The house is mine now; at least, I know that Lloyd left it to me in his will. That fact spoke against me at the trial. I have watched enough legal dramas to know that a convicted person cannot profit from the fruits of his own crime. I must remember to ask Vernah Sithole, the next time that I see her, what will happen to the house, whether it will be confiscated by the state, or whether Alexandra, as Lloyd’s next of kin, will inherit it now.
I try not to think about being released. Even if the thing I dare not think about happens, and I am set free, I cannot see myself ever living there again. I do not see myself ever going back to Umwinsidale. Jimmy calls it Umwinsdale, dropping the ‘i’ and consequently making a strange swallowing sound.
She knows the area well. For two terms when she was in grade four, she lived with her uncle, and went to St Joseph’s School in Chishawasha. She has never forgotten the long walk down Umwinsidale Drive, past the stables at Mahobohobo, crossing Enterprise Road and into Chishawasha, an inverted Umwinsidale with its thatched rural huts and sinewy, hard Mashona cows.
She keeps asking for more and more detail about the house. I have added more and more rooms, and a sauna and a Jacuzzi in addition to the swimming pool and tennis court that need no exaggeration. As we cleared out the Condemn, I heard her tell Verity that I was so rich that, when I wanted to get really hot and sweaty, I would go into a small room built just for that purpose, and that our house had rooms that existed only to lead into other rooms. ‘Lots of halls, entryways and corridors. Jealous down,’ she said. ‘Memo really lived the life. Kwete imi vana Verity munoite wonini.’
Verity protested that she had never hoed a field in her life. Jimmy said, well, just those two feet alone walking in a field is enough to do some hoeing. ‘You can get all the pedicures in the world, Verity,’ she added, ‘but you cannot do anything about your hoe-shaped feet.’
This is how things usually are with these, my unlikely best friends, Jimmy and Verity, the prostitute and the con artist. I moved away to get out of the sound of their argument.
9
The biggest surprise about prison is the laughter. There is laughter to go with sudden quarrels; there is malice and gossip along with acts of generosity. It is not unusual to find two women who were accusing each other of witchcraft the previous week clapping hands to each other as though nothing had ever happened between them.
It is not possible to sustain one emotion for too long. It is too taxing on the mind to always be angry, or always sorrowful. Pain in particular is too big a burden when you are in a confined space. I do not mean to sound like I am writing a self-help manual, but your mind truly is the only thing you can control when you are in prison. Your emotions are the only thing you can call your own.
Much of our time here goes to helping women with court cases, women on remand facing trial, women facing appeals on sentence, helping them to weave convoluted tales of innocence. It is at these trial preparation sessions that you find the most laughter.
Vernah Sithole has told me about the strategy sessions she has with her colleagues at the Advocates’ Chambers. It would amuse and impress her, I am sure, to know about the strategy sessions we hold in here, where the prisoners gather in groups to discuss strategy and rehearse procedure. Unlike the lawyers, what we discuss is not the law, as such, but how to play the system, how to beat it.
Jimmy, who has seen more police cells and courts than anyone else, and Verity, who knows everything there is to know even when she doesn’t, are the most active. Evernice also takes active part. Enough of her comrades have been rounded up in the last year to make her familiar with court proceedings.
Last week, as we took a break from working in the garden, we went over Beulah’s case. She has been on remand for more than a year. The charge she faces is assault with grievous bodily harm. If she is convicted, she faces a long sentence, at least five years, for hitting another woman with a bottle and wounding her.
‘You must point out that you have been on remind for a very long time now,’ said Verity.
‘Remand,’ corrected Monalisa. ‘It is remand, not remind.’
‘And you must remember,’ said Jimmy, ‘that a magistrate is your worship, not your lord. Your lord is a judge.’
‘No, no,’ said Verity, ‘what are you talking? She must say my worship and my lordship.’
‘My worship sei futi. Do you think you are in church?’
