This Thing Called the Future (17 page)

Zi takes this all in. Then she announces, “If you're not married, then I don't want Baba's last name. I'm not Zi Zulu anymore.”

“If you're not Zi Zulu, who are you then?” Mama asks.

“I'm just Zi,” she says.

Mama teases her. “Should we start calling you ‘Just Zi'?”

Zi smiles and takes Mama's hand. “What's your last name, Mama?”

“Mahlasela, Just Zi.”

“Why can't I be Zi Mahlasela?”

“Your
baba
loves you very much, Just Zi,” Mama says. “And your sister's last name is Zulu, isn't it, Khosi? Don't you want to share your sister's last name? Don't you want to be Khosi and Zi Zulu, together always?”

Zi nods.

“Besides,” Mama says, “Zi Zulu is a much better name than Zi Mahlasela!”

“Zi Zulu sounds like a rock star,” I add.

“I could be famous?” she asks, squirming in the seat next to us.

Mama and I smile over her head.

Baba meets us at the taxi rank when we arrive. He is shocked to see Mama so changed. “Elizabeth, you're sick,” he says.

I wish I could have warned him, but how was I supposed to tell him that Mama looks like she is dying of the disease of these days without asking whether he is also sick with this thing?

Baba starts to speak, questions spilling off his tongue, but Mama shushes him. “Can we talk about it later?”

“No, you look terrible,” he says. “I want to know what's going on
now
now.”

As we walk home, Zi and I run ahead, but I can hear the two of them arguing behind us. Mama looks so tired, her brown skin turning to ashes.

Gogo Zulu stares at Mama, hard and deep. “Come in, come in and sit down,” she fusses. “You look terribly tired after your long trip, Elizabeth.”

“
Impela, ngikhathele kakhulu
,” Mama says, sinking down into the sofa, her eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. “Thank you, Mama.”

“Do you feel well?”

“Well enough,” Mama says.

Zi and I sit next to Mama on the sofa, Zi cuddling against Mama and staring at Baba, suddenly shy.

“Zinhle, have you forgotten your own
baba
?” Baba asks her.

Zi shakes her head but she scoots even closer to Mama.

Baba's house is just like ours. It's small and square, with four rooms. Though Baba has no money, his brothers have been able to help his mother quite a lot and her house is nicer than ours. Gogo Zulu likes her things very nice, very proper, all lace and silk and white. She's embroidered dozens of stiff white doilies, which cover everything in the house—the coffee table; the back of the sofa; the wardrobe where she keeps her clothes.

There are even two large stiff doilies on top of the television. Zi accidentally knocks one down when she turns it on so we can watch
Generations
. She looks up—
oops
—until Baba starts to laugh.

“You'll grow up to be just like me,” Baba says. “I always knock everything down too. I'm like a great big lumbering elephant in your grandmother's tiny house.”

Whenever we come to town, Gogo Zulu cooks a feast. She
braais
chicken
and
beef. She cooks pumpkin, beans, rice. She's even made
utshwala
, which she brings out in a pot for Baba to drink. He lets me taste it. It tastes sour and grainy and yeasty and it leaves a small layer of foam on my upper lip.

“Albert,” Mama says, “she's only fourteen.” She reaches out to wipe the foam off my upper lip.

“I'll be fifteen in some few months,” I say.

“Izzit?” she says and then raises a new objection. “Girls are not supposed to drink
utshwala
.”

“Mama, you're always telling me I can do whatever the boys do, if I want it badly enough,” I point out.

Baba jumps in on my side. “Elizabeth, are you really telling your daughter that she's not allowed to do something the boys do all the time?”

Then everybody laughs—Mama, Baba, even Zi who doesn't know why she's laughing.

I've heard Mama and Baba fighting about this. He thinks we should be like all the other girls. He's worried that we will never get married if she fills us with ideas that are not the Zulu way.

