Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

 
As I peer through the hedge, I hear a blood-chilling scream. It is more like the cry of a wounded animal, like when the axe comes down on the neck of a cow and the head is not cut off immediately. The animal bellows and thrashes wildly. I am looking and the screams come from Zuzo’s father, Mabuza. He is on fire and he is thrashing back and forth doing a strange and frightening dance as he screams and screams. He is attached to a chair and he is jumping up and down while the chair and he are engulfed in flames. I see Bongi, Zenzo and MaBaso the grandmother and all of them are watching. I cannot see their faces through the smoke from the now quiet Mazuza. He is just a pile, burning slowly. The smell in the air is sickening. The soldiers are just standing there, guns pointing in every direction they turn. Zuzo’s mother screams like a wild cat and jumps onto the flames. They did not see her coming quietly through the gate. Even I did not see her until she jumps into the fire with baby Innocent on her back. Then I see Zenzo and Bongi running after their mother right into the fire. There they are dancing a horrible dance to the music of their screaming. Only Gogo MaBaso is left sitting. She cannot walk, even with a stick. Her hands are on her head. I cannot see her face but I know she is watching her family burn.

 

“Mama wake up!”

You were crying in your sleep. It was Suko looking concerned.

“What were you dreaming?”

I looked around me, wiping tears from my face.

“It was just a silly dream that’s all.”

Khohlwa and Khethiwe were asleep, both their mouths open. They looked like baby birds waiting for their mother to put food into their beaks.

I had pins and needles in my left leg and I tried to stretch it out to ease the discomfort. It was still hot but the sun was now lower in the sky on the other side of the car. The Kombi slowed down and came to a complete stop. I peered out of the window and saw several large metal drums with horizontal white stripes painted on them with a long wooden bar across them. Off to the side were three police officers, two men in navy blue trousers and grey shirts with shiny buttons on their shoulders, and a woman in a blue dress with shiny buttons down the front. It was the police.  All three officers were wearing caps with the ZRP badge on them. One of them was talking to Mpofu through the window and the woman walked around the car, inspecting. She peered through my window and I looked straight ahead, nervous. She paused for what felt like a lifetime, then proceeded slowly to the back, kicking the tires a few times. Then she reappeared at the opposite window and peered in again. Khohlwa looked straight at her. They locked eyes for a few moments before the officer talking to Mpofu signalled for him to proceed. The third officer lifted the wooden bar and we drove through.

I was furious with Khohlwa. I suppressed the urge to reach across Suko and Khethiwe and slap her stupid face.

“Khohlwa are you insane? What do you think you were doing, challenging that policewoman with your eyes? Wahlanya?”

Vusa turned around slightly in his seat.

“Mama don’t worry yourself. That amaSwina are just as hungry as those mgodoyi mongrels in the villages that eat shit. Just a couple of rand bribe and they were grinning like hyenas.

Khethiwe laughed loud and Suko giggled. Still, I wanted Khohlwa to answer me, the imbecile. Something about the way she pretended not to hear me made me want to hurt her. She was facing the window.

“Khohlwa, did you hear me ask you a question?”

The look she flashed me made me feel like a piece of dirt. I wanted to claw the haughtiness out of her. I wanted to trample to death that thing that made her think that she was better than me. I took deep breaths to stay calm. I unclenched my fists and looked out of the window at the blur of trees and people. The girl had a way of stealing my joy.

                                                     ***

I stayed at the Mabhenas until it was almost time for me to give birth. At first, I was given a room in the main house but as soon as Simon and the Mabhenas and the mediator went to pay my lobola and damages, I moved to the cottage with Simon. I stopped going to school and my belly grew bigger, as though it had been waiting for someone to claim and own the pregnancy before it expanded to let the world know that a baby was on the way. The shame I felt about having sex outside marriage evaporated, leaving me excited at the idea of being a mother.

 

  Simon’s A-level results came out and he passed all three of his subjects. He wanted to go to university but he was now a family man. Mabhena gave him a job managing the shops and helped him get a driver’s license.

 

I was happy cooking for Simon and washing his clothes. We laughed and made love a lot. He was loving and attentive and he shared himself with me. Though he never wanted to answer many questions about his past or what happened to his family he did not mind me asking them. I found out more about his past when I went home to Auntie’s to give birth. The custom is that you went back home to give birth and stayed there until the baby was about 3 months old. This was so that if anything happened to you or the baby during childbirth the in-laws could not be blamed for killing you. Such is the strange love-hate relationship between in-laws.  Also, it is known that there is no rest for a woman in her husband’s house. So, you went home to rest and be taken care of.

I learned that Simon’s father had died during the war and that his mother and grandmother raised him along with his sister Luba in Lupane. Knowing this made me feel closer to him than ever before. He and I understood loss and so we clung to each other, consoling each other and trying to fill those empty spaces left by those who had died when we were so young.

My Aunti could not give me any more details about his family in Lupane, but I made a decision to find out more and to visit them and show them the baby.

 

 March 23, 1993- Khohlwa burst into the world with a vigour that broke my sixteen- year- old body. Labour was long and hard and they cut me so she could come out. For a week afterwards, I washed my hidden parts in warm saltwater. It was torture. I was breastfeeding and my nipples cracked and became sore. Tears streamed down my face as I nursed this baby I loved so much that I would go through the whole gruelling process again for her.

