When Hoopoes Go to Heaven

by Gaile Parkin

  Lying in his bed, with Mama and Titi taking turns to drape a fresh damp cloth over his hot forehead and trying one after the other to tempt him with food that he didn’t want to eat, he thought feverishly about what had happened.

  First Nomsa. A girl.

  Then Josephine. A girl.

  Now malaria. Which you could only get from a female mosquito.

  Girls? Uh-uh-uh.

  It was days and days until he was well enough to get out of bed.

  Lying on his side on the couch, staring at the TV, he felt much better, though not yet well enough to be at school. He hadn’t even been outside yet, and that was what he missed the most. Mama knew that, and she had opened half of the glass sliding door onto the veranda so that he had plenty of fresh air as he lay there.

  He didn’t have to be lying down, he was perfectly well enough to be sitting up, but the TV was boring him. It was on a news channel and he wasn’t allowed to change it. Mama would have let him change it if it was just her, but it was Mama and five other ladies, ladies Mama was training now that the Ubuntu cakes business had started to do well, and the news channel was what they all wanted to look at as they worked at the dining table. Benedict had no choice but to watch the same two aeroplanes getting an accident over and over again.

  On his side, it looked a little different from the way it had looked when he was sitting up. Instead of flying into the sides of the tall buildings, the aeroplanes seemed to fall down from the sky into buildings that were already lying down. Then the buildings scooted up to the left in a big cloud of smoke and dust. But what Mama and the ladies said was the same every time.

  ‘America?’

  ‘Eish!’

  ‘Ooh, nè?’

  ‘New York?’

  ‘Uh-uh-uh.’

  Mama was teaching them decorating, and they were working on a cake to celebrate the life of a man who had worked for many years in the Bulembu asbestos mine at Havelock in the north. He had spent a long time trying to help the miners to get money from the mining company in Britain because the asbestos had made them sick. He had been a hero in the community, and lots of people had contributed so that his family could get a very beautiful cake to remember him.

  The ladies were making a large copy of what the town of Havelock looked like in a photograph: a dark green mountainside beautifully decorated by the mineworkers’ compound of small homes in pastel yellows, pinks, blues and greens. They were oohing and tutting about the aeroplanes getting the same accident again when Benedict heard a small thud on the glass of the sliding door.

  Sitting up, he could see nothing unusual. Then the thud came again, and he got up and went out to the veranda to look for a small bird that might have got an accident by flying into the glass in the same way that the aeroplanes on the news had flown into the buildings. There was nothing on the ground next to the glass except a tiny pile of wet soil.

  An owl hooted.

  Owls weren’t usually awake during the day. What was going on?

  The hoot came again, from down near the garage, but Benedict could see nothing there. Then something moved, exactly where he had been looking. It was Petros, beckoning to him.

  Calling to Mama that he was going to be in the garden, Benedict made his way down the steps to meet Petros. He hadn’t seen him for such a long time! Petros took him all the way down to the shed where the cows slept at night, his dog trotting along next to them until Petros shut her out of the shed. Inside, he pointed up one of the wooden walls to somewhere near the ceiling, and when Benedict’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he breathed in sharply.

  Perched high up on a ledge was the most beautiful owl! Its big, dark eyes looked down at them from a white, heart-shaped face above a cream-coloured chest speckled with brown. The edge of the wing that they could see was black striped with orange-brown.

  ‘Eh!’ Benedict’s voice was a whisper.

  Petros smiled. ‘Look,’ he said softly, reaching for a stick that was leaning against the wall. Then he took something from his pocket and balanced it carefully in the small fork at the end of the stick. It was a late mouse.

  ‘Give it,’ he said, placing the other end of the stick in Benedict’s hand.

  ‘Eh!’ Shaking a little from having been so ill, and also on account of the huge honour that Petros was giving him, he held the stick up high so that the top of it rested against the owl’s perch. The bird looked at the mouse carefully, then bent down, took it in its beak and straightened up. The mouse hung there for a few seconds while the owl looked at them. Then it put the mouse down on the perch, holding it there with one of its feet.

  ‘Come,’ said Petros. ‘It don’t eat when we look.’

  Outside, Benedict thanked him for showing him such a lovely bird.

