It’s like a punch to the gut, seeing it again. Just as she’d left it, not a doll out of place, ruffles on the comforter perfectly draped. Teen pop idol posters tacked to the ceiling. Enough purple to make you vomit. Two cheap plastic trophies sit prominently on her dresser—one from her grade nine decathlon championship, and the other for first place in her school’s science fair for the barometer she’d made under her father’s stern supervision. Riya Natrajan runs her finger over the brass nameplate, remembering how proud her mother had been, and how her father had clapped until his hands turned beet red.
“You kept it,” she says as her father sets a tray on her dresser, “just the way it was.”
“I knew you’d come home one day, Rhoda.”
“I’ve wanted to for a long time. But things got crazy. Now things are always crazy.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He sips from his teacup and she does the same, savoring the smell of jasmine tea, her favorite as a young teen.
Her father goes to her closet, pulls out a pair of purple flower print pants and a ruffled shirt. “You can try these. They might fit. Last thing we bought you before . . .”
Riya Natrajan smiles. She thinks they’re just as hideous now as she did then. “Maybe I’ll just grab a T-shirt.”
“Please, Rhoda. You never even wore it. Your mother said it was too youthful, but I told her you’d like them. Purple was always your favorite, remember?”
“Maybe we should talk some about my symptoms.” She forces herself to look at her father’s gaunt face. His piercing eyes dart all over her, like they’re chiseling away at the here and now, trying to free the little girl beneath. She clears her throat, feeling a sudden rush of warmth in her cheeks. “I’ve got a rehearsal in the city in a few hours, and my taxi isn’t going to wait forever.”
“Oh, I sent the taxi back.”
“You what?” Riya runs over to her window and draws back the lace curtains. The only sign of the taxi is a thin cloud of dust rising from the dirt road.
“You won’t be needing it, Rhoda. You’re home now.”
Her legs wobble beneath her, her brain heavy as a cinder block. “You drugged—” she tries to say, but her tongue is too thick in her mouth.
Eyelids drift shut.
Lips press against her forehead. “Happy birthday, Rhoda.”
Chapter 16
Nomvula and Mr. Tau
Nomvula poses for another carving, the dark brown of the mahogany a perfect match for her own smooth, bare skin. She’s not shy this time. Not a bit. She doesn’t ask Mr. Tau to make her nose smaller or her breasts bigger or her hips wider.
She’s got a dozen bees tickling inside her belly as they swarm. Mr. Tau says it’s basos, belief—a result of her heroic deed, and all the townspeople are truly thankful for her mercy. Nomvula decides she likes this feeling, and craves the praise of her people. She’s even proud that she’d saved that silly Sofora.
“I want to be a helpful god,” Nomvula announces to Mr. Tau, her lips moving, but nothing else. She keeps her head cocked to one side, legs bent out in front of her, arms draped gracefully over one knee. She holds her wings out, perfectly extended. The tips glow golden now, ever, ever so slightly, but it’s there and makes Nomvula giggle thinking about it.
“Do you, now?” Mr. Tau says, chipping and chipping and chipping away at the wood. “Performing miracles and answering people’s prayers is an awful lot of work.”
“But you should have seen the way they all loved me!”
“It is a wonderful feeling.” Mr. Tau smiles for a moment, then his face draws tight and sorrowful. “Nomvula, I wish I could be with you longer. There are still many things that need explaining, but I’m afraid soon your trials will be your own. Your choices will quickly become more difficult than whether or not you choose to save a girl’s life.”
Mr. Tau sets the half-finished wood block aside and pats his lap. “Come here, child,” he says, his voice smooth and comforting.
Nomvula takes a seat and drapes her arm over his shoulder. He preens her wings affectionately.
“I want you to know this, Nomvula. Even if you have nothing but good in your heart, you will fail. You will hurt people from your actions. Weep if you must, but do not let your failures define you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, baba,” she says, though she cannot imagine hurting a soul. She can’t imagine not having these happy bees buzzing in her stomach, one for each of her believers.
Mr. Tau squeezes her tight, then kisses her forehead. And then all at once, a warmth swells up between them, the eternal bond between a child and parent, of love, Nomvula thinks. It’s a feeling not completely foreign to her, but this is the first time she’s felt that love back.
