The Colours That Blind

by Rutendo Tavengerwei

  I hope you are eating well, my mzukuru. I will ask the young man at the post office if I can send you some peanut butter, straight from your Ambuya’s kitchen. In the meantime, read this part of me and know that I carry you always in my spirit.

  With love always,

  Your Ambuya

  Mkoma’s voice barges in, calling me to the car, and my underarms sting as though I’ve already been caught.

  Ambuya wrote the letters? Why are they numbered? What does she mean, Mkoma asked a grave question?

  I step out of the bathroom, slide both letters into a book I’m carrying with me, balance my poorly packed backpack on one shoulder and my gym bag on the other and march to the car, trying as best I can not to show that I’m hiding something.

  5

  Ambuya’s story

  I am wondering now as I sit here writing in my old bedroom hut back in the village that I thought I would never come back to, I am wondering – on the day that your life spins on its head and trouble marches to interrupt your normal, do the winds whisper warnings, or the birds call for your attention to alert you to it? Because if so, I must certainly be deaf.

  Today was one of those days where you pray the light in from wherever it can come. I feel as though I dragged all the minutes to nightfall and have used up all the strength I had. And yet it is only the first day of many.

  I tried not to break down and weep this afternoon as I stood by the stove in Bas Roger’s farmhouse stirring something. I can’t remember the fancy name the Missus said now, but it was one of those soups that Amai mentioned that the Missus likes to have on Sundays. It was my first day working at the farmhouse today. Two years of nurse training at the Andrew Fleming Hospital in Salisbury and I am now responsible for scrubbing floors, feeding hungry stomachs and washing dirty laundry.

  I know I should not grieve so much. It’s not Amai’s fault, the arthritis. Yet I can almost still hear the ripping as I tore the seal from the envelope three days ago. The shock and pain of it all feels fresh, almost as though it is right now that those words are spilling from Baba’s letter. Come back home, it said, you are needed. Short, precise and life-changing. Befitting of Baba.

  And so I’m here, while my peers are finishing off the last few months of the training. It is part of growing up, I imagine. Though I wish someone had warned me about it, because I never would have done it.

  I remember exactly what I was doing today before trouble marched in. I had stepped away from the stove and was standing by the window in the Missus’s kitchen, craning my neck to see if I could spot Baba. What vain hope, because all that’s visible from that window is a vast forest of shrubbery. It reminds me now of the time I heard Baba say that when Bas Rogers’s grandfather was first given the land, they had made a boy ride a horse till it was tired, to mark where the farm ended. But do horses actually ever tire? I wonder.

  And as I stood there, I lost myself in the view of that shrubbery, thinking of the striped dress I’d worn in Salisbury – the modest long one that I used to wear when the girls and I would go dancing – and how it had not cheered my spirits. And how even though my hair stood proud, I still felt as though the core had been carved out of my soul.

  That was when I noticed the clouds beginning to gather and the wind starting to whistle.

  The entire day had been warm, but now there was a cool breeze pushing through the window. I used to think I’d outgrow it, but I still love how playful the wind becomes when it introduces the rains. And how the smell of the earth floats to your nostrils in its excitement to muddy up. I closed my eyes and smiled, allowing the wind to sift its fingers through my afro.

  ‘Rosie!’ The Missus’s voice made me jump, and I rushed to the stove to wipe the froth that had begun to spill from the pot. I had completely forgotten about the soup!

  ‘It’s Thandiwe, madam.’

  ‘Oh, you Africans and your difficult names. How am I meant to remember that? When you’re here, your name is Rosie and you must answer to it.’

  The Missus has a nephew who grew up right there in the farmhouse, although I have not seen him in years. Is he ‘African’ too? I have always wondered.

  Some time in the past that I can barely remember now, ‘African’ was only a fact. Africa was simply a geographical location that I was born and grew up in, so of course I was – am – African. But somehow when the Missus said it today – whenever they say it – it feels like something to be ashamed of. Surely it is some kind of crime to take away someone’s sense of belonging like that. To push someone to reject themselves.

