The house disappears on a Sunday morning in April. Mama, the neighborhood gossip, is the first to notice. She wakes up with the sunrise to pin laundry up on the clothesline. Our patch of backyard is a prime vantage point for her to peer into our neighbors’ houses, taking note of whose husband is crawling back from a bar or a lover’s bed. While craning her neck over the wet clothes, she notices that something is odd, different, misplaced, yet she can’t quite put her finger on it. She moves closer to the fence to get a better look, then she finally realizes that our neighbor’s house is . . . gone.
The asbestos roof, the incessant coughing that announced that the family of five was awake, the reeking outdoor Blair toilet, the off-white walls, the dirty windows (which Mama always frowns upon because even though we’re poor, we should always keep our houses clean) have all vanished. Only the fence, which once surrounded the two-room house, and the rusty address plaque reading 1980 Hopley remain as markers that a house once stood there.
“Loveness!” Mama screams for me.
I ignore her at first, thinking she is excited again about seeing something she shouldn’t have. I concentrate on my math textbook and hit the back of my old calculator so it can blink back to life. I hope this calculator can hang on until the A-Level exams at the end of the year. If I pass my A-Levels, maybe I can get a scholarship for university and get the hell out of this shit town.
Mama runs inside like she is determined to win a gold medal for the country. She shakes Baba awake from his drunken stupor on a mat in their bedroom. She snatches up my little brother, Lovemore, who is wrapped in a bundle next to Baba, and babulas him on her back. Lovemore looks so cozy being carried on Mama’s back, I think grudgingly as she charges across the kitchen, which serves as my bedroom at night.
“Loveness, wake up,” Mama says, almost tripping over our paraffin stove near the door. “The Moyos’ house has disappeared!”
We sprint out of our one-bedroom house, Mama screaming louder than the ill-fed babies of Hopley for everyone to wake up and come see. A crowd gathers outside the Moyos’ house which is no longer there. Children point, people stare, mouths agape as if stretching their mouths any further will explain the gap, and Mai Petunia who lives down the street clutches her rosary to ward off evil and exclaims, “Mashura.” Senzeni, a boy from my high school, jumps the fence to investigate.
“Hezvo how does a house just disappear nje?” Senzeni says as he walks around the empty spot where a house should be. “Ko where did the Moyos go?”
Senzeni uses this large gathering of people as an opportunity for his small business—dealing bronco and mbanje to numb the onlookers against the reality of living in Hopley. He catches my eye in the crowd and smiles that lopsided grin that I hate to admit is irresistible. He adjusts his bucket hat as if he is self-conscious, puts a matchstick in his mouth, and approaches me.
“Boffin,” he says.
I roll my eyes at his nickname for me. Senzeni started calling me that the first time I came first in all the subjects in our stream.
“I still don’t understand why you walk around with a matchstick in your mouth,” I say to him. “You look ridiculous.”
“This world is cold, boffin,” he says. “Best to walk around with matches.”
Mama grabs my arm, drags me away from him, and hisses in my ear, “I told you to stay away from that tsotsi, Loveness!”
Hastily built one- and two-bedroom houses dot the landscape, popping up daily with no real order or symmetry like mushrooms in the rainy season. Hopley germinated from the rubble in the wake of the government bulldozers razing our old homes because they were eyesores. They called it Operation Move the Rubbish, so I guess to those in the big city we’re no different from the landfill, something that everyone knows is accumulating at the edge of the city but no one dares to look at or follow the trail of the smell. I stare at the eerie gap in front of me, trying to conjure the images of Mr. Moyo, his chirpy wife Mai Bornfree who played Mai Charamba gospel songs to the highest decibel as if bursting your neighbors’ eardrums was what got people to heaven, and their madofo children who played maflau throwing and dodging balls all day. I’ve always hated my neighbors for making it difficult for me to study. I’ve always wished they would disappear. Has my wish really come to pass?
Everyone in Hopley nicknamed their house Independence House because Mr. Moyo never failed to mention that his address matched the year our country gained independence from the British. “All my children are born-frees,” he would say proudly. I’d always bite back the retort that being born free in Hopley didn’t count for much.
Mama uses the last of her airtime to call the police, but the police officer laughs when he hears which neighborhood she is calling from. The police officer says he will only drive all the way to Hopley if Mama will buy fuel for the police van to come that far.
