She keeps quiet.
“Hiding,” you say.
“Does this make you frightening to yourself, Tambudzai? Being cooped up behind the door with all these fears?”
The hyena is tired. It does not laugh. It does not leap. All it does is lie there. The doctor looks at her watch and informs you that you still have fifteen minutes.
“People who fear greatly can sometimes substitute themselves for the thing they fear,” says Dr. Winton, looking at you in a way that makes you uncomfortable.
“I am ashamed,” you say.
“Of what?” the doctor asks.
“I don’t have the things that make me better. I want to be better. I want the things that make me.”
You circle round this matter for several minutes until Dr. Winton pulls your file forward. She scribbles on a sheet of austerity-quality duplicating paper, which kind of paper had been introduced during the war and retained after Independence. She purses her lips as though she is satisfied with the session. She books you in for another period.
“Do you want some?”
There is a woman behind the door. She talks to you when you return to the dayroom. She is shaped like a pear, with a shiny doek of black hair on her head. She is holding a breast out over the neck of her chiffon nightgown.
“Cecilia, stop that!” Student Nurse shouts at the pear-shaped person.
The woman tucks her breast back inside.
“Tie it up,” Student Nurse orders in a voice that makes you glad the nurse ignores you.
Cecilia pulls a face. She ties up the gown.
As soon as Student Nurse looks away, she pulls her breast out again.
“Have some,” she coaxes. “It will make you feel better.”
“Mrs. Flower!” Student Nurse shouts in exasperation as you back away into a sofa.
Mrs. Flower settles in a corner, turns her breast up, and sucks it. She looks over her shoulder, grins like a baby, and continues drinking.
“That’s enough,” orders Student Nurse. She kicks the brakes on the wheelchair she is pushing to locked.
“Get your blerry hands awf’a me, you great black whore,” wheezes the tiny old man in the wheelchair.
“Iwe, Mr. Porter,” Student Nurse snaps. “Don’t give me some more trouble!”
“Are you all right, Mrs. Flower?” Student Nurse asks, quietly rearranging her features. “Come, I will show you this.”
Student Nurse leads Mrs. Flower to the coffee table and puts a magazine in the woman’s hands. Mrs. Flower flicks through ragged, beverage-stained pages. One article describes how to knit a baby’s layette. Mrs. Flower bursts into tears.
Student Nurse shrugs her shoulders. She rounds on the cursing old grandfather in the wheelchair, whose insults she has been absorbing.
“Ed Porter, what have you done?” she scolds. “Did something scare you shitless? Is that why it’s happened again already!”
She grips the wheelchair’s handles and swings it toward the door through which you have just entered.
“You, oh yer black devil, didn’t yer hear me? Let go there,” the chair’s occupant yells and wheezes.
“Keep still,” Student Nurse says through gritted teeth. “You’ll dirty everything with your number two.”
Mr. Porter raises the cane he carries across his lap and endeavours to hook the crook around his assailant’s neck.
“Yer blerry black whore,” he howls at the woman who wheels him away. He pants as though his lungs, like his knuckles, are gnarled with arthritis.
Up the furious old man arcs his cane. Down it thwacks on Student Nurse’s shoulder.
The chair rolls toward you. Ed Porter manages to turn a wheel and stop it. Student Nurse revolves round the chair like a satellite, trying to find a way to her quarry.
“Mr. Porter, I’m sorry,” she finally says from a safe distance. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what you’ve done. All I want is to do my work.”
She approaches the chair to pry her patient’s hands from the stick. But Ed whirls his cane and clobbers her over her back, shouting, “Black whore! You filthy bitch!”
“Orderly,” Student Nurse yells at the assistant who escorted you. “Come over here. Help me get him!”
The orderly, who is chatting at the station, glances round and shrugs, saying she is going for lunch.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” yells Ed, triumphantly waving his stick.
The meal bell rings. You start moving with the rest of the patients.
“Mr. Porter! I’m not going to take you to your table as you are. If you get hungry later on, don’t think I am going to do anything to help.”
