When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (29 page)

She had always enjoyed each and every day of
Umhlanga
, but she had loved best the two days of dancing, the Reed Dance itself. The rhythms of the movements and the songs, over and over all
day long, the rows and rows of girls snaking up to the front and then falling back again, singing again and again, dancing over and over, it had all made her feel like her body was there meanwhile
her mind was in another place. It had made her feel like she was part of something very big, not just a small girl on her own.

Doctor was too happy that Innocence was going to do
Umhlanga
, she hadn’t wanted to in all the years before. And Doctor and Madam hadn’t argued about
Gogo
Levine for
almost a week. Mavis had heard nothing, and neither had Lungi.

But Doctor and Madam had something new to talk about now, and so did Mavis and Lungi. Mavis and Lungi both thought it might somehow have something to do with why Innocence wanted to do
Umhlanga.
There was a new girl in the house, Nomsa, and since she had come, Innocence had been different. Not unhappy, just different. More serious, maybe. Thinking about things more.
Unsettled
was the word that Madam had used. Innocence is unsettled, she had said to Titi’s madam.

The day after Nomsa had first come, Mavis had been cleaning in the children’s bathroom upstairs and she had heard Madam talking with Nomsa in the bedroom next door.

Nomsa, Madam had said, you know that there’s no punishment here, no anger, no judgement. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, I’m only asking because I
can help you better if I know. Nomsa’s voice was very soft and quiet, but Mavis had heard her saying yes, she understood, and then Madam had asked her what was she planning to do.

Mavis had stopped scrubbing at the toilet bowl with Harpic so that she could hear Nomsa’s answer. Nomsa was going to feed weevil tablets to her mother, her mother had asked her to. She had
been in so much pain, and there was nothing else that Nomsa could do. She had been begging Nomsa for many, many weeks.

Madam had asked her if that was all, and then Nomsa had cried for a while before saying no, if the tablets worked for her mother then she was going to take some herself because of Mr Thwala at
school. Then Nomsa had cried and cried, and she was still crying when Mavis had finished cleaning the bathroom. As she had passed quietly by the open door of the bedroom, she had looked inside and
seen Madam holding Nomsa tight-tight.

Later, Lungi had heard angry voices outside near the garage, and she had looked out of the window at the side of the kitchen and seen Madam and Doctor arguing. Doctor wanted to get into his
bakkie and go and fetch his gun, he wanted to shoot Mr Thwala for violating Nomsa, and Madam was begging him not to go. Then
Gogo
Levine had gone out and shouted at them both. What kind of
bloody example for the children is this, she had asked them, how are you going to raise them from jail? Then they had all come inside and asked Lungi to make them tea.

Mavis and Lungi had both heard about such a thing happening, sometimes it was even in the newspaper. A teacher or even a headmaster would help himself to one of the girls, and then – to
make him feel okay or to keep the girl quiet – he would give her a hundred emalangeni. It was always a hundred emalangeni. Madam and Titi had even talked about it for Titi’s lesson when
it had been in the newspaper and Madam was teaching Titi about if this then that. If a teacher does this, then he pays that. And if he does this, then he must go to jail. Mavis and Lungi had asked
each other, was it written somewhere that a hundred emalangeni was how much these men should pay?
Eish!

The next day, when Madam took Nomsa to the doctor and Mavis went to give a very special clean to the bedroom Nomsa was sharing with Innocence, she saw that Madam had put one of her special
stones on the chest of drawers next to Nomsa’s bed. It was one of the big stones from the shelf in the lounge, the pale pink one that was the stone of love. Madam had told a visitor about it
while Mavis was standing on a chair just outside the lounge, cleaning the top of the wood around the lounge doorway. If you had that stone, then it helped you to feel that you were worth something,
and if you felt that you were worth something, then you knew that you were worth love. That was what Madam had given to Nomsa. It was a nice stone, but it had many sharp edges. It wasn’t
enough for a girl that life had tumbled the way it had tumbled Nomsa. No. It didn’t yet talk about shining.

Mavis went back down to the kitchen and searched very carefully through Madam’s basket of stones on the table. Three or four of them were the same pale pink, and she chose the largest.
Smooth and rounded, it was already shining in her hand, but she gave it an extra polish with a few drops of Windowlene to help to bring out all of the shine that it had. Then she took it upstairs
and put it beside the other one next to Nomsa’s bed.

It was a much paler pink than the bright pink she was crocheting now. Any mother that bought this jersey at the market in Mbabane would have a very happy child. When the jersey was finished,
Mavis would use a bit of the wool to replace part of a square of her blanket that was wearing rather badly. The wool that was wearing was a reddish brown, and the pink would look fresher, cleaner,
next to the bright green that was in the same square.

As Lungi turned over in her bed and began to snore quietly, Mavis’s thoughts went to Titi, who had spent many nights turning in her bed inside the
kwerekwere
house, trying to think
what to say to her boyfriend who wanted to marry her. Mavis would have said yes before the question had even finished coming out of his mouth. But after all that thinking, Titi had said no.
Eish!
Then he had said he was going to smear her with ochre. That was a man’s right, but it wasn’t what any woman wanted, not any woman Mavis or Lungi knew or had ever heard
about. As much as Mavis wanted a husband, she didn’t want a man to marry her without even asking. No. A man who married her without asking would do anything he wanted without asking, and that
wasn’t nice. Mavis wanted a man to love her, she wanted to love him back. She and Lungi had told Titi she shouldn’t worry, smearing with ochre wasn’t something a man said he would
do, it was something he just did. If he said he would, then he was just joking with her, or just saying it because he was angry that he didn’t get what he wanted. There were men who were like
that.

