This Mournable Body

  You become so agitated you cannot sleep in spite of the antidepressants Dr. Winton prescribed. Your concentration falters. You make mistakes in your analyses and send hotels the wrong questionnaires. Pedzi looms as an increasing threat, and your fear of what all this forebodes causes further deterioration. It does not help that Green Jacaranda pays for driving school as Tracey, maybe sensing your disarray, decides you should, in due course, leave the office to supervise tours in the field. You are so distraught over the statistics that you fail the written test several times. Your attempts at the road test edge toward double figures.

  Beside yourself with apprehension, when your relatives are not visiting, you spend more and more of your free time curled up on your leather sofa in front of your television. Their visits in turn become less frequent. As the weather is warm, you often doze off and wake up on the couch in the early morning. You rise, struggling to summon back to mind the matters you must remember without recalling the ghastliness that haunts you.

  You arrive home late one night after having remained at the office for several hours to read all the information on competitors you can find, as well as Asian and Latin American sites in order to identify new activities for the approaching group of tourists. Unable to think of a single innovation, your confidence in being able to manage the tours not only adequately but excellently, the latest condition for keeping pace with your colleagues, deserts you. The hyena laughs as you enter the gate. It has slunk once more as close to you as your skin, ready to drag away the last scraps of certainty you have preserved the moment you falter.

  Even though everything is already impossible, it all grows worse when you enter the kitchen. A small sack sits on the table. It is the bag of mealie meal that Christine brought to the city from your mother.

  “It was left here by Mai Anesu,” says Ma’Tabitha, who is waiting up for you, although you have told her not to.

  Silently you curse yourself for not having hidden the bag well enough and when you have done with yourself, you swear at your cousin. You refuse the dinner that Ma’Tabitha offers and pace from living room to bedroom, unable to settle. When she finally leaves, you stand by the kitchen table staring at the small sack of meal, which is by now covered in weevil webs and emits a stronger, staler must than ever. You should have eaten it, you reprimand yourself, cooked your mother’s love while at Mai Manyanga’s and taken it into your body. In this way you would have made a home wherever you were. At these thoughts, anger overcomes you. You drag the sack off the table and push it into the dustbin. You fetch a bottle of wine from the pantry, switch on the TV, and force yourself to be engrossed in an Australian soap that is showing on the satellite channel. You fill the long advertisement pauses with lengthy draughts from your glass and are quite surprised to find a few hours later that you have drunk all three of the bottles you had stored. Vaguely you smile, for the horror that lurks at the back of your mind has dissolved into a blur of dim purple fur. The TV drones, your head whooshes. You doze off without realizing it. You wake frantically brushing away a column of ants that troops over your stomach.

  You open your eyes. They march on. You close your eyes. The insects continue parading. Staring at them the thing you promised yourself you will never recall pops back into memory. She is a corpse, long dead, lying by a bus shelter, dined on by creeping things, gnawed at by scavengers.

  You rush away from her into the kitchen. Once and for all, you must bury this woman. You rip the lid from the rubbish bin and heave up the bag of mealie meal. You scatter its contents across the floor and over the furniture. While rage flays at you like a whip, you scoop the meal up again and run out into the garden. There, you drag the hoe from the garage. You dig a hole deep as a grave and pour in the gift from your mother.

  Dogs bark far away. To your ears, they are drawing closer, as to hunted quarry. Unnerved, you lumber to your room, pulling off your blouse as you stumble. You want your head concealed beneath the bed covers, your body on the mattress curled into a ball like a fetus. Stretching forward to search for pyjamas, you sway back from the bed, stricken. You switch off the light. You flick it on again. This makes no difference. Growing as does your horror, a head lies on your pillow. You plunge the room into darkness once more then flood it with light again. Features and proportions change as the head mutates into a small, misshapen person.

  The legs convulse and shatter into an army of students in the green and beige of Northlea uniform. Rushing forward with a scream, you grip one between finger and thumb to flow her away. Her teeth fasten on the flesh of your thumb. You realize it is your mother. You shake your hand. She holds on. Banging your wrist against its rim you succeed finally in throwing her into the wastepaper bin by the door.

