Rosie did take her boombox to school. And that’s what we all did today, but the teachers at schools and the lecturers at colleges and the managers in workplaces said nothing. They’d brought their own radios and boomboxes in anyway.
It’s said that anyone who was old enough at the time can recall exactly what they were doing the moment they first heard of J.F.K.’s assassination. Zimbabweans now wholly appreciate this ability.
Rosie’s class was in the Science laboratory. The lesson was cut short when Miss Riddle turned on her radio and adjusted the volume so that the whole class could hear, and it never got started again.
Rosie says it’s the memory of the diverse emotions she saw flickering and changing in the faces of her fourteen-year-old classmates that will remain with her forever. She groped for, but couldn’t find, the identity of the emotion that brought the pricking to her eyes.
I didn’t even try to analyse it. I sat next to Chipo and toyed with a biro on my desk during the announcement. When I finally looked up, I too saw – felt – so many emotions that a light-headedness washed over and threatened to swamp me. The black girls in the class were as silent as we whites, digesting the news, working out what it meant for each of us, wondering what it meant for the others, and simultaneously not quite able to believe that finally it had happened.
Chipo and I stared at each other while the world got frozen on its axis for a time. Then, amid the babble that erupted throughout the college, we clung to each other.
Jess heard the news during one of her study periods (“We’re told they’re not free periods Tessa, they’re study periods. We are committed to improving our minds”) between maths and biology. The school was eerily hushed, she said. Not just the normal lesson period lull, but a tangible, tense hush. After a brief hope that she’d wake up and find none of it had ever happened, she succumbed to sadness and resignation because her folks declared yesterday that in the event of a ZANU(PF) victory they would pack up and leave for South Africa as soon as the school year was over.
I can’t hide from this fact any longer, so I asked her, “What about Gordon?” and she shrugged.
“I think I’ve finally realised I’m doing too many things I don’t want to do in order to keep him. You said you wouldn’t do that and I thought you were being immature. Don’t look at me like that – I did and I’m sorry. Gordon and I can’t be that compatible if I have to pretend to be someone I’m not. I don’t want to be Ma Baker and I don’t want to sleep with him again. It didn’t do anything for me. I don’t want him that much. One day I might want someone that much and then I would only feel soiled.”
Then she said, “You and Danny though… You really enjoy being together, and so you should. He loves you. He’s told me. He respects you and knows that there’s plenty of time for sex later. He’ll be led by you, and you’ll get there because you’ll want to. I envy you, you know.”
I had no reply to that – I could hardly ask her if her intuition had done a runner. If it was meant to make me feel good, it didn’t.
“So what did the others say? About the elections, I mean. What about Tsitsi, or Lucy Tsauro? Were they around?”
“No. No, I think they were in lessons. Lucy would have been in English at the time. Well, Mandy Carstairs – you know what she’s like – said something like, ‘Bastards. They’ll regret it.’ and I said to her, ‘What’s done is done.’ Joanne suggested hijacking the school bus and going Down South, which I thought was bloody stupid and I guess she was only joking, while someone else – ah, Liz Laurens – said we must give it a chance. Tell you what, Tessa, I wish you’d still been at school. It was a moment to share with a good friend really. You know – for better or for worse and all that.”
That did make me feel good.
Elijah told all of us openly that he’d voted for Muzorewa, which had Mum beside herself fretting.
“We don’t want anyone to think we’ve tried to influence his decision! For God’s sake Bob, explain to him he doesn’t have to tell anyone who he’s voted for. I don’t want either us or him to get any visitors in the night.”
He was holed up in his kaya at the time of the announcement and, with me at college, Dad at work and Rosie at school, Mum had only Skellum and Cleo with whom to share the moment. Not two seconds later she heard the hiccupping that heralds the arrival of a regurgitated cat hair ball. I’ve not felt much like laughing today but I can just see her clapping her hands and shrieking, “Cleo! No! Not on the carpet!”
