Fiction

Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

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Dream II

I am in the cactus garden. The sky is dark, heavy clouds on the verge of unleashing a torrent of rain. It is hot, and the humidity makes my clothes stick to my skin, damp and smelly. A path appears, slabs of concreate that fork into two separate directions. I stand there at the fork, not sure which path to take. I hear crying. A baby. It is definitely a baby, and I hurry down the path in the direction of the wailing. An acacia bush appears, a leafy green umbrella under which lies the baby on a yellow flannel blanket. Its chubby legs are flailing, and the diaper has loosened. It is a girl. I look around desperately, hoping that whoever left her under this tree is somewhere close by. There is no one in sight. Just an ocean of cactus. Plump drops of rain begin to fall. The smell of wet earth fills the air. Quickly, I crouch and reach under the bush and as gently as I can, I pick the baby up. I wrap her in her blanket and hold her to my shoulder. But she struggles and squirms herself into the cradle of my arm, all the while screaming bloody murder. ‘Ehu-hu-e, Ehu-hu-e,’ I sing her the monotonous lullaby that my mother sang to me, that all mothers sing to their fretting babies and have sung for centuries. I bounce up and down to the rhythm of the song, but she is inconsolable. Then I watch as she nuzzles my breast. I move her head, but she persists, frantic. She grabs my shirt front, burying her head in its cotton folds and is quiet. I know I should not nurse a baby that is not mine, but I unbutton my shirt. Before I can do anything her tiny mouth latches onto my nipple. The clouds scatter across the sky, wisps of fluff floating above us. A rock appears before me, and I make myself comfortable on it and nurse the baby. I wake up.

***

It was a hot afternoon, and we were done with classes. Busi and I walked out of the math room together, headed towards the dining hall for lunch.  Old Jacaranda trees lining the walkway dropped purple blooms from the canopy above. Like confetti, they littered the path and gave off a sweet scent as we trampled on them. The sun’s hot fingers of light filtered through the purple canopy, creating a muted, languid atmosphere.

A river of blue and white-clad girls jostled past us, brown paper-covered books in hand. A Prefect yelled: “Quiet please! No running or shoving.” The lunch bell rang, and the rowdy river of hungry girls changed course and flowed in its direction.

“Let’s sneak off to the dorm so I can finish telling you my story.”

I was starving. Food was not in abundance at the school, and I had already devoured my snack from home in the first two weeks of the term. Missing lunch meant that my next meal would be supper at 6 pm. It was 12 pm. As if Busi sensed my hesitation she coaxed,

“I have peanut butter and Mari biscuits.”

Her eyes pleaded with me, and I could not say no.

Busi came from a wealthy family. She had everything she wanted and needed at all times. At least that is how it appeared to me at the time. A driver came to the school twice a month, the car groaning with all manner of goodies for Busi. Food, toiletries, sweets and biscuits, even movies and music CDs. Busi was one of the few Form 4 students with a cell phone. She always had enough data bundles to access Facebook to post pictures at the weekend. Others relied on a boyfriend or aspiring lover to juice their cheap phones with airtime so they could Whatsapp them sweet nothings in the middle of the night.

“Ok let’s go, but quickly so no one sees us.”

“Ach, no one will care. Those greedy cooks won’t fuss. They will be happy to have our portion of sadza, cabbage, and beans. No one will miss us in that mob.”

We ran through the jacarandas and past the sculpted bougainvillea bushes that separated the classrooms from the dorms. The main door was open, and inside was much cooler than the sweltering heat outside. Busi dropped her books on her bed, and I sat down to free my feet from the confines of shoes and socks. The cool cement floor was welcome relief.

“Let me get our lunch.”

Busi giggled, and on her knees, she reached under her bed to pull out her huge metal trunk.

“These coffins are just ugly. I wish we were allowed alternative luggage.”

“Truth is where would you find nice-looking cases that could contain your entire life like these things? Books, toiletries, uniforms… My mother once told me a story about a student at Gokomere who would bring a small pot and a 10kg bag of Roller Meal to cook sadza behind the dorms because the food the nuns gave them was never enough.”

Busi howled, “But when would she cook it?”

“She would wait till everyone was in bed, and she and her friends would sneak out to the back, light a fire, and cook sadza. They ate it with tinned baked beans or corned beef. Soon others were doing it. But one night, someone forgot to put out the fire. A huge bush fire almost incinerated the entire school. The nuns preached fire and brimstone onto the person who had deliberately tried to set the school ablaze, and a couple of guilt-ridden culprits confessed. That was the end of midnight sadza feasts.”

“Sadza and corned beef doesn’t sound bad at all. It beats weevil-infested beans and boiled cabbage.”

“Well as you know, weevils are protein…”

“Oh disgusting!” Busi scrunched up her face, and we both laughed.

