by J. L. Powers
You can’t fight everybody, I say to the witch, knowing she can hear me even if I don’t speak out loud.
As I pray, words dribble out of me, leaking one by one, on and on, forming a river at our feet. The witch stops, looks at the river, lets go of my arm.
Where are we? the drunk man asks, looking around at the darkness and the water, the fear in his eyes only a pale reflection of the fear he made me feel back in Imbali.
This river is the crossroads, the witch hisses, the crossroads between life and death. She gazes at me. How did we get here? Her voice, deadly.
That’s when I know. She’s not the only one with power. I’m the one who brought us to this place in the dream world.
I look across the river. The witch, the drunk man, and I are trapped on this side, surrounded by nothing but black space and nowhere to go but the river.
I look at the water, thinking I could make it to the other side if only I knew how to swim. It’s true, I’m scared of water. But the push to cross the river is urgent. Slowly, I dip my toes in the water. Toes, then feet, then knees, then thighs and hips and waist, until I’m up to my breasts, suddenly panicky about going under and not knowing how to swim.
The witch grabs my arm, trying to hold me back, and I twist it to free myself from her grasp.
I’m going to leave you here in the dream world, I say.
The dream world is my world, little girl. Her face is ugly as it looms near, her body twisting, sinewy, slimy.
You’ll never come back to the real world, where you hurt people.
We’ll see. She slithers into the water, her face shimmery, slick like oil. She slinks under the surface.
I thrash around, wondering where I should go, when something grabs my ankle and pulls me under, sudden, forceful, and I’m face to face with the witch, flogging through the water towards me, her gigantic mouth open wide to swallow me whole.
The drunk man slips into the water, his belly suddenly scaly, his legs morphing into a strong tail, his eyes bulging, his crocodile grin becoming the long snout I saw on his face earlier.
Back in the deep, in the darkness of water and slimy plants and slithering snakes and the stalker-crocodile’s sleepy-slow-sudden hunt. His hunt for me.
Do I have the power to overcome both a witch and her servant, a crocodile?
But Mama is going to be here, soon, crossing over into the land of the shadows, where the ancestors live. I know this as surely as I know the witch will never stop unless I teach her a lesson she doesn’t want to learn, unless I show her the power of the ancestors on my side.
If Mama is coming to this place, maybe I, too, should stay here.
Perhaps I don’t want to return, I say out loud. Perhaps I want to stay here. And when the crocodile comes for me, I’ll let him take me. You can’t fight death.
So I stop resisting the water or the crocodile or the snake and accept the punishment that comes.
Soft, through layers of water, a sudden splash.
My eyes fly open.
Little Man is in the water, staring at me, his eyes wide open with horror. “What are you doing, Khosi?” he shouts. “Why aren’t you fighting back?”
“I’m afraid,” I admit.
“So afraid you’re willing to die?”
“If I die, at least I can be with Mama,” I say, knowing suddenly that this is the place where she is going, if she isn’t already here.
“But what about Zi? What about…what about me?” His voice shakes, the warm tenderness of his sobs cuddling me.
Oh.
At that sound, my body shudders and rebels, resists this fate, dying here in this watery grave.
The crocodile comes for me. I grab his mouth as he strikes, a tooth sinking into my thumb, blood spurting out. But I hold on, thrashing and kicking. Stunned, he lets me go, his powerful tail thumping against my backside as he swims away.
The witch’s eyes meet mine.
She’s as shocked by the power surging through my body as I am.
My breath is coming fast in short, funny spurts. Even with power, you can still be afraid.
Before she can seize on my fear and turn it against me, I threaten her. Is this what you want? To fight until you die? Or are you going to turn around and leave too?
Behind me, across the river, the ancestors are gathering.
The witch looks at all of us, angry, then turns around and swims away.
If you dare come back for me or for anybody I love, I will hunt you down and kill you, I shout at the sinewy figure retreating.
