When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (26 page)

‘That’s nice.’ They were walking slowly up towards the garage, Krishna circling around them, her tail wagging.

‘My baby will get gold from my ancestor.’

Eh!
Benedict hadn’t thought about the gold the whole time he was sick. He had been too busy thinking about how girls had tipped his world over.

‘Did your ancestor find the mine? The gold?’

Petros shook his head. ‘Long time ago, my great, great, great...
eish
, I don’t know greats, nè? My ancestor. He work for Portuguese, in Mozambique.’

‘You’re a
shangaan
?’ In Mozambique, Shangaans were just one of the groups of people who lived there, but in Swaziland a
shangaan
was the same as a
kwerekwere
, and a Mozambican was the worst kind of
kwerekwere
to be. It didn’t just mean you were stealing jobs from Swazis, it meant you were bringing guns.

Shaking his head, Petros laughed without coughing. The dementia in his chest really did seem to be better, though when Benedict looked carefully he could see that Petros’s face had sores
and his body was even skinnier than before. Thinner even than Nomsa’s mother, he reminded Benedict of the skinny, skinny person in the white robe in the picture on the United Nations wall. He
really couldn’t have been getting enough to eat.

‘Portuguese come here,’ he said, ‘they want slaves.’

‘
Eh!
Slaves?’ Slaves were taken from Tanzania, too, Benedict knew that from Baba. They had to work in the clove plantations on Zanzibar, the island off the coast from Dar.
That was back in the days when Zanzibar still belonged to Oman.

‘
Yebo
. They bring gifts from India. To buy slaves.’

‘From India?’

‘Portuguese also live in India.’ Benedict was going to have to check that with Baba or Mrs Patel. It didn’t sound right, and maybe it was something Petros didn’t have
right in his head. ‘My ancestor, he take one gift.’

‘He stole it?’

Petros nodded. ‘He plant it here in Swaziland. Then he go home to Mozambique.’

Plant? Benedict remembered what Uncle Enock had said about Swazi Gold being the funny-smelling tobacco that Petros smoked. Was that what he was talking about? ‘And you found it?’

Petros shook his head again. They were at the garage now, and it was best not to go nearer the house.

‘They make railway here. They find it.’

‘Who?’ Benedict moved into the shade of the garage to lean against the red Microbus, and Petros did the same. ‘Who made the railway?’

‘English. They find it. Then my grandfather, he come, he take it.’

‘He stole it?’

Petros looked surprised. ‘No. It belong great, great, great...’ with each great his hand gestured over his shoulder. ‘
Eish.
His ancestor, nè? He take it. Now he
marry, he get a baby. He want to take them to Mozambique. They walk through bush to cross.’ Petros coughed, shaking his head. ‘A lion, it take my grandfather.’

‘
Eh!
Sorry, Petros.’

Petros coughed again, his chest sounding bubbly. His mind seemed to wander away from their conversation, and Benedict wasn’t quite sure how to bring him back. After a while, he came back
by himself.

‘That baby, nè? He’s my mother.’

‘And she gave it to you? The gift?’

Petros nodded.

‘It’s gold?’

He nodded again, coughing. ‘Old,’ he said, and Benedict wasn’t really sure if he had been talking all the time about something old or something gold. Or Swazi Gold. It really
wasn’t easy, with Petros having so little English and Benedict so little siSwati.

Petros looked very tired now, and Benedict felt tired and a little shaky himself.

‘What exactly is it, Petros?’

Petros’s mind seemed far away again. His dog was sniffing a back tyre of the red Microbus, and he squatted to pet her. ‘Krishna,’ he said to her softly, smiling. ‘My
treasure.’

Then a voice called from the house.

‘
Benedict!
’

‘Mama?’

‘Come and see how beautiful our cake is!’

I
N THE SHADE BEHIND THE ROW OF CLASSROOMS
, Sifiso and Giveness looked at Benedict with very big eyes.

‘What thound did it make?’

‘
Boom!
’ said Benedict, trying his best to get the sound of it just right. ‘But not loud like on TV. We weren’t very close by.’

