The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  This was an old security hut behind the Indeco Flats – a kind of open-air brick closet. Loveness had cleverly constructed a roof by lashing old plastic bottles together and weighing them down with stones. The light that came through that roof was murky, but sometimes spun with rainbows and when it rained, it sounded like you were inside a giant silimba. Loveness kept an mbaula outside, where she fried vitumbua to sell. She told Sylvia she had chosen this place after running away from her uncle’s house.

  ‘I just left,’ Loveness said with a toss of her plaits, which she had been on her way to get done when she met Sylvia – the bulging bag had been full of wig. ‘I got tired of that man making moves. Anyway, he was too big for me. Ouch!’ Loveness giggled. ‘Pass the ciggies?’

  Sylvia handed over the box of Pall Malls. Loveness lit one, inhaled, then blew out a steady stream of smoke. She offered it to Sylvia, who declined.

  ‘You know, in this life’ – Loveness sucked musingly on the cigarette – ‘all you really need is love.’

  Sylvia nodded, wondering whether to tell her about Mr Mwape or Mwaba or Francis.

  ‘That’s why I changed my name.’ Loveness tilted her head and smiled as she sang it out: ‘Loveness!’ She always pitched her voice higher when she said it. ‘Doesn’t it suit?’

  Sylvia nodded again, looking at the cigarette. She had never seen a girl smoke. Impulsively, she plucked it from between Loveness’s fingers and sucked on it softly – puff puff puff like a toy train.

  ‘No,’ said Loveness, plucking it back. ‘Hold the smoke in your mouth, then breathe it in.’

  She demonstrated, then placed the filter between Sylvia’s lips. Sylvia inhaled, holding the smoke in until it seared her lungs. Sylvia coughed and coughed. Loveness laughed and laughed. The coughing fit opened Sylvia’s bloodstream to the nicotine. The buzz hit like a swarm and she canted back, her head bumping gently against the wall of the security hut.

  * * *

  With Loveness’s tutelage, Mr Mwape became more manageable. The girls prepared for his afternoon visits in advance. Inside the security hut, Loveness would pinch Sylvia’s nose to make the hill a peak; plait a labyrinthine mukule into her hair; rub pink lippie into her cheekbones; paint her fingernails for her; and dab baby oil behind her ears in lieu of perfume. Sylvia would head inside the Indeco Flats, Loveness waving at her from the gates. There, in Aunty Cookie’s bedroom, she would choose a dress to wear, and wait for Mr Mwape to arrive.

  After a few weeks of this, the girls resolved that Sylvia should skip the dress entirely and go straight for the satin lingerie Aunty Cookie kept in the back of a drawer. Sylvia had to tie a knot on the side so the panties fit her hips and stuff tissue into the cups of the bra so it wouldn’t sag. But when Mr Mwape found her in this get-up, sprawled out on Aunty’s bed, the tic under his left eye went manic, twitching like a moth against a lit bulb. He panted and sweated, his hands like animals trying to escape, his trousers tighter than they’d ever been. Despite all this strain, however, he did not pull off Sylvia’s borrowed panties that day.

  ‘What does he mean, I’m still a little girl?’ she complained to Loveness that evening.

  ‘Maybe you haven’t pulled enough,’ Loveness shrugged.

  ‘What do you mean, pulled?’

  Loveness told her all about it. How you have to pull your malepe until they stretch – as long as your thumb – so that with the right stimulation, they swell with blood and grasp the man’s mbolo. ‘It’s simple,’ she said.

  Sylvia stared at Loveness. ‘Show me?’

  And she did. The girls took off their chitenges and panties and sat facing each other, knees bent, thighs spread. ‘Like this,’ said Loveness. Later, she showed Sylvia how to use Vaseline and umuthi juice from impwa to ease the pulling, and gave her a splitted stem to wedge the labia open. Sylvia was late to this and it burned at first. But it soon became her favourite game: to sit knee-to-knee in the sweet, yeasty funk of the brick hut and pull with Loveness, gazing at her lips, the pink inner flesh bared like a fruit bursting from its peel.