Sharp awareness for one painful second when I surface from the deep deep water and Auntie breathes, “She left us, Khosi, she left peacefully, saying only, ‘I love you all.’”
Looking beyond her, I see the sangoma, her old wrinkled face looking concerned.
“Where did my mother go?” I ask.
“To the other side,” she replies.
“No! She can’t leave yet! I’m not ready!”
Slowly, I sink back into the dream world. “Sleep, Khosi,” the sangoma says. “Sleep—but then return to us. Find your way through the water and bring your gifts of healing back to this world.”
Slipping back into the world with the river, Babamkhulu, and… Mama. Mama’s on the other side of the river, shouting at me. She’s so far away and the river is so big. How did she get here? And why is she on the other side?
I look back across.
Mama is no longer alone. Behind her are hundreds of people—no, thousands—all of them waving at me.
“Goodbye, mtwana wam’, my child,” Mama calls, still waving. “Sala kahle! Stay well!”
She turns her back and disappears into the trees on the other side of the river.
“Wait, Mama!” I call. “I’m coming! Don’t go!”
Everything is black and murky around me, my legs and arms moving through thickness of water, learning to touch and identify. I’m pushing aside the watery resistance—until I see dim shapes in the water ahead of me, a sudden vision of my babamkhulu and oh! of Mama. She’s there with me, in the water, her face restored to its beautiful roundness, her beautiful body swaying in the water.
She smiles at me. “Khosi, my child,” she says, holding her hands out towards me. “Forgive me.” Even in her happiness, she is weeping, knowing what she has done.
But her face is shiny again. The bruises, gone. The weeping sores—disappeared. The insistent thought, and I’m grateful: She’s been healed. She’s been healed.
And then Zi’s voice, whispering my name, over and over. “Khosi. Khosi. Khosi. Khosi. Khosi.”
I wave fingers towards Mama but do not touch her. It’s like I’m saying goodbye but promising to return at the same time.
“You must do the right thing,” Mama says, her voice now beginning to fade as I float upwards. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me…”
I know exactly what she means. “Of course, Mama. I’ll take care of everything.”
I look over at Babamkhulu. He nods and I nod back, knowing that I’ll see him again.
Then I swim to the surface. Because Zi still needs me. I can hear it in her voice.
“What happened?” I gasp, feeling as though I’ve just breathed for the first time in my life, air knife-like as it thrusts through my lungs.
I open my eyes and, as I do, Zi clutches me, buries her face in my shoulder, sobbing. Stretching my arm over the sofa, I look beyond Zi to Gogo and Auntie, their faces pale; then I glance at my thumb, which throbs and aches, and notice a small puncture wound right in the center.
Gogo’s face floods with color. Auntie’s relaxes into all manner of peace.
“Some drunk man beat you badly, Khosi,” Auntie says, tenderly.
Flashes of the drunk man’s face morphing into the crocodile.
“Did he…?” My voice cracks on the words. I’m not sure I want to complete the thought. “Am I still…?”
“Your virtue is still intact,” Gogo assures me.
Thank God. He didn�
�t rape me. I’m still…safe.
“How did I get away?” I ask.
“One of your school friends found you and carried you home,” Auntie says.
“He was distraught,” Gogo says. “He kept saying, ‘I should have protected her.’”
Gently, I feel my bruised face. My eyelids are heavy, my lips swollen and sticky. “Who was it?” I ask. “Who rescued me?” But I already know.
“Little Man Ncobo,” Gogo says.
I groan, my face to the wall.
“He likes you,” Zi says, her face popping up a few inches from mine. “He likes you a lot.”
Gogo sighs. But in that sigh, I hear a promise. I just hope it isn’t too late—that Little Man really does like me that much, like Zi says.
“The police came and took that drunk old man away,” Auntie says. “He won’t bother you again.”
But what about the witch? Is she also gone for good? Did I really leave her behind, stuck in the dream world? Or has she just started playing games with me?
Whatever comes, the ancestors will protect me. That witch is not the only one with power.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MAMA JOINS THE ANCESTORS
I wander around the house, looking at everything covered with cloth—the television, the mirrors, pictures, even the windows.
