Context: Its 1985, and Zimbabwe has just gained Independence, but there is the threat of civil war in the air. David, a bookworm aged ten, watches from his school fence as soldiers violently break up a riot, beating old women, slashing open the stomachs of pregnant young women. One of the soldiers rapes a woman David is besotted with. David faints, and is rescued by his teacher. We pick up the story here....
Chapter Three
A pair of hands took hold of my shoulders and shook me. A faint voice called out my name. It undulated its way through the weaves of unconsciousness but without light, the darkness was motionless. I could have been shook repeatedly; it wouldn’t have made a difference. Finally, a stinging slap landed on my cheek and left a sizzling sensation that woke me up to a lethargic halfway state, a dimly lit arid space that nonetheless seemed determined to pull me back into the darkness.
‘Wake up!’ a voice demanded.
My eyelids responded and parted, but a bright explosion of light blasted my eyes and I closed them immediately and shut it out. When I opened them again, it was because of a sudden fear of having been struck blind, but I could make out the blurry outline of someone in front of me, and smaller shapes behind the hazy form. I closed my eyes again, satisfied that I could see, and then I waited for the dancing spots inside my eyes to fade into my eyelids. When they did, I thought I opened my eyes again, but I saw a black penis dangling half erect in front of me and I shrieked and brought my hands to my face but stronger hands met them in mid--ascent and pushed them back down. I opened my eyes, and I realised that the apparition was gone.
‘What’s wrong with him sir?’
‘Go back to your desks.’
I was on the floor, and there was a circle of white faces surrounding me, peering down at me as if I was an interesting insect in a glass jar. Somewhere inside me, I was glad. For the first time, people were around me, and not because Jock wanted to bog wash me. At the centre of the circle, before my face, there appeared an open brown palm. It hovered over me with uncertainty while Master Mlalazi studied me, his watery eyes pink with brandy, red veins streaking out from his iris. I had never seen his palm before; knowing it only by sensation, but now the dark palm lines floated just above my eyes, looking like Chinese writing.
‘Are you okay?’ he said.
I thought I blinked, but Tendai’s soldier appeared in front of me again, holding his knife menacingly, so I shut my eyes again, but Master Mlalazi pulled them apart. When he let go of them, I kept them open, but it was too late; his palm had risen from my face and grown distant, and now it came crashing down.
‘Talk boy!’ he said, ‘are you hurt?’
I wanted to tell him but when I opened my mouth, something had gone to the back of my throat and slashed my vocal cords with a serrated hunting knife. I tried again, but Amelia’s soldier stood before me now, his knife in one hand and my tongue in the other. My tongue was moving, lashing about like a fish just pulled out of a river. And how long it was, hanging from his hand! How pink and dry.
He ran the sharp edge of his knife against the top bit of my tongue and scrapped it. As he did so, white particles fell to the floor, but some of them collected on the knife. The soldier showed me the ones that were on the knife. When he was satisfied that I had seen them, he wiped the particles along the leg of his trousers and then showed me his leg. There were the things I wanted to say to Master Mlalazi; separated, disintegrated and lifeless.
Unable to say anything to the Master now, I took a risk and stared at him directly. What had that soldier done to Tendai? What had become of the pregnant girl? Who were those soldiers? What had happened to the soldiers from father’s old Party?
But Master Mlalazi was still looking intently at my face, waiting to hear with his ears. My mind went back, and I saw myself in the Hostel.
There was the blue car driving slowly past Hillside Road for the umpteenth time. There was the flicker of headlights. There was Amelia looking around before quickly crossing the street and getting into the car. There were the two backlights disappearing into the darkness.
There were those two shadows rushing from The House towards the bamboo coven at the corner of the school fence where Maria tried to kiss me. There we were rushing from window to window trying to get a better view of what was going on. There were the bamboo leaves shaking terribly in the night. There we were sneaking out of school the next day to go into the coven so we could chase one another with the shrivelled plastics hanging from sharp sticks before trying to lampoon them onto each other’s faces.
‘Ulimele?’ Master Mlalazi said in our language, Ndebele. Are you hurt?
That girl’s stomach had burst open like a popped balloon, I thought. The soldier had emptied her, of everything, like scooping water out of a bowl and spilling it on the ground around it, but he’d kept everything inside me. And now Tendai’s soldier was drawing closer towards me...