“Yes, baba,” she says again. She likes how the word tastes in her mouth, not just a term of respect, but one of kinship as well. Her heart swells at the idea of finally belonging to a real family.
Mr. Tau’s front door bursts open. The air is sucked from the room, and from Nomvula’s lungs as she sees her mother standing there like a monster within Mr. Tau’s doorway. Her skin sags on her bones. Her eyes are completely bloodshot, burning like twin red suns. Nomvula quickly tries to cover up her nakedness then scrambles to find her skirt and shirt.
“What have you done to my child?” her mother says, approaching Mr. Tau with giant, stomping steps, lean muscles bulging and flexing and quivering like they’ve just woken from years of slumber. She reaches out and lifts him from his seat by the collar of his shirt. Nomvula has never seen her mother perform an act requiring so much strength.
“Mother, he’s done nothing but love me!” Nomvula shrieks.
“Filthy child-whore.” The back of Ma’s hand smacks hard against Nomvula’s face, sending her to the floor. Mr. Tau doesn’t fight or struggle in her grasp, just hangs there like a rag doll as she drags him outside.
Nomvula clutches her clothes to her chest and runs after them, caught off guard by the mob formed in Mr. Tau’s yard. Her mother had never been able to get anyone to listen to her, but now it seems the whole village is here, fists full of stones. Then Nomvula sees Sofora, a tight smirk on her face, oh, so much satisfaction in her eyes. She did this. Nomvula knows it in the pit of her stomach. That silly Sofora probably had been following Nomvula around all morning long, trying to catch her in the act of doing something wrong, and what could be worse than finding her at Mr. Tau’s home?
“I ask of you now,” her mother screams at the crowd. “Which one of you will dare call me crazy? This man who raped me, destroyed me, defiled me with his evil has now seduced my own daughter and filled her with wickedness, using her flesh for his pleasure.”
“Mr. Tau never touched me like that!” Nomvula stands up to her mother, but another backhand sends her to the ground. Dirt cakes her wet cheek.
“My daughter the dirty rag!” Ma kicks her in the side, and Nomvula drops her clothes to protect herself.
“Baba, do something!” Nomvula shrieks, then grits her teeth. Something’s broken inside her, hurts so bad it makes her dizzy.
These people have already made up their minds, Nomvula. Mr. Tau’s voice comes right into her head, a whisper among the jumble of her thoughts. Now hush, or they’ll have your hide, too. I love you, my child.
He looks away, up into the sky, the same sky they’d shared when they’d both had wings and had almost touched the sun. Why doesn’t he fly now? Show them all? Nomvula thinks that he will, but with each moment that passes, the people grow angrier. Ma pushes him down to his knees, then backs away toward Nomvula.
Someone hefts a rock, smacks Mr. Tau right in the chest.
“You don’t understand him,” Nomvula begs at her mother’s feet. “Mama Zafu!” she says, turning to her auntie who stands alone in the distance, arms crossed over her broad chest, and eyes refusing to go in Nomvula’s direction.
Ma pulls Nomvula up by her hair, arms so thin and so strong, so high Nomvula’s feet dangle above the ground. Nomvula kicks and struggles, and
silly Sofora laughs and points out her nakedness to her brother Letu and the other kids she bosses around.
“Let this piece of refuse be an example to you all!” Nomvula’s mother shouts. Foam clings to the edges of her mouth. “Worn out and used up like a bitch mongrel, sexed by every stray dog who sniffs at her. Who’s next? Who else will have a turn?”
Her mother pushes her into the crowd, and she’s swallowed up, hands grabbing at her breasts, fingers poking between her legs. Laughs. Wicked laughs. She cries out to Mr. Tau, but she only hears his yells as the sound of stone against bone rings above everything else in her ears. They push her down to the ground. Nomvula fights with everything she’s got, biting and kicking and screaming, but it’s not enough. Three boys pin her down, two pulling her legs wide apart and laughing at what’s between them. They call her a filthy dog, a whore, all those things her own mother had called her, so how can they not be true?
