“Yes,” the widow says after a while. A tremor runs through her body. “Even though my brother survived the war, the monster that walks around was only lying down. It stood up again and chewed on him down there in Bulawayo.”
After another moment, Christine shakes hands with everybody. Everyone engages in the pleasantries.
“Is that it, Tete?” Christine asks, when the greetings are finished. “Saying here is someone, but only talking about her father. And of things that nobody can talk about sanely in this country.”
An awkward silence follows, for you are all members of a peace-loving nation. You do not talk about how citizens dissented and how their ghastly crushing cast bodies into disused mine shafts and swept them into railway carriages like debris dropped by a whirlwind.
“Are you saying it is not true, that there is no one that I called brother, Kiri?” your landlady says in a tone that stops everyone thinking anything at all. “Yes, if it weren’t for that cyclone down where those Ndebeles come from, there would still be someone for me to turn to in these times that are so bad nobody can say it. Yourself, Kiri, wouldn’t you be a different woman, one who has a father?”
Then Mai Manyanga remembers the reason for the gathering in the hall and remarks in an offended voice, “Now, where is that other girl, Mako?”
Even though the widow says “Mako” loudly and you all expect a response, there is none.
“What’s going on now?” your landlady asks. “I heard her move in there when I knocked and I thought, ah, that is the young woman with manners. She is standing up, getting ready to join us.”
“What about Shine?” says Bertha, who still stands so as to block her doorway. “Mai Manyanga, has that young man been called also?”
“You know me,” says Mai Manyanga grandly, ignoring Bertha. “I don’t talk much. But everyone calls me a prayer warrior. If there is something wrong, this Mako should say so. That is all. Only that. And my knees will bend down for her.”
Bertha is strong, of a size that thinking men run from should she be displeased with them; a woman who often says she is hardened past femininity by too many things to talk about. She gives a shallow chuckle.
“We want Shine to know there’s someone else here,” she goes on. The next laugh is shallower and emptier. “He needs to know. We don’t want anything you don’t want, Mai Manyanga.”
Your housemate’s bosom heaves up and down. You wonder whether to laugh with her, but decide against it.
Mai Manyanga proceeds back up the hall.
“Ah, now we can meet Mako,” she says as Mako’s door creaks. The widow smiles, for your landlady rates her fourth tenant highly. Mako is the kind of occupant everyone with a contract should be—she pays her rent on time, never leaves a light or tap on, nor does she play loud music.
When Mako still does not emerge, the landlady wonders why. Bertha wades forward, past the widow and her visitor.
Your lip rose in disdain when you met the housemate Mako. It was a few days after you arrived at the widow’s. She must have applied to live at Widow Manyanga’s during happier times, for the very air in the room now reeked of incessant adversity and failure.
“Makomborero,” the woman said to you at the introduction. “Makomborero. You know what that means, don’t you? So just call me Blessings.”
“I am Tambudzai. How are you, Blessing?” you said.
The quiet tenant shook her head, emphasizing, “Blessing-ssss!”
“Tambudzai, I hope you and Mako will understand each other nicely. Mako works at the Ministry of Justice as a legal secretary,” said Mai Manyanga.
“As long as people don’t say a legal fool, Auntie,” said your cotenant, with a shrug. “As long as it’s not that, I can’t complain. Aren’t we all fools, staying there, working at that ministry?”
The sound of scratching and gnawing emerged from a corner. Small clawed feet scampered across the ceiling.
“If you can call it working,” Mako shrugged once more, the last traces of vitality ebbing from her voice and paying no attention to the vermin. “What is work? If it’s work it should pay you something. So isn’t it just foolishness keeping on there, when the pay is as good as nothing? That’s why people say it anyway. Legal fool. We who work there know, even if they don’t say it while we can hear it.”