‘But anyway,’ Evernice interrupted, ‘you don’t need all that, because you can just speak in Shona and the translator will find the right words for you.’
‘Those translators are the dangerous ones, manje,’ said Verity. ‘Why do you think that Patience wants to be a translator? They are the people with the power. They are the very people who will really fix you for ever, like if you say something that is too difficult for them to translate, hodo, they will just say whatever comes to their heads, and the next thing you know, ketshke.’
She made the sound of a key in a lock. ‘Ketshke,’ she said again.
‘So I should speak in English, should I?’ Beulah asked. ‘I have four O levels plus a D in English. I can speak in English if that will help.’
‘Yes, use English,’ said Verity. ‘The magistrates will be impressed because they do not expect someone who goes around thumping people in the street to speak in English.’
‘Don’t speak in English,’ said Jimmy, ‘because everyone will think kuti uri wonini, that you are just too high-class and they will want to fix you.’
They all turned to me. I had famously used English, and only English, at my trial. In my first week in prison, I had overheard Jimmy tell Evernice that even when I cried, I cried in English. ‘And she even laughs in English,’ she had added, with what sounded like admiration. ‘Kwete imi vanaEvernice munongoseke dzvandu.’
‘Just speak in Shona,’ continued Jimmy, ‘but speak simply, and just stick to explaining what actually happened. Explain right now. We are in court. Verity is the prosecutor, and I am the magistrate.’
‘And I am the interpreter,’ said Evernice.
Jimmy protested. ‘Interpreter wekwadini when we are saying she should speak in Shona.’
‘Horaiti, I will just sit here with these other people in court.’
Evernice moved to join the five baby dumpers on the grass who were giggling as they watched.
‘I am the court reporter,’ said one of the baby dumpers. She rose from the grass to join Jimmy and Verity.
‘And I am the policewoman in Court Five, the one who always looks like she is smelling rotting onions,’ said Manyara. She twisted her mouth to the right. The watching women gave great gulps of laughter.
‘The court shall come to order,’ said Jimmy. She made as though to gavel a table. ‘Mr Prosecutor, please proceed.’
‘I would like to ask the accused where she was on the day in question,’ said Verity.
Beulah blinked and licked her lips.
‘Hona bwai bwai yacho,’ said Evernice. ‘There is your D in English. You see why you need an interpreter.’
‘Actually, it’s translator,’ said Verity.
Jimmy said, ‘Okay, fine, translator, interpreter, it is all the same thing. Evernice, you can be the interpreter.’
Verity said, ‘Translator.’
Jimmy said, ‘Fine, fine, whatever. Please, Mr Prosecutor.’
‘I said where were you on the day in question?’ Verity asked.
‘Where were you on the questioned day which is the day that we are questioning you about today?’ Evernice translated.
Beulah blinked, licked her lips again, drew breath, and said, ‘I was just coming from the shops, ndazvitengera zvangu yekera yangu, ndazvitengera drink yangu, it was the first time that I had seen Cherry Plum in ages, from the time I was a girl I have always liked it even though it makes your tongue purple, so I bought some and I was so happy, and I bought it with my own money, and I was drinking it and laughing with my friend Shupi who lives in Jerusalem when this woman called Rosewinter
who lives in Canaan walked past us, and I know her because she tried to take my boyfriend, he used to live close by Shupi in Jerusalem, in fact that is how we met until his landlord kicked him out for not paying rent on time, but I can’t really say that he was my proper boyfriend as such because he was married even though his wife lived at their village.
‘So as she passed us she was talking and I heard her say to her friend, ndiye uya anoroya, and I said what did you say, and she said, ehe, I said you are a witch who eats people, what are you going to do about it, you witch?
