The White Shadow

by Andrea Eames

  ‘Hazvinei!’ My voice was tearful now, shamefully so. A man did not cry.

  I found her. She sat – not as a woman should sit, with her legs flat in front of her, but cross-legged, as a man sits. She stared in front of her, tears running down her cheeks as if her eyes were melting in the sun. She did not hear me. I touched her skin, expecting it to burn, but it was cold.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said in a colourless voice.

  ‘Hazvinei, come.’ I pulled at her arm. ‘We have to go home.’

  She did not look at me. She yielded to my tugging, but could not stand alone. I lifted her. Her head lolled on my shoulder.

  ‘I will take you home,’ I said.

  It took me a long time. She walked heavily, and I had to support her. When I arrived, Baba was home. He stood on the stoep beside Abel, who had dark petals of worry beneath each eye.

  ‘Chipo is telling everyone,’ he managed to whisper to me. ‘Everyone will know.’

  Baba did not speak. He took Hazvinei from my arms and carried her to the bed that he and Amai shared. She had stopped crying, but she was silent and grey.

  ‘Baba. I am sorry.’

  He drew the blanket over her – the wool one that itched.

  ‘Baba?’

  ‘Tinashe. What has happened?’ Baba did not turn his eyes from my sister.

  ‘I do not know, Baba.’

  Silence.

  ‘I talked to Simon. He said you kids were playing in the bush and something happened to Tendai.’

  ‘He got sick.’

  He held my gaze and sighed. ‘We will talk in the morning.’

  I swallowed. ‘Yes, Baba.’

  The only person in the village with his own car was Simon-from-the-bottle-store, who needed it to pick up crates for the shop. Baba wrote a note to Babamukuru saying that Hazvinei and I were unwell and that he did not want Abel to become infected, and he asked Simon to pick up Abel that night and drive him into town. Abel and I sat on the stoep, waiting for him.

  Abel was silent and frowning, looking even more like a grown man in the dim light.

  ‘You ran away,’ I said.

  ‘I know. I was frightened.’

  ‘Of the N’anga?’

  ‘Of Hazvinei.’

  I touched his shoulder, awkwardly. ‘Little Tendai will be all right.’

  ‘We do not even know what is wrong with him.’

  ‘He is just sick.’

  ‘No, he is not,’ said Abel. I could not look at him. ‘You saw what happened, Tinashe, when she touched the medicine stick.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘She spoke to a njuzu.’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’ I pressed my palms against my cheeks, holding in the words that wanted to spill out.

  ‘She is like Nehanda,’ said Abel.

  ‘Abel, stop saying these things. They are not true.’

  He stared at me. ‘Why are you afraid?’

  ‘I am not.’

  We heard the sound of a car engine. Abel stood, hefting his suitcase. ‘You know I am right, Tinashe.’

  I did not wait to see him leave. I went inside to sit at my sister’s bedside and watch her breathe. When the headlights swept through the window and across the wall, she stirred, but did not wake.

  Chapter Ten

  WOMEN WERE DANGEROUS. Everyone knew that. It was as much a fact as the wetness of water, or the heat of the sun. I remembered this when I woke the next morning and faced my sister across the breakfast table. Abel’s place was empty. I wondered what he was thinking, back in his comfortable house in town and far away from the witch doctor’s magic.

  ‘Marara sei?’ asked Hazvinei, knowing that I had not slept well at all. She too had violet smears of fatigue beneath each eye, but ate her food with a great appetite. I wanted to ask her what had happened at the witch doctor’s hut – what she remembered – but I dared not with Amai there.

  ‘Have you heard about Little Tendai?’ Amai sliced bricks of white bread and spread them with margarine.

  I felt my shoulders grow stiff. He was dead. I knew he was dead. ‘No.’

  ‘He is better today,’ said Amai. She lifted the lid of the pot to watch the milk and water boiling for our tea. ‘It is so strange that he would be taken ill so suddenly.’

  My bread was dry on my tongue. ‘Yes, it is very strange.’

