“No, I wouldn’t want you to answer,” I said.
“Why not? She knows we’re friends now, doesn’t she? I’ve come to visit on my way to seeing my aunt. What’s wrong with that?”
I shook my head at him, incredulous. “What if she suspects . . . you know?”
Sediba looked annoyed. He picked up his glass, drank, and stood up to go to the kitchen.
I said, “Come on, you don’t want your mom to know either.”
“My mother knows.” His voice was flat, I couldn’t decide if he was sad or angry.
“Your mother doesn’t know!”
“She knows. We don’t talk about it, but she knows.”
When he saw the curious look on my face, he added, “We work together. We live on the same street.” He picked up the bottle of wine. “This wine. We share this wine once a week or so after work, just me, my mother, and father in their sitting room, chatting about our days.” I blinked away my envy. The life he was describing was as unimaginable as snowfall in Kasi.
“She’s never seen me with a girl except my friends—like Thuli—and she never asks me about girlfriends. Every Saturday she says: are you driving down this weekend?” He looked me in the eye, no trace of joking: “She knows.”
I felt my hand shake and I put down my glass and stood up.
“About us?”
Sediba looked confused for a moment and then shook his head.
“She knows about me, not about us.”
“Oh,” I exhaled.
“Nobody knows about you.” He said it almost to himself, looking away. I ignored his bitter tone.
He then asked, “Are you hungry?”
I didn’t know what I was feeling, pressing my thumbs against the armrest of the sofa, my eyes unable to meet his. I started to walk over to him in the kitchen but changed my mind. Sitting on the sofa seemed like the better option.
“What do you mean nobody knows about me?” I spoke into my glass, not wanting him to see how awkward I felt.
“You should phone her back, she sounded awful.”
“What do you mean?” I looked up at him. He shrugged and pointed to the answering machine with the blinking red light. I went to the kitchen and turned it on.
Kabi . . . how are you my child? I’ve been phoning and not finding you. You must be tired from working so much (a heavy sigh). Anyway I’m coming to visit you. I think I’ll come soon. Just phone and tell me when you’re not busy and I’ll come. Or I’ll come anyway, it doesn’t matter if you’re busy. I have to leave here. I have to go on a mini-holiday, just a few days.
There was another heavy sigh and then the machine beeped to signal the end of the message.
“I don’t know what’s wrong. She has been phoning nonstop.”
That wall that I had grown up with—the one I could not reach around—was going up. All I could do was say, “It’s like when I was in Cape Town.”
“What happened in Cape Town?”
I saw shapes shift in front of me and had to shut my eyes to feel less dizzy. I could not talk about Cape Town. Cape Town was the thing I had buried alone in the middle of the night and washed my hands. Cape Town was the shame I couldn’t revisit.
I said, “She just . . . she phoned me a lot there.”
Sediba said, “It’s hard for her that you’re not there. She’s told my mother when she’s at the salon.”
“She worries too much about me but, but I think she’s fine.”
Sediba stood up and came to sit on one of the white stools at the kitchen counter.
“Maybe it’s not you she’s worried about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s her own life . . . ?”
“What? The shop? My father working too hard? What?”
Sediba looked away and kept quiet.
I said, “She’s probably bored,” but Sediba continued to twirl his finger around a key ring on the counter, saying nothing.
“I’m going to shower,” I announced, unable to control the anger in my voice.
He too sounded exasperated. “Just phone your mother back.”
It was not our first fight, of course—that night before I left home was the first time we fought—although it seems unfair to him to call it that. I had experienced this before: the need to walk away, countered by a pull towards him. Getting into the shower and getting cleaned up took great effort. I needed to say something but couldn’t find the right words, so being ever so stubborn in my anger I pulled myself away from him and turned the water on.
I expected to find him sleeping or quietly harbouring resentment, but when I toweled off Sediba was lying in the bed with a broad smile.
About an hour later I closed the door with a sleeping Sediba in bed and went to phone my mother from the kitchen. She sounded dazed, not remembering why she had phoned or what she might have wanted to say.
I said, “You wanted to come? I don’t think next weekend is such a good idea.”
She didn’t seem to mind, to my surprise. “Ag, I just wanted to see you soon, it doesn’t have to be next weekend. Do you know how much food we’ve sold this week?” She regretted her tone on the answering machine, wanted us both to forget it. “They’ve announced we’ll have a blackout after the storm so people are stocking up. People always stock up on food this time of year anyway—it’s the end of the year, they’ll have a lot of parties and—”
“Mama,” I interrupted, suddenly recalling Sediba’s statement: “Maybe it’s her own life . . . ”
“Yes? What’s wrong?”
“Your message sounded . . . ” Words escaped me. “I thought you said you had to go on holiday or something.”
My mother gave a cough and said, “I think I have a cold. You know how a cold can make you feel exhausted.”