Busi rummaged through her trunk and came up with a jar of peanut butter and an unopened box of Mari biscuits.

“See? These biscuits will be nice and crunchy.”

Busi sat back on the bed, and we busied ourselves scooping out peanut butter with our fingers and spreading it onto the small round biscuits. We tossed them whole into our mouths and crunched on the sweet, sticky mess.

“This is better than the lunch mush in the dining hall.”

Busi nodded. “I have something to drink.”

She went back into her trunk and produced a kango cup and a large box of expensive guava juice. She gave it a good shake and used her teeth to rip a hole at the top. She poured some into the cup and handed it to me. I took a drag of the tepid but sweet juice and handed the cup to her. She sipped a couple of times and set the cup on the night stand. She twisted the silver biscuit wrapper, closed and fiddled with the ragged edges.

“My father is a bastard. But everyone thinks he is a nice man.”

I stopped chewing, momentarily shocked.

“My mother is not dead. He kicked her out of the house. I was about five. I remember how she cried, screaming and lying in the dust in front of him begging for forgiveness. She begged him to let her stay for the sake of her children. She begged us to help her beg him. We were all crying and begging him, and he told us to shut up and go inside. Then he told the guards to take her and her belongings out of the homestead. My brother was only a year old at the time and still suckling. He cried every night for months for my mother. My sister, Nqo, who was only twelve, would strap him on her back and walk about all night trying to quiet him. During the day, he drank cow’s milk, but at night he wailed for my mother. We all shared one room, and I would put my fingers in my ears to keep his crying from squeezing my heart painfully.”

“What a nightmare, Busi.”

“Oh it was a nightmare. It has not ended. It will never end.”

The dorm was quiet, save for the tap-tapping of a tree branch on the gutter running by the window opposite Busi’s bed. It was a high window to stop girls from sneaking out at night. A green bomber fly buzzed loudly and hurled itself against the window pane over and over again trying to escape. I watched this fly and felt a sadness settle in my middle. The fly fell on its back on the narrow window sill, buzzed feverishly until it was right-side up and took up its fruitless ritual again.

“I was too young to remember everything, but they say that my father’s second wife caught my mother sprinkling some muti onto his supper. My stepmother screamed, and my mother stood frozen like a statue holding a piece of newspaper containing the powdered potion. There was shouting and doors banging, and my father was called into the kitchen to see what my mother was doing. It is said that he ordered my mother to eat the food she had sprinkled with the muti and she refused and that is why she was thrown out. My older sisters say that the eight kids were eating in the dining room. My mother and my stepmother each have four.”

“Busi, why would your mother choose to poison your father after having four kids with him and after she had even accepted a second wife?”

“Ludo, you don’t understand something.” Busi turned on the bed to look at me.

“My father is the god of our village. He has practically all the businesses there. Butchery, bottle store, dry goods store, grocery. The vegetable market is his. Villagers pay him to get a stall there to sell onions and tomatoes. The village boreholes and cattle-dipping posts are his. Villagers pay him to use them. The village clinic was built by him, the nurses and doctor are paid by him. Every person in the village including the Chief and Sabhuku bow to him. He is rich, and he uses his money to buy people and goods. So my mother had no choice whether he took a second wife or not. Just like his second wife had no say when, a few years later, he took a third wife. No one could protect my mother or help her after she was sent away.”

“Did you say third wife?”

Busi laughed, a humorless cackle. She kicked off her shoes, and a whiff of her smelly socks caught me off guard. I wished she would take them off, but I did not say anything so as not to disturb the flow of her story.

“Yes. There is a third wife. That is why although I hate boarding school I would rather be here than at home because my two stepmothers and their children are some dumb creatures. The wives each think they are my father’s favorite, and the children compete against one other, each believing that they have the best spot in my father’s heart. They don’t know him like I do. The man has no favorites, and he has no space in his body for a heart. So there are no best spots to occupy.”

“But what is he like with you, Busi?”

“With me? What do you mean?”

“Like your relationship.”

“What relationship? I don’t have anything to do with him except when I go home for school holidays. Then I sit in his office and go through the interview.”

“Interview?”

“Yes. That is what a conversation between me and my father is. An interview.

‘Busi how are you?’

‘I am well baba and you?’

‘Fine.’

‘How was school?’

‘School was fine baba. Here is my end-of-term report.’

“Then he sits in silence, nodding and frowning, sucking and puffing on his tobacco pipe. I’m telling you it’s like how they show God in movies, all surrounded by clouds and mist. Then he will say:

‘Ok this is not a bad report. Keep working hard because that math must improve next time. Ninety-two per cent is inferior to hundred per cent. So next time it must be full marks. Only a perfect score is good enough.’”

I was shocked.