  But even though my throat tightened, I looked down and continued to wipe the stove as quickly as I could so she wouldn’t see that some soup had spilled.

  The Missus grabbed the rag out of my hand. ‘Don’t you see you are spoiling the stove, you silly girl? Your first day here and you’re doing everything wrong. Your mother ought to come begging on her knees for this.’

  ‘Sorry, madam.’

  ‘Argh, and you’ve over-boiled the broccoli, Rosie! It’s not supposed to look brown like this. What kind of soup will this be?’

  ‘Sorry, madam.’

  ‘Do you speak any more words maybe? Goodness! You need to learn English. How am I to talk to you if your vocabulary is limited to two words? One would think you’d be smarter. Didn’t your mother say you were training as a nurse? Don’t they teach English in those African schools of yours?’

  I looked down again, this time shuffling my fingers and trying to keep the tears in. I did know English. I wondered if she knew that I had never had a choice. English had been forced down my throat like medicine. Without it I would never have been accepted in any school, let alone been allowed to train as a nurse.

  ‘Useless! Simply useless,’ she had gone on, before taking the pot off the stove and throwing the soup down the sink. I blinked in shock. Just yesterday I had slept on a barely full stomach because there was not enough to share between the eight of us at home. Comrades are dying, fathers are leaving to join the war, and Amai keeps taking in more children because she has a kind heart. And here the Missus throws soup down the drain!

  The strong sound of an engine hummed in the background. You could always tell when Bas Rogers was on his way, simply from the purring of his car a mile away. He had kept the old thing for a long time, perhaps even since before I started school. And on Sundays, as far back as I could remember, he always went out to play cards with his friends in the city.

  ‘Go to the front and see if Mr Rogers brought anything home with him from the city. And tomorrow, please do something about that hair! It looks like an overgrown shrub.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  I held in the little flutter of anger in my chest. It can never come out. We need this job, all eight of us. And Farai needs to continue at school. Otherwise the cycle will continue. He will end up working on the tea estate, just as Baba does.

  I could hear the sound of the wind as it grew stronger, bossing around old pictures of the Missus and Bas Rogers on their wedding day. I dashed through the living room on my way out, adjusting the windows before all the frames fell down from the mantel. The anger of the wind banged the last open window closed, and I quickly pushed down the latch.

  There was a storm coming. Even the curtains to the house fluttered nervously, trying to convince the wind to take it easy. The leaves played around, threatening to move away. I stood outside on the veranda, watching the car as it finally drove through the gate. I uncomfortably wiped the storm dust off my eyes.

  The car slowed to a halt in front of the house. The clouds tore over. The thunder slid in. I could see Bas Rogers, his face a web of wrinkles, delicately woven by time. My eyes immediately went to the passenger door as it pushed open against the force of the wind, now bringing little sputters of rain. A man got out of the car, one hand carrying a small bag, the other one running through his hair. My heart leaped as he closed the door. The storm was here!

  6

  Tumi

  I
am having a hard time imagining Ambuya any younger. Of course I know she wasn’t born old, but somehow I don’t quite think I realised it. I have so many questions, and growing reservations about going to Ambuya’s. I stare at the remaining pages of her diary that were in the letter, wondering what this is all about. Why has Mkoma never mentioned it?

  I watch him in the rear-view for a minute. Should I ask him? His brow is furrowed again. Maybe I should keep it to myself for now. He might not be very pleased with me for having gone through his things the way I did.

  I glance at Noku, sitting next to me in the back of the car, singing with excitement. I wonder whether Mkoma would take me back with him if I somehow managed to fake my own death, or something more believable like insanity. But knowing Mkoma, he’d probably scare any madness out of me with that deep look of his that feels like he’s boring right into you with his eyes. Or he’d drive my fake corpse straight to the morgue, just to teach me a lesson.

