Shadows. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Ballade with an idling problem. So Mama rushes outside the moment we hear the car.
“Leave me supper,” she shouts.
And then she is gone. The cloying scent of Fever perfume lingers after her. I should be used to this. But we both know that Mama is very sick, and so this has become difficult for me.
Ten minutes past one, and Mama finds me in the gloom of the sitting room. There is no electricity and everything is bathed in darkness. There is no moon in the sky. Holly’s Honda Ballade arrives like a frightening fart from the heavens. Then it stutters and dies by the gate. Something is wrong. I do not get up. I wait for them to come inside. Mama is slumped against Holly. She is barefoot. Holly hobbles along on her stilettos. Her boob tube dress restricts her. Mama is crying as they enter the house. Holly drops her onto the couch and wipes her brow.
“Your mother! She is a piece of work, this one!”
Holly is a piece of work. Her face is yellow; not a natural yellow from having caramel skin, but a jaundiced yellow from all the lightening creams she uses. The rest of her body is dark. It is a frightening contrast; an oval yellow face, and then brown from the neck down. Brown ears. Brown spots on her yellow forehead. Her weave is a huge blonde coronation that dominates her head. She lights a cigarette.
Mama curls up on the sofa and continues to cry. Holly slaps her thigh.
“Lighten up, girl! Those whores have got nothing on us, baby. My pussy tastes like spice and that’s why all the men love it.”
Holly teeters. They are drunk. She plops onto the sofa next to Mama.
She bangs her palm on the sofa and winces.
“We are old and hot! Do you hear? Old and hot!”
She begins to cry. It is a pathetic sight. I stare at them both. Holly makes me uncomfortable. We fucked once, a few years back when I was drunk. I was sixteen then, all bravado and energy. I used to have a crush on Holly. I used to dream about her boobs; they look like two air bags pumped to bursting point. Now I can never look her in the eye. It was a mistake. Now I have to see her all the time. And she is Nomsa’s mother. What would Nomsa say if she ever found out? She hates her mother. It just wouldn’t do.
I am glad when she leaves. She asks me to give her s’korokoro car a push. She tries to kiss me on the lips before she goes. I turn away and she misses, manages to smear lipstick across my cheek. And then she is gone.
Inside the house, Mama is still crying. When she sees me she holds out her arms. I sit across the room and watch her. Sometimes she wants to treat me like her friend. I don’t want to be her friend.
“Nobody wants me any more. Nobody loves me.”
“I love you.”
“No, you don’t. You are always saying how ugly I am.”
“But you are ugly.”
She cries harder.
“You were never this ugly. But your business, it has made you ugly in my eyes. Still, I love you.”
“Get out of my house.”
“If you chase me out of this house I shall burn it down.”
“Get out! You don’t love me. How can you say I’m ugly and then say you love me?”
“But it’s true. Nobody wants a prostitute for a mother. I may have illusions about sleeping with one, but I certainly don’t want one for a mother. Which is why I will never sleep with a prostitute. All prostitutes remind me of you.”
She tries to get up, but she’s too drunk and she ends up on the floor. I leave her there and go to bed. I can smell the rain. Kombis and cars drive past. Some have their radios on loud. Some slam painfully into potholes, which decorate the roads like craters. A dog barks, eliciting a chorus of barks on the street. The dogs, like their owners, are emaciated. People eat the food meant for the dogs. So the dogs have nothing to eat.
Eventually, I fall asleep.
Mama
It’s not the case that Mama has always been a prostitute. I don’t think so. She used to work in the suburbs as a domestic. She worked for the Nleyas, whom she called ikhuwa lam’ – even though they were black – the way all the domestics referred to their black baases who lived in big mansions in the suburbs. Because even the blacks there thought they were white, she’d say. They took the white man’s English and manufactured it through their noses: “Mfi mfo mfi mfo mfi mfo.”
All day long, like they were blowing globules of snot stuck in their nostrils.
“All they have to do is take pegs and pinch their noses, and they’ll be fine.”
Mama loved to play the radio loud whenever the baas was not home. She would twist the volume knob, scrunch up her face and sway her hips. She especially liked to listen to Radio2, broadcast in Ndebele and Shona, and sometimes she listened to Kalanga and Venda. Whenever Shwi’s songs played, Mama would leap into the air and wriggle her bum, screeching, “Oh! This song reminds me of my home eNkayi. Hehehehe! We used to run away in the evenings and trek across the bush to the local ‘growth point’ that never did develop into a proper town. There was always a dhindindi happening every night, bantu. And we would dance! And dance! The truck drivers passing on their way to Wankie Coal Mine would buy us beer. It tasted so bitter. But it was beer from the town, Castle Lager, boy, and not amasese-la, curdled in the rurals. Heh! Heh!” And she would clap her hands, Mama, grinding her hips to Shwi. “I was in love with one of the truck drivers – he would pass there twice a week in his nice big truck – big, you hear? So one day, I ran away with him and came to see the bright city lights. Kanti, eh! The bastard was married.”
Mama liked to tell this story over and over again. I often wondered if this truck driver was my father, but I eventually stopped asking. Whenever I asked, Mama would tell me that I had been carried across the lands by a great big bird and had fallen into her lap, even when I was old enough to know where babies come from. Eventually, she just shrugged at the question.
“You don’t have a father. Why are you being such a nuisance?”
In time, when all I could remember with any clarity were the township years and the men who came and went, I began to think that perhaps Mama didn’t know who my father was. I hated her for this. My roots lay in shallow soils which lacked substance.
In the suburbs, I would arrive home from school to find Mama in the living room “gedding-down” with Siziba, the garden boy, as music blared forth from the radio. Siziba had a head the size of a bus, with tufts of greying hair around the temples. His arms were short and thick, his back stooped, probably from bending over so much when he was being addressed by the baas. He never looked the baas in the eye. He would bend over, clasp his hands and stare at the ground, scratch his head whenever they were giving him a tongue thrashing.
Mrs Nleya especially liked to talk. Her mouth was always running. Something was always not right in the house. Her rice was not where she had left it. Somebody had been drinking her Mazoe. The yard had not been swept properly. Mama and Siziba knew better than to argue with her.
“Yes, Ma,” they would chorus. “Sorry, Ma. Right away.”
Mrs Nleya towered over Mama as she wiped down her dark wood shelves with Mukwa Oil, whose smell lingered for hours afterwards. Mama hated the smell. She scrubbed the wooden tiles vigorously, to Mrs Nleya’s great satisfaction, her breasts bouncing from side to side like half-full sacks of candy, dancing to the rhythm of her hand as it swung from side to side. Dancing until the tiles were a sparkling shine that reflected an ebony version of your grinning face.
In some instances, Mrs Nleya was right about the food that went missing. Mama loved to sample the food in the kitchen. On Sunday afternoons, the Nleyas loved to invite friends over and drag the braai-stand out onto the lawn, next to the pool. There, accompanied by the tinkle of glasses and laughter, the aroma of barbecued sausage and spiced beef would waft all the way down the garden to our khaya. Asanda, the Nleyas’ daughter, usually