Under Water

by JL Powers

  “Eish, Little Man. This is terrible,” I say. “What are you going to do?”

  “What else can I do?” Suddenly, he struggles as though he wants to sit up. “Hey! Will you take a message to Bo?”

  “That depends,” I say slowly. “What’s the message?”

  Little Man’s voice drops to a half-whisper. “Langa’s here too, three doors down. I saw them wheel him in.”

  My heart stands still. “Why does Bo need to know that?”

  Little Man shrugs. “I just think he’ll be curious, that’s all.” The lie rolls off his tongue so easily…

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” I ask, my angry words like teeth, biting.

  “Khosi, no! You’ve always been the smartest girl I know.” His shocked act hardens the anger in my heart.

  “Then tell me why would Bo need to know that Langa is in the hospital, three doors down from you? Is it so that Bo can take over Langa’s turf while he’s sick? Or will he send somebody to the hospital to finish Langa off?”

  “Maybe Bo would like to pray for Langa’s soul.” He grins, a shaky grin that masks deception.

  “Do you think this is a joke?” I ask. “Do you think this is funny?”

  The amadlozi whisper whisper whisper but one word from Mkhulu is abundantly clear: Hamba.

  I grab Zi’s hand and yank her towards the door. “Come,” I say. “We’re leaving.”

  “Khosi, don’t be like that,” he pleads.

  “Be like what?” I shout.

  Hamba hamba hamba.

  “Do you want me to sit by and say nothing while you take both of our lives and throw them away?” I keep yelling. “And for what? For a job you’ll only keep for a few months longer before you’re dead or in prison? Ngeke! Ngiyabonga but no thank you.”

  I stalk out of the room, dragging Zi behind me. I don’t say sala kahle or anything. Because I don’t want him to sala kahle. He doesn’t need to stay well, he needs to stay badly hurt because it might force him to change.

  “Khosi?” Zi says outside the door.

  “Yebo?”

  “What… what were you doing? Was that—goodbye?”

  I take a big gulp of air into my lungs, all that deadly hospital air, and release it. Somewhere inside, a deep, nameless ache suggests that goodbye is the truth.

  “I think so,” I admit.

  “Will I ever see him again?” she asks in a lost little voice, the same lostness that I feel.

  I don’t have an answer for her. “Woza.” I tug her hand and she follows, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  I’m so relieved to be out of that stifling room. It hurts that I’m so glad to be away from Little Man, I’ve never felt that way before.

  A queer loneliness pricks my heart.

  The hallway corridor is empty. We progress slowly, glancing inside. It takes me a few doors before I realize I’m looking for Langa.

  A few doors down, there he is. He’s hooked up to even more machines than Little Man, and his head is bandaged. Did they shoot him in the head? And by “they,” was it Bo or Little Man who shot him?

  What will I do if I find out that Little Man was the shooter? Is that something I could possibly forgive? Even condone? The truth forces itself up between my lips in a sudden explosive Cha. No! If he has done this thing, he must pay.

  Zi puts her hand in mine and we watch the tall, thin man, his chest moving up and down in rhythm to his even breathing. He still hasn’t stirred. The big man, the dangerous man, the one that people in the township are afraid of, looks vulnerable and alone, hooked up to machines, blood seeping through his head bandage.

  I step inside, circle the bed, watching him carefully. And then I start to pray, the words I memorized long ago as a child in church falling from my lips. At long last, the protective charm he requested and which I did not feel I could give… But seeing him now…the words form on my lips.

  “Lord of the Skies, protect him. Protect him from the terror of the night, Lord, and the arrow that flies by day. Protect him from the pestilence that stalks in darkness. Protect him from the destruction that lays waste at noon.”

  Using some of the lavender water I keep in the pouch by my side, I make the sign of the cross over the doorpost.

  Langa senses the movement and his head shifts ever so slightly, just long enough for me to see fear flood his face. He opens his mouth and starts screaming at the top of his lungs.

  “What are you doing here, you witch?” he screams.

  “No, no—” I start to say.