  My eyes drift to Mkoma, driving on, with his face serious and his brow thick and folded. I have no idea what he’s worrying about this time. I look out the window and wonder whether I stole Mkoma’s life from him, whether he would have been much happier if he hadn’t had to grow up so fast. I miss the way he used to laugh when he pulled pranks on me. Yes, Mkoma used to pull pranks, and cackle away like a hyena. But I have no right to think like this.

  Perhaps this is why Ambuya wrote him letters. Perhaps those letters are why he’s so blind to who she really is.

  My stomach grumbles. Noku catches on and whimpers. The most decent thing she’s done in a while. ‘Daddy, I’m hungry.’

  She pokes her head between the two front seats towards Mkoma. I bet all that singing is what made her hungry. I’m bobbing my head, shuffling between Drake and Takura on Spotify and enjoying the bass. My eyes meet Mkoma’s in the rear-view and his settle on my headphones. He says they turn me into some kind of zombie. I think the real reason he minds is because lately I’ve been sharing my playlists with Noku. And a few weeks back she made a little boy at her crèche cry after chasing him at break-time, screaming, ‘Neo, do you love me?’

  Needless to say, Mkoma hasn’t been very keen on my headphones since then.

  In the car, Noku has been composing songs for the whole hour we’ve been on the road, and most of them have the same tune, if you can call it a tune. About an hour ago Mkoma switched on the radio to drown her out, but that didn’t stop her at all. She still sang along, with mostly made-up lyrics, consisting of words that the Oxford English Dictionary still needs to be informed about.

  ‘Noku, get back in your seat, please.’

  ‘What are you chewing, Daddy?’

  I turn the volume down to hear this.

  ‘I’m not chewing anything, Noku. Now, back in your seat, please.’

  ‘But your mouth is moving.’

  Mkoma sighs while I hold back my laughter. The thinking lines haven’t disappeared from his face yet.

  ‘Noku, do you really think that I would eat something by myself and not share it with you guys?’

  She pauses and stares at him with her nose scrunched up. ‘Yes, I do,’ she says eventually, with absolute certainty.

  My hand flies to my mouth, suppressing the muffled laughter that threatens to ripple out of me. Mkoma turns his head to look at her, his face half surprised and half lighting up with laughter. He chuckles through his nose and shakes his head.

  It’s because of that one time Mkoma had chicken nuggets at work and left the takeaway box in his car for Noku to find. That’s all it had taken for him to lose her trust when it came to food.

  I look ahead through the windscreen. There are barrels in the road and a boom-gate up ahead. The police are back in the roads again. At first after we got a new president last year there weren’t a lot of roadblocks. Mkoma had been so excited that day. He had woken up early and, with his flag wrapped across his T-shirt, headed to Unity Square for the march.

  He kept saying that all his life he had never been able to answer the question: ‘Who was your last president?’ And after the ‘not-a-coup’, we couldn’t keep him from asking Noku, any chance he got, who the former president of Zimbabwe was. But now he scowls and protests if you remind him of his once so-jubilant self, rejecting any association with the president, almost like Chance the Rapper does with Trump.

  ‘Noku, back in your seat!’ Mkoma’s voice bellows again.

  ‘It’s not fair.’ She scowls, complaining that her hunger is more important than being buckled in. Mkoma watches her through the rear-view mirror, making sure she’s strapped in. His eyes shift to me. Without being told, I make sure Noku’s strap is secured.

  ‘Some people are so mean! Daddy, why are we going through a famine in this car?’

  I look at her little sulking face and let out a giggle. Mkoma, who in this case is obviously ‘some people’, can’t help it too.

  ‘I’m jumping out of the car, Daddy!’

