The Water Man's Daughter (24 page)

Thembi seems to realize that they are still outside and ushers the three of them into her house. She explains in English, slowly, for Claire.

“We built this house four years ago. It cost 11,000 rand, the same amount for the bright pink and blue houses over the hill. I am a young woman, with a job part-time at the cellphone station, but even I get to live in this place.”

She motions to the interior, all of it meticulously clean and decorated in matching blue cloth. There are separate rooms for the dining area and couch. The kitchen is bordered by a half-wall, and two doors in the back look as though they lead to a bedroom and bathroom. It is bigger than Nomsulwa’s house, bigger than the place her mother lives now. Certainly, the house this young woman lives in, in the only town for miles, would impress the richer residents of Phiri. It is astounding what Kwanele accomplished here.

Claire notices it too. “This must have taken forever to build.”

“Can I make you some tea?” Thembi interrupts.

“Yes, please,” Kwanele answers for all of them.

“We did it all in one day. Impressive, neh?” Kwanele
leans in to join the conversation. “You should see when they build. The music … and the beer and food. Someone always puts up a goat or sheep and the women cook a meal, ychoo! What a meal. It’s worth the work. You get fed!”

“You’ve helped build a house?” Claire almost laughs when she asks Nomsulwa the question.

“Of course. Just one of the skills I picked up along the way.”

Claire gives Nomsulwa a sideways glance. Nomsulwa smiles back.

Thembi returns with the tea and the four of them sit around the dining-room table. Nomsulwa opens the conversation in Zulu with Thembi. She hears about the loss of Thembi’s youngest son. How he got sick early on, before they knew that the river was contaminated, and how she brought him to the clinic too late.

“I’ve been boiling my water ever since, but even that I can’t do for much longer. The electricity is too expensive and my arrears are so great that they’re going to cut me off soon.”

Nomsulwa nods. The story is familiar. How can you treat water in a home where no one has enough money to run the stove?

Kwanele begins explaining to Nomsulwa about the sanitation engineer they found. Nomsulwa listens, but notices that Claire has turned away from them and is staring out the window at a pair of girls scuffling over a jump rope. Kwanele follows her eyes and then switches to English for Claire’s benefit.

“The sanitation engineer says with some money he can treat the local water. We can bypass the company’s pipes altogether. Forget about private fees and start a real source for the community.”

Nomsulwa elaborates for Thembi. “It’s not a permanent solution, but with the money we raised, we can treat enough water to get you through the year.”

“Can you really? You have the money for us in the city?” Thembi grasps Nomsulwa’s hand.

Kwanele focuses on Claire, who is now very interested in the conversation. Nomsulwa realizes that her attempts to hide the purpose of their visit are about to be undone. She holds her breath and hopes that Kwanele chooses his words carefully. “A few months ago the community suffered a cholera outbreak. We lost a lot of our people.” He explains in English.

“But my father’s company is in the process of putting in a treatment and distribution centre here, isn’t it?”

Kwanele opens his mouth to speak and Nomsulwa stretches out her foot and nudges his leg beneath the table. “Their system is too expensive for many of our residents. They have no taps and use the river instead.”

“What about standing taps? Surely you can set those up near the settlements with no actual kitchens,” Claire adds hopefully.

“We have yet to, er …” Kwanele looks at Nomsulwa again, “…  convince the water company that the taps would be a good investment. But Nomsulwa has found us a
solution. She has money from the city that we can use to build our own filtration system.”

“To bypass the company?”

“It’s our only choice right now. We can’t provide clean water from a contaminated river forever, but it will give us time to find a new site and decide how best to start over.”

Thembi interjects in Zulu again, urging Kwanele to invest in distribution as well as filtration.

“Are you ready to head back?” Nomsulwa asks Claire quietly as Kwanele and Thembi return to their conversation.

Claire shakes her head. “We should stay longer. This is important. The company isn’t providing the water, so someone has to. I’m glad you’re here, doing this.”

Claire’s response is surprising. For the first time, she doesn’t defend Amanzi or her father. Nomsulwa should feel relieved, but instead she feels guilt. She has no right to let Claire see this. Alvin’s tour of the township was the story the water man’s daughter was meant to hear.

T
HEY ARE QUIET ON THE WALK BACK TO THE COMMUNITY
centre. Nomsulwa, especially, doesn’t feel like talking about the abandoned structures they pass on their way home. Kwanele walks a little ahead of the women, his shoulders falling in and his head hanging. Living with this every day has broken him. Nomsulwa can see it. After the visit with Thembi, he can’t even fake a tour any longer.

Claire doesn’t seem to expect one. Instead she whispers to Nomsulwa, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, just frustrated,” Nomsulwa answers.

“Me too.” Claire reaches out and puts her hand on Nomsulwa’s arm.

It’s strange, Nomsulwa realizes, that she should be comforted by Claire and not the other way round, out here in the middle of nowhere where she has been promised something of her dead father. If Nomsulwa could put herself in Claire’s shoes it would overwhelm her. Worse than imagining Thembi holding her dying son or Kwanele watching the elders waste away.

Kwanele is still ahead, out of earshot.

“I just keep thinking I could have stopped this, the cholera outbreak. If he,” she motions ahead to Kwanele, “hadn’t been so damn stubborn, if he’d told me about it earlier.”

“But how would you have done it? You can’t ship water in from communities that have access to a free supply. There are no neighbours for miles.”

“No. You’re right. It’s not as simple. But we could have organized, we could have protested. These women just stood here waiting for their families to die. They were so helpless.”

“I’m not sure you’re right,” Claire says softly, seemingly unsure about her objection. “These women built houses from scratch; they built that community centre and church and everything else in their town. It was probably impossible to believe when their own land betrayed them. They were stunned, not helpless, and when that wore off, they called you, immediately.”