‘It wasn’t a plane like in America?’

‘Uh-uh, a car.’

‘I hope there’th nothing like that here!’ Sifiso scanned the sky.

‘It wasn’t just in Dar es Salaam,’ said Benedict. ‘There was another one in Nairobi that same morning, also at the American embassy. That one was a truck, it was much
bigger.’

‘
Boom!
’ said Giveness, his pink hands flying apart.

‘Mama’s been talking about it a lot with the ladies she’s training. She lost an in-law in the Nairobi one.’

‘Nairobi’s also in Tanzania?’

‘Uh-uh, it’s in Kenya. But Mama’s in-law was visiting there, she was in a bus going past when it went off.’

‘
Eish.
Sorry, nè?’

‘Mm. What’s happened in America makes it feel like yesterday for Mama, meanwhile it was three years ago.’

Much more recently, two things had gone boom in Benedict’s own life, but he didn’t want to say. He just wasn’t ready yet to tell anybody about his new big sister; he still
needed to keep that inside him until he had stopped feeling like water that somebody had sent a stone skipping across. When the stone had finally sunk and ever further circles of ripples had
stopped disturbing him, then he would say. And he didn’t want to talk about Nomsa, either; if anybody were to overhear, they might start up the story again about her being his girlfriend.
Anyway, he couldn’t tell Giveness and Sifiso the story about rescuing Nomsa in the night, that wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t nice to gossip about somebody wanting to be late, and
it wouldn’t be right to talk about Nomsa’s mother being sick. He wasn’t entirely certain, but he guessed from the looks between Mama and Uncle Enock that it was the kind of sick
you didn’t talk about, the disease you didn’t say.

Still scanning the sky, Sifiso changed the subject and asked Giveness if he knew yet when his mother was going to come.

‘
Eish
, don’t make me get nervous again, Sifiso!’

Giveness had been getting nervous for over a week now. His mother had left him with her sister when he was still a tiny baby, so he had never really met her. But now she was going to come and
visit, and he and his aunt weren’t sure why.

Sifiso patted his arm. ‘Thorry, nè?’

‘What if she wants to take me away?’ It was what Giveness dreaded most.

‘
Eh!
’ said Benedict, as if they hadn’t already had this conversation.

‘No, Giveneth! It can’t happen! I told you!’

‘But it can! She’s my mother, she can take me.’

‘Your aunt is your mother,’ Benedict reminded him patiently. There was nothing wrong with that: Mama was his mother, even though she was his grandmother. ‘What did she say to
your aunt?’ He asked it in a way that said he hadn’t asked it before.

‘She said she wants to come and say sorry.’

‘Maybe it’th true. Maybe she really ith thorry for leaving you behind.’

‘Maybe. But she could say sorry on the phone, or in a letter. She doesn’t have to come.’ His pink hands twisted together.

‘Say she comes,’ Benedict asked again, ‘and she says sorry. What will you say to her?’

His answer was still the same. ‘
Eish
, I don’t know.’ That was the
boom
that was sounding in Giveness’s life.

As the children neared Mr Patel’s shop on their way to the high school, they saw that there was a policewoman just outside the entrance. Across the road, a handful of
people stood looking at her.

Knowing that police meant trouble, which it was best not to go near, Benedict made all of them cross to the far side where they could walk behind the people who were looking. From there, they
could see that somebody had painted
Bin Liner
across Mr Patel’s window in big red letters.

‘
Eh!
’ said Benedict. ‘Bin Liner?’

A man in a smart suit shook his head sadly. ‘Some people are too, too ignorant, nè?’

‘Nothing to do with Patel,’ said one of the ladies there. ‘
Nothing!
Where is his beard? Where is his headdress?’

‘Ignorant!’ the man repeated. ‘And in the middle of daylight!’

‘Those thugs don’t care!’ declared another man. After all this time, who is going to arrest them?
Who?
’

Somebody said that the thugs’ behaviour was un-Swazi, and somebody else agreed that they were a disgrace to the Swazi nation.

