It used to be when I stared at him, we were eye to eye. It made me feel more like equals. Now I have to look up up up at him, an elephant looking up to a giraffe.
“You never said that before,” I say. “You were always studying. You liked science and math. You were—”
“I needed to pass matric,” he interrupts. “It would be shameful to fail. But now, I’m going to work. So I can help you and Zi.” And he leans in to kiss me again. His fingers graze my hips, his hand a firm grip on my back.
A little ball of anger mixed with happiness forms at the pit of my stomach. I am not sure which emotion is stronger. Of course I want—need—help. But I don’t want him to quit school for me. “No,” I say.
“Listen, Khosi,” he starts speaking fast. “I know what you’ll say but we have been together always, since we were young, and if I am making money, I can help you, so you can finish school. I can go to school next year.”
“This was not the plan,” I say.
The amadlozi murmur on the opposite side of the room. I ignore them. I can’t help wishing that sometimes they’d butt out. I can’t help wishing that sometimes I had a choice about this, a choice to say, No. Not right now. Come back in an hour or two.
“Gogo dying was not the plan either,” he says.
“What if you don’t get a bursary next year?” I say.
“They tell me it will wait for one year,” he says. “And besides, it is too late. I’ve already done it.”
Perhaps now I should tell him that I have withdrawn from school. But I feel too much shame. He sacrificed it all, for me, and for what? For nothing. So I keep silent.
“What is the job?” I ask finally.
“I’m working for a taxi,” he says, “collecting the money.”
“But—”
He holds up his hand to stop me. “It’s a good job,” he says. “My route goes by your school, so we can take you in the mornings and again at night. See? And you won’t have to pay. The driver will take it out of my wages.”
“Little Man,” I say.
He puts his arm around me and cuddles me against his shoulder. “Shhh,” he says. “Don’t say anything. The only thing I want to do is help you and Zi. That is all.”
It would be so wonderful to feel like I’m not alone. To know that Little Man and I—
And soon we’re kissing again and the kissing keeps going and…and… We’ve never had time like this. Gogo is always around or Zi.
I should stop this.
I melt into his arms.
I should stop this… but…
His lips march up my arm to my neck, little ants nibbling. He nips my collarbone, uses his tongue to lick the skin down down down. His fingers caressing the small of my back, inching their way up my shirt and gently trailing across my waist. An explosion of birds flapping in my stomach and heart and…
Khosi. A warning from Gogo.
Not just now, Gogo.
You promised…
Yebo, Gogo, yebo. I’ve broken one promise and I’m about to break another. But this is not one you need to witness. You stay here. In the living room. Don’t follow me.
“Little Man,” I whisper.
He freezes. Lips puckered, about to kiss my nipple. Fingers gripping the extra flesh around my hips.
“Ngiyakuthanda, Khosi,” he whispers, as though ashamed.
“I love you too,” I whisper back.
Don’t follow me, Gogo. Don’t you dare follow me. And that goes for the rest of you too. Mkhulu. All you amadlozi. I don’t need your judgments or your eyes on me. Stay here. All of you.
“Woza,” I say. And lead him down the hallway to the bedroom.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY
And so begins our new life.
While Zi is at school, I open the gate and leave a sign that says I am available for customers. I wave hello at all the neighbors, even the ones who just look my way without responding because they believed all of Auntie’s lies. But a sangoma has to be friendly to all the people…even though I really just want to sink into my own private world with Zi. It is hard to always put on a public face.
They say a prophet is never honored in her own country. How can my neighbors ever accept me as anything but little Khosi, the girl they saw grow up? How can they ever let me be this thing among them—a sangoma, a voice for the ancestors? And how will they ever get over all the suspicion and lies that my aunt spread?
Once the gate is open and the sign is out, I wait.
Well, I sort of wait. I can’t keep still for long, so I make some tea with lots of hot milk and sugar. I drink it slowly. Then I examine Gogo’s garden. It is looking pretty scraggly, so I water it carefully and then look for weeds to pull.
“What do you think, Nhlanhla?” I ask. “Should we start a new garden?”
Nhlanhla crouches at the foot of a tall, bedraggled mealie plant and barks.
“Yebo, I agree,” I say. “Let’s start over. Tomorrow, we’ll hike up into the hills and find some plants that we can transplant. Winter herbs…”
It’s cold outside so I light a fire in the hut and Nhlanhla lies down beside me. We look at the fire, at the smoke curling upwards, and I start to drift into a sweet, sleepy haze.
“Makhosi?”
I jerk awake. A young man has entered the hut, smiling, flashing white teeth at me. Nhlanhla’s tail thumps loudly on the floor.
I’ve decided to keep Nhlanhla beside me whenever I’m seeing customers. She stays in the hut by my side and growls if somebody gets too close. I don’t want to be unwelcoming but twice in the first week, two of the men who visited me thought that because I’m a young woman, they could get more than what they requested. But they underestimated the protection of my ancestors.
The first man left with a hole in the seat of his pants and a fresh dog bite on his rear end.
The second man was shocked when a snake started slithering towards him, fangs wide, glistening with poison.
I haven’t been bothered since then but it’s early days yet. I keep Nhlanhla beside me all the time. I’m not taking any chances. I like to think Gogo’s spirit passed into her and sometimes, I swear, I see Gogo looking at me through her amber-brown eyes. Or I hear Gogo’s voice in her whine.
Not