I never want to eat again.
The truth? I feel like I’ve lost. I no longer care what happened in the dream world. I don’t care that the witch slithered away or the stalker realized I’m stronger. No matter where I wander, there’s one room I must avoid: the bedroom. Mama is there. Or rather, her body is there, shrouded in a sheet, Gogo sitting beside her, mourning.
I should go inside that room, but I can’t. I don’t want to look at her body. I would rather remember her, waving at me happily from the other side of the river, calling out, “Stay well, my child! Stay well!” That is a much happier vision than the one I glimpse when I pass by the bedroom to go to the bathroom—the edges of the sheet, Gogo’s keening, her deep breaths, the sobs.
I speak from the hallway. “Do you need anything, Gogo?”
She shakes her head. Pats the bed, inviting me to come sit beside her. It’s where I should be, the oldest daughter, mourning my mama with her mama.
But I can’t. I can’t go in that room. “I’ll be back, Gogo.”
For two days, neighbor women have been making all the food for the family members and friends who are here. I’m just well enough to toddle into the kitchen and watch them as they stir sorghum in a massive pot on the stove. One lady has a pot full of phuthu. Watching her stir it, I stare at the white grains sticking to the wooden spoon.
“How much food are you making?” I ask.
“Enough for a thousand people!” she claims. Then she tells me what I should be doing, rather than watching her cook. “You should sit in the bedroom with your grandmother.”
I drift outside where the men are roasting meat over a fire. Baba and Uncle Richard and all the other men who knew Mama throughout her life sit around the circumference, drinking utshwala and talking, falling silent when I approach.
Baba meets my eyes. There is something really different about him. He seems shaken, his face haggard. I notice a few white hairs in his scraggly beard and coiled through the black hairs on his head. He’s getting old, my father. He’s getting old and now, unless he goes to the clinic and gets help, he’s going to die, sooner rather than later, and I will have lost both my parents.
The tears well up in my eyes. I’ll speak to him, I promise. But I can’t think about it just now.
I wander back inside to the sitting room, where many of the women, even Gogo Zulu, are gathered around Auntie. I stand there, listening to the women chatter, until Zi comes and stands right beside me, perfectly silent, fiddling with the knobs on a drawer. She doesn’t look at me.
Finally I notice her hair: the tight curls knotted and matted, as if she’s been neglected. Zi still hasn’t learned to let any of the rest of us be her mother.
Putting my arm around her, I say, quietly, “Zi, will you let me wash and comb your hair, please?”
She’s very still for a minute, even refuses to respond, but when I reach my hand over to caress her head, she doesn’t jerk away like usual. She lets me work my fingers into the knots, threading through them. As my fingers dig deeper, she begins to hiccup and then to sob and finally she’s quiet. But she stays near me. When I’m done, she buries her face in my stomach.
A few hours before the funeral, the men begin to look solemn and official. The house and yard, which has been so crowded, empties as people leave to walk up the hill to our church.
“How will we possibly feed everybody at the feast afterwards?” Auntie Phumzi frets, but then she shakes her head. “It is good,” she says. “Elizabeth was well-loved.”
Our next door neighbor emerges from her house, sober, for once silent with her accusations.
Her children and grandchildren wait outside while she exits the gate and comes over to our yard. She calls to Auntie, “Sawubona, Phumzile!”
Auntie’s eyes meet mine. I peek at Inkosikazi Dudu. She’s standing at the gate, a shawl draped around her bent shoulders. She looks… penitent. Maybe she believes her curse caused Mama’s death. For that, she should be ashamed. But now that I know what Mama did, I know that we’re covered in shame too.
Auntie walks over. Their conversation is brief but Auntie nods and touches the old woman on the shoulder before she shuffles back out of the gate. She and her family begin the long walk up the hill to the church, to the funeral.
“What did she want?” I ask when Auntie returns.
