style="font-size:15px;"> Ousie Maria took a breath, seemingly to calm herself, before saying, “Let me tell you this before I grant you your moment of outrage. I’m the one who helped you with the traditional medicine so that you could conceive. I helped you bring back that radiant expression of joy to your face.”
“I’m sorry, you will have to leave,” Lulama insisted. “I can’t have someone stay who acts like my husband’s first or second wife. There will no longer be trust between us.”
“Do your children and husband know that you’re chasing me away?”
“Don’t worry about that. I will sort it out.”
Lulama looked around the room. The bed she had given Ousie Maria was sitting on bricks. She arched her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the bricks. This mad Ousie Maria is even afraid of imaginary tokoloshes when she is sleeping in her bed. No, she will definitely have to go, Lulama knew. For a long moment, she looked at Ousie Maria, and held her hands clasped in front of her. She didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say. She stormed out of the cottage and banged the door behind her.
After Lulama had gone, Ousie Maria paced up and down in her room. When she got into bed, she could not sleep until the early hours of the morning. When sleep finally caught up with her at dawn, the violent seizures of a nightmare afflicted her. She dreamt Bonaparte was licking her all over her face. This time he was white. The cat walked backwards towards the swimming pool. By the pole under the shade netting he arched his back to a strong taut bow and yawned. He kept a steady gaze on her face, then purred loudly, the tip of his tail jerking back and forth.
Ousie Maria kept on jerking and twisting in her sleep. The cat crouched back and licked its lips and washed its face and whiskers. Its tail stretched out straight and flat to the floor. Then it flicked the last inch of its tail while smelling the ground.
She woke up in a cold sweat the next morning, shivering all over. Throwing her blanket off, she went to the toilet where she flushed and watched thoughtfully as the water whirled down the bowl.
She remembered how she had mixed butter with chillies and spread it on the edges of the swimming pool the day the cat drowned. They were the same chillies that Mohapi put in the engine of his car to discourage snakes and rats from sleeping inside the engine at night. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She recalled the day she tried to chase Bonaparte out of the children’s room with a broom and how the cat had leapt out of reach. Then he sat down and licked the pads of his raised paws before attacking her.
She wiped her tears away and started to pack her things.
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