‘Bah!’ Master Mlalazi said, letting go of me. He stood up and went to his table, picked up his case and stuffed it with his papers. He opened the draw he normally kept locked and shoved his half bottle of brandy into his inside jacket pocket and made for the door, stepping over me.
Mr Kent, the headmaster, met him at the door. He said, ‘Where are you going?’
Master Mlalazi tried to push past him but when Mr Kent stood at the door, not even a first grader could squeeze through the space that his belly filled out. Mr Kent held out his hand. It stopped at Master Mlalazi’s chest.
‘I said where are you going?’
‘That soldier saw my face,’ Master Mlalazi said, ‘they’ve declared a state of emergency. They’re hunting for dissidents. I’m leaving.’
‘But you’re not a dissident, are you?’ Mr Kent said.
‘Are you thick?’ Master Mlalazi said, pounding his temple with his forefinger, ‘that soldier saw my face. What do you think they will call me?’
‘You’re drunk!’
‘I’m leaving!’
The Master straightened up to his full height and squared up to Mr Kent. Mr Kent shook his great bald head and looked into the classroom. He stepped outside and then stepped aside. Master Mlalazi staggered out of the classroom. Afterwards, Mr Kent walked in and stopped beside me, his white shirt just about stopping his belly from tipping over and spilling all over me, even though it seemed like it would tear from the strain at any moment.
‘What is your name boy?’ he said, crouching. Away from the Beit Hall podium, the sheen on his forehead that I had always thought to be too much Vaseline revealed itself to be tiny beads of sweat. His breath wasn’t the only thing that reeked of garlic; his pores secreted it too.
He slid his arms underneath me, hewing me to his chest, and a portion of his belly flattened out underneath me like a mattress to help carry my weight. His secretary gasped when Mr Kent entered his office with me in his arms. ‘Oh my Goodness!’ she said. ‘Oh my Goodness!’
‘Oh for Pete’s sake Jenny,’ he said, laying me on top of his desk and on top of his papers, ‘don’t just stand there with your mouth open, ring the bell! Get the prefects into my office. Tell them I want an assembly. I want the gates to remain locked until I say so. I want a head count, on the double. No one comes in, and no one goes out without my say so. And then find out who this kaffir belongs to, and tell them what’s happened.’
#
Who do I tell that I dream in blood when I close my eyes? I dream in bodies and bones. I dream in screams and groans and they fill my head like flies. She comes to me; Tendai, she runs towards me with shredded clothes dripping with blood.
‘Help me!’ she says, but I stand there and watch her, afraid.
‘Cut a hole in the fence!’ she says, but I stand there and watch as her belly grows.
‘David please...cut a hole in the fence...’
I reach out through the fence with my finger and touch her stomach. It explodes a baby, and he hangs from the wires by his foot crying, and then I wake up.
#
I stood in front of the class the next morning trying to tell it. Only yesterday, during the English lesson, Master Mlalazi had asked me to read for the whole class. I stood up and read them a poem from America, one which even the white boys didn’t know, although I was cheating because I had it in my bookshelf at home. Master Mlalazi stopped me when I reached the middle and said, ‘can you hear how well he reads? The attention to pronunciation? That’s how you should all read. Read it again David.’
I started again, high in the sky;
“Factory windows are always broken
Somebody’s always throwing bricks
Somebody’s always heaving cinders
Playing ugly Yahoo tricks...â€
But I was on the floor now, where Master Mlalazi had abandoned me yesterday. Even if I was actually on my feet, I was on the floor. The class was so quiet that I was sure they could hear trying to swallow. I didn’t think it was very nice of Mrs Spencer, the substitute Mistress, to force me to tell my story, especially after Mr Kent told her about me outside the classroom before sending us both in. But as soon as Mr Kent left, and just as I was about to starting reading at my desk, Mrs Spencer went and sat on Master Mlalazi’s desk and called me to the front.
‘Tell us what it felt like to be held by the terrorists,’ she said.
The boys at the back of the classroom, Jock’s friends, sniggered and said, ‘like, yeah, tell us what it felt like to be nabbed by the terr’s.’
I wanted to describe what it felt like to have my arm swung around like the end of a skipping rope every time he hurt her between her legs. How towards the end, I thought he was going to pull out my arm, and how I had now also lost Maria’s letter, and didn’t even know where I’d lost it, but there were no words. What stuttered and stammered its way out of my mouth was just jumbled up particles.
