Chapter 5
Natasha started, worked and finished her degree.
VaPfocho watched as the world turned violently around her. Friends and relatives drifted away from her. Children regarded her with suspicion.
Her second born, Wadzanai was hastily married to a bearded husband of the Apostolic Faith church. Yolanda wasn't promising to be at home too long. Despite all this, VaPfocho still went up the mountain and worked herself almost to a standstill. She harvested just enough to keep herself going, and nothing more.
She still slept in the girls’ nhanga. She tried to cajole her husband into putting up a hut for her. He turned a deaf ear on her. She realized that without a boy-child of her own, things would never work out.
They can’t do all these things for you because you are defenceless, she would reflect. Things were this way for her because there was no male in her house to push things along. All the women with sons were getting along just fine.
Emotions got entangled in her mind. They got to her physical well-being. At times, she wouldn't even leave her room, the one she still shared with the girls. Her husband took her to the hospital. After a day and half in the queue, she was told she had high blood pressure. High blood pressure, she was told, is caused by thinking too much.
'So what do we do?’ the husband asked.
'Just don't let her think too much.'
The woman nurse wrote something on the card.
'What's that?' VaPfocho asked.
'Prescriptions you got to buy.'
They had paid five dollars to see the nurse. Nothing less than selling a donkey would have made it possible to buy the prescription.
Chapter 6
The world awaits you
Big and bad
Virgin girl
The world awaits you
Red as blood
That isn’t the way to walk
Virgin girl
You flinch when you step on the ground
You imagine too many eyes on your back
Can’t you stop thinking of yourself?
Virgin girl
You imagine too much
And lose your head
In places and wonders
You miss the truth
Wait for the blood
Wait till you’re broken
It’s the final testimony
It’ll wash the red out of you
That’ll change your life
You’ll learn to love
And you’ll learn the truth
At it will be all gone in one night
Virgin girl
On the cold night
On a warm bed
Top it a little with a little blood
You shall learn a thing or two
The sun shall shine in the morning
You will grope for him in the space next to you
He’ll be gone
Broken promises
And here you’ll learn again
First time sticks
And you’ll ask
Where have you been?
What can I do for you?
You’ll grow to love
What’s more?
You’ll realize you’re just about full
You’ll stop treading on land
And lose that useless flesh
Merging with the land
That little blood shall save us
From you
When you lose your first blood
And save this world
It was almost like a dream, and she wished it was.
It wasn’t.
There was a faint rap at the smoky window. Nobody responded. There was a faint clunk of the knob. The window could be opened from outside, since some of the windowpanes had fallen off. Someone was climbing stealthily up the window. And he fell in!
She opened her eyes slowly. A tall man stood in the hut. Choosing! She might have wanted to scream. If she had tried, the sound would have died in her throat. If she was shocked, only God knows what she was when the man chose her. The stranger fell easily beside her. He nudged her. The hairs on her head stood uptight. She let out a nerve-shattering cry, leaping over the sleeping girls. She screamed the louder as she knocked into the wall.
‘There is someone in here,’ she cried.
The girls came out of their sweet dreams, nothing short of a scuffle. They got mixed up with the stranger easily. Dogs picked it up from the outside, begging without embarrassment to come in to solve the problem their own style. You wonder where the dogs were all along. Perhaps the stranger had brought some meat.
‘What’s it?’ the girls asked in confusion.
There was total chaos again. Everyone suspected the person next to her was the stranger. Men of the neighbourhood heard something was amiss. Most fire brigades are still to learn to react as fast.
Men circled the hut with spears, sticks and stones. It was the sons of different women with the able-bodied men of the community. In the gloom of the pale moonlight, the women spotted a lone figure that was standing against the wall, broken by the sudden turn of events. The girls rushed to one side and in so doing exposed the now uneasy and sheepish stranger. The stranger stood there, awaiting his fate.
‘Come out,’ the men hissed from outside, having made sure all the girls were out
Everyone recognized the poor boy as he walked out of the hut: Tendai. VaPfocho just remembered something. He had of late been pursuing her youngest daughter, Yolanda, quite relentlessly. Her Yolanda, the adventurous and untamed Yolanda!
'Let us burn him,' one of the boys suggested.
'No, we won't do it here,' another answered, angry and harsh as pepper.
'Tie him up and we’ll take him away to the bush. We’ll give him a difficult time. And you're right, we'll come short of burning him.' The oldest boy from the younger wife was naturally taking charge.
They tied him. And he, quiet as a beaten dog, succumbed without a fight, only apologizing. 'I will never do it again, Fathers.'
‘We want to make sure. After this exercise we’ll be doubly sure.'
They led him away.
VaPfocho's skin crept as she heard the oldest boy calling, 'Bring us pepper. And sjamboks!'
She knew exactly what they were going to do with him. They were going to strip him naked. They were going to smear pepper on his genitals. And they were going to beat him until he fell unconscious. It was going to be amazingly painful.