“Stop crying! Did you think being a mother was playing amatope with your dollies?”

I would look at the baby, one hand supporting her head and wipe away my tears with the other. I would wince as she tugged at my raw nipple sucking and sucking with her eyes closed. My womb would contract and my body would be wracked with pain. I just cried and cried endless tears. Simon came to visit and he was confused at my seeming lack of joy at having a healthy baby. I would stare at him and cry. He was free to come and go as he pleased, his body did not ache and he did not have a gushing womb and sore nipples. He did not have to wake up at night to nurse a screaming baby, one who cried all night and slept all day. I resented him and the sight of him made me miserable.

“Give me the baby!”

My aunt would take her away after I fed her so that Simon and I could talk.

“Let’s walk outside Thembi. It will be good for you to get out into the fresh air for a bit.”

I would snarl at him.

“What do you know about what is good for me?”

Simon was silent. I got up and we walked outside.

“You look pretty”.

I did not answer. I just wanted things to go back to normal. I wanted to go back to school, to play with my friends, all of whom had been told to stay away from me since I was now a grown woman and would be a bad influence on them. But I was still the same Thembi on the inside. But what was on the inside didn’t seem to matter. I was now a wife and mother and that was that.

“Thembi don’t go too far in case the baby wakes up.”

The tightness in my shoulders worsened.
“Yes mama”.

The tears would well up and I would look away so Simon could not see them. I couldn’t explain to him that I felt as though I was being buried alive. There was something wrong with me, of this I was sure. Everything felt overwhelmingly heavy and I felt like running away.

 

 

Khohlwa was named a week after she came into the world because we did not have a name for her.

“Let’s name her Khohlwa,” Simon announced one day. Auntie was holding the baby and she agreed.

 “Yes, Khohlwa so that her mother can forget the pain she is going through someday. So that the girl may always bring joy to her mother so that she may forget any hardships life throws at her.”

“Forgetting is good”, Simon nodded.

And so Khohlwa was named. I did not care.

After a month Aunti accompanied me back to the Mabhena’s my matrimonial home. Simon came to carry the luggage: baby bath, bucket for washing nappies, and a huge suitcase. He brought Lizwe with him to help. We were welcomed with singing and dancing and a feast of chicken- and- rice, peanut butter greens, beans, scones and presents for baby Khohlwa. All the children wanted to hold the baby and Simon helped them by supporting the head. They cooed and pulled back her bonnet to marvel at her soft curly hair.

“She has fat cheeks. Her mouth is so tiny. She has skin like peanut butter.”

I was feeling better. My body had healed and nursing Khohlwa was no longer painful. I smiled and laughed more. But I was no longer the same and I stopped waiting to feel like the old me again. I accepted my new life and even came to enjoy being Khohlwa’s mother, especially when she smiled and made sounds. Soon she was sitting up and then crawling. I would carry her on my back as I did housework or put her on a blanket under a tree while I cooked on the fire outside.

Simon was moody. He was always dissatisfied with something. If it was not the sorry state of the country it was Mabhena taking advantage of him or that my isitshwala was not cooked well enough.

“This food is tasteless Thembi. Did you even put salt at least? The meat is tough, the sauce is like water…”

I just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Simon, two days ago you said I used too much cooking oil and salt and that you did not want to die of high B.P. Now you are complaining that the food is bland. It seems nothing I do pleases you lately. Perhaps this is about something else, not food?”

To my horror I watched Simon transform. His face became a dark cloud and the energy around him shifted. I had just put Khohlwa down to sleep and was settling down opposite him so that we could eat together. I had never seen him look this way. He was inflating as though swallowing air. With a swift swipe of his arm, the dishes flew into the air, weightless like paper. They landed on the floor, a jarring clanging noise that set my teeth on edge. He reached across the table, grabbed me by the throat and squeezed. I did not move or scream but felt tears sting the inside of my eyes before they fell, giant drops falling onto my face. He stared into my eyes as though there was something in them that he was watching intently. He clenched the hand at my throat once and shook me.

“Don’t you ever dare to question me like that again.”

He shoved me and I fell on my back. I bumped my elbow on the cement floor. Pain shot through my arm but it was nothing compared to the pain I thought would constrict the life out of my thudding heart. I had never been afraid of Simon. I never thought there would be a day in my life that I would be scared of him, that he would ever hurt me. Not physically, but in a way that would change me forever. I don’t even know how it changed me. But I did not mourn the loss of the girl Thembi through the birth of my daughter the way I mourned the loss of this something. Whatever this thing was it was gone, like a pebble tossed into the middle of the Shangane River at its fullest. There was no sense in trying to look for it. It was gone forever.

I cowered face down on the floor, too scared to look up lest I provoke him again. But when Khohlwa stirred I gathered up courage to get up and tend to her. Simon was gone. But the reminder of what had happened was all over the kitchen, red sauce splattered on the walls and floor like someone had been careless with blood.

He came back later that night. I lay in bed, stiff with fear and clinging to Khohlwa in the hope that he would not hurt me while I held the baby. I heard him cleaning up the mess and when he was done I felt him as he crawled into bed. I lay stiff as his body tried to curl into mine. It did not fit. He caressed my back until I started to relax. My body dropped into the valley of his but still, it did not fit. It would never fit. Hot tears fell into my pillow.

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