  ‘You were sick, bhuti?’

  ‘Mm. Malaria.’ Benedict wasn’t sure if Petros had called him bhuti because he’d forgotten his name, if it was just because Swazis tended to call all men bhuti, or if he really meant to call Benedict his brother. Would Petros like them to be brothers? Eh, Benedict would love to have a brother who showed him owls!

  ‘Malaria? Eish.’

  ‘How about you?’

  Petros smiled. ‘Better. Soon I go get a baby with my girlfriend.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ They were walking slowly up towards the garage, Krishna circling around them, her tail wagging.

  ‘My baby will get gold from my ancestor.’

  Eh! Benedict hadn’t thought about the gold the whole time he was sick. He had been too busy thinking about how girls had tipped his world over.

  ‘Did your ancestor find the mine? The gold?’

  Petros shook his head. ‘Long time ago, my great, great, great... eish, I don’t know greats, nè? My ancestor. He work for Portuguese, in Mozambique.’

  ‘You’re a shangaan?’ In Mozambique, Shangaans were just one of the groups of people who lived there, but in Swaziland a shangaan was the same as a kwerekwere, and a Mozambican was the worst kind of kwerekwere to be. It didn’t just mean you were stealing jobs from Swazis, it meant you were bringing guns.

  Shaking his head, Petros laughed without coughing. The dementia in his chest really did seem to be better, though when Benedict looked carefully he could see that Petros’s face had sores and his body was even skinnier than before. Thinner even than Nomsa’s mother, he reminded Benedict of the skinny, skinny person in the white robe in the picture on the United Nations wall. He really couldn’t have been getting enough to eat.

  ‘Portuguese come here,’ he said, ‘they want slaves.’

  ‘Eh! Slaves?’ Slaves were taken from Tanzania, too, Benedict knew that from Baba. They had to work in the clove plantations on Zanzibar, the island off the coast from Dar. That was back in the days when Zanzibar still belonged to Oman.

  ‘Yebo. They bring gifts from India. To buy slaves.’

  ‘From India?’

  ‘Portuguese also live in India.’ Benedict was going to have to check that with Baba or Mrs Patel. It didn’t sound right, and maybe it was something Petros didn’t have right in his head. ‘My ancestor, he take one gift.’

  ‘He stole it?’

  Petros nodded. ‘He plant it here in Swaziland. Then he go home to Mozambique.’

  Plant? Benedict remembered what Uncle Enock had said about Swazi Gold being the funny-smelling tobacco that Petros smoked. Was that what he was talking about? ‘And you found it?’

  Petros shook his head again. They were at the garage now, and it was best not to go nearer the house.

  ‘They make railway here. They find it.’

  ‘Who?’ Benedict moved into the shade of the garage to lean against the red Microbus, and Petros did the same. ‘Who made the railway?’

  ‘English. They find it. Then my grandfather, he come, he take it.’

  ‘He stole it?’

  Petros looked surprised. ‘No. It belong great, great, great...’ with each great his hand gestured over his shoulder. ‘Eish. His ancestor, nè? He ta
ke it. Now he marry, he get a baby. He want to take them to Mozambique. They walk through bush to cross.’ Petros coughed, shaking his head. ‘A lion, it take my grandfather.’

  ‘Eh! Sorry, Petros.’

  Petros coughed again, his chest sounding bubbly. His mind seemed to wander away from their conversation, and Benedict wasn’t quite sure how to bring him back. After a while, he came back by himself.

  ‘That baby, nè? He’s my mother.’

  ‘And she gave it to you? The gift?’

  Petros nodded.

  ‘It’s gold?’

  He nodded again, coughing. ‘Old,’ he said, and Benedict wasn’t really sure if he had been talking all the time about something old or something gold. Or Swazi Gold. It really wasn’t easy, with Petros having so little English and Benedict so little siSwati.

  Petros looked very tired now, and Benedict felt tired and a little shaky himself.

  ‘What exactly is it, Petros?’

  Petros’s mind seemed far away again. His dog was sniffing a back tyre of the red Microbus, and he squatted to pet her. ‘Krishna,’ he said to her softly, smiling. ‘My treasure.’

  Then a voice called from the house.

  ‘Benedict!’

