“Watch where you’re going. Why don’t you see?” says Student Nurse, while Widow Riley apologizes for the trouble.
“‘Let’s go,” says Aunt Lucia, speaking of leaving many places at once. “I have work to do, Nyasha, not time for sitting here. Leave her now. Maybe she does not want us here. She’ll wake up when she’s so wet it makes her uncomfortable.”
“It’s very kind of you to help me along,” Widow Riley says, as Student Nurse leads her into the dayroom. “Where are you taking me, dear?’”
Your cousin has no more tissues. Her palms move over your face. You feel the faint motion of air as she withdraws them. The hyena stops laughing. You blink and rise through a purple lake.
“You see, she could hear us all the time,” Christine says caustically. She nods at your chest. “At least you have changed shirts. I saw you needed clothes and so I brought everything over. When you were in bed over there and behaving as though there was not a person.”
You do not thank your visitor; nevertheless, at this moment she becomes not a far-off, suspicious ex-combatant, but a friendly companion.
Nyasha goes out to the loo and returns with a handful of toilet paper.
“Svina! Wring it!” Student Nurse laughs when you contemplate the tissue in your hands. “Ha-ha, I meant your shirt, you, not those bits of paper.”
“Kiri’s the one who found me the very day that you were taken from your headmistress’s office,” your aunt Lucia explains.
“I phoned back to the village as soon as Mrs. Samaita told us,” says Kiri. “It was God who saw to it that your niece Freedom had just left the Council Houses when I got through. They sent someone to call her back. She was the one who said immediately that I should contact Lucia in Harare. That girl has already grown up.”
“It is good you found me after we lost touch,” nods Mainini Lucia.
“Tambudzai,” says Cousin Nyasha softly, “how are you feeling?”
Tears well up in your eyes again.
Nyasha nods and says, “I see.”
“What is there to see?” says Mainini. “She’s got to stop this soon, isn’t it?”
“Lucia sent the message via the Council Houses. To your mother,” says Christine more gently.
“My sister is always busy with many things,” says Lucia. “Doing everything to keep that home together. But I told her, come to Harare, you are the one your daughter needs to see, isn’t it? I am expecting her any time. If she has not come yet, it is only because something must have stopped her.”
“When Lucia was busy, I took over,” explains Christine. “Sending our little Freedom back and forth with messages. She ran up and down, even though she said she doesn’t know you, Tambudzai. How can you not know your niece? I couldn’t believe it when I heard you haven’t been home. Not even to celebrate when your sister returned from war! Or to greet the nieces she brought with her. Poor Netsai,” says Christine with a shake of her head. “Hers is a hard situation. I don’t know why so many of us who were involved in the fighting have ended up like this. I do not know what I would have done if it weren’t for meeting my companion, Lucia, here when I had to get the news to your family, Tambudzai.”
“Let’s leave that for now,” Lucia snaps. “All I want Tambudzai to know is that Freedom left a message saying your mother is coming.”
Following that first conversation, your relatives visit you a number of times. Sometimes they are together. More often Nyasha appears on her own. Before she comes you always remind yourself to thank her for the Lady Dis, but you never remember. Your mother sends messages about arranging the journey for the following week, after that the following week and then the following. You learn Mainini Lucia and Christine are working hard at something, that this something is very successful so that Mainini Lucia can pay your treatment costs with only a little help from Nyasha. Your cousin appears to need the company. She chatters on about the courses she studied, the degrees she earned, and the places she obtained them in England and Europe. You do not ask and she does not talk of what she is doing now that she is back in the country. You cling to her words of being somewhere else, infinitely distant from where you are. Assuming she will not approve of this, you do not tell her. Her visits are like it was when you were growing up—Nyasha talking and giving of her energy, while you listen and take in silence. Degree by degree, your cousin’s visits being something to look forward to, you feel better. Due to your new progress, Dr. Winton changes your medication from injections to a mixture of tablets.
