Under Water

by JL Powers

  “What are we going to do?” he asks finally.

  “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  He smiles and though his smile is still as open as before, it’s also a little broken. “You already know what I want,” he says. “That hasn’t changed just because—just because the timing is inconvenient. Just because of—this.” He gestures towards my stomach. “The only question that matters is what do you want?”

  I think about all the things Little Man has always done for me and how he has always been there for me. Until recently, in any case. And how he is the father of the baby I’m carrying. And I look at this beautiful man across from me. The one who says that doesn’t matter to him. “I know what I want to do but I don’t know if it’s the right thing,” I say.

  He sighs. “I’m wondering if I should ask what you want to do, whether what you want to do would be in my favor or Little Man’s.” He shakes his head. “I’m not going to ask. And I’m not going to tell you what to do,” he adds, quick quick. “But I do want you to think very carefully. You know the taxi wars—they’re getting more and more violent each day?”

  I nod.

  “Even if your Little Man still has his hands clean at the moment… unless he gets out of it now—and by that I mean, he needs to get out now now—he’s not going to have clean hands much longer. You have to think about this carefully. You have to think about your future. Is that what you would want—for him? For your child?”

  I whisper, “I think it might be too late already.” I add, “It is only a suspicion but I don’t think he has clean hands anymore.”

  He leans forward, his voice suddenly urgent, and he clutches my hands and grips them, warm, passionate. “Then get out,” he says. “Get out while you can, before he becomes too dangerous to be around, before you get associated with his business and the things he does. Get out and…choose me. Choose me, Khosi. I promise I’ll never—” He breaks off and grips the side of the table. “I’m a good man, Khosi,” he finishes. “I’m a good man.”

  Tears flow freely down my face and drip off my nose. One splashes onto his hand.

  “Eish,” he says. “Listen to me. I’ll take you home. And I’ll leave you alone, for now, and let you think. But I’ll come back to find out the answer. I hope it’s yes. We could be good together. I will always be the man you see in front of you right now.”

  The server brings our food. Sifiso fetches Zi from the playroom and the three of us eat, though the food is tasteless to me. Now that we’ve had our talk, Sifiso is almost cheerful and certainly talkative. He and Zi carry the conversation, but I don’t follow it. I’m too busy thinking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  SEPARATED FROM THE HERD

  Sifiso drops us off with a reminder that he’ll be back with another officer in a day or two to continue investigating Ahmed’s murder. He gives me a quick squeeze with a hurried whisper, “Don’t make me wait too long for your answer.”

  Nhlanhla greets us at the gate as though nothing is wrong. But the lock Sifiso gave me has been cut off with some sort of bolt cutter and is lying in the dirt.

  Immediately, Zi and I look to see if tsotsis have been here and robbed us.

  The front door is closed and locked.

  We walk slowly around the house looking for signs of muthi. The dirt in the front yard is scuffed and there are tire tracks, but I see nothing that would make me think an umthakathi left a curse on us.

  Zi and I walk in the door, and that is when we know that we have been robbed after all. Because the TV is gone. So is the mattress that was on the floor, that we were using for a sofa.

  “Hheyi, what is this?” I ask. I look at Nhlanhla. “What is going on? You are a useless dog.”

  Nhlanhla whines.

  “Oh, don’t think I’m going to apologize to you,” I tell her. “You are supposed to protect the house. That is your job.”

  Zi starts running through the house. “Gogo’s clothes are all gone,” she announces. I follow her into our room and see that the drawer with Gogo’s clothes is open and completely empty. My own drawer is full of clothes and so is Zi’s. So they wanted Gogo’s things only.

  We go into the kitchen. Gogo’s pink plastic chair, the cracked one—it is gone. I open the cupboards. The big bag of mealies is still there but cups and dishes—they are gone. I open the fridge. The box of milk is still there, and somebody kindly dumped out the contents of the big pot of phuthu, so at least the food is still here—but the big pot we use to cook it in is gone.

