As Driver drives me into town I practice my apology to Ma. I’ve decided to patch up my mistake because I feel heavy inside. This must be what Mama T feels like when she talks about carrying a heavy cross. There’s a weight I feel and it’s getting heavier by the minute. If I don’t get rid of it, it will squash me into the ground.
I can’t decide if I should stand or kneel, or if I should apologise to Ma and Uncle Oscar at the same time or just to Ma alone. As for Bee and that lot, I just hope they weren’t about when Tata went to Tudu Court. That’s the problem with living in flats – when there’s a fight in one flat the whole block comes out to watch. If the girls ask me about it I’ll just have to cook up a good story for them. I decide not to think up a story in advance. Experience has taught me that my stories are more convincing and flow more naturally when I haven’t rehearsed them.
When we drive in, Ma is on the veranda, watering her potted plants. Bee, Daisy and the chipmunks – Bee’s twin brothers – are huddled under the mulberry trees at the foot of the garden. My stomach churns and I have to muster all the strength in my body to get out of the car, wave Driver off and walk up to Ma.
‘Pumpkin.’ Ma’s dimple sinks as she puts the jug of water down and opens out her arms to me. She leads me by the hand into the living room. She talks non-stop: ‘How are you?’, ‘How is school?’, ‘Tell me about the bombs’, ‘Oh, I was so worried when I heard the camp had been bombed’, ‘Would you like a drink?’, ‘Have you seen your friends outside?’
The questions keep coming, but she doesn’t mention Uncle Oscar or Tata. I want her to say something so I can apologise, but she doesn’t. Instead she brings out a plastic bag and hands me a dress from inside it. She says she knew it would suit me the moment she saw it in the shop window. She shows me two of her new records: Saturday Night Fever and an album by Letta Mbulu and Caiphas Semenya. I ask her to play the Saturday Night Fever album. As we listen to the music she continues to talk; it’s as if she doesn’t want a quiet moment to pass between us. That or she doesn’t want to give me the opportunity to say anything.
When the phone rings relief brightens her face and she rushes to answer it.
While she’s on the phone I go to her bedroom. I know she’s better, but out of habit I start searching. I burrow into the bottom of her wardrobe and feel around in the jumble of shoes and handbags. From the wardrobe, I move across to the drawers. I put my hands into her underwear and scarf drawers, gently patting the soft, silky textures. I rummage through the dirty-washing basket. Her pink-and-white nightdress and the old stocking she wears on her head when she sleeps are folded under her pillow. Under her bed lie her orange slippers and a magazine with a naked woman sucking an ice lolly on the cover.
‘Pumpkin.’
I jump at her voice.
‘Your friends are here.’
As soon as I open the door, Bee taps my arm. ‘Touch!’ she screams and runs off giggling with Sonia and Daisy in tow.
I chase them down to the mulberry trees, where one of the twins is still playing.
The mulberries are in season. Bunches of purple berries hang from the trees and the ground beneath them is spotted with black juice. ‘Look! The mulberries are ready,’ Sonia says, holding out a handful. ‘We’ve eaten most of them already; the tree was full.’
When I take the berries from her, she jumps up and latches onto a thin branch. It snaps and she lands on one knee with the branch in her hand. Mulberries shower out of the tree along with a bright green chameleon which lands with a splat.
‘Aaarh!’ Daisy screams, umping up and grabbing me. I stumble and knock one of the twins over, stamping on his foot as I try to steady myself. He yelps.
‘Shhh. Hush.’ Bee sweeps him into her arms and clamps her palm over his mouth. But it’s too late. Her mother appears in the small opening that divides the caretaker’s quarters from the rest of Tudu Court.
‘Who hit the baby?’ Bee’s mother has the other twin latched to her hip, sucking on her long-deflated breast.
‘It’s nothi –’
‘What do you mean, it’s nothing? Someone stepped on his toe.’
I freeze. Bee’s mother’s mysterious powers give me the creeps.
‘If I hear the babies cry again I’ll come out and whip all of you.’ She yanks her breast out of the twin’s mouth and he lets out a shrill yell of protest. ‘Find him some shorts,’ she says, dumping him on the ground before disappearing back into her quarters.
