This Mournable Body

  You rummage in the pile, pulling out books at random and not putting them back. The pungency of past decades percolates up: girls wearing lace gloves and veils to Sunday Mass, eating at heavy wooden tables set with white cloth napkins in silver rings, the constant tension from not knowing whether or not you were as you were meant to be, the brutal fighting to answer affirmatively that question, and its damage.

  When Freedom comes up, it is to call you to eat, not to clean. The girls are impatient to tuck into a meal made fragrant with treats like tomato paste and garlic. They push the water bowl across to you as soon as you enter.

  You have not taken half a dozen mouthfuls when a folk song jars up from the gully.

  “Chemutengure! Chemutengure!” the singer rasps.

  Your mother, Concept, and Freedom ignore the noise.

  “Chemutengure! Chemutengure!” the singer begins again with a determined effort.

  “Baba,” you breathe in despair. “It’s him.”

  The girls look at their grandmother out of the corners of their eyes. Mai continues eating as though no one has sung or spoken, as though nothing has happened.

  You cannot beak off another morsel.

  “Go on. Keep eating,” Mai shrugs. “That’s him. Someone must have told him we have a visitor. He doesn’t even know who it is. But he felt the hunger biting and knew there would be something.”

  A thud sounds from the yard. No one moves. You too continue eating.

  “It would be good,” says Mai after a while, “if this Stevenson woman you work for could help you to get a leg for your sister.” She pauses to suck, with a hissing sound, a piece of gristle that has lodged between her teeth.

  While Mai picks up another piece of meat, as though demonstrating what your people say, that there’s no point in losing your appetite over other people’s sorrows, the reminder of their mother’s situation badly disturbs the girls. They sit motionless, hardly breathing, their greasy hands upturned on their thighs.

  You plan to promise your mother the leg she wants for your sister as a kind of barter for the programme you have come to set up. Waiting for a chance to do so, you scoop up a handful of rice and vegetables, lower your eyes, and do your best to look as though you are enjoying the meal.

  “My daughter ended up with one leg, although she started with two.” Mai leans forward and rubs her own shin. “One leg and two children, Tambudzai. That mathematics does not work out. That is why these children are uneducated. It is the wrong numbers. Netsai could not work. You sent nothing. The people those girls fought the war for despised and hated these girls’ mother. Wasn’t she just another one of all the whores from Mozambique, who they say even drank blood and ate flesh while they were whoring? Even if the government took away the school fees, how could we buy the books and school uniforms? And now they call school fees levies, treating us like children. This is what this white woman must do. We have eaten what she sent. But we can’t survive on it. She must help you get a leg for your sister.”

  “Where will you get the leg for my mother from, Maiguru?” asks Freedom in excitement.

  “Iwe, Freedom. Mai will never get her leg back,” says Concept. “Why get involved? My mother is doing well with the peg. If anyone wanted to bring her a better leg, we would have seen it already. So why is it only now people are thinking about it?” She fingers a piece of sadza but does not dab it in gravy, nor put it into her mouth.

  Concept reaches for the water bowl. Running her tongue over her teeth to remove particles, she sets it down in front of Mai, who rinses her hands.

  The girls empty scraps from one plate into another. When they are done, and the dishes are stacked to wash up the next morning, they kneel in the kitchen doorway and bring their hands together in a respectful, soundless clap.

  “Good night, Mbuya. Good night, Maiguru Tambu. Thank you, Maiguru. We have eaten. We are full. Mbuya, shall we go and see Sekuru?”

  “As you wish,” shrugs Mai.

  You take stock. “Ah, it is time to sleep,” you say, deciding to buy time to think matters through.

  After you cross the yard to the house, you stand to say good night to your nieces once more. A heap lies beside the Mazda. Ignoring it, as your nieces do, you convince yourself it is a shadow.

  “I think your grandfather has gone back to where he was,” you observe.

  “Yes, he sometimes does that,” agrees Concept softly.

