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We Need New Names: A Novel Reagan Arthur Books Bulawayo, NoViolet Year: 2013 Language: english File: MOBI , 429 KB Your tags: 5.0 / 0

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Table of Contents

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For Za





Contents





Title Page

		Welcome Page

		Dedication

		Hitting Budapest

		Darling on the Mountain

		Country-Game

		Real Change

		How They Appeared

		We Need New Names

		Shhhh

		Blak Power

		For Real

		How They Left

		Destroyedmichygen

		Wedding

		Angel

		This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images

		Hitting Crossroads

		How They Lived

		My America

		Writing on the Wall

		Acknowledgments

		About the Author

		Newsletters

		 		Copyright Page





Hitting Budapest



We are on our way to Budapest: Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Sbho and Stina and me. We are going even though we are not allowed to cross Mzilikazi Road, even though Bastard is supposed to be watching his little sister Fraction, even though Mother would kill me dead if she found out; we are just going. There are guavas to steal in Budapest, and right now I’d rather die for guavas. We didn’t eat this morning and my stomach feels like somebody just took a shovel and dug everything out.

Getting out of Paradise is not so hard since the mothers are busy with hair and talk, which is the only thing they ever do. They just glance at us when we file past the shacks and then look away. We don’t have to worry about the men under the jacaranda either since their eyes never lift from the draughts. It’s only the little kids who see us and try to follow, but Bastard just wallops the naked one at the front with a fist on his big head and they all turn back.

When we hit the bush we are already ; flying, scream-singing like the wheels in our voices will make us go faster. Sbho leads: Who discovered the way to India? and the rest of us rejoin, Vasco da Gama! Vasco da Gama! Vasco da Gama! Bastard is at the front because he won country-game today and he thinks that makes him our president or something, and then myself and Godknows, Stina, Sbho, and finally Chipo, who used to outrun everybody in all of Paradise but not anymore because somebody made her pregnant.

After crossing Mzilikazi we cut through another bush, zip right along Hope Street for a while before we cruise past the big stadium with the glimmering benches we’ll never sit on, and finally we hit Budapest. We have to stop once, though, for Chipo to sit down because of her stomach; sometimes when it gets painful she has to rest it.

When is she going to have the baby anyway? Bastard says. Bastard doesn’t like it when we have to stop doing things because of Chipo’s stomach. He even tried to get us not to play with her altogether.

She’ll have it one day, I say, speaking for Chipo because she doesn’t talk anymore. She is not mute-mute; it’s just that when her stomach started showing, she stopped talking. But she still plays with us and does everything else, and if she really, really needs to say something she’ll use her hands.

What’s one day? On Thursday? Tomorrow? Next week?

Can’t you see her stomach is still small? The baby has to grow.

A baby grows outside of the stomach, not inside. That’s the whole reason they are born. So they grow into adults.

Well, it’s not time yet. That’s why it’s still in a stomach.

Is it a boy or girl?

It’s a boy. The first baby is supposed to be a boy.

But you’re a girl, big head, and you’re a first-born.

I said supposed, didn’t I?

Just shut your kaka mouth, you, it’s not even your stomach.

I think it’s a girl. I put my hands on it all the time and I’ve never felt it kick, not even once.

Yes, boys kick and punch and butt their heads. That’s all they are good at.

Does she want a boy?

No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.

Where exactly does a baby come out of?

The same place it goes into the stomach.

How exactly does it get into the stomach?

First, Jesus’s mother has to put it in there.

No, not Jesus’s mother. A man has to put it in there, my cousin Musa told me. Well, she was really telling Enia, and I was there so I heard.

Then who put it inside her?

How can we know if she won’t say?

Who put it in there, Chipo? Tell us, we won’t tell.

Chipo looks at the sky. There’s a tear in her one eye, but it’s only a small one.

Then if a man put it in there, why doesn’t he take it out?

Because it’s women who give birth, you dunderhead. That’s why they have breasts to suckle the baby and everything.

But Chipo’s breasts are small. Like stones.

It doesn’t matter. They’ll grow when the baby comes. Let’s go, can we go, Chipo? I say. Chipo doesn’t reply, she just takes off, and we run after her. When we get right to the middle of Budapest we stop. This place is not like Paradise, it’s like being in a different country altogether. A nice country where people who are not like us live. But then you don’t see anything to show there are real people living here; even the air itself is empty: no delicious food cooking, no odors, no sounds. Just nothing.





Budapest is big, big houses with satellite dishes on the roofs and neat graveled yards or trimmed lawns, and the tall fences and the Durawalls and the flowers and the big trees heavy with fruit that’s waiting for us since nobody around here seems to know what to do with it. It’s the fruit that gives us courage, otherwise we wouldn’t dare be here. I keep expecting the clean streets to spit and tell us to go back where we came from.

At first we used to steal from Stina’s uncle, who now lives in Britain, but that was not stealing-stealing because it was Stina’s uncle’s tree and not a stranger’s. There’s a difference. But then we finished all the guavas in that tree so we have moved to the other houses as well. We have stolen from so many houses I cannot even count. It was Bastard who decided that we pick a street and stay on it until we have gone through all the houses. Then we go to the next street. This is so we don’t confuse where we have been with where we are going. It’s like a pattern, and Bastard says this way we can be better thieves.

Today we are starting a new street and so we are carefully scouting around. We are passing Chimurenga Street, where we’ve already harvested every guava tree, maybe like two-three weeks ago, when we see white curtains part and a face peer from a window of the cream home with the marble statue of the urinating naked boy with wings. We are standing and staring, looking to see what the face will do, when the window opens and a small, funny voice shouts for us to stop. We remain standing, not because the voice told us to stop, but because none of us has started to run, and also because the voice doesn’t sound dangerous. Music pours out of the window onto the street; it’s not kwaito, it’s not dancehall, it’s not house, it’s not anything we know.





A tall, thin woman opens the door and comes out of the house. The first thing we see is that she is eating something. She waves as she walks towards us, and already we can tell from the woman’s thinness that we are not even going to run. We wait, so we can see what she is smiling for, or at. The woman stops by the gate; it’s locked, and she didn’t bring the keys to open it.

Jeez, I can’t stand this awful heat, and the hard earth, how do you guys ever do it? the woman asks in her not-dangerous voice. She smiles, takes a bite of the thing in her hand. A pink camera dangles from her neck. We all look at the woman’s feet peeking underneath her long skirt. They are clean and pretty feet, like a baby’s. She is wiggling her toes, purple from nail polish. I don’t remember my own feet ever looking like that; maybe when I was born.

Then there’s the woman’s red chewing mouth. I can tell from the cord thingies at the side of her neck and the way she smacks her big lips that whatever she is eating tastes really good. I look closely at her long hand, at the thing she is eating. It’s flat, and the outer part is crusty. The top is creamish and looks fluffy and soft, and there are coin-like things on it, a deep pink, the color of burn wounds. I also see sprinkles of red and green and yellow, and finally the brown bumps that look like pimples.

Chipo points at the thing and keeps jabbing at the air in a way that says What’s that? She rubs her stomach with her other hand; now that she is pregnant, Chipo is always playing with her stomach like maybe it’s a toy. The stomach is the size of a football, not too big. We keep our eyes on the woman’s mouth and wait to hear what she will say.

Oh, this? It’s a camera, the woman says, which we all know; even a stone can tell that a camera is a camera. The woman wipes her hand on her skirt, pats the camera, then aims what is left of the thing at the bin by the door, misses, and laughs to herself like a madman. She looks at us like maybe she wants us to laugh with her, but we are busy looking at the thing that flew in the air before hitting the ground like a dead bird. We have never ever seen anyone throw food away, even if it’s a thing. Chipo looks like she wants to run after it and pick it up. The woman’s twisted mouth finishes chewing, and swallows. I swallow with her, my throat tingling.

How old are you? the woman asks Chipo, looking at her stomach like she has never seen anybody pregnant.

She is eleven, Godknows replies for Chipo. We are ten, me and her, like twinses, Godknows says, meaning him and me. And Bastard is eleven and Sbho is nine, and Stina we don’t know because he has no birth certificate.

Wow, the woman says. I say wow too, wow wow wow, but I do it inside my head. It’s my first time ever hearing this word. I try to think what it means but I get tired of grinding my brains so I just give up.

And how old are you? Godknows asks her. And where are you from? I’m thinking about how Godknows has a big mouth that will get him slapped one day.

Me? Well, I’m thirty-three, and I’m from London. This is my first time visiting my dad’s country, she says, and twists the chain on her neck. The golden head on the chain is the map of Africa.

I know London. I ate some sweets from there once. They were sweet at first, and then they just changed to sour in my mouth. Uncle Vusa sent them when he first got there but that was a long time ago. Now he never sends anything, Godknows says. He looks up at the sky like maybe he wants a plane to appear with sweets from his uncle.

But you look only fifteen, like a child, Godknows says, looking at the woman now. I am expecting her to reach out and slap him on the mouth but she merely smiles like she has not just been insulted.

Thank you, I just came off the Jesus diet, she says, sounding very pleased. I look at her like What is there to thank? I’m also thinking, What is a Jesus diet, and do you mean the real Jesus, like God’s child?

I know from everybody’s faces and silence that they think the woman is strange. She runs a hand through her hair, which is matted and looks a mess; if I lived in Budapest I would wash my whole body every day and comb my hair nicely to show I was a real person living in a real place. With her hair all wild like that, and standing on the other side of the gate with its lock and bars, the woman looks like a caged animal. I begin thinking what I would do if she actually jumped out and came after us.

Do you guys mind if I take a picture? she says. We don’t answer because we’re not used to adults asking us anything; we just look at the woman, at her fierce hair, at her skirt that sweeps the ground when she walks, at her pretty peeking feet, at her golden Africa, at her large eyes, at her smooth skin that doesn’t even have a scar to show she is a living person, at the earring in her nose, at her T-shirt that says Save Darfur.

Great, now, stand close together, the woman says.

You, the tall one, go to the back. And you, yes, you, and you, look this way, no, I mean you, with the missing teeth, look at me, like this, she says, her hands reaching out of the bars, almost touching us.

Good, good, now say cheese, say cheese, cheese, cheeeeeeeese—the woman enthuses, and everyone says cheese. Myself, I don’t really say, because I am busy trying to remember what cheese means exactly, and I cannot remember. Yesterday Mother of Bones told us the story of Dudu the bird who learned and sang a new song whose words she did not really know the meaning of and who was then caught, killed, and cooked for dinner because in the song she was actually begging people to kill and cook her.

