We’re driving to the cemetery, Ma, Grandma Ponga and I. We talk to lift the melancholy hanging in the air. The conversation is bland and constant: the weather; what Mufuka or Junior said or did the other day. We talk to contain our emotions. It’s a trip we make every three months to visit my three uncles’ resting places.
All three died within twelve months of one another. If it wasn’t for the fact that most of Grandma Ponga’s friends were also losing children I think it would have killed her. Uncles Nelson and Membe lived on chamba and alcohol, duped people to make a living and fought for leisure. So in a way Grandma Ponga expected the news of their death to ring on her phone or knock at her door any day. Uncle Musonda was different. He was a teetotaller, an engineer, a regular churchgoer. His exit should have been a sigh in his sleep at a very old age. It didn’t happen that way. Uncle Musonda died just like his brothers; my three uncles all died young, skeletal and incontinent.
I pull over at a wooden shed by the roadside. The vendor recognises my car, she beams and waves. Ma waits in the car while Grandma Ponga and I get out.
‘Flowers? How many bunches?’ the vendor asks, bunching stalks together and tossing them in a bucket of water with Dulux written on the side.
Loaves of bread wrapped in cellophane line the kiosk shelf and give off a warm, fleshly baked scent. ‘Wreaths have become part of our life. They fit in amongst bread and salt,’ Grandma Ponga says, pointing at the loaves.
The vendor laughs and reveals black gums. ‘These days, mayo, death is life. In my business here I make more money from the flowers I sell for the dead than from selling food to the living.’ She carries the flowers back to the car for us.
By the time I park and we get out of the car our conversation has died completely. It’s hot and the dust blows freely over the dry graves; mounds of red sand topped with dusty plastic flowers. Some have tombstones with inscriptions – a lifetime captured in a few words – and fresh flowers planted around them, others have ornaments: a plate, football boots, a feeding bottle.
‘I would like to grow flowers like those on the graves,’ Grandma Ponga says, looking at one grave surrounded by a brick-lined flower bed.
‘Who will maintain it?’ Ma asks. She’s walking behind us slowly, as if every step she takes hurts.
‘I will. I can employ one of the boys around here to water the plants and pull out the weeds.’ Grandma Ponga takes a step back to help Ma along.
‘I’m okay.’ Ma looks irritated.
‘I could come every two weeks or so to check that they are doing their work,’ I say quickly, to cancel out my mother’s next statement. Which would have been something to the effect that Grandma Ponga should be cutting down on her tasks rather than adding to them.
We get to Uncle Nelson’s grave first. His gold-plated epitaph has long been picked out of the stone. It’s probably hanging around someone’s neck or studded in someone’s earlobes.
‘If I could catch the people who vandalise these tombstones, I would deal with them,’ Grandma Ponga says, then she kneels and mutters a prayer into her hands.
I help Ma to her knees and she mutters a prayer of her own. Two decades hasn’t narrowed the bridge between them. I am the bridge, holding them together and apart at the same time.
My heart has been heavy since the fight in the mall car park. It’s been three weeks but I can’t seem to get the girl out of my mind. I see her smiling face and wavy orange hair. I see her full breasts and her flat stomach. The girl has awakened my memories of Gloria. Last night I dreamt of her. She was standing in the distance in her yellow dashiki and was telling me something I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t open my mouth to tell her that I couldn’t hear her. And when my mouth finally opened, I woke up.
As we leave Uncle Musonda’s grave a young man whistles and comes running towards us, dust lifting off his heels in small puffs. When he stops before us Grandma Ponga makes a show of shutting her eyes and waving the dust away from her face.
‘I see you put flesh flowers on the graves, Madam. I warn you not to do that. When you leave the thieves will take the flowers and sell them to other mourners.’
‘Young men of these days, you don’t fear death!’ Age has not weakened Grandma Ponga’s voice. She looks straight at the young man and hesitation registers on his face.
‘Madam, not me. I work here. Thieves.’
‘What is your work in this cemetery? Why are so many young men like yourself spending your days eating and joking amongst the dead?’
‘So, what are we supposed to do if we want to lay flowers?’ I ask, cutting in.
