by JL Powers
“I can’t have my girl go hungry.” I can feel his grin, even though I can’t see it in the dark and around the heavy bags. “You need to eat. You must keep that amazing body.” He inhales and releases his breath in a slow, whistled sigh. “Those sexy curves. They make me think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Little Man,” I say. “Stop it!” Even at this hour of the morning, I look left and right to be sure nobody is outside listening.
He reaches over and gently slaps my backside. “Why are you ashamed?” he says. “I’ll shout it from the rooftops!” He takes a deep breath and shouts, “I love Khosi Zulu’s amazing, sexy bod—”
I clamp my hand over his mouth. “Little Man! You’ll wake everybody up.”
He grins at me, unrepentant.
I peek inside the grocery bags and shout in delight over the things he brought. “Oranges! Cabbage! Tomatoes! Zi is going to be so excited in the morning.”
“I know you like vegetables,” he says. “As for me, meat and pap, that’s all I need.”
“No,” I start to argue, “your body needs vegetables, unless you want to be getting sick all the time—”
“Eish, Khosi, I was just joking,” he interrupts.
My little argument melts away. I don’t look at him as I speak. “I was worried about you, Little Man,” I say. “Why didn’t you answer your phone? Or call me back?”
His arms go around me. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
His breath is sour. He sways against me.
I step back to glare at him. “Have you been drinking?”
“A couple beers, that’s all.” He holds his hands in the air, the way I’ve seen other men do—defensive, about ready to fight. As though I’m being unreasonable.
“We discussed this.” All my relief at seeing him is robbed by his breaking of this promise. “I don’t care if you drink sometimes, that’s not the problem, but I don’t want you coming here if you’ve been drinking. I don’t want Zi to see it, to see you—drunk.”
“S’thandwa,” he groans. His fingers clutch my hips, sweet fire spreading to our lips as he pulls me in for a kiss. “I know. I know, Khosi. But I just had to see you.”
I sigh. My anger burns out quick quick. “Well, come in then. I’ve been worried all day. I am just glad you’re alive.”
Inside, I see what was invisible in the dark. “Little Man! What happened to your face? You weren’t fighting, were you?”
He touches his swollen eye, the dark skin angry purple and red. “One of Langa’s thugs hit me at the taxi rank.”
I’ve been holding my breath. Now I let it out slow, slow, so he can’t hear it swoosh out in fear. “You got in a fight?” It could have been worse. He could have been shot.
“Ehhe. Eish, there’s already a full-on taxi war. Langa’s trying to take over Bo’s route.”
“I know,” I say, deciding to keep silent about Langa’s visit—for now. What would Little Man think—or do—if he knew? In any case, other things are more important than that. I ask the most important questions: “What are you going to do? What is Bo going to do?” I feel the power in my fingertips, lightly grazing his skin. I’m begging him with everything in me, Please say you’ll stop working until this has blown over. Please say you won’t get involved, that this is not your fight.
He shrugs and the gesture…it makes my heart drop. Little Man has grown so tall and strong in three years, I forget he’s only eighteen. He has a man’s job. He has a man’s ways. He has a man’s way of looking at me. But in that shrug, he seems once again like the young boy I fell in love with. Innocent, vulnerable. Why should he have to shoulder this burden? Here we are, young still but holding the heavy world in our hands.
This isn’t what I wanted for you, my heart says.
“Wait here,” I tell him.
I run out to the garden to get some dirt. I mix it with water, shibhoshi, and blue spirit to make a quick poultice, which should draw out the heat and swelling. He stays perfectly still while I dab it on the skin swelling around his eye, but I can feel him watching me with his other eye. His hand drops to my waist and he twirls me around, draws me into his lap, arms around my waist, his face buried in the nape of my neck.
“Khosi, please,” he whispers.
“What?”
“You know what I want. It’s the only thing I want. I’ll do—I’ll do anything.”
Everything in me wants to say yes to his quiet plea. Yes, Little Man. Come live here. With me.
