The Book of Memory

by Petina Gappah

  My mother believed in the spirits and the mediums through which they spoke. She believed in healers and diviners. And simultaneously, she believed in Reverend Bergen. All of this could exist in her mind at the same time. His deeds had preceded him. In Mozambique he had raised a man from the dead. When she heard that he was coming, my mother could barely contain herself.

  That Sunday we got up early to prepare. My mother had laid out our Sunday clothes, our Christmas dresses, and our long white socks and shiny shoes. After we had dressed and eaten, we walked all the way to Kambuzuma, but still we were not the earliest.

  There was a large crowd of people, nothing like you see now with Prophet Makandiwa and people like that. This was the Pentecostal movement at its nascent stage. Still it was a large enough congregation that it spilled out of the marquee that had been set up for the occasion. My mother fought our way into the marquee.

  My father said, ‘MaiGivhi, there are too many people. Why don’t we sit outside?’

  My mother said, ‘But think of Memory.’

  This was the first time that she had taken note of me, and as we fought our way inside, and a man stepped on my feet, I held off the pain as I thought that she was doing this for me.

  We fought our way to seats that had a direct view of the pulpit. When I saw the Reverend, I was seized with a feeling that was part attraction and part repulsion. I thought, at first: but he is albino, he is just like Lameck and me.

  I looked closer and saw that he was just a white man, with pale eyes, and blond hair that lay flat across his head. Reverend Bergen spoke through a translator. It made the services longer than usual. Babies started to cry. I was pleased that Mobhi was not with us; she had been left at MaiPrincess’s house. Reverend Bergen talked of God’s love, and God’s mercy, and the promises of God’s kingdom. He held out his hands over us and blessed us.

  ‘Every day with Jesus,’ we sang, ‘is sweeter than the day before. Every day with Jesus I love him more and more.’

  Then he looked out at the congregation and picked out people. ‘I can see into your heart,’ Reverend Bergen said to a man in a green jacket. ‘What you desire will bring you no lasting joy.’

  The man nodded and sat down. Reverend Bergen fixed his colourless eyes on my mother. ‘Stand up,’ he said.

  My mother looked around; we looked around, unsure to whom he talked.

  ‘I am talking to the woman in the blue hat with the white flower,’ Reverend Bergen said, and looked at my mother in her blue hat. She had bought it just the previous week from Amato Stores. ‘I am talking to the woman in the blue hat,’ Reverend Bergen said again.

  My mother stood up, in the way that the man in the green jacket had stood up.

  ‘I see your suffering,’ he said. ‘God sees your suffering. He has all the answers. If you trust in him, he will deliver you. He says to you, in one month, I will end your greatest trouble. Believe in me and I will deliver you.’

  He moved on to others, giving each his fatidic pronouncements.

  In the line afterwards, my mother could not keep her eyes off Reverend Bergen. He sat at a long table filled with Bibles and copies of a book that he had written called The Spirit Descends. It was more expensive than the Bibles. He signed a book for my mother, and also a Bible, as if he had also written it.

  When we went home, she took down the Bible and stroked the page with his autograph. The night before they handed me to Lloyd, I sneaked into the sitting room and took down the Bible from where my mother kept it on the radiogram. I ripped out the page with Reverend Bergen’s sprawling autograph on it and put it in my underpants, and only removed it when I lay down to sleep in my new bedroom in Summer Madness, Lloyd’s house in Umwinsidale

  I don’t know whether my mother ever left that church. She was still there when Mobhi died, and the church people came to our house. And she was there still when, in fulfilment of God’s promise that he would relieve my mother of her suffering, they sold me to Lloyd. The vague words spoken by Reverend Bergen gave my mother pride. Her suffering had been given official sanction and confirmation; it had been acknowledged not just by God, but also by God speaking through the undoubted authority of a white man.

  Reverend Bergen himself had come – all the way from Germany, he had come; from all that way he had seen how much I suffer, she said. In her telling of the story, the good Reverend had come for no other purpose than to see and tell to the world the nature of my mother’s suffering.