  If a customer came by for a chitumbua, the girls would pull their clothes on in a fit of giggles. They would emerge from the shadowy chamber and perform tasks in silent coordination over the mbaula – ladling the lumps of dough into the vat of oil, exchanging cash and change, draining the crispy golden balls, wrapping them in newspaper and handing them over with a ‘zikomo kwambili’. Loveness was uniformly languid in her movements, aloof and drifty, and she’d often sell vitumbua with her head turned the whole time, as if looking at something infinitely more interesting.

  * * *

  The lingerie did wonders: Mr Mwape started to bring Sylvia gifts – a bottle of perfume; a new, better-fitting bra. She was on the verge of making specific requests from her Wishful List when they got caught. One afternoon, the bedroom door banged open and Aunty Cookie was there in the room in a powder-blue trouser suit, home early from work. Sylvia expected to be cursed at or beaten, but Aunty barely looked at her. Keeping her eyes fixed on Mr Mwape, who was trying to cover himself with a frilly pillow, Aunty simply stretched out her arm and pointed at the exit. Sylvia hastily wrapped herself in a chitenge and hopped through the door, which was promptly slammed in her face. Sylvia pressed her ear to it.

  ‘…long have you been plotting this…this…this sheer perversity?!’ Aunty cried.

  ‘Ha! How old were you when you seduced me in Kasama? Fourteen?’

  ‘Eighteen! The girl calls you Daddy for goodness gracious me!’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  ‘Are you saying that I raised this female for you?!’

  ‘Female?!’ he scoffed. ‘Don’t you mean blackmail?’

  Sylvia snuck across the corridor to her bedroom and closed the door, her heart bouncing unhappily. She put on her pyjamas and lay there watching the sun set outside her window. After an hour of shouting, she heard the front door to the flat slam. A moment later, her bedroom door opened, letting in electric light. She leaned up but she couldn’t see Aunty Cookie’s expression with the brightness behind her head.

  ‘Sorry, Ba Aunty—’ The door shut before Sylvia could finish.

  When she woke up the next morning, the flat seemed the same as usual. Aunty Cookie had already gone to work at the National Registration Office. Traffic on the main road honked and rushed by. Sunlight flickered in through the curtains. The cornflakes box sat on the table, with that rooster in the colours of the Zambian flag. The only difference, it seemed, was that Aunty’s bedroom door, with its treasure chest of womanly things, had been locked. Sylvia bathed and got dressed and went to find Loveness.

  Her friend was asleep inside the security hut, curled around the mbaula, which she had dragged inside to keep warm. Her skin was coated in an undisturbed blanket of ash and there was dried blood in the cracks of her big lips. Sylvia didn’t wake her. She took the mbaula outside and lit it and fried up some buns. Loveness emerged, squinting and sniffing. As they chewed their greasy, salty breakfast – Sylvia’s second of the day – Loveness explained the blood on her lips. To do that, she had to explain the man who hit her – who he was and how they’d met. By the end of the story, Loveness had retraced all the staggering steps between running away from her uncle’s house and the bruises on her face and neck.

  ‘Me, I must also run.’ Sylvia shook her head. ‘Ba Mwape is like your uncle. He’s sick.’

  ‘Awe, no!’ Loveness swallowed the lump of chitumbua in her mouth. ‘Mr Mwape is a soft man! He brings you presents. He takes care of you. Pampering is very good!’

  ‘But these men you talk about – they also bring you presents! Me, I can do what you do.’

  ‘No, Syls.’ Loveness stared into space, picking at her cuticles. ‘You cannot do what I do. It’s dangerous. Have you not seen that the police are rounding us up again? All these tuma “unaccompanied women” raids. No, you must stick to
your Mr Mwape.’

  ‘Mwape is small potatoes. I want the big potatoes. From the hotels.’

  ‘You’re too young for that.’

  ‘We’re the same age.’ Sylvia rolled her eyes. ‘You just want the customers for yourself.’

  A smile snuck onto Loveness’s face and Sylvia stuck her tongue out and then they were giggling. The two girls spent a lazy, happy day together: frying buns and selling them, crooning into paper cones, devising their futures. Someday, they would open a hair salon, maybe combine it with a nail parlour. Sylvia had no patience for market money, the baffling accounts of who owed so-and-so such-and-such, tiny numbers fluctuating like the udzudzu over the trashy ditches between stalls. They decided that Loveness would keep track of the business side of things while Sylvia worked on choosing styles and products. Between them, they finished two Mosis and six Pall Malls trying out names. Hair Today, Gown Tomorrow. Up in the Hair. The Hairport.

