This Thing Called the Future

Little Man calls Gogo’s cell phone that afternoon to find out why I was absent from school. He offers to bring me the homework we’re supposed to do in the classes we share.

“That would be great,” I say. Actually, Mama called and I already have the homework, but I’m not going to tell Little Man that!

Gogo is suspicious. “Who is this guy, that he is calling for you here at home?” she asks.

“He’s just a friend from school.” I look anxiously at Mama. I don’t want to upset her so that she starts coughing and can’t stop.

“Then be friends just at school,” Gogo says. She looks triumphant, like she’s won some battle.

Mama arranges her blankets so that there’s room for me on the bed. She pats a spot for me so I come over and sit down.

“It’s just Little Man Ncobo,” I say, thinking this is exactly why my friends like to have their own cell phones, so they don’t have to face all these questions from their families.

“See? You’ve known him forever,” I say. “There’s no need to worry.”

When Little Man arrives, Inkosikazi Dudu shouts at him not to visit our house. “They are liars and cheats there,” she yells. “Are you also a liar and cheat?”

“She is just a crazy old woman and we don’t know what to do about her,” I tell him as I usher him inside. My cheeks are burning hot. I hope Little Man doesn’t believe what she says and that he doesn’t go home and tell his mother what our neighbor lady said.

Gogo insists that he sit down on the sofa. Then she bustles about making tea and bringing biscuits.

“I’m sorry about all the fuss,” I whisper as soon as she’s left the room.

He looks around the dining room. It must look similar to his, crowded with a sofa and a table and a television, the tile floor chipped from too many people tromping over it every day. Because he’s not Catholic, I don’t imagine he has a huge crucifix hanging on the wall over the television, but I’m sure he has a picture of Jesus somewhere in the living room, like almost everybody I know.

I nod. “He died the same day I was born,” I say. “Gogo has always said that means he watches out for me in a special way.”

“I think it’s cool.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “Remember how that drunk man attacked me the day of your party?”

Little Man leans forward to hear me. He glances left and right and, seeing that neither Gogo nor Mama are standing in the doorway watching us, he takes my hand.

My heart starts beating faster. God, he is so good-looking! I can’t stop looking at his blue-black skin and his white teeth. I forget all about what I was telling him.

Oh, right. I was telling a story. “I think it was my babamkhulu that rescued me, that got me safely home.”

“What about God?” Little Man has a look on his face like Mama’s when she talks about these things. But I know he’s not challenging me because even as he says it, he takes his thumb and rubs the palm of my hand gently, sending goose bumps up and down my arms.

“Yes, of course, God rescued me,” I agree. “But don’t you think God works through the people here on earth? Both the living and the dead?”

Little Man shakes his head. “It’s the dead part that gets to me. Oh, my family, we believe in the ancestors, too. But it’s so opposite to what we’re taught in school—you know, that there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“I have trouble reconciling it all too,” I admit. “Especially because Mama thinks it’s all superstition. But you can’t prove God either. And I know what I’ve seen.”

After Little Man leaves, Mama calls me to the bedroom. She pats the bed and I sit beside her.

“Just how good of a friend is this Little Man?” she asks, kneading the blanket between her fingers.

“We’re nothing but friends.” I’m not lying. But I’m not telling the whole truth either.

She’s silent. And then she smiles. “I never told you that Little Man’s father was my special friend when I was growing up, did I?”

“Long before I met your father, he and I were—” She starts coughing, putting her face in the blood-stained towel she keeps beside her pillow. When she finishes, there are bright red drops of new blood and phlegm on the towel.

Mama won’t let any of us touch it. No matter how sick she is, she insists on cleaning it herself. I hear her dragging herself out of the bed in the middle of the night. As she cleans the towel in the bathroom, she coughs even more.

Sometimes in the morning, there are drops of dried blood on the tiles. I wipe it up and don’t say a word to anybody, even Gogo.

“Elizabeth,” Gogo says, “I’m sure you can tell Khosi this story another time.”

But Mama so rarely talks about the past, if I don’t take advantage of it when she does, I lose the opportunity. “Where was Baba?” I ask, prompting her to continue.

“Baba had already joined the Struggle,” she says. “He was living in Mozambique.”

“At the time, we were at war here in Imbali,” she says. “We weren’t just fighting the whites, you see. We blacks were fighting each other too. Little Man’s father belonged to one side, and there were people we knew who belonged to the other side. They threatened to necklace him so he fled to Johannesburg.”

“Necklacing was something we blacks did to each other,” Mama replies. “They would douse a tire with gasoline, place it around a person’s neck, and light it on fire. Many, many died that way during our fight against apartheid.”

I draw in my breath, sharp. “But why? Why would we kill other Africans? Weren’t we fighting the whites for freedom? So we could have the right to vote?” My voice is low so Zi, watching TV in the other room, doesn’t hear.

Mama sighs. “It was complicated. When you are fighting for something you really want, everything you believe about right and wrong gets all mixed up.” Mama’s warm brown eyes turn dark and wet. She wipes her hand against her wrinkled skin, her face that used to be so smooth until she lost all that weight.

“Mina? Cha!” She shakes her head. “I had Richard and Phumzi on one side and Little Man’s father, my sweetheart, on the other side. So I kept my head low. My family knew what I believed but we didn’t talk about it here at home. I was afraid. You see, even family members were turning against each other.”

“In those days, we were uncertain about many things,” she says. Then she adds, “Today, we are uncertain about many things also.”

Her eyes still look troubled. It bothers me to see her looking like she has many things on her mind that she can never share. But what can I do? A daughter doesn’t question her mother.

“Yebo, impela,” Mama says. “You know that big house on the top of the hill?”

“During a night of riots, some people took that woman’s son outside and set fire to him just as the sun was setting. Hawu, Khosi, how he screamed—like a baby. I had to go inside to escape the smell.”

I have a vision of a man crouching low in the dirt, flames streaming off his body and leaping towards the sky. “That’s terrible.”

“It smelled like chicken.” Mama shakes her head. “I couldn’t eat for days.”

“That was the day I grew up,” she says. “Before that, I thought we might really see ubuntu triumph. I believed that our common humanity would bring us back together. Then—I wasn’t so sure, when I saw this thing.”

I wonder if that’s what caused that woman to turn to evil too. If she had been a good woman before, and saw what people—her neighbors, her friends—did to her son, maybe it propelled her into witchcraft, to get revenge. That is why people turn to witchcraft, because of their deep anger at others.

“Do you think the world’s a better place now?” I ask. “Now that apartheid’s dead? Now that we have democracy?”

“Yes!” Mama exclaims. “You have so many opportunities that I never had.”

“But what about this thing of AIDS?” I ask. “It’s killing so many people—” I break off, mid-sentence, seeing the look on Mama’s face.

And suddenly, I know the truth. I knew it all along, of course. But it has just been confirmed. AIDS. That’s what Mama has. The shock of it is so strong, it feels like a small fire has been lit deep in my belly, flames licking up my esophagus. It’s burning me up. But no, it’s not me that is burning up from the inside out. It’s Mama. Her body, utterly betraying her.

“Mama,” I say, helpless. It’s all I can say, like I’ve been reduced to babytalk, with only one word in my vocabulary. “Mama.”

“You see, you do have a better world,” she continues, as if I had said nothing. “You can study science or business or medicine.”

She sees the look on my face. She sees how I don’t have words to answer her. How can the world be a better place when it holds such an evil disease in it?

“Don’t look at the past, Khosi,” she says, reaching out a soft hand to caress my face. “It’s there and will always be there and there is nothing you can do to change it. Now, now you must look ahead. There is only this thing called the future.”