  ‘It must have been frightening,’ said Amai. ‘I am not surprised that you were upset. Perhaps you will think twice about wandering into the bush now, eh? Who knows – perhaps Tendai was bitten by a snake.’

  Hazvinei ate her bread daintily while I shivered. I was not safe yet. The N’anga would know. He would know what we had done. It was only a matter of time before he cursed us as the muroyi had cursed Little Tendai’s twisted foot. I saw the N’anga’s dark-clotted eye rolling up at me from my breakfast, and I could not eat.

  ‘Are you well, Tinashe?’

  ‘Yes, Amai.’

  She rested a hand on my head. I felt dank, nervous sweat start on my forehead.

  ‘I do not want you getting sick too,’ she said. She poured me a bigger cup of tea than usual, as everyone knew that tea was good for warding off sickness. I drank it slowly, feeling the sharpness of the leaves on my tongue, and watching Hazvinei drink her own with no signs of concern at all.

  After breakfast, we went to the river. I said that we wanted to cool down, but really I wanted to talk to Hazvinei alone.

  ‘Go gently,’ said Amai, smoothing Hazvinei’s hair. ‘The fresh air is good for you, but you must not tire yourself.’

  I waited until we were a safe distance from the house before I spoke. ‘Hazvinei, what happened at the N’anga’s hut?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what I am talking about. You had the medicine stick …’

  She kicked at a stone. ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘Hazvinei. I know it was you. What did you do?’

  ‘He will be fine.’

  ‘What will the N’anga say? He will know. He will know that we went to his hut and touched his things. What are we going to do? What are we going to tell him? What if Little Tendai does not get better?’

  Hazvinei blinked as my questions buzzed around her head like flies. ‘He is getting better,’ she said. ‘Amai said.’

  ‘Hazvinei!’

  ‘Tinashe! I don’t remember what happened. I don’t know.’

  ‘How can you not remember?’

  ‘I do not remember anything,’ she said. ‘I do not know why Tendai is sick.’

  ‘What will the N’anga do?’

  ‘Who cares? He is an old man with a stick and a handful of dirty old bones. Little Tendai will be fine,’ said Hazvinei. She dragged a long switch of grass behind her, leaving a narrow, snakelike trail in the dust.

  I said nothing more. We did not speak of it again that day – I tried, but Baba and Amai smiled and patted me on the head and told me that everything was fine and Tendai would be well soon. Of course he would be better. Of course Abel would come back. Everything was fine. They seemed to have decided that Tendai’s illness was one of those mysteries that would never be solved. He had always been unfortunate, they said. Just look at his twisted foot! We had been playing; Tendai had fallen ill. That was all.

  Little Tendai did not come to school anymore – he continued to have fits that left him covered in bruises. He did not play with us, and he no longer followed us down to the river. We saw him sometimes as we walked to school, his nose pressed against the kitchen window. He did not wave, and we did not acknowledge him either.

  ‘He has always been sickly,’ said the adults, shaking their heads. The adults nodded to each other, saying that you could catch all sorts of things if you wandered about the bush by yourself in your bare feet. They told the small children about Tendai in order to scare them. ‘You see what will happen if you do not listen to me?’

  Babamukuru telephoned to check on our fictional illness. Even though Baba told him that we were well again, how
ever, he did not want to let Abel come and visit until he was sure it would be safe.

  ‘You say that other boy is sick? Tatenda?’

  ‘Tendai.’

  ‘Tendai. He is still sick?’

  ‘Yes, but not with the same illness.’

  ‘But they became sick together.’

  ‘It was a coincidence. Nothing more.’

  ‘Still. Abel has exams coming up. He has to be careful.’

  I missed Abel. There was no one else I could talk to. I did not see Little Tendai anymore, and Chipo was avoiding me. I could not blame her. When I closed my eyes, I saw the shadow of the medicine stick, a dark vein of fear on the red of my eyelids.

