by Gaile Parkin
He thought about who he could tell about the frog. Not Mama or his sisters, for sure; and his brothers would listen with only half of their attention, longing to get on with kicking their ball around. Sifiso and Giveness at school, maybe. But they would be less interested in the frog itself and more interested in the part about trying to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night.
No, he was going to have to wait until he could tell Uncle Enock, at the other house.
TWO
GIVENESS WAS PEELING THE PAPER AWAY FROM HIS chocolate cupcake iced in bright green. ‘Eish,’ he declared, ‘I wish my aunt could bake like your mom!’
‘Mm,’ agreed Sifiso, whose mouth was full.
‘She does lovely birthday cakes,’ Benedict reminded them, ‘and cakes for any kind of party you can imagine.’
The three sat alone in the shadow cast by one of the rows of classrooms. The cool air of early May meant it wasn’t the warmest place to sit, but if Sifiso had been in the school’s sunny yard on the other side of the classrooms, the children who spent their break there would have kicked a ball at him and laughed at his chubby uselessness in trying to kick it back, and they would have called him Thifitho on account of his lisp. And if Giveness had been there, he would have had to be sheltering himself under his umbrella on account of his skin being pink like Auntie Rachel at the other house, only he wasn’t a Mzungu like Auntie Rachel, he was a Swazi and his skin was supposed to be brown like Benedict’s, only God had made a mistake.
Benedict had been pretty sure that God never made mistakes, but he had checked it with Mama and Baba after supper one night.
‘How can God make a mistake when He’s all-powerful?’ Mama had asked.
‘Don’t you make the mistake of confusing power with competence,’ Baba had said, his finger wagging a warning at Mama. ‘Powerful men are perfectly capable of making mistakes, and powerful nations—’
‘We’re not talking about men or nations, Pius. We’re talking about God. And God does not make mistakes.’
Baba had looked at Benedict and raised his hands as if to say there was no arguing with Mama on that point, and then he had asked him why he was asking.
‘Because when Giveness was born pink and he never turned brown, his mother said she didn’t want to raise one of God’s mistakes, and she gave him to her sister.’
‘Eh!’
‘Uh-uh-uh!’
‘She went away to South Africa and she never came back.’
‘Ooh, that was her mistake, Benedict. His mother’s.’
‘He’s pink because his mother made a mistake?’
Baba had sighed deeply and looked at his watch, then he had said a lot of very big words about how sometimes things went wrong in science and biology and about how an accident wasn’t the same thing as a mistake, and eh! it was time for news.
Benedict had thought about it all the way through news, stopping only to admire the footage of the king dressed up as Ngwenyama the lion with his huge mane of black ostrich feathers and his shawl of the long, hairy ends of cows’ tails.
There were two ways of looking at it, he thought. Number one, God had made everything, including science and biology. And if there could be accidents in science and biology, didn’t that mean that God had made a mistake when he made them?
Number two, they sang in church that God made all things wise and wonderful. But Giveness’s mother was neither wise nor wonderful. Did that mean that God had made a mistake when he made her, or did it mean that somebody else had made her? Eh! Benedict knew from Father’s sermons at Mater Dolorosa exactly who that somebody else was! But God would never have let Satan make a person when it was His own job to do it. No. He was all-powerful.
So either way Benedict looked at it, God must have made some kind of mistake with Giveness. But not all mistakes were entirely bad. Okay, some children were mean to Giveness and he had to stay out of the sun, but he was kind to Benedict even though Benedict was a kwerekwere, and he was clever enough and patient enough to help Sifiso with his maths.
‘Chocolate’th my betht,’ said Sifiso, licking the paper casing to get at every last crumb.
‘Mine’s vanilla,’ said Giveness, holding his pink arm next to Sifiso’s brown.
All three of them giggled.
