When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (20 page)

‘They say it’s not true,’ Auntie Rachel said to him quietly as she slowed the Hi-Ace and eased it over the cattle-grid at the farm’s gate. ‘It’s just a
myth.’

‘Hm?’ Pulled from his thoughts, Benedict had no idea what she was talking about.

‘Scorpions don’t really commit suicide. You mustn’t be upset, hey?’

Benedict gave her a smile to show her that he was far from upset. He knew the spider-girl’s name now, and he turned it over and over in his mind like a smooth pebble in his hand.

Nomsa.

Later that afternoon, Benedict made his way down past the Mazibukos’ house towards the dairy. Mrs Levine was busy in the garden, pulling some plants out of the
flowerbeds.

‘Hi there, Bennie,’ she called, her eyes shining brightly.

‘Hello, Mrs Levine. What are you doing?’

‘Just getting rid of these.’ She pulled so hard on a plant that when it finally let go of the ground it happened so suddenly that she landed on her buttocks on the grass.
‘
Eina
, man!’

The shock of it made Benedict want to laugh, but when he saw tears in Mrs Levine’s eyes, he went and sat next to her, asking if she was okay.

She nodded, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from the pocket of her gardening apron, suddenly seeming to have no energy left.

Benedict looked at the plants she had pulled out. ‘Are they weeds?’

She smiled. ‘In a way. They were all flowers at my wedding. I don’t want to see them.’

‘Um...’ Benedict tried to think of a polite way to ask, but he couldn’t. He asked anyway. ‘Mrs Levine, you do know that this isn’t
your
garden?’

Her smile grew wider. ‘
Ja.
I’m allowed in the garden, as long as I don’t go near the dairy.’

Benedict wasn’t sure what to say next. He looked at the plants again. ‘I’m sorry about you and Mr Levine.’

She let out one of the longest sighs he had ever heard in his life. ‘
Ja.
I thought it would last forever, hey. Every bride does, I suppose.’ She gestured towards the plants
that lay wilting on the grass. ‘When we danced in that hall, with those flowers everywhere... man, that was the happiest day of my life!’

Benedict smiled with her. ‘How did you meet Mr Levine?’ Maybe Mr Levine had seen her rescuing a scorpion or a spider.

Mrs Levine lent back so that she was lying on the grass, and propping both hands behind her head, she spoke as if she was having some kind of a dream. ‘I was working at the hospital.
Solly’s sister had had a premature baby there.’ Benedict didn’t know what
premature
meant, but he didn’t want to interrupt. ‘The baby didn’t know how to
suck.’

Now he
had
to interrupt. What kind of baby doesn’t know how to suck? It was what babies
did.
But Mrs Levine explained that no, a baby can be born too early, before the
instinct to suck is there. Benedict knew about instincts; all animals had them.

Anyway, Mrs Levine was qualified to teach babies to suck, and she taught Mr Levine’s sister’s baby. Mr Levine came to the hospital every day to see his sister, and then when his
sister went home but her baby stayed, he came every day to see the baby. When the baby went home, Mr Levine still came to the hospital every day, on account of falling in love with Mrs Levine.

‘He treated me like royalty back then, Bennie.
Royalty!
I was crazy about him, gave up everything when we married.’ Mrs Levine sat up. ‘Career, the lot. Went and lived
on his farm, gave him two beautiful, wonderful kids. Rachel came here to marry Enock, Adam moved to Australia so he didn’t have to fight in the army for apartheid.’ Her face suddenly
changed, and so did her voice, like she had woken from the lovely dream she was in. ‘And still I stayed on the farm with Solly, spending my life doing his bloody accounts.’ She got to
her feet, bending to gather up the plants she’d pulled up. ‘Then he only goes and runs off with some little tart who—’

‘
Mom!
’ Auntie Rachel was suddenly behind them. ‘
Please!
’

Mrs Levine busied herself with picking up the rest of the wilting plants, ignoring her daughter’s hard stare.

Auntie Rachel helped Benedict to his feet and gave him a small squeeze. ‘Can you find something else to do while I talk to my mom?’

