When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (25 page)

Then a new thought rushed into his head, bringing with it stories from the
Times of Swaziland
, stories that Mama and Baba talked about at the far end of the dining table, stories that
pressed against the ache and made him sit up quickly.

Eh!

Could it...? Could she...?

No. Not seriously.

But still.

Mama was watching a film on TV, and when he showed her the letter and told her about Nomsa, her face turned from its lovely deep brown to grey. With Baba away and Titi out with Henry, Mama had
no choice but to phone Auntie Rachel, even though it was late, to ask if Lungi or Mavis could come and sit in the Tungarazas’ house.

It was Mavis who came, straight from her bed with one side of her hair sticking up in the air and a blanket of brightly-coloured squares outlined in black wrapped around her. With her was Uncle
Enock, taking the keys to the red Microbus from Mama’s shaky hand and telling her that he wasn’t going to let her drive in the night to a part of Mbabane without any lights, more
especially with such a new licence.

They went in Uncle Enock’s bakkie, Benedict sitting between him and Mama, directing him as best he could from the little that Nomsa had said about where she lived. They went very fast,
Mama telling Uncle Enock she had lost count of the number of stories in the
Times of Swaziland
about people suiciding themselves by swallowing weevil tablets, and Uncle Enock telling her, in
between shouting at vehicles, that, yes, it was what Olga’s mother had done.

Once they were in the right part of Mbabane, where the houses weren’t very nice and many were more like shacks, somebody told them exactly where to go, and they found Nomsa living alone
with a mother who couldn’t get out of her bed on account of being too sick to do anything for herself. She could barely open her eyes to look at the visitors in the night who were there with
their torches, hugging her daughter. Benedict had never seen anybody so thin in his whole entire life.

Nomsa said it would be too painful for her mother to try sitting up, she needed to be lying down. It took no strength at all for Uncle Enock to pick her up and lay her down gently in the back of
his bakkie, but it was another matter entirely getting Mama in there.

‘Rather sit inside, Angel.’

But Mama insisted. ‘It is not a child’s job to comfort the sick, Enock. No, let the children sit inside with you.’

Nomsa brought a chair from the house, a neighbour managed to find a low stool, and together the neighbour and Uncle Enock got Mama from the stool onto the chair and then into the flatbed of the
bakkie, where she settled herself next to Nomsa’s mother, straightening her blanket and holding her hand. Benedict was glad that Mama wasn’t wearing one of her smart, tight skirts that
would have made getting her in there so much more difficult, but he felt bad for her, knowing that she must feel ashamed for having come out wrapped in a
kanga
and with her flat house
sandals on her feet.

With Nomsa’s mother admitted at the government hospital, they headed back down the Malagwane Hill, Mama in the front this time with Benedict half on her lap and Nomsa between the two
grown-ups, the small bag of her things in the back of the bakkie. Uncle Enock had told her that she would stay with the Mazibukos until her mother was well again.

Benedict was sure that everybody in the bakkie knew that Nomsa’s mother was never going to come home from the hospital, but nobody said. His own first baba had taken his first mama to stay
in the hospital in Mwanza until she was well again, but she was never well again, and she had never come home. It was easy to become late in a hospital, even if the hospital was nice like this one,
where the nurse had given Nomsa’s mother a mattress on the floor instead of making her lie head to toe in the same bed as a woman she didn’t know.

Uncle Enock said there weren’t enough nurses on account of many of them going to England to do the same job for more money, but he was sure that the few who remained would do their very
best for Nomsa’s mother.

Benedict wasn’t happy now that Nomsa was at the other house. Never mind all the business about her being his girlfriend, he didn’t even want her as a friend. He had thought he had
found a girl who was very like him, a girl who loved all of God’s creatures, even the ones that were poisonous or dangerous. But instead she was just a girl who was looking for something to
make her late.

But as for Benedict’s world tipping over, that was all just the beginning.

Middle

Mama was going to have a baby. Titi heard it from Mavis, who had heard Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock talking about it.

