The Colours That Blind

by Rutendo Tavengerwei

  My stomach twists as he says it, but I smile. Problem is, everyone at school calls me by that name now so it’s too late to make a fuss. And although every time I hear it my stomach turns, I still pull my lips into a smile.

  ‘Is that quaking I hear, Bongani?’ Coach passes by in his St Catherine’s tracksuit and cap, smirking. Liam and I hiss behind Bongani, throwing little jabs at him to show he’s been had. The coach must have overheard our conversation.

  I grin as I watch the displeasure on Bongani’s face. The swimming games today were lit! I’d won two of the solo races, leaving Bongani the runner-up at least a good four seconds behind, and on top of that I’d made a beautiful finish for the team relay. The whole school had chanted my name at the end of the event – but only that same name I let Bongani impose on me. I suppose it’s quite exhilarating when people know your name, even if it’s not your real one.

  There’s always such a fuss when I’m in a tournament. In those few moments, although people are in their own house teams, all of St Catherine’s seems to come together, chanting our war cry and cheering as I plough up and down the pool as fast as I possibly can. It’s the way of the blazer, as we like to say.

  Although I love the support, like I said, most of the kids don’t actually know me. Some of them sort of do, of course, but only from glimpses of the life that I allow them to see on Instagram. But that’s the thing, that’s why I need swimming. Because it keeps me alive and relevant, it covers my skin, makes me one of them. And those few hours at the swim meets are my most treasured moments. It’s always butterflies and racing blood, a feeling I wish I could catch, trap in a bottle and sprinkle in the sky.

  Tonia, the girl who sits in the corner in class, walks past me to her father’s car, laughing hysterically with her friends. She always wears her wavy hair in a neatly pulled-back bun and purses her lips slightly before she smiles. Three years in the same class and only this afternoon after the swimming tournament did she slide into my Instagram DMs: ‘Fam you were slayin out there’ with a heart-face emoji!

  Every afternoon at three twenty sharp Saru’s red VW Polo swerves into the car park with Noku tucked into a car seat in the back. She always leans across, opens the door and allows me to slide into the passenger seat, before waving to the prefects on duty and driving off. It’s routine. But today she’s late. I look nervously at my wristwatch.

  Musa’s mother pulls up and beckons for him to get into the car. He jumps up, pushing the girl under his arm aside.

  I still get goosebumps every time I see Musa’s mother, and not the good kind. Once Musa asked me to his house on a Saturday, thinking that he stood a chance with me at FIFA. I remember it clearly. He had the controller in his hand, pressing the green button, any button, spewing pleas for me to take it easy on him. We heard the front door click as it closed. His mother, all merry, almost sang Musa’s name on her way to his room. But as soon as she opened the door, her forehead zigzagged in lines and her eyebrows lowered. Her voice quivered as she shouted at Musa, upset that he would bring a stranger to her house. But I was hardly a stranger. She had met me at least four times already. Her rants seemed to be about more than Musa not asking for permission to invite me over. I left there as soon as I could, and Musa has never invited me back.

  His mother lowers the passenger window and stares at us. I rub my arms even though I have a blazer on.

  ‘Yo, Tumi-boy, I’ll check you later, boss. Don’t forget we have team practice on Tuesday.’

  He pounds his fist on mine. Unlike the others, Musa never calls me ‘mrungu’, so although he comes up with a new lame nickname for me every day, I don’t mind it.

  His mother ignites the engine again. I wave at her. She almost smiles at me.

  3

  I stand close to the wall, peering through so I can match Saru and Mkoma’s voices with their expressions. I have never heard Mkoma and Saru fighting so openly before. Saru’s voice seems much calmer than Mkoma’s, which bounces off the walls and makes his lips tremble when he speaks.

  ‘You couldn’t have told me before?’

  ‘Emergencies don’t exactly leave time for you to plan, do they? That’s why they’re emergencies. You’re acting like I planned this.’ They’re both quiet for a while and my eyes bounce between the two of them, hungry for the drama.

  ‘The doctors say she’ll be flown to South Africa first thing tomorrow morning. I need to go with her.’