The old man’s hands grab at the chair’s rubber wheels. His bulbous fingers slip over the metal frame.
“Oi, give us a hand here, mate.” Pain and mortification pinch his face.
A tall young man whose forehead delves into blue caves where his eyes once looked out turns, too uncertainly and too slowly. The young man stops. One knee is bent, the foot is in the air. Just as slowly, a thought crawls into his mind until it lights up his eyes. Time is magnified endlessly for this youngster, Rudolph. He dreams his way over to Mr. Porter.
Mr. Porter glares viciously at Student Nurse and swings his cane as Rudolph pushes him to a table. Grinning, Student Nurse sidesteps neatly.
“Iwe! You, Mr. Porter,” she laughs. “What can I do if you want to eat like that? When you’ve finished, and maybe you’ve done some more, what then? I’ll still come and change you.”
“And a good afternoon to yer,” Ed puts his tormenter down superbly.
You drift past Ed in search of a seat in a current of shadows shuffling to their places.
“Are you in for drugs?” Rudolph says as he wafts away on his own search.
You shake your head.
“Have you?” Rudolph’s voice floats out, the way mist settles on mountains.
The boy’s sadness stops you in your tracks and you stare.
“I told you, didn’t I?” he asks.
“You, Rudolph, go and eat. You too, Tambudzai,” shouts Student Nurse.
“They … they put holes in it,” Rudolph says with regret. “With the … the smoke. So a wind whipped through … through it. That’s what they wanted, hey! So that it all comes out.” With a look of satisfaction he drifts further away.
You find a vacant seat opposite Mr. and Mrs. van Byl. She wears a pink bow in her hair, he a suit and tie. Both have real, different names, but they explain to each and every available ear that they are married. They hold hands and try to eat linked to each other until Student Nurse asks them to mind their table manners.
When you sit down you see Rudolph pause again in midstep. It takes him a long time to put his foot down.
Beside you, around the corner of the table, a woman’s head is bent low. Wisps of white, soft hair surround your companion’s head like a halo.
“Hello, dear,” she says, raising her head when you sit. Her face is all translucent skin, fragile as eggshells, rippling over brittle cheekbones when she smiles. Her joy over your taking a seat beside her collapses her mouth over her gums.
She picks up in her feeble fingers the spoon she dropped when she greeted you and proceeds to do her best with the soup, leaving her false teeth by her plate. “Do you think I should put them back in, dear?” she asks, trying to chew soft bits of vegetable. “I really don’t know whether or not I ought to.”
She sets her spoon down again and looks at you, expecting an answer.
“It depends,” you mutter.
“Well, that’s what I thought,” she says, revealing her gums once more in agreement. She picks up her dentures. “And I thought, I wonder if I’ll get on any better having them in or out.”
With a sigh she settles the dentures back in, takes a test mouthful, and stops to wiggle them into position.
“But I do like it here,” she goes on. “I do like this house better than the other one. It’s so much safer here and everyone’s very nice. I never felt sa
fe in the other house after I lost my husband. Did I tell you that I lost my husband, dear? It was during the war.”
You prevent yourself remembering something you do not want to recall. The effort plays havoc with your appetite. At one moment you do not want the slightest taste of anything; the next you are ravenous and gulp down every morsel.
“Who are you then, dear?” the old woman inquires when her own bowl is almost empty and you have been waiting for the main course for several minutes.
“Tambudzai,” you answer. The information leaves you reluctantly.
“I’m Mabel,” she replies and takes a long while spooning up a last mouthful with uncertain fingers. “My Frank always called me Mabs, but did I tell you I lost him during the war? Those people came and took him. In the night. They poked a gun in his ribs, just as if he was a piece of meat, and they took him away. I had a good woman who looked after me, but I don’t know what happened to my dog, Fido. Have you seen Fido by any chance?” she asks in her thin voice and peers around. “What did you say your name was, dear? Did you say it’s Edie?” she encourages you when you do not answer. “Is that what you said? I’m sure you did. Yes, Edie used to come and sit with me. I’m sure you’re my daughter Edie.”