Benedict didn’t know if Mama thought it was a blessing or trouble, but he knew for sure it was trouble for him. Okay, it can’t be nice to live by yourself with just one parent, like
Nomsa. But he already had two big sisters and two little brothers. Wasn’t that enough? Did Mama and Baba want their house to become like the Mazibukos’, full of children and noise?

Uh-uh-uh.

And what about money? Baba was going to have to be a consultant for ever. He could never go back to his old job at the university in Dar, not with another mouth to feed. He would never be able
to retire, and all the Tungaraza children were going to keep moving to one country after another, wherever Baba got a job with lots of money, on account of Mama and Baba wanting the family always
to be together.

There was going to be a long string of first days at new schools, an endless big effort to fit in and belong, and there would be more and more struggles between wanting other children to like
him and not wanting to like them too much on account of having to say goodbye to them soon.

Benedict’s head hurt.

He looked at Mama, wondering when it was going to happen. She didn’t look any different. He wanted to ask her about it, but that would get Titi and Mavis into trouble for gossiping. And
him, too.

He worried and fretted about it until his head was pounding and he felt hotter than he should then suddenly cold and shivery, even though winter was over and the full heat of summer was baking
their house on the hill. At last he had to know.

‘Mama,’ he said, pushing his supper around on his plate and feeling sick at the thought of eating it, ‘when is our brother or sister coming?’

‘What?’ The piece of sweet potato that Mama had been about to put into her mouth fell from her fork, landing with a splat in the small heap of boiled blackjack leaves on her
plate.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Baba.

‘Everybody says we’re getting a new brother or sister.’

‘Who is everybody?’ Reaching into the neckline of her T-shirt for a tissue from her underwear, Mama dabbed at the bit of her supper that had splashed up onto her front.

‘Everybody.’ Benedict’s face was hot.

But Baba wanted to know exactly who, and Titi came to Benedict’s rescue, saying it was Mavis and Lungi. Then Mama and Baba looked at each other and Mama said it was time, and Baba
nodded.

Baba took a deep breath and cleared his throat. Mama covered his hand on the table with her own.

At the conference in Johannesburg, Baba told them, somebody from the university in Dar had brought him a letter that had been sent to him there by the principal of a school in Mwanza. The letter
told him that he had another grandchild, and it included a copy of the child’s birth certificate.

‘A girl,’ said Mama, sinking Benedict’s heart. ‘Josephine.’

‘Grace’s age,’ said Baba, sinking it further.

Josephine had been living with her mother, a secretary at the factory in Mwanza where Benedict’s first baba had been manager. But now her mother was very ill and had gone to the hospital
– Benedict knew from when his own first mama had gone to the hospital, exactly what that meant – and another family had taken Josephine in.

‘For the time being,’ said Baba.

‘She’ll come and live with us when her school year ends.’ It was only Mama’s mouth that smiled; her eyes looked tired.

Benedict felt very tired himself, very sick. He wanted to go and lie down, or maybe he needed the toilet, but when he stood up from his chair his legs couldn’t hold him and everything went
dark.

That was the last he remembered of the middle of his world tipping over.

End

It was malaria. Probably not a new malaria: they said you only got it down in the eastern part of Swaziland, though Benedict was sure he had seen the black-and-white spotted
mosquitoes that gave it to you in their house on the hill. This was probably old malaria visiting him again, which could happen on account of it sometimes never fully leaving your blood.

Lying in his bed, with Mama and Titi taking turns to drape a fresh damp cloth over his hot forehead and trying one after the other to tempt him with food that he didn’t want to eat, he
thought feverishly about what had happened.

First Nomsa. A girl.

Then Josephine. A girl.

Now malaria. Which you could only get from a female mosquito.

Girls? Uh-uh-uh.

It was days and days until he was well enough to get out of bed.

Lying on his side on the couch, staring at the TV, he felt much better, though not yet well enough to be at school. He hadn’t even been outside yet, and that was what he
missed the most. Mama knew that, and she had opened half of the glass sliding door onto the veranda so that he had plenty of fresh air as he lay there.