Baba starts telling Mama about his new plan to make money. He's going to open a small stand in the Durban market and make a business selling little things, whatever he can find or buy for cheap and then sell for a small profit. “Maybe I can sell herbs,” he says, getting excited now. There's almost a look of glee in his face. “I'll open a Zulu chemist! Everybody needs medicine these days.”

Mama sighs. Baba is always making a plan but he never follows through. “Do you know how many people sell herbs in that market?”

He nods. “It's the biggest herbal market in all of Africa.”

“And you think you'll make money doing something everybody is doing?” Mama scoffs.

There's a knock on the open door. A pretty young woman stands just outside, looking in. She's dressed in her Sunday best, and she stares at all of us, curious, and maybe a little bit hostile.

“One moment, one moment,” Baba says, excusing himself and going outside. He closes the door behind him.

I can't help turning to look at the two of them standing out in the yard together. She looks excited, raising her arms, talking fast. Baba grabs her arm and lowers it, and now he is the one talking fast. I try hard to hear but only scattered words come through the closed door—
family
and
birthday
and
I'm sorry.

She shakes her head and stares at the dirt. Baba touches her shoulder and she looks up at him then, face full of need and want and vulnerability. Just seeing that makes my stomach hurt.

At last, Baba comes back inside. “Sorry for the distraction,” he says.

“Who was that, Albert?” Mama asks. Her face looks like a little girl's for just a minute.

“Just a neighbor with a small problem,” Baba says. “I said I would help her later, when my family has left.”

Mama looks like she has more questions, but Gogo Zulu nods at me. “Khosi,” she says, indicating I should bring out the food.

In the kitchen, I dish food out onto plates. Then I bring it out on trays, kneeling before each person as I offer them a plate. Baba is served first because he is a man, Gogo second because she is the oldest woman, and then Mama. Last, I bring food for Zi and myself. We sit on the floor because there are not enough chairs for all of us.

We bow our heads and Baba says grace. Then we start to eat. Zi is excited about all the good food we can't normally afford.

Mama pushes her food around on the plate. She eats hardly anything. And when Gogo Zulu asks her why she is not eating, she says, “
Ngisuthi
.” I'm full.

Perhaps that would have been enough of an explanation, but when her plate clatters to the floor, food scattering to all four corners of the room, I hold my breath. She has revealed her weakness more than even her thin body can: she couldn't even hold onto the plate!

Baba puts his own plate down. His movement is slow, deliberate. “Girls, go into the kitchen,” he says. “I must talk with your mother.”

Gogo Zulu stands up and motions for us to follow her into the kitchen. So we do. And then we sit there, listening to complete silence in the other room.
Why aren't they talking?

“Why aren't they—” I start to ask but Gogo Zulu interrupts with a harsh, “
Hush now.
”

“What's wrong, Khosi?” Zi's hand finds mine. “Is Mama okay?”

And then I grow mad. If only they would talk! “Let's sing, hey?” I say, breaking into a rendition of “
Senzenina
, What Have We Done?” When Zi and Gogo join in, I finally hear Mama and Baba talking in the other room, in hushed voices.

 

We finish singing and in the sudden silence, Baba starts to shout, “Are you accusing me?”

Zi looks at me, scared, so I start singing “
Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika,
” God bless Africa, to keep her occupied. But I try to overhear what they're saying in the other room.

Mama, with a begging voice: “No, I'm not accusing you. But I am telling you that there is no other way it could have happened.”

Baba: “And what are you going to do about it?”

Mama: “
Angaz
'. I really don't know. What do you think I should do about it?”

“Have you told our daughters?”

“No. What should I tell them, Albert? Should I tell them that you, also, are sick with this thing?”

Silence from Baba. And suddenly I realize something: this is his fault. He's the one who made her ill,
he's
the one who gave her HIV, which means he must be going with other women, maybe even young girls. Young girls like me. Maybe he's somebody's sugar daddy. Who knows, maybe that young woman in the yard is one of his girlfriends?

