11

‘My baby! My Pumpkin!’ Ma holds me close and I can feel her heart beating through her pink sleeveless blouse.

‘Pumpkin.’ She steps stands back to look at me.

I haven’t seen her in two school terms and I see immediately that she’s changed. Her eyes are white again and she doesn’t smell of toothpaste, or whisky, or both.

A wave of warmth surges from my stomach up to my face and down into my toes. The urge to laugh and cry overwhelm me with equal intensity; I have a big smile on my face and a painful lump in my throat.

Standing behind me with my bag in his hand, Tata coughs. Ma looks up at him. ‘I’ll get the file,’ she says, standing up and walking back into the flat.

We enter the living room. It’s changed. The olive three-piece suite has been replaced by two wooden dining chairs and a single bed covered in a yellow cloth. The bed rests against the wall where the display cabinet used to be. Only the green carpet with the yellow trim is the same. Grandma Ponga bought it for Ma and I when we moved into the flat, so I guess Tata couldn’t reclaim it like he did the Fiat and all the other stuff. A painting of huts clustered together against an orange sunset hangs in the place where I once sat on Tata’s lap smiling.

Tata asks me to sit down, but he remains standing. Ma walks back in and hands him an envelope.

‘It’s all in there,’ she says to him, though she’s smiling at me.

Ma’s put on weight. Her fitted shirt and jeans shape her body like the number eight. I watch Tata’s eyes as he watches her; they twinkle. I think she notices as well because she quickly picks my bag off the floor and starts out of the room again. That is until Tata steps forward. ‘Let me take it,’ he says, reaching out for the bag.

His sudden movement startles Ma into a stumble.

‘I’m sorry.’ Tata grips Ma by her arm to steady her.

‘It’s okay.’ Ma flinches as she allows him to take the case. She brushes at the spot where he touched her. She does it surreptitiously, but I notice.

Ma sits beside me, takes my hand, oblivious to how sore I feel inside at her for brushing Tata’s touch away like dandruff off a collar. Then Tata comes back in and shuffles through the papers in the envelope. ‘Okay.’ He seals the envelope and looks at me. ‘I’ll be back for you.’

We stand up to see him out.

He hesitates in the doorway, ‘Is everything okay?’ His glance sweeps over the scanty living room furniture. ‘If you need any –’

Ma grimaces. ‘Everything’s fine. Thank you very much.’ She takes my hand and we step out onto the veranda. A white minibus drives in and stops near our flat. Uncle Oscar hops out in his uniform, holding his hat in his hands. He waves at the bus as it reverses out and walks over to the line of grey bricks that divide his section of the lawn from ours.

‘Hello, Pumpkin.’ He puts his black case down and holds out his hand to me, then he turns and walks into his flat. He doesn’t acknowledge Ma or Tata.

‘Pumpkin, I’ll come and check on you tomorrow,’ Tata says as I walk to the car with him. Ma stays on the veranda.

Before Tata drives off he pulls out his wallet and holds out a wad of notes. ‘Give this to your mother,’ he says. Then he drives off.

Ma and I sit on the bed with the yellow cover. Neither of us says much. Instead we just smile a lot. We are shy of one another, like two strangers meeting for the first time. Three times she asks how my new school is. Three times I say it’s okay. I ask after Grandma Ponga and my uncles twice. Twice she tells me that Uncle Nelson is back from the States on holiday.

As we talk I snatch glances of her. She’s had her hair braided in thin cornrows, running from her forehead to the nape of her neck. She’s got on big silver hoop earrings and pink lipstick, which matches her sleeveless pink blouse. I think she dressed up for Tata, so I don’t understand why she flinched when he touched her arm.

She gets up and brings me a glass of milk and a scone. ‘I baked it,’ she says, placing the plate in my lap. ‘I did,’ she adds, answering my look of surprise.

