When Hoopoes Go to Heaven

by Gaile Parkin

  Titi had gossiped, though. She knew it was wrong, and she said she was sorry over and over again.

  The two of them had to go down the hill with the torch and say sorry to Innocence and Auntie Rachel. While they were still on the steps there was a loud racket as some monkeys scrambled across the tin roof of the house, scurried across the garden and plunged into the bank of banana trees. But they were both too busy choosing their words to pay attention, and they barely noticed the month-end sounds of the dairy workers drinking their wages further down the hill.

  Just outside the Mazibukos’ front door, they found Auntie Rachel’s mother, Mrs Levine, sitting on a deckchair, a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other.

  ‘Hi, there,’ she said. ‘You two are in trouble, hey?’

  Benedict and Titi nodded, not really wanting to talk to her but thinking it would be rude not to. All they wanted to do was go inside and get it over with.

  ‘Me too,’ said Mrs Levine, taking a large sip from her glass and setting the ice-cubes in it clinking.

  ‘Eh!’ said Titi, nudging Benedict with her elbow.

  ‘You’re in trouble?’ he asked, knowing that Titi was wondering if Mrs Levine might mean the kind of trouble Titi had thought Innocence was in. She was a smallish woman with white hair cut short like a boy’s, but her middle was rather large.

  ‘Mm-hm.’ She pulled on her cigarette, making the end glow red.

  ‘What did you do?’ The question was out of Benedict’s mouth before he realised how rude it sounded. He made mistakes like that when he was nervous.

  ‘Christ, what didn’t I do?’ Mrs Levine rolled her eyes, took a big gulp of her drink and swallowed hard. ‘Ag, but we don’t have all night, hey? You better go in.’

  Saying Christ wasn’t nice, but Benedict didn’t say. Maybe it was okay if a Jewish somebody said it.

  They knocked before going in.

  At first, Innocence, Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock were angry, but when they heard how Benedict had made his mistake, they smiled and said it was okay and he should wipe away his tears. Innocence told them that Elias Gamedze and Obed Fakudze had brought a bottle of brandy to school and asked her to hide it in her schoolbag. She’d forgotten that it was there, and when she’d opened her bag to get a book, Miss Dube had seen it.

  When Titi went with Uncle Enock and Innocence to have a conversation with Mavis and Lungi in the kitchen, Auntie Rachel gave Benedict a glass of milk, and he apologised again.

  ‘Ag, no, it’s over,’ she said. ‘Forgotten. Forgiven.’ She leaned forward with a tissue and wiped a splodge of milk from either side of his upper lip.

  ‘Auntie Rachel?’

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Have you ever been blessed?’

  ‘Blessed? What, you mean by a priest?’

  ‘Uh-uh. With a baby.’

  She smiled. ‘No, that never happened for Enock and me. But so what, hey? This house is full of blessings anyway!’

  ‘Mm.’

  Sounds of raised voices came from the kitchen, and as he glanced towards the doorway he noticed a new piece of rock on top of the bookshelf between the Mazibukos’ family photographs. It looked like a slice of stone, as thick as a slice of bread, held upright in a small plastic stand. Putting down his empty glass, he went to have a look at it.

  ‘Is this new?’

  ‘Ja.’ Auntie Rachel came to stand next to him. ‘It’s nice, hey?’

  ‘Mm.’ He liked the concentric rings in pale greys and browns. ‘It looks like a slice out of a log.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it is.’

  Benedict touched it gently, carefully. It was smooth and cold. ‘But it’s stone!’

  ‘Ja, it used to be a tree, centuries ago in Madagascar. But it’s so old it’s turned to stone.’

  ‘Eh!’

  ‘Petrified wood. And before you misunderstand, it doesn’t mean the tree got scared, hey? It just means it turned to stone.’

  ‘Eh!’ Benedict ran his fingers over its smoothness. ‘Can it happen to a person?’

  ‘No man, you’d have to be ancient.’

  ‘Though people can have a heart of stone,’ said Uncle Enock, coming in and sitting down.

  ‘Eh!’ Benedict put his hand to his chest.

  ‘Don’t confuse him, Enock.’ Auntie Rachel took Benedict’s hand away from his chest and pulled him down to sit with her. ‘No, the chances of a person ever turning to stone are about the same as him turning to gold.’

