Always Another Country. Sisonke Msimang
happened?’
They will ask this with panic squawking through their voices.
And in the telling of the tale, when I respond, I will not know how to explain the quietness of the room and the awful betrayal of my lungs which never once gave me breath enough to howl.
Telling someone, telling anyone, will be the same as telling them all and it will box me for them. It will make me an outsider, a child who trails whispers and who will grow up and be followed by the lingering scent of ‘Why?’ If I tell them they will soothe me and hold my hand and tell me it will all be fine, but I will be marked. From then on, they will wonder, quietly and perhaps in my presence. They will ask why I never screamed. I will still be their child but I will be altered – damaged and no longer innocent. They will no longer be able to say of me, ‘Oh, that one never bothers anybody.’ I will be troubled.
◆ ◆ ◆
A few months after the incident, Mummy and Baba tell us that we are moving. We are going to Kenya because Baba has a new job working for one of the agencies of the United Nations, just like Uncle Stan. This news is no surprise. For weeks Mummy and Baba have been sitting together at the kitchen table, talking late into the night, discussing Something Important.
I am floored when Mummy says that they aren’t taking me with them. I will have to stay in Lusaka for three weeks after they have left so that I can complete the school term here, while they set everything up in Nairobi. Baba’s contract begins a month before the school term ends, so Mummy explains that it makes the most sense for them to leave me here.
She announces it very matter-of-factly. ‘We will drive to Nairobi, and you will stay here. Baba will use the ticket the UN has given him to fly back to Lusaka to get you at the end of term. Then the two of you will fly back together.’ I start to cry, and Mummy doesn’t fully understand why. ‘You love that house, Sonke. You’ll be with Lindi and Aunty and Uncle and Gogo Lindi will come and see you every day if you want. I’ll ask her myself.’
I am mortified and petrified and resolute in my opposition to the plan. I am not opposed to moving to Kenya but I am dead set against sleeping in that house.
◆ ◆ ◆
On the day of the big departure, we drive over to the Sangwenis’ house in the fully loaded car. The adults talk for a while and drink tea to delay the inevitable. After some time, Baba and Mummy exchange looks. He stretches on the couch, a long languorous unfolding of his limbs, which signals to Uncle Stan that the time has come.
Uncle clears his throat and marks the occasion – as is his wont – by giving a speech. With his combed-back thicket of hair that is delicately greying, and his professorial maroon-and-green argyle cardigan, Uncle Stan is nothing if not solemn. Even when he is angry – which is rare – he speaks slowly and carefully. He is not a man prone to outbursts. And so it is that when he draws himself up to his full height to deliver a farewell sermon, he imbues today’s departure with an air of serious quietude.
He talks firstly about where we come from. He speaks of Humble Beginnings and Man’s Capacity to Triumph Over Adversity. These are phrases he uses often, especially when he refers to Masondale – the village in the Natal Midlands where he and Baba were raised.
He takes the opportunity to remind us that the architects of apartheid did not intend for Masondale to ‘produce men of courage and conviction and dignity. And yet all our stock is like this. We are sprung from the loins of people who have never allowed themselves to be conquered.’
As he speaks, he uses Baba’s home name, the name that he grew up with. In exile, Baba has assumed a new name: Walter, which was his father’s Christian name. He shed Matthew, the one given to him at birth, when he crossed into Francistown in 1962.
Uncle Stan continues, speaking slowly and with great deliberation. ‘We are descended from people who are noble both in word and in deed. Matthew, Ntombi, girls – travel well on this new journey. Make us proud.’
Then it is hugs and kisses and waves and smiles, and everyone is saying how brave I am to not even be crying and the car is pulling out of the driveway and onto Kalungu Road. Aunty Angela takes my hand and we turn to walk back to the house.
I cross the veranda and go to the sink in the kitchen to get a glass of water. I look out and see Praisegod sweeping under the mango trees in the back garden and suddenly I feel, in the most intense way possible, that I am only seven years old and it feels like too small a number in the face of so big a task and so I drop the glass and find myself running.
There isn’t really anywhere to go, so I dive under the dining room table and I start to wail. I lock myself behind the sturdy legs of the chairs and grip the chunky wooden knees of the table as though my life depends on it. Aunty Angela – bless her – thinks that I am embarrassed that I broke the glass. Correcting her would be too difficult. It would raise too many other questions and so I don’t.
Instead, I sniffle and look out at her through the wooden bars, my limbs indistinguishable from those of my mahogany refuge. ‘It’s okay, Sonke,’ she says, coaxing me to come out. I can only heave; words may hurt, but the sobs offer release.
After some time Aunty pads away and goes to the bedroom. I sit under the table no longer weeping. I can still hear him sweeping outside. Then that, too, stops and all I can hear is the distant sound of a manservant whistling.
◆ ◆ ◆
In the three weeks that pass between their departure and Baba’s return, I do not utter a single word to Praisegod, and nobody notices. The initial battles I fought to prevent him from taking me to school have been won so there is no need for me to restate my position. Aunty takes me to school, and Praisegod stays well away.
I survive the weeks by playing on the streets and staying out of the yard in this place that is no longer really my home. At night I think about his breath. I hear myself say yes and blood warms my face. The softly grunting tangled and dirty man who, on that day, was not the Praisegod I had come to know is never far from my thoughts.
Then it is over. Baba comes back and we drive to the airport and I am sitting on a plane next to him and Kalungu Road is on the ground and we are up in the sky and the clouds are beneath us and Praisegod is getting further and further away. I am moving at what feels like faster than the speed of light and underneath us Zambia has disappeared and instead it is the Serengeti and within it are thousands of acacia trees and scores of brown rivers, and wildebeest and elephants and ostriches, none of which I can see but all of which are in a picture book on my lap. My eyes and my mouth are a triad of awestruck Os and I have finally allowed myself not to think about the fear in my belly. I am all imagination now and Praisegod is far, far away.
When she sees me at the airport Mummy hugs me longer and harder than she ever has before. She tilts my face towards her and says, ‘Ha! No scrapes on your knees?’ I shake my head, grinning and trying not to cry. ‘Nothing?’ She inspects my arms and my legs and for a minute I wonder if she knows and I secretly hope that she does so she can march back to Lusaka and Crush His Skull, the way Baba always threatens to do to other drivers when they block him in traffic. But the moment passes and instead she says with a wistful smile, ‘Well, then you must be growing up, my girl!’
In Nairobi there is no Praisegod and no back garden, only a maisonette on Ngong Road. This is just at the turn-off to State House, which means that every day motorbikes and police cars wail past us, with the president somewhere in the middle and a body double pretending to be him in another car right in front of him or right behind him or, who knows, perhaps sitting right next to him prepared to be sacrificed in the event of an assassination attempt. I am trying to say that I am in this new place where I can breathe again. I am in this new place where, this time, I will know better than to trust a man who whistles like a bird and whispers like a friend.
I fold away the stink of his fingers and the odour of his tobaccostained teeth. In time I will force myself to forget his face; its contours will shadow. His body will not be so easy to displace but I will teach myself that I was strong and I will remind myself of all the ways I fought him and made myself live. And my memories will be rich and