  When Lloyd approached my parents a short few months after this, when another white man presented himself to her, she had no hesitation in believing him the messenger sent to deliver her from me.

  15

  They happened a lifetime ago, these things that I am telling you about. It is hard for the truth to emerge shining clearly from a twenty-year fog of distant memory. There is a lot to sift through. I am not sure if there was one event that prompted my parents to act as they did, whether my parents sold me to Lloyd because of the church service that Reverend Bergen had led, or whether it was because of the visit to the traditional healer. Or perhaps it was because of both.

  It was certainly after that service at Reverend Bergen’s church that my sister Mobhi died. It was during term time that we saw him because it was the Sunday of the week in which Nhau had attacked me because I had beaten him again in a mental arithmetic test.

  Mobhi died the afternoon that I saw Nhau steal the peaches from MaiNever’s house. It must have been during the August school holiday because we had spent the whole day playing outside, and it was a day when we would normally have been in school. During the week that Mobhi died, my mother suffered frequent attacks from her headaches, and spent most of her time lying down on her bed. For that reason, we mainly played outside.

  I sat in the shade with my father, watching him make a little wire aeroplane, and when it was finished, moving it up and down on the same spot. Mobhi slept on a blanket near where my father worked, and when she got up, she wandered off to play with Promise from next door. Joyi was, as always, playing in the street.

  Not even the death of Sheila, the little girl from up the street who had been crushed by a car the Christmas before, stopped the children from playing outside. The street was the only place there was, and that August was no different. I could hear Joyi’s voice joined to those of the other children playing endless rounds of dunhu, rakaraka and chisveru. When I asked my father if I could play with the others, he said it was too hot, and I should sit in the shade at the side of the house and help him with his cars.

  Around two in the afternoon, Joyi came back home, complaining that she was hungry. My father said, ‘Don’t disturb your mother – she is sleeping.’

  When Joyi said again that she was hungry, my father said, ‘Fine, we will get something from the shops.’ She cheered up at once.

  My father called out to Mobhi to come, but she cried that she wanted to stay next door. I knew why she wanted to stay: MaiPrincess’s daughter Promise had a new doll with curly yellow hair and blue, long-lashed eyes that opened and closed while it said ‘Mama’. That holiday, Mobhi had spent as much time as she could with Promise, watching her play with her doll, never allowed to touch it, only clapping, cheering and giving little jumps when the doll said ‘Mama’ and Promise hugged it to herself.

  While my father was trying to persuade Mobhi, I managed to sneak into the house without waking my mother. I fetched my hat from our room. When my father saw me put my hat on, he said, ‘Memo, you stay here with Mobhi, and make sure she does not disturb your mother. I will bring you back some food.’

  My father said to me that Mobhi could stay next door, as long as she did not go back into the house to disturb our mother. I stood near the fence and watched Mobhi and Promise play. They made the doll open and close her eyes again and again. I was angry and resentful. I wanted to go to the shops, and had a good mind to follow my father and Joyi. After a few minutes, tired of watching a game I did not have a part in, I wandered away from the fence an
d went to sit on our veranda, where I could watch the people passing in the street.

  It was then that I saw Nhau. He was walking strangely, like he had something in his pants and shorts. Then I saw what it was: he had hidden peaches in his clothes. I realised that he could only be coming from MaiNever’s house. She had a mulberry bush and a peach tree; Lameck sold the peaches for her. Nhau could only have got them from there.

  As I watched him walk away from the house, three peaches fell out without his noticing. There was no one to see him disappear up the street. The peaches lay there, unnoticed, inviting. No one would see me if I took them.

  I left the veranda and went over to pick them up. I rubbed one on my dress. Just as I was about to bite into it, MaiNever came and saw me with the three peaches in my hands. ‘You are the thief who has been taking our peaches!’ she shouted.

