This Mournable Body

  A screech like the cry of a furious banshee crashes through the garage. Leon’s fist is balled the hooter.

  “Papa!”

  Anesu wrinkles her forehead and covers her ears with her hands. Panashe does the same.

  Mai Taka ducks her head beneath Panashe’s shoulder as the blare continues.

  In the upstairs room next to the beauty spot a window opens. Everyone waits for Nyasha to poke out her head. She does not. The window closes again, just as slowly as it opened, annoying you with your cousin’s game-playing. You hate such stages of waiting because you prefer to be moving, to have started without the anxiety embedded in arrival.

  Finally the window opens all the way. Nyasha pops her head out and shouts down that she will leave the office in two minutes: she has almost finished the new concept for the next workshop in which the young women discover their own greatness, not in the cinema or in a boyfriend, but buried in themselves by means of telling their own stories.

  Leon gives an I-told-you-so grunt, accompanied by a small, tight smile.

  Missing this, Mai Taka straightens her neck and relaxes.

  “Toda kuona Mary, Mary, Mary-wo,” she sings a nursery rhyme. “We want to see Mary, Mary, Mary-wo.”

  Your niece and nephew do not know the chorus. Two minutes pass rapidly while they learn. Leon climbs out of the car and paces about the garage.

  “How many times? How many times have I told you?” Cousin-Brother-in-Law grumbles when Nyasha finally appears.

  “We are your family, Nyasha! You chose to have us. You chose to have me and both children. I would have been happy with you or just one child. We all suffered when you were pregnant. Even the one in your stomach. I am not. And your children are not participants in your workshop!” he shouts.

  The children from next door crowd at the fence beyond the garage. They stick their noses and mouths through the wire mesh. Taka has gone over to play with them. His eyes large, he waves slowly at his mother.

  “A mother is what they want,” Cousin-Brother-in-Law insists. “They do not want a workshop facilitator.”

  “For God’s sake,” Nyasha says. “Whether they like it or not, I trained to be other things besides a female parent. So right now I am a workshop facilitator. Get over it!”

  “Mary, Mary-wo,” Mai Taka sings in a louder voice. The children join her.

  You remember feet planted in circles, the sand white and the girl in the middle going round and round, singing in a high piercing voice about how she wanted to see Mary; and if any boys were brave enough to join the circle the girl might approach one and kneel down in front of him, miming with a hand on her head or back the ailment Mary suffered from, and the brave boy found an ailment no one had sung of and became Mary himself. Shocked and disappointed at Cousin-Brother-in-Law’s outburst, which is not the superior conduct you expect of a European, you hold on to the memory, slipping away from a developing argument into dusty recall. If you are disillusioned by Cousin-Brother-in-Law, however, your anger is aimed at Nyasha, who cannot be grateful for the fact that, though her husband might be unpleasant on occasion, she never experiences the abuse that Mai Taka routinely endures.

  You hum and then sing along to take your mind off the thickening atmosphere, deriving a new comfort from this unexpected childhood joy.

  Climbing into the car again, Leon pushes the key into the ignition.

  Nyasha sets her jaw. A moment later, she opens her mouth as though to let out something enormous and dangerously alive. Finally she inhales, breathing in without stopping as though she is pulling the sky down through her body into the ground. A moment later, she opens her door.

  “Yay!” yell Panashe and Anesu.

  “Mama’s coming!” your niece and nephew shout. “Yes, yay, Mama!”

  Nyasha brushes her lips to her husband’s cheek. Cousin-Brother-in-Law’s blue-knuckled fingers clench the steering wheel, but he does not start the motor until Nyasha is settled and has buckled her seat belt. For your part, you are relieved the fracas has ended peacefully, yet this only increases your rancour at your personal concerns, which exhibit no such easy resolution.

  After you have jostled a few metres over the gap-toothed, mealie-cob drive, Nyasha starts on “Ten Green Bottles.”

  She sings too loudly, with dreadful discord, the result of trying too hard when she is too tired. “And if one green bottle should accidentally fall,” the chorus echoes.

  The children join in first, then everyone else, so that by the time Gloria rattles to a stop in front of the sagging gate you are all yelling at the top of your voices.

  Cousin-Brother-in-Law, comforted by the repair of his relationship, leaves the car to deal with the security lock.

  Silence, the guard who is Mai Taka’s husband, appears noiselessly from the bushes.