  I suppose I can be grateful that they left the food.

  I think I know what has happened but I need to verify it before I accuse anybody.

  “Wait here,” I tell Zi, and I go outside and rattle the gate until MaDudu comes outside.

  She’s tying a head cloth around her head, hurrying, and she greets me as though she needs to just hurry through the greeting. “Hawu, Khosi,” she half-shouts, half-pants. “You must be wondering…”

  “Yebo,” I say, “who was here? What happened? Must I call the police?”

  “Oh, little one, it was your auntie and her husband,” she says. “They came with a bolt cutter. They took away some few things in his bakkie.”

  Of course, they have met Nhlanhla, and they have a key to the place, so that is why she behaved as though nothing were wrong.

  “I came out and asked them what they were doing,” MaDudu continues. “They said that though they could not have the house, they were simply taking the rest of Gogo’s things, which rightfully belong to them. What could I do, my child? It is tradition.”

  My shoulders droop. “Couldn’t they wait until I was here?”

  “I asked them the same question, mtanami,” she says. And then she lowers her voice, as though people might be listening, though there is nobody around. “Your auntie said she would rather die than see you again. She told me I should also be worried, living next door to a witch. I told her you were not a witch, and she laughed and said you have bewitched me also.” MaDudu is telling me all of these things and she knows me but way back, I sense that she is frightened.

  “You don’t believe her, do you, Gogo?” I ask.

  “Oh, no,” she says, and the fear is replaced with a flame of indignant pride. “No, no, no! You, Khosi Zulu, an umthakathi? Never! But I fear for you. They are very angry with you, your family, they are very angry over these things. And anger is like a hungry snake, it just eats the rat whole. My child, it makes me wonder what they are willing to do to bring you to your knees.”

  This is the thing I wonder also.

  I go inside and explain to Zi that Auntie Phumzile came back for the rest of Gogo’s things. And then I sit on the floor of the living room, back against the wall, staring at the empty space where the TV used to sit.

  I suppose I have been hoping that someday soon, a big wind of common sense would blow across my auntie’s anger, and she would come to me and say, Let us let this thing lie. We are family. We must be family again.

  But now I know, that was foolishness. Zi and I, we are like the common cattle, separated from the herd, alone in the world without a family.

  Ngikhathele, I’m so tired, I want to curl up into a big ball and sleep until next week.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE RECKONING

  But of course I don’t sleep. No, no, I stay awake all night, realizing a simple truth. It is time to face all the problems in my life. And the main problem is Little Man. If he won’t answer my texts, and he isn’t coming by to see me, I’ll go to him.

  The next day, instead of taking Zi to school, we wait until mid-morning and then, despite the rain and the mud, we walk up the hill towards Little Man’s house. It’s not far, about a fifteen-minute walk, but I go slow. Partly so we don’t slip, partly just to give myself enough time for what I’m facing. Walking up to Little Man’s house always makes me think about how far we’ve come and now, apparently, how far we still have to go. Because whatever is going to happen next, Little Man will
always be a part of my life. It’s time I told him why.

  Zi holds my hand and walks quietly beside me. This is completely uncharacteristic of her and I find myself glancing at her from time to time, wondering what’s going on inside her head. Zi is one of these exuberant little girls, so loud you never stop to think that she has her own thoughts kept up inside her.

  I’ve never asked her to tell me what she thinks. For example, what did she think about when Mama died? Or, more recently, Gogo’s death? We cried together, but I did not ask her to tell me how she felt. Why not? It is my business to find out what people think and feel, that is a big part of what healing is all about, but I’m afraid of my nine-year-old sister’s feelings!

  The road is slick with water and our shoes are soon tacky from the mud. They make a thick sound like the X in Zulu, the sound of the tongue clicking against the inside of the cheek. The only other sound is the soft hiss of rain as it plops on the ground.