Relief lights up the young man’s face, but before he can reply Grandma Ponga says, ‘You say you are here for work. Is there no work in the community where you live? I know that in the compound behind the cemetery,’ she points at the tin roofs in the distance, ‘there’s a water problem. Why don’t you look for work collecting water for the elderly? Wouldn’t that be more productive than coming here to disturb the dead?’
The young man bows his head. ‘Grandma, I am not a thief.’
‘Even when a thief is caught in the mango tree, with mangoes in his pockets, he doesn’t admit to being a thief. If by the end of the day today you don’t find the work you claim you come here for aren’t you the one who will take our flowers and sell them?’
Ma sighs. ‘He’s only warning us,’
‘If I leave flowers on my sons’ graves and you take them, I’ll cut your balls off.’ Grandma Ponga makes a chopping motion in the young man’s direction. He jumps back and lets out a startled laugh. ‘Cut the flowers off the stalks, then they can’t be resold,’ he says with a shy smile and hurries away, shaking his head.
We retrace our steps. At each grave we nip the flowers off the stalks. Grandma Ponga curses the whole time. She mutters threats to those that take from her sons’ graves.
As we drive away from the cemetery we come across a funeral possession heading for the cemetery. ‘In the past when a funeral procession went by, cars stopped. People had respect for the dead,’ Grandma Ponga says.
‘If you stop for funeral processions these days you won’t get to your destination,’ Ma says. ‘Times have changed. Death is part of life; it’s coming to us all.’
Her words hang heavy in the air.
We come across three more processions and the conversation falters awkwardly as we try hard not to acknowledge the dearly departed and their bereaved.
Eventually Ma says she needs to get some skin cream from the chemist to soothe a rash on her neck that’s been caused by the heat at the cemetery. She’s wearing a thick black jogging suit, which is probably the cause of her heat rash, but I don’t say anything. Instead I stop at the nearest chemist.
The air conditioning in the chemist is soothing, and I haven’t heard the song playing on the radio for years. It reminds me of when I shared a flat with Kunle in the UK. My mind wanders and the heaviness of the cemetery lifts away.
A voice beside me says, ‘Madam, it’s you. Hello!’
I swing around and almost drop the tube the pharmacist has just handed me.
‘You’re surprised?’ she says before I can close my mouth.
‘I’m very well.’ I pop the cream and change into my bag and zip it up slowly so I can compose myself. My shock is replaced by irritation. I can feel it creeping up my spine.
‘Remember me, Salomé.’ She’s changed her hair. Jelled it up and attached a mauve ponytail. She has on a low-cut white T-shirt and tight-fitting jeans.
‘I remember you. What are you doing here?’
‘Shopping.’ She smiles. I see her eyes fall to my bag, which is still on the counter. I notice she has a bluish bruise the size of a coin on her wrist. She follows my eyes to it, then looks up and smiles. ‘Madam, I’ve forgiven you.’
‘For what?’ My words come out before I can stop myself. Anger burns in my cheeks. ‘I’m taking my mother to see the doctor, so I have to go.’
I start for the door, swanking a bit more than necessary – I know she’s watching me. The orange graveyard dust that lines the hems of my black trousers suddenly matters. Then it occurs to me to turn around. ‘By the way,’ I take a few steps back towards her, opening my bag. My wallet is full of notes and I make a show of picking out a crisp green one. ‘Take a bus or buy some lunch.’
She stares at my outstretched arm, suspended mid-air and she smiles. ‘I’ve eaten.’ Her smile turns smug. ‘Say hello to Mufuka and Tembo.’ She walks around me towards the door. She hasn’t bought anything.
‘Good day, Grandma.’ She curtsies and holds open the door for Grandma Ponga, then she’s gone.
‘Did you want something?’ My irritation at the girl carries through my tone.
‘It just crossed my mind that I might as well get my BP medicine now. I have my prescription with me,’ Grandma Ponga explains, though she turns down my offer to pay for her.
Out in the car park I imagine that the girl is watching us.
Before we get to the car Grandma Ponga asks, ‘Who was that young girl you were offering money?’
‘Some little hairdresser from around.’
‘She knows Tembo? Where did you meet her?’
‘Around. She’s just a nobody.’ I try hard to sound unfazed. ‘She did my hair the other day.’
‘Pumpkin, I can spot her kind from miles away. Never underestimate the potential of girl who works this!’ Grandma Ponga taps her groin. ‘It has power!’