  Benedict twisted his neck to look up at her. ‘King Midas turned people to gold!’

  ‘That’s just a story, hey?’

  Suddenly, Benedict remembered. ‘Petros says he’s got gold.’

  ‘Our Petros?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Eish, don’t listen to his stories, Benedict.’ Uncle Enock shook his head. ‘There’s no gold here, not any more. The gold rush here is ancient history, over before 1900.’ Then he seemed to have an idea. ‘Ag, he probably means Swazi Gold, it’s the dagga that grows here. You know dagga, nè? They smoke it.’

  ‘Ja, don’t listen to Petros.’ Auntie Rachel gave him a squeeze. ‘He’s sick, hey? He’s quite far gone now and it’s in his head. Probably the beginnings of dementia.’

  Mavis and Lungi came quietly into the room, followed by Titi.

  ‘Sorry, nè?’ Mavis and Lungi chorused softly, their heads bowed.

  ‘Even me,’ said Titi.

  Mrs Levine and her chair were gone when they left the house. Uncle Enock insisted on walking the short distance up the hill with them to make sure that they got home safely, and as they walked the quiet of the night was interrupted by loud laughter from the drinking party further down, where the dairy workers lived.

  ‘Uncle Enock, you know Mrs Levine?’

  ‘Yebo.’

  ‘Did she do something wrong?’

  ‘Eish.’ Uncle Enock came to a halt, sighing deeply. ‘She doesn’t want to realise that she’s not on her farm. She can’t go telling my workers what to do like that!’

  ‘Sorry, Uncle,’ said Titi.

  Benedict tried to comfort him. ‘It’ll be okay. She’ll go back to her own farm soon.’

  A sound like a buffalo would make came out of Uncle Enock’s nose. ‘She’s not going back! She’s left her husband!’

  ‘Eh!’ said Titi.

  ‘Eh!’ said Benedict.

  ‘Eish, what am I thinking? These are grown-up things.’ Uncle Enock started walking again. ‘Forget I said, nè? Please.’

  The three of them moved up the steps towards the Tungarazas’ in silence. They were almost at the top when something moved on the grass nearby.

  All three of them froze.

  Then Uncle Enock and Benedict shone their torches onto the grass.

  A vervet monkey was staggering unsteadily, a can of Lion Lager hanging loosely from one hand. Then another monkey hurled itself at the first, knocking it over and making off with the can.

  ‘Eish!’

  They held their torch-beams steady. The monkey did not get up.

  Benedict wanted to help it, to give it some of Auntie Rachel’s rescue medicine and maybe a blanket. But Uncle Enock said no, the monkey just needed to sleep it off, like the dairy workers would when they finally fell over from drink, and then the monkey would wake up needing lots of fluids.

  Before he went to bed, Benedict sliced an orange into quarters and went out with the torch to check on the monkey. It lay exactly where it had fallen, the top half of its pale grey body side-down on the grass, its bottom half belly-up, showing a pair of balls the bright turquoise that Mama sometimes chose to colour a cake. Its small black face, framed by a ring of white fur, was perfectly still, its eyes only halfway shut. Its chest barely moved with its breathing.

  Benedict placed the juicy orange quarters on the grass where it would see them the minute it woke up needing fluids.

  EIGHT

  HENRY SAID THAT MAMA WASN’T QUITE READY FOR her driving test, though she’d been learning
for three months. Mama said it was because when she got her licence Henry would stop having an easy opportunity to see Titi, but Baba said it was because when Mama got her licence Henry would stop getting his fee out of Baba. But still, Mama agreed to have an extra lesson to tidy up her parking one Sunday afternoon, even though Sunday was supposed to be for family. Baba was going to be away anyway. He would be leaving straight after church to drive to Johannesburg for a conference that was starting on Monday.

  Baba had been away before, usually for just one or two nights when he went to other parts of Swaziland to look at projects that needed helping or encouraging, but this time Benedict was going to be the man of the house for a whole entire week. Each evening of the week before Baba left, Benedict reported to him all the things he had done that day that could make Baba feel confident that he was leaving the family in good hands.

  ‘Titi found a spider in the girls’ room, Baba. I took it outside before they even saw it.’