The lesson after break for their class was siSwati, which Sifiso preferred to call ‘our language’. As a kwerekwere who wasn’t going to be in Swaziland very long on account of Baba’s contract being for just one year, Benedict was excused siSwati. Being excused meant he didn’t have to write or pass any siSwati tests or exams, and when his class was doing siSwati he was supposed just to sit quietly and not disturb anybody. Miss Khumalo never expected him to be able to do more than join the chorus of greetings when she entered the classroom.
His brothers and sisters were happy enough to use the free lessons to go over some classwork or to read one of their books from the public library, but Benedict wanted to learn. If he didn’t, how was he ever going to fit in? How was he going to belong?
He had tried following the lessons at first, but it was the fourth year of school and the fourth year of siSwati lessons for everybody else in the class, and most of them had in any case been speaking siSwati since they had first learned to speak. The textbook was just too difficult and Miss Khumalo spoke just too fast, so he hadn’t been able to manage.
He had spoken to Baba, and Baba had come to see Mrs Dlamini, the principal, and together they had worked out a schedule of siSwati lessons in the first couple of grades that Benedict could attend when his own class was busy with siSwati. Mrs Dlamini had been happy enough to help, even though Baba hadn’t brought her a plate of cupcakes as Mama had wanted him to.
The lessons for the younger children were easier to follow, though Benedict still struggled a bit sometimes on account of the textbooks being for children who already spoke siSwati at home, and on account of him being in different classes on different days so that nothing was really in sequence. But he was doing his best, which is what Mama said was all anybody could do, and the younger children were no longer laughing at him. Besides, he wasn’t the only boy too big for their furniture: while some children didn’t go to school at all, others had to wait until their parents could afford to pay or no longer needed them to work, so they were already big when they started.
After school, the Tungarazas and two of the children from the other house were on their way to the high school where Auntie Rachel would meet them, when two men walked past them carrying take-aways. The smells of hot chips and curry in their wake set Olga Mazibuko off, pulling at Grace who was holding her hand to make sure she walked safely on the road, and trying to get her closer to Mr Patel’s little shop on the corner. None of the children had any money, and all of them knew that there would be a lovely tea waiting for them at home, but sometimes – if the shop wasn’t busy, and if Mrs Patel saw them outside, and if Mr Patel wasn’t there – they would be called in and given one or two chips each to nibble on.
But today Benedict wasn’t interested in chips. His attention was drawn to a van parked on the other side of the road. Pale blue with white clouds painted on it, it had a sign in big dark-blue letters along its side reading Ubuntu Funerals and below that, in smaller green letters, We bury the best.
But it wasn’t the van itself that Benedict was focusing on as he crossed the road carefully.
Caught up in the grid above the van’s front bumper was what had been the most beautiful bird, about the size of a dove. In front of the van now, he squatted to examine it, admiring its body and head the colour of the cinnamon Mama sometimes put in her cakes, its high crest of cinnamon feathers tipped with black, and its wings patterned in black and white. The long, curved beak that it would have used for digging a meal of insects out of the ground was broken, the black of its eye completely still.
The little brown bottle of rescue medicine in Benedict’s pocket would have been of no use at all.
‘Sawubona?’ said a voice so
mewhere above his head. ‘Hello?’
He looked up. Peering round at him from behind the side of the van was a lady with a very confused expression on her face. Benedict stood up.
‘Yebo. Hello,’ he said with a smile, extending his hand. ‘Ngingu Benedict.’
They shook hands in the traditional grown-up way, shaking, then shifting their grip to clutch each other’s thumb briefly before shaking again. Keeping her confused expression firmly in place, the lady examined him carefully.
‘Watalwaphi, Benedict?’
‘Tanzania.’
‘Oh,’ said the lady, as if coming from Tanzania explained everything, and she switched to English. ‘And what are you doing to my van?’
‘Look,’ said Benedict, pointing at the bird and inviting her round from the side of the van to see. She was younger than Mama, with hips not quite as wide, dressed very smartly in a matching skirt and jacket.
