‘Granddad’s in the newspaper!’ Junior bursts into the kitchen. ‘And Daddy says he’ll be home late.’ He dumps a newspaper and two envelopes on the table and races back outside. It’s been two months since the fight at the mall but the tension between us hasn’t eased. Tembo and I have taken to staying out of one another’s way and communicating through Junior.
Is Sakavungo the man? the Daily Mail’s headline asks. There’s a blow-up of Tata’s smiling face, with his tilted chin resting lightly on his fist – his favourite pose. He flouts his unquestionable entrepreneurial skills and his personal success in his campaign to become president of the country. While acknowledging his lack of a formal education and political experience, Sakavungo, 63, is keen to emphasize that if elected he’ll bring a fresh approach to politics and the economy …
I toss the paper aside and turn my attention to the post. There’s a brown envelope addressed to me. I slit it open. The letterhead catches my attention and my heart jumps. It’s a summons addressed to Pezo Tembo for assaulting a Miss Salomé Kalala.
‘Mercy! Mercy!’ With the letter in my hand I race to my bedroom. My hands shake as I grab my bag and car keys. On the way back down the corridor I meet Mercy running towards me, alarm on her face.
‘Mercy, I’m going to the farm.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘I have to see Tata urgently.’
Mercy scuttles after me to the car. Jumping into it, I start driving away then slam on the brakes, hop out again and dash back into the house.
The beads BanaBee gave me are still sitting in the bottom of my bedside table drawer. Grabbing them I hurry back outside and head for the gate – bypassing Mercy, who is still standing in the middle of the driveway. I snap the string of beads and they scatter to the ground. ‘Look for the red one,’ I tell Mercy as I scramble after a white bead.
On my instruction she drops to her knees and together we scour the driveway.
Junior and his friends surround us. ‘Mum, what’s happened?’ Junior asks.
‘It’s okay. Mummy is looking for something. Go and play,’ I hear myself answer.
‘Here!’ Mercy holds up the red bead, relief and alarm combined on her face.
‘Thanks!’ I grab it from her, drop it into my bag and jump into the car.
Mercy gets up and claps the dust off her skirt. Then she huddles the three boys together, murmuring to them before ushering them away as one would usher children away from a crazed woman.
Tata’s campaign team is based at the farm. The drive always churns up memories of the first time I made the journey with Tata on that dark wet night many years ago. The memories are still so strong that I can smell the inside of Tata’s car and feel the raindrops trickling down my neck.
For years I didn’t visit the farm or see Mama T – Tata was living with Gloria in the city – but the events of 1978 trailed me like smoke: grey, hazy, clingy. Sometimes a gesture, a tune or a smell would rouse the fear that lived as a tight knot in my stomach with such intensity that I would taste the memory, bitter and prickly as an aloe leaf. Other times the memories were as sweet as the peaches from the tree outside the kitchen window that year. 1978 became ‘that year’. The year I lived at the farm. The year the Rhodesians bombed the camp. The year Ma stopped drinking and got married. The year Tata dumped Mama T and moved in with Gloria. 1978 was also the year I met and lost Sissy.
But then I moved to the UK and slowly, with distance and time, the memories began to dim somewhat. By the time I came back from Leicester in 1991 Mama T’s ugly words as I recalled them lost their bite, and I couldn’t get myself to conjure up the colours of the flowers on the hedge outside the front gate, no matter how hard I tried.
By then Gloria had left Tata and he had moved back to the farm with Mama T. Gloria’s reasons for leaving Tata and moving back to Barbados are stacked in a shoebox in my wardrobe. She sent them to me for over a period of about a year. Green ink on unlined white paper; love, frustration, anger, hatred and then bitterness, all expressed in her big, looping handwriting. Gloria emptied out her heart to me. She explained that Tata and she were socialised so differently that they couldn’t be together. And that for either of them to compromise for the sake of the relationship would require a fundamental change in their being. Gloria wrote of her love for Tata: I will always love him. But I’ve learnt from our relationship that despite what the fairy tales say, love alone can’t sustain a relationship long term.
I still wonder sometimes why Gloria told me all of it, why she didn’t spare Tata or me? What good did it do for me to know all the details? I thought that if anyone would understand that I should be left out of it, it was Gloria.
In one of her last letters to me there was a paragraph that struck me like a flat palm across my face: Your Tata is incapable of making emotional sacrifices or taking responsibility for the pain he inflicts on others. Money and material things are his penitence. Now I understand what he did to her. I understand your grandmother’s bitterness.
I didn’t finish reading the letter and the three subsequent letters she sent me lie unopened in the shoebox.