  ‘Baba, I think the monkeys must have had a party in the garden today. I don’t know what fruit they’d been eating, but, eh! I cleared up all their kinyezi so the grass is clean for Samson’s mower tomorrow.’

  ‘I helped Daniel and Moses with going over their classwork this afternoon, Baba, then I did English practice with Titi. She likes it when Auntie Rachel can see she’s been practising.’

  ‘Baba, Mama looked sad about her business this afternoon, so I picked a flower for her from the garden and it made her smile.’

  On the Friday afternoon, it was Mama’s business that made her smile. She had a customer.

  Mrs Zikalala sat on one of the couches and Mama on the other as they sipped the tea that Titi had brought them. From his cushion next to the bookshelf, his library book open in his lap, Benedict had a side view of their visitor. Tall and slim, she wore a dress and elaborate matching headdress patterned in green and golden yellow, just like the belly of an African green pigeon with its fluffy yellow leggings. The fabric was beautiful, but a little old and faded. In patches, the white plastic of her sandals still bore some remnants of shiny gold. She ate her slice of cake greedily, in a way that would make Baba tell one of the children to stop behaving like a refugee who had survived on nothing but leaves for weeks.

  ‘My neighbour works with your husband, Mrs Tungaraza—’

  ‘Angel. Please.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Angel. That’s my name.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, she had her whole family there for Easter, and when I looked over the wall, I saw the cake. Eish! That was the day I said to Mr Zikalala, Mr Zikalala, we are getting that cakemaker for Queenie, nobody is going to look over their wall and see a cake made by an inferior cake-maker here.’

  Mama patted at her hair, and even though her back was to Benedict, he knew that she was smiling. ‘And what—’

  ‘She’s our only daughter, our only child, Mrs Tungaraza—’

  ‘Ange—’

  ‘Ours is not to reason why, nè? Ours is but to accept the one gift that God has given us, and ours as parents is to make sure our child gets the best.’

  ‘Of cou—’

  ‘Yes. You do the same for yours, I’m sure, even though they are many. The girls. Just the two that were in here when I came?’ Mama nodded. ‘Still too young, nè? And of course our king will never marry a kwe—, er, a foreigner.’

  ‘Eh!’ Mama sat up straight. ‘Your daughter is marrying King Mswati?’

  Benedict was suddenly so excited that he completely forgot that he was pretending to read his library book and it slammed shut in his lap. But the sound of it coincided with Mama clapping her hands together, and nobody turned to look at him. Eh! A wedding cake for the king! This was going to make Mama’s cakes famous throughout the whole entire world! Nobody was going to mind that Mama was a kwerekwere who shouldn’t have a business here. She was the king’s cakemaker!

  Eh! Maybe the king would invite her to go and bake in his kitchen at the palace! Okay, he had many palaces. The main one was at Lozitha, but he preferred to live in the Nkoyoyo one, on the hill just the other side of Mbabane. Any king’s home really was a palace, even when a king pretended it wasn’t that special and called it a royal residence instead. Mama didn’t trust just any oven. She would insist on moving her own oven to the palace, the gas one that had travelled with them from Tanzania in the trailer behind Baba’s Microbus. It wouldn’t matter that one of its knobs had fallen off with all the jiggling and jangling on the bad roads and Baba had had to replace it with a metal nut that worked just fine but didn’t match. It would be the king’s cake-maker’s oven!

  ‘Mrs Tungaraza,’ Mrs Zikalala was saying, ‘my daughter will marry King Mswati one day. That is my hope. He will give her a much better life than Mr Zikalala and I can give her. But that is not why I came.’

  Mama slumped back on the couch. Feeling her disappointment on top of his own, Benedict sighed as softly as he could and opened his book again at no particular page.

  ‘I said to Mr Zikalala, Mr Zikalala, this is the year. This is the year.’

  ‘I see. And, er... perhaps you would like a cake for your daughter’s birthday? Queenie, is it?’

  ‘Queenie. Yes. But not for her birthday.’ She smiled proudly, sitting up a little straighter. ‘Queenie has passed her test.’

  ‘Er... A test at school?’

  Mrs Zikalala shook her head as she swallowed some tea.

