Zebra Crossing

by Meg Vandermerwe

• By 2003, they had won the FA Premier League eight times.

  • Sir Alex Ferguson is their manager. He was knighted by the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace. Afterwards, he ate cucumber sandwiches and drank tea in the Palace rose gardens. Mama showed us the photos that she cut out and saved from the Zimbabwe Herald.

  • My brother was named after George Best. Number-one Manchester United player until David Beckham came along.

  ‘Whatever you do, never confuse Manchester United with Manchester City, my children,’ Mama would say. ‘That is like confusing a thoroughbred horse with a village donkey. Understand?’

  Manchester United rhymes with ‘We’re never tired’. Mama said their players are young lions. They play and play until their opponents drop with exhaustion.

  Before, when there was still the occasional English Premiership game aired on television, thanks to corporate sponsorship and what-what, she would close the tavern early and hurry next door to sit herself down in front of our black-and-white television, which had pride of place on a small table in the living room. Together, the three of us would watch as Beckham worked his magic on the pitch.

  ‘What a pass! There is nothing that this blessed white boy cannot do. Go! Run! Run!’ Sometimes Mama would get so excited she would spill her mug of tea.

  ‘Mama, they cannot hear you, you know. They are very far away.’

  ‘Shhh, George. Now look at this mess. Chipo, fetch a rag, please, quick-quick. How do you know what they can and cannot hear, hey? He can feel that I am on his side, praying for him to thrash this manure Chelsea team.’

  The minibus’s windows are rattling. A young woman with a baby on her lap is snoring. But this is now, Chipo, I tell my reflection. Mama has been dead for almost three years, and only those like the General, who can afford satellite television, are able these days to keep abreast of the latest overseas soccer matches. And as for David Beckham, he certainly gives no thought to someone like me.

  Two

  Preparations to go. Four days. Documents. New cellphone. Peter and David’s number scribbled down in several places and kept close. Food – buy what you can. Two packets of biscuits. Sell what you can. Avoid the General’s man who comes to the house and bangs on the door so hard that the tin roof rattles. He demands, ‘Why didn’t you come to work? General wants to talk to you.’ Pretend you are Mama hidden beneath a blanket, sick – TB, George says, to scare the man off. Don’t let him in – don’t tell anyone you are going.

  No goodbyes – you need to slip away without honouring the rent that is due. Just one goodbye, one farewell. Your mother’s grave. You go, you kneel at the mound with its wooden cross, gravel and metal bottle tops biting into your knees. Goodbye, goodbye. G-o-o-d-b-y-e, Mama.

  I am sorry.

  George and I are at the petrol station near the border post. We are looking for a truck driver willing to smuggle us for an agreed price. It is early evening. Six o’clock. The air has cooled. Soon it will be dark. That is what we want, says George. The night to hide us, the way a wild animal conceals its young in secret crevices. George goes to speak with another group of drivers who are smoking their cigarettes away from the pumps. I wait with the suitcase and watch the strangers pass on foot. There is a long queue of drivers waiting to fill their tanks, and many people with luggage and packages. The air smells of diesel. The word diesel sounds a bit like the word lethal.

  Last night Mama’s spirit visited me again. Not as she was when she was healthy and happy, charming and commanding her pat rons around Old Trafford. No. How she always comes. With all the meat devoured from her bones like a famine victim. Teeth too large for her shrunken face. In my dream I tried to comfort her. She always looks so confused.

  ‘What has happened to me, daughter?’ Her bewildered eyes seemed to ask. But I have no words to satisfy the dead. No answers either. Three years ago, neither did the exhausted doctor and nurses at the local clinic.

  ‘We can do no more for her here,’ they said. ‘We have no medicines, we haven’t even been paid ourselves in five months. Perhaps if you could get her to Harare…’

  Harare? George and I looked at each other. How? We could never afford that. Mama’s eyes were closed. Was she listening?

  The doctor sighed. ‘Look, even if you could…’ He did not finish his sentence. ‘I am sorry.’ He went to a cupboard and gave us a few tablets. ‘Paracetamol for the pain,’ he said, and sent her home. He was not unkind, only out of options, like the rest of us.

  By then, Mama was so light I could carry her on my back as though she were a child. I remember her hot breath on my neck as she slipped in and out of consciousness. I had to hold onto her. And then those final months. When I would give her a sponge bath, my hands working so softly you would think she was a newborn baby. I remember her protruding ribs. Rasping gasps. Every day I fed her porridge water with a spoon that she spat and vomited out. Slowly, slowly the mother we knew disappeared. Day by day we grew closer to becoming orphans. Standing next to the petrol station, I bite my lip. Tell myself: think of something else.

  Like the General’s wife. Last night George told me that the General has thrown her out onto the street.

  ‘Taught her a good lesson. No more monkey business for her,’ George declared, with some satisfaction.