Eventually talk during these meetings turns to the matter that weighs on everyone’s mind: what will happen to you when you are discharged? Your visitors do their best to be delicate about not immediately offering accommodation.
“When you are out of here you will have to go down there,” begins your aunt on a day the three visit together. “To the homestead.” She nods at your cousin. “Nyasha will take you. So it won’t be said you did not have a home to go to. And that you couldn’t find a way to get there.”
“If you want to drive down with me,” your cousin says. “I don’t think a matter like this should be taken for granted.”
“My aunt Manyanga told me she has been praying for you from the very first day,” says Christine. “‘She’s also praying for that girl you nearly murdered. She wanted me to let you know that particularly.”
A girl was nearly murdered? By you? You smile, refusing to take it in. Having no intention to believe such a thing, you fight and win against the perils of contemplation.
“I think,” Christine goes on, “that she is happy to pray for you. There is somebody in your room. This one is paying double the rent. I have put your other things under my bed.”
Nyasha pushes herself out of her chair. “I must go now,” she says. “To pick up the children. Since I took the car.” Aunt Lucia pulls Nyasha back. For five minutes, she says. Nyasha allows herself to be seated.
Then Mainini Lucia explains about her house for the next half hour. It is in Kuwadzana, one of the townships. She doesn’t expect you to like it, nor, she implies, does she expect to like you in it.
Your aunt looks you over, churning options around in her head.
“I am too busy,” she makes up her mind. “You will need some help and attention, at least in the beginning. If there is somewhere else you are thinking about, like Nyasha says, maybe you can ask your cousin and maybe she can do some looking.”
Energy draining from you, you regard your hands curled in your lap, without saying anything.
Your cousin pushes her lower lip over the top one and wonders whether there might possibly be another option.
“Which one?” snaps Mainini, who used up her last store of patience during the liberation struggle.
Student Nurse rings a bell. Your aunt and Kiri stand up. You walk them to the door, giving a wide berth to Cecilia Flower, who is taking a teacup out of Widow Riley’s hand and offering the old lady her weeping breast in its place. Student Nurse dodges Ed Porter’s cane and Mrs. Riley exclaims, “Thank you very much for coming down to see me and Edie.”
After a few more such sessions it is settled that you will live with your cousin.
Nyasha is punctual the day you leave, hurries in and bustles out of the ward with your bags. She dumps them on top of the rest of your luggage, which she retrieved earlier from Widow Manyanga’s.
You kneel beside Widow Riley to say goodbye. She asks who you are. You tell her and she says she could have sworn you were her daughter.
Ed swings his stick and hollers obscenities at the staff as you go by, while Student Nurse almost imperceptibly lifts a corner of her mouth and allows her gaze to sear across your back.
“That woman,” you tell your cousin, compassion thickening your voice. “Her husband was killed in the war.”
“That nurse doesn’t seem very happy about things either,” your cousin says.
Outside the tarmac glitters like a serpent in the afternoon sun. Either the world has fooled you, or
you are foolish. You shake an incredulous head as you take in evidence that your cousin is just like you. It all seems disconcerting and palpably wrong. You no longer ignore the signs that are all about her, as you did while you were in the ward. To fetch you she has thrown on a faded T-shirt and jeans disfigured by a cluster of old, frayed holes in the middle of the thigh, not ripped at the knee as fashion dictated. Her car keys poke from another tear in her back pocket. You grow puzzled about the Lady Dis. Although you now understand why all that arrived from Nyasha during her years in the West was a single package containing the shoes, you find no way of explaining to yourself why she presented the beautiful footwear to you, while she was herself in a difficult plight; nor do you comprehend how this is possible: to have a degree in England and Europe and still wrestle with adverse prospects. It is an effort to hold yourself together when you cross the tarmac and see her car. Your mood plummets as you realize you will gain little from living with your cousin, who has turned out not much better than yourself in spite of all her childhood advantages.
“So we are going,” you murmur as you survey the vehicle for the sake of saying something. Appalled by the scratched and dented tiny contraption, you promise yourself that somehow, even though it is late for you, you will develop VaManyanga’s touch for upward mobility.