Poor cat, naturally, bolted and left rapidly via the kitchen door. Mum, never good with that sort of thing, threw up in the toilet and stayed out of the hall until I got home. So now I’m going to have to bin the hair ball and clean the carpet.
*
Moira’s alone in the kitchen, washing one of the honey coloured glass casserole dishes Mum would like.
“Hi Tessa! Make yourself at home, love. The others are out getting some drinks for tonight. If I say, ‘How was your day?’ I guess you’ll know what I mean, huh?”
“Well, it’s done now, isn’t it? The college was in a bit of a frenzy but everything just seemed normal on the way home. No trouble. Was there any trouble?”
She smiles, relaxed and serene, puts the dish aside on the draining board and shakes her head. “No. Mind you, I haven’t been out. I was here with Joseph at the time and Gilly came in from the stableyard. We’d just finished trimming the jacaranda near the Lion Rock.” She points through the window to where the Lion Rock is now in the shadow of the very tree.
“I will call it my Election Tree from now on. I invited Joseph to stay with me and Gill to listen to the results announcement on the patio, which he did. I’m not sure if it was just out of respect because I’d asked him. I wouldn’t want him to think I’d pressurised him into coming.”
“I doubt it, Moira. Of course he does have respect for you – for all your family – but he likes you as well. I saw him at the gate when I arrived just now. He said to me he thought it was good news and he hoped I thought it was good news too. He’s just such a gentleman.”
I wonder if he was also just a bit curious to see his white employer’s reaction to the news. Perhaps he was disappointed, or maybe only relieved; I can’t believe either Gill or Moira would’ve displayed much high emotion. I imagine her staring calmly, absently at her jacaranda tree and its delicate green foliage, the lilac blossoms of September long forgotten. She will just want her garden and her life to go on as usual, no matter who’s in government.
“The best outcome of it all to my mind, Moira, is that the war’s really over.”
She doesn’t reply immediately, but she doesn’t have to. Who would fail to be relieved by that? She dries her hands and turns to face me, her buttocks against the worktop edge.
“Tessa, you have no idea. Not like I do. I absolutely don’t know what I would have done if we hadn’t reached this stage now and it was all still going on. I never dreamed I’d see the day when I wanted to get out of this country and take off somewhere, anywhere, with my family, but that day was the day I saw my boy lying in that hospital bed.”
I stay still, silent. This has come from depths inside her I’ve never been privy to before. Raw, unbearably painful depths. The practical, efficient Moira I know is exposing another Moira who’s run out of the ability to cope. Or at least come dangerously close to running out.
“I would never have be able to let him carry on risking his life senselessly Tessa. You must know of course that, although he’s not my own blood son, I have a mother’s love for him, every bit as much as I have for Gill. He’s been one of my two babies. I would’ve had to devise some way to smuggle him out. I’d honestly have faced life in prison to save him, if that was the punishment. If the war had carried on he’d have been back in the thick of it sooner or later. He got – we all got – a bit of a reprieve and escaped duty for some time then was lucky enough to get the riding instructor role, but with such a desperate shortage of manpower they’d have found him, realised he was reasonably fit again and shoved him back out there. How many times can you be that lucky?”
Gill said the exact same thing while Nathan was still invalided out, didn’t she? We had this conversation in one of the many past lives we’ve endured.
“In a perverse way, him getting relatively minor injuries, at precisely the time he did, actually saved him from ever going back to the frontline,” I say cautiously. Cautiously, because how do you tell a mother it was beneficial for her son to get wounded in action? “He was only actually on active duty for a relatively short time too, wasn’t he?”
“It was only about eight months, after he’d finished his training,” she replies, with a sort of bewildered surprise. “God, it was more like eight years to us here.”
I’ll bet it was. During which time he was in several contacts before the final one and she came to realise that coping was never going to be an option.
“I’m sure you can probably imagine that when he finished the training and went off out on real ops we were that jittery here at home that every time the phone rang we, all of us, and that includes Amai, had to peel ourselves off the ceiling. There were times when the sound of it made me just want to run and hide down a big black hole and never come out. Then, after a few months, it did get a bit better but that utter dread was always there in the pit of my belly.”