‘Better the devil you know,’ Tata said to me over the phone when he called to tell me he was back at the farm with Mama T. Then he said, ‘I don’t understand what happened. I bought her a new car and offered to sign over the house to her, but she had made up her mind to pack up and leave – women.’
By saying this he vindicated Gloria. She was right, I thought as I listened to him: he believed that money and material possessions made problems disappear. He believed that they could fill any emotional void. But I didn’t tell Tata that I already knew Gloria’s side of the story.
When I get to the farm I find cars lined up along the driveway, so I park up by the gate, where Zu almost cracked open his skull all those years ago.
Things at the farm have changed over the years. The hedge has been replaced by rose bushes, and a two-metre-high wall with electric wiring perched on top and a solid gate crudely obstruct the view of Mama T’s garden from the road. My jacaranda tree still stands tall, providing shade either side of the wall, but these days it offers little reprieve from the sun as the wall traps the heat underneath it, sucking the moisture and colour out of its rice-sized leaves, bleaching them olive.
Tata’s on the veranda, talking to a man wearing a grey suit and a toothpaste-ad smile.
‘Meet my daughter.’ Tata holds out his hand as he presents me to his companion.
As I shake the guest’s hand I recognise him as the spokesperson for Trevor Zulu, Tata’s main political rival. ‘She’s an architect,’ Tata adds, pride on his face.
Mr Zulu’s spokesperson shakes my hand and unashamedly suggests I start planning Tata’s victory party. After a few pleasantries we walk him to his Mercedes and watch him drive away.
‘What is he doing here?’
‘Politics, Pumpkin. It’s called politics!’ Tata takes my hand. I’m a head taller than him, but his warm, firm grip makes me feel nine again.
We walk through the living room; two men are sat on the sofa, sharing a newspaper. One of Tata’s secretaries, with bright blue eye shadow, stops typing on her laptop to wave and take a swig from a beer bottle.
Driver is sitting on a chair outside Tata’s study. He stands up to greet me. Even though he has retired from driving Tata he still hangs around him like a shadow.
In the study Tata bounces into his chair and rubs his hands together. ‘Money. It’s amazing what money can do.’
Age has been kind to Tata. A greater girth is all he has to show for his advancing years. His face is taut like the skin of a fresh aubergine. Over the past few years he’s taken to shaving his head and has attained a more youthful look with no grey hair to betray his age.
‘I’m going to win this one. Quit your job now and come and work for your Tata.’
‘It’s not easy to unseat a government.’
‘So, because you don’t think I’ll win, you won’t support me?’
‘Of course I will. But politics is not for me.’
‘Well, some of us feel morally bound to do something for the betterment of the country, for mankind.’
‘You’ll be the first.’
‘Don’t mistrust all politicians’
‘Look at Trevor Zulu. I wouldn’t trust him.’
‘I don’t. And he doesn’t trust me either. But it’s not about liking one another, it’s about cash.’
‘Hasn’t he been leading the smear campaign against you?’
‘It’s politics. And, in any case, so what if I once had two wives and many girlfriends? Which one of them campaigning out there doesn’t?’
‘Good campaign line.’
Tata throws his head back and laughs. ‘You stayed in London too long. Leave us to our politics.’ Tata refers to the whole of the UK as London and I’ve long given up on correcting him.
There’s a knock at the door. A thin man in a T-shirt with Tata’s image emblazoned on the front walks in and puts a bowl of grilled nuts on the table. I try to listen as he starts to explain something to Tata, but the envelope in my handbag is all I can think about – Tata can’t afford to get embroiled in a scandal at this stage in his campaign.
‘By the way, how is your mother?’ Tata asks, turning to me as the thin man makes his way from the room. He pushes the bowl of grilled nuts across his desk.
‘She’s well,’ I say, shaking my head at the nuts.
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Are you sure? If you need anything just let me know.’
We sit in silence for a while; Tata’s chewing. Any mention of Ma’s ill health always turns my insides to stone.
Tata’s mobile rings. While he’s on the phone I pick up a newspaper and stare at the sports page.
‘Tata, I have a small problem,’ I say as soon as he hangs up.
‘What’s wrong?’ He fills his mouth with a fistful of nuts.
I edit the story. He doesn’t need to know that I followed Tembo and Salomé around for half an hour. I make out that I was already at the mall when I saw her jumping out of Tembo’s car. In my version, she strikes me first.
Tata listens until I finish, then he asks for the summons. He opens it out, glances over it and then pops it in his drawer. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I’m sorry. I know that the last thing you need is a scandal. I mean, I don’t want you to pay anyone –’
‘Pumpkin, why have you brought this to me?’ Before I can say anything Tata says, ‘Isn’t it because you want me to deal with it?’