Nomsulwa is thankful for Claire’s quiet voice and comforting hand. “You know, that’s the hardest part. The water you have drunk your whole life suddenly becomes poison. It’s too hard to believe, so sometimes you don’t.”

“I think I have a new appreciation for ‘hard to believe’,” Claire replies with a smile as they walk the last stretch towards the compound.

T
HAT NIGHT, THE SOUNDS OF THE DESERT OVERWHELM
their small bedroom. They lie, barely a foot from each other, neither sleeping. Nomsulwa can hear the irregular breathing of Claire awake.

“Are you asleep?” Claire asks when Nomsulwa turns over to face the wall.

“No.”

“I’m not either.” There is a pause. “I keep imagining him here, sleeping in these beds. It’s strange. I still expect him to sweep in and turn it all around. Get a grant, give everyone a new, perfect kitchen with running water from a clean well … I guess you never grow out of that idea of fathers.”

“Maybe not,” Nomsulwa agrees, but the idea of the water man as an angel with wings annoys her.

“He was always like that. The person who made everything better.”

“We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah … Nomsulwa? … He would have liked you.”

“Ha. I’m not that good with fathers.” Nomsulwa attempts to keep her tone light.

“My father would have seen how incredible you are.”

Nomsulwa doesn’t answer. Claire’s breathing evens out and turns into a light snore. Nomsulwa closes her eyes and wills herself to sleep, refusing to move until she has fallen. She dreams of water men. In her sleep, she punishes the man for each death. A long line of women who look a lot like Thembi passes by them as he cries out. In the morning, she is weighed down by more guilt, more sadness. Even in her dreams she is betraying Claire.

T
HE BLOOD ANALYSIS FROM THE PATERNITY LAB IS
waiting for Zembe when she returns from a courtesy visit to the neighbouring precinct. She had been hoping to cajole the station to share one of its two printers. It was a pleasant conversation, but she is coming back to work empty-handed.

She tears open the envelope and reads: the blood is human, type B. A match to Matthews. Zembe sighs and sinks into her seat. She wonders why she didn’t pray for a different result. This has become a secret project, one that doesn’t even find its way into her morning and evening meditation. If she had asked Him, He might have spared her this process, the careful search of the street where many
PCF
mothers live that Zembe must now undertake, the questions she must now ask.

Zembe takes out a map and pinpoints Florence’s house. It is on a street without many women active in the movement. But behind Florence’s house, the street that butts against her’s is more interesting. Mandla has a sister and a brother who have medium-sized houses closer to this nice area of Phiri. Both of them live half a block from Florence. Zembe knows this because Mira’s family are in constant confrontation with
the sister about their adjoining yards. Each spring Mira’s mother watches the weeds from Mandla’s sister’s garden invade her carefully planted lot. She once asked Zembe to intervene, and Zembe laughed – with all the murders and thefts, she wanted a police chief to regulate the township gardens?

If Zembe opens the grid search, extends it to the block behind Florence’s house, she might just stumble upon something linking Mandla to the murder.

She calls for the young female officer. “We’re going back out to Florence’s street. We’ve got to find some corroborating evidence before we can apply to DNA-test the blood found in her yard. So far we’ve got a blood-type match.”

The woman smiles, thrilled at the first real lead in the Matthews case.

“Meet me at three o’clock with four officers. Get people off patrol duty, and tell Tosh to come in from his day off. We have to get this done immediately.”

A
FEW SHRUBS AND ONE PURPLE FLOWER
, F
LORENCE’S
only living plants, defy the heat of the day. Zembe pulls up and unloads four rolls of string and a pile of wooden stakes painstakingly separated from old wood in her shed.

“We’ll divide the area into square sections. None larger than the size of my desk. Each of us will then take a portion and search it carefully. Dig into the sand, look under concrete tiles and rocks. Be thorough. I want to cover this street and the one abutting the yard. Over there.” Zembe points through the fence beside Florence’s house.

The officers all nod their understanding and begin to divide the area. Zembe supervises from Florence’s front step. She extends the search a half block in each direction on both streets. One of the younger men growls a complaint as he is ordered to attach string to the farthest house. Zembe snatches the ball away from him and sends him to the front seat of her car. He sits in the shade, sullen, like a schoolboy ordered to the corner for bad behaviour. Zembe finishes his job, completing the last square in front of a green house with a deep concrete yard and a tall fence.

They begin to work the site. Each uniformed detective crouches on the heels of his or her boots. They sift through the muck of the streets and the carefully placed dirt of the community’s front yards.

The man to Zembe’s left finds a handkerchief of bright red cloth with a stain on the corner and pockets it in a plastic bag from the trunk of the police buggy. A female officer discovers an abandoned running shoe and also places it in the car. There are shards of broken glass, discarded earrings, and candy necklaces, beer bottle labels and food containers. This is a waste of time. Zembe will give the officers five more minutes and then end this charade.

In a yard four houses down from Florence’s and one street over, an officer yells for Zembe. Sticking out from a disturbed patch of garden soil are several ribbons of white cloth. Their ends and tips are sullied by the black dirt. Each also has a rust-coloured pattern.

“Could be blood,” the officer announces triumphantly.

Zembe presses against the stiff stain on the largest swatch of cloth. She looks up and sees a familiar yard, familiar building.

Best to wait and be sure, though. The blood on this cloth could be from anywhere – a cut from a kitchen knife, a fall on the concrete stairs. Zembe packages the shreds and hands them to a courier to be sent directly to the paternity lab.

Later, she calls to make sure they arrived and begs for a quick analysis. The receptionist sounds tired of panicked requests, but agrees to pass the message on. Zembe doesn’t even sit down at her desk. She takes her vest and holster and starts her rounds, desperate to keep busy while she waits for the test to return.