  Mkoma breathes deeply, his eyes fixed on Saru, whose leg is now gently tapping. I don’t think she realises yet though. Mkoma scratches his head and chews on his bottom lip. I can tell he is looking for the right thing to say. Whenever Saru’s leg bounces like that, it’s a sure sign that the anger is creeping slowly into her system.

  ‘Can you not take Noku with you then?’

  Saru heaves a sigh. She is still calm, but her voice now has a hint of frustration in it.

  ‘You remember, don’t you, that Noku’s passport is still off being renewed? And it’ll take at least another week or two, which means I can’t possibly take her with me, can I? And even if I could, what about Tumi? Who will stay with him?’

  ‘You know very well that I can’t miss my flights, Saru. I have to go in for work. I have two flights tomorrow. What are we supposed to do now?’

  I purse my lips and watch.

  Mkoma better check himself. That leg really be bouncing now.

  ‘I told you, the kids can both stay with my aunt in Marondera. I won’t even be gone that long.’

  Mkoma scratches his head, gets up from the sofa where he is sitting and paces up and down. I glance at Noku, walking towards me with one hand holding her doll as though saving it from a tragic fall, the other rubbing her crusty eyes. She certainly looks like she enjoyed that nap.

  ‘I can’t let Tumi go to a stranger’s house, Saru, you know that. If anything happened to him …’

  ‘Oh, I see how it is! So basically you’re saying I am so irresponsible that I’d send Noku to a stranger, right?’

  The anger has set in now. It might just get real in here …

  Mkoma looks at her as though he wants to say yes, but seeing the look on her face he decides against it. He scratches his head again. They now both look visibly irritated, frustrated, troubled … there’s no one right word to describe it. Mkoma walks over to Saru and cups her cheeks in his hands. She tries to suppress a smile and pushes him away, but playfully.

  ‘C’mon, Saru, you know that’s not what I mean. After what happened with Bamkuru, I’m only saying I have to be careful where I let Tumi go.’

  Saru rolls her eyes at him as he strokes her hand. This right here sums up their whole situation-ship. ‘It’s complicated’ doesn’t even begin to explain this weirdness.

  A thought crosses my mind. This is my big chance.

  ‘I can take care of Noku.’

  I have it all figured out. It’s easy. If I stay with Noku, Mkoma will have no choice but to see that I’m no longer a child and he’ll stop treating me like one. And also, it will mean I can avoid missing any of my swim practice.

  Mkoma looks at me, his face blank. ‘Tumi, please. Shouldn’t you be doing your homework or something?’

  His voice is tired and hints at irritation.

  ‘Mkoma, I can do this.’

  ‘How exactly, when you’re still afraid of the dark, Tumirai? I don’t think taking care of anyone is something that’s on your list of strengths right now.’ He buries his face in his hands in frustration.

  There is honestly no need to say such things in front of people!

  Noku sniggers by my side, looking up at me as though she somehow expects me to join in. I bunch my eyebrows and narrow my eyes at her. Mkoma says men aren’t afraid of the dark; that’s why he sleeps with his lights off. I get that. And I’m not really afraid of the dark, but ever since I left Bamkuru’s I’ve had to sleep with the lights on because the dark hurts my eyes. And besides, sometimes the night hides terrible things that can creep up and take you.


  Saru looks at me and smiles softly, as if saying to ignore Mkoma.

  ‘I think I’ll just take them to Ambuya’s house in Vumba.’ The words spill out of Mkoma’s mouth. I don’t think he intended them to.

  I stand there frozen and watching Mkoma, waiting for him to take them back.

  I haven’t forgotten the conversation I heard between Mkoma and Saru a long while back, when Saru used to sleep over more. They were sitting on the couch in the middle of the lounge. At first I heard echoes of their conversation from the corridor where I was, before I heard Saru mention my name: ‘… does Tumirai know?’

  Mkoma had replied in a quiet voice, ‘You don’t tell a boy his age that his Ambuya watched people die. He won’t understand … She will tell him herself when the time is right. In any case, it is really her story to tell.’

  I had shuddered at the thought, and scars had been all I could see. Even though Saru and Mkoma had changed the subject, and even though I had tiptoed back to my room and left my light on when I got into my bed, all I could think about was Ambuya watching people die, perhaps even killing them too. All I could see for days in my terrors were the scars.

