The Death of Rex Nhongo (7 page)

I
knew I done sumthin wrong only Sasa tell me not to worry about it. He say he tell me nuthin gonna happen to the baby an, for sure, nuthin happen to the baby so he don know what all the fuss about. That what he say only he don say it that way. Sasa don speak English an he don speak Shona. He speak his own language what only me unnerstan. He say this when we on our way home from the party an Mom an Dad fightin in the front seat (Dad say, “We not fighting, little bird. It's just a frank exchange of views.” Momma say, “Why are you lying, Shawn? Why are you
always
lying?”).

I tell Sasa to keep quiet cos I wanna hear, but he jus keep on like he does—when Sasa got sumthin to say he jus keep sayin it until you gots no choice but to listen, even if you don wanna. Mostly he jus say, “Look at me! Look at me!” An he spread his wings wide and show off his belly, which so black you feel like it not really there an you could put your whole hand right inside.

After what happen, after Dad get out the pool and change into a T-shirt and short he borrow from Theo's dad, he go, “OK, it's time for us to leave right now!” An he take me by the arm an he hold it so tight I starts to cry.

Theo's dad walk behind us, goin, “Don't worry. It was an accident. He's OK.”

But my dad know otherwise an when we gets to the car he put me face down on the seat an he smack my backside an he shoutin at me only quiet an I can feel his spit on my ear. He go, “I saw you, Rosie. I saw what you did. You could've killed that boy, you know that? You could have killed him.”

An I know he seen what I done an the tears sting my eyes cos I real shamed, but he dint see Sasa standin next to me on the edge jus sayin, “Do it,” an “Do it,” an “Do it,” until I gots no choice but to listen.

Altho it's me what dun the sumthin bad an Dad smack me cross my behind, he still real angry wid Momma, tho she angry first. Momma get in the car an she jab a finger at him an she go, “I ever see you raise a hand to our daughter again, Shawn, I'll…”

An Dad jab a finger right back. “You'll what, Kuda? You'll fucking what?”

“I'll kill you,” Mom say, an that make Dad stay quiet for a bit an then shake his head an stare at the road in front.

Sasa sayin to me, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

Dad sayin to Mom, “You're sick, you know that? You're sick in the head. You're mentally ill.”

Sasa sayin, “Sick in the head! Sick in the head!”

Dad sayin, “You think I didn't see you watching her? What were you doing? Praying? Jesus, Kudakwashe! You do know what just happened, right? And you're off with the fucking angels!”

Sasa jumpin up an down now an flappin his wings real fast. He goes, “Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch!”

An Momma turns round and goes, “What did you say?”

An Dad goes, “I said you're a crazy bitch!”

When we gets home, it's Gladys who give me my bath an dress me. She know sumthin wrong cos she can tell from Mom and Dad, so she go, “Have you been naughty, little bird?”

An I go, “I dun sumthin bad, Gladys. But Sasa told me do it.” An Gladys look at me very hard and then shake her head.

Gladys put me to bed, then Dad come an say goodnight. He sit on the chair next to me and he put his hand on my shoulder. He goes, “I'm sorry I smacked you, Rosie. But you have to learn that what you did was very dangerous. Do you understand that?”

An I go, “Yes, Daddy.”

An he smile an he go, “You know I love you, don't you, little bird?”

An then Sasa there on the end of the bed an he go, “Yes, Daddy.”

An I go, “Yes, Daddy.” Then suddenly I feel sad an I go, “Where's Momma?”

“I'm right here.” This is Momma an she standin by the door. She smile an she go, “Good night, my love.”

I say, “Gimme a kiss.”

An she come and she still smilin but her eyes look kinda spooky. She kiss me on the forehead and she smell like Momma even tho her lips are cold like glass. Dad says, “Sleep now,” an he turns off the light.

I can see Sasa's eyes in the dark an he says, “You wanna go flyin?” An even tho I know he naughty, it real excitin when we go up in the sky an he look after me real well. He go, “I'm kinda like your dad's family, you know that? He call me up when he come home to Afrika, tho he don even know it hisself. You think I gonna let anythin happen to you when we related? No way!”

Up in the sky he point his sharp little ears forward an he say, “I can hear evryone. Look: there's your momma prayin.”

An I go, “Is anyone lisnin?”

An Sasa laugh an I see his teeth pointed like a Halloween pumpkin an he say, “Well,
I
lisnin. I lisnin good.”

G
ilbert arrived early. He had taken a kombi to the city center, then another to Glenara shops, where he bought two Cokes and some chicken pieces. He walked from there, following his wife's instructions. Still unfamiliar with Harare, he hadn't known how long the journey would take so there he was, standing outside the gate of number forty-five with an hour to spare.

He was nervous. This was only partly because he was going to see Bessie for the first time in almost five months. Mostly it was because he was specifically going to see where she lived and worked and the kind of life his wife had built for herself on her own.

