Black Dog Summer (22 page)

It was dark. Ma Retabile was seated at her head, wiping her forehead with a damp cloth that smelt of cooked leaves. Lesedi could see a flickering candle jammed into the neck of a bottle in the corner of the room. Ma Retabile seldom wasted precious candles. There was one tiny moth circling the flame.

“I'm failing, aren't I, Ma? I'm not going to be able to become a sangoma, am I?”

“Perhaps you stand too lightly on this side of the world, Lesedi. I do not know. But I do know that it is this very connection to the other side that will make you a great sangoma,” Ma Retabile whispered in time with the swish of the cloth. “But you will have to be very careful. The ones that have passed often have messages and stories
they are desperate to share. Even if you wanted to, you could not keep them away.”

The dead, drawn to the living, like moths to light.

Quite suddenly, without any whooshing or parting of shadows, I am in the Matunyanes' living room in Cortona Villas. The story thread of white and blue that led me back into Lesedi's past is nowhere to be seen. The lounge suite is expensive dark brown leather, and there's a woven kind of kilim rug on the floor. Lesedi sits across from me on the couch as if I am just another normal guest. She blinks. There is no story noise. I feel almost . . . solid. For a moment, I crave hot tea, and I realize that I haven't once thought of such a thing since I stopped being in Sally's skin. I swear I can almost feel the cool leather of the sofa seat, as if I have nerves and blood again.

My mother still refuses to accept what I am, what I do.
Lesedi looks down at her hands.
Since I returned from Swaziland with my amulets and my new wisdom, and a huge hunger to help those who needed me, she's insisted I'm just a foolish woman who dropped out of varsity, got married, and hasn't yet had the decency to produce a single grandchild. I pretend. I hide. It is not easy to be in two worlds, but you would understand that, wouldn't you, Ancestor?

Why are you telling me all of this?

Bryony.
The lounge fades behind the image of the black dog-cloud that Lesedi saw the other day.
There's something . . . dark following that child. I tried to warn her, but she'd made up her mind that I was not to be trusted, and now they are coming for me.

Who is coming for you?
My question coincides with the harsh, insistent buzz of the Matsunyanes' doorbell. The dog-cloud vaporizes. Lesedi smooths her hands over her jeans and stands up. Her brown face is expressionless.

Thank you for joining me in my memories, Ancestor. Forgive my rudeness, I must go now.
Lesedi makes her way out of the lounge. I hear her bare feet on the tiles, and then the sound of her opening the front door.

“I hope you don't mind me dropping in like this, Mrs. Matsunyane.” I recognize Mrs. Silverman's voice. “We're here on
behalf of the Body Corporate. Would it be all right if we came inside for a moment to have a little chat? You're not busy, are you?”

“I just had a guest, but they're on their way now,” Lesedi says, and, as she does so, I am released from the lounge and the craving for tea and the almost-feel of cool leather, and am back in the sky with the story noise and the gathering storm.

Liam arrives home from work just as the first, fat drops of rain begin to fall. They splatter on the path leading from the garage to the front door, sending up little puffs of dust. He pauses and then bends down to remove his shoes and socks, clutching them in one hand and his briefcase in the other as he walks towards the house. Droplets burst against the newly freed skin of his toes, and the bricks of the path are warm beneath the soles of his feet.

When he gets to the front door, it swings open before his key can make contact with the lock, and there stands Adele with her hand on the brass doorknob.

She crosses her arms over her cream cardigan with the shell buttons, and then uncrosses them almost immediately. Adele stands aside to let Liam in. He steps onto the Persian rug with his damp bare feet and turns to see the charcoal sky break behind him and the rain pelt down.

Bryony and Gigi watch the storm from the window in their bedroom. They have kept the light switched off so that their reflections cannot obscure the drama unfolding beyond the glass. Bryony moves her face as close to the open window as she can.

“Do you think this is what clouds smell like?” she asks, breathing in huge nosefuls of ozone, but Gigi is still in zombie mode after her first day of school and doesn't answer.

