‘Pumpkin! Get up, we have to go!’ Ma shakes me awake. I smell her toothpaste-and-whisky breath before I open my eyes or recognise her voice. She is whispering, but I feel the tension in her voice and in her grip before she hurries out of the room.
My room is dark, but the light from the living room casts a yellow rectangle across the floor and onto the foot of my bed. My heart jumps when I see the light. For the past thirteen days we’ve been living under a curfew and blackouts have been imposed across the country by the government. It’s a way of protecting ourselves from attack by Rhodesian forces, who have been coming into the country to kill Rhodesian freedom fighters.
I sprint to the living room, flick off the switch and blackness surrounds me. The front door’s ajar, letting in voices from outside and a draft that’s blowing the curtain. The side table’s been tipped over; the pile of Drum magazines that usually sit on it are sprawled across the carpet. I can hear Uncle Oscar speaking outside in a raised voice.
Before I get to the front door Ma hurries in. ‘Go and pack a small bag. We’re going to New Town.’
Instructing the guard not to open the gate, Uncle Oscar follows Ma into the living room. ‘Totela, it’s late –’
‘I have to go!’ Ma cuts him short.
I’m surprised to see Uncle Oscar in our house. He’s Mwanza’s boss – an airline pilot who wears a navy suit with stripes on the sleeve and a peaked cap to work. But no matter how many times I see him in his smart uniform, I can’t shake the image of him in electric-blue underpants, a forest of hairy black knots on his chest. That’s how I first saw him. It was early one Saturday morning, three weeks and one day after we had moved to Tudu Court. A white Volkswagen sped into the complex and screeched to a halt outside Uncle Oscar’s flat. The shrieking brakes had us all outside even before we heard a woman’s scream and the shattering of glass. There we saw a man, Uncle Oscar, trying to wrestle two women apart. They were swinging their handbags at one another, over his head and under his raised arms. As we watched the white-and-green striped towel he had around his waist fell to the ground and he quickly bent down and grabbed it, tying it firmly around his waist again. The embarrassment of losing his cover must have given him strength because he suddenly pulled the two women apart and asked both of them to leave. One of them, her ear dripping blood onto her shoulder, jumped back into her car and sped off, leaving her wig and hoop earring lying on the veranda.
Ma doesn’t like Uncle Oscar because of that fight. I heard her telling a friend that because her neighbour can’t handle his business the children in Tudu Court don’t respect him, as they have all seen him in his underpants. She’s wrong. On behalf of the children of Tudu Court I can say honestly that we respect Uncle Oscar very much. He brings us chocolates from London, or Paris, or Amsterdam. He gives them to Mwanza, who throws them at us through the kitchen window and watches us scramble for them like chickens after breadcrumbs.
Now Ma is talking to Uncle Oscar.
‘I have to go,’ she says, switching on the light.
‘It’s dangerous.’ Uncle Oscar switches the light off.
‘There’s a curfew, Madam,’ Mwanza adds from the veranda. He’s holding a torch and the beam bounces up and down against the living room wall. ‘Police will arrest you.’
‘I’ll use the back route,’ Ma says. ‘Besides, this is an emergency.’
‘Madam, the back route is even more dangerous.’
Ma must be crazy. It’s pitch black outside, there’s a curfew and she’s planning to drive to New Town. Uncle Oscar tries to calm her down, but she’s ranting about how someone is planning to come and kill her. Meanwhile, outside, Mwanza has taken up Uncle Oscar’s fight with the guard, who has opened the gate, saying that if the drunken lady wants to get herself killed it’s up to her. Mwanza takes over a lot of things from Uncle Oscar: his old clothes, his old shoes and even his bed. Although Uncle Oscar doesn’t know about the bed.
Ma paces in and out of the flat. ‘He’ll kill me,’ she mutters. ‘He’ll kill me.’
The only he she can be referring to is Tata. But he’s not here. If he had come I would have heard his car. I always do.
‘Let’s go!’ Ma says, handing me my doll. Grabbing a beer from the fridge she picks up a plastic bag of clothes and heads for the door.
Despite the attempts to stop us – even the guard, on realising Ma is serious, joins in, trying to persuade her to stay put – she gets her way. She settles me in the passenger seat, the plastic bags in the back and the beer bottle jammed between her knees. Uncle Oscar insists on following us. The full beam of his motorbike shines through the back window all the way to New Town. God answers my prayers: we don’t come across any army or police roadblocks.