  After this conversation, it is better to fall asleep immediately. You do not dare to go out to clean your teeth but rinse your mouth with bottled water, which you spit out through the back window.

  The three-quarter moon waxes to full brightness in the early hours of morning. Its light spills across the baskets and boxes in the spare room, twisting the shadows into the swaying serpent and creeping hyena spectres of childhood.

  “Chemutengure! Chemutengure!” your father wails as though he has been moaning all night.

  Only half asleep, you lie tense in bed.

  “Chave chemutengure vhiri rengoro. Mukadzi wemutsvayiri hashayi dovi! It’s the rolling wheel of a wagon. A driver’s wife always has peanut butter!” the man roars in truculent tones, as though he carries a personal grudge against any husband who keeps his wife supplied with the spread.

  “Dovi! Peanut butter!” your father yells.

  Footsteps shuffle through the main room.

  “I forgot to put his sadza by the bed,” whispers Freedom, who, being the youngest, is supposed to remember such tasks.

  “Serves you right if he beats you. You were having too much fun chewing Maiguru’s meat,” Concept returns softly.

  “Go and talk to him. I’ll do it now,” Freedom hisses back.

  The bolt on the front door scrapes. The hinges creak, the edge of the wood grates across the floor.

  Concept laughs harshly, forgetting to whisper. “I hope you left something. Go and take it, don’t worry. Tell Mbuya he’s still sleeping and you just remembered. But have a look.” Her voice pulses with more mirth. “Where did he want to go? He’s fallen straight onto Maiguru’s Mazda.”

  By the time you hurry out, tying your Zambia cloth around your waist and tucking in a T-shirt hastily thrown on, your father has disengaged himself from the car and is swaying under the hute tree that stands at the edge of the central clearing.

  Mai hurries out, draped in her night wrap also, the Zambia cloth already around her waist above a discoloured petticoat, her night doek knotted carelessly about her head. Freedom follows at a distance, hanging her head in guilt.

  “Vhi-vhi-vhiri. What did I say? Oh vhiri, I said vhiri, please, vhiri, vhiri,” your father moans, his fury spent as you all gather before him.

  He looks back and waves at the car. “The wife of a driver? That’s wrong. No, it’s not the wife. No, it’s the father of a driver who never lacks peanut butter. Peanut butter! The father always has it, peanut butter.”

  Mai is merciless.

  “Wheels,” she seethes. “What vhiri are these? The only thing that’s going round, you rag of a fool, is your head.”

  Your father staggers toward you.

  “It’s you, my daughter. It’s you, the one who has come with those wheels.”

  Before he reaches you he turns and gropes his way back to the car, his arms stretched wide. Mai glowers. Baba strokes the Mazda’s canopy. Mai breathes deeply and shakes her head. Baba keeps on stroking the machine’s doors, bumpers, and hood. When he finishes he begins to cry.

  “Oh,” the words choke from his chest. “Oh, is it a daughter of mine? No, it can’t be. A daughter of mine, who has achieved such things? Hi-hi-hi-hi. A daughter of mine, can it be? No, never. This can’t be my daughter!”

  “No, no, don’t touch me,” he moans although no one is moving. “Today I have seen something that sews up every seam and every hem that was ripped. Let me stay and see what this murungu has done. Let me see what my daughter has brought me.”

  He continues moaning as you finally grip his arms and march
him to the house his brother built.

  “It’s me, Baba. It’s Tambudzai,” you say to his face. But his interest is elsewhere.

  “Vhiri,” your father sings softly, dreamily as you march him on. “Ha, vakomana, oh men and women, vhiri, vhiri.”

  His foot kicks the plates Freedom has put out as you enter his bedroom. Sadza, congealed meat, gravy, and bits of vegetables scatter.

  “Vhiri, oh vhiri,” Baba sighs. Without saying anything to each other, you and your nieces lay him down on his koya mattress.

  Night sidles west. Grey outlines the mountain behind the homestead. You do not think of sleeping.

