When Hoopoes Go to Heaven

by Gaile Parkin

  ‘Eh!’ said Grace, nudging Benedict with her elbow. ‘Imagine if our mama had been deputy head of a school!’

  Benedict rolled his eyes for Grace’s sake, though in truth he wouldn’t have minded. He imagined all the books that might have been in Faith and Daniel’s house.

  ‘Remember how exciting it was when we got to spend time with our baba?’ Grace’s hands stopped what they were doing as her eyes seemed to focus on something far away. ‘It was so nice when he wasn’t at the factory morning to night. Eh, it was a real treat when he was home with us.’

  ‘My baba was never home.’ Faith’s voice was sad. ‘I don’t really remember him.’

  ‘Our mama’s a bit blurry for me, too,’ said Benedict, ‘even though she was home all the time.’ He glanced at the framed photograph on the wall. Because it was always there to look at, the two people in it – his baba and his baba’s sister – were very clear in his mind, which meant that his baba’s sister – Faith and Daniel’s mama – was less blurry than the picture inside him of his own mama. But he didn’t want to say.

  ‘She was always sewing,’ remembered Grace, ‘and trying to knit. Eh, do you remember my blue jersey? Short short short.’ She indicated somewhere high above her waist. ‘She got bored and stopped here.’

  Benedict didn’t remember. ‘Do you think Daniel and Moses remember much?’

  ‘Not Moses.’ Grace shook her head. ‘He wasn’t yet three, and it’s more than four years since.’

  ‘Daniel wasn’t seven yet,’ said Faith, ‘and for us it’s only two years since. He remembers things, but he doesn’t want to talk about anything from before.’

  ‘Eh,’ said Benedict. ‘What is in those boys’ heads but football?’

  ‘Like our baba,’ said Grace. ‘When it wasn’t work, it was football.’

  ‘Mm. And he used to run to keep fit.’

  Faith began to giggle, and Grace joined in.

  ‘What?’ Benedict couldn’t see what was funny.

  ‘Imagine Baba running!’ The girls couldn’t stop giggling.

  Benedict smiled as he tried to imagine Baba trying to bend down past his round belly to tie the laces of a pair of running shoes. Baba would bend to pick up a book, yes. But running shoes? Uh-uh.

  He was still smiling when his brothers called from the garden.

  He had long since returned King Solomon’s Mines to the public library unread, but he had made a drawing of the map that was in the book. He folded his copy of the map now, putting it in his pocket before carefully re-folding Baba’s large map of Swaziland.

  Mama wanted the girls to clear the table quickly and go to their bedroom, where Titi was having her afternoon nap, but Zodwa and Jabulani said there was no rush, there was something they needed to do outside first. Benedict went out with them while Mama made tea.

  Their faces were very serious.

  ‘Maybe...’ Jabulani looked at the two boys wrestling on the grass.

  Benedict sent his brothers to play down at the other house.

  Then, placing the plastic bag he was carrying on top of the stack of plastic chairs on the veranda, Jabulani removed from it a large bottle full of golden liquid, which he handed to Zodwa.

  Zodwa examined the bottle carefully. ‘You see this?’ she said, showing it to Benedict. ‘This is for you.’

  ‘For me?’ Looking at the label, Benedict didn’t understand. He was never going to drink whisky! It was only for grown-ups!

  Zodwa’s finger underlined the words Famous Grouse before tapping at the label’s picture. ‘This is a grouse, nè?’

  Benedict nodded. He hadn’t seen a grouse, but he had seen a guineafowl, which looked a similar sort of shape.

  ‘We went to a sangoma to ask the ancestors about this new part of the business,’ said Jabulani, locking his hands together and shaking them up and down. ‘She threw the bones for us.’ Jabulani’s hands flew apart, and Benedict imagined the sangoma’s collection of bones and shells scattering all over a grass mat, just like in the picture in one of the books about Swaziland in the bookshelf. The place where each thing landed could tell a sangoma what the ancestors were saying about how everything was and how it was going to be.

  ‘She gave us some muti,’ said Zodwa. ‘You know muti, nè?’

  ‘Medicine,’ said Benedict.