Recognition lumbers up from the purple pool, like an ancient, clumsy animal.
“Borrowdale.” You shake your head at the mammoth in your memory. “I know your house. I saw you there, in Borrowdale.”
“I knew it.” Your companion beams with the low-wattage glow of elderly people. “What did they do with Fido, dear? Did they shoot him too when I left? I knew you’re my daughter Edie.”
Your companion fumbles at the edge of her plate and picks up a forkful of potato from the dish that has just been set in front of her.
A cruel smile hovers above your lips at the widow’s fall in the world that has made you and her and all the other white people in the establishment equal.
“I’m not your daughter,” you tell her. “My name is Tambudzai.” You pause. “Tambudzai Sigauke.”
“Are you sure?” the widow inquires after several seconds. “Aren’t you, dear? You’re not her? Well, that’s very strange. You’re the spitting image of my daughter Edie.”
You shake your head again. A vine unfurls deep within you. The spiteful grin cannot sit on its leaves.
“Well, if you’re not, that’s very kind,” the widow says. “It’s very kind of you to come down like this to see me.”
Drops brim in your eyes, plop into your gravy. You have no will to stop them.
“I want to give you something, dear,” the widow says. “It’s awfully kind of you to come all this way. I was so afraid before, I didn’t talk to anybody.”
Your companion puts down her knife and fork to pull at a large ring of gold and amber, repeating, as she struggles with it, that you are the spitting image of her daughter Edie.
“I can give you a bigger dose,” the nurse says when she comes to give you your injection. “To make the effect stronger. And work faster.”
Observing the flow of tears that began at lunchtime, she leans in closer and continues, “I want to ask you some questions. I need your help. I am doing my degree. There is a dissertation. I must have an interesting subject. You know, talking to me is good for you. We are the same, you and I! We are not like these European doctors. You know, so you mustn’t worry about anything, my sister, Tambu. You can just answer what I am asking.”
She inquires in a low, furtive voice, whether you are satisfied with your partner, how often you have sexual relations with him, and whether you feel that this part of your life has any bearing on your situation. As she puts these questions to you, she stares as though you are a book in which she has marked the most important chapter.
“Do you mind if I write the answers down?” she asks, more at ease now that the interview has begun.
You do not have the strength to do anything but gaze at this student nurse, the front of your linen robe wet with tears. At first her expression is expectant. It transforms to a disappointed glare. Eventually she slips her pen and small notebook into her uniform pocket as she walks away, leaving you once again feeling ashamed for reasons you cannot fathom.
CHAPTER 10
You discover you are the pool. The shadows in the dayroom are ponds. Together you form the ocean. This ocean pours from your eyes without end.
“Still like that?” snaps Student Nurse. “Do you want us to feel sorry for you? We haven’t heard that someone has died or anything.”
Cecilia Flower passes you over when she wanders round the dayroom offering her breast to people, as though the pool is poisonous. Ed Porter keeps abusing the student nurse. His shouting reaches you distantly. Mabs Riley, introducing herself again at every encounter, says she is astonished at how kind you are. She attempts to pull the ring off her finger, but fails each time. Bones shrink when people die, she says, or else they will use soap and then you will inherit it.
Although the old one is unaware of it, her spells of innocent generosity bequeath you an effective legacy, their repetition gradually persuading you that abandoned in your interior is a kernel of value. Efforts to disinter this more estimable remnant of your personality, though, are sabotaged by some wretched fragment, emptier than you dare remember, that can be loosened only by fresh torrents flowing over your cheeks. You exasperate the orderlies, who compel you to change your smock often. Finally they insist you carry a towel, which you forget to pick up when you change location so that they are obliged to assist you.
One day, when you have graduated out of the hospital gown into your own clothes, there are two people sitting beside you.