‘Eish!’ Her hands rose to her face when she saw the bird, and she made tutting sounds with her tongue against the back of her teeth, just like the sound of a c in siSwati which you had to make by trying to pull a pretend seed out from between your top teeth with your tongue.
‘It’s a hoopoe,’ he said.
‘Is it late?’
‘Mm.’
‘Eish!’ She clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth some more. ‘Did I hit it?’
‘You must have. It walks around on the ground looking for insects, so maybe something scared it and it started to fly off then it got an accident.’
‘Eish!’ It was a man’s voice now, and they were joined by its tall owner, who carried two plastic containers of Mrs Patel’s curry and rice, and two plastic spoons. ‘When did we hit this?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t notice.’
‘It’s a hoopoe,’ said Benedict.
‘King Solomon’s queen,’ said the man.
‘King Solomon’s queen?’
‘My grandfather used to talk about this bird. That crown that it wears,’ the man pointed to the bird’s crest with one of Mr Patel’s plastic spoons, ‘that was a gift from King Solomon.’
‘Eh!’
‘Benedict!’ Grace was calling from the other side of the road, outside Mr Patel’s shop.
‘I have to go,’ said Benedict, pausing for one last look at the bird. ‘Will you bury it?’ he asked.
‘Bury a bird?’ The lady’s confused expression rushed back.
Benedict pointed to the van. ‘Your sign says you bury the best.’
‘That’s true. But—’
‘And this is King Solomon’s queen.’ Benedict knew that interrupting wasn’t polite, but he could see that Grace and the other children were becoming impatient.
The tall man began to laugh. ‘He’s right, Zodwa! This bird is royalty! It deserves a good burial.’
Benedict called a goodbye as he crossed towards the others. ‘Salani kahle! Stay well!’
‘Hamba kahle! Go well!’ they called back, both of them laughing and shaking their heads as he gave them a wave from the other side of the road.
The children continued their walk to the high school, Olga Mazibuko quietly holding hands with Grace, who laughed with Faith about something that had happened that morning, and Fortune Mazibuko joining Moses and Daniel as they tussled for control of their football. Benedict hung back a little, thinking about the hoopoe. He had seen one or two in the garden, but he had never been so close to one. How beautiful it was! The brown of its body and the black and white of its wings were the same colours as an African monarch butterfly. A hoopoe was the queen of King Solomon! Imagine! That would be an interesting story to find somebody to tell.
He thought he might tell Auntie Rachel on the way home in her yellow Hi-Ace, but the two older Mazibuko children from the high school, Vusi and Innocence, wanted to sit up front so that they could try to persuade her to let them go to listen to a band at the weekend, and Grace and Faith wanted to sit close to the front so that they could listen to them trying.
So Benedict found himself seated near the back amongst the younger ones’ chatter, thinking that as hard as it was to be one of five siblings, things could have been a lot worse. In addition to the four Mazibuko children in the yellow Hi-Ace, there were three more back at the other house who weren’t yet old enough for school. Seven altogether. Eh!
But each one of the seven was lucky, on account of having been chosen by Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock from all the other children whose first parents were late. Benedict’s own first parents were late, the first parents he shared with his big sister Grace and his little brother Moses. Faith and Daniel’s first parents were late, too. But unlike the Mazibuko children, none of the five Tungaraza children had ever had to wait to be chosen: their grandparents had become their new parents immediately.
The Mazibuko family lived in the other house on the farm, the bigger house just a little further down the hill from the one Baba was renting from them. Somebody at Baba’s work who was family with somebody at Uncle Enock’s work had told Baba about the empty house on the hill that a family had just moved out of, and that was how the Tungarazas had come to live in the same compound as the Mazibukos.
The garage for both houses was wide enough for two vehicles next to each other, and deep enough for one vehicle behind another, so Baba could park his white Corolla behind the red Microbus, and Uncle Enock’s white bakkie could fit behind the yellow Hi-Ace, and all four could be sheltered from the rain.