The woman points at me, nods, and tells me to say cheeeeeese and I say it mostly because she is smiling like she knows me really well, like she even knows my mother. I say it slowly at first, and then I say, Cheese and cheese, and I’m saying cheese cheeeeese and everyone is saying cheese cheese cheese and we are all singing the word and the camera is clicking and clicking and clicking. Then Stina, who is quiet most of the time, just starts to walk away. The woman stops taking pictures and says, Hey, where are you going? But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even turn to look at her. Then Chipo walks away after Stina, then the rest of us follow them.

We leave the woman standing there, taking pictures as we go. Then Bastard stops at the corner of Victoria and starts shouting insults at the woman, and I remember the thing, and that she threw it away without even asking us if we wanted it, and I begin shouting also, and everyone else joins in. We shout and we shout and we shout; we want to eat the thing she was eating, we want to hear our voices soar, we want our hunger to go away. The woman just looks at us puzzled, like she has never heard anybody shout, and then quickly hurries back into the house but we shout after her, shout till we smell blood in our tickling throats.

Bastard says when we grow up we’ll stop stealing guavas and move on to bigger things inside the houses. I’m not really worried about that because when that time comes, I’ll not even be here; I’ll be living in America with Aunt Fostalina, eating real food and doing better things than stealing. But for now, the guavas. We decide on Robert Street, on a huge white house that looms like a mountain. The house has big windows and sparkling things all over, and a red swimming pool at the front, empty chairs all around it. Everything looks really pretty, but I think it’s the kind of pretty to look at and admire and say, Oh, that’s pretty, not a pretty to live in.

The good thing is that the house is set far back in the yard, and our guavas are right at the front, as if they heard we were coming and ran out to meet us. It doesn’t take long to climb over the Durawall, get into the tree, and fill our plastic bags. Today we are stealing bull guavas. These ones are big, like a man’s angry fist, and do not really ripen to yellow like the regular guavas; they stay green on the outside, pink and fluffy on the inside, and taste so good I cannot even explain it.





Going back to Paradise, we do not run. We just walk nicely like Budapest is now our country too, like we built it even, eating guavas along the way and spitting the peels all over to make the place dirty. We stop at the corner of AU Street for Chipo to vomit; it happens most of the time she eats. Today her vomit looks like urine, only thicker. We leave it there, uncovered.

One day I will live here, in a house just like that, Sbho says, biting into a thick guava. She points to the big blue house with the long row of steps, flowers all around it. A really nice house, but not nicer than where we just got the guavas. Sbho’s voice sounds like she is not playing, like she knows what she is talking about. I watch her chew, her cheeks bulging. She swallows, starts to peel what is left of the guava with her side teeth.

How are you going to do that? I ask. Sbho spits the peels and says, with her big eyes, I just know it.

She is going to do it in her dreams, Bastard says to the sun, and throws a guava at the Durawall of Sbho’s house. The guava explodes and stains the wall. I bite into a sweet guava; I don’t like grinding the bull guava seeds, because they are tough and it takes a long time to do, so I grind them just slightly, sometimes swallow them whole even though I know what will happen later when I’m squatting.

Why did you do that? Sbho looks at the stained Durawall of her house, and then at Bastard. Her face has turned ugly now, like a real woman’s.

I said, why did you do that? Sbho’s voice has hot coals in it, like maybe she will do something to Bastard, but really she won’t because Bastard is bigger and stronger, plus he is a boy. He has beaten Sbho before, and myself, and Chipo and Godknows as well; he has beaten us all except Stina.

Because I can, kiss-knees. Besides, what does it matter? Bastard says.

Because you just heard me say I like the house, so you are not supposed to do anything to it. Why don’t you pick another that I don’t care about, they’re many houses here! Sbho says.

Well, that doesn’t make it your house, does it? Bastard wears black tracksuit bottoms and a faded orange T-shirt that says Cornell. Now he takes the top off, ties it over his head, and I don’t know if it makes him look ugly or pretty, if he really looks like a man or a woman. He turns and starts walking backwards so he can face Sbho. He always likes whoever he is quarreling with to look right at him.

Budapest is not a kaka toilet for anybody to just walk in, it’s not like Paradise. You’ll never live here, he says.

I’m going to marry a man from Budapest. He’ll take me away from Paradise, away from the shacks and Heavenway and Fambeki and everything else, Sbho says.

Ha-ha. You think a man will marry you with your missing teeth? I wouldn’t even marry you myself, Godknows says, shouting over his skinny shoulder. He and Chipo and Stina walk ahead of us. I look at Godknows’s shorts, torn at the back, at his buttocks peeping like strange eyes through the dirty white fabric.

I’m not talking to you, chapped buttocks! Sbho shouts at Godknows. Besides, my teeth will grow back. Mother says I’ll even be more beautiful too!

Godknows flings his hand and makes a whatever sign because he has nothing to say to that. Even the stones know that Sbho is pretty, prettier than all of us here, prettier than all the children in Paradise. Sometimes we refuse to play with her if she won’t stop talking like we don’t already know it.

Well, I don’t care, I’m blazing out of this kaka country myself. Then I’ll make lots of money and come back and get a house in this very Budapest. Or even better, many houses: one in Budapest, one in Los Angeles, one in Paris. Wherever I feel like, Bastard says.

When we were going to school my teacher Mr. Gono said you need an education to make money, Stina says, stopping to face Bastard. And how will you do that now that we are not going to school anymore? he adds. Stina doesn’t say much, so when he opens his mouth you know it’s important talk.

I don’t need any kaka school to make money, you goat-teeth, Bastard says.

He brings his face close to Stina’s like he will bite his nose off. Stina can fight Bastard if he wants, but he only looks at him like he is bored and just eats the rest of his guava. Then he starts to walk, fast, away from us.

I’m going to America to live with my aunt Fostalina, it won’t be long, you’ll see, I say, raising my voice so they can all hear. I start on a brand-new guava; it’s so sweet I finish it in just three bites. I don’t even bother chewing the seeds.

America is too far, you midget, Bastard says. I don’t want to go anywhere where I have to go by air. What if you get there and find it’s a kaka place and get stuck and can’t come back? Me, I’m going to Jo’burg, that way when things get bad, I can just get on the road and roll without talking to anybody; you have to be able to return from wherever you go.

I look at Bastard and think what to say to him. A guava seed is stuck between my gum and my last side tooth and I try to reach for it with my tongue. I finally use my finger; it tastes like earwax.

Yes, America is far, what if something happens to your plane when you are in it?

What about the Terrorists? Godknows says, agreeing with Bastard.

I really think flat-face, peeping-buttocks Godknows is only saying it to please ugly-face Bastard. I begin on a new guava and give Godknows a talking eye.

I don’t care, I’m going, I say, and walk fast to catch up with Chipo and Stina because I know where the talk will end if Godknows and Bastard gang up on me.

Well, go, go to that America and work in nursing homes. That’s what your aunt Fostalina is doing as we speak. Right now she is busy cleaning kaka off some wrinkled old man who can’t do anything for himself, you think we’ve never heard the stories? Bastard screams to my back but I just keep walking.

I’m thinking how if I had proper strength I would turn right around and beat Bastard up for saying that about my aunt Fostalina and my America. I would slap him, butt him on his big forehead, and then slam my fist into his mouth and make him spit his teeth. I would pound his stomach until he vomited all the guavas he had eaten. I would pin him to the ground, jab my knee into his spine, fold his hands behind him, and then pull his head back till he begged for his two-cents life. That is just what I would do, but I walk away instead. I know he is just saying this because he is jealous. Because he has nobody in America. Because Aunt Fostalina is not his aunt. Because he is Bastard and I am Darling.





By the time we get back to Paradise the guavas are finished and our stomachs are so full we are almost crawling. We stop to defecate in the bush because we have eaten too much. Plus it is best to do so before it gets too dark, otherwise no one will accompany you; it’s scary to go out by yourself at night because you have to pass Heavenway, which is the cemetery, to get to the bush and you might meet a ghost. As we speak, those who know about things say Moses’s father, who died last month, can be seen roaming Paradise some nights, wearing his yellow Barcelona football jersey.

We all find places, and me, I squat behind a rock. This is the worst part about guavas; because of all those seeds, you get constipated once you eat too much. Nobody says it, but I know we are constipated again, all of us, because nobody is trying to talk, or get up and leave. We just eat a lot of guavas because it’s the only way to kill our hunger, and when it comes to defecating, we get in so much pain it becomes an almost impossible task, like you are trying to give birth to a country.

We are all squatting like that, in our different places, and I’m beating my thighs with fists to make a cramp go away when somebody screams. It’s not a scream that comes from when you push too hard and a guava seed cuts your anus; it’s one that says Come and see, so I stop pushing, pull up my underwear, and abandon my rock. And there, squatting and screaming, is Chipo. She is also pointing ahead in the bush, and we see it, a tall thing dangling in a tree like a strange fruit. Then we see it’s not a thing but a person. Then we see it’s not just a person but a woman.

What’s that? somebody whispers. Nobody answers because now we can all see what it is. The thin woman dangles from a green rope that’s attached to a branch high up in the tree. The red sun squeezes through the leaves and gives everything a strange color; it’s almost beautiful, it makes the woman’s light skin glow. But still everything is just scary and I want to run but I don’t want to run alone.

The woman’s thin arms hang limp at the sides, and her hands and feet point to the ground. Everything straight, like somebody drew her there, a line hanging in the air. The eyes are the scariest part, they are almost too white, and they look like they want to pop out. The mouth is open wide in an O, as if the woman was maybe interrupted in the middle of saying something. She is wearing a yellow dress, and the grass licks the tip of her red shoes. We just stand there staring.

Let’s run, Stina says, and I get ready to run.

Can’t you see she’s hanged herself and now she’s dead? Bastard picks up a stone and throws; it hits the woman on the thigh. I think something will happen but then nothing happens; the woman does not move, just her dress. It swings ever so lightly in the breeze like maybe a baby angel is busy playing with it.

See, I told you she’s dead, Bastard says, in that voice he uses when he is reminding us who is the boss.