  “A womb,” she sobs. “One just like mine. You want to drown me in it!”

  The basket is of woven sisal. Your mother grabs at the threads, struggling, yet unable, to haul herself out. You surge back across the room, grasping for the next diminutive apparition that has also metamorphosed into your mother.

  “A womb! Oh no, how can it be! How can a womb tell me what is what? Baba wanguwe, oh my father! You elders, how can it happen?” your mother screams as you dispose of the next one beside her. Both of them strive to climb out, tearing and groping at each other until they lose hold and slither back down.

  You spend the rest of the night picking up the creatures in uniform who are your mother and interring them in the wastepaper bin, lobbing them in and pulling your dressing gown over the top to prevent their escape while you trap the remainder.

  When you wake, you are in bed. Your dressing gown still covers the bin. You pick up your slippers, as you had grasped a stone at the market more than two years ago, with the intention of hurling them, this time at your wastepaper bin, but you do not throw as you become aware that someone is howling. A scream wails about the room, making the windowpanes shudder. You clamp your teeth. The cry continues. It is the howl you had wished that girl Elizabeth to utter. It was meant to be her, so that you would not have to scream it.

  For many days thereafter you go to work without having closed your eyes, propped up on your bed with a book that you pretend to read. You dare doze off only in your office where you are surrounded by people. When you wake, you fret, worried that your colleagues might catch you napping. You take more time to complete your tasks and make more mistakes. It is an increasing effort to correct them. You recognize you have taken a certain path, arrived at a place you had not known was your journey’s destination and locked yourself in. Sorrow and shame prevent you from divulging your torment and confusion to anyone. As the days pass and each night crawls by, you repeat to yourself the conversations you had with Nyasha the evening you arrived at your cousin’s. Finally, after many such episodes, you resolve to launch a search for your freedom.

  At first you intend to use the telephone. In the end, you get out of bed in the middle of a wakeful night to write a letter. You sit with pen in hand, struggling to bring your heart round to finish what is necessary. When you do begin to set phrases down, you spend hours in anguished composition; for though it seemed acceptable—even glorious—to you at the time, you find now no cause compelling enough to justify such brutality as you wrought upon a young person whose education had been handed over to you. With every word you inscribe on your paper, scratch out, and rewrite, you understand that in addition to her skin, you shattered a young girl’s trust.

  You think to find out where Elizabeth lives and send her money, to put bills in an envelope and hand it to someone outside her house. But then you speculate that she is writing her final examinations by now and waiting to attend university, so that the sum you can spare will be of little account, will serve only to make her and her family angrier than ever at futile dollars flung in their faces without consultation. How you regret now, in the solitude of night, scorning the opportunity you had in Mrs. Samaita’s office when reparation could have been made for at least part of what you had committed.

 
“Go-go-go, madam!”

  Someone is tapping at the window. It is Ma’Tabitha. Your first impulse is to ignore the noise but you are afraid of more loneliness so that it is good to see another human being.

  “What is it?” you ask.

  She cannot hear you. You open your curtain and point to the front door.

  Ma’Tabitha’s face looms out of the night. She steps forward, barely dressed in a night dress, a Zambia cloth, and a pair of flip-flops.

  You open the window.

  “The light? I saw it,” she whispers anxiously. “I always see it. Only today it was too much.”

  Flying ants raised by a brief storm flutter around the porch lamp.

  “Come in,” you return. “It’s just that? You don’t want anything?”

  “When the light stayed on all the time and then the big one went on, I wondered,” Ma’Tabitha’s whisper continues. “I said so to Ba’Tabitha. I said to my husband, can everything be all right when the light in madam’s is on all the time? He said, go and check.”

  You wait. She does not move.

  “I see,” you nod.

  “Are you all right, madam?”

  You pull yourself together and reply that you are meditating on a business matter and have been doing so for a number of nights.

  “I am sorry, madam. I did not want to disturb you,” Ma’Tabitha apologizes. “Ba’Tabitha and I thought maybe something has happened.”