We’re quiet again. I try to chew without a sound. She reaches for my hand and her smile turns sombre. She starts to talk. She says that every life is full of special moments. She says holding me in her arms for the first time was very special to her. She says I was warm and sticky and she couldn’t believe I was hers. She tells me another special moment for her was when she graduated from secretarial school, where she went after she dropped out of university. Then she keeps quiet. It’s the kind of silence that says there’s more. I’m right because she starts talking again, her head bowed, winding and unwinding her blouse tie around her index finger. She says that not all special moments are happy. Some are sad. Like when her father passed away. She thinks of him often and wishes I had met him. Then she tells me that the night Tata took me away was a very sad moment but was also special. She hesitates, then tells me it was special because it made her realise how special I was to her and that if she didn’t stop drinking she would throw away her life and lose me for ever.

Her voice changes as she speaks. It sounds like the words are getting stuck in her throat. I don’t want to see her cry, so I stand up quickly. ‘Ma, can I go and play?’

She looks up at me and nods. I’m sure it’s relief I read in her face.

I find Daisy sitting on the concrete slab outside Bee’s house. ‘Eyee, Pumpkin.’ She jumps up and hugs me. ‘When did you come?’ The inside of her mouth is green.

‘What are you eating?’

She points at a tall tree with white flowers that’s leaning over into Tudu Court from the other side of the wall. ‘I have a cough.’

‘So you eat leaves?’

‘It’s a chifumbe tree. The juice from the leaves cures coughs. You don’t swallow the leaves.’ Daisy spits out a dark green blob of leaves to make her point.

‘Where is Sonia?’

Daisy gives me a smile – her teeth are stained green. ‘They are doing it with BaDodo.’

‘Doing what?’ Her smile rouses my curiosity.

‘Pulling,’ Daisy says, pointing down.

I look at my feet.

‘Not there.’ She giggles. ‘There!’ She reaches between my legs.

I jump back and smack her hand away.

‘BaDodo is showing them. They said I’m too young,’ Daisy says, her voice whiny. ‘You go to the house. You are almost ten, so BaDodo might allow you in.’

‘Ah, I don’t want to do that.’

‘You’re a girl. You have to.’

‘And you?’

‘They’ll show me when I’m older. Anyway, I already know. Bee has shown me.’

‘Has she?’

‘Yes. It’s easy. When you open your legs and look down you’ll see two small pink wings. They feel like rubber and are slippery. You have to pull them everyday until they grow long.’ She giggles.

‘Yuck!’

‘You have to. Every girl has to do it. That is why BanaBee told BaDodo to show Sonia and Bee how to do it. If you don’t, you’ll never get married. Anyway, you won’t do it because your mother is like this.’ Daisy stands on tiptoe and sashays away from me holding her hand up daintily. Then she twirls around and sashays back, twitching her nose up in the air.

I burst out laughing. ‘I’ll tell you something, if all girls have to do it, my Grandmother will tell me.’

‘Hey, do you know Mwanza made big trouble so Uncle Oscar chased him?’ Daisy asks, reaching for more leaves to stuff into her mouth.

‘Mwanza’s gone?’

‘Yes, he tried to do jiggy-jiggy with Bee.’

‘You swear?’

‘Please, Pumpkin,’ Daisy says. ‘Please don’t tell Bee I told you. BaDodo said no one should talk about it.’

‘Does BanaBee know?’

‘No one knows.’

‘Then why did Uncle Oscar chase him?’

‘Mwanza called Bee and gave her two kwacha. He rubbed himself on her back and asks her to squeeze him. He even squeezed her breasts. He said, so that they can grow. BaDodo is the one who peeked in Uncle Oscar’s window and saw Bee and Mwanza. She was so angry with Mwanza she told Uncle Oscar. She said Mwanza is always playing with the children here at Tudu Court and that he wanted sex with her. So Uncle Oscar kicked Mwanza out. Mwanza kept saying BaDodo was lying. He said BaDodo wanted to have sex with him, but that he refused, and that’s why she made up a story about him.’ Daisy shrugs. ‘But we all know Mwanza is a liar.’

‘Iye!’ I blurt out. ‘But what if he was telling the truth.’