The boys at the back of the classroom started pulling discreet forkies. They began to mimic my new stutter, to burst into spontaneous eruptions of laughter so that even Mrs Spencer, who had been gesturing with her hand for the words to roll out of my mouth, could not help but look down as she stifled a giggle.
‘Sit down,’ Mrs Spencer said finally. ‘Sit down, please.’
I took my seat and brought out my comic book. Spiderman was in pursuit of the green goblin. The green goblin scowled and flew up a building. Just as Spiderman leapt onto the building and started to scale it, I blinked, and the film of tears that had been welling up in my eye collected into a point in the centre of my eye and dropped right on top of him.
There was an urgent rap at the door.
Mrs Spencer raised her eyebrows and turned her neck in the direction of the sound. Her face was calm, but her eyes betrayed her. I hoped it was Mr Kent. I hoped that he’d been listening in at the door. Slowly, Mrs Spencer walked to the door and opened it partly. Mother took hold of the doorframe and opened it all the way, almost pulling Mrs Spencer with the door, and then barged into the classroom.
‘Where is he?’ she said.
‘Who?’ said Mrs Spencer.
‘How many black boys do you have in your class?’ mother said, scanning the room. It didn’t take her long to find me. When she did, she said, ‘David, get up, we’re going.’
I pushed my chair back and stood up quickly. I knew better than to drag my feet. But Mrs Spencer’s arm rose in my general direction. She raised her palm, like a traffic policeman. ‘David,’ she said, ‘sit back down.’
Mother shifted her gaze from me, lifted it and fixed it on Mrs Spencer. Mrs Spencer, elegant as always, turned from me and looked down at mother from inside her flowing rose dress like a queen inside a castle.
‘Who do you think you are?’ mother said.
Mrs Spencer pushed her glasses up the ridge of her nose and said, ‘Madame, I am the Mistress of this classroom, and I have strict instructions--’
‘Stuff your instructions,’ mother said, ‘I’m taking my son.’
Everybody in the classroom froze. I could feel eyeballs creeping all over me like enlarged ticks. Where was Maria?
‘David,’ mother said, turning back to me, ‘let’s go.’
‘David,’ Mrs Spencer said, ‘sit down.’
‘Mum...’ I started to say.
‘I said come on!’ mother said. Even though she was wearing her black two--piece outfit, complete with necklace and brooch, I noticed that she was wearing the flat tennis shoes that she wore around the house. It was a bad idea to confront her when she was flatfooted, because she could use the tennis shoes on you, but also I kept looking at the corner of the classroom where Mrs Spencer had planted herself, where Mr Mlalazi’s cane, Long John Silver was. Sensing my hesitation, mother was in--between the desks in an instant, her hips knocking them slightly out of place as she rushed haphazardly towards me through the rows like a giant rat bounding through a cardboard maze towards a small piece of cheese.
A knock at the door made her stop for a moment and look over her shoulder. I looked around her in time to see Maria, unusually nervous, and dirty, standing in the doorway, which Mrs Spencer had left open.
Maria cautiously scoured the room, looking first at Mrs Spencer, and then behind her, at Master Mlalazi’s desk. Lifting her eyes, she studied the posters and maps on the wall. It was only when she looked in my direction and saw me, or probably mother, that she slowly lifted up her foot and placed it softly on the floor and then crept into the classroom. She went straight to Mrs Spencer, who was a pincher, because she was late. If it had been Master Mlalazi, it would have been two licks of Long John Silver across the palm, but Mrs Spencer motioned her away without even bothering about an explanation. ‘Go and take your seat,’ she said, dismissively, and then she returned to watching mother.
‘Didn’t we tell you to stop reading those comics?’ Mother said, her attention back on me, her gaze on my desk, where Spiderman, clinging to the damp wall of the building on top of which stood the green goblin, warily peeked up at her from underneath the weight of the exercise book I had pushed over the comic book in order to conceal it.
I wanted to apologise, but knew it wouldn’t make a difference, so I covered Spiderman with the exercise book and then reached beside me for my bookcase. But mother was in too much of a rush. I had just about reached the other side of the desk when she took a hold of my free wrist and pulled me off my seat so fast that the fatty bits in her massive arms flapped gently from left to right.
‘Mum wait,’ I said.
‘Hurry up!’ she said.