“Yoh! You get ninety two for math and it’s not good enough? Wow!”

“I know. It’s crazy. But what is really crazy is the way he expects me and everyone else to be perfect when he himself is not. I hate how he doesn’t see his own bullshit but has antennae for everyone else’s. I call that hypocrisy. Fathers are hypocrites.”

That statement from her jarred me. I looked at her, and I could see that she was adamant.

“Not all fathers are like that, Busi. My father is…”

“Well, all the fathers I know or have heard about are just tyrants. Even ones with no money, so yours must be special.”

I did not know whether she was being sarcastic, but her comment stung a little. I shifted on the bed longing to tell her about my own life back home. About how poor we were and that we owned three mud huts, a couple of goats and chickens, and not a single cow. I wanted her to know that we still fetched water from the streams and did not have solar panels to power TVs, radios, and fridges like she had. I wanted her to know that my scholarship was not because my father knew people in high places but because I really was poor and this time ‘round the board had done the right thing by giving money to a student who needed it. I wanted her to know that my father had walked every day for two months to the government offices five miles away from our home to ask whether my scholarship application for money had been successful. I really liked Busi, but I did not want her putting my father in the same group as the bad fathers. I wanted to talk, but I didn’t. I don’t know why.

“Busi, so where is your mother now?”

“She went back to her people. She is Karanga, from Masvingo. My siblings and I have no contact with her or anyone from her side of the family. My grandfather once sent a delegation of elders to try to talk to my father. They were not even allowed in through the gates. Not even offered a drink of water or a place to sit and rest after such a long journey.”

“Wow. Your father is hardcore.”

“He is a beast. That is what he is. He did not give a shit that we did not have a mother to care for us. My sister, Nqo, went from age twelve to thirty, being mother to us and my brother who would not sleep at night. My stepmothers are horrible to us, and when he finally realized this he sent us off to boarding school. That is his solution for everything. To send people away. Maybe I will look for her one day when I am grown up.”

The sadness in my middle tightened, and I could not stop the tears that I had been holding back from falling. Quickly, I wiped them away with the back of my hand. Busi did not seem to notice.

“She came a couple of times to see us, but my father had the guards beat her and chase her away. I was about ten years old. Imagine hearing your mother wailing, calling Nqo, Vika, Busi, Themba over and over again. Then the father’s voice barking orders that she be removed from outside his gate and dumped as far away from the property as possible. Imagine having her so close, hearing her and not being able to see her or touch her.”

“I can’t imagine such Busi, angeke.”

“Ludo, I ran into the house, up the stairs, and watched from our bedroom window as those guards dragged her through the dirt. She kept calling our names until I could no longer see them. But her voice. I can still hear it today.”

We sat in silence. The green bomber fly was dead. It lay belly up on the window sill. The tap-tapping of the tree branch on the gutter was faint. I looked at Busi. Beads of sweat had popped up just above her upper lip. Another trail of sweat snaked down her temple from her hair line. She continued to fiddle with the biscuit wrapper, small motions with her fingers. Time stretched between us, a long drawn-out yawn filled with things I longed to say. But everything that I longed to say remained trapped at that junction where the head, heart, and mouth meet.

The lunch bell startled me. Within minutes the dormitory was alive with the energetic sounds of fed girls with an hour of free time before afternoon studies at 3 pm in the main hall. We chatted with the other girls, Busi and I. We even laughed and shared jokes. But something had happened that tethered us to each other in a way that no crowd, then or thereafter, could undo. There would be parties, funerals, graduations, exams in huge halls with hundreds of other students, and I would feel the reassurance of that tether.

That night after lights out, as I was fading in and out of sleep, Busi came to my bed. It was pitch-dark, but I knew it was her. I shifted to make a space for her.

“I am scared.”

She snuggled up to me and we lay there for a moment, a pair of spoons, both facing the wall. Then as though to a silent command Busi turned to face me. Her quick paced breath was heavy on my face and in the dark my lips found hers and they touched. Frantically, she pushed herself closer to me. She dipped her head to my chest and, with feverish fingers, found my breasts. With a hand on one, she took the nipple of the other into her mouth and sucked gently. Her tense body relaxed and poured itself into the valleys made by mine. She sucked harder. I gasped.

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2 Comments

Mathamkaze Ramakau April 11, 2017 at 4:39 pm

Poor Luba’s friend, I can feel a lot for her, it is not easy for almost everyone break lose of such personal information especially that which is about abuse taking place at home. Thank you for sharing this as it can help in discussion with young girls as to how they can find different ways to break silence.

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Jackie Mgido May 6, 2017 at 1:51 pm

Wow!!! I want to read more. So many questions about injustice. I sat there thinking, this poor girl was the one abused. I wonder is she is going to be abused again when she gets home. So many questions. Really great easy read.

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