  A woman with a large tshangani bag on her head passes. She is walking slowly, like someone walking on shifting sand instead of concrete. Her right hand is balancing her load. Looks heavy. Our own suitcase contains some clothes, my umbrella, biscuits for the journey and two one-litre bottles of water. It is small enough for me to carry it on my own without too much trouble. I watch the woman with the tshangani bag cross the road. Soon she will be gone from view and I want to shout after her: ‘What is your life like there?’ But I don’t have the courage.

  ‘Tortoise!’ George signals for me to join him beside a red truck.

  The truck driver is small and muscular, with grey stubble. He is Ndebele, not Shona like us. He says he is travelling almost all the way to our destination, and that George and I can sit in the main cab with him. After exchanging the traditional greetings and asking our names, he immediately begins to talk.

  ‘Ah, they say you need no entry documents at the moment, but the border police do not care. If you have no passport and no visa they will not let you through. Not unless you give them something in return.’

  Seeing our despair, he laughs, ‘But do not worry, I will help you. You are very fortunate that I am the one who picked you up. There are plenty of thieves about. They take your money but hand you over to the police. And those border police, they will rob you before they throw you into jail. And even if you somehow manage to escape them, there are the magumaguma gangs. Know what those are?’

  He does not wait for my brother and I to reply that we have already heard all about those terrible criminals.

  ‘Young men. Zimbabwean or South African. They roam the two borders, looking for unfortunates like yourselves. If they find you, they rob you, beat you, rape or even kill you, or sell you into slavery for other gangs. And you…,’ he said, turning from the wheel to look at me for a moment, ‘you, they will take your organs, chop them out and sell them to the muti men. Ha ha ha. Yes, you are very lucky to have met me.’ The truck driver laughs again. ‘But tell me, sisi. Is it true that you people do not die, only disappear?’

  That is what many believe about albinos. I blush and say nothing. The driver does not seem to mind and continues to tell us his horrible stories.

  ‘Yes, you two are very fortunate to have found me. Very, very fortunate.’

  ‘Don’t move! Don’t even breathe!’

  The driver’s warnings kick inside our heads as the border guards’ flashlights sweep the inside of the truck cab. They are searching for stowaways. They are searching for us. We hold our breath. The mattress under which we are buried smells of sweat, beer and unwashed bodies. I want to retch. Something is biting my arms and now crawling towards my neck. Lice? Lice rhymes with nic
e, but there is nothing nice about them. Only bad.

  Let them bite. They can eat me alive, I think to myself, if it means we will not be discovered. The guards are asking the driver lots of questions. He has climbed down and is standing outside. They want him to open the back.

  If we are found, the driver has warned us, we will have to fork out a hefty bribe. Two hundred South African rand. Too much, George said. We cannot afford it. So we hold our breaths as though we are underwater. Under the rushing current of the Limpopo River. Until our lungs burn. And I can taste Limpopo River mud, sweet and earthy, and feel the hungry crocodiles swimming closer. Try to imagine something else. This driver at home? His family? On the dashboard there is a photo. Six children, girls of different ages. Neat school uniforms. Smiling proudly. And a wife. Must be why he agrees to take travellers like us. Not only for money. For some company. Better than talking to the road, to oblivious stars, to yourself, I tell myself as I try not to think about the border guards, about getting caught. Lonely. Lonely because you are the only. The only one. I am the only sope I know. Is that why I am lonely? And the driver? Must be lonely for him, too. To drive all day, all night. No wife. Children growing taller and ready for marriage. Without you. The flashlights pass here, pass there. My heart pounds. A crocodile is approaching.

  I am a child afraid of the dark who wants to call out for her mother. Instead I can only pray to her spirit. Help us. Please. I do not want to go to prison, to rot away like a dead dog. I do not want to be raped.

  The muttering border guards prod and poke. They are giving up. The hungry crocodiles glide past, their jaws still shut. We are safe. For the moment. Disappointed, the Zimbabwean guards raise the boom and wave the driver on. Somehow, after a similar game of cat and mouse, we manage to pass through on the South African side as well.

  When the doctors sent Mama home to die, George fetched Mai Patricia, the nganga. We knew that Mama would probably not like it. She had no time for witch doctors. But we were desperate.

  Mai Patricia came to our home and, after casting a sideways glance at me, squatted on the ground and threw her bones in front of Mama’s sickbed. By now Mama was too feverish to protest, or perhaps even to notice. Peering down at the bones’ secret message, Mai Patricia shook her head and sucked at the gap between her front teeth. George and I waited to hear what the mudzimu had to tell us.

  ‘Your mother’s disease goes back a long time. She is dying of an old wound to her heart.’

  Mai Patricia did not look at me as she said this, but I knew she believed I had a part to play.

  First, there was my father. When I was born, he took one look at my foreign pink form and condemned Mama for cheating on him with a white man. No amount of pleading on Mama’s part or on the part of her relatives or even on the part of the midwife who assisted with the birth could convince him otherwise. My pale skin was the product of an interracial betrayal, pure and simple. Two days later, he was gone. We never heard from him again, but rumours came that he had taken up with a new wife in Harare who ran a small tuck shop not far from the Central Post Office. As for Mama, she always claimed that she was better off without him: ‘Goodbye to rotten rubbish.’ But it took many years before she was ready to love again.