  Sylvia swayed up the stairs at the Indeco Flats as the sun set, wondering what punishment Aunty Cookie had in store for her at home. The silent treatment? Sylvia pulled her key from the knot in her chitenge. No TV time? The key slid into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. She pulled it out and examined it. Extra chores? She slid it in again and twisted in vain. Only then did she realise that the look on her aunt’s face yesterday had not been one of anger or disgust. Sylvia had stolen Mr Mwape from Aunty Cookie. There was no punishment equal to that humiliation. Sylvia didn’t even bother knocking.

  * * *

  One warm Thursday night, a month after she moved into the security hut with Loveness, Sylvia decided it was time to try her luck. Under the eerie underwater light of the plastic-bottle roof, she gathered her tools: a lace camisole, a white blouse, a skirt she had sewn from a men’s t-shirt, and salaula stilettos that set her ankles spinning. Using a child’s pocket mirror, she applied foundation, rouge and red lipstick. Then she began the mile-long march from the Indeco Flats to her destination.

  A Lusaka evening: a purpling sky, woodsmoke from supper fires, mosquitoes singing delirious rounds, the clapping and chanting of a church meeting, the bitter smell of car exhaust. Sylvia teetered through it, so anxious it felt like she’d eaten something still alive and rotating. She had chosen to make her debut at the Ridgeway, knowing that Loveness went to the Pamodzi on Thursdays. But the two hotels were precariously close to each other – kittycorner across an intersection – and the party girls who worked them would definitely report it to Loveness if they saw Sylvia. By the time she reached the Pamodzi, her stilettos were dangling from her fingers by their ankle straps and sweat had seriously compromised her make-up. She wiped her feet clean in the cool grass under the neon hotel sign, squeezed back into her heels and stepped wincingly into the hotel.

  Avoiding the bellboys, she made her way through the gauntlet of apamwamba guests in the lobby – a businessman sitting with legs crossed reading the Times of Zambia, a muzungu with a rotting nest of dreadlocks smoking a cigarette, a young woman in glasses reading a book – wait, was that…? It was. Mutale was wearing jeans and a bulky sweater – that girl had never taken proper advantage of having the money for fashion. She was probably here for a fancy dinner with her parents. As if sensing eyes on her, Mutale looked up from her book.

  Sylvia pulled her plaits forward to hide her face behind the swinging curtain and picked up her pace as much as her heels would allow. She hadn’t spoken to Mutale since abandoning her at the Agricultural Show and hadn’t seen her since leaving school. As Sylvia reached the exit to the poolside area, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a tall figure approach Mutale. Was that…? It was. Mwaba! Sylvia hustled outside, feeling a clutch of shock in her throat. But then it released – something had shifted. She smiled to herself. Those two were just schoolchildren.

  It was a warm night. The Ridgeway swimming pool glowed smooth and white under the big moon. As Sylvia moved towards the outdoor bar, she felt eyes following her and her confidence began to grow. She had deliberately worn clothes that showed you what to do with her body. Her loose shirt drooled off her shoulders and gasped open at her cleavage. The folds of her skirt grasped her hips and caressed her thighs as she walked, cloth fingers inviting human ones to join them. She propped herself on a bar stool, tossed her plaits and ordered a Mosi.

  The bartender gave her a wary look but caved easily to the kwacha she waved at him. This cash – saved from sales of vitumbua over the last few months – was the only reason Sylvia could be at this luxurious hotel instead of at a shebeen. She cast her eyes around. Tourists, local businessmen, a few wives, no party girls just yet. She closed her eyes and listened to the subtle music of affluence: swishing palm trees, tinkling ice cubes, murmurous conversation, and a certain absence of sound, too – a lack of urgency, of complaint. She felt a swell of resentment at Loveness for keeping her from…

  ‘Cheers.’

  Sylvia opened her eyes. A grizzled muzungu in a limp suit had slid onto the stool beside her, holding a tumbler of whisky towards her. She clinked her bottle of beer against it and sipped.

  ‘Vhut is your name?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ Sylvia pouted at him.