  “He is waiting for me,” Mai Taka breathes, stiffening. “He said so: If you go with them you will see me. Now he is doing it.”

  “You, Wonderful! Mai Taka!” the night guard calls his wife.

  “My God, my father, oh my mother,” whispers Mai Taka. She turns a frozen gaze on her husband.

  “I am getting out,” she decides after a tense moment, her hand on the door handle.

  “Stay there,” Nyasha breathes, without moving her eyes or changing her tone, as though no one has approached and she has not seen anything.

  Leon pushes the gate open while the security guard watches.

  “I should not have come.” Mai Taka shakes her head over the seat rest at your cousin. “I must go if I do not want someone to kick me tonight like I am that someone’s football!”

  Mai Taka lifts Panashe from her lap.

  “Don’t you dare open that door,” your cousin hisses.

  “It might be all right for her to go, Nyasha. Just let her get out nicely,” you tell your cousin, alarmed at Nyasha’s foolishness in treating Mai Taka as though she were a workshop participant.

  “Mai Taka, can’t you hear me?” Silence calls. He makes sure his tone is mild because Cousin-Brother-in-Law is approaching. Mai Taka sits petrified between the two authorities.

  “What is the matter?” Cousin-Brother-in-Law asks, raising a hand to greet the night watchman.

  “Afternoon, sir!” Silence nods. He rubs his palms together.

  “Please, madam,” Mai Taka begs, her breath so shallow and quick that she can scarcely form the words.

  “Please, Mai Anesu, let me go. Otherwise I do not know what is going to happen. He is smiling, but when you know him, you will know why he smiles like that when he is angriest!”

  “Angry?” your cousin says quietly. “We’ll see about anger!”

  “Silence! Baba Taka!” she calls winding down her window.

  “Make space, everyone. Go on!” she orders you. “Let’s get someone else in here.”

  Silence takes several steps forward. “Yes, madam?”

  “Do you want transport to go somewhere?” asks Nyasha.

  “No, madam,” the guard replies. “I had made my plan where to go on my off this weekend. That one,” he points his forehead toward his wife. His voice glitters and slithers like snakeskin. “That one knows it.”

  Cousin-Brother-in-Law finishes opening the gate and returns to the vehicle. Mai Taka chews her lips and bends her neck. In this position she decides the damage is already irreversible.

  “Yes, I know it,” Mai Taka storms at her husband. She straightens up and juts her chin. “And if you are going where you want on your off, Baba waTaka, I can go where I want too on mine. Today I know where I am going on my off. I am going to see the movie!”

  “Be quiet, Mai Taka,” Nyasha hisses again. “Thank you, BabawaTaka,” she calls more loudly.

  “You are going, madam?” Silence, whose presence curdles the blood of the most merciless of thieves, strolls forward. Taking a couple of strides, he plants himself in front of the vehicle.

  “We are going,” Nyasha confirms.

  “All right,” Silence nods steadily. “Then,
may I speak to the boss?”

  Leon, who is tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and does not speak Shona well enough to understand, wants to know what is going on.

  “He wants to talk to you,” says Nyasha.

  “Yes, BabawaTaka, what is it?” begins Leon, looking out.

  “Boss,” says Silence.

  “Is there a problem?” Leon says. “I am sure we can sort it out.”

  “I don’t know if it is a problem,” replies Silence. “I just want to know, is it good for my wife to think she belongs to another family? A family that is not mine? Even if it is the family of her Europeans?”

  Nyasha rolls her eyes. You let the fifth green bottle fall. Then you cannot hold any bottles at all. One after another they plunge. You pray Mai Taka will disembark.

  Leon pauses to reflect.

  “Yes,” he responds finally. “I see it is a good thing. A very good thing for one afternoon, Baba waTaka, if the family sees it like that also, and has asked her and they have agreed about what they are doing.”

  “But it is her afternoon off,” Silence insists. “I know that work is work. I never question her or stop her when she comes to work. Her afternoon off is not time for working!”

  “It is work,” your cousin interjects icily. “As you see, Panashe is on her lap. That’s why we need her.”

  “Boss,” Silence goes on, ignoring your cousin, “I am saying, if it is work, no one can say anything against that. Mai Taka did not tell me about work. That is why when it is off, it is better to ask the husband.”

  “I think Mai Anesu has told you what is happening,” Leon says, starting the car.

