Pó
“AMALIA, STOP PLAYING with that record player. I need your young eyes to thread a needle.”
“I’m fixing the music box,” Amalia says. She throws herself onto the mattress. The glass beads I had separated by colour are sent into the air.
“Filha!”
“I’ll help,” she says, and begins sorting the beads into small piles. “We’re almost running out.”
“You will have to go to the market soon and get some more.”
I only ever work with glass beads, as my mother and Simu had before me. I bring my hand up to touch the beaded collar my mother once wore.
“I don’t like going to the market. They say mean things.”
“Who does?”
“Mwanito makes fun of me. He calls this the ghost hotel and I’m its ghost keeper.”
“You can’t listen to nonsense.” I remember Mwanito as a boy. He once lived in the Grande Hotel, in Block C. Overnight the hotel became a safe place for refugees from what was once Rhodesia during their civil war. The common rule for living in the Grande Hotel is respect. As squatters, the refugees are given the nickname whato muno—not from here. Like the albinos, they are not accepted in Beira. Mwanito shed his skin and has reinvented himself. “Mwanito is not a bad man, filha. He’s a young man. He does not understand the world.” It strikes me then that I did not wake up to the scratching song of women sweeping the courtyard. The hotel grounds are deserted. I see a few children pulling a calf up the beach road and a load of soldiers together in the bed of a truck. The truck swerves, and with each jolt the men in the back roar in laughter, only to resume their shouting and singing with their rifles raised high.
“How come you don’t sit with the other women to make jewellery anymore?” Amalia says. “They miss you.”
The doctor who visits twice a year has told me that the lesions on my neck and shoulders are cancerous and the disease is now in my blood. I cannot tell Amalia that it is safer for me to stay inside my room now. Murderers lurk in Beira’s crowds. They have heard that my bones will fetch a high price on the market. They will see I am not as strong as I once was and they will pounce.
“The necklace I am wearing will be yours one day. My mother never put similar colours next to each other. That was her way. A dark bead is always set against a lighter colour. And every bead has meaning.”
Amalia holds up a large, flat beaded disc. “What is this one for?”
“It’s for young girls like you,” I say, poking her belly. She smiles.
“And this one?” Amalia thrusts a red bead up close to my face so I can see.
“That colour is for bravery and blood. Blue is the colour of the sky. It provides water for the cattle. Green for the grass. Black is the colour of the people.”
As I wait for Serafim’s visit, I think about what I have left to share with him, which parts will remain mine.
I stood at the pool’s bank and slipped out of my shuka. The mountain air was cool. Two steps in and the water met my knees. Two more steps and the water lapped my thighs. I spread my arms and thrust myself into the water. A chill. A rush.
When I surfaced, Ezequiel had crossed over the wet rocks and was kneeling by my shuka.
I took another plunge, stayed under as long as I could. I surfaced breathlessly to the rumble of the waterfall.
Ezequiel now stood at the edge of the water. I turned and swam away from him, towards the waterfall.
“What do you want?” I said, my voice as calm as I could make it.
He did not answer but dropped my shuka to the ground.
“I can’t swim,” he said.
“Trust the water,” I said.
He took one step onto a slippery stone. I could see him, arms wide out, trying to balance. I swam closer to him.
He was unbuttoning his shirt. His belt was next, the slap of leather loud. His pants dropped to his ankles. He stepped out of his pants and onto another rock.
He took one step into the water. Then another. I swam out farther. When I surfaced, the water reached his waist. I held his hand and led him into the pool. Three, four, five steps more. He tugged back and wouldn’t go any deeper. “Trust me,” I said.
“One step after another,” I heard him whisper.
The sun was disappearing. I lay next to Ezequiel on a bed of moss.
Giant ferns surrounded us, their tips dipping into the water.
“You are quiet,” I said.
“I don’t want anything to change.”
We had been there all day. I had told him about my childhood, about Simu and Koinet and Lebo.
Ezequiel lay motionless. Quiet.
“I don’t remember things as clearly,” he finally said, swallowing hard. “The workers on the mission had left. Papa grew a beard, I remember that. He wore a brave face when he fried eggs every night for dinner. That was all he knew how to cook, which was fine with me because he fried them until their edges turned bronze. Mother Anke sat across from Papa. She did not eat. She looked smaller, diminished in a way I couldn’t understand.”
Ezequiel talked about Macaco and his men and when he was captured by the Portuguese. He would begin to tell me what he had seen and then his lips would close. Side by side, our arms and legs touching, I watched his chest rise and fall. It slowed sometimes and I thought his burden had been lightened.
Ezequiel moved away from me. He sat up, curled into himself.
“What is it?”
Metal flashed through the open spaces in the canopy of trees.
He covered his ears and rocked gently. “My rifle. Give me my rifle!” His eyes were on fire.
I did not understand. I was afraid. I crouched beside him, held him tight, until the rocking slowed.
“He is near,” Ezequiel said.
“Shhh,” I said.
“The Commander is near,” he sobbed, his head dropped into his hands. “It’s over.”
It had been a while since a plane had come so close, but it had been no different than the other times.
“He’ll find us,” he mumbled.
I felt his panic and held him tight. My shuka turned into a pillow to prop up his head. I left his side and brought back water.
His eyelids closed, softly. I kissed his forehead. “I taste sadness,” I said.
Kwazi was sent down the side of the mountain for supplies. He returned with rumours. Both FRELIMO soldiers and the Portuguese army were looking for clear vantage points in the area. He did not know what these groups represented. I bribed him with honey to keep the news to himself.