  Although our visit to the witch doctor’s hut remained a secret, things were still not right in the kopje. Once more there were rumours of a leopard outside the village, as children had found pawprints in the dust, and Simon-from-the-bottle-store swore that he had seen a pile of droppings (although they vanished before anyone else could confirm his story). Men were troubled by strange dreams and awoke tired and pale. Women reported that the milk from the cows was sour as soon as it left the teat. The N’anga wandered the village with his rattling gourds and the children shrank from his footsteps. I watched him from a safe distance. When his bad eye looked in my direction I turned away, imagining that he would stop in the middle of the road, point one trembling finger and say, ‘You! You are the one who caused all this trouble! You and that muroyi sister of yours!’

  But he did not see me. And I kept my knowledge to myself.

  Worst of all the misfortunes, the rainy season came, but no rain. The mielie plants died in the ground, falling with their leaves spread in front of them like yellow hands. The waterhole became a puddle surrounded by earth; the mud around the edges cracked like dry lips, with little swirls of white scum.

  We let our chores slide. I went out to the chicken run with my bucket of feed and scattered a handful on the ground, but the chickens barely moved. They sat in the one small patch of shade, huddled together with dusty feathers. I left that one handful and carried the bucket back to the house. It was heavy and burning hot from the sun.

  Hazvinei became even more irritable than usual. There was not enough water for her to have her own tub for washing, and so we had to share.

  ‘I will get all your germs.’

  ‘You have all my germs anyway.’

  She pushed me. ‘I get it first.’

  ‘But I have to get ready for school!’

  Hazvinei ducked her whole head under, which Amai always told us not to do, and looked up at me with mocking eyes through the stream of bubbles that floated up from her nose.

  After another week, however, even Hazvinei had run out of energy. Two of our chickens died, and the goat was sick. There just was not enough water to go around. One of the little boys in the kopje drank from a stagnant puddle out of desperation, and died of dysentery that bled his insides out of his mouth and his bottom.

  Thirst swelled my tongue. The pump was almost dry.

  ‘Only use what you have to,’ said Baba.

  I tried digging for water. When I reached the part of the ground that was wet, I dug further, but the water retreated from me and hid lower and lower down so that I could never reach it. It was teasing me. In the end I picked up a handful of the mud and put it in my mouth, sucking it to get the moisture. It tasted of salt and metal.

  The plants were dry and exhausted. People wilted. When I tried to remember the feeling of water falling on my head, that sharp mineral smell and the craters the raindrops made in the dust, I felt as if I were telling myself a story, repeating something Amai had told me long ago. Soon, even the sky looked dry and dusty. People stopped saying ‘the rains will come soon’ and started to say, ‘the rains are not coming’.

  When the rains do not come, the witch doctor is called.

  ‘We are cursed,’ said Hazvinei.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’ I ate my dinner and tried to ignore her. If we were indeed cursed, I knew why. The N’anga knew what we had done. He was punishing us. He would tell the whole village.

  ‘It is what people are saying,’ said Amai. ‘They are saying that there is a curse on the kopje, and that is why there is no rain. The N’anga is going to talk to the spirits for us.’

  ‘When?’ asked Hazvinei. She had stopped eating, waiting for Amai’s response.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Amai.

  I felt sick. Hazvinei glowed for the rest of the evening with a sort of strange nervous energy.

  ‘I have never seen the witch doctor talk to the spirits before,’ she said. ‘I want to see how he does it. How he calls the rain.’

  ‘You are staying here,’ said Baba. Amai poured him a second cup of tea.

  ‘Why?’ Hazvinei glared at him. ‘I want to go and watch.’

  ‘Because I told you so.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Hazvinei!’

  ‘But Baba …’

  Baba put down his tea with a clang. His face was closed. ‘Stop arguing with me. I am your father and you must listen to me. You are not going. It is not a safe place for you and Tinashe.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Hazvinei, we are not going to speak any more about this.’

  Hazvinei closed her lips tightly. She did not speak to Baba again during dinner, but I knew that the matter was not decided.

  I woke with dry crumbs of sleep edging my eyelids and fear in my belly. Today was the day. The sun was high in the sky already, even though it had barely risen, and the dew seemed to smoke and vanish in the hot air. When Amai pushed my morning bowl of cereal in front of me, it looked like the cracked earth outside.