‘He was lying. How can he say BaDodo did jiggy-jiggy with him? BaDodo doesn’t do bad things like that.’ Daisy wrinkles up her nose. ‘Anyway, when men do bad things they always deny it, or they scare the girls into keeping quiet. Like Mwanza told Bee that if she tells he will let everyone know and she will be chased from school. He also said when you do it when you’re a child, and you tell, you’ll grow a beard.’ Daisy laughs. ‘He was lying. He’s a bad man.’

I decide not to tell Daisy what I know. ‘Where did Mwanza go?’

‘I don’t know. Then a lady, BaGertrude, came to work for Uncle Oscar. But he chased her because she stole your mother’s shoes.’

‘My mother’s shoes?

‘Yes, because BaGertrude clean your place as well as Uncle Oscar’s.’

‘Now another man works for Uncle Oscar. He –’

‘Pumpkin! Pumpkin! Pumpkin is here!’ Bee’s shriek cuts Daisy short.

Bee runs towards me and throws her arms around me. I hug her back tightly, only letting go to stop the lump in my throat growing again.

‘Daisy, go home, your mother call you,’ Bee says to Daisy. Then she turns to me. ‘Eh, Pumpkin, you go fat. Now you look like pumpkin for sure.’ She jiggles my cheeks gently, but surprisingly I don’t feel as irritated as I think I ought to. ‘Bumpty bum! Bumpty bum!’ she sings as she twirls around and shakes her bottom at me. I join in and we wriggle waists, bump hips – left, right, left – clap palms and then fall over laughing.

‘So, now you go new school?’ Bee steps on a heap of Daisy’s soggy leaves. ‘Arhh! Look at what Daisy do!’ She stamps her feet.

‘She was chewing it for her cough.’

‘My mother show her,’ Bee says proudly. ‘You know, my mother, she know plenty about medicine. People come see her. You know, the women, they come to get medicine from her.’

‘But how does she know?’

‘She just know. She dream about it. In her dream someone show her. Like …’ Bee looks around. ‘The root for that plant.’ She points at a shrub growing against the wall. ‘It use for taking out babies.’

The surprise in my face shows because she leans forward. ‘It’s secret,’ she whispers, ‘but I tell you. Some young girls do sex and come pregnant by mistake. So, when they come to my mother, she give the root of that plant and then the baby …’ She shakes her head. ‘I mean, before it proper baby, the root take it out. Abortion.’

‘What? Is it true?’ Daisy has sneaked up on us.

‘Go away! You big mouth!’ Bee says.

We watch Daisy stomp away. ‘So, is it true you stay with your Tata now?’ Bee asks as soon as Daisy is out of earshot.

‘I hear Mwanza was fired.’

‘Who told you? What Daisy say?’

‘I heard from my mother,’ I say to protect Daisy.

‘She say what?’

‘That Mwanza was fired.’

‘Did she tell you why?’ Bee looks anxious.

‘No.’

‘It’s that BaDodo. She told lie that Mwanza did something bad to me, because she wanted to do it with Mwanza and he doesn’t want her, because she fat like elephant. She told lie so Mwanza will be put in jail for doing bad things to me.’

‘Can you keep a secret?’ Before Bee can say anything I say, ‘I saw Dodo and Mwanza doing it.’

Bee looks startled, then she narrows her eyes at me. ‘You swear? You shuwa? Where? When?’

‘Before I left. They were in Uncle Oscar’s room.’

‘You’re lie.’

‘I’m not. Anyway, you know what Mwanza is like. Last time you and Sonia told me he had asked you to squeeze his banana.’

‘Did he ask you?’ Bee asks.

‘Of course not. He wouldn’t dare. He knows that if he did I would take his ujeni off with my bare hands. Mwanza wasn’t good, so it’s just as well Uncle Oscar chased him.’

Bee laughs abruptly, then turns serious. ‘I have secret to tell you,’ she says, looking around to make sure that no one can overhear us.

‘What?’

Bee makes a circle with the thumb and index finger of one hand and then pokes her other index finger into the hole. ‘Uncle Oscar is doing jiggy-jiggy to your mother,’ she says.