He continued on his way down the hill, past the dairy where he could hear the cows being milked, and where he could hear a dog barking and Petros coughing. He wanted to go and talk to Petros, to
see how he was and to ask him again about the mines and the gold, but talking to Mrs Levine had already delayed him, and he didn’t want to miss Baba coming home.

As he carried on down the driveway, he thought about Mr Levine running away with a tart. Was that like the queen of hearts baking some tarts and then somebody running away with them? Who was it
who ran away with them? The king of hearts? He couldn’t remember. There was a dish that ran away with something. What was it? A spoon? Something like that. Anyway, Auntie Rachel sometimes
made little tarts called Bakewell, which were pastry spread with jam and then filled with cake, with a thin layer of white icing on top. They were okay, but really, cake didn’t need pastry
and there should be thick butter icing on top in a nice colour.

He came to a halt at the gate, where he spent a long time looking at the cattle-grid.

No.

He couldn’t bring himself to cross it and run all the way up to the edge of the highway to meet Baba’s white Corolla, no matter how badly he wanted to do just that. He knew that it
was silly to imagine that he was small enough to fall through the gaps between the strips of metal.

But still.

When he had been much smaller, Grace had sat with him and helped him to read a story about three goats called Billy. They had to get across a bridge without being eaten by a big, ugly monster
that lived underneath and looked very scary in the pictures. Benedict knew that the monster wasn’t real, it was just pretend, and there was no monster waiting to eat him under the cattle-grid
or under the narrow bridge leading to the pump in the middle of the dam. Anyway, even if there
was
a monster – which there wasn’t – he knew from the story of the goats how
to escape being eaten. The trick was to tell the monster that he was very small – which he wasn’t – and that there was somebody bigger coming along who would be a bigger meal.

Of course, that would only work if Baba really was coming along behind him. Baba was big enough to scare away any monsters, even the ones that were real and not just pretend. There had been
three goats, and the first two had both said that somebody bigger was coming. But there were only two Tungarazas, on account of Benedict’s first baba being late.

Then Benedict breathed in sharply. What if the three goats weren’t from three generations? What if they were three brothers? Okay, it would be silly for all three brothers to have the same
name, but maybe that was normal in goats. Daniel, his smallest brother, would cross the bridge first. Daniel was a year older than Moses, but he was smaller on account of having the same sort of
shape as Faith, little and solid. Then Moses would cross, and both of them would rely on their biggest brother coming up behind them to save them.

Eh!

He would have to be big enough to save them!

Taking a deep breath, he stretched out his right foot and rested it lightly on the metal bar of the grid that was closest to him. At once that leg felt like he had been sitting on it badly for
too long and it had gone to sleep. That same feeling flooded up his whole body, and he struggled to breathe as he felt himself beginning to fall down, down, down between that bar and the next.

Dizzy with fright, he sat down hard on the ground and scooted away from the grid on his buttocks, his shallow breaths coming quickly. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest the same way
it had when he had run all the way from the dam with his duck in his arms, calling to Uncle Enock.

Blinking back tears, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. How he wished he had the little brown bottle of rescue medicine in his pocket! It had been after he had taken his duck to Uncle
Enock that Auntie Rachel had given him some drops of it for the first time. He really could do with a few drops now! But all he had was his breathing, and he had to make do with that.

There had been no monster coming for him. No, he was sure of that. Just the feeling of sliding down into a dark place where he would be lost forever. Unnoticed. Forgotten.

He forced himself to look over at the grid. The spaces between were really so small! But he did not stand up until Baba’s white Corolla was right next to him and Baba was asking him what
he was doing there. He climbed in beside Baba and said he’d been waiting to tell him the good news about Mama, that she’d passed her test.

Her test had been the day before in the afternoon, so it had been Titi alone who had greeted them at home after school, and Titi alone who had listened to their stories about their school day as
they had their fruit and tea.

When Moses and Daniel had finished their homework, they had played in the garden, not wanting to go down to the other house in case they missed Mama coming home with Henry, and the same worry
had kept Benedict and his sisters at the dining table with their books much longer than they needed to be there.

The hooting from the Quick Impact Corolla all the way up the long driveway had told the whole entire compound what the Tungaraza household had been waiting to hear: Mama had passed!