“What the hell are you guys doing in the dark?” Tyler asks as he pushes open the door and peers into the room. For a moment, as he stands silhouetted against the passage light, Bryony thinks that with his wide shoulders and loose-hanging arms he could be her father.

“Don't switch the light on,” she orders. “You'll ruin the storm watch.”

Tyler, astonishingly, obeys, then closes the door behind him and walks over to join them at the window.

“Jeez, check it out,” he says at the sight of the black trees waving wildly at the choking sky. “It's really cooking it up out there.”

“I know.” Suddenly, a squall of rain batters against Bryony's face and she tastes icy, metallic-flavored water before the wind changes direction again.

“Holy shit!” Tyler mutters as a flash of lightning strobes across the sky, turning the garden into flat white and blue cutouts that burn onto the insides of their eyelids. Bryony silently counts the seconds before the thunder crash, one for each kilometer.

“That's pretty close,” Tyler says. Clearly he was counting too. “That strike was only about three Ks away.”

“How far is that?”

“About as far as the Spar, I think.”

“That's close!”

“It's hailing.” It is the first thing Gigi has said since she got home today. Tyler and Bryony stare at her for a second before following her gaze out of the window once more. She's right. Intermittent at first, plopping down in between the slashes of rain, white bullets of ice have begun to fall. They slam against the glass and ping down onto the windowsill.

“Ouch.” Bryony jumps back, giggling, as a hailstone smacks into her forehead.

“See if you can catch one in your mouth,” Tyler laughingly instructs her, and she opens her jaw wide against the wind, waiting for ice to bounce in.

“Hey,” Gigi says, as if the storm has woken her from her miserable trance, “they're tasty.” She picks a hailstone off the sill and pops it into her mouth. She chews, grins at Bryony, and reaches for another. Bryony follows suit, crunching the frozen rain between her teeth. It tastes so fresh that it's almost fizzy.

“Mmm, vegan treats,” Gigi says, and holds out her hand to catch a handful of falling stones. She's laughing so much as she pops them into her mouth that some of them bounce right out again and fly back outside to join their uncaptured brothers.

Tyler laughs. “You girls are nuts.”

“You should try them, they're yummy,” Bryony says, crushing a large one between her molars. Her whole mouth is numb from the cold.

“Ja. Try one, Tyler,” Gigi says, and, as she speaks, she turns from the window and pushes a hailstone right into the pink heat of his mouth.

Tyler's eyes go very wide at the shock of her cold fingers on the intimate insides of his lips, and he almost chokes on the little hailstone that now melts on his tongue. Gigi turns back to the storm with a toss of her head, and he can smell her hair: traces of the familiar shampoo that Adele buys for all of them to use, and something else—something warm and almost animal.

Drunk from the thrill of her slippery fingers inside his mouth, Tyler lets himself lean forward till the length of his body is almost touching Gigi's slender back. He bends to breathe in more of her hair, only jerking back, confused, when he realizes that Gigi is suddenly holding herself rigid, like a statue.

Lightning once more flashes into the room, and in the electric purple-white, Tyler glances sideways to see his sister watching them both. Her pupils are very black and large, and her mouth is open in a little O.

Next door to the Wildings', in the kitchen of the Matsunyane household, Thabo stretches across the granite countertop and curls his fingers around one of his wife's braids. He resists the urge to give it a hard downward tug like a bellpull, but from the way she looks up at him it's clear that she knows he wants to. Thabo sighs and lets the braid slip out of his fingers.

Outside, the storm is building, and the wind chucks furious handfuls of rain against the kitchen window.

“You've every right to be angry, Thabo.” Lesedi wraps the same braid around her own finger. “I'm pretty pissed off myself.”

“You sure you want to do this, Sedi? Can't you just stop consulting here at home? I'm sure this whole thing would blow over soon.”

“Ag, babe, you didn't see how they looked at me,” Lesedi says. The
kettle clicks and she lifts it to pour hot water into the instant coffee and sugar mixture waiting in the bottoms of two mugs. The coffee foams up, brown and creamy. “I know the score by now. They're never ever going to forget that there's a sangoma living right beside them in their safe little gated village, trust me on this.”

