Strong Medicine (11 page)
Authors: Angela Meadon
“What happened?” I asked. I looked at Busi. She had come here with me. She carried some of my normal life with her, like a dark cloud above her head. I yearned for that normalcy again. She just shook her head, her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth fixed in a tight line. I could see the muscles on her jaws clenching and releasing.
“You met your ancestors,” the
sangoma
said. “Now we will throw the bones again and I will tell you what happened to your daughter.”
She scooped the collection of bones and shells back into her hands. Her assistants took their places and they repeated the ritual they had performed earlier.
I couldn’t detect any patterns in the trinkets when they clattered to the mat between us, but the
sangoma
peered at them knowingly. She hummed and grunted, pushing a small bone one way, turning a shell the other way.
Finally, she raised her eyes to meet mine. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“Your daughter has been taken by an
inyanga
.”
“Aaaiii!” Busi cried behind me. I heard her fall to the floor where she broke into gut-wrenching sobs.
“Wait, wait. A what? What does that mean? Where is she?” None of this made sense to me. My body still folded in strange ways, and my mind wobbled from one sensation to the next. The revelation joined the maelstrom that buffeted me. I couldn’t sort it from the noise.
“An
inyanga
,” the
sangoma
said. “It’s… a witchdoctor. She’s been taken for
muti
.”
“No, that’s not possible.” I’d drilled it into her not to go anywhere with strangers. I’d even given her a book,
Play Safe Stay Safe
, which told her all about keeping away from men whom she didn’t know. Was she going to be chopped up?
Images flashed through my mind. Her flawless skin covered in blood. Her blue eyes fixed in a lifeless death stare. It was more than I could take. My stomach buckled and twisted and I vomited. A wave of hot liquid splattered around my legs.
“No, no. You’re wrong.” I wiped the dregs of vomit from the corner of my mouth. “It can’t be. It can’t be.”
Busi put her arms around my shoulders and helped me stand. Rhea brought a warm, wet facecloth that she used to wipe my pants clean. One of the
sangoma’s
acolytes brought in a bucket and a mop and cleaned the floor.
“Come, sit over here.” Busi led me to a chair and lowered me into it. My arms and legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t control them.
“You’re in shock,” the
sangoma
said. She handed me a steaming mug of tea and sat on the ground opposite me. “It’s a natural response. I see it a lot here in the township. We lose a lot of children.”
“But how do you know for sure?” I asked. “That it’s an
inyanga
?”
“I trust my ancestors. They guide me and help me to understand the messages in the bones.” She patted the impala skin pouch she held, and the bones and shells rattled against each other.
“What can we do?” I asked.
“Hope that the police find her before she’s dead,” the
sangoma
said.
I cried again. When my hands stopped shaking, Busi and I thanked the
sangoma
and left her cold shack in the township.
She squeezed her eyes shut, felt tears running down her cheeks and pooling in her ears.
Soon they would come with their candle and their dark, empty eyes. What would they do to her tonight? How would they hurt her?
The candlelight would show her the bruises on her body. Dark marks across her legs and arms from the stick they’d used to beat her. The cigarette burns still itched; it had been days since the boy had pressed a glowing cigarette to her back and giggled as it hissed out a strand of smoke.
What would they bring tonight?
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. The door opened, spilling moonlight into the room, and the boy entered. He had a hungry smile and a long-bladed knife in his hand. He disappeared into darkness when the door closed.
The old man locked the door behind him and Lindsey heard his heavy footsteps as he crossed the room. Matches rattled inside the matchbox, and then one flared into light. The old man held it to the wick of the candle he had on the ledge above the bed.
“Right, let’s get started.”
Lindsey strained against the chains that held her to the bed. Why were they doing this to her? What had she done? Where was her mama?
She wanted to beg them not to hurt her, but the words didn’t make it past the gag in her mouth. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.
The two men stood over her, looking at the marks on her skin. The old man spoke in a language she couldn’t recognize, pointing at parts of her body.
“We want her to last,” he said. “So we will start on the outside and move our way in. The hands are powerful. The fingers bring things to us. If your customer wants to get money, or a lost lover, anything. You use the fingers for small things, the whole hand for bigger things.”
The old man took Lindsey’s right hand in his own, he turned it this way and that, showing the boy the knuckles and the joint of her wrist.
“When you want to take the finger, you put the point of the knife here.” His fingernail dug into the knuckle of her pointer finger and she felt him twisting at the tendon there. “You push in and twist and the joint will come apart. Pass me the knife, I will show you the first one.”
Temporary stalls, often no more than a blanket laid out on the sidewalk, clogged the space under the highway. The road itself was blocked by stalls. The market spread out from the underpass, filling empty store-fronts and every open space in the alleys on either side of the highway.
Vendors called out to him in greeting as he passed, some offering special prices, others offering new ingredients. But the old man wasn’t there to shop. He had come to the market to teach.