  ‘Eh! Her driving test?’

  ‘More important, Mrs Tungaraza. The most important test a girl can ever pass. I took her across the border to South Africa. We don’t do it here.’ She shook her head, clicking her tongue against the back of her teeth. ‘Eish, we are too modern here. Meanwhile we have our lovely Somhlolo stadium. That doesn’t have to be just for men and their soccer, we could test our girls there too. But no, I had to travel with Queenie across the border.’ Again she clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. ‘The stadium that side was inferior, Mrs Tungaraza. Not even full! And thanks God I took a grass mat from here for Queenie to lie on. The girls on either side of her had mats that were inferior. And when you’re not in Swaziland the ladies who do the checking are of course not Swazis, but when you have no choice but to rely on Zulus to test your daughter, what can you do?’

  ‘Mrs Zikalala, I’m not sure that I—’

  ‘Some of us are mobilising for facilities to get our girls tested here.’

  ‘But what—’

  ‘Eish, what am I thinking?’ Taking an envelope from her handbag, she removed a piece of paper from it and handed it to Mama. ‘Here’s her certificate, Mrs Tungaraza.’ Her smile was very wide. ‘My daughter is a virgin!’

  While Mrs Zikalala beamed with pride, Mama turned around and gave Benedict one of her looks that said he must do what she said without even thinking of asking why, and she told him to go outside with his book.

  He went out through the back door, taking King Solomon’s Mines with him. He kept renewing it at the library, feeling that he really should read it even though it was just too difficult. He had decided to try his best to get through it before Baba got back from his conference; that would make Baba feel proud of him. Watching him renew it over and over at the library was surely making Baba think he was still small.

  He knew that Mama had sent him out because her customer was about to tell her something confidential that nobody else must hear. Sometimes she and Baba sent him out when they wanted to talk about something that was too grown up for him, but that wasn’t the case now. He knew about Virgins, he’d seen them on TV, though not in real life: they never came to any airport he’d been to. Glad that Queenie Zikalala had passed the test to get a job serving meals on an aeroplane – at least up until the time she married the king – he was proud that the girl’s mother knew Mama was the best person to come to for a cake to celebrate it. But Mrs Zikalala didn’t look like the kind of person Mama could persuade to order a cake that was expensive.

  Unsure exactly where he felt like going, Benedic
t perched on the step outside the kitchen door, thinking that he might need to put on his shoes. Bits of what Mrs Zikalala was saying to Mama drifted through the kitchen. ‘Wide open, Mrs Tungaraza, wide apart.’ His sisters had gone down to the other house to see Innocence, and his brothers were playing there with Fortune. ‘Of course there’s an audience in the stadium, Mrs Tungaraza, everybody must see, they must know.’ The afternoon was overcast and windy, so he didn’t feel like sitting in the garden or going up to the dam. No, he wasn’t going to need his shoes. He stood up from the step. Perhaps it was one of those Friday afternoons when Uncle Enock could get away from the clinic early.

  But Uncle Enock’s bakkie wasn’t in the garage. Auntie Rachel was sitting on the lounge carpet, helping the youngest Mazibukos to build something out of Lego. Standing up and putting an arm round Benedict, she moved to the couch to sit with him.

  ‘Auntie Rachel, have you read this?’ He showed her his book.

  ‘Ag no, man, Benedict, don’t tell me that’s what you’re reading!’

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Ja, we did it at school. Centuries ago!’

  ‘I’ve been trying to read it but it’s too hard for me.’

  ‘Ja.’ She flipped through a few pages. ‘This would be too hard even for Vusi.’ Hearing that it was too difficult for such a big boy made Benedict feel better. ‘You’ll never manage this. I can tell you the story if you like.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure, there’s not much to it. A real boys’ adventure. These three white guys go in search of gold and diamonds – oh, and they’re also looking for the brother of one of them who’s gone missing. On the way they kill some black people, including a black woman who’s a witch. I seem to remember there’s only one other woman in the story, a nurse who’s also black. One of the white guys likes her, but it’s not allowed. Something about it not being natural for the sun and the darkness to get together. Can you believe it? Anyway, the white guys have a lot of manly adventures, and eventually they come back with the treasure and the missing brother. And that’s it. The end.’