Strong Medicine (7 page)
Authors: Angela Meadon
- Testimony of father, Mozambique,
#
Forty-eight hours had passed since I’d woken next to Lindsey. My heart had sharpened to a bright-hot knife that stabbed at me with every breath. Every moment that passed was another one in which my little girl was lost.
“I can’t just sit back and do nothing while we wait for the cops to find Lindsey.” I put the empty tea cup down on the kitchen table and ran my hands through my hair, pulling it tightly into a ponytail at the nape of my neck.
My eyes stung from lack of sleep. I’d spent the whole night tossing and turning in bed, tormenting myself by imagining what she might be going through. Was she tied up? Was she scared and hungry? Was she in the dark, calling my name, crying?
“I’m going to call John Robbie this morning,” I said. “Maybe he can help.”
“That’s a good idea,
liefie.
” Besta pulled a smoke out of the box on the table and offered me one. She struck a match, filling the air with Sulphur, and pulled on the smoke until the cherry glowed like a summer sunset. Dark rings under her eyes showed that she’d slept as much as I had. “He’s always helping people in tough situations. I’m sure he’ll be able to do something.”
I made myself another cup of tea and had a smoke while I rehearsed what I was going to say. I’d heard other people phone in to Talk Radio 702 when they had a crisis they couldn’t solve. I picked up my phone at quarter past seven and dialed the number for the radio station.
The doorbell rang while I was waiting for John Robbie. It was Busi, our once-a-week domestic worker. She came into the kitchen with a friendly smile on her round face, newly installed braids cascading over her shoulders, and froze.
Her eyes drifted over the discarded beer cans and heaps of cigarette stompies, the dirty dishes, none of it was unusual in our house. It was Besta’s puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks that made Busi’s smile disappear.
“What’s happened?” Busi asked. She hovered around my mother, waiting for an answer.
Besta shook her head and pointed at me. I was about to tell the whole country the story anyway, Busi might as well hear it from me.
Watching her face crinkle like crepe paper as I described what happened nearly made me start crying again. I held on tight to what little strength I had and recounted everything. I told the concerned radio host about Lindsey’s plans on Monday, about the netball game and route she walked home every single day without incident. I told him about the school bag in the veld, and the dogs, and the detectives’ crippling case load.
A tiny flame of hope danced in my chest when I hung up the phone. Now everyone who listened to 702 knew what had happened to Lindsey. If anyone had any information they would surely come forward.
By lunchtime our kitchen had transformed into a staging area for the search for Lindsey.
Stacks of flyers lay on the counters, Lindsey’s smiling face beaming up from them. It was a photo from the last netball match her team had won. She was wearing her school sports uniform, the blue-and-white chequered skirt pleated just above her skinny knees, her hair trying desperately to escape the pony tail she’d tied it into. I looked away, blinked tears out of my eyes.
Every few minutes a volunteer would knock on our door, introduce themselves, and leave with a handful of flyers.
Busi sat at the table. She was a volunteer of a different caliber, she’d known Lindsey since we’d moved into my mother’s house, taken care of her when she was sick and I had to go to work. Busi was more a part of the family than Johan or Sue.
“You’ve already spoken to all of Lindsey’s friends?” Busi brushed a stray braid behind her ear as she spoke. It flopped over her forehead again almost immediately, and she shuffled it back into line.
“I phoned them on Monday evening, as soon as I realized Lindsey was missing.”
“Okay,” Busi said. “Give me a list of names and numbers and I’ll follow up with everybody. She might have gone to one of them since you called.”
The doorbell rang again and I disbursed another batch of flyers to the volunteer standing there, a tall black man with large lips and greying hair. He smiled at me, imparted some fleeting words of comfort and left.
“What about search parties?” Busi asked.
“We took some police dogs out to the
veld
on Third Avenue yesterday,” I said as I sat back down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. “They found her school bag but nothing else.”
“Okay,” Busi said. “We’ll start taking names of volunteers and form search parties. We need to look through all the open places, empty buildings, anything isolated nearby.”