  The chattering from the side room dies down in a little while as the girls drift back into dreams. You light a candle. Finally you pick up the exercise book you discarded earlier.

  An exercise toward the end of the book is called Mantra. The title is written in the middle of the line in ornate capitals. Under it the teacher has requested in small, amused script, “Please use normal writing.”

  You remember composing the poem but not what it says. Curious, you read once more thoughts committed to paper by your adolescent hand.

  Mantra

  I do not

  do not recall, not

  in any way remember

  the sombreness she speaks of, that

  vivid concentration of her mood as she

  so often sat

  pressing thumb against

  gap-rowed maize-cobs;

  do not recall

  this density of distress she considers

  that is thicker

  than the livid cloud

  dripping red bursts of

  sunset on mountain,

  that is deeper

  than the purple

  of hute juice

  of the mango tree shade rippling

  over her; an umbra

  she knew with fear could disintegrate

  whole women

  I who whole

  do not

  encompass either her

  error or

  the same of her judgement

  Impatient with the cryptic phrases, you drop the book back into the trunk and begin again to contemplate options for reaching your objective. You have not come to any conclusion when your mother’s voice cries out.

  “Mai-we, mai-we. Yuwi, yuwi, oh Father,” your mother shrills. “I am being killed. I am being put to death here. Daughter. Concept, Freedom. Everyone, it is my life that is being torn away.”

  You walk to the door. You wait there, head bowed. Your return to the bed, and do not go out.

  “Yuwi! Yuwi! He is killing me, he is killing me,” your mother wails. “Oh, my daughters and granddaughters-wé. Who will save me from this man?”

  You continue to listen, until, after some time, the cries diminish. When it is quiet again, you lie on the bed and turn to the wall as though you are sleeping.

  CHAPTER 20

  Early in the morning, you remove a small package from your overnight case and lay it on the table amongst the provisions. It contains a blouse and skirt for your mother and a short-sleeved shirt for your father that you were to present to your parents, as a kind of “open the mouth” at your official pitching of the Village Eco Transit, since you had imagined a formal meeting. You are leaving the package in the way of insurance, an ambiguous intermediate to, as it were, keep your mother’s mouth open. Clearly it is time to drive away in the Green Jacaranda Mazda, but you plan to return to further the exchange. You find a spot for the package where it will easily be found after which you pad to the front door.

  “Ndiwe here, Maggie? Is that you, Maggie?”

  Concept and Freedom are singing as they sweep the central clearing with brooms made of branches. “Wakatora mukunda. Who took my daughter?” Their happy voices shower music over the yard.

  Your mother is washing her face. An enamel basin containing warm water is balanced on the verandah wall. A slab of green Sunlight soap lies beside it. She touches her face carefully with a threadbare, greying towel.

  You remember you brought food, necessities, but no scented soap, Lux, Geisha, or Palmolive to add a trace of fragrance to your mother’s ablutions.

  “Good morning, Tambudzai,” your mother says. She does not look at you. “I thought I should leave him alone and not wash myself where he is,” she says.

  You are careful to keep neutral and calm.

  “Good morning, Mai,” you reply. “How did you sleep?”

  “As you see. And maybe heard,” she replies. “And you, how was your sleep?”

  You reassure her you rested well.

  “That is good,” your mother says. She pats her cheeks and neck dry. She knots her scarf cautiously around her head and spends a few moments pulling the front over swellings on her forehead. When that is done she pinches the headscarf further down to cover a red star that shines in the white of her eye. Then she pushes the doek up again because she cannot see anything.

  “What that woman, your boss, gave, in any case, we will use it. We’ll survive for a little while,” your mother says. “What I am thinking is, what made her want us to survive like that? That’s what I have been thinking about all these hours. Even when I had my hands up like that, as beer evaporated and his aim improved, even then, I was thinking there is something this Stevenson wants, and maybe I can do it. That is why I have decided that whatever happens, I am going to listen to whatever you came to say about your work with this … this …”

  “Tracey,” you supply. “Tracey Stevenson.”