“Matchsticks,” Nyasha replies. “Remember. I pulled the short one.”
She ignores your attempt at laughter.
“The children wanted to come too,” Nyasha tells you, fumbling in her bag. “It’s better they didn’t but they can’t wait to see you. They’re so excited. Their father’s an only child. You know what happened to us as a family. With my brother disappearing off the radar somewhere in the United States. So they never imagined having an aunt.”
She discovers the car keys poking through the hole in her pocket and pulls them out, causing more ripping.
“Shit. This is just about the last pair,” she says, causing your heart to fall further.
She rattles the driver’s door open, climbs in, and turns the key in the ignition impatiently. The car’s insides scrape, as though it was meant to be pedalled rather than powered by fuel.
“They haven’t talked about anything else since I told them,” she says, and carries on without pause, in the same conversational manner, “Come on, Gloria. It’s Cousin Tambudzai. You’ve got to start.”
Down by the Research Institute, a group of gardeners attends to beds of pink and yellow roses. Student Nurse is a silhouette behind the green curtains in the ward. As though it is not bad enough that so many people have seen your cousin’s battered vehicle, it squawks like a distressed peacock each time Nyasha tries the ignition.
After a few attempts, Nyasha lets out the hand brake and throws her door open again. She grips the steering wheel in one hand and heaves against the chassis with her chest. Your mouth drops open, dismay rises as you watch your cousin push the car herself. The vehicle rolls. Nyasha jumps back in. Her feet balance the clutch and accelerator. The engine revs. The gardeners by the institute straighten up and clap. Mortified, you look away, only to see Student Nurse’s shadowy form disappear toward the dayroom.
“Children?” you prompt, once you have obeyed your cousin’s gesture to jump in, in order to cover up with civility your growing dissatisfaction with your position. For the first time since the night with Christine, you think of the Manyanga sons.
“Anesu and Panashe,” your cousin gushes, but cuts the conversation short to keep her vehicle chugging at a give-way sign. The car bounds over potholes the size of continents, and through trenches that work gangs have left open like expectant graves. A quarter of an hour later, it turns into a miniature jungle. Bamboo poles run north, east, and southward. Barbed wire sags from them in rusted dejection. Your cousin jumps out and engages a tarnished padlock. The poles sway but hold their ground. Nyasha gives a violent twist, grins, and holds the lock with its chain aloft, like a champion. Embarrassed by her lunacy, you promptly start plotting escape.
You judder through brambles encroaching on the track, over disintegrating lumps of tarmac lurking beneath withering grass, and finally over a once fine brick drive in grey and black, which now resembles a maize cob from a year of miserable harvest. Patches of parched lawn poke up through the rubble. Thorn bushes tear at the car’s cracked paint. Your cousin begins to hum, with the air of an empress returning to her fort after battle.
Gas gurgles out of the exhaust as Nyasha manoeuvres into the garage. She jumps out and gives the car a pat, grinning, “Atta girl, Gloria! There’s my engine!”
Next she whirls round, all earlier irritation forgotten. Arms stretched out, she beams, “Welcome. It’s all over. Don’t worry. You’re home now, Tambu!”
You were never one for chaos, least of all now, and there is decidedly too much of it. Paper sacks spill cement over old children’s toys and abandoned bicycles. Grocery boxes of mouldy cardboard split under mountains of South African wine bottles. Thin white grubs wriggle in and out of termite-infested wicker baskets.
“Mama! Mama’s home!” a child yells.
The kitchen stable door scrapes open. A slat falls off. A pale hand reaches out, picks up the plank, and rams it back into place. When the hand disappears, a girl of seven or eight, whose skin is lighter than you expected your niece’s complexion to be, bounds out. You suspect many reasons, most of them stemming from disregard, for Nyasha not telling you that she has married a white man. Concealing your vexed apprehension, you arrange your face in a smile.