God will punish you for that, Godknows says. Bastard throws another stone and hits the woman on the leg. The woman still does not move; she just dangles there, like a ragged doll. I’m terrified; it’s like she’s looking at me from the corner of her white, popped eye. Looking and waiting for me to do something, I don’t know what.

God does not live here, fool, Bastard says. He throws another stone; it only grazes the woman’s yellow dress and I am glad he missed.

I’ll go and tell my mother, Sbho says, her voice sounding like she wants to cry. Stina starts to leave, and Chipo and Sbho and Godknows and myself follow him. Bastard stays behind for a little while, but when I look over my shoulder, I see him right there behind us. I know he can’t stay in the bush by himself with a dead woman, even though he wants to make like he is fearless. We walk, but then Bastard jumps to the front, making us stop.

Wait, so who wants real bread? he says, tightening the Cornell T-shirt on his head and smiling. I look at the wound on Bastard’s chest, just below his left breast. It’s almost pink, like the inside of a guava.

Where is it? I say.

Look, did you notice that woman’s shoes were almost new? If we can get them then we can sell them and buy a loaf, or maybe even one and a half.

We all turn around and follow Bastard back into the bush, the dizzying smell of Lobels bread all around us now, and then we are rushing, then we are running, then we are running and laughing and laughing and laughing.





Darling on the Mountain



Jesus Christ died on this day, which is why I have to be out here washing with cold water like this. I don’t like cold water and I don’t even like washing my whole body unless I have somewhere meaningful to go. After I finish and dress, me and Mother of Bones will head off to her church. She says it’s the least we can do because we are all dirty sinners and we are the ones for whom Jesus Christ gave his life, but what I know is that I myself wasn’t there when it all happened, so how can I be a sinner?

I don’t like going to church because I don’t really see why I have to sit in the hot sun on that mountain and listen to boring songs and meaningless prayers and strange verses when I could be doing important things with my friends. Plus, last time I went, that crazy Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro shook me and shook me until I vomited pink things. I thought I was going to die a real death. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro was trying to get the spirit inside me out; they say I’m possessed because they say my grandfather isn’t properly buried because the white people killed him during the war for feeding and hiding the terrorists who were trying to get our country back because the white people had stolen it.

If you’re stealing something it’s better if it’s small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with, like guavas. That way, people can’t see you with the thing to be reminded that you are a shameless thief and that you stole it from them, so I don’t know what the white people were trying to do in the first place, stealing not just a tiny piece but a whole country. Who can ever forget you stole something like that? Nobody knows where my grandfather’s body is, so now the church people say his spirit is inside me and won’t leave until his body’s buried right. The thing is I’ve never really seen or felt the spirit myself to say if it’s true or people are just lying, which is what adults will do sometimes because they are adults.

Hey, cabbage ears, what are you bathing for? I hear somebody shout.

Who is it? I shout back, even though I don’t like being called cabbage ears. I have soap all over my face so I can’t really open my eyes.

We’re going to play Andy-over, what are you bathing for?

I’m going to church with Mother of Bones, I say, tasting Sunlight soap in my mouth. I start to splash my face with water.

Don’t you want to play with us? says a different voice, maybe Sbho’s.

I have to go to church. Don’t you know Jesus died today? I say.

My father says your church is just kaka, and that your Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is an idio— I hear Bastard’s voice start.

You you futsekani leave her alone you bloody mgodoyis get away boSatan beRoma! Mother of Bones spits from inside the shack. I hear giggling, then the stomp-stomp of running feet. I finish splashing my face, open my eyes, and they have disappeared; all I see is a brown dog lying behind MaDumane’s shack, and Annamaria bathing her albino son, Whiteboy, in a dish. When I wave to him he starts to cry, and Annamaria looks at me with a peppered eye and says, Leave my son alone, ugly, can’t you see you’re scaring him?

Inside the shack, Mother of Bones has already laid out my good yellow dress, which I wouldn’t dare wear if my mother were here; she went to the border to sell things so I have to stay with Mother of Bones until she returns. Sometimes Mother comes back after only a few days, sometimes after a week; sometimes she comes back when I don’t even know when she is coming. Right now Mother of Bones is busy counting her money like she does every morning so I start to do my things quietly, the way I’m expected to. I reach under the bed for the Vaseline.

Yes be careful with that Vaseline I didn’t say you should drink it khona and I told you not to play with those dirty imbeciles they are a bad influence, Mother of Bones says, and I just pretend she hasn’t spoken. After I finish Vaselining, I get dressed and sit on the edge of the bed and wait; I don’t know why Mother of Bones has to go through her money every day like somebody told her it lays eggs overnight. To make the time go I start counting the faded suns on the bedspread; there’s exactly twelve of them, like the disciples—Simon, Peter, Andrew, I don’t know the rest, maybe if they had better names I’d remember them all.

After I finish with the suns I look at my father at the other end of the shack: he is dressed in a strange black dress, like a woman, and a silly square hat; there are ropes and things going around his neck and down his dress. He is carrying a paper in one hand, and a fat man in a suit is shaking the other. Mother of Bones says the picture was taken when Father was finishing university, just before I was born. She says that she was in the picture as well but we can’t see her because that fat man got in front of her just when the camera was snapping, like it was maybe his own son who was finishing university. Now Father is in South Africa, working, but he never writes, never sends us money, never nothing. It makes me angry thinking about him so most of the time I just pretend he doesn’t exist; it’s better this way.

Then there is the long, yellow curtain with beautiful prints of proud peacocks, the feathers spread out like rays. It covers one side of the tin wall; I don’t really see why Mother of Bones has the curtain in the first place since there are no real glass windows. After the curtain comes the calendar; it’s old but Mother of Bones keeps it since it has Jesus Christ on it. He has women’s hair and is smiling shyly, his head tilted a bit to the side; you can tell he really wanted to look nice in the picture. He used to have blue eyes but I painted them brown like mine and everybody’s, to make him normal. Mother of Bones walloped me so much for it though, I couldn’t sit for a whole two days.

Next to Jesus is my cousin Makhosi carrying me when we were little. Two years ago Makhosi went away to Madante mine to dig for diamonds, when they were first discovered and everybody was flocking there. When Makhosi came back, his hands were like decaying logs. He told us about Madante between bad bouts of raw, painful coughs, how when he was under the earth he forgot everything. He said all he knew inside that mine was the terrible pounding of the hammer around him, sometimes even inside him, like he had swallowed it. After a while, he too went to South Africa, like Father.

And hidden under the bed, inside the old, tattered Bible that Mother of Bones doesn’t take to church, is a picture of my grandfather. He was killed before I was born, but I knew who he was the moment I laid my eyes on him for the first time; it felt as if I were looking at myself and Makhosi and Father and my uncle Muzi and my other relatives, like my grandfather’s face was a folded fist and all our faces were collected like coins inside it.

In the hidden picture, Grandfather is speaking, his mouth pursed. There are frown lines on his forehead, and from the way his red eyes are looking deeply at the camera, you would think that he wants to eat it. He has a bone going through his nose and is wearing earrings. Behind him are fields of waist-high maize crops, just endless and endless green. Nobody likes to talk about him, it’s as if he is something that never even happened, but there are times I have caught Mother of Bones muttering, and even though she doesn’t say, I always have a feeling she is muttering to him. She doesn’t know that I know about Grandfather’s picture.

Why anyone would want me to throw away my suitcase of money is all I want to know and I mean money not bricks no but money, Mother of Bones says. She stays crouched on the floor like a praying mantis, her suitcase at her feet. Her brass bangles clink and clink as her hands go over the bricks of money.

You know what I don’t understand? Mother of Bones asks. She raises her head and looks at me, but I don’t say anything back because I know she is not even talking to me.

What I don’t understand is how this very money that I have in lumps cannot buy even a grain of salt I mean that there is what I don’t understand, she says, anger starting to churn in her voice.

Money is money no matter what this is still money, she says. Now Mother of Bones is patting the money like it is a baby. Like she is trying to put the baby to sleep.

It’s old money, Mother of Bones, it’s useless now, don’t you even get it? You just have to throw it away or use it to make fire like everybody else. Now they say we’ll start using American money, I say, but to myself so Mother of Bones doesn’t hear.

And the American money they are talking about just where do they think I’ll get it do they think I can just dig it up huh do they think I will defecate it? Mother of Bones says. When she speaks, her words always come tumbling out, as if she is afraid that if she pauses, something will whisk them away. At first I want to jump up because I think she heard me even though I said it quietly, but she’s not looking at me so I stay put. You can see the pain on her face now, like something inside her is breaking and bleeding.

Mother of Bones’s face is the color of the shacks, a dirty brown, like it was made to match. There are deep lines on it; when I was little I thought somebody had taken a broken mirror and carved and carved and carved. A white scarf is tied around her head, and bright beads coil like snakes around her neck: purple beads, orange beads, pink beads, blue beads, their colors screaming against the quiet brown of the skin.





I make sure I walk behind Mother of Bones when we go to church; if I walk in front of her she’ll just be telling me to walk like a woman, which I am not. On her small feet, Mother of Bones wears mismatched shoes, a flat green shoe and a red tennis shoe with a white lace, but that doesn’t mean she’s crazy.

We pass tiny shack after tiny shack crammed together like hot loaves of bread. I’m not wearing shoes because they are too small now, and the other made-in-China ones that Mother brought me from the border just fell apart, so I walk carefully and make sure to lift my feet to avoid things on the dusty red path: a broken bottle here, a pile of junk over there, a brownish puddle of something here, a disemboweled watermelon there. It’s early in the morning but the sun is already frying the shacks; I feel it over my body, roasting me, like.

I keep my mouth shut like I’m supposed to while Mother of Bones shouts greetings to the people we see on the way; Bornfree’s mother, MaDube, who is pounding nails on the roof of her shack with a rock; NaBetina holding her squatting grandson Nomoreproblems; Mai Tonde sitting on a stool and peering inside her screaming baby’s ear; NaMgcobha dictating a letter to a tall boy I’ve never seen before.

We pass old Zuze looking at everything with his blind eyes, pass women sitting outside a shack and gossiping and doing one another’s hair, and not too far off, the men huddled like sheep and playing draughts under the lone jacaranda. The blooming purple flowers almost make the men look beautiful in the shade without their shirts on. They sit there, crouched forward like tigers, like the sun whipping their backs doesn’t matter, like the bird droppings falling on their bare shoulders and splattering their skin don’t matter. Mother of Bones shouts her greetings and waves but the men hardly take their eyes off the fading draughts board with its upturned and downturned bottle tops.

