the kitchen I heard plastic bags rustling and then, a few seconds later, Mama burst into a personal rendition of a kwaito song by Bongo Muffin that was coming from my uncle’s radio.
| Thathi’s sgubu usfak’ezozweni. | (Take the drum and put it in the shack.) |
| Ufak’amspeks uzobuzwa . . . | (Put on your glasses and you’ll feel . . .) |
| Ubumnandi obulapho. | (The joy that is there.) |
I laughed inside my room as I imagined the meaning of the song and my overweight mother singing it. She paused and called my name again.
“Bafana! Are you still in bed in there, my son?” she shouted.
“I’m here, Mama.”
“I haven’t seen you for ages. Wake up and come have breakfast with me while we chat. I want you to tell me everything about Cape Town, and I mean, everything. I bought you a newspaper as well. They’re looking for a legal advisor in this advert.”
“I’m coming, Mama.”
“Sheshisa! Hurry up! I’m dying to see how my boy looks. Five months is a very long time for a mother not to see her son. And Yuri’s here too.”
Yuri was my ten-year-old cousin whose mother, Aunt Thandi, had died of Aids-related diseases at the age of twenty-seven. Aunt Thandi was Mama’s younger sister. On her death certificate it said that she had died of tuberculosis, chronic diarrhoea and pneumonia.
Two days before she passed away, my sickly Aunt Thandi had called me into her bedroom with a feeble wave of her thin hand and asked me to help her remove a big rock from her chest. She had been coughing badly; coughing up slime and blood.
I still wish I could have helped Aunt Thandi to remove the rock she was talking about, but I didn’t see any such thing when I got there. When I tried to tell her about the rock she asked me to help her turn over, but I was afraid of touching her. She was so thin and weak that I was sure that if I touched her, I would catch her disease.
My family had chosen to believe Aunt Thandi’s infection was a result of negligence by the hospital. It was said that some time back, before Yuri’s birth, Aunt Thandi had been involved in a car accident and had lost a lot of blood. At the hospital she was given a blood transfusion and that was how she had contracted HIV.
“Wow, look at you! I like that complexion,” said Mama as soon as I walked into the kitchen, wearing my fur-lined slippers. “Come here and give Mama a big hug.”
She squeezed me hard against her enormous pear-shaped breasts as if I had been lost for a decade.
“You look fine too, Mama.”
“So, tell me about your university results,” she said, as soon as she let go of me. “I know that my boy has done well. I can’t wait to see you in a suit with that black gown that lawyers and advocates wear in court!”
“Eeee-eh . . .” my reply was slow to come, “that’s what I was hoping to discuss with you, Mama.”
“What happened? Do you want to take me to the graduation ceremony? I don’t mind going to Cape Town with you even though I’m like this . . .” She rubbed her belly. “It would be a great opportunity because I’ve never been to the Mother City. I was talking about it with Zinhle when we saw a nice dress at Southgate Mall the other day. I wanted to buy it specially for your big day.”
“No, Mama. The university has withheld my results because I owe them money,” I lied. “So, until I’ve paid them, they won’t give me the results.”
“That university is very greedy! How do they think you’ll become an advocate without your results, huh?” she asked crossly. “Tell them that you’ll settle your debts when you’re working as an advocate next year. I’m sure they can give you an extension?”
“I tried that, Mama, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Ag, shame, my baby! Don’t stress . . .” She tried to comfort me by hugging me again. “I’m sure we can make a plan.”
I shrugged and looked at Mama.
“But how, Mama?” I asked, my voice devoid of interest. “I owe them R22 000. How can you afford to pay the university?”
“Just leave everything up to Mama, okay? In the meantime you can apply for this job,” she said, pointing at the newspaper on the kitchen table.
“No, Mama,” I shook my head, “I don’t want you to go to the abomashonisa again. You know how those loan sharks are, they’ll take all your money if you fail to pay on time.”
“Actually, I wasn’t even thinking about them.”
“Am I missing something here?” I asked as I saw her smile. “Does this mean that the supermarket is paying you well these days?”
“Are you trying to be funny, Bafana?” she asked, the smile vanishing from her face. “What can I do with R21 an hour, huh? You tell me.”
“Why don’t you join the workers’ union, Mama?” I asked.
Mama raised her eyebrows and gave me a sour look. She was sweating a bit above her upper lip.
“Iyhooo! Do you want them to fire me like they did with the others? Ask Zinhle what they did to her before she completed her nursing course. I can’t risk that! Where will I get the money to put the food on the table if I join the union, huh? Those rich bastards don’t care about us South Africans because of the illegal immigrants. That’s why they were so quick to fire Zinhle in the first place, they know it’s easy to get these amakwere-kwere and underpay them. No, I’ve joined a stokvel society and it’ll be my turn next month. I think I’ll make a good profit. It’ll be way too short to pay for your results, but it’ll be something.”
By that time Yuri had entered the kitchen, followed by my uncle’s dog, Verwoerd. Every time that I looked at Yuri, he reminded me of the slow, painful death of his mother.
“Stop that!” Mama shouted at Yuri angrily as he started scratching at his little hand until his skin broke. Then she looked at me and said, “He always does that when he’s hungry. I left his food at home in Naturena.”
“I don’t mind running to the shop and buying him a kota with cheese and a Vienna,” I offered.
“No, his sickness requires that I feed him a special diet,” said Mama. “He’s only allowed the chicken stew I make with onion, garlic, potatoes, carrots, pumpkin and green beans. I’ll have to leave for Naturena now,” she said, standing up. “You’ll have to make your own breakfast. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
FOUR
Thursday, November 25
The following morning, before she went to work, Mama passed by our house in Chi again. To my utter astonishment, she asked me to draft an advert for the sale of our house. At first I thought my ears were playing elaborate tricks on me, but when she insisted that I should send the advert to the Sowetan newspaper offices in Industria for publication the following day,