‘What’s happened?’ Grandma Ponga asks, holding a candle stuck on a saucer. The flicking flame casts shadows in her face.
‘Can I leave her here for tonight?’ Ma nods down at me. She’s holding the bag of clothes in her arms, but she’s left the beer bottle in the car and is chewing spearmint gum. I clutch my doll Cindy tight against my chest and smile, unsure of what else to do.
Looking at Ma, Grandma Ponga shakes her head and claps her tongue against the top of her mouth disapprovingly. Then she sets the candle on a ledge and reaches for my hand: ‘Isa.’ Stooping a little, she pulls me into a hug and holds me close, my chin resting on her bony shoulder. Grandma Ponga works hard at liking me. Deep down inside I think she does, but my being Tata’s daughter makes it hard for her. She hates him as passionately as Ma loves him.
Grandma Ponga holds me for a while, then she lets go and stands aside. I walk ahead of them into the living room, where there’s another candle on the coffee table. Ma and Grandma Ponga hang back and when she thinks I’m too far ahead to hear, Grandma Ponga says that Tata should keep his rotten member to himself and not stick it in every hole he finds. She says that Tata’s weakness will kill him. She says Tata worships himself. She says, ‘Where have you seen a man who likes his face so much? He plasters pictures of himself on every surface he can find.’
‘I’ll be back for her,’ Ma says. ‘I just need to sort out some other accommodation.’
‘Totela, there’s a curfew. The security forces are on high alert. Moments like this they get jittery. All it will take is for you to make a wrong move and they’ll shoot at you.’
‘I had to leave the flat.’
Grandma Ponga sighs. ‘What are you running from this time?’
‘He’s threatened me.’
‘How?’
‘The phone keeps ringing, but when I pick up the caller hangs up. I know it’s him.’
‘The man is a fool, but even he is not up to such childish pranks. Besides, you can’t run away from him. If he’s after you, he’ll find you.’
‘He’s bitter and dangerous because I don’t want to see him anymore –’
‘Bitter? Don’t delude yourself. Didn’t I warn you about him? He’s stopped coming because he’s found some younger, firmer breasts to fondle. You have suckled his daughter, so your breasts are not good enough for him now. Besides, no man wants a woman that smells of beer. He’s turned you into a drunkard and he’s left you.’
‘Is it okay if she stays?’ Ma sounds as if she’s going to cry.
‘As I said the last time you brought her here: I can only keep a child here, I can’t raise her in this place.’
When Ma doesn’t say anything Grandma Ponga says, ‘There’s a difference, as you know. Keeping her? Okay. She’ll eat, sleep and go to school. But I can’t raise her. Not in this environment. This is a tavern. Prostitutes and drunks are around the whole time. I can’t cage her in the house like a bird.’
‘I’ll be back for her –’
‘You can’t keep moving the child around. Stay in one place for the sake of your daughter.’
‘It’s difficult because –’
‘Aha!’ I hear Grandma Ponga exclaim. She starts clapping. ‘Say it again. It’s difficult to raise a child, not so? Well you should have thought of that before you opened your …’
Grandma Ponga lowers her voice so I don’t hear the end of her sentence.
‘I’ll leave you some money.’
‘This is not about money.’
I know how to eavesdrop without showing it. I hold my doll up in the light from the candle and hum to the dancing shadow on the wall. I hum loud enough for them to hear me.
‘The bad habits she’ll pick up here can’t be erased by money. The child needs security, stability and a good environment. Does he know she’s here?’
‘No.’
Silence. I imagine the grimace on my grandmother’s face. She always twists her mouth when she talks about Tata.
Ponga’s Tavern once belonged to my grandfather. He died long before I was born. I don’t know much about him except that he owned a mututila, that he loved books and that he was a soldier in the First Battalion of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment that was sent to guard the border with the Belgian Congo in 1939. When he died Grandma Ponga, who has never drunk alcohol in her life, took over the tavern and turned it for the first time into a profitable business. That’s what Melody told me. She said Grandma Ponga used the income from the tavern to put my mother through secondary school and the six months of university it took her to hitch a ride from Tata and get pregnant with me.