  I protested that it was not I, that all I had done was to see them fall and pick them up. ‘Fall from where?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell lies, how can peaches fall from the tree behind my house, how can they just fall onto the street?’

  ‘They are not your peaches,’ I said.

  ‘As if I would not know my own peaches,’ she said.

  I knew that I was in fifty thousand kinds of trouble, but I could not bring myself to name Nhau. He was the most popular of the children, the most playful, the most daring, and the acknowledged leader of the Mharapara Street children.

  Perhaps, even now, the other children were congratulating him as they ate the fruit of his exploits. I could not name him. If I did, the other children would never talk to me again. So I did not say what had happened. I could only protest that I had stolen no peaches, that I had only seen the peaches fall, and that I was no thief.

  As with anything in the township, our contretemps attracted attention. Soon, there was a small gathering of onlookers, with each person giving their opinion about how guilty I looked and was. I could hear the whispers, ‘Aba mapichisi, aba mapichisi.’ In the middle of all of this, my father came back.

  MaiNever dragged me to my father and said, ‘Your daughter is a thief.’

  My father only asked me, ‘Where is Mobhi?’

  I looked down. I could not answer.

  My father then ran into the house. MaiNever still held my arm, and yelled about her peaches as she followed my father to MaiPrincess’s house.

  ‘Where is Mobhi?’ he asked.

  ‘She said she was hungry and went back to your house,’ MaiPrincess said.

  MaiNever still held me by one hand and in the other she held the incriminating peaches. I saw Nhau in the crowd of people, smirking among the children. I could almost feel the peaches in his stomach. I imagined him sharing them with the other children, while letting me take the blame. My eyes welled up with angry tears.

  I could hear my father calling out for Mobhi. My rage against Nhau gave me strength. I managed to break free from MaiNever’s grip, and ran to hide in the outside bathroom behind the house. She ran behind me, still shouting. I opened the door and was about to shut myself in when I stopped. MaiNever also stopped behind me.

  In the silence that followed, she let out a piercing scream.

  My father ran out of the house.

  From a very long distance, I heard MaiWhizi shout, ‘Chii chiiko, zvadiniko veduwe?’ Other neighbours followed to where I stood in stiff silence as MaiNever continued to scream.

  My father moved me out of the way and there was Mobhi, or at least, there were Mobhi’s legs, because all I could see of her were the legs sticking out of the large zinc bucket that was used to store the water for flushing if there was none in the tank.

  I looked for a long time at her feet.

  They were brown with dirt even though she was in the water. Then there was noise and confusion behind me, as my father took her out of the water and tried to breathe life into her while he called her name.

  MaiNever and MaiWhizi had their arms around each other as they wailed in counterpoint. My mother came out of the house. When she saw Mobhi, she hit my father on his back with her fists. My father struggled to get her to stop.

  He pushed too hard. She screamed, fell against the wall near the door and cut her head. Joyi began to cry from the sight of the blood.

  My mother got up. She fought against my father’s restraining arms. She slipped in the water and hit her head against the doorjamb. Her head bleeding, she ran weeping to the house next door. She picked up the front of her dress and covered her face, and everyone could see that she wore her black petticoat with the hole where the iron had singed it.

  MaiPrincess came and then all the other neighbours came. The women joined my mother in keening and the lament spread from house to house in the street until everyone in Mharapara and as far as kwaMhishi knew of Mobhi’s death.

  In all of the confusion, I remember one thought: this meant that people would soon forget about the peaches. I was right. No one mentioned the peaches again, not even MaiNever. My father took us to MaiWhizi’s house. She took me in her arms, and hugged me to her. I could smell the sweat of her armpits and from her skin the cloying and overpowering smell of camphor lotion.

  *

  Mobhi’s wake lasted four days and three nights. During that time, our neighbours and the people from the Church of the Felicitous Tidings of the New Gospel filled up our house, cooked outside and sang. My mother and MaiSheila sat and wept together, rocking back and forth as they held each other. Joyi and I did not sleep at home.