There was a lull in the conversation. I would hear my neighbour’s radio. I suspected the guy was a night owl because whenever I couldn’t sleep I heard faint sounds of his music. I picked up a glass from my cupboard—appreciating that Sediba had done my breakfast dishes before taking his nap earlier.
I hated the feeling of going to bed when there was still light outside and then waking up when it was dark, so now I walked around the flat turning lights on, half listening to my mother while distracted by Whitney Houston singing one of my mother’s favourite songs. I told her: “My neighbour’s playing ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All.’ ” It was the sort of music my mother liked to hear all the time on weekends after work, listening to it on Metro FM with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother and Sediba’s mother were two of the few women their age I knew who smoked. It was a wonder they were not better friends: each running her own business, each impeccably dressed and with Setswana accents that made them sound at once sophisticated and rustic; their habits were unconventional.
I thought I heard my mother sniffle on the other side but when I asked, “Are you . . . ?” I couldn’t find the word “crying” because it was my mother and you didn’t ask.
To change the subject, I asked about my father. “Is he working too much?” I had spoken to my father two days before and he had sounded exactly as he always did: busy and interested in my work. My father never asked about anything other than my work and I appreciated him for this.
My mother replied, “He’s doing the way he always is,” each word lower than the previous, her voice heavy and dragging.
When I dropped the phone that feeling of things being wrong gnawed at me, not letting me settle down and not allowing me to think. I considered going for a jog but of course it was too late and too dark. I started to walk over to the cupboard, thinking that I would make myself some tea, but instead I turned towards the bedroom. I climbed back into bed and held on to Sediba.
Home
IT W
AS A FEW MONTHS into our relationship that Lelo got married. Even as I wrote down the date in my day planner, my hand shook a little and I had to put the pen down to steady it. After Sediba had told me about the wedding, I stood near my sofa as if forgetting to sit, staring down at the coffee table while he stood with his back to me, looking out the window, the way he tended to do sometimes when he was deep in thought. Neither of us said it, but we were terrified. We would have to go, of course. Lelo was one of our oldest and dearest friends. This was an obligation, not a matter of picking and choosing what we felt like doing.
We would have to be there, with everyone, remaining a secret again as we had done just before I left home that first time. We would have to leave our cocoon.
“I’ll arrive on the Friday,” I said softly. “There’s always something on the Friday.”
“I’ll see you when you arrive then,” Sediba said, and it felt as if we were already practicing our deception.
This was all we needed to say about the matter at the time; I turned to go and fetch us something to drink from the fridge and we proceeded to do what we always did, carefully side-stepping the topic, not wanting it to seep through the contentment of our world away from home.
When he left that Monday evening I sat at my dining table staring at the bottle of beer in front of me, wondering what we would do, how we would be. I considered first the practical things: I would have to hire a car, since I hadn’t yet bought one. There had been offers from my parents to buy me one when I graduated, but I was tired of being soothed with things my parents could buy, so I had stalled them both. For the wedding they would of course expect me to sleep at their house—although if I stayed out all night with my friends they’d think nothing of it. I had barely visited since first leaving home, and when I did visit, it was for so brief a time that my mother would say, “It hardly counts . . . ” She was right, it was merely a pop in. Durban was not only my refuge from Cape Town; it was also my hiding place from home.
I spent the week contemplating what the weekend would look like, unable to make plans with anyone, because whenever Sediba and I spoke on the phone we continued our sidestepping, and our silence around it grew more uncomfortable with each visit.
It became so painful that by the time I had to leave and make my way up north, I had decided to pretend that I was merely going to see my friend; that there was no problem at all with us being together up there, with our parents and friends somewhere nearby. As I packed my bags and went to pick up the hired car, I fantasized about driving straight to Sediba’s house, unpacking my bags there and spending the weekend at his place instead of my parents’ house. In my mind I would arrive to a home ready for me with pretty sheets and good food. I’d walk into it as I did my own house and my parents would think nothing of it—they’d only expect me to come by and have one meal with them.
In an attempt to slash through the tension, I phoned Sediba before I left and joked, “So I hope you’ve laid out your best sheets and have the beer cooling in the fridge because you know I have a long drive ahead. I’ll need a cold beer and a comfy bed when I arrive.” I could almost see him smiling on the other side.
“It’ll all be ready for you,” he half whispered. It was always obvious when he was with a customer because he spoke in what I called his “professional” voice. He might as well have been ordering a product. But this always led to me tease him more: “And I like a hot foam bath and my feet rubbed . . . ” He let out a slight giggle. “I’ll be right back,” he was saying to someone and then I could hear the noise fade behind him as he stepped outside.
“OK. OK,” he was more serious. “When do you get here, na?”
“To your house? Six long hours.”
Sediba went quiet. I heard the match scratch and strike across the box. He only smoked at work when he was having a tough day. He inhaled sharply and said, “Stop joking. You won’t even see my house.” There was a long pause as I looked around my room, wanting to throw my clothes back into the wardrobe and drawers and forget about the wedding. I so desperately wanted it all to be over already.