Eventually people go about their day, spreading their own versions of what happened to the house. I hear a woman by the musika say that Mai Bornfree sings in the church choir, leading praise and worship every Sunday. Maybe her angelic voice stirred God’s heart so much that the house sprouted wings and flew the family to heaven. If you look directly at the sun, you can almost see the imprint the alabaster wings made as they pierced the sky.
There is a saying that doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results is the definition of insanity. I turn the tap over the kitchen sink thinking that perhaps today will be the day I see a running faucet. Nothing comes out. Maybe I am insane for hoping. I wonder if the pipes feel useless for not fulfilling the only purpose for which they were created. Before I go to school I fetch three buckets, place them on the wheelbarrow, and make the daily trek to the well. Senzeni abandons his corner and runs to catch up with me, offering to push the wheelbarrow.
“A pretty girl should never do manual labor when us gentlemen are around,” Senzeni says.
“Are you coming to school today?” I ask, letting him take over.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he says, shrugging.
“It’s the only way to get out of here, you know,” I say.
“Tsotsis belong in Hopley,” he says. “You get out. Don’t forget me when you’re a mbinga.”
“You’re not a tsotsi,” I say. “You were just born in Hopley.”
We walk in silence until we reach the outskirts of the neighborhood. We pause before the entrance of Hopley Cemetery. A long line for the well already cuts through the rows of tombstones like a giant tapeworm inching towards its host. Instead of the usual queue chatter about how water only runs once a week now and how ZESA shouldn’t dzima magetsi during the Manchester United–Arsenal game or else they will beat up the power station’s general manager, people talk about the house.
“This is the work of satani diaborosi,” Mai Petunia says, putting down the bucket she is carrying on her head. “We must pray for the Moyos’ safe return.”
The line is slow to move, and I grow irritated. I will be late for school. I don’t want to miss anything, with exams being this year.
“Do you ever get scared?” Senzeni asks suddenly.
“Of?”
“You know,” he says, twirling the matchstick in his mouth, “drinking from graveyard wells.”
I try not to think too much about the two hand-dug wells in the middle of the cemetery. They were dug by Hopleyans who took matters into their own hands out of frustration with the water shortages. The wells are most likely contaminated with embalming fluids and decomposition.
“I’m more afraid of not having water,” I say.
“Maybe that’s why the house disappeared,” he says, lowering his voice. “The dead are getting their revenge because we’re drinking them.” Senzeni pushes the wheelbarrow forward as the line moves. “Resting places should never be disturbed,” he adds grimly.
“So you think the dead opened up the ground and swallowed the house?” I say, punctuating the question with a giggle so that Senzeni can’t see the fear underneath my mask of logic. Senzeni gives me a long, hard stare but does not respond.
The well diggers charge twenty bond notes for three refills.
Mai Petunia organizes a prayer session at her house that night. Mama and I fry some vetkoeks for the event and we all gather inside Mai Petunia’s tiny house, some guests spilling over to the veranda which Mai Petunia polishes religiously every morning. Mai Petunia offers us black tea with a splash of lemon. Mama bites into the oily fried dough, washing it down with the tea, and makes a face. “Mai Petunia can’t afford milk and sugar,” she whispers to me and the woman seated next to us. Our family can’t afford milk either, because Mama is saving up every penny for my exam registration fees. I don’t say anything, lest I embarrass Mama in front of our neighbors.
In between prayers, Mama offers tidbits of gossip about the Moyos.
“That family has always been odd. One can never trust people who never clean their windows. And that husband, I never trusted him one bit, he had those shifty eyes and never greeted me.”
“Perhaps Mr. Moyo vakachekeresa,” Mai Petunia says. “People sacrifice their own children these days to make money fast. Eventually the demons come to collect at night.”
“That would explain how he got promoted all of a sudden,” Mama says, nodding.
Last week Mr. Moyo had been promoted to supervisor at the security company that provides guards for the rich neighborhoods like Borrowdale Brooke. I want to say something, want to tell them that maybe he worked hard for that promotion, but I just sip on the tea in silence, the lemon stinging my tongue.
I’m making biology study notes by candlelight when Mama wakes up two hours earlier than usual to check if the prayers worked. The house and the Moyo family are still gone. When day breaks, she makes her way to Mai Petunia’s house ready to imply that perhaps Mai Petunia isn’t the great prayer warrior she thinks she is. She doesn’t give me the reason why she wants me to come along with her on one of her shit-stirring missions. I guess when you have nothing else to give your children, you give them spite.
“That woman thinks she is Mary mother of Jesus herself,” Mama says. “If her prayers are so powerful, why hasn’t the house returned?”