I nod.
‘So? Are you going to tell me how to deal with it? You go home and forget about this. It’s a small matter.’ Tata springs off his chair and hurries out from behind his desk. Opening the door he hesitates and turns to face me. ‘If Tembo is going to walk away from your marriage, you can fight all the girls in the world, he’ll still walk. And if he means to stay, you can fight all the girls in the world, he’ll stay. You understand, eh?’ Then he walks away, nodding to Driver to follow him.
Mama T is in the guest house. It’s what used to be Sissy’s quarters, but it’s been remodelled into a bright, sunny room with a cream-tiled shower and toilet. One of the walls has been knocked down and replaced with a sliding glass door, and the cream walls and curtains make the room look much bigger than it used to be. But even with all the changes I still feel Sissy whenever I enter the room.
I never got a chance to say goodbye to Sissy. The last time I saw her was when she opened the gate to let Driver and me out. I waved at her from the car, thinking I would see her again at the end of the holidays, but it was the holiday that BaDodo died and I stopped talking. Tata allowed me to stay with Ma and by the time I was talking again Tata had moved out to live with Gloria and Ma had married Uncle Oscar. Two years later Zimbabwe gained independence and Sissy and Zu went back home. I lost contact with Sissy, but to this day I still carry her around inside me – I often hear her words ringing in my ears and see her smile the way I remember it.
Mama T and her three companions, sitting around a table set with tea and biscuits, look startled to see me. Their conversation trails off.
‘Pumpkin.’ Mama T jumps to her feet and ushers me around the table, introducing me to each guest. If Mama T wasn’t with them I would think I’d caught them gossiping about Tata, but as she’s here I know they must have been talking about something else. Mama T never gossips to anyone, least of all to her church friends, about Tata. We exchange greetings, they ask after the children and Tembo, and I make an excuse to leave.
‘You’re already going?’ Mama T says, guilt written all over her face. ‘Let me get the workers to pick some pumpkin leaves and a few maize cobs for you.’ She follows me out.
We make small talk as two young boys scurry up and down the vegetable beds, hurriedly snapping pumpkin leaves off the creeping stems and breaking cobs off maize stalks. Mama T tells me her maize crop is stunted this season, so the corn is scanty and the cobs are half-size. She holds up one hand and holds the other one halfway up it, to demonstrate the size of the cobs. However, she says, the pumpkin leaves are very tender and their yellow flowers so sweet I don’t need to add onions and tomatoes for flavour when I stew the leaves. She confesses that she doesn’t go anywhere near the living room these days because it breaks her heart to see all the strange men marking the cream carpet with their shoes, and steaming up the windows with their sweaty bodies. She doesn’t understand how they can work with so much alcohol in their bodies. Just yesterday she counted three empty bottles of whiskey and two crates of Mosi bottles. She volunteers all this information in a single breath, as if she has to keep talking because if she doesn’t she’ll end up saying what she really wants to say.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Eh?’ She hesitates. ‘Yes!’ She bobs her head. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘Has Tata been okay healthwise?’
‘You know Tata, always fit. It’s just … No, nothing.’ Mama T shakes her head and loads the basket into my boot. ‘Everything’s fine.’
As I pull away I watch her in my rear-view mirror. Tata and Mama T slipped back into their lives on the farm as if he had never left. For years after I left the farm I looked forward to the day I would stand before Mama T, face her as an adult and show her I had made something of myself. That Pumpkin the sinner was a woman now. Tall and educated; two things she would never be. But the day didn’t happen quite as I had hoped. It went as planned only in so far as I wore my pinstriped trouser suit that hid my wide hips. I planned to visit the farm the day after I got back from Leicester, as I wanted Mama T to see me before the sun burnt my face black. And I did. But when I got to the farm and Mama T opened the door the first thing I saw were her red teary eyes and puffy face. She hushed me, pressing her finger to her lips. ‘Tata is on a long distance call to St Lucia,’ she whispered, pointing in the direction of Tata’s study. ‘Gloria is dead, from a stroke.’
Mama T’s words struck me like an invisible fist. I let go of the duty free plastic bag I was holding and the bottle of Chivas Regal I had bought for Tata shattered on the floor. My knees gave way and I buckled over, clutching my stomach, trying to ease the pain of the blow.
Mama T knelt before me and we held onto one another. Her body shook; spasms that caused her teeth to chatter so violently that I thought they would never stop. My resolve for payback ebbed away, and from somewhere deep inside me I felt a strong empathy for Mama T grow. I held her close as a howl of anguish came from Tata’s study. Because when Gloria died, Tata cried. He cried like a baby.