Bakkie was a way of saying a small pick-up truck, and Swazis used the word even though it was part of South African English. Swaziland wasn’t part of South Africa, it was a separate country with its own borders and its own culture and its own king. But South Africa surrounded it on the three sides that weren’t Mozambique, and words could cross a border without any papers and without being called names or told to go home.
When Auntie Rachel pulled into the garage, Benedict was pleased to see that the white Corolla behind the red Microbus was an older one than Baba’s, with dents and scrapes and a sign in black letters down its side saying Quick Impact Academy of Driving.
The first time he had seen that Corolla, Miss Hlophe had been climbing into it. The school day was over, and as Benedict had waited for his sisters to stop talking and laughing with their friends, Miss Hlophe had started the engine and reversed the Corolla right into the school’s wire fence, hitting a wooden pole with a loud crack.
The door on the passenger side had opened quickly, and a man had shot out like a hare being chased by a cheetah and rushed to look at the back of the Corolla, cursing loudly.
Eh! Cursing in Swahili!
Putting his book bag down on the ground, Benedict had gone over to ask him if the damage was bad, and the man had already told him that it was a lot worse for the wooden pole than it was for the car before he had realised what language they were using. Then the man’s face had lit up like a cake that was covered in birthday candles.
‘Unasema kiSwahili! Eh! Eh! Eh!’
The man had shaken Benedict’s hand in the same way that Mrs Dlamini rang the school bell, and the shake had gone all the way up Benedict’s arm, making his jaw wobble and sending his left arm out from his body to steady him in exactly the way that Mrs Dlamini’s left arm stood out from her body when she rang the school bell.
Where was Benedict from? Who were his family? Where did they live?
Then the man had stopped pumping Benedict’s hand up and down, and he had given him one of his business cards and said Benedict’s family should call him. When Benedict had seen on the card that he was Henry Vilakati, Director in Chief of the Quick Impact Academy of Driving, an idea had come to him, an idea of a way to help Mama. Not a way to help Mama’s business, but a way to help Mama not to mind so much about not being busy with her business.
But by then Mrs Dlamini had come out of the office to look at the pole, and Miss Hlophe had begun telling her that the Corolla had no brakes, and Henry Vilakati was looking at them nervously.
‘Mama doesn’t know driving,’ Benedict had said quickly, ‘but, eh, there isn’t really money for lessons.’
‘Hakuna matata, my friend! No problem! I can do her a special, nè?’
Then Mrs Dlamini had used her stop-this-nonsense-right-now voice to speak to Henry Vilakati about the brakes on his Corolla and the money for a new pole, and Henry Vilakati had switched to siSwati and pointed at Miss Hlophe, and Benedict had moved away, slipping the card into his pocket for Mama.
That was some few weeks ago now, before Baba had had his idea that Mama should learn to drive, and long before Mama’s lessons had begun.
Greeting Mama now as she was putting plates and paper serviettes on the dining table, Benedict went into the kitchen, knowing he would find Henry in there chatting to Titi. Henry knew Swahili on account of his mother having loved him enough to send him away to live with an uncle in Uganda when she couldn’t afford to pay for his high schooling herself. And Henry was wonderful because he always spoke to Benedict like he was big.
‘Benedict! Habari, rafiki yangu? How are you, my friend?’
‘Nzuri. I’m fine.’ He returned Henry’s strong up-and-down handshake, clenching his jaw and holding on to the counter-top for balance. ‘How is Mama’s driving coming along?’
‘Too good, my friend, too good. Improving all the time. Now! Let us help Titi with filling these mugs.’
Over tea, Henry told them about old Mrs Gama, who had just passed her driving test after failing it ten times.
‘Ten?’ said Mama. ‘Eh, Henry! You didn’t tell me I could fail many times before passing!’
‘You are not Mrs Gama, Angel. First of all, you know the difference between left and right. Eish!’ Rolling his eyes, Henry shook his head. ‘I had to ask her granddaughter to spend time with her every day revising left and right. And she battled to hear me! She must be at least three-quarters deaf.’