  Silence raises his chin. His eyelids draw together until all that is visible is a bright darkness glistening through narrow slits.

  “If she is working, she should have said,” he nods quietly. “You see, my wife just lies to me. She said she just wanted to see this film at the shopping centre. She said it is what she wants. That is why she is not wearing her uniform.”

  “Are you the one who tells me to wear a uniform, Silence?” Mai Taka flares up. “No, it’s not you who has to tell me!”

  Silence shines the cold light of his eyes on his wife.

  “Mai Taka,” he warns. “Someone taught you to lie to me. I told you leave that one, that dress you are wearing. I told you put on your uniform. It is all right now. Go, I will see you when you come back.”

  “Ah, so why doesn’t he move?” mutters Leon.

  “You will tell me what I ask,” Silence promises Mai Taka. He turns to Nyasha.

  “Mai Anesu,” the guard inquires, picking now at his fingernails. “If I work for you and you give me a house on your property, that house is for me and my family, is it not?”

  “It is,” says Nyasha. “As long as you are employed here.”

  “See!” Silence moves round to grasp the car bonnet on either side of his wife’s window. He lowers his head between his arms so he can speak to her directly. “You have heard it for yourself. I want to hear what you say this evening when you return. When you are on my property.”

  You cannot stand the tension anymore. You lean across the children and the help and open the door. Silence pulls it wide. Mai Taka leans over and drags it closed.

  Astonished, you all stare at Mai Taka, who defiantly presses down the lock.

  “Mai Anesu, you said she is working, is that not so?” Silence begins again.

  “Yes, Baba Taka,” agrees his employer. “That is what I said.”

  “If it is work, it is overtime. Mai Anesu, she must be paid,” says Silence, raising his chin.

  “She will be paid,” confirms Nyasha coldly. She turns to her husband with an intense look. After a minute Leon nods and Nyasha relaxes.

  “All right? She will be paid,” Cousin-Brother-in-Law says.

  “Thank you, boss,” Silence replies. He steps back and waves.

  “Please, Mai Taka,” Nyasha warns as you set off. “Please, be careful how you deal with your husband when you get back.”

  “Let’s go,” Mai Taka replies with determination.

  “Yes,” says Nyasha, sounding even more exhausted. “Let’s.”

  You are wearied too by what has just passed. Only Mai Taka sits upright, her energy crackling around her.

  “Nothing that happens now will stop anything anymore,” Mai Taka shrugs. “In fact, from the time I went down yesterday, everything was already going to happen. Remember, Mai Anesu, I said, no, it’s better for me not to go. He had already kicked my leg that morning. So what is going to happen today will happen when I have seen the film and not when I haven’t seen it. Mai Anesu, now don’t think of anything.”

  Anesu buries her face in the back of her mother’s seat. Nyasha twists round to stroke her daughter’s head. Leon rolls the car through the gate. Silence pulls on a listing pole to close it.

  You look out of the window, your face pressed so close to the pane that the glass mists.

  Your cousin has tracked down a new, able mechanic. So the car rumbles on as you ascend the little hill near Kamfinsa Shopping Centre and as Leon dodges potholes on Churchill Avenue.

  Women who seem stunned by the fact of their existence trudge along the verges, babies on their backs, bags of seed and fertilizer on their heads, or else they simply stand, waiting for combis. Cousin-Brother-in-Law shakes his head as Gloria eases through the traffic lights, which are working.

  “So here we are!” Your cousin forces gaiety into her voice when you finally turn in to the car park at Avondale Shopping Centre. “Now we can do what we’ve been meaning to do for ages. Have some fun.”

  Cousin-Brother-in-Law starts glowering again, as you walk through rows of four-wheel drives, most of them with white number plates, BMWs, and Mercedes-Benzes. Imagining dismal endings to the afternoon, you fear that fun is the last thing he is capable of having.

  “That’s your bourgeoisie,” Leon mutters.

  “A-nnn-na-nn-si,” spells out Anesu, half-reading each letter, as they are taught in the new phonetic system. “A-na-n-si,” the little girl repeats more fluently.

  Anesu looks at her mother. Nyasha nods a smile. “Look, Panashe,” she says. “It says what Anansi is, can you see?”

  The sun flames off the tarmac. Panashe lifts his face and squints.