‘As easy as cutting a slice of cake!’ Mama had declared with a big smile as all of them had hugged her. ‘Okay, maybe not a sponge cake. A heavy cake thick with dried
fruit.’

‘And nuts, too!’ Henry had declared happily, laughing as he grabbed Titi and twirled her around in a dance. ‘Let us not forget that three-point turn with its five points,
nè?’ Mama laughed. ‘Or that cone that will never again be able to stand straight!’

Mama had flopped down on one of the couches with a loud
eh
and kicked off her smart shoes. Benedict had sat down next to her.

‘We’re all proud of you, Mama!’

Mama had put an arm around him. ‘I’m proud of me, too, my boy. I’m proud of me, too.’ Then she had pulled him closer and planted a kiss on his forehead.

It was Benedict’s idea that Mama could learn driving, and it was Benedict who had brought her Henry. Tucked under Mama’s arm then, he had felt proud of himself, too. But he never
said.

Now, in Baba’s Corolla, he said, ‘She got her licence, Baba!’ His voice sounded like he didn’t have much breath inside him. Part of that was still about the cattle-grid,
but more and more of it was about how excited he was to see Baba.

‘That is very good.’ Baba seemed a little sad.

‘Mama and Titi are cooking a special supper to welcome you home.’

‘That is very good.’

As they waited for the cows to finish crossing the driveway in front of them, Benedict wondered why Baba wasn’t more pleased. Perhaps he was tired. The drive from Johannesburg to Mbabane
was long, and perhaps Baba hadn’t slept so well in the hotel, away from Mama.

Petros walked with the cows from the milking shed to their sleeping shed, giving Benedict a small wave. When Benedict returned it without thinking before he remembered he wasn’t supposed
to know Petros, Baba didn’t even notice. His mind seemed very far away.

‘Was the conference good, Baba?’

Baba nodded. ‘Very good.’

‘Did people come from Tanzania?’

‘Yes. They brought me—’ Baba clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as the last cow stopped right in front of the Corolla and Petros and Krishna came back to move it
on. Then the way was clear and they headed up towards the house.

‘They brought you what, Baba?’

‘Hm?’ Baba seemed to have forgotten that he was in the middle of a sentence. ‘Oh. Yes. News from home.’ He sighed. ‘They brought me news from home.’

As they tucked in to their supper of spicy chicken pieces with mashed potatoes, boiled gem squash and spinach, Baba smacked his lips together and said how delicious it was, and
how happy he was to be back with his family, more especially his beautiful and brilliant wife. Mama smiled and patted her hair, and said how happy she was to have her husband home and how proud of
him she was for having spoken at a panAfrican conference.

But Mama was moving her food around on her plate rather than eating it, and Benedict knew that something was wrong.

She had been fine when Baba had arrived, proudly showing him her driving licence, telling him all about the test and reminding him how clever he had been to have the idea that she should learn
to drive. But then Baba had led her into their bedroom and closed the door, and whenever the other children’s noise had died down and Titi’s clattering and splashing in the kitchen had
stopped for a moment, Benedict had heard that they were talking in hushed voices.

At the end of the meal, when Mama brought in her dark chocolate cake with the yellow shape of Africa on it glittering with Dusting Powder (Gold), Baba said how lovely it was. As he sliced into
it, he joked about what a crime it was to be cutting Africa up into random pieces as the colonials had done in the past, and Mama laughed, but her laugh was too big for Baba’s joke and her
eyes shone a little too brightly.

Mama and Baba both took tiny pieces, and while Baba managed to finish his piece in between telling them all how powerful Africa could be if African countries would unite and trade with one
another rather than with the West, Mama ate little more than a mouthful before quietly dividing her piece up between Moses and Daniel.

The children moved to the couches to watch TV, Benedict went to his cushion next to the bookshelf, and with Titi washing up in the kitchen, Mama and Baba were alone at the table.

They were silent.

Half-heartedly, Benedict looked for Krishna in one of the encyclopaedias. What was it that Mama and Baba weren’t talking about that was stopping them from talking about anything else? They
had talked about it behind their bedroom door, so it was obviously something they didn’t want the children to hear.