  Come to think of it, I actually haven’t seen Ambuya since … the thing that happened. She phoned once or twice, but we didn’t speak for long. And even before that, we were never close. It wasn’t like how it was with her and Mkoma, who Ambuya had practically raised, because he went to a high school there in Vumba and visited her often. The few times I had seen her was when Bamkuru had taken my cousins and me to the village to visit.

  After my father disappeared, Bamkuru insisted that a young boy like me needed to be around cousins his age, and Ambuya hadn’t fussed about it. Though I wish someone had fussed about it, given all of Bamkuru’s weird cultural misconceptions and superstitions about my albinism. But I know Mkoma, who was only a seventeen-year-old heading off to a new country for the first time by himself, couldn’t take me with him. Although I know it’s selfish, sometimes I wish he had stayed with me, because then maybe some things would not have happened the way they did.

  Back then, Bamkuru had a store near Ambuya’s house, and when he needed to restock, that meant a trip for all of us. We didn’t go often but the few times we did, it had always been for one night. Once or twice I had heard Ambuya hissing at Bamkuru about something behind closed doors. But all the other memories I can see now are of her laughing with him, her head pulled back and the veins showing through the wrinkles in her neck. A dark and jagged scar follows her jawline, zigzagging along it as though someone did a rush job of sewing together torn skin. My own scars, accumulated from all the times I grazed my knees while playing chitsvambe outside, aren’t nearly so darkly stained. She looks like the people they talk about who snatch unsuspecting albino boys, shove them into a truck and take them across the border to be sold somewhere nobody knows, before the police discover them. Those aren’t made-up stories, you know. Those things happen.

  And anyone who laughs that much with Bamkuru deserves to be in a prison cell just like he is!

  ‘She’s been complaining for a while that she never sees us.’ Mkoma interrupts my daydreaming.

  My jaw drops. He really is serious about this!

  ‘I’ll drive down on Friday with the kids, spend the day there on Saturday and drive back early Sunday, get some rest and fly out Monday. It’s perfect.’

  Nah, fam. It is not perfect.

  I can tell a bad idea from a mile away, and this is one of those really good bad ideas. I wait for Saru to say something, to talk some sense into my brother, but she just stands there and nods. Am I the only one to see that this has trouble painted all over it?

  ‘I can’t go,’ I blurt.

  Everyone looks at me.

  I stand there nervously, aware that Mkoma might get upset, but I have to do something. I can’t say anything bad about Ambuya without proof. She sold half her furniture, ground nuts into peanut butter with her bare hands and, from the way Mkoma tells it, sold both kidneys, half her heart and her liver to get enough money to send him to university in America. She is almost his mother and he’s very protective of her. But I know it’s all a front.

  There has to be another option, someone else who can take care of us. Besides, Ambuya doesn’t have Netflix or much network, let alone a pool.

  Mkoma stands there uncharacteristically quiet for a while, then asks, ‘Why?’

  ‘Musa and I have to practise for the Zim swim-team selection. And also Mrs Roderbelt said she wants everyone present for her chemistry class when holiday classes start next week.’

  I stand looking at him, fingers and toes firmly crossed and hoping he will find these two reasons compelling enough to cancel his trip.

  ‘Tumi, but Ambuya’s place is so much fun. We can play in that big yard, and chase chickens, and eat lots of guavas. I want to go, Daddy!’

  Why is Noku in this conversation?

  I look at her with a tinge of resentment as she stares up at Mkoma with her big brown eyes. There are so many reasons why I don’t like her right now. Apart from the obvious, she also always calls me by my first name as though we’re the same age, instead of saying ‘Bamnini’ out of respect, like she’s supposed to, because technically I’m her uncle. You don’t hear me calling Mkoma by his first name. I call him ‘Mkoma’ for a reason. No wonder he still thinks I’m a child if even Noku can’t respect me.

  ‘You will pack your bags tomorrow.’ Mkoma’s voice is very calm.

  He lifts the grinning Noku, who seems fully aware of what she has just done.