Besides, he had never been into a
murungu
's house before; he wasn't sure what to expect and, from the outside, he already found something vaguely threatening. It wasn't the heavy iron gate, with the sign saying “Armed Response,” that bothered him, or the looming walls topped with an electric fence. Rather, it was the neat flowerbeds planted with climbing yellow bougainvillea overlooking a pristine two-meter verge of lawn to the curb. The artfulness spoke to Gilbert of a manic, controlling attention to detail that he found unsettling. How much time and effort had it taken to create this effect? And what conviction was expressed in the commitment? He couldn't imagine a life of such certainty.

He sat on the curb at the far corner of the property, away from the gate. He took out his phone. He had no airtime, so he sent Bessie a free “call me back,” so that she'd know he'd arrived. But she didn't finish work until one p.m., so he'd just have to wait. He idled back to the airtime seller on the corner where two gardeners were playing checkers. He watched for a while and made vain attempts to engage them in conversation, but they were unfriendly and engrossed in what was clearly a regular challenge match. He tried talking to the airtime seller, but the kid was every bit as sullen. Gilbert had the sense that the workers in this rich neighborhood banded together against any outsiders who might compete for jobs or customers.

By the time he returned to number forty-five it was five past one and, from a distance, he saw Bessie standing at the gate. He quickened his pace and, when she turned to look in his direction, instinctively raised his arm in a broad, excited arc of greeting. Her response was a brief, low-key twitch of her right hand and he felt suddenly embarrassed. The specific nuances of this small exchange signified, for Gilbert, everything that was wrong with their current situation. His love for his wife burned consistently hot but, in his absence, she had begun to resort to a kind of pragmatic frigidity that would take time to thaw even in the full glare of his passion. He sometimes worried that, one day, he would no longer be able to warm her up and she would cool him down instead.

He had told her this the last time she visited Mubayira and she appeared immediately crestfallen. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But when I am not here, do you believe I must think about my husband and daughter all the time? I can't do that. If I do that I will become depressed.”

Gilbert promptly regretted his comment and suffered one of those sudden reversals of sentiment common to the love-struck. “No!” he gushed. “
I
am sorry. I will always have enough love for us both.”

She then looked at him—somewhat sadly, he thought—and said, “You cannot have enough love for two people. That is not how it works.” At which his heart turned over once again and he wished he'd said nothing at all.

Bessie was still wearing her maid's uniform and in it she seemed all the more unfamiliar: the shapeless dress, gathered at the waist, robbed her small frame of its natural undulations, while the headscarf low on her brow made her look unusually stern. She greeted him formally, tentatively, and he, suddenly racked with uncertainty, did likewise. But, he couldn't help taking her hand in his and she smiled up at him with a brief, familiar flash of personality that made his stomach tighten.

“You have been in Harare…” she began.

“Almost two weeks,” he said.

“How is our pumpkin?”

“She is fine. She is speaking, you know.”

“No! What does she say?”

“
Gogo
. To my mum. Well. Almost.”

Bessie nodded slowly. Gilbert felt his clumsiness and insensi­tivity. He watched his wife swallow her sacrifice as she surely did every day. She waited for it to settle. She asked, “And how is everyone at Sunningdale?”

“They are fine. Everybody is fine.” He let go of her hand so that he could adjust his small knapsack. “Shall we go inside? I bought some chicken.”

She smiled. “I also bought chicken,” she said. She looked back at the gate. “Madam is having a party. There are some guests. Later I may have to help with the dishes.”

“I thought you were off this afternoon?”

“I am,” Bessie said, and shrugged. She turned, took out her keys and opened the small door in the heavy iron gate.

G
ilbert looked around the plot. It was large: perhaps half an acre in front of the house, a driveway running up the right-hand side to a twin garage, and then at least double the space behind. The house, though, was surprisingly old and modest, perhaps eight rooms in all, and Gilbert considered that, if these people were so rich, which they must be, it was strange that they hadn't rebuilt. He said as much to Bessie, who replied, “It is not their house; they are renting. They're from UK. I told you.”

As they skirted the garage, Gilbert heard the sounds of chatter and soft, unfamiliar music. The back of the house opened onto a large covered veranda, raised a meter or so above the lawn and overlooking a swimming pool. Half a dozen kids of various ages were splashing in the water, the youngest bobbing reluctantly in the arms of a white woman. A
braai
was in full swing on the far side of the veranda, burning too fiercely to be cooking the meat nicely. Around twenty people were gathered in clusters here and there, talking somewhat seriously. It was hardly what Gilbert would have described as a party.

Bessie told him to wait and approached the nearest group, all men, who were seated on cane chairs around a low table. She stood at a couple of meters distance until she caught the attention of a burly man in T-shirt and shorts. He stood up, even looking slightly relieved by her intervention, and joined Bessie on the grass. She led him over to perform the necessary introductions.