  Zodwa nodded. ‘She said that for the business to succeed, ours is to slaughter a chicken—’

  Jabulani interrupted, putting a hand on Benedict’s shoulder and speaking quickly. ‘Don’t worry, nè? We’re not going to slaughter a chicken at your house!’

  ‘No, no. That is why we have this.’ Zodwa tapped at the bottle again. ‘It’s modern. We used a chicken at Ubuntu Funerals, but for here we’ll use this. We knew it would upset you to have the blood of a chicken sprinkled around the outside of your house—’

  ‘Though I don’t mind making another small casket!’ Smiling, Jabulani squeezed Benedict’s shoulder.

  ‘A grouse is family with a chicken, nè?’

  Benedict nodded. How kind they were to think of him! He knew that when he ate a piece of chicken it meant that the chicken had been slaughtered, but he really didn’t want to watch it happening right in front of him. Their concern for him made him feel a bit like Abraham must have felt when God told him no, he didn’t have to sacrifice his son Isaac after all, a goat would do just as well.

  Tears stung at the back of his eyes as they all became solemn.

  Giving the neck of the bottle the kind of sharp twist that would end a chicken’s life, Zodwa unscrewed the lid and released the spirit, all three of them walking all the way round the outside of the house as she sprinkled the liquid slowly onto the ground.

  Benedict wasn’t quite sure what his mind should be doing, if he should be praying or what. He decided to think about beautiful cakes and high piles of Cake Order Forms, and whenever Zodwa poured a little more quickly and the bottle of Famous Grouse made the same gloop-gloop-gloop sound as the call of a Burchell’s coucal, he tried not to focus on listening for an answering call from behind the hedge of yesterday, today and tomorrow bushes. The bottle emptied as they finished a full circle of the house.

  Inside, the girls had gone to their room and Mama waited alone at the dining table with tea and cake. Benedict took his to have at the coffee table, where he sat on one of the couches with the bird book, keeping an ear on his percentage.

  Now that the ancestors had blessed their new business, they could have their first proper meeting. As they had already agreed by phone, Zodwa and Jabulani had chosen the first three cakes that they were going to provide for free on account of having to spend money to make money as Baba always said, and just to see what people thought.

  The first cake was for the family of a man who was late from a car accident. Mama said she didn’t want to know about the car accident, thank you very much, she was in the celebration business, so could they please just tell her about what they were celebrating, which was the man’s life.

  ‘Sorry, nè?’

  The man had worked at the casino at the Royal Swazi Sun hotel in the Ezulwini Valley, and his family had been very proud of him for having such a good job. Mama said they should suggest to his family a cake shaped like a casino table covered with casino chips with one of those wheels that spun round. Or they could have a treasure chest that was partly open, with casino chips tumbling out. Jabulani liked Mama’s treasure-chest idea, but it would be up to the family to choose.

  Then there was a man who had worked cutting sugarcane in the sugar plantations in eastern Swaziland, and that made Benedict think of Mrs Patel’s ancestor cutting the British colonials’ sugarcane with his dentures. Swazi children loved to chew on sugarcane, he had seen them running alongside the sugarcane trucks trying to get a piece. But Miss Khumalo told them that chewing on it too much was bad for their teeth. Maybe their teeth would fall out and they would need dentures like old Auntie Geraldine in Bukoba.

  Zodwa said a cake that looked like a big
, thick piece of cane would be nice, and Jabulani suggested one that looked like a whole bundle of pieces of cane tied together. Mama said it would even be possible to make a cake that looked like one of the lovely yellow cane-gathering machines that the Tungarazas had seen in that part of the kingdom on their way to their new home on the Malagwane Hill.

  The last cake was for the family of a young girl.

  ‘Benedict’s age,’ said Zodwa sadly and, sensing all their eyes suddenly upon him, Benedict concentrated hard on trying to find a grouse in his book. There was a sandgrouse, but it didn’t look much like the famous grouse, and it didn’t live in Swaziland. He wondered what the grouse had done to make itself famous.

  Jabulani cleared his throat. ‘This one we chose because it’s difficult.’

  ‘Tell me what we’re celebrating,’ said Mama. ‘What did this child love to do? How did she make her family happy?’

  For a long time, nobody said anything. The only sound was Jabulani clearing his throat.