Mama is salivating so much at the thought of the look she’ll see on Mai Petunia’s face when she delivers the blow—“Hamusi kunamata askana. Pfugamai”—loud enough for everyone to hear, that she doesn’t notice the anomaly at first. It’s only when Mama walks up to knock on Mai Petunia’s door that she realizes that there is no door to knock on, for house number 1982 is gone too.
Every day a house disappears in Hopley.
1979. Pretty, the prostitute, and her four children born of men who felt owed and didn’t pay. She loved those children like a gardener tending flowers.
1984. Moreblessing, the hwindi who couldn’t read or write but could easily count the fare from passengers. He was all gap-toothed smile and smelly breath with a twinkle in his eye that refused to die.
1977. Gogo Mlambo who sold maputi, chips, jolly juice, maveggie, and freeze-its under an umbrella on the sunniest days. She always gave me mbasera with a smile. I would clutch the extra tomato or onion like a precious gift.
1988. Sekuru John whose children all left for South Africa and never came back. He sat by his door every day looking down the road, waiting for them to emerge from the dust.
1975. Martha, Mary, and Matilda. Orphans all below twelve who Mama sometimes checked in on. Smart little things who made a solar lightbulb all by themselves so they always had light.
1992. Mai Memory, a lonely widow kicked out of her home in the nice suburbs by her husband’s family before the first fistful of dirt hit the casket. She braided my hair like it was my wedding day.
At school I try to ignore the empty desks where some of our disappeared classmates once sat. Teachers go on strike again, so my classmates and I sit in math class listening to Holy Ten and Winky D, hoping that our teachers will pity us and return to work for peanuts. Once in a while everyone’s gaze falls uneasily on the empty desks. Senzeni lights a joint—he is only here because the teachers aren’t—and tries to lighten the mood by saying we should start referring to ourselves as the remainders. All the girls in the class are crowded around him, and I can’t shake the pang of jealousy I feel that I’m not by his side. Everyone throws around their theories about the vanishings. Many think that it is magic, that someone is spiriting the houses away.
“Loveness, you’re the boffin,” Senzeni says. “What do you think is happening?”
I take out a piece of paper from my notebook and write down all the house numbers of the disappeared houses, up through Mai Memory’s. Then I take a deep breath and add:
1973. The Dubes.
1996. The Ncubes.
1967. The Makuras.
“I think there is a pattern. I’ve been trying to figure it out,” I say. I hold up my math textbook and point to the section on sequences.
“It clicked when I wrote down the address numbers. Whether it’s magic or math, both have rules, right? It can’t be random,” I say. “Every sequence has a rule, and the rule helps you to come up with a formula.”
“Loveness is still trying to be a teacher’s pet even without any teachers here,” a girl next to Senzeni says, rolling her eyes. Everyone laughs.
“Shut up, Siphiwe, you can’t even do long division at your age,” Senzeni says.
The girl crosses her arms and pouts. “The teachers keep striking. How am I supposed to learn anything?” she says.
“You think you can predict which house is next?” Senzeni asks me.
“I think the houses are vanishing in alternating additions and subtractions of prime numbers,” I say. “If I’m right, 1973 is next.”
Several people gasp. Our teacher lives at that address.
“Whether it’s sequences or tikoloshes, I think it’s fucked up that nobody cares that our hood is disappearing,” Senzeni says.
“Maybe if we lived in Borrowdale Brooke someone would care, but this is Hopley,” I say under my breath. No one hears.
When house number 1973 disappears, Mama pours salt outside our front door. She starts frequenting the services of Prophet Madzibaba, who goes on and on about end times and the rapture. Prophet Madzibaba is the go-to prophet to find out who has placed a curse on you. His followers say they witnessed him pull a fish out of a woman’s womb. The fish then spoke the names of the relatives who bewitched her. One afternoon, Prophet Madzibaba visits our house in his immaculate white robes which never seem to stain on our street’s dusty roads. He gives Mama a two-litre Mazoe Orange Crush bottle filled with water and with two curious-looking rocks floating near the bottom.
“Holy water to protect your family,” Prophet Madzibaba says. “Make sure that you pour a cap into everyone’s bathwater every day. When it’s finished, come for more.”
Mama pays the prophet with the money that was meant for my exam registration fees.