“Thank you so much.” I forced a smile that had no hope of reaching my red, bruised eyes. “You have been amazing. You’ve given me so much strength.”
“Don’t mention it,” Busi said. “I have seen many women lose their children. I know the pain you are going through. There’s one other thing I think we should do.”
Something about the way Busi rubbed her chubby hands together when she spoke, like she was wringing out a wet towel, made me nervous. Whatever she was going to suggest, I didn’t expect to like the idea.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Maybe you should speak to a
sangoma
?” Busi said.
“A witchdoctor?” My voice rose to a high-pitched squeak at the end of the word and Besta made the sign of the cross over her chest.
“That’s Satanism,” Besta said. “You don’t want to get mixed up with it.”
Busi crossed her arms across her ample bosom and leaned back in her chair. “It’s not satanic. It’s part of our culture. There are lots of good
sangomas
; they can help you.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
Besta relaxed visibly at my words. We weren’t the most pious family at our church, but Besta went every Sunday. Or, she had until Johan moved in. Now they were usually too hungover.
“I’ve never done anything like that. And I don’t believe in spirits and things anyway.”
“It’s up to you,” Busi said. “But our ancestors are powerful. They can see things we cannot.”
“I don’t know.” I tapped a head of cigarette ash into the empty beer can in front of me. “I’ve seen some of the things those guys do on the TV, and I don’t think they can really help me. It’s mostly clever tricks and psychology anyway. They listen to what you have to say, make a show with bones and shells, and tell you what you want to hear. They don’t have to get it right, because you’ll forget or blame yourself if it doesn’t work. They’re just con men.”
“You can say that,” Busi said. “But you don’t know the power they have. The spirits of our ancestors talk to them and give them answers. You think about it. Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Sure.” I nodded, but I knew it was a step too far. I wouldn’t let some con man take my money so that he could tell me stories.
Inmate Number: 7865649
Bongani Zulu
13 August 2005
CMAX Prison, Pretoria
Detective Tshabalala (DT): Tell us about the first time you met Makulu.
Bongani Zulu (BZ): I was a young man. Maybe seventeen years old. I’d been in the
shebeen
with my friends, drinking beer. I went outside to piss and I met a man there. We talked and I told him I needed money. He said he could give me money but I’d have to do something for him.
DT: Did you recognize him? Had you seen him before?
BZ: No, I didn’t recognize him. But It was like that back then, you know, when the cops would arrest you for having the wrong colour skin. Men would spend years away from home, working on the mines or in the prison.
DT: What did he want you to do?
BZ: I thought he’d want me to be his wife, but he said he needed me to get something for him.
DT: What did he want you to get for him?
BZ: He told me he wanted the parts from a child, this high. He said he would give me R200 if I brought them to him. He said I must avoid killing, because the parts should come from a living person.
DT: What parts did he want you to get him?
BZ: He wanted the eyes and the fingers.
DT: Why should the parts come from a living person?
BZ: Hai! You know why!
DT: I want to hear you say it.
BZ: It makes the
muti
stronger. When they scream.
DT: Did you do it? Did you get the parts?
BZ: I didn’t want to. I told my friends what the man said and they went to him. He said he would give us all money if we brought him the parts he wanted.
The next morning we were down by the river, when three girls came to wash. They were the right size. My friends scared two of them away and we caught the other one. They hit her and she fought with us. Then they gave me a knife and held her to the floor.
The screams were so loud.
Soon we heard men from the village coming down the path and we ran away with the fingers, but we didn’t have the eyes. The man wouldn’t pay us.
“Tell me what happened,” he said before taking a small sip of the honey-smooth liquid.
“I was sitting outside school with my friends and the teacher came out.” Jacob sat on the other side of the large oak table, his gaze fixed on his shoes, shoulders slumped, hands tucked beneath his legs. Evelyn sat next to him, snotty tissues clasped between her fingers, tears streaking her cheeks.
“He shouted at us for being there too late, told us we must go home. Some of the guys started shouting back, and then somebody threw a plastic bottle at him.”