Chapter 7
Yolanda couldn't be found. They searched high and low. They assumed she had gone to see an aunt. Next they thought she had probably gone to see an uncle, or perhaps a nephew of the family. They sent messages to friends long forgotten. But she seemed to have vanished.
At the end of the day, it was confirmed that Yolanda had not been found. At the end of the day, they gathered by the fire and tried to figure out where Yolanda was. It was unanimously agreed that VaPfocho knew where she had put the child. VaPfocho, being VaPfocho would bring the girl home when it suited her. And that was to be very soon.
A snake was found in the girls hut!
VaPfocho wasn't there. The girls reported to the boys. The sons of different women came after it with sticks, catapults and stones. It was quite a big snake, an endless coil of a black tube: the mamba. Indeed, everyone who saw it screamed the same sentiment: mamba! VaPfocho found the boys like that, armed but useless. Her instinct told her something was wrong.
Eventually, one of the younger boys who was the proud owner of a well-made catapult and a marksman of sorts, took a shot at the reptile and hit it just below the head, practically decapitating it. Then he aimed another stone into its back. From a safe distance VaPfocho hit the snake with boiling water from a pot that had been on the fire. Then everyone with a long stick was upon the besieged reptile. They kept hitting it long after it was dead. The oldest among the boys scooped the snake up with a long stick and carried it out. He put it inside an empty hole nearby and covered it with grass and dry sticks before pou
ring paraffin on the heap and lighting it.
He stood guard until there was nothing but ash. Then he closed the hole with soil and rolled a stone over it.
The girls wouldn't sleep in the hut that day. VaPfocho failed to understand why they wouldn't sleep in the hut if the snake was gone. It was the girls’ minds that had changed. The hut was still the same. She used the hut and even wished they never came back. She desperately needed her own hut.
People were talking into the night outside the hut.
'We'll burn the hut,' she thought she heard someone say. Her nerves screamed.
'Come out.'
She rose and walked out silently, waiting for her fate just like Tendai.
'Witch,' another boy called.
'VaPfocho, tell us where all these snakes are coming from?' the eldest boy demanded.
'Shut up, shut up...What do you mean by that?' she demanded furiously.
'Witch, witch...' the other boys called. 'Impossible, we can't live with her. She will kill people with her snakes.'
'Yes, let her go,' a girl yelled from within the crowd. 'We're tired of her tricks.'
VaPfocho knew it was too dangerous to stay. She would have to move. She heard her husband’s weak voice, trying to shush everyone else but to no avail.
She packed her belongings, which weren't much, and took a path that led to nowhere.
Chapter 8
A message came home after a week:
I’m sorry, Mother. I am pregnant. I couldn’t face Father. He would have killed me. I had to run away with Tendai.
Yolanda had eloped.
Natasha finished university and was employed at a commercial bank in town. Everything was going her way. She left her CV there one morning. Two months later, she was called for an interview. She was the only person who attended the interview. A week later, she was called to report for work. She had to miss a day, because she was writing her last paper at Witwatersrand University.
At the bank, they gave her cards: computerized keys to an apartment, her office and car park slot.
But there was a small problem: the door to her office couldn't open. She tried feeding her card into the hole from all angles to no avail. Several men tried the door with no success. The door couldn't open. Soon it was lunchtime. The caretaker suggested they take a break while he went to try and get a locksmith.
At lunch, a guard accompanied her to the basement to her car: a sleek Nissan Skyline. Tears stung her eyes: Natasha loved wheels. She had to remove the plastics herself. The guard grinned at her as she drove off, and she knew then that from then she would never take a guard into her bed.
She stopped at the gate as another guard came around to politely demand her credentials. She kind of liked it: dark tinted glasses, short skirt, and big boobs: a professional woman that carried a sophisticated look by knowing a little too much.
'Madam,' said the guard touching her cards as well as his hat. Natasha couldn't help noticing that he didn't even read her card.
Natasha shifted her gears, but there was no response. She lowered the accelerator, still nothing.
The engine of her brand new car had seized.
Miles and miles of empty space between them but bound by blood, VaPfocho knelt and prayed. Tears drenched her face, coming unchecked down her cheeks, salty in the mouth.
The fire was a soft glow in the middle of the hut. The smoke had subsided a little: ambers don’t give smoke. There was a single hen in the corner, disturbed by her sounds. Kunyaanasa sat in the glow of the ambers, helpless and watching.
Her stomach throbbed. It was at the point of bursting. Her whole body was this one solid mass of pain. She recalled the nights she had spent the whole night asleep, and realized those were a blessing from God. We don't realize how important things are until they are taken away from us.
To think this could trigger a fresh outburst of pain. She cried again: Natasha, Natasha and Natasha
Chapter 9
In the evening Natasha phoned her lover at the Parliament of Zimbabwe in Harare. A nasal secretary told her the Minister of Health was in a meeting, and she would take a message if Natasha didn’t mind. Natasha insisted that she wanted to speak to Thomas.
She was put through. 'Comrade, Dr., Minister of Health, the Honourable Member of Parliament, Thomas...'