Jacob followed behind, the boy tried to appear nonchalant, but Bongani Zulu could see the concentration in his features. Fine lines appeared on his forehead and surrounded his eyes.
Good, he is thinking hard.
“This is the root of an acacia tree,” Zulu pointed to a bag full of dried root pieces. “We use it to encourage love. The customer can make it into a tea.”
Jacob nodded and pointed at a bag next to the first one, it had dried twigs with leaves and thorns still attached.
“And this one, Tata?”
“This is also from the acacia. It’s to make a man’s erection strong. This red powder will make a man appear handsome to women.”
The next stall was built out of rotting wood stacked up on bricks to make shelves. A row of bottles stood on each shelf, each held a powder or a dried leaf. Small pouches of powder hung from the shelves, handfuls of pink or white powder in clear plastic sandwich bags. The vendor smiled and greeted them as they approached.
“What is this for?” Jacob pointed at one of the bags of pink powder.
“That will help you with your trial,” Zulu said. “So you don’t go to prison.”
They worked through the bottles and pouches, and Zulu patiently explained the origin and purpose of each one. He thanked the vendor before they moved deeper into the market. They followed the narrow pathways into an alley, where Zulu passed through a dark doorway and into the gloom beyond.
He knew his way, having come here uncountable times before, but he could feel Jacob’s fear as they walked into the old shop. It had been a grocery store, before the owners closed up and moved out. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Bongani Zulu led his grandson through the dust-choked rows of shelves, past a rusted cash register, and into a courtyard behind the store.
Very few people knew about this part of the market. The courtyard was surrounded on all sides by brick walls, three storeys high. One door led into the courtyard. There were no windows or any other exits.
Here the stalls held
muti
you couldn’t buy in the open. Ice cream tubs filled with chunks of half-dry meat, or lumps of fat. Skulls and horns and dried carcasses.
Jacob flinched and shied away from the sights around him.
“Don’t turn away,” Zulu said. “You must learn about this part of the business too.”
They passed a shelf with a row of fresh baboon paws, the fingers trailed over the edge of the wood they were stacked upon, thick brown fur stood out from the raw stump on the end of each one.
“These are animal parts,” Jacob whispered.
“Yes,” Bongani Zulu turned to face the boy. “Each one has a purpose, power that we can use to help people. Come, there is more.”
He turned and walked to the stall furthest from the door. This one held the usual assortment of animal parts, but there were other items hidden under cloths behind the vendor. Jacob’s reaction to these ingredients would be his biggest challenge, and one that Zulu could not allow him to fail.
Jacob followed, trembling and gray, his eyes fixed on his shoes.
Bongani Zulu greeted the stall holder, Philani.
“This is my grandson.” He put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “I’m teaching him about the family business.”
“Good, good.” Philani’s voice was hoarse and he coughed out a lump of phlegm at the end of his sentence. He had one blind eye, a milky white orb that stared at nothing, while the other was black and darted around in its socket as he spoke.
“Will you show us your
muti
?” Zulu asked.
“Of course, Makulu.”
Philani held out a hand and Zulu slipped a hundred rand note into his palm. The note disappeared into a pocket and Philani lifted the cloth from a mound at his side.
“What the fuck?” Jacob stumbled backward, almost tripping over a pile of kudu horns.
“I need one tongue and three fingers,” Zulu said to Philani.
While the vendor prepared his purchase, Zulu turned to Jacob.
The boy’s face was drawn, his lips stretched tight over his teeth and tears ran from the corners of his eyes.
“You didn’t think this was all roots and leaves, did you?” Bongani Zulu asked.
“I…I don’t know…” Jacob stared at the small collection of
muti
on the plate in front of Philani. “Not this.”
“This is an important part of what we do, Son.”
“It’s evil! I can’t.” He turned and started walking away from the stall. Two men stepped out from the doorway, their arms folded over broad chests.
“It’s okay guys,” Zulu called over to them holding a hand up. “I’ve got this.”
Neither man moved. They wouldn’t let Jacob pass.
Zulu caught up to the boy and took his shoulders in a firm grasp. The boy had grown over the past year, his shoulders were almost level with Zulu’s, and they had a broadness to them that hinted at great strength. He couldn’t hope to restrain the boy physically. He would have to convince him that this was the right way, before the two guards did it for him.
Zulu pulled Jacob away from the door, to a clearing among the stalls that afforded them some privacy.
“Look, Son, I know this is difficult to accept, but you have to put your personal feelings behind you. You know these warlords in Nigeria and Congo? They throw people alive on a stack of burning tires. They mutilate people with machetes. And for what?
“By comparison, what we do, we make small suffering. But we use that suffering to help people. Suffering is the currency of our lives. We live in a world where, sometimes, a stranger will cut your lips off. Had you rather that be because you live in the wrong place? Or be because it will help someone to conceive a baby? Or make money for their family?
“You follow your friends and become a criminal, Son, you're no better than a warlord. You only make suffering. You become a
sangoma
. You turn suffering into something better. That is a high calling. That is what I do.”