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Come and see how beautiful our cake is!’

  FOURTEEN

  IN THE SHADE BEHIND THE ROW OF CLASSROOMS, Sifiso and Giveness looked at Benedict with very big eyes.

  ‘What thound did it make?’

  ‘Boom!’ said Benedict, trying his best to get the sound of it just right. ‘But not loud like on TV. We weren’t very close by.’

  ‘It wasn’t a plane like in America?’

  ‘Uh-uh, a car.’

  ‘I hope there’th nothing like that here!’ Sifiso scanned the sky.

  ‘It wasn’t just in Dar es Salaam,’ said Benedict. ‘There was another one in Nairobi that same morning, also at the American embassy. That one was a truck, it was much bigger.’

  ‘Boom!’ said Giveness, his pink hands flying apart.

  ‘Mama’s been talking about it a lot with the ladies she’s training. She lost an in-law in the Nairobi one.’

  ‘Nairobi’s also in Tanzania?’

  ‘Uh-uh, it’s in Kenya. But Mama’s in-law was visiting there, she was in a bus going past when it went off.’

  ‘Eish. Sorry, nè?’

  ‘Mm. What’s happened in America makes it feel like yesterday for Mama, meanwhile it was three years ago.’

  Much more recently, two things had gone boom in Benedict’s own life, but he didn’t want to say. He just wasn’t ready yet to tell anybody about his new big sister; he still needed to keep that inside him until he had stopped feeling like water that somebody had sent a stone skipping across. When the stone had finally sunk and ever further circles of ripples had stopped disturbing him, then he would say. And he didn’t want to talk about Nomsa, either; if anybody were to overhear, they might start up the story again about her being his girlfriend. Anyway, he couldn’t tell Giveness and Sifiso the story about rescuing Nomsa in the night, that wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t nice to gossip about somebody wanting to be late, and it wouldn’t be right to talk about Nomsa’s mother being sick. He wasn’t entirely certain, but he guessed from the looks between Mama and Uncle Enock that it was the kind of sick you didn’t talk about, the disease you didn’t say.

  Still scanning the sky, Sifiso changed the subject and asked Giveness if he knew yet when his mother was going to come.

  ‘Eish, don’t make me get nervous again, Sifiso!’

  Giveness had been getting nervous for over a week now. His mother had left him with her sister when he was still a tiny baby, so he had never really met her. But now she was going to come and visit, and he and his aunt weren’t sure why.

  Sifiso patted his arm. ‘Thorry, nè?’

  ‘What if she wants to take me away?’ It was what Giveness dreaded most.

  ‘Eh!’ said Benedict, as if they hadn’t already had this conversation.

  ‘No, Giveneth! It can’t happen! I told you!’

  ‘But it can! She’s my mother, she can take me.’

  ‘Your aunt is your mother,’ Benedict reminded him patiently. There was nothing wrong with that: Mama was his mother, even though she was his grandmother. ‘What did she say to your aunt?’ He asked it in a way that said he hadn’t asked it before.

  ‘She said she wants to come and say sorry.’

  ‘Maybe it’th true. Maybe she really ith thorry for leaving you behind.’

  ‘Maybe. But she could say sorry on the phone, or in a letter. She doesn’t have to come.’ His pink hands twisted together.

  ‘Say she comes,’ Benedict asked again, ‘and she says sorry. What will you say to her?’

  His answer was still the same. ‘Eish, I don’t know.’ That was the boom that was sounding in Giveness’s life.

  As the children neared Mr Patel’s shop on their way to the high school, they saw that there was a policewoman just outside the entrance. Across the road, a handful of people stood looking at her.

  Knowing that police meant trouble, which it was best not to go near, Benedict made all of them cross to the far side where they could walk behind the people who were looking. From there, they could see that somebody had painted Bin Liner across Mr Patel’s window in big red letters.

  ‘Eh!’ said Benedict. ‘Bin Liner?’

  A man in a smart suit shook his head sadly. ‘Some people are too, too ignorant, nè?’

  ‘Nothing to do with Patel,’ said one of the ladies there. ‘Nothing! Where is his beard? Where is his headdress?’

  ‘Ignorant!’ the man repeated. ‘And in the middle of daylight!’