‘They’ll try anything, nè?’ said the man in the suit. ‘Any opportunity to hurt Patel.’

As the children continued on their way, Benedict wondered how much it really hurt Mr Patel to be called a bin liner. Okay, it wasn’t nice for somebody to say that you belonged in a
dustbin, but there were probably worse things that had been said to Mr Patel before.

At least the police were taking it seriously now. But maybe other people would also cross to the other side when they saw the policewoman outside Mr Patel’s shop, maybe they would rather
go and buy KFC or some other kind of take-away. Benedict knew from Mama how bad people felt when their business did badly. He hoped that Mrs Patel was okay.

Later that afternoon, he was getting ready to go up to the dam when he saw Mrs Levine making her way up the steps towards the Tungarazas’ house. He went to say hello.

‘Hi there, Bennie! Going somewhere?’

He didn’t want Mrs Levine coming up to the dam with him, it was his special place for being quiet and thinking and being with other creatures.

‘Um...’

‘Glad I caught you. Listen, that friend of yours, the one with the lisp.’

‘Yes?’ Benedict’s eyes lit up.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Sifiso Simelane.’

‘
Ag
no, man! Serious?’

‘Mm.’

‘Do you have his parents’ number?’

‘Mama has it.’ Mama hadn’t wanted him to go with the Simelanes for Sifiso’s birthday without knowing how to reach them to say thank you. ‘Are you going to help him,
Mrs Levine?’

‘I’ll give it a go. But listen, I don’t have a work visa, so Enock says I’m not allowed to charge any money for it.’

‘I’m sure Mr and Mrs Simelane won’t mind.’ Benedict’s smile was very wide.

‘
Ja.
’

‘Thank you, Mrs Levine!’ Benedict went to her and she bent to accept his hug before pushing him away.

‘Go do whatever you were going to do, and I’ll get that number from your mom. If I don’t ring right now I might never find the courage again.’

Benedict smiled all the way up to the dam, then he smiled some more when he settled in the shade of a water-berry tree and saw that on the grass very close to him was a large green praying
mantis. Very gently, he encouraged it to climb up into his hand, which it did, settling unmoving into his palm.

He thought about the very nice
boom
that would go off in Sifiso’s life if Mrs Levine could help him. Okay, he would still be fat, and he would still be bad at sports, but nobody
would be able to laugh at the way he spoke, and that would make a big difference. A very big difference indeed.

As Benedict relaxed, his mind began to wander over other kinds of differences.

Mama said the whole world was going to be different now, but Baba said they should wait and see, on account of there being a different that’s truly different and a different that’s
just more of the same but with a different name. Benedict wasn’t sure what Baba meant, but he knew that things might be truly different at home very soon, much sooner than his new sister
Josephine coming to join their family. Henry had asked Titi to marry him, and after thinking for a week about her answer, Titi was telling him yes or no this afternoon.

Grace and Faith had advised her to say yes. Henry had his own car and his own business, and he loved her.

‘No girl can ask for more than that,’ Faith had said.

‘Except maybe Brad Pitt or Shaggy,’ Grace had said, and the two girls had giggled.

‘He’s already married,’ Titi had reminded them. ‘Do you want to share your husband with another lady?’

‘
Eh!
’

‘Never!’

‘Then why should I?’

Changing their minds, they had advised her to say no.

Daniel and Moses were too small to give advice, but Benedict knew they didn’t want Titi going anywhere. Neither Mama nor Baba would tell her what they thought, no matter how many times she
had asked them.

‘Listen to your own heart,’ Mama had told her.

‘Listen to your own head,’ Baba had told her.

Benedict hadn’t known what to say to her. There were many reasons why he didn’t want her to stay behind with Henry when the Tungarazas left Swaziland, but his main reason was
entirely selfish: with a new big sister
and
a new place to get used to sometime soon, he wanted as much as possible to stay the same. Titi had been with him at his first parents’
house, she had been constant in his life longer than any other grown-up. But the decision she needed to make was big, and it shouldn’t be about anybody other than herself.