Shadows. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
screaming my name, over and over, her vocal chords vibrating like the keys of an mbira.
I angle my face away from the raindrops. Very soon I am soaked, and my dreadlocks are soaked, and my spirit is soaked. The people at the shops are now clambering onto the mealie-meal truck, grabbing willy-nilly at soggy bags of mealie meal, heavy with the weight of rainwater.
I sit on a stone across the road. I take a joint from my pocket. I shield it from the rain. Light it. Smoke it once, twice, thrice, before it, too, is soaked. I watch them, these people I have always known, screaming and kicking and kicking and screaming, turning into people I have never known. Pretty grins and waves at me from the scuffle. I wave back. She is wearing a yellow frock that clings to her curves. I used to slink into her house whenever her mother was away on one of her cross-border trading trips, and fuck the nonsense out of her. When Pretty came back from Jozi, her body had filled out, with rolls around her waist that the men at MaG’s joked would make for better handling. The dimples had sunk deeper into her cheeks, which slid up her face each time she smiled, adding to her countenance a deceptive, childish sort of innocence.
“Have you seen the way the girl now rolls her hips when she walks?” Dlomo said. “Mounds of flesh rolling to her step, khwa khwa khwa on the virgin streets of Bulawayo in those gi-gi South African heels!” His eyes bulged as he said “khwa khwa khwa”.
“Oh, somebody has already taken the virgin out of her!” Shoko said. “Probably some gun-slinging njiva with a 325i – a gusheshe, you know – and a big house. Or one of the juju-peddling Nigerians – the poor child must have heard the man say ‘ma sista-oh’ and gone all gung-ho!”
Pretty had been all innocence before she left, steering clear of boys such as myself loitering at the shops, whistling at her as she walked by. Now, her sweet voice, which used to make the Pentecostal ladies weep with its spiritual crescendo, has acquired a husky quality.
I stare at her nipples pushing against the wetness of her dress, and lick my lips.
She grins. She puts her thumb to her ear, her pinky-finger at her lips.
I laugh. Of course I won’t call her. She’s fucking Tendai, the baker, these days. He gives her as much bread as she likes, even when there is no bread on the shelves.
Tendai must be fucking half the township, ever since he got the job as a baker.
The rain stops suddenly. I look up and there is a rosy sky. But there is no smell of cleansing in the air. Just the wet smell of runny shit.
Luther, the township vagabond, staggers past, pushing his Scania. He grins and waves as his metal trolley trundles by.
“Hey, s’phukuphuku, give me a piece of paper.”
Luther’s eyes dance in their sockets. His tongue hangs from his mouth, like a dog’s. He claps his hands and fishes a dry receipt out from the debris in his Scania.
“Good boy, s’phukuphuku. Like a good little dog. There’s a good dog!”
Luther claps his hands again and scampers off, leaving his Scania behind. From my pocket I retrieve the Eversharp pen I always carry, the pen my friends say holds my dreams. I turn the receipt over and begin to scribble. I should have told you at the beginning: words flow from me like shit running from buttocks:
Big-hearted woman
Vein of gold! Vein of gold!
See how her legs scatter as she walks
See how her legs scatter as she walks!
Tripledoom be falling down her thigh
Oh, Tripledoom be falling down her thigh!
Her heart her bladder and a knife
Heart bladder and knife!
Somebody gone done stabbed her heart
Somebody gone done stabbed her heart!
And now she done gone falling apart
Trickle down thigh, falling apart!
I look up. A fight has broken out between Mai Nyari and MaGumbo over a bag of mealie meal. They squawk and claw at one another, splashing in the mud like a pair of happy-go-lucky children. The people laugh and clap, egging them on. There is nothing to laugh about, and everything to laugh about:
Oh, big-hearted woman
Vein of gold
Flesh shake ’n shiver ’n shudder sorrow
Smooth peanut butter roast in sun
Do anybody know where she go?
Morning in, morning out
All she do is stagger ’bout
With Tripledoom trickle down her thigh
Tripledoom trickle down her thigh!
Do anybody know where she go?
That big-hearted woman with vein of gold
With hips that span century of heartbeat told
See her gold trickle down her thigh
Trickle trickle like rain in July!
See how the children from her fly
Firefly trickle dying in dark.
There’s a queue for the men and another for the women, then a special one for the women with babies, but none for the elderly. So everyone is borrowing a baby and scrambling for special privileges.
Big-hearted woman vein of gold!
She try bend over catch her heart
But see how her gold seep through finger
Do anybody know where she go?
See how her gold trickle down thigh
Tripledoom trickle trickle Tripledoom trickle
See how her gold seep through finger
Do anybody know where she go?
That big-hearted woman
With gold vein of old.
I fold the receipt and pocket it. Stand up and make my way home. Mama’s house stands second from the corner. It has walls the colour of avocados that have stayed too long in the sun. Its asbestos roof is pulled low over its window eyes, like an experimental design from the book of an apprentice builder. It is a semi-detached, and shares one of its walls with its neighbour. It’s Mama’s crowning achievement, the one thing she has managed to acquire in her life. I have tried before to burn down this house, and I think one of these days I shall try again.
Mama is standing by the full-length mirror, prancing this-a-way-and-that.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“You look like a Barrow Street prostitute.”
She laughs. It is hard to miss the cynicism.
I do not exaggerate: today she has managed to squeeze herself into a black pencil skirt. Her breasts sag like flat bicycle tyres beneath a red blouse made from see-through material. She is not wearing a bra.
“I don’t know why I bother to ask.”
“You look like a Barbie doll. Chinese manufactured. Those Fong Kong types that melt in the heat.”
She laughs again, harder this time.
Her wig slopes over her head, so that the fringe misses its mark. She’s put on fake eyelashes and there’s pink blush on her cheeks.
Mama is a veteran prostitute. Past retirement age and still forging ahead. Still clutching at illusions about her beauty. She was beautiful once. Now she is just old. Not too old to be pretty. But too old to be a pretty prostitute.
We hear the car before we see it by the gate. It’s Holly, Mama’s friend. They met wherever