It’s about a family squabble too

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IT’S ABOUT AN HOUR since they left the river. They are no longer running. But they are walking as fast as they can, scaling a steadily rising incline littered with sharp rocks. 

Steam is coming off Nozizwe’s mother’s wet clothes. It reminds Nozizwe of rainy days back home. Days when the rain would ambush them on their way home from school. By the time they got home, they would be drenched to the bone. 

Soon as they got inside the house, they would strip their clothes and put them in front of their coal stove. The stove was always burning in the afternoon. Then they would sit in front of the stove, fascinated by the steam rising from their wet clothes. 

The steam coming off Perseverance’s clothes right now reminds Nozizwe of those days back home. She feels tears welling in her eyes. She blinks them away. She concentrates on a pleasant thought: it’s a good thing the weather is agreeable. The sun is warm without being oppressive. It will soon dry their clothes. Now they are on flatland. She thinks her geography teacher Miss Chigumburi calls it a plateau. It is flat land interspersed with hillocks and clumps of trees.

The terrain reminds her of home. She’s from a land of big, wide-open spaces. In summer the land prefers to wear green, endless stretches of green. There are also the shimmering yellows of sunflower plantations. And more greens and browns and the blues of wild flowers. But everywhere, the sun. Sometimes it smiles shyly from behind the clouds. Mostly it caresses one’s skin. The skin lies inert, enjoying the massage.

But other times the sun behaves in a most brutal manner. It emerges  … No, no, strike that. It does not emerge. It explodes into existence. It is a fiery ball. A ball someone has sling-shot into the atmosphere. It is a live thing, the sun. Hammering away at everything in sight. It lashes trees until they bow in defeat. Blades of grass shrink away as the red-hot tyrant screeches its supremacy over everything else. It is a live thing, the sun. It roars, it rumbles. It belts everyone, it whips. It pounds, it kicks. It lances with its sword-sharp rays. It pounds the land with demented fury. 

The sun

But today it is behaving in a most civilised manner. It licks her face with its mild, warm tongue. So soothing. So serene. Her skin is happy. Her clothes are beginning to dry under its gentle warmth. She starts singing in her rich, thick alto.

Perseverance smacks her on the face. “What did I say about your singing?’ Perseverance hates music because she believes it took her husband away. Nozizwe’s father one day woke up, took his guitar and went to join a band of musicians that were on their way to South Africa. And, ah yes, in addition to playing music in South Africa, he’d then been told there was a job on the mines waiting for him. He wrote one or two letters after that; sent some money too. He abruptly stopped communicating.

Perseverance associates music with bad luck. More so because she is a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The church frowns upon dancing and music. It is through music and dancing that the devil enters a happy home and destroys it. In her home you don’t sing. You don’t clap. You don’t whistle. Only when you are extolling the virtues of the Lord may you break into song.

Her ear ringing from the unexpected slap, Nozizwe stops singing. She smiles to herself when she remembers how everyone at school, at the farm, envies her voice. Maybe one day she will be a musician like her father. God gave her the voice, after all! So, who is she to rebel against God? She must celebrate God’s gift.

Her aunt’s voice breaks into Nozizwe’s thoughts: “At least she’s stopped bleeding.”

“I still say we shouldn’t have left home,” her mother says now.

“I agree,” Nozizwe says.

Crossing the River, Fred Khumalo, Tafelberg, R210.