  ‘Tinashe, will you get me some water from the river?’ said Amai after breakfast. Baba had already left, and it was just the three of us sitting at the small kitchen table.

  ‘I will go too,’ said Hazvinei.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need you to help me with some things at home. You must stay here and do your chores, Hazvinei.’

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘I am visiting Sisi Taradzai.’ Amai pushed back her chair and tied her dhuku around her head. ‘This dry weather is making her sick. Be good while I am out, vana.’

  ‘I don’t want to do chores,’ Hazvinei glowered.

  ‘I will stay with you,’ I said. ‘And I will go to the bottle store and get us Cokes.’

  ‘That is a good idea.’ Amai fished in her pocket for a coin. ‘Here. And stay away from the N’anga, remember.’

  Hazvinei shrugged, still sulking. ‘Fine.’

  I stood and took the coin from Amai, happy to have a job to distract me from the day’s events. ‘I will be back very soon, Hazvinei. Wait for me.’

  ‘I am not going to run away, Tinashe.’ She folded her arms.

  I ran down to the bottle store. There had been a big party in the shebeen the night before: lots of empty bottles to hand in for coins. I picked them up as I went, and Simon-from-the-bottle-store took them from me, whistling through the gap in his front teeth, and counted out my money.

  ‘What are you going to do with it, eh? Buy beer?’ he laughed.

  ‘Could I have two bottles of Coke, please?’

  ‘Two bottles? One for you and one for your girlfriend, yes?’ Simon-from-the-bottle-store went to the Coke fridge, which had once been red and was now a dusty pink, and opened it. It smelled of stale ice. A fly that had been knocking its head against the glass was released, and came to buzz around my head instead.

  ‘One for me and one for my sister,’ I said.

  ‘Eh-eh, you are keeping that little chongololo in your pants, then.’ He handed me the misted bottles, which were already starting to sweat.

  I used the handle of the fridge door to open my bottle. A fine, sweet spray dampened my hand, and the bottle cap clattered on the floor.

  ‘Take it back to your sister before it gets warm,’ said Simon.

  I to
ok my time walking home. It was too hot to hurry. I watched the air shimmer and break, turning to water in the heat and making the landscape waver and ripple. The ground shone red and was hot under my feet. There is nothing better than sucking on a cool Coke bottle, slippery with condensation, on a day so hot that your hair is melting to your head. I did not see the white men until I was almost upon them.

  ‘Iwe, piccannin!’ One of them pushed me. ‘Watch where you’re going.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ I stumbled. My Coke, already precarious in my sweaty grip, slipped from my hand and spilled onto the ground like oil. The white men laughed. There were several of them, I saw now, sprawled in the dust and playing cards. No wonder I had not seen them – the browns and greens of their uniforms disappeared into the long grasses, and even their slumped khaki bags looked like dusty boulders. The men smelled of sour milk and unwashed clothes.

  What were they doing here? They were waiting for something, I could see, and with this many supplies they could have settled in for a long stay. I was aware of the guilty weight of the bullet that I still carried in my pocket.

  ‘Got a spare?’ said one of the men. I realised that I was still holding Hazvinei’s bottle of Coke, still sealed and cold.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you feel like donating it to the cause?’

  They laughed. I stood, clutching the neck of the bottle and feeling my heart thump in the hollow of my throat.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said one of the men, younger than the others.

  ‘What about it, hey?’ said the first man.

  ‘He wants your Coke, boy,’ said another. I blinked and handed over the bottle. Sorry, Hazvinei, I thought. I will have to find another way to distract you from the witch doctor.

  One of the men rested a hand on my shoulder – a friendly hand, but I could feel its strength. He had a gold wedding ring on his finger; hot from the sun, it burned my skin. I wondered where his wife was. In town, probably, in a big house with green lawns and water from the taps, far away from this wind-eaten, fire-scarred red land.

  ‘I hear there are shenanigans today,’ he said.