“She said we must use her yard and home for all the people that come.”
“That’s kind of her,” I say, knowing Auntie has no idea what I really mean. “Gogo’s missed her friendship.”
“Perhaps her anger is gone now,” Auntie says. “Death is the greatest force for forgiveness.”
“Yes,” I agree, wondering if I can forgive Mama myself.
Finally, it’s our time to go. Men load Mama into a wooden coffin and place it in the back of a van we’ve borrowed for the day. Gogo and Gogo Zulu get into the van. Gogo calls out to Zi, “Come, child, come with us,” and Zi runs over to climb into the van.
There’s no room for the rest of us. Auntie is driving her car but it’s already full too. So Baba and I are left to wait until she comes back to pick us up.
I want to be angry at Baba, for what he did to Mama. But all I can think is how he will leave us, too, unless he goes to the doctor now now to get help. “How’s your business, Baba?” I ask. But what I really want to ask is this: How are you feeling? Are you well? When will you die, Baba?
“Oh, it’s getting started that’s so difficult,” he says.
Will it ever happen, Baba? Will you ever get started? And how will it ever happen if you’re sick?
“I tell you what I would really like to do,” he confides. “I would really like to sell some things that make muthi and the other things that sangomas need to do their business. That is what I would like…” His voice trails off. Then he adds, “But I don’t have the money to make a business.”
I want to offer some few rands to help him, to take some money from the bank account so he can make his business. But it isn’t my money to give. Instead, I offer a smile and again I promise myself that I will talk to him when all this is over.
When we reach the church, it’s filled with people—neighbors and relatives singing hymns, clapping hands, waiting for the funeral to begin. They struggle to get the coffin out of the back end of the van, and the people part so we can pass. Zi runs over to take my hand. We follow Gogo and Gogo Zulu inside, after Uncle Richard, Baba, and the other men carrying Mama’s coffin shoulder their way through.
We follow them up the aisle towards the front of the church. I look out at the sea of faces, at people I don’t recognize. Baba Mkhize, the priest, is standing at the front, waiting for us, waiting
to begin.
And then I see Little Man. He’s sitting a few rows behind Auntie Phumzi.
My eyes move from Little Man to his mother, sitting next to him, and then to his father, who looks like he’s swallowed something bad and it hurts his stomach.
Little Man looks like his father, his face solemn as he watches me. He gives me the slightest nod, like he’s encouraging me, like he’s saying I really can do this. Like maybe he’s saying he’s sorry.
Inkosikazi Dudu sits in the back, her head bowed, ashamed. Soon, I will have to go to her and tell her about the money. Give it all back to her. I’ll do it, I promise. But that is a task for another day—another task I can’t think about just now.
I sink deep into my own thoughts, so deep that I don’t remember the service. I don’t remember the songs we sing or the words the priest speaks or how many people press money into Gogo’s hand afterwards, a tradition that will help us pay for the feast and for all the food we’ve been feeding the people who came the last days to mourn Mama’s death.
Zi sits through the service, holding my hand and glancing up at me for reassurance every few minutes, the way she once did with Mama. I hold her hand and I sing hymns and I listen to the priest, his words drifting over me like clouds in the sky. Here, but gone so quickly. I think about all that Gogo and I did to purify our family, and what I found out because of it. I wish Mama was still here. I wish I could talk to her about stealing the money. I wish I could cry.
By the time it’s over, my lips feel like they’re bleeding.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MAKING UP
A few days after the funeral, Gogo looks out the window and sees Little Man lingering by the gate. “Khosi! Khosi!” she calls. “Your friend is here, outside the gate!”
I glance in the mirror in the bathroom—wow, my face is still so swollen—even as she yells, “Khosi, shesha! He’s leaving!”
It’s true, he’s about to turn and walk away. “Little Man!” I yell, fumbling my way out of house.
He turns around, quick quick, and grabs the gate. “Khosi,” he says, sounding so glad to see me that relieved little tears spurt to my eyes. “Come talk to me.”