  Then Mama said that it was good that they had chosen this case because it gave them the opportunity to see what difficulties lay ahead. She told them that they needed to go back and speak to the child’s family, to find out what the child loved to do, what it was about the child that the family loved, what it was about her that made them happy. The family wasn’t yet ready to order a cake if they didn’t yet know what they could celebrate, if they didn’t yet feel ready to celebrate.

  ‘In the cake business,’ Mama added, ‘you are not yet ready to make a cake if you yourself don’t yet understand why there is a celebration, why your cake is necessary.’

  ‘You are right, Angel,’ said Jabulani. ‘Ours is to go back to the mother and then report back.’

  ‘Right,’ said Zodwa. ‘Now let us be clear. We are done with talking about cakes and celebrations, nè? Because as a woman I have to talk about this child and why she is late.’

  ‘Maybe...’ said Jabulani, and again Benedict could feel everybody’s eyes upon him.

  Sitting on the kitchen step while he tied the laces of his old pair of shoes, listening to pieces of what Zodwa was saying as her voice came faintly through the kitchen and a little more clearly through the open window near the top end of the dining table, Benedict didn’t see why Mama had asked him to go outside. It wasn’t as if he was too small to understand. He knew exactly what had happened to that girl on account of having witnessed it happening to his duck.

  She had been swimming by herself near the edge of the dam, happily dipping her bill into the water to scoop up something to eat, when suddenly, without any warning, male ducks had come and attacked her. Five, six, seven, eight, one after the other, landing on top of her, forcing themselves on her, even though she had struggled and quacked and tried to get away, even though he had shouted and run up and down on the muddy bank, looking for stones to throw at them to make them stop.

  When it was over, she was left floating barely above the surface, patches of her feathers gone, one wing outspread, too exhausted to stop herself from drowning. He had run out to her as quickly as he could, the mud sucking him down, the water pulling at his shorts as he bent and scooped her up into his arms, anxious not to cause her any more pain, desperate to save her, frantic to get her down the hill to Uncle Enock.

  He thought about her now as he made his way up to the dam. He hoped that she was okay. Uncle Enock had told him that only ducks could do that, they were the only birds that had a pipi. As he emerged from the trees onto the plateau, he remembered the programme he had watched on TV about hyenas, and he thought perhaps that was why female hyenas chose to have a pretend pipi. Was that how they kept themselves from getting hurt by the males? Was that why the males let the females be in charge?

  He wished female people could have a pretend pipi, too. Then they could be in charge, and it wouldn’t be his shoulders that had to carry all the responsibilities that came with being the eldest boy. Grace would have to be the grown-up one, the one who had to watch out for dangers, the one who always had to make sure that the whole entire family was okay.

  Petros was kneeling at the edge of the dam, scooping up handfuls of water to drink. His golden-brown dog wagged her tail as Benedict squatted to pet her.

  ‘Sawubona, Krishna. Sawubona, Petros.’

  ‘Yebo.’ Petros stood up, smiling shyly and wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘Unjani?’

  ‘Ngikhona. How about you?’

  Petros squatted down next to Krishna. ‘Better,’ he said, rubbing his chest with his hand. His shirt was open, and Benedict could see his ribs under his skin. ‘I have new doctor. Better than Auntie’s.’ Reaching into the pocket of his shirt, he brought out a piece of newspaper, unfolded it and handed it to Benedict. ‘Somebody, he help me to read.’

  It was an advertisement, the kind that Benedict had seen plenty of in the Times of Swaziland, near the announcements that told friends and family that a certain person had demised, and when they were going to have the vigil and burial. This one said: Are you sick/in pain? Lost a loved one? No problem to big or to small. Clear evil spell with magic stick. Get lover back in 1 hour, lost job back in 3 days. All sickness cured, TB, Aids. Win at casino garanteed. The advertisement ended with the number to call.

  ‘You went to this doctor?’

  ‘Yebo.’ Refolding the piece of newspaper, Petros put it back in his pocket and took out something else. ‘Now I can get a baby with my girlfriend.’ He showed Benedict a small, black-and-white photograph of a young woman. ‘He live near Nhlangano.’

  Baba had been to Nhlangano. It was the big town in the south, in the Sishelweni region.