He didn’t have to be lying down, he was perfectly well enough to be sitting up, but the TV was boring him. It was on a news channel and he wasn’t allowed to change it. Mama would
have let him change it if it was just her, but it was Mama and five other ladies, ladies Mama was training now that the Ubuntu cakes business had started to do well, and the news channel was what
they all wanted to look at as they worked at the dining table. Benedict had no choice but to watch the same two aeroplanes getting an accident over and over again.

On his side, it looked a little different from the way it had looked when he was sitting up. Instead of flying into the sides of the tall buildings, the aeroplanes seemed to fall down from the
sky into buildings that were already lying down. Then the buildings scooted up to the left in a big cloud of smoke and dust. But what Mama and the ladies said was the same every time.

‘
America?
’

‘
Eish!
’

‘Ooh, nè?’

‘New
York?
’

‘Uh-uh-uh.’

Mama was teaching them decorating, and they were working on a cake to celebrate the life of a man who had worked for many years in the Bulembu asbestos mine at Havelock in the north. He had
spent a long time trying to help the miners to get money from the mining company in Britain because the asbestos had made them sick. He had been a hero in the community, and lots of people had
contributed so that his family could get a very beautiful cake to remember him.

The ladies were making a large copy of what the town of Havelock looked like in a photograph: a dark green mountainside beautifully decorated by the mineworkers’ compound of small homes in
pastel yellows, pinks, blues and greens. They were oohing and tutting about the aeroplanes getting the same accident again when Benedict heard a small thud on the glass of the sliding door.

Sitting up, he could see nothing unusual. Then the thud came again, and he got up and went out to the veranda to look for a small bird that might have got an accident by flying into the glass in
the same way that the aeroplanes on the news had flown into the buildings. There was nothing on the ground next to the glass except a tiny pile of wet soil.

An owl hooted.

Owls weren’t usually awake during the day. What was going on?

The hoot came again, from down near the garage, but Benedict could see nothing there. Then something moved, exactly where he had been looking. It was Petros, beckoning to him.

Calling to Mama that he was going to be in the garden, Benedict made his way down the steps to meet Petros. He hadn’t seen him for such a long time! Petros took him all the way down to the
shed where the cows slept at night, his dog trotting along next to them until Petros shut her out of the shed. Inside, he pointed up one of the wooden walls to somewhere near the ceiling, and when
Benedict’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he breathed in sharply.

Perched high up on a ledge was the most beautiful owl! Its big, dark eyes looked down at them from a white, heart-shaped face above a cream-coloured chest speckled with brown. The edge of the
wing that they could see was black striped with orange-brown.

‘
Eh!
’ Benedict’s voice was a whisper.

Petros smiled. ‘Look,’ he said softly, reaching for a stick that was leaning against the wall. Then he took something from his pocket and balanced it carefully in the small fork at
the end of the stick. It was a late mouse.

‘Give it,’ he said, placing the other end of the stick in Benedict’s hand.

‘
Eh!
’ Shaking a little from having been so ill, and also on account of the huge honour that Petros was giving him, he held the stick up high so that the top of it rested
against the owl’s perch. The bird looked at the mouse carefully, then bent down, took it in its beak and straightened up. The mouse hung there for a few seconds while the owl looked at them.
Then it put the mouse down on the perch, holding it there with one of its feet.

‘Come,’ said Petros. ‘It don’t eat when we look.’

Outside, Benedict thanked him for showing him such a lovely bird.

‘You were sick,
bhuti
?’

‘Mm. Malaria.’ Benedict wasn’t sure if Petros had called him
bhuti
because he’d forgotten his name, if it was just because Swazis tended to call all men
bhuti
, or if he really meant to call Benedict his brother. Would Petros like them to be brothers?
Eh
, Benedict would love to have a brother who showed him owls!

‘Malaria?
Eish.
’

‘How about you?’

Petros smiled. ‘Better. Soon I go get a baby with my girlfriend.’