This Thing Called the Future

My father calls some few days later. Even though Baba lives in Durban, just an hour away, we only see him some few times a year. It’s too expensive to travel back and forth all the time. So instead, we try to talk on the phone often.

“Sawubona, Baba!” Zi screams into the phone. She garbles a story about why mosquitoes scream in people’s ears. I think it’s from a book her teacher read to the class. She’s quiet while Baba talks on the other end.

“Khosi!” he says when she hands the phone to me. “Your mama told me how fast you’re growing up, so I thought I must call to find out just how grown up my little girl has become.”

“She’s worried because I’m a beautiful young woman,” I joke. “She gets sick just thinking about it.”

“Hawu!” he chuckles. “Does she think you’re going to be wild, like she was? Does she think you’re going to start running around all over the place?”

“Don’t go getting any ideas in your head, just because I told you how wild Mama was when she was young,” he says. “Anyway, I wasn’t talking about boys. I meant she was always getting into trouble because of her strong political ideas.”

I like hearing about the days when Mama and Baba were young. Mama and Baba are older than a lot of my friends’ parents. They are old enough that they participated in the liberation struggle.

Everybody was so fearless in the fight for our freedom! Children boycotted school and teenagers like my baba joined the guerilla soldiers. Men and women stopped paying rent on their government-owned houses. People like Mama marched in the streets to protest the government policies. They did all this so we blacks could be free, so that we would have the right to vote, so that we would have the same opportunities as whites.

“I wish I did exciting things like you and Mama did when you were young,” I say. When I think about what people like Baba and Mama did for us, it makes me long for a different life, like there’s something I should be doing, that I’m called to do, to make South Africa a better place. But whatever it is, I can’t figure it out.

“Don’t long for the old days,” he says. “When your mama and I were young, we thought only about freedom. We sacrificed everything to fight for it. But now, without an education, I can’t even find a decent job. I try and try, Khosi. Every day, I go knocking on doors and nothing. But you can go to school and really become something.”

“I just feel so anxious,” I admit. This is something I can’t say to Mama or Gogo. They depend on me too much. “I feel like there are so many things I should be doing to help people but I don’t know where to begin.”

“Ntombazana, I felt the same way when I was fourteen,” he says. “My grandmother used to say that each generation has its own challenges, its own work to do. You’ll figure it out. Just give it time.”

“Baba, I’m not a little girl anymore,” I say. “I’m growing up and I’m going to do great things someday.”

He laughs. “I’ll always be proud of the fact that I struggled for our liberation, Nomkhosi,” he says. “We did an important work. But let me tell you something. I wish we could have lived a normal life and gone to school.” He pauses, then says, “Please just agree to be my little girl for a little while longer.”

The truth is, I will always be his little girl, no matter what happens in my life or how “grown-up” I become.

“And,” he continues, “you make sure you stay away from all those young men your mama is so worried about.”

“Which one of them is so nice? Does this ‘someone nice’ have a name?” He becomes suddenly demanding.

“Not young enough,” he emphasizes. “You see, you’ll make me sick with worrying, just like you’ve done to your mama.”

“And Gogo, too,” I add, laughing with him. “That’s why she goes to the sangoma’s to get muthi for her arthritis. Her bones ache because I’m sooooo beautiful.”