so, and the impepho so, and here is where the amadlozi sit, and you must, you must, you must. But even so, these accusations, they happen all the time. What do you think of that, Mkhulu? Is that tradition, hah? Sometimes I am not so sure about “tradition.”
Thandi and I have a quick cup of tea after but Hopeful is misbehaving, chasing after the dog and knocking into one of her grandmother’s customers waiting in line, an elderly gentleman sitting on a broken chair. He wobbles for a second and then totters over, so slow it’s almost comical.
“Oh, Mkhulu,” I say, “let me help you up.” He grips my offered hand and I raise him to standing position.
While I’m helping the old man, Thandi is already yelling at Hopeful and chasing her through the yard and into the house to swat her bottom.
I wait some few minutes, then tell Thandi I’ll come by again soon. I’m so glad I’m not a mother yet.
That Saturday, Zi and I walk to the other side of Imbali to Auntie’s house. They are home, I know this because her husband’s car is there, and Auntie doesn’t drive, but we rattle and rattle the gate and nobody comes out. We wait and wait. The sun beats down on us. We rattle again and wait. The dust rises and settles. Zi coughs. It feels like the grit is stuck in my throat.
“Why is Auntie rejecting us?” Zi asks. “Mama was her sister.”
It does not make me proud to admit it, but I collapse at Auntie Phumzi’s gate, sitting right there in the dirt as though I was a chicken or goat.
“What are you doing, Khosi?” Zi’s voice rises high and shaky.
It’s been three weeks since you left us, Gogo, and we’re all alone. That is what I say to her.
But even as I wail silently, I know we’re not alone. I have this cast of characters, as my drama teacher used to say, and they follow me everywhere, commenting on everything. Just now, they stare at me in stark disapproval. Get up, stop being a child, their stares say, even while their mouths remain closed.
“I don’t know what to do, Zi,” I say. “My spirit isn’t in this fight. I just want to do what is right for Gogo. And for us, for the family. We must do the cleansing.”
Zi rattles the gate and starts to call, “Auntie! Auntie Phumzi! You must come out. We must talk to you.”
You’re letting Zi do this alone, shame, Mkhulu says finally. You mustn’t give up. Her voice is small and it doesn’t carry, it’s like a mosquito in a large room. Your voice will travel. You must just fly near your Auntie’s ear so she cannot ignore you.
You cannot give up, my girl.
That is a new voice. A woman speaking. I peer at the people surrounding Mkhulu. Who is it, speaking to me? Who is this person? I have never heard her before. They gaze back at me, unperturbed. Any one of them can speak to me, and they are multitudes. But mostly, they let Gogo or Mkhulu speak.
“What are you looking at, Khosi?” Zi has turned back from the gate, defeated.
“Oh, nothing.”
You mustn’t be like the beasts of the field, those who graze and do not even know what they are eating.
It is that same voice again.
I’m not a beast of the field, I grumble at her, whoever she is.
“What, Khosi?” Zi asks.
Did I say that out loud?
“Please, can we go home now?” she asks.
That forces me to my feet. I stand and dust the dirt from my skirt. I do not have a loud voice either. Zi and I, we are just Imbali girls, trained to be quiet. But like Mkhulu says, I can send my voice right into Auntie’s ear.
“Auntie,” I say, as though she were standing right beside us. I picture my voice flying through the air, perching on her shoulder, speaking directly into her ear. “Auntie. We are here, and we are not going home until you come out and talk to us. If we start to yell, and make a scene, your neighbors will all come out and hear how you are neglecting your sister’s children, how you are not willing to do ukugeza for your own mother. All the amadlozi are here with me, and if you think they won’t help me, you are mistaken. I am the one they chose, I am a sangoma. I can hear them just as well as you can hear me now, even though I am nowhere near you.”
“I’m here,” Auntie says suddenly.