When we pass the people standing in line outside Vodloza’s shack, Mother of Bones only waves; here she cannot shout because it’s a healer’s place. A few of the people wave back unsurely, like they don’t even want to, looking worn out from sickness or troubles. They are waiting for Vodloza to divine with their ancestors because that’s his job. A large white sign says in bold red English words: VODLOZA, BESTEST HEALER IN ALL OF THIS PARADISE AND BEEYOND WILL PROPER FIX ALL THESE PROBLEMSOME THINGS THAT YOU MAY ENCOUNTER IN YOUR LIFE: BEWITCHEDNESS, CURSES, BAD LUCK, WHORING SPOUSES, CHILDRENLESSNESS, POVERTY, JOBLESSNESS, AIDS, MADNESS, SMALL PENISES, EPILEPSY, BAD DREAMS, BAD MARRIAGE/MARRIAGELESSNESS, COMPETITION AT WORK, DEAD PEOPLE TERRORIZING YOU, BAD LUCK WITH GETTING VISAS ESPECIALLY TO USA AND BRITAIN, NONSENSEFUL PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, THINGS DISAPPEARING IN YOUR HOUSE ETC. ETC. ETC. PLEASE PAYMENT IN FOREX ONLY.

When we pass the playground I walk a little slower so I can see everything. They are playing Andy-over, and Bastard is jumping under a rope and the others are busy chanting—he went to America on a saucepan, and what-what. They pause to watch us, and when we get close, Godknows screams, Darling! Samu said she can beat you up, do you want to fight her when you get back? Did you hear NGO will be here next week! Are you coming to Budapest? as if he doesn’t know he’s not supposed to talk to me when I’m with Mother of Bones like this. I start to raise my hand to my lips to shut him up and Mother of Bones says, without even turning around, Leave those little heathens alone you hear me?

A little ways past the playground we meet Bornfree and Messenger carrying stacks of posters in their hands. They are trying to look like twins in the matching T-shirts with the little white hearts at the front and the word Change written in red just below the hearts. They stand aside to let us pass.

Good morning, Mother of Bones, they say together, like they rehearsed it.

Going to hunt for bones, Mother of Bones? Messenger says. He looks at Mother of Bones with a smile; if it were not for the one black tooth at the front, it would be a good smile. They don’t say anything to me so I just look at my feet, covered now in red dust because that’s just what happens when you use Vaseline and don’t wear any shoes.

No my son today I’m going to the house of the Lord don’t you know what day it is? Mother of Bones says, walking on. She calls everybody my son or my daughter; I think that’s because she cannot remember all the names.

Well, your God is listening because the change everybody’s been crying for is finally here, Messenger says. He smiles again; Messenger likes to smile, like life is just too pretty, like everything is great.

Yes, it is, you watch, Bornfree adds. He waves his stack of papers and I see the words Change, Real Change at the front. His voice is bright and bold, like the red ink on his posters.

We’re demonstrating tomorrow, on Main Street, come and walk for change! Be the future! Messenger shouts after us. We can hear them whistling and chanting about change, and in no time we hear the children’s voices chanting as well. I turn to look and I see everybody has abandoned Andy-over and is now running after Bornfree and Messenger. Fists above their heads. Running and jumping and chanting, the word change in the air like it’s something you can grab and put in your mouth and sink your teeth into.

Yes that Lot’s wife turned to look back just like you’re doing and turned to salt, Mother of Bones says, and I immediately stop even though I know that I, Darling, will not and cannot turn to salt.

Fools, Mother of Bones says. She picks up her pace a bit and I have to walk-run to catch up. What do they think they are doing yanking a lion’s tail don’t they know that there will be bones if they dare? she continues. Now she turns back like she really is talking to me.

You will ask me tomorrow you will ask me what I’m saying now tomorrow when there are real bones, she says, and I just look away at the sky.

Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us. When sweat trickles down my face I let it drip so I can try to reach it with my tongue; when I do, it is salty and stings. We stop underneath the mopane tree where we used to church until a little while ago so I can tie up Mother of Bones’s one shoelace; I do this every time before we start on the trail up Fambeki. On the mopane is a big sign with an arrow that points upwards, towards our church. Beneath the arrow are the words HOLY CHARIOT CHURCH OF CHRIST—IT DOSNT GO BACKWARDS, IT DOESNT GO SIDEWAYS, IT DOESN’T GO FORWARDS. IT GOES UPWARDS, TO HEAVEN. AMEN! I think this is taken from the Bible, but I have forgotten the verse.

Mother of Bones is already singing her favorite church song, the one she always sings when she makes the climb. She sings it wrong because she doesn’t know all the English words because she doesn’t speak the right English because she didn’t go to school, but I don’t correct her since you can’t tell an adult nothing. The truth of it is that the song says My sins were higher than a mountain when the Lord sanctified me, not sacrificed me, like Mother of Bones sings. I don’t go to school anymore because all the teachers left to teach over in South Africa and Botswana and Namibia and them, where there’s better money, but I haven’t forgotten the things I learned.

By the time we finally get to the top of Fambeki my thighs are like lead and I’m sick of the sun and just want to sit down, but Mother of Bones is singing away like she hasn’t just climbed a mountain. She has even raised her voice because I know that she wants to show people that she is a good Christian. There are only three other adults there, Mr. Hove and his pretty wife, Mai Shingi, and a man in a green shirt I have never seen before but maybe he is Mr. Hove’s relative because they both have the large heads that look like ZUPCO buses.

I sit on a rock with the Hove children like I’m supposed to, but when the little boy smiles at me and shows his toy soldier, I ignore him to let him know he’s just not my size. I also give the big-nosed sister a good frown to show her that she, too, doesn’t count.

I see you’re already here I see you beat me to it today, Mother of Bones says to the adults. She says it playing-like, laughing-like, but if you knew her well, like I know her, then you would know that she is in fact mad that they got here before she did. Mother of Bones likes being the first in everything.

In no time the rest of the church people begin to arrive, panting like dogs returning from a hunt. The only thing I like about getting here early is that I get to watch the fat adults toiling up the mountain, trying to look like angels in their flowing robes that have now lost their whiteness. They clap their hands and greet one another in the name of the Lord and what-what, and the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet. Chipo has come with her grandmother and grandfather, and I have already elbowed away one of the Hove kids so that Chipo can sit next to me. Then MaMoyo comes and puts her baby in my arms without even asking me if I want to hold him.

I hate babies, so I don’t smile when MaMoyo’s baby looks at me with his crazy bullfrog eyes. To make it worse, he is an ugly baby; his face looks shocked, like he has just seen the buttocks of a snake. I look at the pattern of ringworms on his bald head, at the mucus in his nose, and decide that no, I don’t want to have anything to do with him. I ask Chipo in a whisper if she wants to hold him but she doesn’t even look at me.

I make sure nobody is watching, and then I immediately start making faces to scare the baby. When he doesn’t cry I pinch him on the arm. I watch the fat face scrunch up, reluctantly, as if he is deciding if he should cry at all, and when I think he is taking too long to make up his mind, I pinch harder. This time the baby explodes in a real cry like he’s supposed to, and me and Chipo look at each other and smile. MaMoyo quickly comes to get him because no woman wants to be chided in front of the whole church.

The Evangelists and Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro arrive after everybody, like chief baboons. They look like something else with the colorful crosses emblazoned on their robes, their long sticks with the hooks at the ends, their bald heads glimmering in the sun, the long beards; you can just tell that they are trying to copy the style of those men in the Bible.

Today Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is wearing a brand-new robe; it’s milk white, with green and red stripes going down the sides. He is also carrying a new stick, and his doesn’t look like the Evangelists’—it’s way longer and fatter, like it can actually injure and do ugly things. At the end of the stick is a cross inside a circle. When the Evangelists and Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro come, you know that it has really begun, so a tall thin woman stands up and starts singing “Mikoro” and I just want to die because the song bores me like I don’t know what.

All of them are on their feet now, singing and shuffling and swaying, singing and shuffling and swaying, like maybe they have caught the spirit, but if they have, then it skipped me. The spirit always skips me. Chipo is swaying as well, her hands playing with her stomach, but she is not singing. I pretend to sing in case Mother of Bones looks to see, but I’m really just moving my lips because this “Mikoro” song has no spark. All there is to it is the repeating of the words Mikoro, Mikoro while the woman who is leading the song does the singing, and she doesn’t have the voice for it to begin with, even I myself can sing better, even a cat can do better. I look at MaMoyo and am not surprised the song is putting ugly baby to sleep.

To pass the time I let my eyes wander towards Paradise. When I’m on Fambeki like this I feel like I’m God, who sees everything. Paradise is all tin and stretches out in the sun like a wet sheepskin nailed on the ground to dry; the shacks are the muddy color of dirty puddles after the rains. The shacks themselves are terrible but from up here, they seem much better, almost beautiful even, it’s like I’m looking at a painting.

Then I look up at the sky and see a plane far up in the clouds. First I’m thinking it’s just a bird, but then I see that no, it’s not. Maybe it’s a British Airways plane like the one Aunt Fostalina went in to America.

It’s what I will take myself when I follow Aunt Fostalina to America, I whisper in Chipo’s ear. I look up so she can see what I’m talking about, and she follows my eyes.

But I don’t know why I have to take a British Airways plane to go to America; why not an American Airways one? I say, but now I’m no longer talking to Chipo. Now I’m just talking to myself because I don’t think she will understand. From here the sky appears very close, like somebody holy can reach a hand down and wipe the sweat off Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro’s and the Evangelists’ dripping heads. God told Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro in a dream that he needed to move the church to here; maybe God wanted us to be closer to him, just like in that verse, Simon on the mountain.





Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro brings me back with his roaring and I realize the singing has stopped. If Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro’s voice were an animal it would be big and fierce and would knock things down. Once, when we still churched under the mopane, he told us how he used to have a small voice and that he rarely used it because he was a quiet, timid man, until the night an angel came to him and said, Speak, and he opened his mouth and thunder came out.

Now Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is busy thundering about Judas and Golgotha and the cross and the two thieves next to Jesus and things, making like he was there and saw it all. When Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is in form he doesn’t stand in one place. He paces up and down like there are hot coals under his feet. He flails his arms, sometimes waving his stick at the sky, sometimes jumping around as if he is itching where nobody can see. Every once in a while a woman will scream Sweet Jeeeeesus, or Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm, or Glory, glory, or something like that, which means that the spirit is touching her.

Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is drenched in sweat now, and his robe clings to his chest; you can see his breasts and nipples. I look to the side and see Mother of Bones listening with all her might, eyes half closed, head tilted, and arms clutching at the stomach like she is feeling pain. All around, the adults are busy nodding their heads in agreement, or shaking them to show how terrible what Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is saying is, or making guttural and moaning sounds. I look at Chipo and she is closing her eyes, taking a nap. My buttocks are so stiff they could be made of stone.

Now Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro reads from his English Bible even though he sounds like a grade-one reading. If he went to school, you can tell from the way he reads that he must have been just a dunderhead at it, even Godknows can read better. Prophet Revelations Bitchington doesn’t spend much time on the Bible, maybe because he is afraid of running into a big word he won’t know how to pronounce; he quickly moves on to preaching, which he is very good at. Then he starts to speak in a strange language that nobody understands. The people moan and clap and groan.

When the Mikoro woman interrupts Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro with another song, he just keeps thundering like he doesn’t even hear her. For a moment their voices circle each other like crazy cocks, neither of them giving way; it becomes dizzying just listening until at last Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro says, I command the devil to shut up in the name of Jesus. When the Mikoro lady is silenced I bring my head to my armpit and giggle because she was making like God told her she is Celine Dion.

After the preaching somebody passes a big white bowl around for offerings, and Destiny’s mother starts singing “Blessed Are the Givers.” Her voice is quiet and beautiful and it makes me think about the Budapest lady; this is what her voice would sound like if she could sing; it would suit her better than it suits Destiny’s mother, but she still needs to do something about that mess on her head. After a while the bowl comes back with strange monies I’ve never seen before, then Destiny’s mother ends the song, then we move on to the confessing of sins, and those with sins stand up.

I think of what I would say if I were to stand up right now, among the confessors, but then I realize I have no sins. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro goes around touching each of the sinners—there’s seven of them, all women—on the forehead with his stick, and then sprinkles them with holy water before they confess.

We are listening to Simangele confessing about how last week she succumbed to the devil and went to seek Vodloza’s help because she doesn’t know what to do anymore about her jealous cousin. She says the cousin is also a witch who keeps sending her tokoloshes because she wants her dead so that she can then take over Simangele’s husband, Lovemore. Somewhere near me, a voice says, Mnnnc, serves you right, you think your kaka doesn’t stink. I turn to see who has spoken and Chipo’s sister Constance gives me the look and so I quickly turn away.

We are waiting for Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro to pounce on Simangele for going to see a pagan, which is how he refers to Vodloza, when we hear a woman’s scream coming from down the mountain. Some of the adults stand up to see but Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro sharply commands them to sit, and then he asks all the Evangelists to rise in the name of Jesus and get ready because God has told him the devil is coming.

The devil is a woman in a purple dress that’s riding up her thighs and revealing smooth flawless skin like maybe she is an angel. A group of men are carrying her, struggling to get her to the top. I have never seen the woman before, or any of the men, but I think she is just so pretty even Sbho doesn’t compare. She has long shiny hair that isn’t really hers but it still looks good, nice skin, white teeth, and it seems like she eats well. Her breasts are the only thing that’s wrong with her body—nobody needs breasts that are each the size of ugly baby’s head.

You can see the woman’s white knickers with the red kisses; they are really pretty knickers and they don’t even have a single hole in them. The Evangelists and Prophet are already screaming prayers even before they’ve heard what is wrong. They pounce on the woman and pin her down. She is kicking and twitching like a fish in the sand; she obviously doesn’t want them to hold her down like that and she’s screaming for them to stop. I’m worried about her dress and knickers, about her skin getting scratched, about all that dirt they are getting on her. The men who brought the woman are standing to the side, watching.

Leave me alone, leave me alone, you sons of bitches! You don’t know me! the woman screams at Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro and the Evangelists. Her voice is angry, like it can strike and kill things, but they don’t even hear her; they are busy yelling prayers. I repeat her words—Leave her alone, leave her alone, you sons of bitches! You don’t know her!—but I’m saying it quietly to myself.

When Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro tells them to, the women get up and stand behind him and the Evangelists like a wall, singing and dancing and waving Bibles in the air. Some of them pray. This is what they must do in order for the Holy Spirit to come properly, but they have to keep their voices kind of controlled so they don’t sound like the pagans at Vodloza’s. I have seen them calling the ancestors behind Vodloza’s shack, the pagans—drums bark and men roar and women shriek, bodies leap in the air, bodies writhe, and sometimes clothes fall off.

The pretty woman keeps screaming for the sons of bitches to stop but the sons of bitches keep doing their thing. I try to catch her eye, to make her see that I’m not joining in the activities, that I’m with her, but she is too busy kicking and screaming to see me. The prayers grow louder and louder, some praying properly, some praying in strange languages, some chanting.

Then Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro raises both his hands for everyone to be quiet. He points his stick at the pretty woman and commands the demon inside her to get the hell out in the name of Jesus, his exact words, and in his most loudest voice. He says more things to the demon and insults it even. When nothing happens, he wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve, throws the stick to the side, and leaps onto the woman like maybe he is Hulkogen, squashing her mountains beneath him.

Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro prays for the woman like that, pinning her down and calling to Jesus and screaming Bible verses. He places his hands on her stomach, on her thighs, then he puts his hands on her thing and starts rubbing and praying hard for it, like there’s something wrong with it. His face is alight, glowing. The pretty woman just looks like a rag now, the prettiness gone, her strength gone. I’m careful not to look at her face anymore because I don’t want her to find me looking at her when she is like this. Chipo is just waking up and she is looking around like she was lost but has found herself.

He did that, that’s what he did, Chipo says, shaking my arm like she wants to break it off. This is the first time in a long time that Chipo is talking, like maybe she has received the Holy Spirit or something. Her voice is shrill in my ear. Around us, the prayers grow louder; everybody is excited that Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro has stopped the woman. The men who brought her are happy, especially the tall one who makes like he is the husband, the church people are happy, Mother of Bones is happy, but I am sad the pretty woman is just lying there under Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro like Jesus after they clobbered him and nailed him on the cross.

He did that, my grandfather, I was coming from playing Find bin Laden and my grandmother was not there and my grandfather was there and he got on me and pinned me down like that and he clamped a hand over my mouth and was heavy like a mountain, Chipo says, words coming out all at once like she is Mother of Bones. I watch her and she has this look I have never seen before, this look of pain. I want to laugh that her voice is back, but her face confuses me and I can also see she wants me to say something, something maybe important, so I say, Do you want to go and steal guavas?





Country-Game



It’s just madness inside Shanghai; machines hoist things in their terrible jaws, machines maul the earth, machines grind rocks, machines belch clouds of smoke, machines iron the ground. Everywhere machines. The Chinese men are all over the place in orange uniforms and yellow helmets; there’s not that many of them but from the way they are running around, you’d think they are a field of corn. And then there are the black men, who are working in regular clothes—torn T-shirts, vests, shorts, trousers cut at the knees, overalls, flip-flops, tennis shoes.

We stand for a while at the entrance, underneath the huge red banner with the pretty, strange writing we can’t read. We don’t usually come to Shanghai because of how far it is but today MaS’banda, Sbho’s grandmother, made us come and find this man Moshe, who works here, and tell him to come to Paradise because she wants to talk to him, about what, we don’t know. To get here you have to pass Budapest and take Masiyephambili Road, head east all the way until you hit the fenced-off quarry, where not too long ago people were trying to dig for diamonds before the soldiers chased them away. Shanghai is on the other side of the quarry, separated by a bush.

They did all that already? Sbho says, her voice filled with awe. It’s hard to believe just how much has been done. The last time we came they had only burned the grass and were bringing the machines and things in. Now there’s this skeleton of a building that looks like it wants to belch in God’s face.

Yes, didn’t I tell you last time that China is a big dog? Was I lying? Isn’t this major, all this? Bastard says, sounding pleased. He makes a sweep with his hand like he is the one who sent the Chinese to build, like they are his boys and are here just to follow his orders.

And when they get done, it’s going to be something else up in here, just wait and see. Don’t say I didn’t tell you, Bastard says.

You talk like they are building your house, Stina says.

So what if they’re not? Major. Major, major, major, Bastard says, chanting the word like it’s a song. He is already starting towards the building and we follow him.

Around the construction site the men speak in shouts. It’s like listening to nonsense, to people praying in tongues; it’s Chinese, it’s our languages, it’s English mixed with things, it’s the machine noise. Because the men don’t really understand one another, hands and tools often rise in the air to help the language. When we approach the black men shoveling earth into wheelbarrows, some of them pause to watch us. They look like they’ve been playing in dirt all their lives—it’s all over their bodies, their clothes, their hair. They don’t look the way adults always try to look, making like they are in charge, so we pity them a little bit.

We stand near the pipes and Bastard shouts that we want to see Moshe. Nobody answers us, but after a while the pitch-black one who is all muscles shouts for us to go away. Moshe went to South Africa a few days ago, he says, and he goes back to digging.

He did the right thing, Bastard says.

Who? Sbho says.

Moshe.

How?

By going to South Africa. That’s what I would do, instead of working in this kaka place and getting all dirty. Do you see how they look like pigs? Bastard says, and laughs.

We stand around for a bit but since nobody else talks to us, we walk away from the men. When we get to the tent next to the large yellow Caterpillar we stop and peep to see what’s inside. We are peeping like that and failing to see anything because it’s dark in the tent when out walks this fat Chinese man fastening his belt, catching us. He must be the foreman because unlike the others, he is dressed in proper trousers, shirt, jacket, and tie.

It’s surprise all over—he is obviously surprised to find us there peeping and we are surprised at being caught but we are more surprised at his fatness; the other Chinese workers here aren’t even half his size, so what is wrong with this one? And then, to add to our surprise even more, the fat man starts ching-chonging to us like he thinks he is in his grandmother’s backyard. He ching-chongs ching-chongs and then he stops, the kind of stop that tells you he is expecting an answer. Chipo giggles.

This one is crazy, Stina says.

Yes, somebody told Fat Mangena here that Chinese is our national language now.