The boy’s body said he felt guilty about his actions, but his voice was strong and proud. The old man took another sip of his drink and motioned for his grandson to continue.
“The teacher got angrier, he threatened to beat us, but he was alone and it was almost dark. One of the guys punched him and he fell down. Then the others started hitting him and kicking him. A car came up the road and we ran away.”
“Did you strike the teacher, Jacob?”
“No, Tata. I was there but I didn’t hit him.”
“Then why did you have blood on your shoes?” Evelyn asked.
“Maybe from when I was running?” Jacob glanced at his mother, barely lifting his head as he did.
The old man squinted his eyes even further. The boy’s words did not carry the sound of truth in them.
He didn’t like being lied to, but he didn’t want to embarrass his daughter by calling her son a liar. She’d brought him here to try and help with his truancy and fighting, but what can an old man do to stop a boy from hanging around the wrong type of children?
“Evelyn, please will you go to the kitchen and see how dinner is coming along?” the old man said.
“Yes, Tata.” Evelyn stood and curtsied before leaving the room with a wistful backward glance at her son.
“Close the door on your way,” the old man called after her.
With the door closed, they wouldn’t be interrupted. the old man drank the last of his whiskey and placed the tumbler carefully on the leather coaster on his desk.
“This isn’t the first time your mother has brought you to me,” he said.
Jacob’s shoulders squared and he straightened his back, less apologetic now that Evelyn had left.
“I have to show my friends that I am a man, Tata. You must know how that is?”
“Hmm, when I was a boy, we would go to the mountains for circumcision. All the boys who came back were men. Sometimes we would challenge each other to stick fights, but we never attacked our elders.”
“We can’t do that in the city, Tata. How do I show my friends that I am a man?”
“You show them by your actions, Jacob!” the old man pushed his chair away from the table and stood on trembling knees. “You show them by behaving like a man. You show courage, compassion, and sacrifice.”
“Yes, Tata.”
Again, Jacob’s words and his feelings didn’t match up. the old man could see it in the cast of his mouth. The way he held his lips slightly pursed and up-turned on the left side.
The boy didn’t have a strong role-model in his life. His father had left when Jacob was four years old. Twelve years was a long time to live with your mother and two sisters. the old man had tried to steer the boy, to teach him how to be the man of the house. It was clear to him, now, that he had failed his grandson.
He would have to set this right. It was his responsibility as the head of the family. And it was time he started training someone anyway. Every day his body grew a little weaker, his bones couldn’t hold him up straight enough anymore. Maybe this was the perfect opportunity.
“Jacob, do you remember a few months ago you asked me to teach you how to be a
sangoma
?”
Jacob’s eyes brightened.
“Yes, Tata.”
“Do you want me to start teaching you now?”
Jacob nodded his head vigorously and a huge grin spread across his face. The old man nodded. He wasn’t as excited as the boy, but it felt like the right decision to him. It was better than leaving him to the influence of his so-called friends.
“Before we start, you must promise me that you will never tell anyone about what I teach you. You must promise that you will finish your training. There is no turning around. Once we start we have to go all the way.”
“I promise, Tata. I will learn everything you teach me, I won’t tell anybody.”
“There’s something else.” the old man walked around to Jacob’s side of the table and sat on the edge of the warm oak. “Some of the things I will teach you are considered…evil by some people. But everything we do is to help someone. Everything. You must always remember that Jacob.”
“What kinds of things, Tata?”
Jacob’s eyes shone with the beginnings of tears. Were they tears of gratitude or fear? The old man couldn’t tell. He hoped they were not a sign of weakness in the boy.
“You will understand in time. Just remember that everything we do is for the greater good. I bring balance to the luck in the world. To improve one person’s luck, you must take some away from another person.”
“I don’t understand, Tata.”
Jacob wound his hands in his shirt, his curiosity and bravado replaced by the inching finger of doubt and fear.
“You will, my child, you will. I will show you everything. Now, let’s go have dinner and tell your mother.”