  We remained at MaiWhizi’s until the day we buried Mobhi. On the day of the funeral, I went with my parents and the others on a bus to the cemetery in Highfield. Only a year before, we had walked these same streets, in our Christmas clothes, going to get our picture taken by Bester Kanyama, Mobhi in her pink lace dress seeing everything from my father’s shoulders.

  My mother should not have been at the graveside. There is a tradition according to which the person most touched by a death is not to see the burial. My mother was supposed to come only to see the grave after the burial, and not to witness the burying itself.

  My mother refused to stay in the house, so my father gave in to her. I kept my eyes focused, not on the little coffin that was covered in dirt, but on MaiWhizi, who was dancing at the grave in time to the beating of the drums. When Mobhi’s coffin was lowered into the ground, my mother tried to jump after it. My father hid my face against himself, but I could still see my mother struggling to jump in before she went suddenly limp. Even when the men from the funeral place threw gravel over Mobhi, she simply stared, and continued in the same position until the entire grave had been filled up.

  It was only when Mobhi died that I realised that we had no relatives. I overheard MaiWhizi ask MaiPrincess, ‘And just where are all their relatives? What is this new fashion of being buried only by neighbours and church people? There are no aunts here, no uncles, no grandparents?’

  ‘It is as though they had just sprang from the earth,’ said MaiPrincess.

  ‘They have never received any visitors, not once as long as they have lived here,’ said MaiWhizi. ‘I have never seen a single aunt or uncle, sister or brother.’

  ‘Not even an in-law, and you know how you can never get rid of those.’

  ‘And they go nowhere in planting season.’

  ‘Maybe they just have nowhere to go.’

  They were right. Our neighbours had endless uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents forever coming to stay. In six months alone, for instance, all of MaiWhizi’s relatives would have visited.

  In the holidays, instead of going to a rural home like the other children, we stayed at home, like the Manyasarandi and Bhurandaya families from Malawi or Mozambique, who everyone said were born rukesheni, belonging to the townships and with no proper home, and who had to be buried in the cemetery in town.

  No relatives ever came to us from the village, or from anywhere else. We seemed complete in ourselves, with no one ever coming, no aunts, uncles or nephews. At the time, I did not notice
it, but I have wondered since then why we were so unconnected to anyone else but ourselves.

  It made sense to me that we were from Malawi, which I knew was another country that was far away. In the invincible confidence of my new knowledge, I marched up to the two women and said, ‘They are in Malawi; everyone is in Malawi.’

  My father came up to me and I turned to him eagerly and said, ‘Baba, tell them. Tell them about Malawi. They are asking where our relatives are, but they are in Malawi, aren’t they, Baba, aren’t they? They are in Malawi.’

  My father said only, ‘Memo, go inside.’

  As I walked away, MaiWhizi laughed, a high, nervous sort of laugh, and said, ‘Ah children. When they overhear something, they don’t always understand it.’

  My mother did not leave the house after Mobhi died. She lay on her bed in her room and came out only when my father helped her to the bathroom. A few days later, I began to have strange dreams. I began to dream of the creature that hugged me to itself and almost choked me with the smell of camphor cream.

  Now that I have written that sentence, it strikes me as strange that I should have begun to dream about a creature that I had never seen, because it was only at Lloyd’s house, and not before, that I first saw the Chimera, but so it seems to me now.

  It was then that my dreams started. In them the creature trailed water; it had dirty feet and surrounding it was the cloying smell of camphor. In another dream, the creature came and picked me up; its dirt had spread from its feet to its body, and I was covered in it. I opened my mouth to scream and my mother appeared to fight for me. She looked terrible in her nightgown; her hair stood up in spikes as though it had been stretched. For a moment I thought that she was the Chimera. Then she fought the creature and took me from it. ‘You are dirty, Memo,’ she said. ‘Come, you need a bath.’