Africa39 (13 page)

Now, in what could be the last moments of Mama's life, Temisha didn't want to dig up the bodies. She had written spirituals, poems, books, scripts and essays about all she had been through. Mama could check her website for the details.

But of course, Mama prodded. ‘Aminatu, I'm waiting.'

‘I didn't leave you, Mama.' Temisha heard the
Boulie
in her voice, when she wanted to sound like the High Street Mama respected. Why, at this stage of her life, did Mama's acceptance still mean so much?

‘I was plucked, Mama. Like a grey hair. And I was raped. Passed from one man to another from the centre to the coast, from the ship to the other side.

‘I was flogged and I was lynched. I was bred and I was brainwashed.

‘I broke tools and fell sick, prayed for weevils and locusts to destroy their precious cash crops, and I started insurrections to survive. I founded advancement associations and advocacy groups. I joined fraternities and lodges. I sat in at lunch counters and marched up and down streets.

‘I filed lawsuits and I wiled out. I rotted in prison for crimes I committed and offences I was framed for.

‘I went to war for my kidnappers, and went to war on myself. Shot heroin. Smoked crack. Sniffed coke. Numbed the pain with Mary Jane. Ate and drank myself to diabetes.

‘Climbed corporate ladders and rose through Union ranks. And each time, I hit my head against their glass ceilings, suffering concussions with the contusion-marred egos to prove it.

‘I led gangs and menaced streets. I minded my business, and I was shot for standing my ground.

‘I gave my life to Jesus. Studied the Quran. Recited mantras. Practiced Baha'i. Sacrificed to Yemaya. Created my own holidays and traditions.

‘I've had so many names, Mama. Nigger. Nigra. Coloured. Negro. Black. Black-American. Afro-American. African-American. Nigga. Now, the only one I answer to is Survivor.'

When she finished speaking, the room was a balloon of
saudade
; and Temisha felt deflated. ‘Did you make me come all this way to tell you what happened, Mama?'

‘I wanted you here to bless you, Aminatu.'

The old woman struggled to sit up under the net, and the flies stirred.

‘During the day, it's flies,' she complained on a momentary tangent. ‘At night, it's mosquitoes. Like they are shift workers. I don't understand it. This net is treated.'

‘You don't need a treated net, Mama. You need to keep yourself clean and work out an effective water and sewage system so the flies and mosquitoes won't have anywhere to breed.'

‘Temisha.' It was the first time Mama had called her that. ‘When you lef—. When you were taken from me – you carried my strength with you.' She shrugged. ‘You needed it more than me then, but now, I need it back; and I am willing to pay you for it.'

Temisha raised an eyebrow. Ananse had assured them Mama's faculties were sharp, but delusion suddenly seemed to be infecting her speech.

‘I sealed some of my riches in the Future for you,' she kept talking. ‘Diamonds. Gold. Oil. Natural gas. Not in the amounts I once had, but enough for a smart person to do something with. I need you to go to the Future, and use what I left to make my legacy great again.
Promise me.
'

Temisha wasn't sure what her mother was asking. Either way, Mama didn't wait for an answer.

‘I want to see Xiomara next.'

Temisha held the door open for the sister she had been chained to for part of the march to the ships.

That they were both enslaved should have bonded them for ever, and to some extent it did. But they had fundamental differences over the best way to carry the history. To Temisha, Xio (and their brother João, for that matter) was too cavalier about the impact of their enslavement. Xio felt Temisha had allowed it to swallow her.

One specific point of contention Temisha had was that Xio did not correct her children when they referred to themselves as ‘Afro-descended', ‘Garifuna', ‘Creole', or ‘Mestizo' – anything but Black.

‘Why should they call themselves “Black” when they are mixed blood, Temisha? You Americans and your one-drop-ruled identity. It's dishonest, and it lets our captors off the hook.'

‘You are the dishonest ones. No matter how light, or bleached, your skin, how straightened your hair, how straight your nose, you are African.'

‘You Americans have to own the discourse on everything.'

‘If you don't own, you are owned.'

When the door shut behind Xio, Temisha wished for a moment she could be one of the flies on Mama's net.

 

Xio entered Mama's room singing the lullaby Mama used to serenade them with.

‘Wá wá . . .'
she began, and the old woman joined her. ‘
Wá wá . . .
Quietly, listen to me. My child, don't cry. Don't cry, my child. Mama is here. Don't cry, don't cry for your mother
.'

They let the lyrics hang in the air between them, reflecting separately on the memory.

‘Even when you were far from me, you felt near,' Mama said, blowing air on the damp silence.

Xio reached under the net to thread their fingers together. She didn't feel the same way.

‘I held on to what I could, Mama, but I am different from what I would have been, and I know that. It's just how it is. I am yours, but I am mine too.'

Her mother began to cry. A Nile of blood ran from her eyes because it hurts when a child's path leads away from you.

Xio lifted the net fully and crawled in next to her mother; rocking her as she ached to be rocked. It was odd, Xio thought, and magical, how the old became babies again.
‘Quietly, listen to me.
Mama
, don't cry.
Xio
is here. Don't cry, don't cry for your daughter
. . .'

The old woman shook her head stubbornly. If she were standing, Xio was sure Mama would have stamped her feet. ‘I delivered you. Now, I need you to deliver me.'

Xio smiled as she blotted her mother's tears with the hem of her dress. Only Mama would make such a demand. ‘Mama, I love you,' was all she would say before calling Musa to take her place.