“I'm taking medicine,” Mama says. “Albert, you should go find out and perhaps you can slow this thing down before it eats you up.” She starts to cry, which is exactly what I feel like doing.

“What are they talking about, Khosi?” Zi asks.

“
Hush
, Zi,” Gogo says, at the same time that I say, “Mama's really sick.”

Zi starts wailing. It sounds like somebody is dying.

“
Shhh
, it's alright, Zi,” I murmur, grabbing her and pulling her into my arms. Her wailing subsides into muffled sobs.

“Khosi, help me,” Gogo Zulu says. She goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of Coca-Cola. She opens the cupboard and reveals a birthday cake.

We light six candles. I take the cake and she takes the Coca-Cola and Zi and I follow her as she enters the sitting room, where Mama and Baba are sitting in grim silence now.

A quick glance at them—angry, sad, alone.

I reach out my hand to take Mama's. Zi takes her other hand. Baba joins us and we sing
Happy Birthday
to Zi.

Zi is so excited to see her presents—a doll, some pretty things to use in her hair, candy. She starts clapping her hands and it seems we forget all about Baba and Mama's fight.

But I can't forget. Even as we sing, I look around at this circle, at the five of us holding hands, Mama's hand now in Baba's, the way it
should
be all the time. Then the image of Mama and Baba, holding hands and singing, begins to dissolve. It wavers in the air in front of me, breaking up into a million pieces, until suddenly their image has disappeared inside the layer of salt filming over my eyes and making me blind.

When we come back from Durban, Mama goes straight to bed and doesn't get up for several days.

Finally, something is so wrong, we all have to acknowledge it. Even Zi knows now. But when she whispers, “What's wrong with Mama?,” I shake my head.

Inkosikazi Dudu's anger seems to have subsided. She is no longer always in her front yard, staring at our house and shouting accusations when she sees one of us.

But you lose one problem only to gain another. The drunk man is everywhere. Zi and I start finding creative ways to avoid him when we arrive home from school. That means taking a different
khumbi
, circling back, sneaking into our gate through the back or the front, depending on where we see him. Most days, Little Man rides with us, and then we can go the normal way. The drunk man leaves me alone if he's with us.

I don't want to burden Mama and Gogo so I make Zi promise she'll keep everything secret. It's not fair to Zi but what else can I do?

One day, riding back with Little Man, we pass a group of people gathered around something in the middle of the street. The three of us walk over to look and there's a chameleon right in the middle of the road, colored brown, the exact color of the dust that surrounds it. A man is poking at it with a stick, and a few other men are gathering large rocks and stones in a pile.

“What's going on?” I ask a woman standing next to me, her baby tied around her back with a bright blue and red blanket.

“They're going to kill it,” she says.

This is one thing Zi doesn't need to see. “Come on, let's go,” I say.

“Why are they going to kill it?” Zi asks as we walk away, kicking up dust with her feet.

I look down at her, realizing for the first time in weeks how neglected she looks. Her black eyes are huge in her face, which suddenly seems hollow, like she isn't eating enough. And her hair, which Mama had fixed last month, is starting to get ratty again. I reach out and put my arm around her shoulders, curling my fingers around to smooth it, but she shrugs me off.

“They're going to kill it because Zulus hate chameleons,” I say.

“Why?” Zi looks surprised.

We pass a
sangoma's
apprentice, wrapped in a bright red cloth, her face smeared with white paste. She keeps her head down, avoiding our gaze, since during her training, she's supposed to keep herself pure, separate from other people.

“Hasn't Gogo ever told you that old folk tale about how God commanded Chameleon to tell the people they would live forever? And because the Chameleon was so slow, God got mad and sent the Lizard to tell the people they would die. And that's why people die—because the Chameleon didn't run fast enough to tell the people God's first message.”

“My
gogo
has told me that story, too.” Little Man meets my eyes over Zi's head and we smile at each other.