“It’s us. How are you, Tambudzai? Don’t you remember?” one of them asks sternly. In spite the gruff tone, you sense her anxiety.
There is a pause during which low, synchronized sighs tell you they have glanced at each other.
“Try,” she says. “Think! It’s me, your aunt Lucia. Here is Kiri with me.”
Thinking being the last thing you want to do, you resent these visitors with their masked voices asking troubling questions you neither can nor wish to grapple with. Discouraged and apprehensive at your silence, after the first few times they go away shaking their heads. Finally, when your state has confounded them on several further occasions, they begin to make jokes.
The afternoon that they resort to this tactic, Student Nurse has seated you next to Widow Riley in the garden. The woman has taken to pairing the two of you up, to calling you “murungu” when she orders you around since you are now a white woman’s daughter; and she laughs cadaverously at Widow Riley’s befuddlement. This treatment from Student Nurse of course causes your tears to cascade, which in turn prompts her to inquire roughly why you carry on like that before turning away with barely restrained mirth.
“It’s us again!” the woman with the louder voice begins at visiting hours this afternoon. “Don’t tell me you haven’t eaten or slept, Tambudzai. It looks like you’ve been sitting there since we last left you.”
Metal scrapes on the stone paving when they move their garden chairs closer. Their body heat radiates about you as they press forward and peer. It is stronger than before with a new pulse that is as captivating as a dance or song. A third presence accompanies them.
“What now? Shall we go again?” says the loud woman as softly as she is able. “Just wait a few more days?”
“Can this be sleep?” her companion wonders. “That never ends. With the eyes wide open like that? I’ve seen many things, but mmm, this, I’ve never seen it.”
The new woman catches her breath. “She’s dead,” she says, breaking the silent probing she has undertaken. “I mean dying!”
“If you’re dying you don’t cry like that,” says the first. “Your spirit is busy with other things and you use all your strength for departing. Anyway, this is the first time you’ve seen her. She’s been like this every time we’ve come. If she’s going home, she’s taking her time about it.”
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Metal scratches again on the paving stones. “Call the nurse,” the third insists loudly. “Nurse, nurse, Tambudzai’s not moving.”
“Sit down, Nyasha,” says the second woman, “don’t embarrass everybody. Dying doesn’t look like that. Didn’t you hear your aunt Lucia?”
“Is there something wrong with her?” Widow Riley asks. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my Edie. She sits there all day, nice and quiet. She’s such a good girl to come here to see me.”
There is a thud as Nyasha drops back into her chair, soothing the old woman with a murmur. A moment later, tissues dab your face.
“Lucia, when was it?” Christine says, to take the conversation in another direction. “When did you see eyes staring like that for the first time? Wasn’t it when everything was smashed and torn and red was white and white was red and floating in a river that was running out, that should have kept on running inside our sister’s body?”
Your tears flow faster. The woman wiping your tears replaces the wet tissue with a dry one.
“Right, Kiri,” relents your aunt Lucia, a relative of the womb, being your mother’s younger sister. “Yes, we did see our sisters looking back like that, as though they were dead, although still living.”
Christine grunts a hoarse laugh. “So, little sister Nyasha, the next time you see a corpse that cries, call me to examine it again. If there is one thing that me and my sister Lucia here have our PhDs in, it’s in knowing whether a body is dead or living.”
They have landed in territory they seldom speak of with this discussion. It takes them a moment or two of silence to leave plains ankle deep in men burnt crisp, black and small as babies, infants who throb red blood from every orifice, the faeces of men who watch their daughters cut off their husbands’ genitals, and pieces of women, scarlet decorations, that bob on the branches of forests. You hear the click of the padlock, the distant splash of a small object in a wide sea. They say to each other without talking, knowing they lie, “Now we won’t find those keys anymore. M-m, never.”
With a rare show of discomfort, Widow Riley heaves herself up. Heading for the dayroom, she bumps into the glass door that should be open but is not and falls. Student Nurse and Nyasha hurry from different directions to lift her.