The Hairdresser of Harare

by Tendai Huchu

  The first time I felt something was wrong was towards the end of January. We were both at home when a car pulled up at the gate late at night.

  ‘I’m going out tonight, I’ll be back later,’ Dumi said, putting on a jacket.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked, wondering why he had not mentioned that he was going out before.

  ‘No one, just a friend, that’s all. We’re just nipping out for a drink.’

  ‘It’s almost midnight and you have work tomorrow.’ ‘I’ll be back.’

  I watched him walk across the driveway in the glare of the headlights. It gave him an eerie look. I could not figure out whose car it was. Was it another woman? Come to think of it, on a few occasions, Dumi had often taken to going to his bedroom when his phone rang and speaking in a low voice. Surely Dumi wouldn’t betray me! I felt guilty even thinking this way, and he’d given me so much support.

  Had I been taking him for granted? I didn’t think so, but it was true we hardly ever spoke about our future together now; it was like something given.

  I could not sleep, tossing and turning in my sheets, trying to figure out what was going on. It was true that all the time we’d been together Dumi had not once introduced me to any of his ‘friends’, yet he’d been comfortable enough to introduce me to his family. Now, thinking about it, it seemed odd. I knew that in the middle of the night problems have a way of growing exponentially, but I could not shake off my anxiety. I’d kept my curtains open and my ears pricked every time I heard a car passing by. Part of me wanted to go into his room to search for clues but I controlled myself.

  At three o’clock in the morning, Dumi had still not returned. Four o’clock and I paced round the living room, occasionally peering out into the dark, hoping to see him emerging through the garden. He was not the kind of person to cheat, it didn’t seem in character. Perhaps he was preparing a surprise for me. What if he had been in an accident while I was imagining all sorts of acts of betrayal and deceit? I felt ashamed of myself.

  Day broke and I went for a bath. By the time I left for work, he still had not returned. It was raining heavily and my umbrella broke in the wind, so when I arrived to open the shop I was drenched. Sarah came in soon afterwards, her hair soaked, looking like a wet dog.

  ‘Morning, Baas,’ she said, reaching for a towel and drying herself.

  ‘The farmers will be pleased today.’

  ‘If they’re farming anything other than weeds maybe.’

  Holding a cup of coffee, I looked out over the grey atmosphere. This was surely what Britain looked like. Robert had once told me about the grey overcast skies and the coldness of the people there.

  ‘What’s on your mind, lovey?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  ‘Don’t give me that. I’m slightly older and wiser than you. Let me guess, man troubles is it?’

  I gave a weary smile and sipped my coffee.

  ‘That Dumisani of yours seems a decent chap, not like the other black guys I’ve seen who always seem to have another woman somewhere. No offence meant.’

  ‘He went out and didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘Oh.’ She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘There could be a rational explanation for it.’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping.’

  She patted my hand in a motherly gesture and poured herself a cup of tea. People were running by, trying to stay out of the rain. We would have talked some more if Yolanda and Tariro had not come in. They were also drenched and I told them to spruce themselves up. The first customer would be coming in at any moment. It was a struggle but I wore my business face.

  I got home with a heavy heart. Chiwoniso jumped on me and showed me a picture she had drawn at school. It had me, a big woman with wild hair drawn in purple with a pink triangle for a skirt, her as a miniature version of me, and a man, Dumi, standing tall between the two of us, his afro represented by a mass of curly lines.

  ‘It’s a really good drawing, but where is Sisi Maidei?’ I said to her.

  ‘She is that one.’ She pointed to the woman in the triangle skirt.

  ‘Where’s mummy?’

  ‘Mummy’s at work.’

  I set her on the ground but she ran off to her room to play with her toys. I did not know what to make of that. The business had consumed me so much. I was spending less time with my daughter. Maidei came in to give me some letters. They were the electricity bill and council rates for the coming months. It felt good not to be in arrears any more. I looked at Maidei standing before me and for the first time realised that she held a special place in my daughter’s heart. She was there for her when I was not. Only now did I realise how important she was in my life. If Maidei was not there, I could not have accomplished half the things I had done over the last few years. I’d spent all my time thinking of her as a simpleton. When was the last time I said thank you to her?

  ‘Is Dumi in?’ I asked.

  ‘He should be in his room.’

  ‘What time did he come back?’

  ‘Around ten o’clock this morning.’

  ‘What did he do after that?’

  ‘He went straight to bed.’

  I dismissed Maidei and sat alone in the lounge. One part of me wanted to go immediately to his room to confront him but I was too angry and afraid I would say the wrong things, stuff I would regret later on. I tried to remember our long forgotten auntie’s advice for dealing with errant men but it did not come to me. Anger was never the answer. I told Maidei not to bother cooking, I would do it myself. I prepared a course of spicy chicken with plenty of soup and rice. The stomach was the way into a man’s heart.

  Dumi woke up after eight and I invited him to have dinner with me at the table. I had already sent Chiwoniso to bed so we were alone.

  ‘It smells really nice,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Candlelit dinner, what’s the special occasion?’

  ‘I cooked it myself.’