'Damn it, Thomas,' Natasha interjected. It seemed to her that Zimbabwe’s cabinet ministers had the longest titles in the world. ‘I got myself into trouble,' she added.
'What trouble?'
'I lost my job so I want to come home.'
'No, you can't do that, Sue. See, you can't go to Botswana, now. I bought that apartment for you.'
A temper seized her. She immediately confirmed that she wasn't the only girl in the minister’s life: he had wives and madams. Above that he had more women and girls.
'No, it's me. Natasha.'
'Natasha, sorry. How are you doing, dear?'
'Sad. I'm coming home. And I will leave for my country home in Chipinge as soon as I can.'
She heard another phone ringing in the background. She was told to wait. When he returned, he said, 'So when are you leaving Jo’burg?'
'Today.'
'That's fine. I'll wait for you at the airport. Can you kiss me over the phone?'
Before Natasha could answer, she heard. 'Wait,' as he answered another phone call.
She heard Thomas swearing. 'You are a man from the Truth?'
'What's that you want to know about AIDS funds?'
'I have no comment on that.'
'Young man, that's asunder.'
'Hey, I refuse to comment on that. Just exactly where are you phoning from? I think you have a very big affinity for trouble. And I'm willing to give you just that, too'
'Not Thomas, you are talking to the Comrade, to Dr., the Minister of Health, and an Honourable Member of Parliament. And the law won't allow you to speak like that.’
Natasha, since this was on her mobile, knew she would be hit hard on the bills.
She hung up.
On a quiet afternoon, Natasha caught a plane to Harare. She set out alone to the airport in a cab. She had four suitcases. The cab driver had some hard time fitting them in the car.
As she sat alone in the leather seat, she reflected that this was the first time that she had ever gone back home. She also realized that being what she was, she had to go home on finishing school. She had never heard of anyone who was doing what she had done and got away with it. She just had to go home. All that considered, she still had some affection for Durban, Cape Town and Jo'burg. She was very certain she would come back some time.
They had a brief stop in Bulawayo. The last time she was here, she had toiled on foot. How time changes: now she was travelling on a plane.
She was expecting to see the Doctor on arriving at the airport. He wasn’t there.
Her temper flared. She dialled him at his office.
'We're not taking any calls from journalists, madam. Sorry.' And the phone was jammed in her ears before she could rebel.
Her temper building steadily, she dialled him on his mobile phone. Damn him, if he wasn’t coming, he should have simply said so. Natasha would have made plan B. Damn it! She felt cheated.
His phone was barred from receiving calls.
And as she looked around wondering what she would do with the four suitcases, she saw a man approaching. He stretched out his hand. 'Sipeyiye. Sipeyiye Mohyi.' He said.
Natasha stretched out hers too and shook his timidly. 'I don't suppose we have met before, have we?'
'No, we haven't. But since Dr. Dumka couldn't make it, I thought I would help.'
'You work for him?' she asked.
'And where’s your luggage?'
He was a wise man and in no time he had taken charge of everything. He drove a Mazda 323. It was a far cry from what Dr Dumka would have driven: a Mercedes or a Jaguar.
But Sipeyiye was alive and young. He was a good listener and held intelligent conve
rsation.
'How is Jo’burg?'
'Great, I guess. I will miss it. But there is no place like home, and you know it. I had to come here, at one time or another and afterwards start strategizing again.’
'Thomas has a great home there, girl, isn't it?'
'Yeah. I have been there once myself, when he was hosting a big party. That's a real splendid home that he has.'
'Been to Cape Town myself. Believe me, he has a mansion. And in the evening you will be looking at the great Table Mountain. That's him, imagine, I'm telling him, you have looted enough out of the government coffers. Slow down. He’s telling me to fuck off.'
'You speak as if you're great friends.'
'Sort of. Ever seen his mansion in Cape Town?'
'What you talking about, man? I go there every weekend.'
'Yep, so where do we go from here?'
'Sheraton. I want to catch a bus to my country home early morning.'
'Sheraton we shall go,’ he said as he snaked through the traffic.
'And, Mr Sipeyiye? I mean, have you done defence driving?' she asked. He was driving rather dangerously through the traffic.
'Yep. In North Korea.'
'Well-travelled too, aren't you?'
'Yep, I had to go there and do martial arts and all the dangerous things. I still spend most of my spare time strengthening my body at RIM Martial Arts. The world has never been a safe place for me.'
'We share a common interest there. I'm a great fanatic of martial arts.'
'I guess some day we shall meet at RIM in Bulawayo.'
After the refreshing bath, Natasha did her makeup. She covered her eyelids with white shadow shimmer. She used burgundy eyeliner extending outwards. Along the lashes she wore black mascara. She shifted her emphasis from modern classic to updated, chic. She went into the lounge and found Sipeyiye working on his laptop. He dropped the lid as she approached.
'And Mr Sipeyiye, you haven't told me you work so hard for a living. And exactly what do you do for a living?'
'A journalist. Ever been very low in the ladder on a sick salary? That's me.'