 

Mama's firstborn son adjusted the loosened net and tucked it under Mama's mattress to secure her from the flies. He noticed the tattoo – a small Chinese symbol – emerging through her tear-streaked make-up. He was not ignorant of China's growing influence over his mother. No one was, the way the two of them were carrying on. China was laying roads and erecting businesses all over her. But Musa couldn't believe Mama would take his mark on her face.

‘Haven't you learned from your mistakes, Mama? Do you really think China will save you?'

‘If you care so much what happens to me, Musa,' she said, ‘mind your business.'

In other words, China was doing the business of saving her that Musa was not. Mama had a way of making her problems other people's fault.

‘Mama, I am not the reason you are in this state. You are.'

‘When I needed you most, you and your siblings abandoned me.'

‘You were unable to take care of us, Mama. You squandered our inheritance. We didn't know when our next meal was coming. We weren't being educated. You expected us to stay and suffer with you through that?'

‘I expected – and expect – you to stay and help me rebuild, the way Ananse did.'

‘Mama, what has Ananse rebuilt? Mismanagement? Corruption? Famine? Poverty? A haven for flies, mosquitoes, all manner of communicable disease, and fundamentalists? If so, he has done a masterful job.'

‘Is this how they talk to mothers in the country you have run to?'

Musa suppressed an exasperated chuckle.
Oh, Mama.

 

‘Mama, I love you too much to lie to you. Things have to change now.'

‘I can't do it by myself, Musa. I need you and your siblings.'

‘What do you want from us, Mama?'

‘I want more than the money you give to assuage your guilt. I want you to come home and take care of me till you find the Future.'

Musa nodded, patronisingly. ‘Yes, Mama. Yes. Temisha told us all about the treasure you buried in the Future. Where exactly is the Future? Does Ananse know?'

Musa strode to the door and peered out to shout.

‘Ananse! Do you know where the Future is?'

Ananse took his opportunity to enter the room. He knew from Temisha and Xio that their mother had revealed the hidden fund, but he couldn't determine how much detail the old woman had shared. Had she told them exactly how much was in the Future?

‘Musa, I wanted this conversation to be between you and me.'

‘Mama, the closed-door conversations have to stop. It's time for transparency.' He called his other siblings into the room.

In her youth, Mama would have put ginger in Musa's anus for defying her this way, but the Past was now the Present; and these kids were the key to her Future. She saw pity and sadness and distance in their eyes. She needed to remind them of who she was. Who they were by extension. They needed to have faith in her again.

‘I wasn't always on this bed,' she said. ‘It is imperative that you don't forget. Otherwise, you will miss the Future.'

She continued, ‘I don't mean the Immediate. I'm talking about the Long Term – where I hid a reserve for all of you.'

Ananse took the opportunity to assert ownership. ‘Mama, I remember the moon as our only witness as we dug to the Future. I will never forget because I was there.'

‘You left early, Ananse. Remember? I made seven more hiding places.'

Ananse felt his scalp catching fire. After all the time he had invested in Mama, his portion was to be equal?

Aesop gave his brother a consolatory clap on the back. ‘The Future belongs to every soul blessed to meet it, and every soul able to seize it.'

‘Mama, you can't expect us to go on some kind of scavenger hunt for you. We've made lives elsewhere,' Xiomara reminded her.

‘Elsewhere is for strangers, and that's what you'll always be anywhere but Here. The hunt is for you and me.'

‘How do we get to this Future?' Yauwii asked. Once upon a time, the kids had accused her of loving Yauwii most, but what mother didn't love the child who humoured her without making her feel humoured?

‘You dig until you find it.'

‘That's it?' Musa snorted. ‘Simple as that?'

‘No,' Mama shook her head. ‘Hard as that. But you've done harder.'

from the forthcoming novel
Azotus, the Kingdom

Shadreck Chikoti

The Occupant

For many years Kamoto had not thought of going outside. The world outside offered him nothing that he could not find within the confines of his own home. He always had enough air to breathe and food to eat. Even if he fancied connecting with distant places, he was happy to do so through the convenience of the Telecommunication Curtain – the TC – he had in his living room.

On rare occasions he would get a chance to peek through the front door. This usually happened when the Room Service girls showed up to deliver things like food, groceries or clothes. Or when they came to clean the house and appliances. Since it was he who had to open the front door in order for the workers to come in, on more than one such occasion he caught himself peering through the door. But neither the need nor the thought of exploration ever crossed Kamoto’s mind.

But recently, Kamoto had made the habit of going out at dusk to watch the sun go down. Even though he could watch this natural phenomenon on the screen of his living room TC, it did not take him long to conclude that it was in too many ways unlike the real thing. The actual sunset appeared to him to be much bigger, much brighter, much more varied in its display of colours. Untamed.

Today, he found himself carrying a chair outside to sit while he watched the sun slowly descend beyond the mountains. Sometimes, it seemed like the sun was heading for the yawning mouth of a cave which dominated the face of the largest mountain. The range of mountains in the distance had the effect of creating what seemed like a boundary of all that existed, almost as if this was the very edge of the world.

Each time Kamoto came out to watch the sunset, he felt altered but he had not found the right words to describe it. The best he could come up with was that his heart felt lighter and he breathed much easier.

He sat with his legs stretched in front of him, occasionally lifting and suspending them in the air for a while before bringing them down again.

A flock of birds – crows – flew across the sky above him, cawing as they went their way towards the direction of the sun. They’d been doing this every day he’d been outside at sunset and now a week had gone by. He figured that the birds were returning to their nests, and that his house just happened to be on their route. There was only one day when the birds had veered slightly to the west of where they usually flew.