As she bids the prophet goodbye, I heat water for my bath on the paraffin stove until bubbles boil on the surface. I pour the water into a bucket and inhale the steam, hoping that the burn will vaporize me, that when I open my eyes I will be reborn to another family in another place better than here. When Mama tries to pour the holy water into my bucket, I slam the Mazoe bottle out of her hands, knocking her backwards. The holy water pours onto the floor. Mama desperately tries to scoop the water up, but it just slips through her hands. With a sneer, I grab a chikorobo from under the kitchen sink and wipe the water away as fast as I can, pushing her back on the floor when she tries to stop me. On her knees she begs me to stop, but I do not stop until the floor is completely dry again. She wails and wails, screams at me for dooming our family. I scream at her for ruining my only ticket out of this place.
We don’t speak again for a couple of days as houses 1996 and 1967 disappear.
Baba doesn’t seem to care about the vanishings. He hasn’t cared about much since losing his job at ZISCO Steel. After the defunct blast furnaces, the countless worker injuries, and the bankruptcy, ZISCO Steel let go of their workforce with no pension. All Baba does these days is drink and sleep. Sometimes he sits out in the sun in front of our house.
“What do you think is happening to the houses?” I ask him.
He turns his head in my direction, eyes unfocused.
“When your beard appears,” he sings, slurring his r’s, “childhood disappears.”
I suck air between my teeth, angry at myself that I would think Baba would say something coherent. Senzeni and his crew walk by my house. He flashes me a smile and yells, “Boffin!”
I leave Baba behind to sing his stupid song.
“House 1967 disappeared today, so you know who’s next according to your sequence?” Senzeni says. He does a little bow.
My heart sinks. I’ve been trying not to think about what this miserable place will be like without Senzeni’s antics to make me smile.
“Don’t look so sad, boffin,” Senzeni says. “People might start to think you care about a tsotsi.”
I cross my arms and Senzeni playfully pokes me. “Since I will be a goner come tomorrow,” he says, “I’m throwing a big party today. You should come.”
“A party? Is that . . . appropriate?” I ask.
“If I’m going to go out, might as well do it with a bang.” He twirls the matchstick dangling at the corner of his mouth. “We’re going to buy some stuff for the party. Come with us.”
Mama’s warnings about Senzeni being a no-good tsotsi fly out the window. Why take advice from a woman who used the money supposed to go for my exam registration for holy water?
“Remember how Mr. Moyo always said to us ‘maBorn free munonetsa’?” I ask as we walk down to the shops to get the alcohol for the party.
Senzeni sucks on his teeth. Mr. Moyo thought we complained too much, that those born before independence had it harder and that we should be grateful that we were born free.
“Delusional old man, that one. No wonder he was first to disappear,” Senzeni says. “What is there to be grateful about? We don’t even have a neighborhood anymore. Look at this place.”
Senzeni gestures to the eleven vacant lots on either side of the long street. Nothing remains there but fences and dust.
Senzeni hosts his outdoor party at the empty space of 1980, and it spills onto the street. He sets up large speakers that keep all of Hopley up. I have a feeling he wants to be remembered, and this is the only way he knows how. Senzeni blasts “Muchadzoka” by Holy Ten as if wishing the hook of the song, “Muchadzoka zvenyu,” were a spell that could bring him back after tomorrow.
My classmates drink hard liquor and gulp down bronco from brown cough syrup bottles until the pain goes away. Senzeni smokes mbanje and offers me the joint. I’ve always stayed away from alcohol, bronco, and mbanje. My studies have always been the only fuel that I need to keep going. But Mama has taken that away from me. I accept the joint from Senzeni and let the smoke fill my lungs. I cough from the burn, and Senzeni chuckles.
“Slow down, boffin,” he says. “I don’t want your mother to kill me.”
“To hell with her,” I say.
“I heard what she did with your exam money,” Senzeni says. Nothing in Hopley is a secret. “I’m sorry, boffin.”
With enough drink and smoke inside me, I’m lighter, the world is a tapestry of bright colors and music. I count my fingers one by one and laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world. I name each of my fingers after a disappeared household.
“Do you know what I thought the other day, boffin?” Senzeni says, his eyes red. “Since the disappearances are following a pattern, I thought, why doesn’t someone stake out the houses at night to see how the houses are disappearing? Me and the boys staked out 1973, 1996, and 1967. Do you know what happened?”
“Poof!” I say, making a gesture with my fingers and laughing.
“Each time it got to midnight during the stakeout,” Senzeni says, “we all passed out asleep and woke up with the house gone.” He twirls the matchstick in his mouth to distract from the tears gathering in his eyes. “I lost a friend yesterday. He tried to run away. He thought if he went somewhere else, he would survive. But he disappeared too, even though he wasn’t inside the house.”