She stands by the gate, hair wrapped in a black turban. She’s glaring at me so hard, her eyes bulge right out of her head. I want to tell her to stop staring or a bird will think her eyes are a ledge that they can land on. But I stay silent. Her husband and my cousin Beauty stand on the porch, keeping their distance.
“Speak, wena, and let us be done with it.”
“We must do this thing,” I say. “It’s time.”
“How can you do ukugeza?” Auntie protests. “You are not even wearing proper mourning clothes, hah! Are you going to burn your everyday clothes? And tell me, how will we buy a goat? Do you have so many rands that you can just go and buy one? If so, why are you not making your entire family rich, eh?”
I can’t afford a goat, it’s true, but it’s also true that I know people, namely, a whole host of amadlozi, and they are on my side. They will help me. Auntie is forgetting that.
“I will get a goat,” I say. “But you must come.”
“How will you get a goat?” she shouts. “You see, hah! You can just conjure up a goat, like that. You are a witch. We will never come to your house. We will do our own ceremony here.”
“Gogo is not here,” I say. “She doesn’t sit by your hearth in your hut. She is in my hut, at my hearth, in her own home. How can you do the cleansing here?”
But she is already gone, slamming the door behind her.
Zi and I are silent for a long time as we walk home. “How are we going to get a goat?” Zi asks finally.
I wish I knew. “You will see,” I say.
How am I going to get a goat? It is not like goats wander the streets of Imbali, looking to be slaughtered so that you can do a cleansing for a loved one. Even if we were in the rural areas, goats are valued creatures.
Zi is asleep, taking a Saturday afternoon nap. It is a hot day and she grew sleepy. I would love to crawl in beside her and join her but I am vexed with this problem. We need to do the cleansing, and if I am on my own to do it, I am on my own.
Why can’t it be a chicken, Gogo? A chicken I can find. A chicken I can buy, somehow. I can search for rands in the dirt, like a chicken pecking for food, and I can stand out on the street corners offering my services as a sangoma until enough people employ me so that I can buy a chicken.
I will tell you how to get a goat, my girl.
It is the voice of the woman again, the one who has never helped me before.
Go to the hill of the witch, she says.
I almost swear, I’m so startled. Words have power, so I keep a watch on my lips. But the witch? How could she suggest it?
I avoid the witch’s hill scrupulously since that time, three years ago, when I encountered her. She had marked me, she was waiting for the chance to drag me underground where she planned to suck me dry of my life, my powers. She wanted to turn me into her own personal zombie, a slave that worked just for her. Little Man was the one to rescue me from her strong grip. And though I know I have the ancestors’ protection now, and I think she will leave me alone, I am still afraid.
Even taxis avoid driving up that hill and past her house. Everyone knows she’s a witch…everyone knows that young men and young women have disappeared, that she has turned them into zombies, that they go deep into the earth to find gold for her…and everyone’s that scared of her. Just thinking about her makes me shiver.
Go to the witch’s house, the woman says. You will find your goat tied to her tree in the front, outside of the gate.
Who are you? I ask.
I was trained to trust the amadlozi, without question. But this advice mak
es me very afraid. If the witch helps me, am I indebted to her? Am I allies with her, an evil one?
But you must do what they tell you to do. If my ancestor tells me to go to the witch’s house, I must go. Otherwise, I will go crazy.
Who are you? I ask again.
She smiles at me and I realize she is one of my grandmothers, truly an ancient one, from long long ago.
Take a jar of amanzi, she says. Some of the ocean water you have blessed. It is powerful muthi. Leave it as payment for the goat.
Mkhulu, do you hear what this woman is saying?
Ehhe, he agrees but says nothing more.
But why would she help me? I argue. Because I cannot believe they are sending me to the witch, the one who tried to destroy me so long ago, before I realized I was meant to be a sangoma.
She will help because I compel her to help, the woman who is one of my grandmothers says. She has sins she must pay for.
So I go.
I thought I would avoid this side of Imbali the rest of my life. I know I am safe, at least with the amadlozi on my side, but it seems prudent to avoid your sworn enemy. Yet here I am, staggering up the hill.