I can rewind my mental clock to that year. I rode, I danced at discos, I cycled to and from school. I met Danny and I steered my way through my little life, facing up to my little trials and tribulations. The fact that there was a war out there disturbed me – distressed me even – but, having said that, I interacted with Gill and Charles and Moira four times a week on average and probably barely gave Nathan a thought because he was turning up in my life even less often than before. It appals me now to find that I had no inkling these friends of mine were living with a dread of phone calls. You never let on to me, I want to accuse her.
She’s watching me struggle with my guilt but she won’t recognise it for what it is. There’ll be no doubt in her that I’ll have been acutely aware of their anguish. I’m such a fraud. In the next heartbeat I know she’s going to tell me how far that anguish could go.
“And then that day, when the call did come? I died over and over, and yet it turned out that he was going to be okay. I simply have no concept of what it would’ve been like to find out he’d been killed and to have to go to his funeral. Tessa, I swear to you, I’ve never seen my husband look so utterly destroyed as he did when he took that call. I was in the hall as well – we were on our way out for the supermarket run. I can relive it like it happened five minutes ago. He said hello and then ‘Yes, this is he,’ in the way that he does, and then he just crumpled and sat on the floor and I knew the origin of the call in that instant. Of course one’s first reaction is to think the absolute worst. And even when we knew he was in the hospital, the only information was that he was in theatre and we didn’t find out the extent of the injuries until we actually got seen by a surgeon about an hour and a half later.”
She pauses, head cocked to one side, then points toward the back door. “Oh, wait, here they all come.”
It’s been the calm before the family storm. The sound of a car engine swells then recedes then dies altogether, doors are opened and slammed, Charles guffaws, Piet’s voice is straining to be heard over him and Gill is shrieking with laughter. If Nathan’s with them he’s silent.
“So yes, my love, that filthy war is over,” Moira concludes quietly to me as she steps towards the door, presumably to open it. I make a grab for her hand, causing her to wait. She squeezes back and holds on to me until we hear the multiple footsteps approaching from outside and some unmistakeable clinking of bottles.
“It’s the past now,” I tell her, just as quietly, and she stoops to give me a kiss on the head before extracting her hand from mine.
It’s only the three of them and they fill the kitchen. Gill, Piet and I do a group hug before Charles takes me in his arms.
“We missed you at work today, kid! Shoulda been there with us for the moment. It was epic.”
“So where were you in the moment then?” I ask from the depth of his embrace. “Me and Chipo were sitting together in Accounting class, but we didn’t do any accounting in the end.”
Piet says, “Anyone for beer?” and Charles says, “In the fridge,” releasing me, patting my shoulder.
“Well now. Me, I go further than simply remembering where I was. I was taking off some reinforcement quantities and I reckon that bloody drawing will be forever burned into my brain. Que Que reservoir, pure water incoming main, valve chamber number four, drawing number ‘QQ-RES-VC4-RC-01’. The draughtsman was someone called ‘P.B.N.’ My eyes were fixed on that titleblock throughout the whole broadcast and for several minutes afterwards.
“So I sat there and I thought to myself, it had to be ZANU(PF). I even considered the possibility that I might have to join the Party soon. If you can’t beat ’em… So I folded up the drawing and tossed it into the basket that you kindly labelled Current Drawing Queries for me and went to find my staff. Turns out they’d all been in reception listening to Nathan’s ghetto blaster and the over-riding vibe was one of relief. And I guess I felt that way too. The uncertainty is over and something concrete… ’scuse the pun… has been achieved. Sylvester, bless him, said we’ll all have to become Mashona now, even him. Sylvester! Can you believe that? I said I couldn’t see him kow-towing to the Mashona dogs, and Debbie got all idyllic and told him he should be proud of his tribe and that we’re all now Zimbabweans together, black and white… oh you should’ve been there Tess! At risk of sounding as idyllic as Debs, the camaraderie was just the best. We had cream cakes and Debs started fluttering those mascara-laden eyelashes sweetly at Nathan in the way that she does. You know how she’s always making bedroom eyes at him!”