  “No, no oranges, thanks,” your cousin smiles at a fruit vendor who steps out from under the shade of a tree and accosts Leon, calling him “baas.”

  The vendor pleads. Nyasha rummages in her bag and makes a face when she finds no small change, only the note for the cinema tickets. The man’s face cracks into a smile of hope.

  “When I come out,” your cousin says.

  “They’ll want muzungu prices,” mutters Leon forlornly. So saying, he strides off toward the cinema.

  “Mama!” warns Anesu, but it is too late.

  Panashe works out the answer to his mother’s question. “S-s-pa-ih-da-e-r … spider,” he triumphs. “It says, Anansi, the spider.”

  Your nephew’s face crumbles.

  “I don’t like spiders,” quavers your nephew. “I don’t want to see the spider!”

  “Shit!” swears Nyasha under her breath.

  “Go to the supermarket for the fruit and veg,” says Leon when you catch up with him at the box office.

  “Panashe doesn’t want to see the spider film,” sighs Nyasha.

  “I don’t like them! I don’t want to see them!” the boy wails.

  “Spiders with popcorn?” your cousin encourages hopefully. “And chocolate,” she adds tentatively, as though her son were a little experiment.

  Panashe starts crying.

  Leon picks his son up, which makes your nephew pump his lungs full and howl at the top of his voice. People turn to see what the tall white man is doing to the little brown person.

  “Incy wincy spider,” chants Mai Taka, hooking her thumbs about each other and waving her fingers in Panashe’s face. Her smile looms behind her waggling digits. In a few minute
s Panashe is convinced the spider went up the wall only to be washed down the drain, and it is evident your nephew is not afraid as long as he keeps his arms around Mai Taka’s legs.

  “Four for Anansi. Two for Pretty Woman,” orders Nyasha, rebelling at the counter.

  Cousin-Brother-in-Law looks down his nose at her.

  “Oh, all right, six for Anansi,” says Nyasha.

  When you emerge from the Elite 100 an hour and a half later, Anesu and Panashe chase each other around the foyer.

  “Those ones! Ah, the West Africans. Those Nigerians,” laughs Mai Taka.

  “Ghanaians,” corrects Leon.

  “Oh, those Ghananians,” Mai Taka bubbles with enjoyment. “I am so glad I saw it, Mai Anesu! And Panashe was enjoying it all the time. I-ih, Mha-mha, when will we be able to do things like that? Like those from West Africa?”

  Nyasha winces and Leon changes the conversation by saying he would like pineapple for the next day’s breakfast. Nyasha pulls a list out of her bag and gives it to you with the change from the tickets, saying, “If you don’t mind, Tambu.”

  The others saunter off to wait for you in the car, the children demanding a second ice cream.

  In the supermarket next to the cinema, you prod thirsty-looking pineapples to discover a fresh one. This causes their leaves to fall off them. A woman comes up to examine the paw-paws. Your shoulders bump. She turns to look at you, and gasps, “Tambu!”

  You recognize her immediately: Tracey Stevenson, your boss at Steers, D’Arcy and MacPedius, and, before that, your most dangerous rival for the class prize at the Young Ladies’ College of the Sacred Heart. She stands before you grinning and holding out her hand. Your mouth dries as the evening at the nightclub with Christine laughs at you from a cave at the bottom of your heart. A handful of ants troop over your neck as you fight to dispel the notion that your former classmate can hear what you are thinking. The most recent memory overcome, you tremble as others crowd back. You are at the convent on your first day, and your uncle is already disappointed that you are not allocated rooms on the same basis as white girls are. Your lavatory is flooded because you are not allowed to use the white girls’ toilets where the incinerators stand and, without an incinerator of your own, you and your roommates have thrown your pads into the toilet bowl. The headmistress makes a public announcement at assembly concerning the “African girls,” their dirtiness, and their cost to the school. Then, as the war intensifies, she calls you to her office to reassure you, joking that no one will be cut in half to meet government quotas for African students. In spite of this, the only one from your dormitory, you take the school bus to the town hall on Friday evenings to knit woollens for the Rhodesian soldiers. Deep down, as you hunker in your seat, looking out of the window to repel conversation, you know that things are meant to be different. In the hall, clicking knitting needles chatter, “Mistake! Illogical!” There comes a time when you can no longer smile. No, you tell that other memory, the one that includes Tracey and trophies and the college moving goalposts; no, I will not think this.