‘And I said, what, what do you mean I am a witch, and I said to myself, no, I cannot allow this, how can I allow this Rosewinter person, mumwewo mukadzi zvake akabarwa seni, to call me a witch while I just stand here drinking Cherry Plum like nothing is happening, and she said again, you are a witch, and then I took my bottle even though it still had some drink in it and I took it and I hit her with it and she screamed, maiwe, the witch is killing me, and that made me even angrier so I hit her again and the bottle broke on her head; you have never seen anything like it because the bottle broke and there was this blood now mixed with the Cherry Plum and I turned to Shupi for help but she and the other woman’s friend were busy fighting, but when the police came, they both of them managed to run away even though Shupi left her new wig behind, it was a boy-cut style, which was a pity because kanga kakamufita zvisingaiti kawig kacho, and this woman was now shouting, my head, my head, my head, kani my head, like I had killed her.
‘And then they took us to the police camp and they arrested me even though I explained to the police that I was minding my own business drinking my Cherry Plum which I had just bought for myself with my own money when this woman spoke to her friend and said, ndiye uya anoroya, and I said what did you say …’
The women were now in fits of laughter. Abandoning her role as court reporter, the baby dumper was rolling on the grass, while her friends clapped their hands to each other in delight.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Jimmy. ‘Just stop there. You need a simple story. Leave out the stuff about this wonini, this Cherry Plum; no one cares about Cherry Plum or what colour it makes your tongue. And this Canaan, Canaan business …’
‘Did I say Canaan?’ Beulah said. ‘I actually meant Egypt, yah, he moved to Egypt before he went to Canaan.’
‘Egypt, Canaan, Jerusalem, it would not matter if it was Gethsemane. Just cut all that out and get to the point. Just say what actually happened. She called you a witch and you became angry.’
‘And you were angry because of your dead grandmother who was once called a witch,’ said Evernice.
‘Ehunde,’ said Jimmy. ‘That is a good one.’
‘But both my grandmothers are alive,’ Beulah said.
‘Yes, but what about your grandmothers’ grandmothers?’ Evernice asked. ‘Are they not your grandmothers too?’
‘But they were never called witches,’ Beulah said.
‘And how do you know that?’ said Evernice. ‘Were you alive in the time of your grandmothers’ grandmothers? Do you know everything that happened to them? Were you there? What are you, a witch?’
‘Don’t call me a witch,’ Beulah said as she flared up.
In a low voice, making sure that Beulah did not hear me, I said to Verity that it was just as well that there was no bottle of Cherry Plum handy. Verity swallowed her laughter and gave me a punch on the arm.
‘Iza, Beulah, iza,’ said Jimmy. ‘Evernice has a good point. Just say she called you a witch, it made you angry and sad because that is what they had called your grandmother who has now died, and you were overcome with anger.’
‘Say you need a course in anger government,’ said Verity.
‘Anger government kuita sei,’ said Jimmy. ‘Just say you are sorry, and that you have remorse.’
‘That’s right, remorse,’ said Verity. ‘You are full of remorse and you ask to be sentenced to the time that you have saved.’
‘Time served,’ said Jimmy.
‘Time saved,’ said Verity.
‘What do you mean, time saved?’ said Monalisa. ‘Jimmy is right. It is time served.’
‘The point is that she will not go to jail because she has saved the time,’ reasoned Verity.
Before anyone could answer, Beulah said, ‘I am sorry, of course I am, and I will let the court know that I am sorry, and that I promise not to be that angry again, but I swear by my father who is buried in Zimuto even though he died in Seke Unit J, I swear that if I see her again and she calls me a witch or so much as looks at me like she is even thinking that I am a witch, ndinopika nevakafa, I swear by the dead that I am going to thump her, bottle or no bottle.’
As the siren sounded for lock-up, we took our laughter with us all the way to our cells.
*
I spend twelve hours of every day in my own cell. There are women here who would go mad in such solitude. The guards frequently punish us by isolating us. Verity claims that the activist who was kidnapped from her home two years ago is actually here in Chikurubi, hidden away in solitary confinement in an underground room with a special guard that we have never seen.