Look at that drum of a stomach, it’s like he has swallowed a country.

We are still standing there when out walk these two black girls in skinny jeans and weaves and heels. We forget about Fat Mangena and watch them twist past us, the large blue purse of the skinny one grazing my left side. Matching bling hangs around their necks like nooses. They twist past the Caterpillars, past the mountains of gravel, twist past the groups of men who stop working and stare at the girls until they eventually get out of Shanghai and disappear behind the bend near the main road.

So, you want something? this other regular-sized Chinese man who has come to join Fat Mangena says to us in slow English. This one is a worker; his face is dirty and he is dressed in the orange uniform and helmet, and he carries a rope in one hand, a cigarette in the other. We watch him take a drag, exhale, drag, exhale.

What are you building? A school? Flats? A clinic? Stina says.

We build you big big mall. All nice shops inside, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Versace, and so on so on. Good mall, big, the Chinese man says, flicking ash off his cigarette and looking up at the building. We laugh and he laughs as well, and Fat Mangena laughs too.

Give us some zhing-zhongs. We got some before, Godknows says, getting straight to the point.

Last time, they gave us a black plastic bag full of things—watches, jewelry, flip-flops, batteries—but like those shoes that Mother bought me once, the items were cheap kaka and lasted us only a few days. But we also got these interesting brown, funny-shaped thingies wrapped in plastic. They were crunchy when we bit into them, and to our surprise we found little white pieces of paper tucked inside. Godknows’s said If you eat a box of fortune cookies, anything is possible. Bastard’s said Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded. Chipo’s said If I bring forth what is inside me, what I bring forth will save me. Sbho’s said The nightlife is for you. Stina’s said A new pair of shoes will do you a world of good; lucky numbers 7, 13, 2, 9, 4. And mine said Your future will be happy and productive.

You get one time is enough. Now you want made in China, you work, nothing free, the Chinese man says.

Well, you are in our country, that counts for something, Stina says.

You want us to come at night and defecate all over? Or steal things? Godknows says, and the Chinese man laughs the kind of laugh that tells you he didn’t understand a word. Then he and Fat Mangena start some really serious ching-chonging and we know they are now talking about other things. We wait until we grow tired of it, until Stina says, Let’s just go, they are not giving us anything.

We are booing and yelling when we walk out of Shanghai. If it weren’t for the noisy machines, the Chinese would hear us telling them to leave our country and go and build wherever they come from, that we don’t need their kaka mall, that they are not even our friends. We are still yelling when we pass the black men but then the one with the muscles steps out to meet us like the Chinese made him a prefect and blocks our way with his giant body. He doesn’t say a single word but we can tell from his face that this one can pinch a rock and make it wince so we shut up there and then and leave Shanghai in silence.





Okay, it’s like this. China is a red devil looking for people to eat so it can grow fat and strong. Now we have to decide if it actually breaks into people’s homes or just ambushes them in the forest, Godknows says.

That doesn’t even make sense. Why does it need to grow fat and strong if it’s a devil? Isn’t it all that already? I say.

We are back in Paradise and are now trying to come up with a new game; it’s important to do this so we don’t get tired of old ones and bore ourselves to death, but then it’s also not easy because we have to argue and see if the whole thing can work. It’s Bastard’s turn to decide what the new game is about, and even after this morning, he still wants it to be about China, for what, I don’t know.

I think China should be like a dragon, Bastard says. That way, it will be a real beast, always on top.

I think it must be an angel, Sbho says, with like some superpowers to do exciting things so that everybody will be going to it for help, like maybe pleading or dancing to impress it, singing China China mujibha, China China wo! Sbho says. She is dancing to her stupid song now, obviously pleased with herself. When she finishes she does two cartwheels, and we see a flash of her red knickers.

What are you doing? Bastard says.

Yes, sit down, that’s just kaka, who will play that nonsense? Me, I’m drawing country-game, Godknows says, and he picks up a fat stick.

Soon we are all busy drawing country-game on the ground, and it comes out great because today the earth is just the right kind of wet since it rained yesterday. To play country-game you need two rings: a big outer one, then inside it, a little one, where the caller stands. You divide the outer ring depending on how many people are playing and cut it up in nice pieces like this. Each person then picks a piece and writes the name of the country on there, which is why it’s called country-game.

But first we have to fight over the names because everybody wants to be certain countries, like everybody wants to be the U.S.A. and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and France and Italy and Sweden and Germany and Russia and Greece and them. These are the country-countries. If you lose the fight, then you just have to settle for countries like Dubai and South Africa and Botswana and Tanzania and them. They are not country-countries, but at least life is better than here. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti, like Sri Lanka, and not even this one we live in—who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?

If I’m lucky, like today, I get to be the U.S.A., which is a country-country; who doesn’t know that the U.S.A. is the big baboon of the world? I feel like it’s my country now because my aunt Fostalina lives there, in Destroyedmichygen. Once her things are in order she’ll come and get me and I will go and live there also. After we have sorted the names we vote for the first caller. The caller is the person who stands in the little inner circle to get the game started. Everybody else stands in the bigger circle, one foot in his country, the other foot outside.

The caller then calls on the country of his choice and the game begins. The caller doesn’t just call on any country, though; he has to make sure it’s a country that he can easily count out. It’s like being in a war; in a war you don’t just start to fight somebody stronger than you because you will get proper clobbered. Likewise in country-game, it’s best to call somebody who is a weak runner so he can’t beat you. Once the caller calls we scatter and run as if the police themselves are chasing us, except for the country that’s been called; that one has to run right into the inner ring and shout, Stop-stop-stop!

Once everyone stops, the new country in the inner ring then decides who to count out. Counting out is done by taking at least three leaps to get to one of the countries outside. It’s easier to just count out the country closest to the outer ring, meaning whoever did not run that far—you just do your leaps nice and steady; the other country is counted out and has to sit and watch the game. But if you are the new country in the inner ring and cannot count anybody out in three leaps because you were not fast enough to stop the other countries, you pick the next caller and leave the game. It continues like that until there is only one country left, and the last country standing wins.

We are in the middle of the game, and it’s just getting hot; Sudan and Congo and Guatemala and Iraq and Haiti and Afghanistan have all been counted out and are sitting at the borders watching the country-countries play. We are running away from North Korea when we see the big NGO lorry passing Fambeki, headed towards us. We immediately stop playing and start singing and dancing and jumping.

What we really want to do is take off and run to meet the lorry but we know we cannot. Last time we did, the NGO people were not happy about it, like we had committed a crime against humanity. So now we just sing and wait for the lorry to approach us instead. The waiting is painful; we watch the lorry getting closer and closer, but it seems far away at the same time, like it’s not even here yet but stuck somewhere else, in another country. It’s the gifts that we know are inside that make it hard to wait and watch the lorry crawl.

This time the NGO people are late; they were supposed to come on the fifteenth of last month and that month came and went and now we are on another month. We have already cleared the playground because it’s where the lorry will stop. Finally, it arrives, churning dust, like an angry monster. Now we are singing and screaming like we are proper mad. We bare our teeth and thrust our arms upward. We tear the ground with our feet. We squint in the dust and watch the doors of the lorry, waiting for the NGO people to come out, but we don’t stop singing and dancing. We know that if we do it hard, they will be impressed, maybe they will give us more, give and give until we say, NGO, please do not kill us with your gifts!

The NGO people step out of the lorry, all five of them. There are three white people, two ladies and one man, whom you can just look at and know they’re not from here, and Sis Betty, who is from here. Sis Betty speaks our languages, and I think her job is to explain us to the white people, and them to us. Then there is the driver, who I think is also from here. Besides the fact that he drives, he doesn’t look important. Except for the driver, all of them wear sunglasses. Eyes look at us that we cannot really see because they are hidden behind a wall of black glass.

One of the ladies tries to greet us in our language and stammers badly so we laugh and laugh until she just says it in English. Sis Betty explains the greeting to us even though we understood it, even a tree knows that Hello, children means “Hello, children.” Now we are so excited we start clapping, but the other small pretty lady motions for us to sit down, the shiny things on her rings glinting in the sun.

After we sit, the man starts taking pictures with his big camera. They just like taking pictures, these NGO people, like maybe we are their real friends and relatives and they will look at the pictures later and point us out by name to other friends and relatives once they get back to their homes. They don’t care that we are embarrassed by our dirt and torn clothing, that we would prefer they didn’t do it; they just take the pictures anyway, take and take. We don’t complain because we know that after the picture-taking comes the giving of gifts.

Then the cameraman tells us to stand up and it continues. He doesn’t tell us to say cheese so we don’t. When he sees Chipo, with her stomach, he stands there so surprised I think he is going to drop the camera. Then he remembers what he came here to do and starts taking away again, this time taking lots of pictures of Chipo. It’s like she has become Paris Hilton, it’s all just click-flash-flash-click. When he doesn’t stop she turns around and stands at the edge of the group, frowning. Even a brick knows that Paris doesn’t like the paparazzi.

Now the cameraman pounces on Godknows’s black buttocks. Bastard points and laughs, and Godknows turns around and covers the holes of his shorts with his hands like he is that naked man in the Bible, but he cannot completely hide his nakedness. We are all laughing at Godknows. When the cameraman gets to Bastard, Bastard takes off his hat and smiles like he is something handsome. Then he makes all sorts of poses: flexes his muscles, puts his hands on the waist, does the V sign, kneels with one knee on the ground.

You are not supposed to laugh or smile. Or any of that silly stuff you are doing, Godknows says.

You are just jealous because all they took of you are your buttocks. Your dirty, chapped, kaka buttocks, Bastard says.

No, I’m not. What’s to be jealous about, you ugly face? Godknows says, even though he can be beaten up for those words.

I can do what I want, black buttocks. Besides, when they look at my picture over there, I want them to see me. Not my buttocks, not my dirty clothes, but me.

Who will look at your picture? I ask. Who will see our pictures? But nobody answers me.

After the pictures, the gifts. At first we try and line up nicely, as if we are ants going to a wedding, but when they open the back of the lorry, we turn into dizzied dung flies. We push and we shove and we yell and we scream. We lurch forward with hands outstretched. We want to grab and seize and hoard. The NGO people just stand there gaping. Then the tall lady in the blue hat shouts, Excuse me! Order! Order, please! but we just laugh and dive and heave and shove and shout like we cannot even understand spoken language. We are careful not to touch the NGO people, though, because we can see that even though they are giving us things, they do not want to touch us or for us to touch them.