  “Get out!” he screams. “Get out get out get out!”

  Zi grabs my wrist and we whirl through the halls, down the stairs, out into the open air. And there, just outside the front entrance, is MaNene, wheeling in a young man in a wheelchair.

  “Mama!” I’m shocked into speaking. I look closely at the man she’s wheeling in. Her son. Or one of them, at least.

  She shrinks back. Moves in front of the wheelchair, shielding her son with her body. “Wena!” she screams. As though I’m going to hurt him. “Leave him alone!” she cries.

  “I’m not going to do anything to him,” I say. I feel bewildered. Between Langa and now her… “What happened to him?”

  “What do you mean, what happened to him?” she yells. “You of all people, you ask this?”

  She jerks him forward now, as though to show off his limp body, his useless limb encased in bandages.

  “This is your work, you witch! He was shot during a taxi run. You think I don’t know you did it? Wena, you said you’d come after us if my sons did anything they shouldn’t. I never should have come to you.” Her sobs shake her whole body.

  “Mama…” That’s the only thing I can say.

  She starts running inside so fast, her son jerks around in the wheelchair, a flopping doll. He looks like he might fall out.

  I gasp and lean over. I retch and retch. Dry heaves, gasps that rack me from head to toe. A long sliver of silver drool dangling from my lips. My whole body, wanting to empty itself. But nothing comes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  HAMBA

  They wake me in the middle of the night with just one word, the same word they spoke to me when I started this journey three years ago. Hamba.

  Where we’ll go, I don’t know, but I know better than to hesitate. I place jugs of water and packages of Marie biscuits in a thick bag that belonged to Gogo, something Auntie overlooked or did not want.

  I wake Zi gently.

  “What’s going on, Khosi?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.

  “We’re leaving for a few hours…or days…or weeks,” I say. “We have things we must do.”

  “What?” She’s wide awake now, struggling to get out of bed. Her little fingers, surprisingly strong, grip my arm, as if I’m going to disappear—or leave without her. I gather her in my arms and then put on her school backpack—filled instead with supplies—over her winter jacket.

  I lock the house carefully, making sure all the lights are out. With Nhlanhla at our side, we step out of the gate in the darkness of the night.

  I take very little because I know that the ancestors will take care of us, since they are the ones that called. Yet I cannot help but look behind me at the house. Will we ever return?

  The streets are completely empty, not even tsotsis are out at this hour. Taking Zi’s hand, we head out into the unknown.

  Sometimes you are surprised at what the amadlozi tell you to do, where they lead you. When you set off, you don’t know where you’re going but somehow you end up exactly where you were meant to be.

  And here I am again, at the witch’s house, at the top of the hill.

  The witch’s yard is littered with concrete statues—a graceless lightning bird, lurching into flight; a mischievous dwarf, the tokoloshe; and a series that depicts a girl who, as she dances, slowly turns into a snake. A lion’s tail and a full set of shark’s teeth, mouth included, dangle on a string over her stoop, just out of reach of the large Rhodesian Ridgeback t
rotting back and forth in front of the gate.

  This is the kind of medicine I could never practice. I ask you, what possible good could come from killing animals to harness their power? Would you be seeking peace? Accountability? Responsibility? Or reconciliation? No, the only thing you can seek with these parts of animals is more violence.

  Was it you? I ask my ancestor who first sent me here, so long ago, to get the goat for Gogo’s cleansing. The one I recognize as a great-great-great-grandmother, way back. Are you the one who sent me here?

  Ehhe, she agrees. Yes, my girl, it was me.

  Who is this woman, this umthakathi? I ask. Who is she to me?

  Of course I remember, all those years ago, when she dragged me into the spiritual world and tried to turn me into her zombie. But why did she target me then? And why is this ancestor of mine determined to send me to her?

  She is my sister’s child’s child, she answers.

  And I realize it in disbelief. We have a common ancestor. My grouchy ancestor, she can speak to us both. The witch and I are connected, forever and ever.

  I stare at the world in front of me. No wonder there was a goat waiting for me when I needed it.