“Ugly,” Sofora says, breaking into the ring of boys. She’s got a long stick and jabs Nomvula in the rib, right below her breast. “We’ll make something so ugly of you, you’ll wish you would have been the one stoned.” She leans down, her breath hot and vengeful in Nomvula’s face. She stares for a moment, like she wants something of Nomvula, that greedy look like she gets when she’s playing upuca and is about to snatch up all those pretty stones. “Your eyes,” she says with a wicked exhale.
Sofora stands and turns back, her shiny skirt twirling around her, then pulls Letu out from the crowd.
“Do it,” she says to him. She slaps her stick against his chest. “Get me her eyes.”
Letu stands there for a moment, grimacing at Nomvula’s body. “Sofora, this isn’t—”
“I said do it!” Sofora shouts, and with a whack to the back of the knees, Letu drops down next to Nomvula, pulls a knife from his pocket. Nomvula trembles at his touch, feeling weak and dirty and dizzy with pain.
“He’s dead,” Nomvula hears her mother’s voice shout. The smell of blood rides heavy in the air. “He’ll never hurt another girl again!”
“Baba!” Nomvula cries.
The bees in Nomvula’s stomach stop playing nice and start stinging, so painful that she no longer feels her broken rib, the ache in her heart. The buzzing rings in her ears, fills her vision up with a blinding white light. Her chest is about to explode. Anger. Beyond anger. Ire, Mr. Tau had called it. Something so ravenous that it seems all the wrong in the world is clawing its way into her bones with promises to never ever leave. And when she’s shivering and shaking so hard that she can barely keep hold of a single thought, she makes a wish, a simple wish that all these people—everyone who’d laughed, everyone who hadn’t done a thing to help her, and everyone else too caught up in their lives to pay attention to the rantings of a madwoman or hear the shrill pleading of a ten-year-old girl—she wishes everyone would vanish into dust.
And with that, the bees ignite, burning up and out of her with a force that tosses her into the air, and for a moment she hangs limp, eyes barely slits, but able to see all the tin rooftops of the township she calls home, all the people below, all the solar panels atop the solar wells, all those pieces of man that used to be Mr. Tau.
Nomvula extends her wings and catches herself before she falls. She looks up to see those bees raining back down, now twelve fireballs each the size of a hut, and getting bigger as they near. The people, they see them too, and begin running and screaming in every direction.
Nomvula swoops down, lapping it up, laughing as she flies over the heads of her tormentors. She sees silly Sofora running with that stick in her hand. She shrieks, raises the stick in defense. But Nomvula flexes the threads of her wings, golden tips now faded away. She zooms past, slicing Sofora in half, oh all that blood over her beautiful skirt!
As Nomvula exhales, she feels the wickedness swelling within her—all those things her mother had called her are true now, for sure. She’s strong, stronger than she’s ever felt. The fireballs fill the entire sky with their blue and yellow flames. She has the strength to stop them, though her will is weak. Thousands of her people are gone in the blink of an eye. The fireballs hit, gouging out the ground and melting everything in their path. Her mother, her Mama Zafu, her life.
It’s the price of her baba’s blood, of her broken bones and shattered spirit. The price is steep, but Nomvula is not even sure it will be enough.
And then there is only emptiness inside her, so she flutters to the scorched earth and weeps.
Part III
Chapter 17
Stoker
He’s late. Incredibly late. Suspiciously late. But it’s taken Stoker half the morning to get to the point where he doesn’t feel like retching at the thought of Gregory’s body being found in a ravine, or a Dumpster, or picked apart by a pack of stray dogs. Stoker needs to get through this day, and he’ll be free. Well, as free as anyone can be after killing a man. Had he killed Gregory? Should have taken his pulse, not that it’d matter after Stoker’s mother had made the problem disappear.
He’s got Valium in his system, just enough to take the edge off, but too much to trust himself behind the wheel. He takes a bot taxi to work, spending this valuable time practicing the face he’ll make when he walks into the office and is told the bad news. Shock, disbelief, sorrow, and in that order, but not too emotional. Don’t want to draw attention.