Bee zooms into the house and then out again with a facecloth that she uses to wipe the twins faces. When she’s done she pegs the facecloth on the washing line and unpegs two pairs of cotton pants that she pulls onto the boys before seating them on a mat with a plastic bowl of mulberries between them. Then she beckons us to follow her. ‘Let’s stand over here,’ Bee whispers, leading us away from the twins. ‘Because if we move there my ma might hear us.’ She winks at Sonia.
‘What?’ I’m curious.
‘Shhh.’ Bee points up to the small bathroom window near to where we’re standing.
‘Should I tell her?’ Daisy asks.
‘Mmmmh.’ Bee shoves her aside. ‘What do you know?’
‘I’m the one who told you.’ Daisy pouts, then skulks away.
My mouth feels dry and my heartbeat quickens. Could they have witnessed Tata’s visit? One of the chipmunks has tottered up to us. Despite the sand stuck to his bottom, I find myself picking him up and wiping at the slime dripping off his chin with his vest. He’s heavier than I imagined and his instincts rightly advise him to grab a fistful of my blouse and hang on tight.
‘Put him down, he’ll wee on you,’ Sonia says.
I hope he does. It will give me a chance to go home. I was so excited to see them that for a moment I forgot about my lie.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ I say.
They look surprised. ‘How? How would you know?’ Sonia asks.
Relief floods through me. If the story was about me they would expect me to know. Chipmunk has relaxed and is smacking his open palm on my chest, making ‘da, da, da,’ sounds to his beat.
‘Okay, if you know, tell us,’ Bee says.
‘Okay,’ I admit, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What were you going to say?’
‘It’s a secret.’ Bee puts on a silly smile that turns her mouth down at the corners.
‘Just tell me!’
‘Okay.’ Bee leans towards me, but before she can say anything Sonia butts in: ‘BaDodo is …’ She bends over and brings her fist up under her dress.
They both burst out laughing at my open mouth.
‘What?’
‘This.’ Sonia and Bee stick their tummies out, then Sonia makes a crying sound and rocks her arms as if she’s holding a baby.
‘Is it Mwanza’s baby?’ I blurt out.
‘But she’s not going to have the baby,’ Daisy, who has joined us again, says. ‘I saw her take the root fro –’
‘Liar!’ Bee and Sonia chorus. Sonia smacks her younger sister in the face and pushes her away. ‘Go away, you liar.’
‘I’m telling the truth.’ Daisy sticks out her tongue.
Sonia picks up a stone and Daisy immediately breaks into a run with her sister at her heels.
‘I wonder where Mwanza is?’ Bee says as she watches Sonia chase Daisy under the mulberry trees. She looks like she’s about to say more, but the sound of a car horn interrupts us.
My heart sinks as Uncle Oscar drives through the gate. I’m suddenly breathless; my chest constricting at the thought of what I told Sissy.
I feel Bee watching me as I watch Uncle Oscar hop out of his car. Jingling his car keys, he whistles as he locks his door. Before he goes into his flat, Ma opens our front door and says something to him. She laughs. So does he.
Relief spreads through me and I exhale. Only then do I notice that Sonia and Daisy are standing beside Bee. All three stare at me, but before I can react Ma calls out to me. ‘Pumpkin,’ she says, ‘come and get ready, we’re going out.’
Ma and I wait for Uncle Oscar in his car.
‘Isn’t it nice of Uncle Oscar to take us out?’ Ma says. She’s teasing hairs out of her chin with a pair of tweezers.
I nod, though I’m sitting behind her so she can’t see me. In my head I count to ten, but instead of saying something when I get to ten, I start counting again from one. I want to apologise to Ma, but I don’t know how.
Uncle Oscar comes out of his flat and jumps into the car. He turns to me and puts out his hand. ‘Hello, Pumpkin.’
Our relationship has changed. I can see it in his bright smile. Suddenly I’m aware of my hand buried in his. Our skins almost match; they are almost the same shade of toffee brown. ‘Hello, Uncle Oscar,’ I mumble.
There was a time I would run up to him when he was dropped off by the aircrew bus after a trip and ask him if he had brought us any chocolates. It seems such a long time ago now – the time before Uncle Oscar started doing jiggy-jiggy with Ma, the time before I accused him of doing something he didn’t do.
We drive to a fast food place in town. I ask Uncle Oscar for a beef burger, but I only manage to eat half of it because my tummy is in a tight knot. Uncle Oscar finishes his burger in eight mouthfuls. Ma doesn’t order anything. Instead she takes sips from my Fanta and stains my straw pink with her lipstick.
