it,” I tell her. “This is not how we normally eat.”
She seems so smart, and her brown eyes—they look just like yours, Gogo.
“It’s time for soapies,” Zi says, hopeful.
So we turn the TV on. The three of us sit on the mattress, backs against the wall, the light flickering as we watch Generations, Isidingo, and The Bold and the Beautiful. Nhlanhla cavorts around the living room as Little Man reaches behind Zi’s back to hold my hand, and I sit there with his hand in mine, feeling not quite so alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CLEANSING
The empty house feels even more barren, stripped of most of the furniture and all the wall decorations and the crocheted lace that Gogo draped in various spots around the house. I hope Auntie is enjoying everything she took in her already over-decorated house.
When I think enough time has passed and I still haven’t heard from them—not about the cleansing, not about life, not about school fees or help with what what, nothing—I visit my teacher, Makhosi. We must talk about launching my healing practice, especially if I must begin to earn a living.
Outside of the hut, her granddaughter Thandi stands in front of the washtub, plunging her arms deep into the sudsy water, apparently washing a load of clothing. She drips water on my shirt as she gives me a quick hug.
Thandi’s little girl Hopeful is running in circles in the courtyard just inside their yard. Her mouth is sticky, stained red with some kind of candy.
“Are you coming to see me or is this a professional visit?”
“I’m sorry, I came to see your grandmother.” I smile ruefully at her.
Thandi used to be my best friend. She and I have known each other almost our entire lives. But then she fell in love with an older man, Honest, who was anything but honest.
In truth, I haven’t been the best friend to Thandi since Hopeful was born. First, I was training with her grandmother and going to school at the same time. Then Gogo got sick and died and now, it’s just me and Zi, so I don’t see how it’s going to be different—I’m going to be responsible for a whole lot more now that Gogo isn’t the adult. All this time, I’ve been trying hard just to manage everything. Besides, Thandi’s entire life is so different than mine now. She quit school long before I did to take care of her baby. She and Honest stayed together for a short while but then he returned to his wife so she came back home. And now she’s raising Hopeful alone, with her family’s help, of course. It sometimes feels like we’re both hiking a steep trail but the path is taking us up two completely different mountains.
“I’ll tell Gogo you’re here,” she says.
“Ngiyabonga.”
“Maybe after you can stay for a cup of tea and play with Hopeful?”
“Yebo.” I nod my agreement.
Makhosi taught me everything I know. She trained me to be a sangoma. When she gestures, I enter her hut and breathe in the rich scent of impepho.
“Makhosi.” I greet her with the honorific title.
“Makhosi.” Before I became a full sangoma, when I was her junior, her student, she called me thwasa. Now she greets me as makhosi, her equal. Sometimes, now that people greet me the way they greet all sangomas, with a strong “Makhosi!,” it feels as though my given name “Nomkhosi” with the nickname “Khosi” was nothing more than a prediction of my calling, of what I’d become someday.
I wait a few seconds in silence, out of respect. I expect her to ask me what I’ve come to ask her. But before I can talk to her about launching my practice, she reminds me that it’s time to do the cleansing for Gogo.
“It’s your duty,” she says. “You must perform ukugeza. Then you can start your life. Your grandmother is waiting for this to be done. I can see her, can’t you see her? She is crouching behind you, ashamed that her children have forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say. “But I haven’t heard from my aunt and uncle in three weeks. What if they don’t want to do it? Or don’t want to do it with me?”
“You do it on your own,” she says, simply.
So I try calling Auntie and Uncle but neither answers the phone, nor do they call back. I text—We need to do ukugeza, I am planning to do it, are you both coming?—and hear only silence in return.
But you can’t wait forever to cleanse the hut. At some point, life must return to the living. Even sangomas know this, we who are always with one foot in that world and one in this.
What should I do?
Go to her, my child, Mkhulu says. Your Gogo is here with us but she must have peace. Your Auntie Phumzile has forgotten tradition.
But what Mkhulu doesn’t say, is this thing of accusing a relative of witchcraft—that is also tradition. Not real tradition. Not like a wedding or a funeral, where you can say, This is how things are done, nee? You have the food so, and the people so, and the impepho so, and here is where the amadlozi sit, and you must, you must, you must. But even so, these accusations, they happen all the time. What do you think of that, Mkhulu? Is that tradition, hah? Sometimes I am not so sure about “tradition.”
Thandi and I have a quick cup of tea after but Hopeful is misbehaving, chasing after the dog and knocking into one of her grandmother’s customers waiting in line, an elderly gentleman sitting on a broken chair. He wobbles for a second and then totters over, so slow it’s almost comical.
“Oh, Mkhulu,” I say, “let me help you up.” He grips my offered hand and I raise him to standing position.
While I’m helping the old man, Thandi is already yelling at Hopeful and chasing her through the yard and into the house to swat her bottom.
I wait some few minutes, then tell Thandi I’ll come by again soon. I’m so glad I’m not a mother yet.
That Saturday, Zi and I walk to the other side of Imbali to Auntie’s house. They are home, I know this because her husband’s car is there, and Auntie doesn’t drive, but we rattle and rattle the gate and nobody comes out. We wait and wait. The sun beats down on us. We rattle again and wait. The dust rises and settles. Zi coughs. It feels like the grit is stuck in my throat.
“Why is Auntie rejecting us?” Zi asks. “Mama was her sister.”
It does not make me proud to admit it, but I collapse at Auntie Phumzi’s gate, sitting right there in the dirt as though I was a chicken or goat.
“What are you doing, Khosi?” Zi’s voice rises high and shaky.
It’s been three weeks since you left us, Gogo, and we’re all alone. That is what I say to her.
But even as I wail silently, I know we’re not alone. I have this cast of characters, as my drama teacher used to say, and they follow me everywhere, commenting on everything. Just now, they stare at me in stark disapproval. Get up, stop being a child, their stares say, even while their mouths remain closed.
“I