The adults have come from the shacks and are standing slightly to the side like they have been counted out of country-game. They don’t order us to stop pushing. They don’t look at us with talking eyes. But we know that if the NGO people were not here, they would seize switches or pounce on us with their bare hands, that if the NGO people were not here, we would not even dare act like we are doing in the first place. But then the NGO people are here and while they are, our parents do not count. It’s Sis Betty who finally gets us to stop by screaming at us, but she does it in our language, maybe so that the NGO people do not understand.

What are you doing, masascum evanhu imi? Liyahlanya, you think these expensive white people came all the way from overseas ipapa to see you act like baboons? Do you want to embarrass me, heh? Futsekani, don’t be buffoons zinja, behave at once or else we’ll get in the lorry and drive off right this minute with all this shit! she says. Then Sis Betty turns to the NGO people and smiles her gap-toothed smile. They smile back, pleased. Maybe they think she just told us good things about them.

We stop pushing, stop fighting, stop screaming. We stand in a neat line again and wait patiently. The line moves so slowly I could scream, but in the end we all get our gifts and we are happy. Each one of us gets a toy gun, some sweets, and something to wear; I get a T-shirt with the word Google at the front, plus a red dress that is tight at the armpits.

Thank you much, I say to the pretty lady who hands me my things, to show her that I know English. She doesn’t say anything back, like maybe I just barked.

After we get our things, it’s the adults’ turn. They stand in their own line, trying to look like they don’t really care, like they have better things to do than be here. The truth is that we hear them all the time complain about how the NGO people have forgotten them, how they should visit more often, how NGO this and NGO that, like maybe the NGO are their parents. Soon the adults get small packets of beans and sugar and mealie-meal but you can see from their faces that they are not satisfied. They look at the tiny packages like they don’t want them, like they are embarrassed and disappointed by them, but in the end they turn and head back to the shacks with the things.

It’s MotherLove alone who does not join the line for food. She stands there like a baobab tree, looking at everything from the side, in her bright gown with the many stars. There is a sadness on her face. One of the NGO ladies takes her sunglasses off and waves to MotherLove, but MotherLove just stands there, not waving back, not smiling, not anything. Sis Betty holds out some packages.

Hawu, MotherLove! Sis Betty shouts in a silly voice like she is coaxing a stupid child. Please come, bantu, can’t you see we’ve brought you gifts? she says. The NGO people hold out more little packages to MotherLove, and the two white women even bare their teeth like grinning dogs. Everybody is waiting to see what MotherLove will do. She turns and strides away, head held high, the bangles on her arms jingling, the stars on her dress shining, her scent of lemon staying in the air even after she is gone.

When the NGO lorry finally leaves, we take off and run after it; we have got what we wanted and don’t care how they want us to do. We wave our toy guns and gifts in the air and shout what we want them to bring us next time: shoes, All Stars, balls, cell phones, cake, underwear, drinks, biscuits, U.S. dollars. The groaning sound of the lorry drowns our voices but we continue to run and shout regardless. When we get to Mzilikazi, we stop because we know we cannot get on the road. Sbho screams, Take me with you! and we’re all screaming the words, screaming and screaming, like somebody said the lorry would turn around and take whoever screamed the loudest.

We watch the lorry get smaller and smaller until it’s just a dot, and when it finally disappears we turn around and walk back towards the shanty. Now that the lorry is gone-gone, we do not scream anymore. We are as quiet as graves, sad like the adults coming back from burying the dead. Then Bastard says, Let’s go and play war, and then we take off and run to kill each other with our brand-new guns from America.





Real Change



The adults are preparing to vote and so for now everything is not the same in Paradise. When we wake up, the men are already parked under the jacaranda, but this time they are not crouching over draughts, no. They sit up straight, chests jutting out, and hold their heads high. They have their shirts on and have combed their hair and just look like real people again.

When we pass, they smile and wave like they can actually see us, like maybe they like us now, like we are their new friends. We are surprised that they still remember how to smile, but we don’t smile back. We just stand together and carefully look at them, at the hairs peeping through the tops of their shirts, at the foreheads that we know can turn to ridges anytime, at the eyes that we have seen become lightning whenever they’re angry, at the bricks in the arms that have clobbered us before, and we know that this smiling at us means nothing.

Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.

They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder. We listen, and then we grow tired of listening but we know, from the men’s faces, from their voices, that what they are talking about is supposed to be a good thing.

The women, when the women hear the men, they giggle. Now there is something almost lovely in the women’s eyes, and from the way they are looking, you can tell that they are trying to be beautiful. Painted lips. Made-up hair. A pink ribbon pinned to the dress, just above the left breast. A thick figure belt. A bangle made from rusty, twisted wire. A fur coat, most of the fur fallen off. A flower tucked behind an ear. Hair straightened by a red-hot rock. Earrings made from colorful seeds. Bright patches of cloth sewn onto a skirt. We haven’t seen the women look like this in a while and their beauty makes us want to love them.

What happens when the adults go and vote? Godknows asks. We are busy putting up the Change, Real Change posters like Bornfree and Messenger told us to. We are supposed to put one on the door of each shack, to remind people they need to go and vote on the twenty-eighth.

Weren’t you even listening to the adults? Sbho says. There’ll be change.

Yes, but what exactly is it, this change? Godknows says. He has just finished putting up a poster and is now looking into it like it has eyes, like it is a person. Sbho starts to speak, but then bends down to pick up a broken mirror and smiles into it, admiring herself.

We continue putting up the posters; the thing is, we don’t even care about any change, we’re doing this only because Bornfree says he has some Chinese yams for us when we finish the job. Maybe we’ll go to Green Zonke and buy something with the yams. I’ve never seen Chinese money before, but what I know is that their shoes are plain kaka; I wore them just four times and they turned to rubbish.

You know, one day I’ll become president, Bastard says. We have put up most of the posters and we’re now doing the last of the shacks, towards Heavenway Cemetery.

President of what? I say.

President of a country, this country, Bastard says. What do you think I’m talking about, you dumb donkey?

But you have to be an old, old man to become president, Stina says.

Who told you that? How do you know? Bastard says, slapping a poster onto a door. He does it so hard that the tin trembles, and a voice inside says, You, you damage my door and I’ll make you wipe your asses with razor blades, fools! and we look at each other and giggle, hands covering our mouths. In reply, Bastard raises his fist and makes like he will pound the shack. His poster is tilted, but he doesn’t try to fix it. He turns to look at Stina over his shoulder.

I said, how do you know? Bastard says again.

I know, Stina says. I saw a picture of the president in a magazine. He was also with the president of Zambia and Malawi and South Africa and other presidents. They were all old; you have to be like a grandfather first.

Bastard’s poster falls, and he picks it up and tears it into two. He stretches out his leg and rolls one piece on his thigh to make like it’s a cigarette. He puts the rolled-up paper in his mouth, reaches into his tracksuit, and takes out a box of matches. We all watch him light up his cigarette and smoke it.

What are you doing? I say.

Can’t you see he’s practicing? Godknows says.

It doesn’t matter, Bastard says. It doesn’t matter that I’ll be old and white-haired, as long as I’ll have money. Presidents are very rich, he says. He laughs like the men, takes a drag on the cigarette, and the smoke chokes him he coughs and coughs and spits. Nobody asks him for a smoke.

When we’re finished, there’s a poster on every shack, except Mother of Bones’s because she told us she would kill us if we ever put our nonsense on her door. Now, with all the posters, Paradise looks like a colorful thing. We are proud of ourselves; we clap and we dance and we laugh.

Let’s sing a Lady Gaga, Sbho says.

No, let’s sing the national anthem like we used to do at school assembly, I say.

Yes, let’s sing, and me, I’ll stand in front because I’ll be president, Bastard says. We line up nicely by Merjury’s shack and sing at the top of our voices, sing until the little kids come and gather around us, but they know they must not join.

Wayyyt, wayyyt, wih neeeeed tuh tayke a pictchur, whereh ease mah cemera? Godknows cries, making like he is the NGO man, and we laugh and we laugh and we laugh. Godknows runs and picks up one of those bricks with holes in them and holds it like it’s a camera and takes and takes and takes pictures. We smile and we strike poses and we look pretty and we shout, Change! Cheese! Change!





I am not sleeping. It’s just that Mother expects me to be sleeping, that’s why my eyes are closed like this. Mother of Bones tells me that because he is always hunted, the hare sleeps with his eyes wide open. This is to fool everybody; when his eyes are shut, he is actually awake. Right now I am the hare but I have to be careful not to be found because Mother is busy parading all over the place. She paces a lot, as if we live in a Budapest house.

We didn’t always live in this tin, though. Before, we had a home and everything and we were happy. It was a real house made of bricks, with a kitchen, sitting room, and two bedrooms. Real walls, real windows, real floors, and real doors and a real shower and real taps and real running water and a real toilet you could sit on and do whatever you wanted to do. We had real sofas and real beds and real tables and a real TV and real clothes. Everything real.

Now all we have is this small bed that sits on some bricks and poles. Mother made the bed herself, with the help of Mother of Bones. The inside of the mattress is made of plastic and chicken’s and duck’s feathers and old pieces of cloth and all sorts of things. That’s our parents’ bed, but Father is not home to sleep on it because he is in South Africa. He does not return to see us or bring us things, which is why Mother is sometimes worried and sometimes mad and sometimes disappointed in him. Because Father does not do anything for us, Mother complains. About our tinned house, Paradise, the food that is not there, the clothes she wants, and everything else.

Mother is sitting on the bed now, I can tell by the noise of the mattress. It makes different noises, depending on how a body is positioned on the bed. Mother is silent; I wonder what she is thinking. Sometimes she is just silent like that, with her head held like a heavy melon in both hands, like somebody told her, Be careful or your head will fall on the ground and smash into red, impossible pieces.

Now there is a very soft tap on the door. It’s that man again. I don’t know his name but I know it’s him and nobody else because he always knocks five times, not four, not six, just five, and so softly too, like he fears he will make dents in the tin. Mother pulls the blankets over my head and then blows out the candle before opening the door. But what she doesn’t know is that I am always awake most of the time this happens, because I am the hare.

I hear the door creaking open, and Mother whispers something to the man and he whispers back. I cannot hear the words properly; they are speaking like they are stealing.