As she spoke, a grey rat bolted from beneath a plastic bag concealed in a corner. Its claws trailed streaks of soiled cotton wool, at which it had been gnawing. Falling over, the bag deposited a red, clotted mass on the floor. Disgust stopped your breath as you realized why the young woman’s room smelt even worse than yours.
“I keep it there to burn it,” your housemate said dispassionately.
“Yes, that is something else for you to know,” your landlady nodded, turning to you. “There is more to pay if any one of my toilets stops working.”
After that introduction, you ignored Mako’s request to be called Blessings, as does everyone else in the house. She herself exudes defeat in suffocating waves as dreadful as the rank odour.
Now, several months after that introduction, Mako uses both her hands to close the door once everyone has entered. The second it clicks shut, the legal secretary starts weeping. Down onto the floor she crumples. There her short, thin body curls up, forehead buried in the crook of her arm. Her fingers clench a wad of tissue. She is like a zongororo prodded by curious children.
“Get up!” commands Bertha roughly, her face without expression.
“What are you doing, going pfiku-pfiku, sniff-sniff, like that?” your housemate says harshly. “It’s enough now. Iwe, get up and tell us.”
Your landlady breathes deeply as though she is about to sing. Bertha changes her mind quickly and smoothly.
“Don’t mind. Don’t mind anything,” she says, bending over the broken secretary. She hauls the young woman up.
“No, I just want to die now. That’s all I want,” your housemate insists and cannot stop weeping. “What can I do?” she goes on, trying to slide from Bertha’s grip, back onto the floor.
Bertha grasps her firmly.
“There is nothing else,” the young woman sobs.
“Shine!” Bertha exclaims. Her voice flies past outrage to hover halfway between disgust and amusement.
“Hi-hi! Hi-hi!” Mako weeps ever more loudly, confirming Bertha’s suspicion.
The new woman watches intently, although she does not speak.
“Shine is not here,” the landlady says. “He didn’t come when I called him.”
After that your landlady joins Bertha in advising Mako to wipe her face.
The good advice accomplishes nothing. Mako keeps choking on mucous and tears. The widow tells Christine, “This is the one called Makomborero.”
Christine nods without response. The widow taps the newcomer’s shoulder to prod her to leave. Apart from walking a little more quickly than usual, Mai Manyanga departs calmly as though nothing extraordinary has happened.
The door clicks shut again. You, Bertha, and Mako are alone. It is a different time of the month. The pall of putridity you experienced at your first visit is somewhat diminished.
“Shine,” Bertha says again in a hollow voice.
Mako wails and slips back onto the floor.
Bertha stands over her and tells her to stop falling down and to pull herself together.
You move to the door. Bertha turns to go as well, looking quite ill at the sight of Mako’s fragility.
“The lavatory,” Mako sobs to make sure you do not leave her alone.
You halt, your hand on the doorknob.
“The brush scrapes so loud. Then you have to flush it and keep brushing, so I didn’t hear anything,” gasps Mako. “I didn’t hear him coming.”
Bertha returns to the bed and pulls Mako up onto it once more.
The legal secretary’s shoulders shudder. Her voice quivers. She can hardly tell you that Shine sidled out of his bedroom.
“Oh, why am I so foolish? Why didn’t I hear him?” she w
ails, savaging herself with self-accusation. “I thought he was just going out. Why didn’t I do something?”
Your housemate weeps that her dying started right there, with her error of judgement. While she leaned over, brushing inside the bowl, Shine heaved in and wedged his knee between her buttocks. She says no more than this, telling it to you again and again, varying her anguished account of the incident only to inform you she knows her agony will go on forever because now that this has happened, she does not know how to stop either the dying or the housemate who caused it.
You had put the episode at the market firmly behind you when you came to Mai Manyanga’s. Now, though, you think of Gertrude. Mako is wearing baggy sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt for cleaning. You have never caught her in a miniskirt or tight leggings. With Gertrude, the reason for what happened was clear for all to see. Yet something similar has happened to Mako. Your heart beats faster. You are a woman alone. Your room is next to Shine’s. After this attack on Mako, will your age and general unattractiveness prevent him coming for you? Hoping so, you move away from your housemate, wanting distance between yourself and the woeful young woman.