  “Thank you, Ma’Tabitha, everything is all right!” You force a smile and add, “Please, do not call me madam.” You pause and take a deep breath before you continue. “Ms. It is Ms. Sigauke.”

  “Good night, madam.”

  You hold her gaze with yours.

  “Good night, Madam Ms. Sigauke,” Ma’Tabitha says.

  You listen to the sound of her flip-flops, the slap of rubber on her sole followed by the softer thump of her foot striking the ground. When you cannot hear her anymore, leaving the window open on a sudden fancy, you return to your letter and rethink the course you must take. What will happen if you discover the Chinembiris’ address? Will they laugh at your coming, after all this time, to say you are sorry: If you were woman enough to thrash their daughter as you did, what has happened to develop in you the weakness of contrition? Should they smell feebleness, what will they do? How large is Elizabeth’s family and who are they? What number of young uncles, cousin- and womb-brothers will there be, if they decide on retribution?

  Having considered all, you compose two lines asking Mrs. Samaita for a meeting. You carry the envelope to work and put it in the out tray for Pedzi, who still does the reception work in spite of being promoted to project manager.

  Mrs. Samaita’s office phones a few days later, and on the very next afternoon you take a seat in the wobbly wooden chair in front of the desk where you sat for your interview on the day you met her. You gaze wistfully past the headmistress at the cupboard full of trophies.

  Mrs. Samaita is distressed when you tell her you must, without delay, apologize to Elizabeth and her family. You are given to understand that the young woman is now permanently deaf in one ear and that she missed several months of school for rehabilitation so that she is now a year behind. The headmistress suggests you speak to Elizabeth there and then with no further undertaking. Relief rises in your chest at this mention of an easier option. Could this be a way out? you wonder. In the end you remain adamant, for now that you have brought yourself to it, you are single-minded about your repentance. In the end Elizabeth is called in. She pretends she does not see you apart from responding to your “Mhoro, hello, Elizabeth!” She will not tell you herself, but agrees that the headmistress may give you her home address.

  Your former pupil lives in Highfields, in the area of housing where rent had been two pounds during the colonial days, but the government at Independence transformed much of the settlement into a home-ownership area. Many people owned their houses now and the Chinembiris too had worked their way into this situation, so that, without a landlord to evict anyone, many of the clan had migrated from various farms and communal lands to the little building.

  When you arrive, Mai Chinembiri is bent over the small hump of verge that marks the limit of the road and the beginning of her property. She has built up, running parallel to the street, a ridge of earth and is putting in some sweet potato seedlings. A band of young men—whom you take to be various of Elizabeth’s relatives—are smoking by the gate, while another group of older men lounge on the steps to the little house drinking Shake-Shake from cardboard cartons.

  You are respectful. You introduce yourself as Ms. Tambudzai Sigauke.

  “Oh, so you are the one who goes round killing other people’s children,” Elizabeth’s elder brother says when the introductions are finished. He squints down his cigarette. “And breaking their ears, haikona!”

  You bend your head. Tears fall out of your eyes of their own accord. You clench your jaw so that they will not see this weakness.

  “Look at her! Ha, maybe something was wrong. See how sorry she is,” a voice calls slowly from the porch. You feel the speaker’s eyes taking you in.

  “Wouldn’t you be sorry,” his neighbour, who, unlike the others, is sipping from a Scud, begins dryly. “You would, wouldn’t you, if someone was about to do to you exactly what you did to another, and you knew the very thing you had done to this other person?”

  “You never know,” the elder brother agrees with the last Chinembiri. “Maybe she only wants to look down on us some more. When do people like her ever see us?”

  “If she was a politician, I’d say on voting day,” the Scud drinker suggests. “Maybe that’s what she’s practising for, don’t you think?”

  Some of the young men smile, but the curve in their lips is tense, their eyes hard.

  “Auntie, leave now. We’ve seen you. Tomorrow, we will know who you are. But if you go now, quietly without causing any trouble with anyone here, we will just say it is finished,” decides the elder brother.

  The atmosphere lightens a fraction.

