Santa Barbara.”
But she kissed me anyway, a soft “mwah” on my lips, before she bunched her skirts around her waist and scampered off giggling. That was the first kiss she ever gave me, the first kiss I ever got from a girl.
“Do you ever see your baba?” I ask.
Nomsa looks at me curiously. She shakes her head. She looks down at the brown mixture she is stirring with a stick.
“Ah, look, my soup is almost ready,” she says. “Check if the veges are ready. I think the sadza is ready.”
“Boys don’t cook,” I reply, turning away.
We are playing amatope beneath the shade of the lemon tree that sags over our neighbour’s fence. Nomsa has placed bottle lids on top of a stone, which is the “stove” cooking a meal – hard mud cakes are the sadza, lemon-tree leaves are the veges, and watery mud is the soup. She is the mother and I am the father in our game of amatope.
“I have many fathers,” she says after a while. “Just like you.”
“I don’t have many fathers. I don’t have a father.”
“That’s so stupid. Everybody has a father.”
“No. I don’t have a father, and neither do you.”
“Well, I have many fathers. Though I like Mr Richard the most. Sometimes Mama doesn’t like him, when he gets drunk and bumps into things.” She giggles. “He’s sooo funny when he’s drunk.”
I glare at her. “That’s not funny at all.” I pause, then look down at the circles I am drawing in the soil with my finger. “Drunks are wife-beaters.”
“No, they’re not.”
“Yes they are.” I gesture at the Ndiwenis’ house. “SaJoe always beats up NaJoe when he comes from the shebeen. Mama says drunks are wife-beaters.”
“Well, Mr Richard never beats up Mama.”
Sergeant Mpofu slaps Mama sometimes. He is a huge man with a wobbly tummy. I have never seen him in anything other than his brown policeman uniform, complete with polished shoes and a policeman’s cap. He is so tall. In order to look up at his face, I have to bend my neck back as far as it can go. I try to take in all of his face, but it’s his nose that draws my attention. It is huge. Whenever he falls asleep in front of the TV on the sofa, I come and stand before him, look up and stare in wonder at that nose that fills up his face. He snores in his sleep, hhrrrrrr, like he’s trying to get a tickle out of his throat. The way his nose shudders and his nostrils flare makes me think of a double-barrelled rifle, like the ones I’ve seen in Westerns. I can imagine him firing two blobs of snot from that barrel-nose. I clamp my hand over my mouth to keep the giggles in. He likes to slap Mama around. Mama says that’s how men are. The other day, we had to go to the clinic after he punched her in the face. We had to walk a very long distance, because Mama didn’t want the people at the local clinic to see her. She walked with a towel over her swollen eye, waving and smiling at the neighbours, mumbling about having something in her eye. The nurse advised her to make a formal report, but she just threw back her head and laughed.
“Make a report to who? He is the police.”
“But he will keep doing it –”
“He is good to me.”
“Wife-beating –”
“Who says I’m his wife? Look, mind your own business.”
When I ask her if Sergeant Mpofu is a bad man, and why he hits her, she looks down into my face and frowns. She seems to be thinking hard. After a while, she says, “That’s how men are.”
So, I look up at Nomsa. “Men beat women up. That’s just how men are.”
“Mama says men who beat up women are weak.”
“That’s so stupid! If they are weak, how come they can beat women? Men are stronger than women.”
“I don’t know. But Mama said so, so it’s right.”
“Well, my mama says that’s how men are. It’s in their blood.”
“My mama says that’s why your mama is always walking about with a black eye. Because she doesn’t know how to choose a man who can treat her right.”
“My mama says your mama has no class. And Mr Richard is a wife-beater. I saw your mama with a black eye the other day. I saw you with one too. Wife-beater!”
Nomsa winces, stands up.
“Where are you going?” I call after her.
She shrugs and continues walking.
Marijuana: Blissful Woes
Sometimes, after I have smoked a joint or two and I am in that surreal realm where everything seems real and nothing really is, my earliest memories of Mama blend into my earliest memories of Nomsa. An earliest memory is an elusive thing; I have known Mama all my life, I have known Nomsa most of my life. The beauty of memory lies in its self-delusion. I do not have clear memories of Mama’s face, in the way in which I have clear memories of Nomsa’s face. I remember Mama’s face as it is in the photographs. There is a particular photograph that keeps recurring in my dream-like state. In it, Mama is gazing coyly at the camera. Her hair is a wild bush of curls glistening with glycerine. She is wearing a shimmering dress of kaleidoscopic flowers, her hip thrown out for effect, a pink stiletto resting precariously on a rock. The background looks like the Matopos. In this surreal state, I ask, “How did you manage to climb all the rocks of the Matopos with those stilettos?”
The photograph dissolves, and suddenly Mama is alive, all those years ago, when I was too young to remember her face. She laughs. Her nostrils flare, suggesting a playful arrogance, and suddenly she is Nomsa, prancing about as if in front of a camera. I do not see myself smile, but I feel the smile gurgling from the pit of my stomach, bubbling to the surface of my lips. Now, Nomsa has a big wide perm on her head that reminds me of Rebecca Malope and Brenda Fassie back in the day, swaying to fast beats while flinging nappy curls at the camera. Nomsa is swaying and flinging her perm this-a-way and that-a-way. I reach out to touch her. When I do, she is suddenly on the rocks of the Matopos again, and she is slipping, slipping . . .
“Nomsa!” I scream but I do not scream, because nothing comes out of my mouth.
And, just before she plummets into the black abyss, she turns into Mama again, and she is smiling.
At this point, I am jolted into a state of wakefulness, and my eyes are wet.
Day at the Clinic
Monday arrives, a bruised morning bleeding streaks of purple across the sky. The township is at its most peaceful in the early morning, in those moments just before the chaos of daily living ruptures the seams, and everything bursts open. Burst pipes and burst transformers entwined with warped electricity wires and rubbish bursting from intoxicated minds. I rise to the chirrup of matinal birds. The kukurukuuu of a rooster reports the arrival of the morning as it washes over the sky in ever-changing hues. I lie on my mat for a long time, listening to the township tearing itself from the clutches of slumber, washing off its night-time odours and preparing to put on its daytime costumes. Metal clanks as taps gag and choke before coughing out trickles of rust-coloured water. Mothers bellow to sleep-soaked children who stretch, turn and burrow ever deeper into their blankets. I’m listening to myself, hearing myself all those years ago, grumbling, a little more time, more time, please, Mama. “There will never be enough time,” Mama would say to me.
I saddle Mama on my back and trek to the clinic. Everywhere, people stop and stare.
“Poor thing,” they murmur.
“Do you need help?” they ask.
I ignore them.
Children sidestep the streams of sewer water, pause only to point and giggle before they continue, wriggling their bums to a ruling party jingle blaring from a radio somewhere