be fine.”
Mama loved to play the radio loud whenever the baas was not home. She would twist the volume knob, scrunch up her face and sway her hips. She especially liked to listen to Radio2, broadcast in Ndebele and Shona, and sometimes she listened to Kalanga and Venda. Whenever Shwi’s songs played, Mama would leap into the air and wriggle her bum, screeching, “Oh! This song reminds me of my home eNkayi. Hehehehe! We used to run away in the evenings and trek across the bush to the local ‘growth point’ that never did develop into a proper town. There was always a dhindindi happening every night, bantu. And we would dance! And dance! The truck drivers passing on their way to Wankie Coal Mine would buy us beer. It tasted so bitter. But it was beer from the town, Castle Lager, boy, and not amasese-la, curdled in the rurals. Heh! Heh!” And she would clap her hands, Mama, grinding her hips to Shwi. “I was in love with one of the truck drivers – he would pass there twice a week in his nice big truck – big, you hear? So one day, I ran away with him and came to see the bright city lights. Kanti, eh! The bastard was married.”
Mama liked to tell this story over and over again. I often wondered if this truck driver was my father, but I eventually stopped asking. Whenever I asked, Mama would tell me that I had been carried across the lands by a great big bird and had fallen into her lap, even when I was old enough to know where babies come from. Eventually, she just shrugged at the question.
“You don’t have a father. Why are you being such a nuisance?”
In time, when all I could remember with any clarity were the township years and the men who came and went, I began to think that perhaps Mama didn’t know who my father was. I hated her for this. My roots lay in shallow soils which lacked substance.
In the suburbs, I would arrive home from school to find Mama in the living room “gedding-down” with Siziba, the garden boy, as music blared forth from the radio. Siziba had a head the size of a bus, with tufts of greying hair around the temples. His arms were short and thick, his back stooped, probably from bending over so much when he was being addressed by the baas. He never looked the baas in the eye. He would bend over, clasp his hands and stare at the ground, scratch his head whenever they were giving him a tongue thrashing.
Mrs Nleya especially liked to talk. Her mouth was always running. Something was always not right in the house. Her rice was not where she had left it. Somebody had been drinking her Mazoe. The yard had not been swept properly. Mama and Siziba knew better than to argue with her.
“Yes, Ma,” they would chorus. “Sorry, Ma. Right away.”
Mrs Nleya towered over Mama as she wiped down her dark wood shelves with Mukwa Oil, whose smell lingered for hours afterwards. Mama hated the smell. She scrubbed the wooden tiles vigorously, to Mrs Nleya’s great satisfaction, her breasts bouncing from side to side like half-full sacks of candy, dancing to the rhythm of her hand as it swung from side to side. Dancing until the tiles were a sparkling shine that reflected an ebony version of your grinning face.
In some instances, Mrs Nleya was right about the food that went missing. Mama loved to sample the food in the kitchen. On Sunday afternoons, the Nleyas loved to invite friends over and drag the braai-stand out onto the lawn, next to the pool. There, accompanied by the tinkle of glasses and laughter, the aroma of barbecued sausage and spiced beef would waft all the way down the garden to our khaya. Asanda, the Nleyas’ daughter, usually had her playmates over, and Mama would stand solemnly by the edge of the pool in her blue maid’s uniform, complete with a doek, her hands clasped behind her back, herding Asanda and her friends into the shallow part of the pool. She always wore a blank face in front of the baas. The Nleyas’ friends always brought more food than they could possibly eat. Mama would pack some of it into a black bin bag and pretend to go out the back to the dustbin. I would be waiting for her at the bottom of the garden, near the tree house, as instructed. There she would shove the bin bag into my arms.
“Go and put this in my green suitcase under the bed. And push it far, far under the bed, okay? Good boy, I’ll buy you ice cream tomorrow, okay?”
Most of the extra food was eventually mashed up for the dogs. This infuriated Mama – “Give those stupid animals better food than me?” – and why were the mongrels allowed to roam the house and jump onto the couches where she herself was not allowed to sit?
“I never get a moment’s rest, never, never, because I’m always cleaning dog hair! Ah bantu! I don’t understand how a person can love a dog more than another human being.”
One thing Mama never touched was the Mazoe – “Tastes too strong, like rotting oranges,” she said; it was the Mainstay bottle in the cupboard in the lounge that she loved to sip from, topping it up with water so nobody would notice.
“Where else will I get a chance to taste white people’s drink?”
One evening, the baas arrived home to find that Mama had sliced and fried the lettuce. Mr Nleya was amused. Mrs Nleya was not.
“Where, where have you ever seen lettuce being cooked? You are going to eat it, you can’t waste food like this. Have you any idea how much food costs?”
Mama happily ate it. “It tastes better cooked – who wants to eat uncooked vegetables, anyway? Imagine eating uncooked chomolia! She is crazy, that baas woman. She thinks I’m stupiti. She is the one who is stupiti. She is just lucky to have such a nice and rich husband. Hmmm! Nleya is such a rich man!” I frowned at Mama as she stared dreamily at the asbestos roofing of our khaya.
Her favourite pastime, though, was trying on the madam’s clothes. She would lock herself in the Nleyas’ bedroom and reappear moments later, draped in the madam’s chiffon scarves, wearing her Woolworths skirts, her Truworths blouses, glittering in her jewellery. The subtle scent of Mrs Nleya’s Pretty Woman perfume would waft after Mama. I used to collect Mrs Nleya’s empty perfume bottles. I thought Pretty Woman had the most beautiful body in the world; the bottle curved into the breasts of a woman, before nipping at the waist, then bulging slightly at the hips. I would rub those glass breasts over and over with my finger, pretend they were big and bouncy like Pamela Anderson’s in Baywatch.
Mama would khwa khwa khwa around the house in the madam’s stilettos, tilt her head and peer at Siziba and me above a pair of Rayban sunglasses. On her head, one of Madam’s wigs.
“You, Siziba, you! Come here!” And she beckoned with her finger, just like the madam did. “Did you clean yard? I say did you clean yard? Nxx! Stupiti. Pick rake and clean yard!”
We all burst into laughter.
“You look like you are going to fall in those stick shoes,” Siziba chuckled. “And eh! Engreeesh my gal, Engreeesh is a probremu! You need learn Engreeesh!”
Christmas was Mama’s favourite time of the year. Although we got hand-me-downs from the Nleyas, Mama always made sure to buy me something brand-new. We would walk into town and spend the afternoon trekking across Bulawayo, admiring the shoes on display at Bata, the clothes at Sales House, the white ladies having tea at Sisters in Haddon & Sly. Mama would imitate them, sitting with their backs straight, carefully sipping tea from tiny cups.
“Who gets full on a baby cup? Heh! Ah! I should introduce these women to a nice big Kango cup.”
We always waited in line to see Father Christmas. Before everything became black in the country and the whites were chased from the farms and disappeared from public view – to be seen only once in a while in startling numbers in their exclusive get-togethers in places like the Bulawayo Country Club – and Father Christmas became a black face wearing a ridiculous fluffy beard made from cotton wool, sitting not on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, but