  “Do what he says,” the second youth says. “He’s holding himself in, but we are the ones who know this person. You don’t. When he bursts out nothing can hold him.”

  Mai Chinembiri cleans her hands on her Zambia wrap.

  “I have heard everything and I do not know why you are still standing there,” she says to you quietly. Your ex-pupil’s mother lifts her chin. “Why are you not moving? Why? It is not your ear that is now not hearing.”

  When you remain standing, the woman first narrows then closes her eyes. The young men wait. Mai Chinembiri looks at the youths. Finally she moves forward, an arm extended.

  You take her hand. You want to hold it, but she pulls away at first contact.

  “This way,” she nods. You follow her to the back porch. You walk round the side of the house, for each of her three rooms is packed with mattresses, blankets, and clothes stacked in cardboard boxes.

  At the back, you sit on a wooden stool. Mai Chinembiri takes a seat on the bottom step. You sit in silence for a long time.

  “I have come,” you begin at last.

  “As I see,” Elizabeth’s mother says. “Her father is not here. That is good. He said this second time he does not want to see you.”

  You nod. “Where is she? Can I ask you to forgive me?”

  “Her heart is like her father’s,” Mai Chinembiri responds. “I spoke to her quite a few times before you came. She behaved as though I did not say anything.”

  “Shall I wait?”

  “Perhaps another time if you and I speak well together. But it is hard for him. You know now his daughter can no longer hear everything. As for her!” Mai Chinembiri gulps, her voice wet with tears that course down her face. “As for her, when I speak to her, I have told you, it is as though she cannot hear anything. She says I did not protect her.”

  “Don’t do that, Mai,” you whisper, taking her hand.

  This time the mother does not have the s
trength to shake you off. Grief flows to and fro through your intertwined fingers, and the tears from your two faces mingle so that it is as though you are washing your hands. Ah, how you wish the tears would cleanse away everything the four hands hold.

  After a little while Mai Chinembiri pulls away. She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes. The wetness smears over her face.

  “It is done,” she says. “Whether you come or you do not there is no longer any difference. Perhaps we could have saved that ear if we could have paid for the hospital.”

  The woman regards you accusingly. “The money came from the school after two weeks. Her class, they did that for Elizabeth but then it was too late for the ear to keep on hearing.”

  Your regret tastes foul in your mouth. You know you have prescribed for yourself a life sentence. You repeat your request for forgiveness anyway. Mai Chinembiri remains silent. As there is nothing more you can do, you repeat softly your apology and prepare to leave, saying you will do what you can for Elizabeth if the family finds a specialist. The mother agrees, although you both know it is too far for Mrs. Chinembiri to heave herself over the ridge of sweet potatoes beside the road, in search of an ENT surgeon.

  “We had planned something for you,” the elder brother says, as you walk past the front of the building. “I hope we never see you again, because that will make things better for all of us.”

  You watch the road furtively as you walk, hardly daring to raise your head, hoping to see Elizabeth’s green skirt approach down the narrow road from the combi rank, but only the young men’s silence thickens behind you, and then the silence is taken and tossed away by the shouts, the curses, the laughter of neighbourhood life.

  CHAPTER 18

  The money you had imagined you might spend on Elizabeth you end up spending on yourself. You have a weekly appointment with the hairdresser, instead of once a month as recommended. You order the most expensive hot oil and sulphur treatments each time and experiment lavishly with Indian, Brazilian, and Korean weaves. You indulge yourself with diverse manicures and pedicures. You graduate rapidly to Thai foot massages. On the masseur’s mattress you prefer the Swedish. Eyebrows are plucked, hairs are electrocuted, you are wrapped in mud, and pores are shocked into closure. Your skin grows soft and smooth. Your clothes account at Jason Moyo department stores edges toward the sum in your bank account. The rigours of the past years having whittled your body down, young men glance at you twice, while young women assume grudging “if only I could be like her” expressions. You do not see anything these days, when you look into the mirror, except the reflection of your bedroom and imported satin sheets, your two cell phones, and far beyond that a shadowy outline mocked up with blush, lipstick, and eyebrow pencil that you do not examine in any way for substance.