He said, “So we’re going to be eighteen all over again, hey?”
I could hear him exhaling, blowing out smoke. Something odd about cigarettes: I liked how they tasted on someone else’s breath. Sediba had the same thing: he liked the taste of them on my breath, so these days I only smoked when he was around. I wanted to tell him how much I did want to see him, his home. I wanted to go together to the wedding, sit together and hold hands. And so I could not respond to his question. It felt unsafe, talking about it on the phone at this point. I thought I’d scream out the things that filled me with dread and it would not be fair—he was at work.
He sighed, exasperation blowing through the phone.
“Drive safe, yah?”
“OK. See you.” I dropped the phone, furious and helpless. I had six long hours to look forward to and a whole weekend of pretending I barely knew the man I loved. The old exhaustion seeped in, settled in my chest even before I had left my place.
Here is the thing that happens when a man is in love with a woman and that woman loves him back. Here is one of the most important moments in a man’s life: there comes a moment when the two sit together and the man says: can my people come to your people? The moment you see on television, where a man asks his girlfriend’s father for her hand in marriage, doesn’t happen with my people. This is bigger, involves a lot more people, an entire clan. You send your uncles and aunts to meet your girlfriend’s aunts and uncles. There are negotiations about what’s to come, what the woman is worth—how many cows, how much money—whether or not the man is up to the task of taking a wife. The man must ask a woman if her people are ready to receive—to welcome—his people before he asks them to go. Growing up as a boy in Kasi your mother always speaks of that day; the day she will have to ask the uncles to go and speak on your behalf. So like everyone else’s mother, mine had dreamed of this day and I knew she still looked forward to it, that she’d want me close by at this wedding, want me to see how it could be for me—for us.
What this all did was turn into balled-up resentment towards Lelo, his future wife, our parents, and our friends. I hated the occasion before it had even started and I hated even more that Lelo, my friend who was getting married to the woman he was expected to marry and not the one he was in love with, got to dance around the township being congratulated and showered with praise. He was marrying Masechaba only because his mother approved of her more, because she was going to be a lawyer, and his other girlfriend, Lerato, was considered unsuitable because of having two brothers in jail. He had been with Lerato longer and in my opinion he had always liked the idea of Masechaba more than Masechaba herself. On the other hand I understood the power of making choices based on what our parents did or didn’t approve. I was in no position to judge him.
Still, I was bitter for it—a feeling I needed to keep in check since I was meant to stand alongside him and wish him well in less than twenty-four hours. I spent the ride home thinking of ways I could find to see Sediba alone, because that would at least quiet the wretchedness of the weekend.
When my car finally pulled up at our gate, I saw that instead of having to step out and call on the intercom I could drive through because someone had left the gate wide open. Both my parents’ cars were in front of the double garage doors. I parked behind my mother’s, assuming my father would be driving out soon, since he was not usually home in the afternoons. He must have come for a quick meal, I guessed. I took a deep breath as I walked, my shoes crunching loudly against the pebbled walkway.
As I approached the door, I heard voices coming from my parents’ bedroom on the floor above, followed by a scream. Aus’ Tselane appeared suddenly and stood still at the door, clutching a pile of the washing in her arms and looking frightened.
“I’m here!” I exclaimed stupidly and ran to kiss her.
“Ao! You’ve arrived, na?” She forced a smile.
“Are they fighting?” I asked in a guarded, conspiratorial whisper. She grimaced and stepped around me, and hurrying away.
“Are they?” I asked again but she didn’t answer.
My mother looked cheered up as she appeared and threw her arms around me, kissing my cheeks happily.
“This time you have to stay the whole weekend!” was the first thing she said.
I went straight to the fridge and opened it, looking for food.
“If you’re hungry get Tselane to make you something. Keep her busy.” She clicked her tongue. She always spoke of Aus’ Tselane with disdain; I wondered why she kept her as her helper if she could just as easily find someone else in the endless sea of people looking for work.
“No,” I said. “I’ll just make myself a sandwich.”
My father came out with his arms outstretched and pulled me into a warm embrace.
“Sorry son, I have to run back to the surgery,” was his greeting. “Come tomorrow before the wedding and I’ll show you some changes I made.”
My father liked to take me back to the surgery every chance he got, a way of reminding us both that someday we would work side by side. I think he didn’t believe it would actually happen—he didn’t think I would ever return, so whenever he could he’d pull me in, ask me to come take a look as though selling me the benefits of coming back. And because I knew my own reservations, knew that he did in fact have reason to worry, I felt ashamed as I reassured him, saying, “Eng, Papa. One more year.”
In another home, a child might have mentioned the screaming and asked what was wrong, but in our house there was a line I couldn’t cross. We walked around not saying things, stepping over and around what we saw and felt and carrying on as if we had never come across our own feelings. So I asked the right questions.
“Has it been hot here?”
“No,” my mother said, taking over my sandwich-making.
Such a Lonely, Lovely Road Page 11