Now that the cleansing is over, there’s no reason why he couldn’t, except for the reason that I promised Gogo. And that’s why I can’t say yes. So I ignore the question. I don’t mean to be cruel. I just don’t know what to say.
I’ve never told him about the promises I made to Gogo—not to become serious with him until I finish school. It seems like a betrayal of her. Would he think she didn’t love him? That she didn’t want us to be together? Because the truth is, she thought the world of Little Man. She called him grandson, and Gogo didn’t do that unless she meant it.
But maybe there is something else holding me back? Is it possible that I’m just using Gogo as an excuse? No. No! I want to be together. But I want to know I have Gogo’s blessing also.
“Come,” I say instead. “Let’s get some rest.”
We lay down together on the mattress in the living room. I shift on my side and he puts his arms around me from behind, burying his face against my hair.
“I love you, Khosi,” he whispers, almost like a prayer, just before drifting off to sleep.
I lay awake for awhile, thinking about everything that’s happened in the last day or two. Warning Ahmed. The taxi war. Langa’s visit. Little Man. I drift off to sleep, murmuring my own kind of prayer. Gogo, please… I want to be able to say yes…please let me tell Little Man yes.
I wake early, long before first light. I extricate myself from Little Man’s embrace and go to the kitchen, light the stove. While the water boils, I pet Nhlanhla absently and stare out the window at my hut in the back—the hut that Gogo and I built before she died so that I could practice as a sangoma. It makes me sad that it hasn’t yet been used much. In the moonlight, it casts a shadow into MaDudu’s yard.
Ah, yes, MaDudu. From neighbor to enemy to beloved friend. She has turned out to be a true friend and she is forever sorry that she asked that witch to come after us, to come after me, when Mama was still alive because Mama had stolen money from her.
I should ask her what she thinks about all this taxi war business.
When the rooibos tea is ready—extra sweet the way Little Man likes it—I take a cup into the bedroom to rouse him. He can’t be here when Zi wakes up: I don’t want her to know he spent the night. And besides, I have another long day ahead of me if we’re going to walk to her school again, so I have to get her up and out the door.
He wakes slow, one hand stealing out to caress my arm while he takes sips of tea with the other.
“You have to go,” I whisper. “I need to get Zi ready for school.”
“It’s early,” he whispers back. “Why are you waking her so early?”
I stare at him. Has he gone mad?
“Khosi,” he says. “You’re not walking all the way to town again, are you?”
“Of course, you can’t think I’d send her on a khumbi today of all days?”
He sets the tea down and speaks in a normal voice. “I would never let anything happen to Zi.”
“Shhh,” I shush him as Zi shifts and moans, perhaps startled by the sound of his voice.
I beckon him in to the living room and he comes, reluctantly, a fact that makes me want to clobber him with my words. His eyes are bloodshot—how many beers did he really have yesterday? Is he still drunk?
“You can’t promise that nothing would happen to her,” I say. “Anything can happen when there’s a taxi war.”
“Ngiyazi,” he says. Now those bloodshot eyes are staring at me with frustration. “Ngiyazi, anything can happen. And
anything can happen when a beautiful young woman and a young girl walk through the streets of Imbali in the dark.”
“It may not be safe but it’s safer than going for a ride with a bunch of angry men carrying guns, fighting over territory. In fact, why are you even going to work?”
“I can’t quit just because of this thing,” he says.
“Why not? Why can’t you just quit?”
“It’s my job, Khosi,” he says. His voice is suddenly very quiet. “Do you know how hard it is to find a—”
“Well, Zi’s not going with you,” I declare. “Not until this thing settles—”
“Enough!” he cuts off my announcement. “I’m out of here. Have a very nice day! And night! And a nice tomorrow too. And the day after that! See you sometime.”
“I’m just trying to protect my little sister,” I say. “Why are you getting angry?”
“Because you seem to be forgetting everything about me,” he says. “Zi is not just your little sister. We’ve been together so long—she’s like my own sister. Do you think I wouldn’t do anything to protect her? You and Zi aren’t alone. But you would never know it, would you, from the way you’re acting.”