  We pass the place where Little Man kissed me for the first time. It’s nothing special—a fence on the side of the road, an open field behind it, but it hid us from prying eyes. That was three years ago. I was only fourteen and he was fifteen. By the time he kissed me, we’d known each other a long time and I already knew he’d be in my life…well—forever.

  No matter what happens with Sifiso, that is the truth. Little Man is the father of the child I am carrying. He must be part of this, part of me, always.

  “Khosi,” Zi breaks the silence.

  “Ja?”

  “I like Sifiso,” she says.

  “Yes,” I agree.

  “I like his laugh,” she says.

  “Oh?” I say. “Why?”

  “It has kindness in it.”

  Her words are hard little stones pelting my tender skin.

  We continue in silence again. Then: “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Why are you sorry?” I want to be angry with her but I don’t have it in me. Right now, I just have to think about what to say to Little Man.

  “I’m sorry if I ruined it,” she says. “By asking about Little Man.”

  “Eh,” I grunt. I don’t know what else to say.

  She sighs loudly, in between the ticky-tacky sound of her shoes lifting from the mud’s clutch.

  “Kulungile,” I finally say, just so she feels better. “I do not believe you can say ‘what happens is meant to be,’ because if that is true, it means we are not responsible for the bad choices we make. But I do know the ancestors have something to say about all of this.”

  That reminds me that I have a lot to talk to them about: Sifiso and Little Man. Ahmed. My schooling. The baby, the one I’ve been ignoring in all my conversations with them.

  But first, I have to do this thing. So again, I put one foot in front of the other and keep walking.

  Little Man’s mother comes to the door, hand to her mouth. Whenever I see her, I catch my breath a little. If she was a man, she’d look exactly like Little Man. He carries her face on his shoulders, but in every other way, he is like his Baba, a man I only met once.

  “Sawubona, ninjani, Khosi,” she greets me. Then she looks behind her, over her shoulder, like she’s worried about somebody in the house overhearing us.

  “Is Little Man here?” I ask.

  She shakes her head no and looks left and right, checking the surroundings. Then she lowers her voice: “He’s in hospital.”

  “What?” My voice sounds unnecessarily loud. She waves her hands around as if to remind me to quiet down.

  “Somebody shot him,” she whispers.

  “Who? When?”

  “I don’t know. It is two days now.”

  Two days already? And I am just now learning about it?

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I demand. I’m on the edge of tears. She can see it. I can’t let her see me cry though. If Little Man and I ever have a future together, I will be her makoti—the daughter-in-law—and she must never see I am weak because she will use it against me. I will already lack power in her family.

  She looks at the ground, though, and that tells me all I need to know about the state of things between me and Little Man.

  “I would have come,” I say, but my anger is like shaking a spear in the wind. It will do no good. “I would have prayed for him,” I say, more quietly this time. “Tell me what you know. Was he working at the time? For Bo?”

  She nods and again looks around. Fearful. They must be watching.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  She shakes her head. Helpless. “If you want to visit him, go. He’s at Edendale. I don’t know if he’ll be glad to see you or not…”

  Her voice trails off and the door closes behind her. I rock back and forth on my heels. What now? What now? Tears drip down my face. All this time, I’ve been mad at him and he’s been in hospital…he could have died and I wouldn’t have known…

  But her last words sink in. Little Man might not be glad to see me, all because of our stupid fight. All because I didn’t think my sister would be safe riding in a taxi that, I am sorry to say now, clearly was not safe.

  I’m not sure who should be the target of the sudden anger flooding my entire being. Little Man, for not calling me from the hospital? His family, for not telling me? The ancestors, for keeping all of this secret? Little Man for the way he’s been behaving? And I thought we were so connected. Connected forever. Even this little baby buried deep inside me can’t do that if nobody else reaches out a hand to keep the connection alive.

  Zi puts her hand in mine. “Woza, Khosi, let’s go.”

  I follow her, numb, not thinking about where we’re going until I look up and realize we have passed the road to our house and are walking towards the main road that goes up to the hospital.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “We have to visit him,” Zi says.