  ‘You know how much I love your cooking; maybe after the salon, you’ll open a restaurant.’

  Dumi devoured his food almost without tasting it, and asked for more. He washed the chicken down with a glass of cold water. I ate slowly and with each mouthful I felt as though I would gag. Dumi could not look me in the face. Whenever I tried to make eye contact, he looked at his empty plate.

  ‘I think we need to talk,’ I said, finally. He scratched his nose with his pinkie.

  ‘Sure thing, you know we can talk about anything.’

  ‘Let’s start with who you were with last night.’

  ‘I already told you I was out with a friend.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘His name is Paul, we went to school together.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Um… just to the club for a drink. Chez Ntemba.’

  ‘I never took you for a Rhumba fan. What time did you get back?’

  ‘I came in just after you’d left and rushed straight out to go to work. Look, this is beginning to sound like an interrogation…’

  Thirty two

  Jealousy is the worst feeling in the world. It creeps up on you, hugs you so that you can’t breathe. Your chest feels compressed and food loses its taste. In my case my condition was worsened by uncertainty. In the morning Dumi greeted me and told me he’d made breakfast himself since I’d cooked him dinner. He adjusted the bun in Chiwoniso’s hair before Maidei walked her to school. His expression impregnable, I was at a loss. He seemed the same old Dumi that I knew and loved. We talked about new styles emerging from the backyard salons in Highfields and Canaan and wondered if we could convert them to look upmarket.

  ‘You’re still on course for joining me at the end of this month, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course, nothing has changed.’ He spoke through a mouthful of toast. I wondered if he was right. Perhaps nothing was something and then what?

  We left for work together. There were more cars on the road because the petrol situation had improved. The government was allowing m
ore stations to sell their petrol in foreign currency and that had eased the acute shortages. The kombi we took was full and we hung on for dear life near the door, which seemed about to fall off.

  ‘When are you going to buy your licence? There’s no way you’ll catch me taking two kombis every day to Sam Levy’s!’

  ‘Give me to the end of February. The instructor wants me to take the test in Chinhoyi because that’s where his connections are. You still have to pass through the drums and parallel parking but once you are out of the VID depot and on the road, the licence is guaranteed.’

  ‘No wonder we have the highest accident rates in the world. They should just stop the charade and start selling the damn licences in supermarkets, or at auctions to the highest bidder.’

  ‘Everyone’s doing it.’

  ‘That’s precisely the problem. If they set the standards they’re supposed to set, the whole practice would stop. There’s no way they could fail each and every person coming through their door. I’ve sat two tests and been failed twice because I won’t pay a bribe. I was raised in a car and I know the rules of the road better than any of those jokers but they still fail me. Even the instructors are in on it. They get a cut too. The whole thing stinks.’

  Could someone who was so upright cheat me? It didn’t seem possible. I wanted to kiss him on the cheek when we parted but it was too public. I felt as if I’d been torn in half, become two people with two different minds and two different hearts.

  Sarah was waiting for me outside the shop when I arrived. I resolved to give her a set of keys, in case one day I was delayed or fell ill. She was always the first of my staff to come on site and the last to leave. ‘Have you found out anything else about his mysterious whereabouts?’ she asked as I let her in.

  ‘Nothing yet but I’m sure there’s something he’s not telling me.’

  ‘Sounds a little like my ex-husband.’

  ‘You never told me you had a husband.’

  ‘I said ‘ex’. I was married at twenty-one. You know, that age when love is supposed to last a lifetime and you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It lasted just five years and I’m glad to be out of it.’

  ‘Where did it all go wrong?’

  ‘Cheating, of course. There are only two certainties in a relationship, either he cheats on you or you’re going to cheat on him at some point. Hear this from someone with experience; men can’t keep their dicks in their pants.’

  ‘But Dumi is…’

  ‘It’s the ones you least expect that hurt you the most. Relationships are a game of cat and mouse. Now you’re the pussy but you have to behave more like the guard dog. He has to realise that if he’s up to no good, you’ll know, no matter how discreet he is. Put the fear of God up his arse.’

  ‘Do you really think that would work?’

  ‘Not really… With my ex I put spyware on the computer and on his mobile so I would know every text he received, every e-mail, everything. It was some MacGyver stunt, real FBI. And spying made me feel pretty cheap, I can tell you. Still, he knew that I knew but he went ahead and did what he did. That’s because when sex gets into their heads they just can’t help themselves. I mean, he left me for some Irish floozy who’d come down here on holiday — can you believe that?’ She opened the diary and the receipt book to prepare for the day.

  Our kombi journey had somehow lulled my anxieties. Now, talking about the situation brought them all back. Sarah made me a cup of tea and I felt a little bit better.

  ‘Dumi is the one, I can’t even begin to imagine a future without him. He’s a great listener and I think he would make a great father for Chiwoniso.’ My head felt light like someone had blown hot air inside it. Sarah leant towards me and offered her hand.

  ‘I don’t know what I can tell you but the best advice I can give is stay on your toes. Keep one step ahead because once you start reacting, you’ve lost the battle.’ She spoke like a woman whose heart has been torn to pieces, and who wasn’t going to that dark place ever again. She rubbed her naked ring finger as if it was itchy.

