Novidade Castigo was the daughter of Veronica Manga and the miner Jonasse Nhamitando. She gained the nickname Castigo because, true to the moniker, she came into the world like a punishment. That much could be surmised shortly after her birth, from the blue that shone in her eyes. A Black girl, the daughter of Black parents: Where had this blue come from?
Let’s begin with the girl: she was astonishingly beautiful, with a face to incur the envy of angels. Not even water was more pristine. Her one drawback, though: she was slow in the head, her thoughts never seemed to stay the night. She’d become that way—amiss—when one day, already a young woman, she suffered a fit of convulsions. That night, Veronica was sitting on the veranda when she felt insomnia’s spider-crawl across her chest.
—Tonight I’m going to count stars, she predicted.
The night was already biting its fingernails towards dawn when, in one corner of the house, the young girl awoke in spasms and convulsions, as though her flesh were trying to break free from her soul. Her mother, predicting the future from the shadows, sensed a muted warning: What had happened? Light as a fright, she ran to young Novidade’s bedside. In the houses of the poor all is well according to the degree of tidiness or disarray. Veronica Manga cut through the dark, dodged crates and cans, leaped over hoes and sacks, until she drew closer to her daughter and saw her arm, hoisted like a flag drooping at full-mast. Veronica didn’t call for Novidade’s father. It wasn’t worth interrupting his rest.
Only the next morning did she relate what had happened. Jonasse was preparing to take off for his job on the eve of his descent into the belly of the mountain. He stopped at the door, reconsidering his intentions. Jonasse Nhamitando, all father-like, went to his daughter’s room and found her lying still, her only wish to rest. Without removing his rough, worn glove, he tenderly stroked her face. Was he saying goodbye to another girl, the one who had been his little daughter? Then the young girl’s father left the way a cloud parts from the rain.
The years passed in less than a blink of an eye. Novidade grew up, nothing new there. Her parents had acknowledged and assented to the idea: their daughter had sealed Veronica’s womb. She wasn’t an only child: she was a none-ly child, a creature of singular stock. Jonasse was a kind man, he refused to abandon Veronica. And the couple’s daughter, in a pact with the void, showered her father with love and tenderness. Not that she put this into words. Rather, she did so by the way she would wait, suspended in time, for the miner’s return home. For the duration of each of the miner’s shifts, the girl remained apprehensive, neither eating nor drinking. Only after the father returned would the girl reassume her normal expression, and, in her voice like a stream, they discovered tunes that no one, save the girl, knew. And then there were the gifts she would pick for him: bizarre little flowers of no other colour than the blue found in her eyes. No one ever learned where she plucked such petals.
Many nights later, the family relived their earlier suffering. Jonasse was nowhere to be found. The miner was out digging the earth full of holes on the night shift. Back at the house, his wife’s eyes rested over the rim of the light coming from the xipefo, their old oil lamp. She stitched together swaddlings of nothing, tiny clothes for a son who, as they well knew, would never come. Little Novidade dozed at the woman’s side. The girl began to curl up, convulsing, her epilepsy an epic lapse. Her mother quickly tended to her. In her panic, she shattered the light to pieces, overturning the xipefo and its glowing light. As she calmed the girl, who was all lips and heavy breathing, Veronica Manga sought the matches above the chest. Only then did a muddy sound from the mountain outside call her attention. What was that? The mine exploding? Good heavens! She broke out in goosebumps. And Jonasse, her husband?
The woman zigzagged through the house in a run-or-die, moved from anxiety to alarm, a fly in a bull’s tail. And then came even bigger explosions. Seen from the window, the mountain was transformed into a fire-breathing pangolin. Would boulders and bedrock tumble down upon the houses? No, the mountain, that one at least, had a tough constitution. And what about Jonasse? The woman knew she would have to wait till morning for news of her husband. But the young girl didn’t wait for the morning light. In silence, she gathered up her tiny things in a basket and a sack. Then she arranged her mother’s belongings in an old suitcase. Finally a few meagre words, in a gentle command, came from her mouth.
—Let’s go, Mother!
Without stopping to think, the girl’s mother abandoned her post, the spot where she’d nested for so many years. She let the young girl lead her by the hand, trusting in who knows what intuition. Along the way, the two of them crossed some others, like them, on the run. And Veronica asked them:
—This thing we’re hearing: What is it?
It wasn’t coming from the mine. Those were military explosions, the war was approaching. And our husbands, where can they go to save themselves?
—There’s no time. Climb onto the truck, the others responded.
And up they went. Veronica situated her things better than herself, and made Novidade sit on top of the basket. The motor turned over, spinning more slowly than her eyes in their anxious search to find Jonasse emerging from the clouds of smoke and chaos. The truck pulled away, leaving behind only debris and explosions. Mother stood looking at her daughter, the composure in her expression, her dirty dress. What was she doing? Humming. In the midst of that whirlwind, the girl panned for bits of joy amid her quiet songs. Was she defanging that moment pregnant with disaster?
Between bombs and gunshots, the truck pulled forwards until it reached the front of the mine where Jonasse worked. And then the girl, disregarding the moment’s developments, leaped to the ill-advised ground. She took a few steps forwards, ironing out the wrinkles in her little dress, turned backwards to offer her mother a sign of affection. Horrified, the vehicle came to a halt. Little Novidade resumed her path, crossing the road exposed to certain danger. The truck honked its horn in fury: the only thing that took its time there was death. The girl didn’t appear to even hear. She stood in the road as if the way were entirely hers. In the dictionary of her footsteps, there was no sign of arrogance, nor any grand declarations. The fact that she was standing in the road, upsetting the chaos, wasn’t an act of defiance but of distraction, plain and simple. She put the blue of her eyes to use. The driver, all nerves, called for her one last time. And the rest of the passengers screamed for her mother to order her to return. But Veronica didn’t utter a word.
Atop a pile of sand pulled from the mine, Little Novidade leaned down to pluck wildflowers, the kind one spots on roadsides. She chose them at a cemetery pace. She stopped before some tiny blue petals identical to the colour of her eyes. The truck, tired of waiting, beset by the distressed clamour of its passengers, darted down the road. The mother refused to look away from her daughter, as though she wished to see her fate in its final form. What happened next, no one knows. Only she could see it. There, amid the dust: what happened was the flowers, the ones with a blue glimmer, began to swell and soar towards the sky. Then, all together, they plucked the girl. The flowers grabbed hold of Little Novidade with their petals and pulled her down into the earth. The girl seemed to expect this, as, smiling, she was swept away into the same womb where she’d seen her father extinguished, out of sight and out of time.