But Titi had lied to Mavis and Lungi about the men in her own country. They didn’t take just one wife there, her madam’s own son had taken another without even telling the first.
Titi said no, he never married the second. But all those years he had never told!
Eish
, the men in Titi’s country were not honest, Titi should rather marry a Swazi.

Petros was going to marry, there was a girl in Nhlangano. He had come to talk to Mavis about his dog, and he had told her about the girl. Look, he had said, and he had shown her a photo, an old
kind of photo that didn’t have any colour.

Holding that photo, looking at that girl, Mavis’s hands had trembled. She hadn’t known that there was a girl. She hadn’t known that he was waiting until he was better before he
went to negotiate with the girl’s family. She had sent him to the doctor and paid for him to get better, and now he had gone. Doctor had given him some holiday, and he’d gone to
Nhlangano to pay
lobola.
He had no cows to give the girl’s family, so the tin of money under his bed must be very full.

He had come to tell her that his dog was going to stay with the dairy manager while he was away, and while he was away would she please give the food for his dog to the dairy manager instead.
Mavis had tried not to let her face show how hurt she was that he had thought the food she gave him was for his dog rather than for him. While they had talked about how taxi drivers didn’t
want a dog inside their taxi because a dog could mess, and about how it was fine for a chicken or a goat to be tied to the roof of a bus but it wouldn’t be nice for his dog, and about how he
would come back and earn some more money on the farm and then Doctor would drive him and his dog in the bakkie to Nhlangano when the wedding time came, all the time they had talked about those
things Mavis had pretended that she was happy for him.

But she wasn’t happy, and when he came back, she was going to tell him.

She was going to tell him it would break her heart when he left again.

She was going to tell him it was like he was her own boy.

W
HEN THE TIME CAME, ALL THE MAZIBUKO
children got the day off school to support Nomsa at her mother’s funeral. That
day, Mama drove the Tungaraza children to school in the red Microbus, which she didn’t like to do on account of the early morning mist and fog on the way up the hill into Mbabane. Baba said
it wasn’t mist or fog, it was actually a cloud sitting low on the mountaintop, but Mama said she didn’t have to know what something actually was to know that she didn’t like
it.

Helping themselves from the small pile of bricks that Uncle Enock stored at the back of the garage, Benedict and his brothers built the small step to help Mama climb up into the vehicle in her
smart, tight skirt, and then they put the bricks back again. Mama never needed help getting out: by turning sideways on the seat so that both of her legs were out of the door, she could slide to
the ground gracefully.

Grace had suggested that Mama should consider wearing a trouser like Auntie Rachel did, but Mama had said no, it wasn’t polite for a lady her age to wear a trouser, especially a lady who
wasn’t the right kind of shape for it. And besides, here a lady in a trouser wasn’t allowed into a government building, which meant that Mama wouldn’t be able to visit Baba in his
office at the ministry. Mama never had visited Baba in his office at the ministry, but still.

After school, it felt strange not having to walk to the high school to wait for Auntie Rachel. But they did have to wait, and Benedict was disappointed: Sifiso had been hoping to meet Mama so
that he could say how nice her cake was, but Mr Simelane was in a hurry to get Sifiso home in the Buffalo Soldiers van because Mrs Levine would soon be arriving there to help him for the very first
time.

Sifiso was nervous, but he was also a little giddy with excitement. Even if Mr Simelane hadn’t been in a hurry, Sifiso would never have had the patience to wait for Mama to arrive.

‘Nekth time,’ he said, as his father hooted again.

‘Next time,’ Benedict agreed, though he knew that wasn’t likely to be soon. Mama was busy with training the ladies, and she was also making a number of the Ubuntu remembrance
cakes herself. And something interesting was beginning to happen: people liked the remembrance cakes so much that they were starting to order them for people who weren’t yet late, to
celebrate special moments in their lives like retirements, anniversaries and the beginnings of new projects.

Getting his percentage from the remembrance cakes that Mama made herself was making Benedict feel big. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it meant that he had been able to order a cake from
Mama for Giveness.

The cake, which would be ready for the arrival of Giveness’s mother that weekend, wasn’t a cake to welcome her. No. She didn’t really deserve a welcome on account of her
calling Giveness one of God’s mistakes. But Giveness and his aunt deserved to have something sweet and comforting to make them feel better and to help them to forget about being afraid.

Benedict wasn’t afraid waiting outside the primary school: if his brothers needed the toilet, they knew where to go, and nobody was going to shout at Benedict and make him feel small. But
he knew from Auntie Rachel that there was no need to feel afraid at the high school now, either, on account of Mr Thwala being gone. Two other girls had come forward and said that Mr Thwala had
been doing bad things to them, too, and Mr Magagula had had no choice but to tell him to go.

Benedict hadn’t been nice to Nomsa himself, and thinking about that sometimes made him feel like he’d bitten into a rotting prickly-pear fruit that had stung his mouth and flooded it
with the taste of
kinyezi. Eh
, he just hadn’t understood! He had even thought it was nice that Mr Thwala helped Nomsa with pocket money! Now that he knew, he didn’t need Mr
Thwala to make him feel small; he felt small all by himself.

When the red Microbus finally arrived, Mama wasn’t alone inside it. A man they didn’t know slid the side door open. Stepping out and tipping his seat forward, he ushered the
surprised children into the back. The inside smelled deliciously of curry and chips.

‘Sorry, for delaying,’ Mama called back to them. ‘I’m just dropping these people past the golf course.’

‘Eveni Village for me, nè?’ said the man who had let them in.

‘We’re not a bl—’ Grace began.

‘We’re not a taxi!’ Benedict shouted, and the five strangers inside the Microbus laughed.

‘I’ve already told them that,’ said Mama.

‘Many times!’ laughed one of the ladies in the front next to Mama.