Before we leave, Uncle Oscar buys me an ice cream. As we drive along the sun works faster at my ice cream than I can. It melts down my arms in pink tracks, and drips onto Uncle Oscar’s car seats. Fortunately Ma and Uncle Oscar are engrossed in their whispers and giggles, so they don’t notice when I throw the squishy cone out of the window, then hold up my hands to dry the ice cream that’s keeping my fingers stuck together.
We turn off the tar road onto a bumpy track that leads us through tall trees and tall dry grass until we get to a clearing – dry open land with bags of cement and bricks stacked between scattered shrubs.
By now the sun has disappeared behind a thick, dark cloud that’s filled the whole sky, and the smell of soil that’s been touched by new rain blows through the air. Grandma Ponga calls this the rain wind because it announces the coming of the rains. Only after the first rains have fallen does the rain wind blow, carrying the rich smell of the earth with it.
Uncle Oscar stops under a tree and we all get out. Three men in cement-splattered overalls and black gumboots hurry to meet him. They gather around a pile of bricks and talk numbers while I entertain myself by walking around the foundations.
‘This is Uncle Oscar’s land.’ Ma joins me, frightening away the gumugumu I’m sneaking up on. ‘It’s hard to imagine this will be a house one day, isn’t it?’ she adds, taking off her sun hat.
I nod. There’s more to come. She’s setting herself up to tell me something, I can sense it. The gumugumu has wedged itself between two bricks and is nodding its bright blue head at me.
‘Pumpkin, mummy is getting married.’
I nod, although she’s said something that doesn’t make sense.
‘Pumpkin, mummy and Uncle Oscar will be getting married soon. When we do, we’ll be moving from Tudu Court.’
Her voice is moving further and further away from me. It feels like my head is filling with air.
‘We want you to come and stay with us.’ She smiles pleadingly. ‘Would you like that?’
I smile back, clasping my sticky hands together. In a way I’m happy, because if they are getting married then Uncle Oscar will have to forget about my lie and I probably won’t get into trouble. But at the same time, as I look at Ma’s childlike grin, I can’t stop myself wishing that when next Uncle Oscar’s girlfriends come looking for a fight, Ma is wearing the hoop earrings she has on.
It showers lightly – not as the clouds threatened. The drive back is taken up with Uncle Oscar and Ma talking about the price of cement and which side of the house the gate should be positioned.
‘What’s happening?’ The hysteria in Ma’s voice jolts me out of sleep.
We’ve turned into Tudu Court and come to a stop behind a taxi that has been parked in the driveway. All four of its doors are open.
Uncle Oscar stops the car and hops out, leaving the door open. I can hear someone crying loudly and as I open my own door I see that there’s a small crowd on the veranda of flat five. Sonia’s mother and another woman are on their knees, bowing over BaDodo, who is lying flat on the ground. Their mouths are open and tears stream down their faces.
Hopping out of the car, I drop to my knees and crawl till I’m lying flat on the veranda besides BaDodo. White froth is caught in the crack of her mouth. It’s trickling slowly across her cheek and settling around the silver stud in her earlobe. Her eyes are wide open, like she’s surprised, but I know she can’t see because she doesn’t blink. Her bra is drenched in sweat. Lying discarded by her side is her yellow shirt, the one she fastens with the nappy pin with a teddy bear head.
‘BaDodo,’ I hear myself whisper. I stretch my arm out across the warm veranda, between the hysterical women. ‘BaDodo,’ I whisper again. ‘It’s me, Pumpkin.’ Her hand feels cold, like a scaled fish.
Uncle Oscar lifts her legs, one either side of him as if he’s about to push a wheelbarrow. More men have come to help. Two of them stand either side of BaDodo and together with Uncle Oscar they hoist her up. Grunting, they move in fast jerky steps to the taxi. As they carry BaDodo the edge of her chitenge falls away. It sweeps the ground, dripping thick blood the colour of mulberry juice.
The crowd re-forms around the taxi. The world moves in slow motion, like a film being played at the wrong speed. The shouting and screaming sound distant, like the volume of the world has been turned down. Except for the damp feel of BaDodo’s cold hand still in my palm, everything feels like a dream. Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn and Bee puts her arms around me. I hold her tight. Sobs shake her bony body. Her tears soak into my shoulder. There’s crying all around me. But I don’t cry. As usual the tears don’t come. I can only cry inside.