I put the case on the desk and threw in the exercise book, leaving the comic, because I figured that was better. All the while, I shot apologetic glances at Mrs Spencer and Mr Kent, who had come into the classroom after Maria, because I would have to face them and Long John Silver when all of this was over, but Mrs Spencer refused to show relax her face, and kept on looking at mother, and then at Mr Kent, who shrugged his shoulders and gave Mrs Spencer a knowing look.
On our way down the rows, mother stopped where Maria was and reached out with her other hand. ‘Come on dear,’ she said, ‘you’re coming with us.’
‘You can’t take her with you I’m afraid,’ Mr Kent said. ‘I cannot allow it.’
‘But she’s my next door neighbour’s daughter,’ mother said.
‘Precisely,’ Mr Kent said.
Mother sighed. ‘Alright then,’ she said, withdrawing her hand. ‘Sorry sweetie,’ she said to Maria, and as I looked back at Maria, I would have waved, but my other hand was holding onto my bookcase. As we made for the door, mother pulling me behind her, Mrs Spencer decided to try one last time. ‘Madame...’ she said.
Mother stopped, but didn’t turn round.
‘This really isn’t necessary,’ Mr Kent added, ‘David is fine. Look at him; it was just a little shock, that’s all.’
‘At least let him finish the lesson...’ Mrs Spencer said.
Mother turned round now. She walked up to Mrs Spencer and raised her finger--‘listen wena,’ she said, wagging the finger, as if Mrs Spencer was a dog, or a child, ‘you--don’t tell me what to do anymore. Is that clear?’
The wave of silence spread across the room as if mother had dragged a dead dog with a bloated stomach into the centre of the room and cut it open. The stench of rotting insides filled the room instantly. Worms writhed inside the mass of exposed intestines.
Mrs Spencer, face ripening, stepped back towards the blackboard and stared at the chalk sticks. Mr Kent stared listlessly somewhere in the back of the classroom, but he looked like he wanted to laugh.
The toilet bowl would certainly narrow before my face for this. After all, wouldn’t the black pupils rejoice over this? At break time, they would no doubt still race to the school
tuck--shop, which overlooked the tennis and squash courts at the back of the school. They would crowd at the counter, jabbing the air eagerly with their fingers as they pointed at the shelves and the giant glass jars on top of them which contained nicker balls, the round little black sweets the white boys had told us were called nigger balls when we first came to Churchill after it stopped being a ‘whites only’ school.
They would still shout, ‘excuse me miss! Excuse me miss! Can we have some of those sweets please?’
The amused white attendants would still look over the counter and say, ‘which ones?’
And the boys would say, ‘those one’s miss, between the bonbons and the sherbets!’
‘What are they called?’ the attendants would say, because they knew that we now knew what niggers were.
‘Nicker balls, miss.’
‘That’s not the name that we use. What are they called?’
But the boys wouldn’t look down anymore and whisper, ‘nigger balls, miss.’
The attendants wouldn’t have the chance to say, ‘speak up. You’re holding up the queue. What are they called?’
Forcing the boys to speak up and say, ‘NIGGER BALLS, miss.’
After today, the boys would still reach into their pockets, jingling the shiny new Zimbabwean coins, but they would do so without shame, rattling in their pockets among the coins their secret shiny weapon of Mrs Spencer’s public humiliation by the wife of a war hero. They would say, ‘nigger balls’ louder after today. They would slam their coins onto the counter and look up at the attendants with bright eyes. They would take the sweets and pop them into their mouths without hating the sweets for being so humiliating and yet so sweet. They would turn their mouths into stadiums; transforming their tongues into shins of steel as they wrapped them around the dark balls and used them to perform tricks that would make any soccer player jealous. Their tongues would dribble the sweets past our troubled past, past defenders, past apartheid fences, past Jock, past Mrs Spencer. They would take the sweets out every few seconds to compare what colour they’d become, racing to see whose sweets finished the fastest because nigger balls changed colour as they melted, going through the colours of the rainbow, from black to dark purple, to dark blue, to indigo, to dark red, to red, to orange, to dark yellow, to yellow, until they became white, but never pink, because that was a girls colour, and then became nothing but a stain in the centre of the tongue of all the colours they had once been.
But Jock and his friends would see today as a terrorist act, carried out by the wife of a terrorist, and I agreed with them, for once. After all, no one else had seen my father wielding a knobkerrie.