  ‘She looks nice.’

  ‘Yes. Now I am the size to marry, but eish, Auntie’s doctor, he say no, I mustn’t marry.’ He shook his head. ‘That doctor, he tell me no, I mustn’t get a baby.’

  ‘Eh!’

  ‘This one,’ he tapped his shirt pocket, ‘he say I can marry my girlfriend, we can get a baby.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Benedict gave the photograph back. ‘Will she come from Nhlangano?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He slipped the photograph back in his pocket.

  ‘So you’ll go there?’ from his squatting position, Benedict eased himself onto the ground, stretching his legs out in front of him.

  ‘Soon. When I’m already tip top.’

  Not wanting Petros to think he had no plans himself, nothing in his own pocket, Benedict brought out his drawing of the map to the caves full of gold and showed it to him.

  ‘Do you want to help me to find this gold? We can share it.’

  Petros looked at the piece of paper, turning it sideways then upside down, just like Benedict’s sisters did whenever they tried to work out a map.

  ‘Here,’ he said, getting to his knees. ‘I’ll show you what it says.’ Reaching for a bendy stick, he placed it on the grass. ‘This is the Kalukawe River, only I don’t know what its name is now. And these,’ he put two stones next to each other, some distance from the stick, ‘these are Sheba’s Breasts, just down the hill.’ He pointed in the direction of the peaks. ‘And all the way here,’ on his knees, he crawled towards the dam and slapped a piece of ground, ‘here is where the treasure is.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Well, no...’

  ‘Here?’ Petros’s eyes had grown very big.

  ‘No. You see—’

  ‘This paper,’ Petros looked at the map, ‘it say treasure is here? On this hill?’ His breathing was fast now, and he began to cough. Krishna drew close to him, squashing her body up against his legs.

  As the loud, bubbly sounds of coughing continued, Benedict waited patiently, thinking that the new doctor’s muti hadn’t yet had time to make the dementia in Petros’s chest better. At last the coughing eased, and Petros turned his head and spat onto the ground. It wasn’t nice to spit, but Benedict didn’t say.

  ‘No, it’s somewhere else, some other place. That paper says where.’

  Petros was calmer now as he stood up, han
ding the map back to Benedict. ‘My ancestor, he have this.’

  ‘This map?’ Benedict stood up too.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A different map?’

  Petros nodded before making Benedict jump by whistling and whooping loudly. Cows began to appear around the end of the clump of trees from the field beyond them, and Krishna walked to meet them, her tail wagging slowly. Petros began to move away.

  ‘Did he find it?’

  Walking away, Petros gave no answer.

  Benedict called after him. ‘Your ancestor. Did he find the gold?’

  But Petros was coughing again, and by the time he stopped he was some distance away with the cows, and he seemed to have forgotten that Benedict was there.

  On the Saturday afternoon when Innocence Mazibuko had her birthday party, all the Tungaraza children were invited. Benedict wasn’t keen to go but Baba said he must, and he went because he could see that Mama and Baba wanted some time alone to talk. They seemed a little happier than when Baba had first got back from the conference, but Benedict could see that something was still wrong.

  He had looked in Auntie Rachel’s book, the one where she had shown him that Sifiso’s birthday meant he was a lion, but Innocence’s birthday at the end of August just meant she was a maiden, a young girl. That was boring for a birthday picture, so he had drawn some flowers for her instead. Feeling shy to give it to her himself, he had given it to Grace to pass on.

  As he had expected, there were lots of girls at the party for his sisters to talk loudly and dance with in the big, added-on room, and there were also plenty of younger children. Mrs Levine was in the garden trying to organise games to keep the young ones busy, while Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock chatted and laughed with a few parents in the lounge.

  Helping himself from a bowl of cashew nuts flavoured with pilipili, Benedict looked at the cake that Auntie Rachel had made. It was a big oblong covered in chocolate and sprinkled with tiny pieces of dried coconut. Benedict counted the fourteen candles on it. Lungi told Titi and Titi told Benedict that Auntie Rachel always used a cake mix that came in a box. Mama said that was cheating, but Baba said it was just about saving time and money. But Auntie Rachel didn’t need to make a special cake for Innocence, not for a birthday that wasn’t special.