“Can't you just explain to them that it's not what they think? It's not all crazy juju, but commonsense counseling for the most part?”

“With a spot of bone throwing here and there.”

“Sure, but half these housewives go to fortune-tellers and crystal healers and whatnot. It's the same damn thing.”

“That doesn't change the fact that I scare them, Thabs. Sure, it's against the rules to run a business here, but when Mrs. Pieterson was operating her interior design thingy from her dining room, no one even raised an eyebrow. South Africa may have come a long way from the dark days, babe, but sangomas sanctioned in Cortona Villas? Even I know that's pushing it.”

“Shit,” Thabo mutters as he goes over to the fridge to get the milk. “I've worked hard to get us into a place like this, Sedi. Somewhere safe and nice with good resale value and everything.”

“And I've messed it up. I know. I am sorry, Thabs.”

“I thought you were going to lie low this time.”

“I did lie low. I never did anything that would cast the slightest suspicion. But these things have a way of coming out, babe. They always do.”

Her husband is still standing at the fridge with his back to her. She stares at the creases on the bottom of his mauve Hilton Weiner work shirt from where it was tucked inside his trousers all day and bites her lip.

“I'm going to leave for Swaziland in the morning,” she says.

“What?” He freezes, then closes the fridge door very slowly and deliberately. “Why?”

“Well, for one thing, I need to get away from here as fast as possible so that the Body Corporate board can simmer down.”

“So go to a hotel or something close by. Your sister's place in Parkview, even? You don't need to go trudging off to the bloody middle of nowhere just because a bunch of scared whiteys are on the warpath.”

“No, it needs to be Swaziland.” Lesedi sips on her coffee and pictures the tufted green of the triangular mountains rising up towards the blue. “I need to speak to Ma Retabile and get some advice on how to do this, Thabs.”

“How to do what?”

“Live in two worlds.”

“For God's sake, Lesedi.” He huffs out a breath and the large metal buckle on his belt clinks into the countertop as he leans heavily against it. “What does she know? Out there everything is still one way, babe. Sangomas still wear beads and animal gunk and everyone hangs on their every word—what advice can she possibly give you about trying to follow your calling here in Jozi?”

“I don't know, but I do know that somehow there's an answer for me out there where she is.” Lesedi stirs milk into their coffee. Thabo likes his pale brown and very sweet, like a child. “I'm sorry.”

“How long for? You were in Swaziland for nearly two years the last time. Three if you count the back-and-forth with apprenticing and ceremonies and stuff.”

“That was for my apprenticeship. Not that long this time.” Lesedi takes a sip of her drink. Despite the sugar, it still tastes bitter. “But I really don't know.”

“When are we going to be able to start building up a life, have kids and . . . ?”

Lesedi puts her mug down and folds forward, sinking her head down to rest on the cool stone of the counter. She smells rain and ice. “Oh God, I don't know. That's what I need my teacher for. Ma Retabile is about a million times wiser than I could ever be, babe; she can help me find the answers.”

“Just tell me this, Sedi,” Thabo says, and then waits for the loud rumble of thunder to pass. “Do you still want to have a family and a life with me and everything? I mean, does it fit in with your . . . other plans?”

“Yes,” Lesedi says, and she means it. “I do. I am just not sure how, and this whole Body Corporate drama has made me see that I can't just go along pretending that I'm doing OK when I'm messing up.” Her voice rises, and she clenches her fingers into fists on the cool
granite. “I'm a lousy sangoma and a lousy Joburg wife and I miss marketing and sometimes I just want to forget all of this and go back and get my degree but I know that I can't because the calling won't let me.”

“Hey hey, Sedi, come now,” Thabo says, finally walking around the counter that seems to have ballooned into a cliff face between them. He takes his wife into his arms. “Don't start beating yourself up about all this again, OK?”

“I didn't choose this, Thabo. You know it.”

“I know.”

“I didn't plan for all of this sangoma stuff to come and unstick our lives,” she says into the warmth of his neck. “There must be a way for me to be able to do it, to have us and a family and to stay true to the calling.”