I squeeze his shoulder. I don’t know what to say, so I ask, “Uchadzoka here?”
Senzeni doesn’t answer the question. Instead he reaches into his pocket, takes out an envelope, and hands it to me. I open the envelope, and inside is a stack of crisp bills.
“What is this?”
“Your exam registration fees,” Senzeni says. “Before you refuse it, just think of it as a businessman investing in a boffin. Strive Masiyiwa does it all the time.” He shrugs and blows smoke rings.
I can’t get my racing thoughts to form anything coherent. I want to cry and laugh all at once. I want to toss the money at Senzeni and tell him he is not going anywhere, he can give me the money tomorrow because he isn’t going anywhere.
“If anyone can figure out what’s happening and stop it, it’s you, boffin,” Senzeni says.
“What about your own fees?” I ask.
Senzeni chuckles. “You know I’m not about the books. It would be a waste on me. If you can’t think of it as an investment, then think of it as hope. This means I believe you will survive this and write your exams at the end of the year.”
The music changes to “Kusina Ani.” Couples draw closer, beautiful girls twirl and whine on their boyfriends, their dark skin glistening in the moonlight.
“May I have this dance, boffin?” Senzeni says, holding out his hand. I take it and he leads me to the dusty yard we are using as a dance floor. Senzeni puts his arms around my waist and I wrap my hands around his neck. We dance in time with the music. He pulls me closer and softly sings the lyrics in my ears, “Handei tinofara kusina ani. Kusina ani. Kusina ani. Tinozodzoka mangwana.”
I pull back and look into his eyes. The regret in his eyes clears the fog of the high, and my anger rises to the surface. Why would he choose tonight of all nights to tell me how he feels about me? Why did he wait until the night before I never see him again?
“Usazondikanganuwewo, boffin” he whispers.
I grieve for him as he dances in front of me. The last I see of Senzeni is him twirling his matchstick searching for warmth in this cold world.
When house number 1998 disappears, an awful silence falls upon the neighborhood. I can’t stand being in the house anymore, so I go to my high school’s bursar office to pay for my exam registration, just to have something to do.
“You are one of the few people that have registered for exams,” the bursar says. “Guess everyone else thinks they will have disappeared by the time exams come.”
My head is still heavy from all the drinking and mbanje at Senzeni’s party. My heart is heavy too. I’d hoped to see Senzeni’s lopsided grin in the morning, and his infuriating matchstick. I longed to hear him call me boffin one more time.
When I walk past his house, I see people who don’t live in Hopley gathered around where his house used to be. They are government officials, accompanied by surveyors in white helmets and investors from China. They map out the area and take photographs. It’s as if they can’t even see us.
Mama runs out of our house and screams at them, “Our houses are disappearing! Our houses are disappearing! Don’t you see, don’t you see.”
She is beaten by riot police with batons and goes back home broken.
Baba’s words come hurtling at me. When your beard appears, childhood disappears.
Nothing has appeared in Hopley until today.
On the day of house number 1961’s disappearance, Mama holds up a Bible and turns to Thessalonians.
“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first,” Mama reads out the verse. “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be carried up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
Mama’s evangelism increases daily. I try not to think about our address: 2002.
I grab one of Baba’s Chibuku bottles and go out to lie in the dirt as the sun goes down. Senzeni had the right idea about drinking and partying before the end.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Mama prays from inside the house, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
I put my headphones on to block her out. I think about where it all started: 1980. Perhaps everything is tied to 1980. Perhaps I was wrong about the sequence. Perhaps there is an end to the vanishings. Perhaps there is an equation I haven’t considered before, a rule I cannot deduce. I play an old video clip in black-and-white of the first president giving a speech at independence. The Union Jack is taken down and our flag is hoisted up, waving freely in the breeze for the first time. I can see so much hope for the future on the faces of the people in the video. I wonder if Mr. Moyo was in that crowd on that day in 1980. I try to imagine how Mr. Moyo felt seeing freedom for the first time, tasting the possibility of raising born-frees. Now that idea is like bad breath and rotting teeth.
I don’t know what tomorrow will hold. When our house vanishes at midnight, I wonder where we will wake up. Will it be a better place than Hopley? Perhaps I will open my eyes to the sound of trumpets, to wings carrying me up a beam of light. Perhaps tomorrow I will meet God. Perhaps tomorrow I will inherit the earth.