  The witch’s dog growls and bares his teeth at us. Nhlanhla, never one to back down even if she’s smaller than the dog in question, parks herself in front of the gate and grins at the fierce dog, as if she knows that’s driving him nuts.

  “Thula!” the old woman yells at the dog to shut up. She limps out of her hut, practically unchanged from three years ago, wearing a print cloth wrapped around her body. I remember the way a gold tooth flashed in her mouth. If I didn’t know better, I’d look at her and just think old woman and I would call her Gogo out of respect. If she was wearing her headdress, I would recognize her as a sangoma and call her Makhosi.

  She stops and gazes at me and Zi, standing just outside her gate, then shuffles to the gate, shaking her head, tutting. “What is she doing here?” she murmurs to herself or probably to her own gogo or Babomkhulu. We may understand the nature of our work differently—the end purposes—but we both have voices in our head that refuse to thula.

  “What are you doing here?” she demands, grabbing the fence with both hands and shaking it until it rattles. This sends her dog into a new paroxysm of barking. She swats it with the back of her hand. He lays down at her feet and whines.

  “Oooh.” Zi winces. She doesn’t say it but we both feel for that poor dog.

  “Eh? What are you doing here?” she shouts at me.

  “Angaz,” I say. “The ancestors said go, so I went. They said come this way, so I came. I’m as surprised as you that I ended up here.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she says. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  She peers at me, squinting as though the sun were out, and I suddenly realize that she’s gone blind in one eye. Her grin reveals blackened gums where several of her teeth have fallen out. The gold tooth that used to distinguish her with its tell-tale glint? Completely gone.

  “What is it that you want?” she asks, suddenly suspicious. “I don’t do the kinds of things I used to do, not anymore.”

  The lion tail and shark’s teeth dangling from the roof of her hut suggest she’s lying. But maybe they are just leftovers from her old life.

  “I don’t want anything like that,” I say.

  She looks down her nose at Zi. “But I could use a girl like her to help me around here,” she shouts suddenly. “What do you want to trade her for?”

  Zi grabs my hand with a rock-hard grip.

  “I’m not here to trade my sister,” I say.

  She snorts. “A sister is of no use to you,” she says. “But a zombie who will do your bidding, who will do all your work? If you don’t want to leave her here with me, you can pay me and I’ll turn her into a zombie for you.”

  She’s fixed Zi with her good eye and Zi seems frozen into place.

  I step between them, shielding my little sister. “I have no use for a zombie.”

  “Ehhe and you have no use for wealth either,” she snaps. “And you’re able to get all your own work done too without asking for help.” She grabs a tuft of my hair, yanking it so hard, my ear is level with her mouth. “If you came to spy on me and steal my secrets, I’ve already put a curse on you.”

  She releases my hair so suddenly, my head yanks backward. She looks at me, a strand of my hair caught in between her fingers, and grins. With one of my hairs, she can cast any kind of spell she wants to gain power over me.

  I’m in her grip already, I feel it, this slow sinking into something like wet concrete rapidly drying and I must use my wits to get out of it while I can.

  “I thought you said you don’t practice that kind of medicine anymore,” I say slowly.

  Her grin fades and she lets the hair go. It flies away in the wind. “I don’t.”

  “Anyway, I do not want your secrets. You claim I’m here to seek your secret for generating wealth. Did all your years of practicing witchcraft lead you to this?” I throw out my hand as if encircling her yard and house. “You have nothing to envy or desire. No treasure here. So why should I listen to you? What secrets do you have to share?”

  She smiles, almost delighted with my words. “What is it you see when you look at my yard?”

  Strange statues and animal parts. Things scattered randomly throughout. Old clothing piled in corners. Yet no matter that it is full, it feels so much empty.

  “Rubbish,” I say. “If I were to step into your yard, I would feel like I was suffocating.” Madness—that is what I see in all those statues.

  Complete and utter madness. And that is nothing I wish to step into. Oh, mysterious ancestors, please tell me why you sent me here.