  “Ah, Maggie, uchandiurayisa, Maggie. Ah, you will be the death of me, Maggie,” your nieces sing.

  “That one,” Mai nods. “I am going to listen to the message you say you are bringing.”

  The girls have swept the yard clean. They are scooping up rubbish onto a bit of aluminium roofing on the far side of the homestead. Their voices are fainter.

  Mai shouts, as loudly as she can with the bruises and contusions on her face, to her granddaughters to fetch the basin of dirty water. Passing through the door into the old house, she raises a hand for you to follow. Arranging two dusty chairs face to face amongst the provisions, she lowers herself into the first and gestures for you to take the other. She listens as you outline the plan, interrupting only occasionally for clarification.

  “It is for the whole village?” Mai confirms when you are done. “Not just for here, for your own reasons that will annoy the whole area?”

  “Yes! It is for everybody. It is being done properly,” you assure her. “But it will be built here,” you hurry on as her expression turns to doubt.

  “It is easier that way,” your mother agrees. “That way we can tell our mambo it is our project. If it is for the whole village, it is the mambo’s project and that would not be very good. On the other hand,” she reflects after weighing up the situation, “if it is only our project, that will not be good either. We will never succeed with something like that. People will kill us out of jealousy.”

  “It is a new life to share,” you explain. “All the village will have their part. It will provide something for everyone.”

  “All the village? Everyone?” Your mother’s expression clouds over again. “I thought you said the women are going to do the work. Everything that needs to be done? How will we manage if we have to do anything with these men interfering?”

  You assure Mai that, as you are in charge, you will work closely with each and every woman in the village.

  “And we will be paid? Each for doing what we do? All of us, properly?” your mother asks warily. “These white people, they say something and they do it too, but the way they do it, you just never know what it is they first said they were doing.”

  “I tell you, Mai, I now know them,” you say. After so much tension you are unable to resist a little boasting.

  “Do you forget I spent all those years at the Young Ladies’ College of the Sacred Heart? I know our white people. And I have worked with her for so long, I can
say I now know my boss better and I also know what she is talking about.”

  “It’s me you should know better,” says your mother. Jutting her chin she attempts a toss of her head, which ends in wincing.

  “Since I passed the grade seven, the Women’s Club voted me treasurer for our chapter in this village. Yes, I am very good with those numbers. So I can do this thing for you. I can talk to the Women’s Club and the chairwoman will carry our words to our mambo. Now I hope you are prepared, that you come ready to finish what you started,” she concludes. “He will want us to open his mouth with something. But it is no good opening the mouth and leaving the heart. So that will be another something.”

  You are prepared. You open your bag.

  “And they will pay us like this?” your mother verifies, examining the notes. “Money I can tie up for myself in my own headscarf?”

  “It will be money anyone who works with us can tie wherever he or she wants.”

  Your mother smiles.

  “We will eat first,” she decides. “Then we will go to see the Women’s Club chairwoman.”

  “Treasurer! Makorokoto! Congratulations, treasurer,” you reply with a swell of pride.

  “Now,” Mai begins again, standing up. “Do as if nothing has been said, you hear, Tambudzai. Wash yourself. Make tea for your father, porridge, whatever he wants. But when you speak to him, not a word. Don’t tell him what we’ve spoken of. Certainly, don’t tell him we have spoken and gone on to reach a decision.”

  “I have understood, Mai,” you say, heart beating as you see the distance to your next promotion rapidly decrease.

  “Then I will go and get dressed,” your mother says. “The time will come when you will let him think he is the first to know, and the first to take the message to our mambo,” she persists, from the door.

  “Mai,” you call.

  “What is it, child?”

  Thinking of it only at that moment, you rummage in your bag once more and hold out a packet of paracetamol. Your mother takes the pills and calls for water from her grandchildren.