As they turn the corner onto Independence Avenue, Stoker’s heart sinks at the sight of yellow police cars crowding the main plaza of the Executive Council Building. Blue lights flicker over stern faces, SAPS officers in their navy blue uniforms. Strangely, a handful of Recces are among them, both human and bots, clad in army camo with high-caliber rifles tucked under their arms—not drawn, but clearly visible. Stoker’s fought for justice for so long, he’d never imagined he’d find himself on the other side of it. No, he won’t let anyone, not even his mother, obstruct the decency he’s worked so hard to achieve. This has to end now, before corruption seeds itself into his soul, before he gains more power and his mother can use him as a weapon.
Stoker knows what he has to do.
He steps out of the taxi, marches around the barricades, and gets right up into the face of the first officer he comes to.
“Halt!” comes an order, punctuated by the black barrel of a gun.
“I did it. I take full responsibility,” Stoker says. He throws his arms behind his back. “I’m the murderer.”
The officer lurches forward, and in one fluid motion, sweeps Stoker’s feet from underneath him and plants his face into the ground. “Suspect apprehended,” the officer says into his earpiece, pistol muzzle cold against Stoker’s cheek. “White male, early to midforties. Confessed to murdering all those people.”
“All what people?” Stoker asks, but the officer’s got his knee wedged in Stoker’s back. He can’t see much besides worn pavement, but above him he hears the buzz of media bots hovering, their video cameras capturing this for posterity.
“All right, you piece of scum. To your feet.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Gregory Mbende says, pushing his way through the mass of officers and Recces converging on Stoker. Stoker nearly pisses himself.
“We’ve apprehended the terrorist,” the officer yells over the rhythmical thwack of an Airwing chopper. Wind gusts tug at Stoker’s clothes, the tail of his jacket flapping wildly behind him. Stoker can barely stand as it is, and he braces himself against the officer’s firm grip.
“That’s no terrorist! He’s my boss. Councilman Wallace Stoker.”
“He confessed to the bombing of the township, sir. Now please, you’re obstructing justice.”
“Gregory! I didn’t do it,” Stoker says, voice cracking eight different ways. His arms tremble behind him and his legs give out. He falls back down to his knees.
“Officer, I’m sure he did confess, not because he’s a terrorist, but because Councilman Stoker wears his heart on his sleeve. He takes personal responsibility for all the injustices that
go on in the Eastern Cape. That’s why he’ll make an excellent premier one day, and I’ll make sure that he won’t forget your name when he is.” Gregory points at the nameplate above the officer’s badge. “Officer Davis, is it?”
“I’m sorry, sir, for the confusion,” Officer Davis says. He releases Stoker from his handcuffs. “But you really shouldn’t go around confessing to crimes during a national emergency.”
Gregory nods at the patrolman, then plants a firm arm around Stoker’s waist, helping him into the building. Stoker loses it as soon as they’re inside, retching on the limestone floor of the foyer, bits of vomit spackled on his loafers.
“It’s okay,” Gregory says, patting his back. “We’re all taking this pretty hard. But we’re going to get those bastards.”
The via-wall in the foyer broadcast all the grisly details: a township completely demolished, no signs of life. No signs of anything besides tin siding strewn across the ground like the world’s biggest house of cards had come crashing down. Early estimates put the death toll at thirty-seven thousand, and the entire country is on alert for more acts of violence. Police swarm the streets to stave off looting. Soon, people will start tossing around the word genocide and all at once, South Africans will be divided into white and black and brown and yellow all over again.
They stand in silence, Gregory watching the news, Stoker watching Gregory, who’s most definitely alive and well, no worse for wear except for the bulge at the back of his head, a mound of raised flesh peeking through his shorn hair.
Blackmail? Threats? Stoker wonders what tactics his mother had used to quiet Gregory . . . not unlike those threats Gregory had thrown in his face. Tit for tat, right? And then suddenly, without warning, Stoker’s fear morphs into rage. After thirteen years of working so closely together, Gregory decides to pull a stunt like this?
“You don’t have to say anything,” whispers Stoker. “But what you did was inexcusable, and just because you got a little hush money to put all this nonsense behind us doesn’t mean I’m going to forget.”
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