It is very still up here, as if the wind itself refuses to breathe. Or as if the air is weighted with the heaviness of all the evil practiced in this place.
And it is just as my ancestor said. There is the goat, tied to the tree. The witch is nowhere in sight. I do not have to go to her house or speak to her, I can simply snatch the goat and leave.
I breathe a quiet sigh of thankfulness. That woman, eish, she truly does have sins she must pay for.
I leave the jar of amanzi—water I harvested from the Indian Ocean and then blessed with the words of the amadlozi—and I take the goat home. In the morning, I will ask Little Man to help me slaughter the goat. I will take the goat to emsamo, the place where the amadlozi sit in my healer’s hut. I will burn impepho and speak to them. Zi and I will mix its stomach guts with water and wash outside. We will burn our mourning clothes, such as they are, since Gogo told us to wear our everyday clothes. And then, the cleansing will be complete.
As for me, I will be happy to have completed this important part of releasing Gogo to that side. But otherwise, I am uneasy.
I pray that the witch uses my amanzi for good, not evil.
I pray that I have not entered an unholy alliance.
CHAPTER SIX
BREAKING PROMISES
Now that Gogo is gone, the days feel endless. It isn’t that I am doing more work than before. In fact, I am doing less because I no longer need to care for her like I did while she was dying. But Gogo was always so joyful, even when she scolded and even when she was so sick she could barely breathe. Now her love is gone. That’s not true, it is not gone exactly, it is just changed. Now she is one of the ancestors and it is no longer give and take. Her spirit is right here in the kitchen corner and her voice is in my head, talking, talking, talking. Khosi, do this. Khosi, do that. I am just a tool in her hands.
In fact, she is glaring at me.
What else could I do, Gogo? I ask.
Gogo hasn’t been dead for a month and just today, I broke one of the promises I made to her—that no matter what, I’d finish school. I’d matriculate and then go to university.
You promised, Khosi. You promised you would finish school.
Yebo, impela, I promised, Gogo. I did. I know it.
I stare at the twenty rand note on the counter. It is all I have left after paying Zi’s school fees this afternoon. There wasn’t enough money for my fees also. And I have no one to go to for help. It’s just me and Zi. Completely on our own. I have become what they moan about on the evening news: “a child-headed household.”
I told all my teachers I’d return, soon, but I’m not sure any of us believe it. And it’s the worst possible time for a student like me to quit—right in the middle of my matric year. The final year before university. I can’t suddenly go somewhere else, like one of the fee-free township schools. They don’t offer the same courses I’ve been taking. Even if they let me attend for the final half of my matric year, they’ve been preparing students for an entirely different set of exams than the ones I’ve been preparing for these past three years. Instead of being tested in Afrikaans or calculus, both classes I’ve been taking in preparation, they might test me in history and accounting.
For a long time now, my dream has been to go to school and be a nurse while also practicing as a healer. I was initiated as a sangoma just before Gogo caught pneumonia. The goal was to make some money as a sangoma while finishing school, to help pay my fees, but we all hoped I would get a bursary too. That was before, when we still had Gogo’s pension from the government, and Uncle and Auntie were giving her some money each month to help raise us. Now, Zi and I are completely dependent on the money I make as a sangoma, for living as well as for school fees.
And it’s not enough. At least, not yet. After all, I’m new. I still have to establish myself, create what my business teacher called “a customer base.” It could have been more difficult if my teacher had asked me to go somewhere else to practice since she is already practicing here in Imbali. But Makhosi said there was more than enough for both of us and she will send me her overflow. I am grateful that she loves me that much, that I’m not just somebody she trained. I am truly her daughter.
Even so, there hasn’t been much overflow. I need more customers if Zi and I are going to eat next month. But Gogo still expects that I would be able to pay for my school fees too?
I know I promised, Gogo, but that’s before I knew how hard it would be. Would you have made me promise if you knew? I’d like to think you’d release me from an impossible promise.