Ma has three younger brothers. The middle of the three is Uncle Musonda, who is studying engineering on a mine scholarship in America. The eldest son, Nelson, and youngest, Membe, disrupt grandma Ponga’s business operations for a living. They totter around the premises, swaying and slurring, and now and again entertaining Ponga’s patrons with a fight over a clean shirt, the day’s takings or a cold beer.
Grandma Ponga walks into the living room. ‘Have you eaten?’ She manages a smile.
I nod to show I’ve eaten, but grandma hurries around the little room anyway. Stepping over my feet she pulls a plate from the display cabinet and then bustles into the kitchen.
Ma comes and sits beside me. I think of Uncle Oscar waiting outside in the unlit night on his motorbike with a helmet on his head.
Grandma Ponga comes back from the kitchen with sweet potatoes cooked in peanut sauce. It’s usually my favourite, but my stomach is set in a tight knot. I force the food down because my Grandma Ponga has had enough disappointment in her life without me adding to it.
Ma fishes some notes from her purse and hands them to Grandma Ponga.
‘Thank you.’ Grandma Ponga gets up and kneels by the wooden shelf weighed down by a row of green encyclopaedias. The books belonged to my grandfather. I wonder if my grandfather, between handing out beer bottles and counting the day’s takings, ever found the time to read such thick books. Each has about five thousand pages.
Grandma Ponga tucks the wedge of notes snugly between two of the books. The letters embossed on them in gold read C–D and D–E. That is where she always hides her money. Where there’s no chance of Uncle Nelson and Uncle Membe stumbling upon it.
‘This curfew is ruining business. I’ve lost two weeks’ worth of earnings.’ She turns to me. ‘Go and get some water to drink. Sweet potato catches in the throat.’ When she thinks I’m out of earshot she says, ‘You had better take it slow. Spend wisely. The way things are going you’ll soon find yourself without a roof, when he stops paying your rent.’
‘He has to pay. She’s his daughter.’
‘Totela, just be aware of what happened to the women that passed his way before you.’
I come back with my water and carry on eating. I’ve always felt a barrier between Grandma Ponga and me. It’s the same barrier I feel between Ma and Grandma Ponga. They are careful and polite around each other. When we visit, usually the last Sunday of the month, Ma always sits on the same chair, usually in the same pose. They ask one another the same questions. The responses are the same. Vague. Polite. Expected. Everyone is fine. Everything is okay. Conversation between the two that go beyond that turn into a challenge to see who will make the last catty remark. I think it’s been like this since Ma met Tata. I know it got worse when I came along. Things must have been different before.
When my plate is empty Grandma Ponga follows me to the kitchen and fills a green dish with warm water from the kettle. She squats, the basin balanced in her lap, and rubs her coarse hands over mine. She holds each hand between hers, sliding her palms over mine in the soapy water. I feel she is trying to make me feel better; to comfort me by talking to me with her hands. When she’s through, she places the dish on the floor and dries my hands with the free end of the chitenge tied around her waist.
Back in the living room we find Ma standing, ready to go.
I pick up my bag of clothes.
‘I’ll come for you tomorrow,’ Ma says.
‘Where are you going this time of the night?’ I hear Grandma Ponga ask as I leave the room. ‘You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’
I hear Ma deny she’s been drinking, but Grandma Ponga clucks her disapproval nevertheless.
The bed is high and rests heavily against the wall. It’s got a dark wooden base and square headboard. Beneath it are dusty cardboard boxes that I don’t think have been opened since before I was born.
There’s a big crack across the dressing table mirror. It’s always been there. It makes my face look lopsided.
Grandma Ponga brings me a white enamel chamber pot, and places it at the foot of the bed. When she leaves the room again I climb on to the bed. The wooden base creaks. The mattress is soft and lumpy and the white sheets smell of washing powder.
I hear the front door close and Ma’s car start up. There is the sound of a motorbike being kick-started in the distance. I pray they won’t be stopped at any roadblocks on the way back.
Grandma Ponga shuffles around the house before she finally comes into the bedroom. I feel her lean over and look at me. She sighs heavily as she pulls the heavy blanket over my head, almost burying me. I lie still. I hear her removing her clothes. Then the mattress beside me sinks and I feel myself roll into the depression. My back rests against hers.
She sighs again. This time gently. And I feel like saying sorry. Because somehow, something inside me always makes me feel like I owe Grandma Ponga an apology.