We must do the cleansing.”
Zi rattles the gate and starts to call, “Auntie! Auntie Phumzi! You must come out. We must talk to you.”
You’re letting Zi do this alone, shame, Mkhulu says finally. You mustn’t give up. Her voice is small and it doesn’t carry, it’s like a mosquito in a large room. Your voice will travel. You must just fly near your Auntie’s ear so she cannot ignore you.
You cannot give up, my girl.
That is a new voice. A woman speaking. I peer at the people surrounding Mkhulu. Who is it, speaking to me? Who is this person? I have never heard her before. They gaze back at me, unperturbed. Any one of them can speak to me, and they are multitudes. But mostly, they let Gogo or Mkhulu speak.
“What are you looking at, Khosi?” Zi has turned back from the gate, defeated.
“Oh, nothing.”
You mustn’t be like the beasts of the field, those who graze and do not even know what they are eating.
It is that same voice again.
I’m not a beast of the field, I grumble at her, whoever she is.
“What, Khosi?” Zi asks.
Did I say that out loud?
“Please, can we go home now?” she asks.
That forces me to my feet. I stand and dust the dirt from my skirt. I do not have a loud voice either. Zi and I, we are just Imbali girls, trained to be quiet. But like Mkhulu says, I can send my voice right into Auntie’s ear.
“Auntie,” I say, as though she were standing right beside us. I picture my voice flying through the air, perching on her shoulder, speaking directly into her ear. “Auntie. We are here, and we are not going home until you come out and talk to us. If we start to yell, and make a scene, your neighbors will all come out and hear how you are neglecting your sister’s children, how you are not willing to do ukugeza for your own mother. All the amadlozi are here with me, and if you think they won’t help me, you are mistaken. I am the one they chose, I am a sangoma. I can hear them just as well as you can hear me now, even though I am nowhere near you.”
“I’m here,” Auntie says suddenly.
She stands by the gate, hair wrapped in a black turban. She’s glaring at me so hard, her eyes bulge right out of her head. I want to tell her to stop staring or a bird will think her eyes are a ledge that they can land on. But I stay silent. Her husband and my cousin Beauty stand on the porch, keeping their distance.
“Speak, wena, and let us be done with it.”
“We must do this thing,” I say. “It’s time.”
“How can you do ukugeza?” Auntie protests. “You are not even wearing proper mourning clothes, hah! Are you going to burn your everyday clothes? And tell me, how will we buy a goat? Do you have so many rands that you can just go and buy one? If so, why are you not making your entire family rich, eh?”
I can’t afford a goat, it’s true, but it’s also true that I know people, namely, a whole host of amadlozi, and they are on my side. They will help me. Auntie is forgetting that.
“I will get a goat,” I say. “But you must come.”
“How will you get a goat?” she shouts. “You see, hah! You can just conjure up a goat, like that. You are a witch. We will never come to your house. We will do our own ceremony here.”
“Gogo is not here,” I say. “She doesn’t sit by your hearth in your hut. She is in my hut, at my hearth, in her own home. How can you do the cleansing here?”
But she is already gone, slamming the door behind her.
Zi and I are silent for a long time as we walk home. “How are we going to get a goat?” Zi asks finally.
I wish I knew. “You will see,” I say.
How am I going to get a goat? It is not like goats wander the streets of Imbali, looking to be slaughtered so that you can do a cleansing for a loved one. Even if we were in the rural areas, goats are valued creatures.
Zi is asleep, taking a Saturday afternoon nap. It is a hot day and she grew sleepy. I would love to crawl in beside her and join her but I am vexed with this problem. We need to do the cleansing, and if I am on my own to do it, I am on my own.
Why can’t it be a chicken, Gogo? A chicken I can find. A chicken I can buy, somehow. I can search for rands in the dirt, like a chicken pecking for food, and I can stand out on the street corners offering my services as a sangoma until enough people employ me so that I can buy a chicken.
I will tell you how to get a goat, my girl.
It is the voice of the woman again, the one who has never helped me before.
Go to the hill of the witch, she says.
I almost swear, I’m so startled. Words have power, so I keep a watch on my lips. But the witch? How could she suggest it?
I avoid the witch’s hill scrupulously since that time, three years ago, when I encountered her. She had marked me, she was waiting for the chance to drag me underground where she planned to suck me dry of my life, my powers. She wanted to turn me into her own personal zombie, a slave that worked just for her. Little Man was the one to rescue me from her strong grip. And though I know I have the ancestors’ protection now, and I think she will leave me alone, I am still afraid.
Even taxis avoid driving up that hill and past her house. Everyone knows she’s a witch…everyone knows that young men and young women have disappeared, that she has turned them into zombies, that they go deep into the earth to find gold for her…and everyone’s that scared of her. Just thinking about her makes me shiver.
Go to the witch’s house, the woman says. You will find your goat tied to her tree in the front, outside of the gate.
Who are you? I ask.
I was trained to trust the amadlozi, without question. But this advice makes me very afraid. If the witch helps me, am I indebted to her? Am I allies with her, an evil one?
But you must do what they tell you to do. If my ancestor tells me to go to the witch’s house, I must go. Otherwise, I will go crazy.
Who are you? I ask again.
She smiles at me and I realize she is one of my grandmothers, truly an ancient one, from long long ago.
Take a jar of amanzi, she says. Some of the ocean water you have blessed. It is powerful muthi. Leave it as payment for the goat.
Mkhulu, do you hear what this woman is saying?
Ehhe, he agrees but says nothing more.
But why would she help me? I argue. Because I cannot believe they are sending me to the witch, the one who tried to destroy me so long ago, before I realized I was meant to be a sangoma.
She will help because I compel her to help, the woman who is one of my grandmothers says. She has sins she must pay for.
So