A boy, younger than the girl, emerges holding on to his father’s hand. Once inside the garage, he quickly joins his sister in prodding and pulling at your luggage.
“Let Auntie Tambu do that,” Nyasha suggests. She unfolds determined fingers from handles and fasteners. Your cousin encircles her daughter in the crook of her arm and holds her son against her stomach. Your Cousin-Brother-in-Law kisses you on both cheeks, which you are not prepared for, then his wife on the lips, which you are not prepared for either. The four crowd together to examine you.
“This,” Nyasha informs the children formally, “is your aunt Tambudzai.”
“Her?” your niece asks doubtfully.
“You can call her Maiguru,” her mother replies.
While your niece compares the word with the person, the household help, clothed in a geometric patterned uniform, hurries forward.
“Give us a hand, Leon,” Nyasha says to her husband, as she heaves a bag onto her shoulder.
Leon grabs a couple of pieces. You start after them to the house, leaving the maid to bring in the rest.
“Thank you, Mai T,” Nyasha says, stopping.
The maid insists on heaving up another carryall.
“Thank you, Mai Taka,” your cousin repeats. “This is Maiguru Tambudzai. We are sisters. We are helping to carry her luggage.”
At this, Mai Taka grabs a small parcel and places it in your nephew’s hands. She gives another to your niece, then leads the children away. Nyasha gives you a look. Confused, you pick up two of the remaining pieces.
“Occupational therapy,” your cousin grins, “is good for you.”
You are immediately resentful, judging that this is no way to treat a convalescent, that living in Europe has not improved your cousin at all; if anything, it has made her more ill-mannered. You continue to smile with all of your face. Inside, your head shakes angrily.
In the kitchen, oily puddles slick over the floor in front of the sink. Shiny black worms wriggle in the thick water. The edges of the draining board look soft and rotten. A sour smell seeps up. Your fingers itch for a mop and brush at so much dampness and neglect, just as they had done, fruitlessly, at Widow Manyanga’s house. Your cousin doesn’t seem to mind. She stands with her back to the muck as she inquires about the day’s events.
“Everything’s fine, Mha-mha,” Mai Taka assures her.
“No problems?” Nyasha follows up. “Not with anything?”
“The only problem is that the
re is no problem, Mai Anesu,” answers Mai Taka with an attempt at grumbling.
“Those participant people at the workshop ate everything! That’s the trouble,” she carries on with pride. “What do they think? That this place is a hotel? They say they come here to learn something, isn’t that what they say? Something that you want to teach them. Not to eat like politicians and the people who vote for them at a rally. One day I want to cook something bad so they don’t just eat and eat. But they always like my cooking. When a person eats like that, I don’t think a person has come to learn anything.”
“Oh, they’ll learn yet,” chuckles Nyasha, pleased that the people she left behind to fetch you have been fed. She continues, throwing a glance in your direction, “That’s why Mai Taka’s given name is Wonderful.”
“Mai Taka, I have to ask you again,” she says, casting a thoughtful eye over the help’s petite, round figure. “Are you sure you’re not carrying anything in there?”
“Haven’t I got Taka already?” says the help. “Why should I get pregnant, Mha-mha? When there’s so much you need me to do?”
“What’s not really wonderful is that the plumbers were meant to come in,” Nyasha explains as though she has given up on service delivery. Thus changing the subject, she beckons you into the living room. “It sits in the cracks, the water, I mean, and then when the hard board is waterlogged it drips, no matter how well you dry it. Anyway,” your cousin laughs as though she is coughing. “That’s proof. I always suspected kitchens aren’t what they’re made out to be. Poor Mai Taka! It shouldn’t be a prison sentence. No woman should have to go in them unless she’s willing. And me, I’m the luckiest woman on earth to have someone who lives in to do my cooking.”
“Yes,” smiles Cousin-Brother-in-Law, speaking with a slight, unfamiliar accent. “What we need to see is that men also are made to be more willing. So, my best wife of all, will you tell me what you want me to prepare for dinner?”