  Michelle dropped into the salon around closing time. She had come to take me home, which she did every so often. It gave us a chance to catch up and gossip. She was wearing blue track bottoms and we went over to Mimi’s for a coffee. The owner recognised me and asked how the salon was doing.

  ‘It’s very pricey, that Exclusive of yours.’

  ‘But look at how much you’re charging us for coffee beans and boiling water,’ Michelle said with a smirk.

  ‘You’re getting more than that. There’s the ambience which you won’t get anywhere else.’

  ‘Maybe you should come down to the salon one day and we’ll pamper you, then you’ll see that we also offer an ambience you can’t get anywhere else.’

  She left us and went back behind the counter. Each time someone spoke to me like this I felt part of the family at Sam Levy’s. We were all peddling smoke and mirrors and worried that one day someone would pull the rug out from under our feet. The smell of the coffee filled my nostrils. There was something vaguely erotic about having coffee and I think it came from all the Sex and the City episodes I was watching on my new satellite channels.

  ‘So how’s things between you and Dumi?’

  ‘All right, I guess.’

  ‘Just all right? My brother is super, you should be looking after him.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Anyway you two are boring, so let’s skip that. I met a guy today. He’s really hot. I was kinda bored and hanging around the gate at home when this guy on a mountain bike stops and asks the time. I was like, damn! To cut a long story short he gave me his number and we’ve been texting all day.’ As if on cue her phone began to vibrate.

  ‘Is it him?’

  ‘He says he was just thinking about me. I-WAS-THINKING-ABOUT- YOU-TOO. This guy has to be the one.’

  ‘You’re a bit too young for that. What does he do for a living anyway?’

  ‘He’s at uni in Australia studying architecture or something like that. I think I might go over to do my uni there too if mum and dad allow me. There’s no way they’ll cough up if they think it’s for a guy.’

  When I returned home Dumi told me that he was going away to Nyanga for the weekend. He needed a break and some fresh air and wanted to go mountain climbing while he was there. I waited for an invitation that never came.

  Thirty three

  On Friday morning Dumi packed his bags and left for the Eastern Highlands. He kissed my cheek as though it was obligatory and off he went without once looking back. I’d taken the weekend off and left Sarah to run the salon. Though I knew what I had to do, I dreaded finding something that would confirm my suspicions. Feeling this way seemed like a sign of my own weakness, a sign of how quickly I was ready not to trust the man who had loved me and given me everything I had until now.

  I could not even begin to contemplate what I would do if I found something out. My life and my daughter’s future were tied to the magnanimity of the Ncube family. There could be no guarantee that their kindness would outlast my relationship with their son. These thoughts made me feel like a gold-digger. I’d loved Dumi even when I had thought he was as ordinary as myself, but looking back it became blurry as to whether it would have gone this far had I not found out about his privileged background. Sure, it had kind of added to the fairy-tale… but I wasn’t certain that I wanted to go down this route. What was I thinking? My parents now knew about him, of course, and this further complicated matters. They had only just come back into my life and I didn’t want any scandal that might complicate my relationship with them.

  The postman rode past our house on his red bicycle. Apart from the sound of his tyres on the road, I felt an ominous stillness. I’d been raised in a house full of people, with very little privacy, so it was something I valued. I knew Dumi had a right to his as well, but wasn’t that overridden by my right to know the truth? AIDS was another consideration, so if he was cheating then I had a right to protect
myself.

  I knew I was being illogical, even self-rightous. How could he be cheating when he’d refused to sleep with me until we were married? I had been charmed at the time but now I found myself asking what type of man, even a Catholic man, was it who refused the prospect of sex offered to him on a silver platter? There was, after all, a chance he was looking after himself, since Phillip was a well-known philanderer — perhaps Dumi feared that I carried the dreaded virus in my blood.

  The more I thought, the more I found myself confused and perplexed. Yet Dumi had lied to me about where he was the other night. If he’d had nothing to hide he would surely have told me the truth. I had a duty not only to myself but to my daughter, who now saw him as a father figure. It was still early but I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of red wine and drank it in one go. Then I picked up the whole bottle and took it with me to the lounge where I began to drink it straight. The wine tasted like straw and I forced it down. It went to work immediately. I had drunk it on an empty stomach and the alcohol raced into my bloodstream, and straight to my head.

  ‘Maidei, I want you to go to town,’ I said as soon as she appeared.

  ‘Sure, what would you like me to go and get?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. I want you to get out of this house and go to town.’ I was slurring but could not control it. The poor girl gave me a wide-eyed look and went slowly to the door. She must have thought it was some kind of obedience test.

  ‘Are you okay, Mama?’ she asked timidly, her hand on the handle as though ready to flee.

  ‘I’m not your mother, stupid. Get out of my house.’ She went out slowly and shut the door behind her. The poor wretch was completely in my power. I fed her, clothed her and sheltered her. Her entire existence was dependent on my slightest whim. Such is the life of a house-girl, living in perpetual awe of the mistress of the house. I called her back and threw some money at her, telling her to buy herself a new dress. She clapped her hands and left looking very confused.