  ‘No, no, Noku. Settle down. Tumirai, make sure she doesn’t undo her buckle.’ He looks at her through the rearview, his face now serious. ‘And besides, there are things out there that can eat you …’

  Mkoma slows the car down. I look at him in the mirror and can see him as he watches one of the police officers standing by the boom-gate. His face doesn’t register fear, only annoyance. As the police officers come into focus, my muscles tense. My lungs jam up and I can’t breathe. Mkoma brings the car to a halt in front of the boom. I am gasping to breathe.

  ‘Good afternoon, officer. Is there a problem?’ Mkoma starts.

  My hand goes to my hip and I remember the pain, the screams, the scratching. The whole image of that night settles in my mind in troubling detail. My throat closes up.

  I catch a glimpse of the officer handing Mkoma back his licence and waving him through. The car starts moving again.

  ‘What vultures! Aren’t police there to protect us? Instead all they do is make us feel uneasy, as if we’ve all done something wrong. Busy there inventing fake crimes and filling quotas for taking our money and our rights. We’re not blind.’ Mkoma shakes his head and mumbles to himself, still peeping back at the police through the mirror.

  It takes me a moment to relax.

  My stomach grumbles again. Mkoma looks at me through his mirror, and then shifts his eyes to Noku, who is now visibly sulking with her hands crossed over her chest.

  ‘Why don’t we stop at the Halfway House and get some pies?’

  Noku smiles.

  7

  Ambuya dances the way she always does when a car belonging to one of her children or grandchildren pulls onto the homestead. Her grey dreadlocks sway back and forth. Mkoma drives slowly towards the shade of the mango tree, a big grin on his face, while Ambuya trails by the side of the car, next to his window, singing and dancing. I try and imagine her the way the diary entries describe – big afro, flowing dress, younger.

  Nah! No way she was ever younger than this.

  A big farmhouse stands on one side of the yard, with two huts right beside it, almost like having three houses there. Ambuya uses one of the huts as a silo for maize after the harvest season, and the other as a kitchen because it was built to accommodate cooking fires. So when she needs to cook delicacies that would use up too much electricity, she uses that kitchen instead of the stove in the main house. Today seems to be one of those days. But Ambuya enjoys food cooked on the fire anyway, so any excuse to use the flames is a good one for her. Listen, for this I’m not complaining.

  I can smell the mouth-watering smell of matumbu, a fine dish of cow intestines that she serves with sadza and spicy vegetables. I lick my lips, well aware that I’m going to be doing some tongue-chewing tonight from all that goodness.

  ‘Eeeeeh Chineke God-oo!’ Noku shouts, hands on her head, mimicking all those Nollywood actresses she’s been watching lately on TV.

  ‘How could you have wanted to miss this-oo?’

  Her big wide eyes dart about wildly, taking in all the
animals roaming around Ambuya’s small yard, sending a clear message that they own the place.

  The kindergarten teacher recently asked Saru if Noku’s father is Nigerian because of all of the dramatic expressions that Noku comes out with, using her best Nigerian accent. But Nollywood movies are Saru’s Achilles heel, so all those expressions that Noku uses are not going anywhere any time soon.

  There are things that I enjoy about being at Ambuya’s. Like how the moon always seems to come out early and stare down the last rays of the sun. And how clearly you can see the stars twinkling without competing with all those city lights, almost as though they are greeting you. But I’m still not safe here, and I have to show Mkoma before it’s too late.

  As soon as the car stops, Ambuya pulls open Mkoma’s door and engulfs him in a long embrace, singing his totem in the process. She turns to me, but I quickly look away. I remember the scars, but this time they look even darker. Befitting of someone who watches people die.

  Once when I asked Bamkuru where Ambuya got her scars, he took off his belt and gave me five good ones on the soles of my feet for being disrespectful. Though it still made no sense to me, he said that it was not our culture for children to ask such questions. Bamkuru is like that – he has all these things he believes because of culture. And I think some of them are a bit messed up. All I got out of Mkoma was that Ambuya had gotten the scars on her face from doing something brave. But I knew that it was the kind of lie that you tell children to calm their fears.