  I glare at her. “We don’t have to do anything, Zi!”

  She plants her little feet firmly on the ground and glares right back at me. I suck in my breath. Just like Little Man looks like his mother, Zi looks like Mama. The same beautiful, vivacious face. The same stubbornness. “You have to do this,” she insists.

  I don’t know if she’s right or not but I don’t have the will to resist. So we keep going. Down the hill, then following the road up the hill to Edendale. Tiny rivulets of rain water rush past in the ditch beside us. I watch the flowing trickle as we trudge up the hill.

  The hospital’s red-brick building looks dreary to me in the hazy smog of mid-day and misty rain. We enter to even bleaker décor, a long hallway with a checkered floor and mint green walls. Although it’s clearly clean, something about the way it smells makes me want to turn around and leave. So much for wanting to be a nurse… a dream that dies a little more every single day I’m not in school anyway…

  The security guard at the front desk directs us to Little Man’s room and tells us that visiting hours end in fifteen minutes. So we hurry through the desolate halls, searching for his room. The fact that we can visit him fills me with hope, even as I dread seeing him. What am I going to say? What is he going to say?

  He’s sleeping, a shock of his curly hair sticking straight up like a pillar.

  When I first met Little Man, it was his dreadlocks I fell for, his easy smile, the respectful and funny way he talked to me. Asleep, I see none of that, just the gentle way his face is aging into the man he’s becoming—an uneasy marriage between the funny, kind boy I have always known and something harder and willing to fight.

  His right arm is heavily bandaged and an IV feeds him fluids.

  Zi stands at the foot of his bed while I take the chair beside him, wondering if I should wake him up or leave him alone. He shifts in his sleep and I can’t help it, I reach out for his hand.

  His eyes fly open.

  “Little Man,” I whisper.

  He jerks his hand away and closes his eyes again. “Go away,” he says.

  “What?” I hear what he says but I can’t believe he
said it.

  “Go away,” he says. “You don’t care about me anyway.”

  I’m silent for a full minute, biting back the stream of angry words. The room smells astringent mixed with that terrible yellowish smell of the ill and the dying, something that can never be scrubbed clean no matter how much disinfectant you use.

  “If I didn’t care,” I say, making my voice as steady as possible, “I wouldn’t bother fighting with you. You don’t fight with people unless, in some way, you care.”

  A tear trickles down the side of his face.

  “And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care,” I add.

  Zi opens her mouth. I reach out and put my hand over her lips. I don’t know what she’s about to say but God help her if she tells him I almost didn’t come to visit. She brushes my hand away.

  “We miss you, Little Man,” she says. “Where have you been?”

  Eyes still closed, his fingers grope across the sheet until he finds my hand. He grips it, hard, like he’s never going to let go. “Thanks for coming,” he says. After a brief pause, “Thanks for not leaving when I told you to go.” He is silent for a long while and then says, “I miss you.”

  I should tell him I miss him too, which is true, but I am afraid to say it because of what it might mean or what it might do. Should I try to fix this rift between us? I swallow back the words forming in response. “What happened?” I ask instead.

  His words tumble out, thick and dull, as though his tongue is swollen—but maybe it’s just his attempt to keep back the flood of tears. “Happy, one of Langa’s men, shot me while we were fleeing.”

  I don’t ask why they were fleeing. Why, because I’m a coward.

  I want to reach out and touch his hand but hold myself back. “Where did the bullet hit you?”

  “The bullet went straight through my arm,” he says. “Shredded the bone. They say it’s minced, like meat. The docs want to cut it open, mess around, see what they can fix. I’m supposed to enter the surgery theatre in the morning…”

  “Does it hurt?” Zi asks.

  He smiles at her and there’s something so weary in that smile—so old like he’s eighty instead of eighteen—that I feel tears prick the corners of my eyes. “Yebo, but they have been giving me pain killers so it’s not so bad.”