But the dead broker no compromise. Right is right. The eye crosses the full river, Khosi, she used to say.
In other words, if I wanted it, I would make it happen, no matter how hard or seemingly impossible.
But Gogo, I do want it. I want to finish school more than anything. How am I supposed to go to school if I don’t have the money to pay for it, eh, Gogo?
Sometimes when I talk to her about these things, the conversation is a one-way street. All she does is glare at me from wherever she is sitting or standing.
But now she speaks.
Don’t tell me what what. You’re a sangoma, my child, she says. You have a way to make money. Enough money to pay for school.
Perhaps in time, yes, but not so soon. That’s what I want to say but I leave the thoughts in the part of my head she can’t hear. It feels too disrespectful.
Plus, and this is not something I say to her, her daughter’s accusations—my auntie’s anger—may have made the neighbors afraid to visit me, to consult me as a sangoma.
But now that I’m not in school, I’ll certainly have enough time to work. I don’t say that to Gogo either.
And I don’t say anything to Little Man when he comes over later that night. Perhaps because he has such excitement spilling from his eyes. He rattles the gate, sending Nhlanhla into a tizzy. She gallops toward him, goofy and long-eared, while I hurry out, fumbling with the lock. He picks me up, swings me around, grunts oof, and kisses me hard on the mouth. It leaves me breathless, he keeps his lips planted on mine so long. I take his hand and pull him inside. Zi is with my neighbor so if he’s going to kiss me like that, he can do it without God and everybody watching, the sun shining on us with a bright intensity, almost as though scrutinizing our kisses.
As soon as the door shuts behind us, leaving Nhlanhla outside, shivering with whimpers, he reaches for me again.
I lean with my back against the wall and let him kiss me. Little Man has always liked to kiss me though usually they were stolen good-bye kisses, between the house and the gate when we were sure Gogo wasn’t watching. Now he plants a series of quick, sweet ones on my lips, taking little breaths in between, and then a few long ones that make my knees shake. I grab his jacket to hold steady.
“I have a job,” he announces.
“What?” I stare at him. This was not the plan. I’d take a step away but my back is literally against the wall. “I thought you had a bursary. That you were going to school.”
“Eish, Khosi, I’m tired of school,” he says. “I need a break.”
It used to be when I stared at him, we were eye to eye. It made me feel more like equals. Now I have to look up up up at him, an elephant looking up to a giraffe.
“You never said that before,” I say. “You were always studying. You liked science and math. You were—”
“I needed to pass matric,” he interrupts. “It would be shameful to fail. But now, I’m going to work. So I can help you and Zi.” And he leans in to kiss me again. His fingers graze my hips, his hand a firm grip on my back.
A little ball of anger mixed with happiness forms at the pit of my stomach. I am not sure which emotion is stronger. Of course I want—need—help. But I don’t want him to quit school for me. “No,” I say.
“Listen, Khosi,” he starts speaking fast. “I know what you’ll say but we have been together always, since we were young, and if I am making money, I can help you, so you can finish school. I can go to school next year.”
“This was not the plan,” I say.
The amadlozi murmur on the opposite side of the room. I ignore them. I can’t help wishing that sometimes they’d butt out. I can’t help wishing that sometimes I had a choice about this, a choice to say, No. Not right now. Come back in an hour or two.
“Gogo dying was not the plan either,” he says.
“What if you don’t get a bursary next year?” I say.
“They tell me it will wait for one year,” he says. “And besides, it is too late. I’ve already done it.”
Perhaps now I should tell him that I have withdrawn from school. But I feel too much shame. He sacrificed it all, for me, and for what? For nothing. So I keep silent.
“What is the job?” I ask finally.
“I’m working for a taxi,” he says, “collecting the money.”
“But—”
He holds up his hand to stop me. “It’s a good job,” he says. “My route goes by your school, so we can take you in the mornings and again at night. See? And you won’t have to pay. The driver will take it out of my wages.”