Bessie's boss was tall, as tall as Gilbert and twice as wide. He had short dark hair, a broad, open face and a poorly trimmed beard that cracked easily into a smile. He transferred his beer bottle from right to left so that he could shake Gilbert's hand.

“This is Mr. Jerry Jones,” Bessie said, in English. “Sir, this is my husband, Gilbert Chiweshe.”

Gilbert took his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Boss,” he said.

The man said something incomprehensible and Gilbert was thrown until his wife prompted, again in English, “He is greeting you!” and he grasped that the
murungu
was speaking broken Shona.

“Ndaswera. Maswera sei?”
Gilbert said.

“Fine, fine. It's good to meet you.” The man reverted to his own tongue, swigged from his beer, then adopted a grave expression. “I'm sorry that we keep Bessie away from you. Though I don't know what we'd do without her. She's been a godsend.”

Gilbert didn't know how to reply to this. He glanced at Bessie for help, but she was looking at her feet. “Thank you, sir,” he tried, and it seemed an acceptable response.

There was no need for further conversation, but Mr. Jones appeared determined to continue and he asked after Gilbert's family and the journey from the “rural area.” Gilbert said that the journey had been fine, that his family was fine. Mr. Jones shifted from foot to foot as if uncomfortable. He drank from his beer again. “And what are you doing in the city?” Mr. Jones asked.

“I am looking for an opportunity. But at the moment I am driving a taxi with my brother-in-law.” Gilbert took out his wallet and found one of his new business cards. It had his phone number and Patson's. It read, “Gapu Taxis. Your journey is our business. We go in peace.” It had been Gilbert's idea to print the cards and it felt good to hand one over.

A hint of a smile twitched around Mr. Jones's eyes. “You go in peace?” he said. “Is that a promise?”

Gilbert felt foolish. It had been Patson who'd insisted on the motto. “It is a promise,” he said. “Not a contractual obligation.”

Mr. Jones raised his eyebrows. “That's good to know,” he said. Then, “Well, we're a one-car family, so I often need a taxi. I'll call you. At least now you can find the house.”

“No problem, Boss.”

Gilbert's attention was taken by what was happening over Mr. Jones's left shoulder. The white woman he'd noted before was hurriedly getting out of the pool and, in the absence of any other takers, handed her child to a tall, light-skinned black guy, wearing a loose, short-sleeved shirt and light trousers—he looked, Gilbert thought, like an American singer. The woman then wrapped a towel around her waist and hurried over, busily arranging her curly hair into something like order. She was too pale to be revealing so much skin to the afternoon sun and her shoulders and upper arms were marked with countless small freckles as if by way of protest. As she approached, she jabbed out her hand like a spear and Gilbert took it to avoid being run through.

“Hello,” she said.

“Madam,” Bessie said quickly. “This is my husband.”

“Gilbert,” Mr. Jones said blithely. “He is visiting.”

“Visiting?” Mrs. Jones said, at a pitch that made her own husband's eyes dart towards her, the last to cotton on to her obvious displeasure.

“Yeah,” he said, making no attempt to conceal his own irritation. “Visiting. Bessie. His wife.”

“Tomorrow we will go to church,” Bessie said.

There was a heavy moment of silence. Then Mrs. Jones said, “Well, this is a nice surprise. Good to meet you, Gilbert.” Then, “Bessie? Can you come back around six to clear up?”

She turned on her heels and strutted back to the party. Mr. Jones sniffed and gave Gilbert a conspiratorial look, which the latter didn't entirely understand, then turned and said over his shoulder, “Nice to meet you. Have a good weekend.”

“Thank you, Boss.”

At the domestic housing, Gilbert stood in the doorway of the small kitchen while Bessie prepared the chicken. He sipped a Coke. They didn't talk much, but that was OK. He enjoyed watching her busy herself and, besides, he knew that, though there were no words or gestures of affection, the diligence with which she cleaned and cut the meat was its own kind of intimacy.

They ate in Bessie's room. He sat at the small table on the single chair. She sat on the floor. He told her his plans. He wasn't sure how she would react, but he tried to speak as if it were all decided and brooked no argument. He told her that there was nothing for him in Mubayira. There were no jobs and he was no kind of farmer. He was proud that she had taken the initiative to come to Harare, but what kind of husband would he be if he just sat at home and let this situation drift indefinitely? He told her that Patson and Fadzai had agreed that he could stay in Sunningdale until he found his feet. He showed her the business cards. He would share responsibility for the taxi until he found work of his own. It might take some time, but eventually they would bring Stella and have a house and build a life as a family. He said, “What do you think?”

Bessie fetched the second Coke and divided it equally into two glasses. She smiled at him. She said, “I think it's a good plan.”