  She was not supposed to smile. I never smile for free, Loveness always said. No smiles until he buys me a drink. The man laughed and went ahead and told her his name, then where he was from. He bought her a drink, then another. After two more hours of pouting and drinking and eventually not just smiling but laughing, Sylvia found herself stumbling along a corridor, her shoulder glancing off walls rocky with framed paintings. The grey-haired muzungu (Dutch? Danish?) walked ahead, intermittently turning back to wave her on with a beer bottle.

  He closed the door to his hotel room behind them, pulled her into a hug, and said, ‘Hello,’ as if they had not already greeted. She extricated herself and stepped further into the room, which was clammy with air conditioning. She sat on the bed, took off her shoes and her skirt, and stretched back. The bed was like a bowl of vitumbua dough, soft and firm and creamy. She hadn’t slept in a bed since she’d been kicked out of Aunty Cookie’s flat, and she’d never slept in one like this. The man knelt over her on it and began fumbling his mouth over her skin, using his fingers to tug at her plaits and her nipples and her panties, as if they were all the same sort of object.

  When he finally put his thing inside her, it hurt but not as much as Loveness had said it would. Sylvia turned her head away from his astringent breath, wondering whether sex had been painful for Loveness when her uncle had first ‘started’ her. Sylvia closed her eyes and tried to picture the big fat man bouncing on top of the skinny little girl – Loveness before she was Loveness. Was she in the middle of doing this exact thing, at this very moment, across the road at the Pamodzi? At the thought, Sylvia felt a purring heat inside the pain below…The Danish-Dutchman interrupted her by cramming two crooked fingers into her mouth. Did this count as kissing? She wasn’t supposed to kiss customers. Sylvia decided that it didn’t and remembered to make some noises. The man responded immediately – bucked hard once, twice, stopped.

  There was a strained silence as he rolled off her and reached for a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. Sylvia asked him for one and he lit it for her. She sucked gently to draw the ember to life, then lay back on the damp pillow, trying to recall the price she had whispered in his ear at the bar. The exact centre of her body was ringing with a stinging, smarting sweetness. She was still drunk – a corner of the ceiling dove repeatedly, in a loop. She felt a double feeling: she missed her friend and she hated her friend. Sylvia took another drag, held the smoke in her mouth, then inhaled until her lungs burned.

  ‘Vhut is your name again?’ asked the Danish-Dutchman.

  ‘Loveness,’ she exhaled just as the buzz swarmed in.

  2007

  Back when Lusaka was a dusty old town, before it became the capital city, propeller planes would stutter down the dirt runway at Ci
ty Airport, bearing expats and dry goods into the country. After Independence, after the big international airport was built 25 kilometres east, the Zambian Air Force took over the old runway, and now only the rich and powerful landed their private planes at City Airport: soldiers, industrialists, bankers, politicians.

  Government built a fence around the perimeter and sprinkled some seeds at its base. Over time, bougainvillea spread along the wire mesh, dabbing like a paintbrush on canvas until the fence was a messy wall of green and pink. It shielded the wealthy and the foreign from having to see the local destitution across the road in Kalingalinga compound. For their part, the compound mothers forbade their children from going anywhere near those fences. ‘Who knows what those rich people are tossing?’ The bazungu especially, so temperamentally irritable, so red in the face for nothing, seemed capable of dropping anything out of the windows: books, diseases, car parts, bottles, cutlery, their own bodies even. But fences can rise only so high. People in the sky could see Kalingalinga from above – the roofs of shacks weave such a pretty patchwork! – and people on the ground could gaze up at the big silverbellied creatures flying overhead.

  As soon as the compound kids heard a roaring in the distance or felt vibrations in the ground, they would start running. ‘TEKAS TO AMELIKA! TEKAS TO AMELIKA!’ they would shout up at the plane as it buzzed above them. They would try out flight themselves, outstretched arms tilting to imitate a shaky lift-off, noses humming to make engine noises. They would run in a horde, throw their palms onto the ground and flip over, their thudding feet like a giant thrumming its fingers. Yes, all the Kalingalinga kids loved aeroplanes, but only Sylvia Mwamba’s son was obsessed with them. Long after the plane had passed and the other kids had moved on, Jacob alone would sit cross-legged, ground-bound, looking up.