“Did anything happen?” Bertha asks when Mako is calmer.
“I told you what happened,” Mako says. “He enjoyed himself behind me. And I thought only let him finish. Let it be finished. Let him go. So I kept quiet.”
“Only that? Then why are you crying?” Bertha demands. “He didn’t threaten you? He didn’t say he will find you again? Mako, if you ask all women at your workplace, in fact all women, maybe just not Tambudzai over there, then you will know it’s what nearly every one of them puts up with.”
Bertha’s forehead creases with uncertainty when your housemate sobs more loudly at these words. At much the same moment you realize there is nothing you can do or say since it is already done. Mako’s noise does not undo anything. As neither you nor Bertha wants to continue considering the cause of her grief, you say goodbye, telling Mako you will see her when she has herself under control. For one reason or another, however, you fail to leave.
Mako throws herself across her bed and pushes her face into her thin pillow. You do not talk and now even Bertha is silenced. She stretches out an arm and pulls up Mako’s tracksuit bottom, which has slid halfway down her buttocks.
That evening, when it is dark, after you have finished up your hidden food, because another’s grief is no reason to lose your own appetite, as your people say, and also because it is better to be out of your room this evening, beyond the range of sighs and groans from Shine’s bedroom, you forage for the next day’s vegetables in the widow’s garden.
“I have your parcel,” your landlady’s niece says softly from the cottage porch. She sits so still you only notice her when she wishes.
“Mealie meal,” she continues. “Your people at home are thinking of you.”
Your saliva turns bitter.
“Your mother walked all that way to bring it herself to our homestead. She said make sure you bring it right to where my daughter is. And a letter. That she wrote. They do not see you, but they are thinking of you. Your mother told me to tell you.”
You are quiet for a long time. Christine retreats, although she does not move, her presence merely melting back into the shadows.
“Your aunt is a wonderful woman,” you say in the end. “She is so kind, so full of love. She allows me to take the vegetables.”
“I can bring it now?” Christine says. She does not sound as though she wants to move, the question a formality.
“There is no need,” you say. “Why should you worry yourself? I’ll come over in the morning.”
You leave the garden carrying a smaller bunch of covo leaves than you intended.
“I’ll tell my aunt you say thank you,” says Christine.
“Thank you?”
“For the vegetables,” Christine says.
CHAPTER 6
The next day, you decide not to collect your mother’s parcel from Christine. Knocking on your landlady’s door, being offered a seat, engaging in the conversation that is part of a visit will associate you too explicitly with the homestead. Then you will grow quiet and surly. Or you will talk and divulge too much concerning your family’s circumstances. Mai Manyanga will learn firsthand the extent of your family’s privation. She will put two and two together and realize that while you are educated, you have nevertheless become a failure. A notice letter might well follow, as you still do not have a job.
You spend the morning writing a letter to your cousin Nyasha, who has become a filmmaker in Germany, in which you ask for advice concerning leaving Zimbabwe. You want nothing more than to break away from the implacable terror of every day you spend in your country—where you can no longer afford the odd dab of peanut butter to liven up the vegetables from Mai Manyanga’s garden or the petty comfort of perfumed soap—by going away and becoming a European. You do not post the letter. Instead, you tear it up and laugh bitterly at yourself: If you cannot build a life in your own country, how will you do so in another? Were you not offered an escape from penury and its accompanying dereliction of dreams through many years of education provided by your babamukuru, your uncle, first at his mission, then at a highly respected convent? All this you threw away with your wilful resignation from Steers et al. advertising agency. You wonder whether after all it is your fate to become as indigent as your father. To nurture whatever esteem your landlady might have for you, built on quite a few half truths and many small lies, you stay away from her cottage.