The idea of being alone horrifies the others. They prefer to move in groups, to work in clusters, to always have a companion. It is different for me. Solitude is not the hardest thing about prison life for me. From the time that I was a child, I have been able to retreat into myself, and to find within myself the resources that have made it possible to bear my own company. Even when everyone came back from their various occupations, my mother from plaiting hair when she was well, my father from his work, and Joyi and Mobhi from their play, I found it possible in that houseful of people to be entirely alone.
I spent so much of my time on my own that I learned early to follow the thread of my own thoughts, and to watch, and be still while others talked. I learned early to distinguish between those who spoke the truth and those who lied. My habit of watching people enraged my mother. She often lashed out at me, not because I had said something she did not like, but because I had said nothing at all.
I was not always alone at Chikurubi. When I first arrived, just after I was convicted but before I was sentenced, I shared a cell with Mavis Munongwa. Mavis has been in a kind of solitary confinement for most of her life here because there are no other women with sentences as long as hers.
She has been here since the last year of Rhodesia, longer than any other prisoner or guard. For thirty years or more, she has roamed the halls of the prison, moving between the Condemn and the canteen, between her cell and the prison farm.
She has no knowledge at all of Zimbabwe, no idea of what life has been like in the last thirty years, no concept of the immense contradictions that make up this country – national unity achieved through the massacres in the south, discrimination against the white people whose Olympic victories form an integral part of the nation’s self-declared successes, the multiplicity of laws that guarantee women equality and a culture that ensures that they remain subservient.
When she talks, she talks of Salisbury, of Que Que, of Charter and Melsetter. Like the mink-and-manure set in which I once lived, the fact of independence does not translate into any reality for her. But the people that I lived amongst in Umwinsidale lived in a cocoon of privilege that was untouched by the political changes around them, while Mavis is more like that Japanese soldier who continued to fight the Second World War decades after Japan’s surrender. She simply does not know that anything has changed, and when she is confused has the vacant emptiness of a marble god.
Every name that she gets wrong is more abuse from the guards. ‘I have had enough of your boomshit,’ says Patience. ‘Acting like a deaf-moot. Do you think we still live in Rhodesia?’
On the first night in our shared cell, in long urgent whispers interrupted by fits of raspy weeping, she told me why she was here. In her life before this one, Mavis had been married in Gutu. Her husband fell sick and died suddenly. She and her brothers consulted a diviner to find out wha
t had killed him. The diviner had told them that her sister-in-law, Mavis’s brother’s wife, and her friends in sorcery, had killed Mavis’s husband. ‘In the night, in the graveyard,’ the diviner told Mavis, ‘they feast on his flesh and drink his blood. They have made his penis into the whistle that they use to summon each other.’
Mavis bought rat poison and put it in the drinking water inside her sister-in-law’s cooking hut. But it was not Mavis’s sister-in-law, or even her sorcery friends, or her husband, who drank that water and died. Instead, it was their four children. It was Mavis’s two nieces and two nephews, aged eleven, nine, seven and three, who drank the water and died in pain on the floor of their mother’s hut.
In those nights that I shared with her, I would have given anything to be back at the police cell at Highlands. When her spirits were high, she filled the cell with manic laughter, chanting the alphabet name song over and over again. ‘Anna, Boniface, Cecilia, Dickson, Edina, Fungai, Gibson, Henry, Ida, Jakobo, Keresenzia, Lameck, Manuere, Noeri, Otilia, Patson, Que Que, Ruth, Stephen, Timothy, Urita, Vikita, Watson, Xhosa, Yachona, Zambia.’
And when her spirits were low, she groaned out the names of the children she had killed. ‘James and Lydia, Cecelia, Boniface.’
If I managed to get any sleep at all, I would wake up to find her whispering to me, telling me of the children’s distended stomachs, their bleeding mouths, their horrible death. ‘They vomited out their own intestines,’ she whispered. ‘I saw everything that was inside them. They put the bodies in my hut and refused to bury them until I told them what I did to them. They locked me in with them. They would not let me out.’
The Book of Memory Page 7