Now Mother is laughing. I like it when she laughs like this. It’s like how she used to laugh when we lived in a house. I don’t know what he said, this man, to make Mother laugh like this. I also don’t know what he looks like because I can never see his face in the dark. I don’t even know his name, but I know that I don’t like him. He never asks after me, like I’m just a country that is far away. He also never brings us anything. All he does is just come in the dark like a ghost and leap onto the bed with Mother.

Now Mother is moaning; the man, he is panting. The bed is shuffling like a train taking them somewhere important that needs to be reached fast. Now the train stops and spits them on the bed of plastic, and the man lets out a terrific groan. Then Mother and the man are still; I hear nothing more, only some heavy breathing. Maybe they are sleeping, but in the morning the man will be gone; he gets up and sneaks away during the night and when day comes he is gone, like something too terrible to be seen in the light.

Now I am counting inside my head; this way I will not sleep. Nobody knows that sometimes I do not sleep. I am the hare. Even if I want to sleep I cannot because if I sleep, the dream will come, and I don’t want it to come. I am afraid of the bulldozers and those men and the police, afraid that if I let the dream come, they will get out of it and become real. I dream about what happened back at our house before we came to Paradise. I try to push it away and push it away but the dream keeps coming and coming like bees, like rain, like the graves at Heavenway.

In my dream, which is not a dream-dream because it is also the truth that happened, the bulldozers appear boiling. But first, before we see them, we hear them. Me and Thamu and Josephat and Ncane and Mudiwa and Verona are outside playing with More’s new football, and then we hear thunder. Then Ncane says, What is that? Then Josephat says, It’s the rain. I say, No, it’s the planes. Then Maneru’s grandfather comes sprinting down Freedom Street without his walking stick, shouting, They are coming, Jesus Christ, they are coming! Everybody is standing on the street, neck craned, waiting to see. Then Mother shouts, Darlingcomeintothehousenow! but then the bulldozers are already near, big and yellow and terrible and metal teeth and spinning dust.

The men driving the bulldozers are laughing. I hear the adults saying, Why why why, what have we done, what have we done, what have we done? Then the lorries come carrying the police with those guns and baton sticks and we run and hide inside the houses, but it’s no use hiding because the bulldozers start bulldozing and bulldozing and we are screaming and screaming. The fathers are throwing hands in the air like women and saying angry things and kicking stones. The women are screaming the names of the children to see where we are and they are grabbing things from the houses: plates, clothes, a Bible, food, just grabbing whatever they can grab. And there is dust all over from the crumbling walls; it gets into our hair and mouths and noses and makes us cough and cough.

The men knock down our house and Ncane’s house and Josephat’s house and Bongi’s house and Sibo’s house and many houses. Knockiyani knockiyani knockiyani: men driving metal, metal slamming brick, brick crumbling. When they get to Mai Tari’s house she throws herself in front of a bulldozer and says, Kwete! You’ll have to bulldoze me first before I see my house go down, you dog shit. One ugly policeman points a gun to her head to make her move and she says, Kill me, kill me now, for you have no shame, you could even kill your own mother and eat her up, imbwa! The policeman does not kill Mai Tari, he only hits her with a gun on the head, because all eyes are on him and maybe he has to do something important. Blood gushes from Mai Tari’s head and turns the policeman’s boots red-red.

When the bulldozers finally leave, everything is broken, everything is smashed, everything is wrecked. It is sad faces everywhere, choking dust everywhere, broken walls and bricks everywhere, tears on people’s faces everywhere. Gayigusu kicks broken bricks with his bare feet and rips his shirt off and jabs at the terrible scar running across his back and bellows, I got this from the liberation war, salilwelilizwe leli, we fought for this facking lizwe mani, we put them in power, and today they turn on us like a snake, mpthu, and he spits. Musa’s father stands with his hands in his pockets and does not say anything but the front of his trousers is wet. Little Tendai points at him and laughs.

Then Nomviyo comes running from the bus stop in her red high-heeled shoes, because she is just returning from town. She sees all the broken houses and she throws all her groceries and bags down, screaming, My son, my son! What happened? I left my Freedom sleeping in there! Then they are helping her dig through the broken slabs and then Makubongwe appears carrying Freedom, and his small body is so limp and covered in dust you think it’s just a thing and not a baby. Nomviyo looks at the thing that is also her son and throws herself on the ground and rolls and rolls, tearing at her clothes until the only things she has on are her black bra and knickers. The mothers scream to put our hands over our eyes and we put them there but me, I spread my fingers so I can still see; Nomviyo weeps, beats the earth with her head and hands until somebody wraps her in a gray blanket and carries her away.

Then later the people with cameras and T-shirts that say BBC and CNN come to shake their heads and look and take our pictures like we are pretty, and one of them says, It’s like a tsunami tore through this place, Jesus, it’s like a fucking tsunami tore this up. I say to Verona, What is a fucking tsunami? and she says, A fucking tsunami walks on water, like Jesus, only it’s a devil, didn’t you see that time on TV, how it came out of the water and left all those people dead in that other country?

It is a bad dream, and I don’t want it to come, which is why I am being the hare. Now Mother’s man is snoring; I hate people who snore because it’s an ugly sound, how are we even supposed to sleep? Now MotherLove is singing out there. Nobody ever sings like that in Paradise, voice swinging like ripe fruit you can pick and put in your mouth and taste its sweetness. When you hear MotherLove, you know that her shebeen is now open for people to go and drink.





The day the adults go to vote we stand at the edge of Paradise, near the graveyard, and watch them leave. They are silent when they go, none of that talk-talk of the days before. We are quiet because we’ve never seen them silent, not like this. We want them to open their mouths and speak. To talk about elections and democracy and new country like they have been doing all along. We want them to look over their shoulders and tell us they will know what we are doing while they are gone. We want them to say something but they are just silent like they are suddenly unsure, like something crept upon them while they slept and cut out their tongues.

When they eventually disappear down Mzilikazi, we don’t go running to Budapest even though we’re free to do as we please. We don’t go to Heavenway to read the names of the dead, don’t start to light a fire or get inside the shacks to try on the adults’ clothes or mess with their things. We don’t play Find bin Laden or country-game or Andy-over or anything. We just go to sit quietly under the jacaranda all morning and all afternoon.

Maybe they’re just not coming back, Godknows says. Nobody answers him, which means we don’t want to think about the adults not coming back.

Maybe there’s a party and right now they are busy feasting and dancing without us, Godknows says. We keep looking far out towards the playground, where the adults are supposed to appear. There is nothing but trees and dry grass and brown earth and Fambeki and emptiness.

Or maybe they are still voting. Maybe all the adults in this country went to vote for change and there are so many of them there they have to stand in an endless line. Maybe the line is not moving, like when you are waiting for a doctor. Maybe the line will never finish, Godknows says.

Somebody’s stomach makes a loud long sound and I remember I am hungry. We are all hungry but right now we do not care. All we want is to see the adults come back, we so badly want to see the adults come back, it’s like we will eat them when they do.

They will come. Maybe they are just on the other side of Fambeki and they are appearing any minute, Godknows says. He has stood up now and has both his hands on his egg-shaped head. Then it starts raining, like maybe Godknows has made it rain by all his talking. It’s light rain, the kind that just licks you. We sit in it and smell the delicious earth around us.

Me, I want my mother, Godknows says after a long while. His voice is choking in the rain and I look at his face and it’s wet and I don’t know which is the rain, which are the tears. I am thinking I want my mother too, we all want our mothers, even though when they are here we don’t really care about them. Then, after just a little while, even before we are proper wet, the rain stops and the sun comes out and pierces, like it wants to show the rain who is who. We sit there and get cooked in it.

By the time the adults return we are dizzy from waiting. We see the first ones appear from behind Fambeki and we stand up. They are walking like floating and speaking with their hands, and we can tell, even though they are so far, that they are happy. We forget they are not really our friends and take off to meet them. We collide with their bodies and they catch us with those hands with black ink on them, because that is how they have voted, with their fingerprints, they tell us. They catch us and toss us in the air, toss us so far up we see the blue so close we could stick our tongues out and taste it.

That night, nobody sleeps. We all go to MotherLove’s shack, which is the biggest shack in Paradise; the adults don’t even have to bend inside. What MotherLove does is cook brew in huge metal madramuz by day, and by night people go to her shack to drink. The shack is painted a fun color and when dark comes the paint glows like a living thing. We always wait for it to light up in the night, and when it does we blaze towards the light, holding our breath like we are underwater. We get to the shack, touch it with just our fingertips, and run back the way we came, screaming, Fire! Fire!

We crowd in MotherLove’s shack like sand, and it is stuffy and hot inside and smells like adult sweat and armpits and brew. The adults are passing the brew around, even to us, because they tell us change is coming. We don’t drink it because it sears our lips and stings our noses, so we just stand there and fold our arms and watch the adults drink and burn their throats and laugh and talk and what-what.

Then MotherLove stands beside this giant poster of Jesus and starts singing. At first there is this hush, as if people don’t know what music is for, but then they start swaying. Soon they are gyrating and twisting and writhing and shuffling and rocking. MotherLove’s head is tilted up like she’s drinking the stuffy air, her eyes closed. Her mouth is open just a little, you’d think she didn’t even want to sing, but her voice is boiling out of her and steaming up the place. Then we are caught in the arms of the adults and twirled in the air, their skin sweaty and warm against ours.

Get ready, get ready for a new country, no more of this Paradise anymore, they say when they steady us on our feet. They say Paradise like they will never say it again: the Pa part sounding like it is something popping; letting their tongues roll a while longer when they say the ra part; letting their jaws separate as far as possible when they say the di part; and finally hissing like a bus’s wheels letting out air when they say the se part. And once they say it like that, Pa-ra-di-se, we know that it is a place we will soon be leaving, like in the Bible, when those people left that terrible place and that old man with a long beard like Father Christmas hit the road with a stick and then there was a river behind them.





How They Appeared



They did not come to Paradise. Coming would mean that they were choosers. That they first looked at the sun, sat down with crossed legs, picked their teeth, and pondered the decision. That they had the time to gaze at their reflections in long mirrors, perhaps pat their hair, tighten their belts, check the watches on their wrists before looking at the red road and finally announcing: Now we are ready for this. They did not come, no. They just appeared.

They appeared one by one, two by two, three by three. They a