  “It is a problem, this thing you have of not seeing,” she says. “A sangoma is only as powerful as her eyes. You think you see but you cannot see through the darkness. You see light only.”

  “Then how is it I see you? You are not light.”

  “That is what you think,” she says, “because you see only what you expect to see. That is your weakness. Do you think there is no light in darkness? And no truth in evil?”

  My lips feel dry. I have no response. Her words are like being knocked over by a goat.

  “You crave order,” she says, “you fear anything else and so you cannot help people in their chaos.”

  “No, you are lying!” I shout but I feel it, this deep fear filling up the emptiness inside of me. I thought I was full too, though not full of concrete statues and animal parts, full of good things like love for Zi and Little Man and now Sifiso and the people the amadlozi send to me but here it is: nothing. Nothing at all inside except fear.

  I gulp back the sudden sob and a tear rolls down my cheek.

  “Wena, you may lack eyes, but do you have ears? Listen! The ancestors sent you here.”

  “I know,” I say, subdued.

  “Your problem, little girl, is that you don’t understand evil.” There is something in her voice that inevitably becomes a cackle, no matter how serious she is being. “You don’t even want to understand evil. How do you expect to fight evil if you do not understand it? If you cannot sympathize with it?”

  “Sympathize with evil?” Everything in me wants to recoil, to reach back in my mind and deflect her words and her presence. And yet the amadlozi sent me here. That includes not just goat-woman but Gogo and Mkhulu. Maybe even Mama. Am I meant to learn from her or learn despite her? “I won’t choose evil,” I say. “I refuse.”

  She laughs at me. “Stupid child.” As she laughs, head back, there’s nothing to block the stench of her mouth.

  Zi flinches and shrinks behind my back.

  “Did you never read the Bible?” she asks. “Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves. You,” she belches in my face. “You are a failure. Hah! You’ll never be the sangoma you could be or that you want to be because you lack the fundamental, most important skill a sangoma possesses.”

  “What?” I a
sk. A little desperate. “What is it? What do I lack?”

  “Hah! Hah hah hah! I just told you…and yet still you don’t know. Go away. Hambani, both of you, get out of here before I show you what I’d like to do to you.” She gets down on both knees and then her belly and slithers right through the holes of the gate and towards us, stinging Zi’s legs with her mouth as Zi starts screaming. “I’m going to eat you, little girl,” she hisses. “You’re going to go down my belly in the dark…”

  Nhlanhla nips at her. Half of her face splits open, revealing her rotting teeth, and she snarls at her.

  Cha! No, she isn’t getting away with this. I hold up my hand. “Leave Nhlanhla alone.”

  She dances and sways, imitating a cobra, growing taller and taller and taller until we’re looking the serpent in the face.

  “You want power?” she asks. “You’ll never have power.”

  I reach out and grab her by the throat. “And I already said you are a liar,” I say. “I will have power. I will be more powerful than you ever were. But I will use my power for good.”

  She’s choking for a second, starts shrinking until I’m no longer looking at a serpent but only the old woman—an aging, ugly witch. She has the ability to look like anything she wants, to make herself appear beautiful, but I have to respect her for this at least: she doesn’t lie about who she is.

  I let go and she gags a little, gasping for air.

  “Siyahamba, Zi,” I say.

  Taking Zi’s hand and clicking my tongue at Nhlanhla to come, I turn around and march back down the hill.

  “Don’t be so afraid all the time,” the witch calls after me. “If amadlozi brought you here, they are telling you not to fear all these many things.”

  My legs are wobbly and I squeeze Zi’s hand hard.

  What was that about, Mkhulu?

  Didn’t you listen to her? he says. If you were listening, she told you exactly what you need to know.

  His voice shuts off in an annoyed, hopeless sort of huff and I realize that I’m alone. That’s an awkward feeling. So much of the day and night, I spend navigating their voices, trying to please them. And then when they suddenly disappear? I wonder what I did wrong. Like just now. The witch said I was useless. And apparently, the witch handed me some nugget of wisdom and I didn’t recognize it. I hope it’s not gone forever.