Rain, those few times it came without thunder. You could feel something bloated about the air when you breathed, and you knew. You also knew it would disappear as quickly as it arrived, that by tomorrow the dark stain in the sand would be as gone as the silence of the rain itself. I’d learned at least this, that the rain carried its own engulfing silence, and that it, too, would leave us. As if none of it ever happened. Then the Erongos would emerge from the clouds and loom again, and the relentless sun would pierce our thin walls, and we would curse the rain for bothering us in the first place.
It had been a glorious downpour, but it had gone on for nearly three hours. It was no longer a miracle, and however fleeting and teasing, it always started as a miracle. Now it was just rain again. We were waiting for after rain, when the sun would rise, battered, like a wet loaf. When Antoinette’s chickens would shake out their dirty feathers and saunter again. When the younger boys would start whittling sticks to spear the fantasy fish the older boys lied to them about: Don’t you know? They swim down from Ovamboland when the heavy rains come. Those boys—lying on their stomachs, watching the amazing river of actual water, looking for barbel or pink-bellied scroot. But the only thing the momentarily flowing Kuiseb carried along was a few drowned mice.
The earth slogged. The water curdled in our footprints in the sand. All was mud now. We’d all retreated to our rooms when Pohamba knocked on the wall. “Mother Goas has birthed another lunatic!” Then he came to my door and ordered: “Come and see.” Wet feet, towels over our heads, we went out to the edge of the soccer field. And there was Dikeledi at mid-field, whirling. The rain was still falling in gray veils. Festus was out there too, on his back, playing his fatty chest like bongos. She was wearing his stupid straw hat and laughing, her arms stretched out, her wet breasts swinging as if they were trying to reach out to her hands. Rain-worn, we craved her more. Pohamba kicked his door shut and yowled about his fucking toe. I rammed my door also. For once our envy of Festus spoke with one voice. It was too much. We shut up our windows and listened to the silence of our rooms, of our beds, as the dread rain pounded, pounded our corrugated roofs.