“But we are alone,” I say. “We live here alone.”
“Well, you don’t have to,” he shouts. “You are living here alone because you refuse to live with me. How much longer will you refuse me? Or do you just intend to refuse me forever?”
“Little Man!” I’m aghast.
He drops his face into his hands. “You don’t need to worry about this thing anymore, Khosi,” he says. “I won’t ask again.”
“What do you mean?” Does he mean we’re done? Is he…breaking up with me?
He stands and fumbles at the lock on the door. I bring the keys, start to say, “Little Man,” and everything inside me wants to spill out, to tell him that it’s not just Zi I’m worried about but I’m worried for him too, and that he can quit his job, that it’s too dangerous, and that yes, yes, yes, I’ll be with him. Especially if he’ll quit his job. That we can make this work. That I’ll tell Gogo something to keep her quiet, how could she know about this before she died? And besides, I don’t think it was Little Man she was opposed to, she just wanted me to finish my schooling before we got serious… So maybe she won’t bother me so much if I go back on this promise.
But he doesn’t let me say a word. He stops me with a final, cold, “I don’t want to hear it, Khosi. I won’t hear no from you again.”
The door bangs open and he stalks to the gate, which is also locked. “Please,” I say, “listen to me,” but he turns around and glares at me with so much anger in his eyes that I back away instead. I simply hand him the keys so he can unlock the gate. Nhlanhla dances around us, barking, and Zi comes running to the door in her nightshirt.
“Did you just get here, Little Man?” she calls, running over. “I’m not ready yet. Is the taxi already waiting? It’s so early.”
He’s outside the gate, closing it, and I can see part of him thinks about just taking off. But he stops. He bends down so he’s level with her. And his voice is gentle when he speaks to her. “Zi, you and Khosi are going to walk to school again today. I hope things are safer tomorrow. If they are, I’ll be here for you. Promise.”
She starts to cry. He reaches two fingers through a hole in the fence and she grabs them with her hand.
“Are you going to be OK?” she asks.
“I’ll always be OK,” he says. “And I will always be here for you. Ngiyathembisa?”
Then he stands, straightens, and brushes the backs of his pants…like he’s brushing me off. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look once before he strides away, up the hill towards his own house.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PUTTING ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER
“Don’t cry, Khosi,” Zi says for the tenth time as we trudge through the dark and the cold, up and down the winding dirt roads of Imbali towards downtown Pietermaritzburg. It’s been ten mornings of walking to school in the dark, ten mornings of no Little Man. The lights of downtown twinkle at us through the distance and the world is bathed in pinky-orange light as the morning sun peeks over the Drakensburg Mountains behind us. Despite the beauty of the clear winter morning, I’m crying again. “Little Man said he’ll be safe. Don’t you believe him?”
“Of course I believe him,” I lie. Lying is not something I like to do, not ever, especially not to Zi. But I feel like I’ve become very good at it since Gogo died. I feel like I’m lying to everybody all the time. Including myself. Ngiyagula, it makes me so sick. I decide to visit Makhosi later. I’ll take her a jar of herbs and ask her for a cleansing. And, “We should go to mass this week,” I say. “We haven’t gone in, oh, a long long time.”
We haven’t gone since Gogo died. I want to believe God is on my side but he doesn’t seem as real to me as amadlozi. I don’t hear his voice in my head all the time. He isn’t always telling me do this, do that. In fact, he is always perfectly silent.
“Yebo,” Zi says. She reaches out and grabs my hand and gives me a sideways smile. I can always count on Zi to enthusiastically support my ideas. “Let’s go. It would make Mama and Gogo happy.”
For some reason, the walk seems shorter today. We share a package of biscuits as we walk and arrive in plenty of time for Zi’s first class. After brushing crumbs off Zi’s uniform, I wave goodbye, calling out “Sharp sharp,” and head back to Imbali to see Makhosi, even though I’ll need to turn back around to pick Zi up only two or three hours after I get there.