  4

  Next morning I am in Mkoma’s bedroom looking for an extra bag to pack. Mkoma has stepped out to fuel the car and run a few errands before we leave. Noku is somewhere in the house. Maybe I should be watching her, but I can hear the soundtrack to Princess Sofia playing and I’m sure she’s safely in front of the TV. Besides, I’m a little frustrated because I can’t find a bag small enough for this trip, which I’m hoping will be short. All the bags in Mkoma’s room are either too big or ones he uses for work.

  I wonder if I can use that as an excuse.

  I dismiss the thought as soon as it settles in my mind. As if Mkoma would ever buy that. I sigh as I swing the wardrobe door open again. I didn’t look properly before, but the truth is I really didn’t want to. My eyes lift up to the very top of the wardrobe. Mkoma’s backpack is lying there, waiting for me.

  As I pull it down by the strap, a box tumbles to the floor together with the bag, hitting me on the head and scattering its contents everywhere. I stand there for a while, eyes scanning the bunch of fat letters, all addressed to Mkoma’s old address in America. I kneel on the floor, sweep the letters together with my hands and put the whole pile back in the box. They are numbered, as though they should be read in sequence, and I riffle through, but I can’t seem to find the first one.

  I can hear the gate sliding open now and I peer outside just in time to see Mkoma driving into the yard. I dash back to the box and quickly go through the letters. I shove the envelope marked ‘2’ into my pocket and my hands shuffle through the rest, still looking for the first letter. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m curious.

  The sound of the car engine dies down and I can now hear Noku’s excited voice cheering about something Mkoma has brought her. My eyes suddenly spot a letter by itself, almost under Mkoma’s bed. It’s marked with a 1! Footsteps are advancing towards the bedroom, so I toss the box up where it was before, grab the letter from by the bed and shove it into the backpack. All this just as Mkoma walks in.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  Be cool, be cool.

  Ever since Noku and I accidentally knocked over his camera, Mkoma doesn’t like us in his room. By Noku and me, I really mean Noku though. I was obviously being well behaved, not snooping in his room at all.

  My heart is throbbing and I know my face looks guilty. I don’t know if he saw me. I lift the bag to show him, hoping he won’t ask any m
ore awkward questions.

  ‘You still haven’t packed? We’re behind schedule, my friend. Chop-chop.’

  I nod, trying to hide my relief as I exit the room. I’m a little excited. I wonder if there are secrets in those letters. Maybe they’re from Saru. I hurry to stuff the backpack with all the clothes from my bottom shelf, throwing a pair of running sneakers in there too, so I’ll have time to read through one of these mysterious letters. I peer into the corridor to see where Mkoma is, and bump right into him. My hand lingers behind my back, hiding the letter.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Almost. Umm, I just need to use the bathroom before we go though,’ I lie, trying to buy an extra minute to read. He nods and heads into Noku’s bedroom to carry her bags to the car. I slip into the toilet, lock the door and my eyes scan quickly through the words on the paper.

  My mzukuru,

  I was so pleased to receive your letter that I showed it to everyone here in the village. But also so sad to hear you’re missing home. Of course we miss you too, but you must be strong and continue to work hard and focus on your studies there. Your father would have been so proud. We’re all well here and eager for when you return.

  The question you asked is a grave one, one you have asked me multiple times but I have not been ready to answer it. Thinking about it now, I don’t quite know that I am ready to tell it yet. You see, mzukuru, the past is a difficult thing, especially when you have to recount and remember where the wounds formed. But for you, mzukuru, I will try. I have slipped in this envelope a few pages from the diary I kept as a young girl all those years back. The young man at the post office said I could not send the whole book to you. He said I had to pay more money if I wanted to do that, and what ridiculous amounts he told me, mzukuru. I was not sure if he was trying to take advantage of an old maid like me, so I tore out the first few pages for you to read for now, and I will send more with my next letter. Perhaps it is better that way – you know my memory is not sharp now anyway. I do so dearly hope that these pages will keep you company while you are there, so far from us. And I hope this anger you feel, that you spoke of, will wane somewhat as you read this. I know they are only words on paper, but it is my prayer that you will see that you are not alone, not even in your misery about your life changing and your dreams becoming increasingly slippery. And who knows – perhaps sharing this part of me might also do me some good.