Gill creases up with glee and Piet says “Oh-ho? Really?” and I think who-does-Debbie-think-she-is-trying-to-flirt-with-the-boss’s-nephew?
Charles is beaming, basking in his story. “You should’ve seen her, guys. Nathan bestowed one of those dazzling smiles of his upon her and she went all red and coy and you could actually see her heart-rate double. Hilarious, it was!”
Suddenly alone on a little island, I don’t find it even faintly amusing. We were talking about the elections here.
Piet returns from the fridge with two bottles of Castle and sits next to me.
“So, Piet. Pamberi ne ZANU(PF), eh? How did it go down on the farm?”
He takes a swig from the bottle and goes, “Ah!”, then, “Ja, it was fine. I gave the buggers the rest of the day off but some of them have to come back this evening for milking and stables. They seemed quite happy. We all partook of a few bottles of Shumba together.”
Where is Nathan anyway? And I haven’t spoken to Danny yet. I’m here swapping election-result stories with my second family and we’re bantering and it’s all so normal that it’s bizarre and I’ve not even wondered what my boyfriend is doing and thinking and where he was when the results came through.
“How are the plans going for your party?” Piet says, and I go, “Sorry?” but he’s talking to Gill. She sighs.
“I can’t believe I’m going to be twenty-three. With all this drama of the elections it’s got rather put to one side. We’ll probably have it in two weeks’ time if we can get ourselves organised and if I can be bothered, to be honest. I’m too busy really.”
Piet flinches and a strangely perturbed expression flickers round his face. He looks like he’s trying to bring it under control.
“Oh,” he says. “That would be a shame.”
He’s looking at me, but when I meet his eyes full on he flicks them away. Gill shrugs.
“Perhaps we’ll just make it a very small, immediate-family-only thing this year. Go out for a meal. That doesn’t exclude you and Danny of course, Tess. Nathan can bring Debbie.”
They all think that’s just so funny. Gill yawns and shuts her eyes. “Most of the usual crowd have probably left the country today.”
With a sinking rush of dread, I have a brief and horrible fantasy of my parents throwing clothes into suitcases and taking pictures down off the walls. Piet is addressing me over Moira’s assurances to Gill that plans for the usual braai will be made.
“We’ll help, won’t we? Will your sister come too?”
“What? Sorry.”
“A party. We’ll help Gill with all the preparations.”
“Oh yes. Of course.” I manage to make myself smile at him. “Anyone would think it was your party, Piet.”
He actually blushes behind his big, ginger beard, but I’m no longer interested in parties. I have an urge to get back home and make sure everyone’s still there. As I stand, the legs of my chair scrape excruciatingly on the tiled floor.
*
No-one is packing. As soon as I’ve put the phone down after speaking to Danny, Dad tells me how he and Dudley Foster, together in Dudley’s office, heard the triumphant cheer swell and roar skywards from the city streets below. We exchange some bits of chit-chat and it’s good that we’re trying to communicate as though our altercation of yesterday never happened. Then he jerks at the knot of his tie as though he’s suffocating and ruins the truce.
“We put our backs into working for this place and now the bloody British government has jeopardised the future for all us whites. I told Dudley that if there’s any trouble, the damned Brits will have to get us out. They could have sent UN troops in to sort this lot out, so they’re entirely responsible if there’s any bloodshed.”
Rosie, now National Junior Reserve Tennis Champion, saves the moment by creating a magnificent diversion. She comes into the house bouncing off the walls, clapping and trying to waltz with Mum. Skellum is barking and Dad’s yelling “For Christ’s sake put that dog outside!”
“Wimbledon! Wimbledon! We’re all going to Wimbledon! My God, can you imagine? Wimbledon! Rob’s going to try and get tickets for all of us in the junior team! We’re going to watch Wimbledon!”
An instant positive outcome from the elections at last. Rhodesia was a sporting pariah but now, as Zimbabwe, we’ve arrived back in the world.