Another day of walking. Sometimes that’s all we can do. All the time, worrying if Little Man is safe. Wondering if the fight we had almost two weeks ago is the end of this thing. He wouldn’t just end three years of together just like that, would he? It is small comfort that he told Zi he would always be there for her. There was a pointed message in that.
Plus, he hasn’t called since the fight. We’ve never gone more than a day or two without speaking before.
So much for promising Zi he would always be there for her.
I try to ignore the ache in my chest. Maybe if I pretend it isn’t there, it’ll go away.
Even though two clients are waiting on chairs outside her hut, Makhosi calls me in right away. The scent of burning impepho inside her hut is one that fills me with both nostalgia and excitement, the same feeling I get when I use it myself to help a client. And it’s true, that’s also the feeling I get when I walk inside a school and think about all that I’m going to learn. But I can’t think about that. Is it over? All my dreams? School…and Little Man?
We sit down on the goatskin mat in the middle of her hut, her hands gripping mine. Her soft wrinkled flesh reminds me of the way Gogo’s hands felt in the last months and weeks of her life, when she really depended on me, when I had to help her do everything.
“What is this thing that is worrying you?” she asks.
I let a big whoosh of air escape my lips. “Everything,” I say.
She smiles, pats my knee. “Speak openly. Amadlozi are listening.”
I sigh and begin to list all the problems. “I’m not attracting a lot of business yet so I’m not making enough money.”
She has a pot of water heating over the fire in the center of the hut. She pours the hot steaming liquid into a cup of herbs and hands it to me to drink.
I put it on the ground before me, to let it cool before I drink it.
“I need to put food on the table and continue to pay Zi’s school fees, the ones that are left over after her scholarship,” I continue. “Not to mention that I couldn’t pay my own fees. Also, the taxi wars are starting again, and Little Man is caught up in the middle of them. I’m worried for his safety.” I don’t say the thing I’m most afraid of, perhaps even more afraid of than his death: that maybe I pushed him too hard and pushed him away. Forever.
“My aunt and uncle believe I’m a witch. They no longer speak to me.”
Her eyes close while I’m speaking.
She rocks back and forth, listening. Before long, an almost inaudible hum vibrates through the air.
“And…and…and I think there are people threatening my neighbor, the one who runs the tuck shop a few doors down from my house. I feel like the whole world is conspiring against me… or is evil… or both.”
She murmurs, the sound meant to still and soothe me. I try to sit patiently, in silence. But while the outside world may be quiet, the voices inside my head are banging against my brain in a way that is slowly giving me a headache. I lift the cup with its rapidly cooling liquid and take short sips. Makhosi’s mixture of herbs has never been my favorite.
“The eye crosses the full river,” she says at last. “The eye is always able to do things that the body cannot do. And so the eye is impatient. It wants the body to behave as though it were the eye.”
She pauses and is silent for a long time. A low groan breaks the silence.
“You must be patient. All things take time, especially good things. The spirits are on your side. But you must let the river wane. Let the water level fall. Then the body will be able to do what the eye already wants to do. You will cross in good time. Yes, in good time. But the timing will not be of your own making.”
Her hand on mine stills the restless spirit inside me. At least, for the moment.
I take a quick detour home to feed Nhlanhla before setting out to fetch Zi. But such a large crowd is gathered on the street in front of the tuck shop and taxi rank that I can barely push through.
My first thought is that something terrible has happened at the tuck shop. After all, MaNene’s sons were just threatening Ahmed and his wife not too long ago. But when I reach it, they seem fine. Ahmed is helping lead an elderly gogo towards a chair in the shade, while his wife is popping open a cool drink and giving it to one of their children, a little girl of four or five. The little girl carries the drink carefully over to the old woman and offers it to her. The gogo reaches for her pocket as though she wants to pay but the little girl shakes her head and puts her hands behind her back, refusing to accept payment. Meanwhile, Ahmed has already led another gogo towards the shade while his wife brings a chair.