Naturally, as you have forbidden yourself association with her, Mai Manyanga’s niece becomes fascinating. Admiring the determination that brought her to a more prosperous life with the widow, despising her affection for her home—buried as deep in her heart as both of your umbilical cords are interred in the earth of your villages—you succumb to an agitated obsession.
You spy on her from the bathroom window. The newcomer spends most of her time in your landlady’s yard, doing the work the gardener doesn’t. She stops from time to time, looks up at the little window as though she can see you, and then resumes her work. At times you indulge yourself by imagining a kinship with this woman who confronted Mai Manyanga sober, a feat managed before only by Bertha.
Your heart taps your ribs anxiously whenever you meet her, but, to your relief, Christine does not mention the gift again. As time goes on, however, her silence grows into wordless condemnation.
She becomes an undulating presence moving in and out of your orbit. When you think she is in agreement with you, she is a sun giving off warmth and strange, invisible sustenance; when not, she seems too brilliant and strong, a bolt of lightning waiting to strike. She works around the yard with the same fluid quietness with which she moves and appears and disappears wherever she wishes. She connects the hose and jets of rainbow drops spray out along its length. Her expression does not change as she searches in the garage. She emerges testing a couple of catapults. You watch the expertise of her fingers enviously as she strips off lengths of black rubber, repairing the hosepipe from her bounty. Deftly, she lays the hose spout at the highest point of a seedling bed while she swings a hoe. She waters the sweet peas around the widow’s cottage. She sweeps the students’ slab. She replants a patch of grass under the guava tree. She is a woman who is good at what she does. And this is intriguing.
The new woman does not sweat, nor do you see her out of breath. She is too calm at every task as though her core has fled to a distant place disconnected from her body. Her look, hidden under her bland expression, travels far beyond the widow’s cottage. She stares down the shaft of her gaze as though when the time comes she will weave herself into it to slide away to a place where vision coincides with a deep wanting. You have seen this manner before, this being where the body is and not being there, in your sister Netsai, who went to war, who lost a leg, and who said to you when they said there was peace, “Yes, I went and I am here but I never came back. Most of the time I’m still out t
here wandering through the grass and sand, looking for my leg.”
You grow thinner, and do not know whether to be pleased about this or not. There is a dullness to your skin, like a thin membrane enveloping despair. It tells people you have collided with your limit; you do not want them to know this. The vegetables become too disgusting to eat, as first cooking oil then salt fall off your shopping list, and you do not have the heart to drain a portion every day from Bertha’s or Mako’s bottle. Every minute of each twenty-four hours taunts you with what you are reduced to. Although it seems they cannot be, the nights are yet more horrendous since your housemate Shine takes a different woman into his room practically every day of the week.
The encounters in the next room grow more strident from one night to the next, as though Shine measures the noise level from his women to set some kind of standard. You struggle to find sleep and when you do you are woken up again almost immediately. You try to read or resort to covering your head with your blanket. Finally, rest being as futile as everything else, you climb out of bed to stare over the yard, into the knowledge that you do not have the courage for anything you want—neither emigration, nor ensnaring one of your landlady’s sons.
One evening, several weeks after Christine’s arrival, you hear Shine’s bedroom door open earlier than usual. Footsteps pass by your room, toward the entrance. Gratified at the prospect of peace, you put away your disintegrating magazines and climb into bed.
“You will call me?” your housemate’s woman wheedles, out in the hall.
“I will,” Shine assures her.
“What if you don’t? Can I get you here? On the number you gave me?” the voice continues with plaintive longing.
“Are you afraid I will forget you?” Shine chuckles.
“Don’t do that. I’m sure you can’t, after tonight,” the woman says with the hint of a giggle.
“Don’t worry.” Shine’s voice is dark and slow like treacle. “You’re not someone a man wants to forget.”
You tie your nightscarf tightly over your ears and bury your head beneath your pillow.