  ‘Those thugs don’t care!’ declared another man. After all this time, who is going to arrest them? Who?’

  Somebody said that the thugs’ behaviour was un-Swazi, and somebody else agreed that they were a disgrace to the Swazi nation.

  ‘They’ll try anything, nè?’ said the man in the suit. ‘Any opportunity to hurt Patel.’

  As the children continued on their way, Benedict wondered how much it really hurt Mr Patel to be called a bin liner. Okay, it wasn’t nice for somebody to say that you belonged in a dustbin, but there were probably worse things that had been said to Mr Patel before.

  At least the police were taking it seriously now. But maybe other people would also cross to the other side when they saw the policewoman outside Mr Patel’s shop, maybe they would rather go and buy KFC or some other kind of take-away. Benedict knew from Mama how bad people felt when their business did badly. He hoped that Mrs Patel was okay.

  Later that afternoon, he was getting ready to go up to the dam when he saw Mrs Levine making her way up the steps towards the Tungarazas’ house. He went to say hello.

  ‘Hi there, Bennie! Going somewhere?’

  He didn’t want Mrs Levine coming up to the dam with him, it was his special place for being quiet and thinking and being with other creatures.

  ‘Um...’

  ‘Glad I caught you. Listen, that friend of yours, the one with the lisp.’

  ‘Yes?’ Benedict’s eyes lit up.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Sifiso Simelane.’

  ‘Ag no, man! Serious?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Do you have his parents’ number?’

  ‘Mama has it.’ Mama hadn’t wanted him to go with the Simelanes for Sifiso’s birthday without knowing how to reach them to say thank you. ‘Are you going to help him, Mrs Levine?’

  ‘I’ll give it a go. But listen, I don’t have a work visa, so Enock says I’m not allowed to charge any money for it.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr and Mrs Simelane won’t mind.’ Benedict’s smile was very wide.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Levine!’ Benedict went to her and she bent to accept his hug before pushing him away.

  ‘Go do whatever you were going to do, and I’ll get that number from your mom. If I don�
�t ring right now I might never find the courage again.’

  Benedict smiled all the way up to the dam, then he smiled some more when he settled in the shade of a water-berry tree and saw that on the grass very close to him was a large green praying mantis. Very gently, he encouraged it to climb up into his hand, which it did, settling unmoving into his palm.

  He thought about the very nice boom that would go off in Sifiso’s life if Mrs Levine could help him. Okay, he would still be fat, and he would still be bad at sports, but nobody would be able to laugh at the way he spoke, and that would make a big difference. A very big difference indeed.

  As Benedict relaxed, his mind began to wander over other kinds of differences.

  Mama said the whole world was going to be different now, but Baba said they should wait and see, on account of there being a different that’s truly different and a different that’s just more of the same but with a different name. Benedict wasn’t sure what Baba meant, but he knew that things might be truly different at home very soon, much sooner than his new sister Josephine coming to join their family. Henry had asked Titi to marry him, and after thinking for a week about her answer, Titi was telling him yes or no this afternoon.

  Grace and Faith had advised her to say yes. Henry had his own car and his own business, and he loved her.

  ‘No girl can ask for more than that,’ Faith had said.

  ‘Except maybe Brad Pitt or Shaggy,’ Grace had said, and the two girls had giggled.

  ‘He’s already married,’ Titi had reminded them. ‘Do you want to share your husband with another lady?’

  ‘Eh!’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Then why should I?’

  Changing their minds, they had advised her to say no.

  Daniel and Moses were too small to give advice, but Benedict knew they didn’t want Titi going anywhere. Neither Mama nor Baba would tell her what they thought, no matter how many times she had asked them.

  ‘Listen to your own heart,’ Mama had told her.

  ‘Listen to your own head,’ Baba had told her.

  Benedict hadn’t known what to say to her. There were many reasons why he didn’t want her to stay behind with Henry when the Tungarazas left Swaziland, but his main reason was entirely selfish: with a new big sister and a new place to get used to sometime soon, he wanted as much as possible to stay the same. Titi had been with him at his first parents’ house, she had been constant in his life longer than any other grown-up. But the decision she needed to make was big, and it shouldn’t be about anybody other than herself.