  Then came Stanley Mupfudza. I was six and George nine. Stanley was much older than our mother and worked for a local company distributing seeds and equipment to farms. He had small hands and a loud laugh and was a customer in Mama’s tavern.

  ‘But he supports Everton,’ my brother complained after Stanley’s first visit.

  ‘I know,’ Mama told us as she plumped up the cushions on the armchair where Stanley had been sitting. ‘But you will see children. He will support United by the time we are through with him.’

  Stanley the Everton Supporter starts to spend nights at our house. For Mama, he brings perfume and Oil of Olay, as well as meat that he gets from farmers. Together they disappear into Mama’s room as George and I eat the sweets he has brought for us. Raspberry and caramel dissolve on our tongues and make our hearts swirl with pleasure. Dizzy fizzy. Fizzy sweets send a child’s heart dizzy. Afterwards, over cups of tea, he quizzes George on his times tables.

  ‘Six times twelve?’

  ‘Seventy-two, Va Mupfudza.’

  ‘Very good. You are a smart boy. You will go far.’

  After his initial doubts, George decided he liked Stanley and his gifts, even though Stanley had yet to embrace Manchester United. George started to look forward to his visits.

  ‘When Stanley and Mama marry,’ George said to Michael one day, ‘he and I will go fishing.’ George had seen a TV programme in which a father and son went fishing together, and for weeks afterwards it was all he spoke about. Him and Stanley fishing.

  ‘Black kids don’t go fishing with their fathers for pleasure,’ said Michael. ‘That is what whites do.’ Michael and George’s debate continued. Growing bored, I took my umbrella, a Christmas gift from Mama, and went outside to check on our chickens, who had recently hatched six chicks, soft as cotton wool.

  But Stanley was not what he seemed. One day I saw him leaving church with a woman and a boy. That woman looked nothing like Mama. She was tall and slim, except for the bump where another baby was growing. She did not wear colours as Mama liked to do, especially Manchester United red, but was dressed in a serious, stiff blue and grey skirt and jacket, like a headmistress or Sunday-school teacher. So Mama was Stanley’s small house. I knew she could not have known it. What to do?

  When Mai Mupfudza saw me looking, she spat at her feet and turned her back on me. It was local superstition – spit and you will protect your unborn child from catching the sope’s curse.

  ‘Ugly monkey, what you staring at?’ Stanley Mupfudza’s young son bent down and picked up a stone to throw. I tried to dodge it, but it caught my cheek as I turned. After that I ran all the way back home.

  ‘Nay! Chipo, you must be more careful. You know you are not like other children,’ said Mama.

  I was too miserable to defend myself. I barely felt the sting of the pungent-smelling Dettol on my skin. How could I tell Mama what I had seen or what Stanley’s son had done? And how could I tell her that Stanley was already married and so was shaming Mama in the eyes of everybody.

  ‘Such a baby, Chipo. It is only a small scratch.’ Mama’s voice softened. She put her hand on my head to calm my tears.

  Stanley came to the house only once more after that. He and Mama went into her bedroom, and I went and hid outside behind the chomolia plants. Through the open window I could hear snatches of their conversation.

  ‘I would leave my wife, Grace, but…’

  I could not bear to hear Stanley say that I was the problem. Grace rhymes with face. It is my face he doesn’t want close. So I went to stand at the edge of the road like someone waiting for something or someone important to arrive. But I was waiting for nothing. Mama and Stanley did not stay inside for long. When Stanley drove off, he did not wave goodbye. George turned off the video of Manchester United versus Chelsea at Wembley in 1994 in the FA Cup Final. It was his favourite, and Brian McClair was about to score the winning goal just a few minutes before the final whistle. George ran outside to watch Stanley’s car recede in a cloud of goodbye-forever dust. I watched it go, too.

  ‘Why is Va Stanley going?’ Suddenly, as though reading my mind, George pointed at me and bared his teeth. ‘It is because of her.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, George!’ Mama snapped. It was rare for her to lose her temper with us, and George ran away, probably to Michael’s. That was where George always went when he was in trouble at home. He did not come back until suppertime had passed and it was dark.

  ‘Come here, Chipo.’ Mama called me to her. She told me to take off my jersey so that she could rub lotion onto my skin. She did not mention Stanley the Everton Supporter again. But I knew George was right. I was the one responsible for breaking Mama’s heart twice.

  Three

  ‘The seven thirty-five t
rain for Athlone will be delayed by twenty minutes. Platform two.’

  Half past seven in the morning, 2 October 2009. There are two hundred and forty-two days until the start of the World Cup. Two days since we left behind all we have ever known. My bladder is bursting, but George says, ‘You can’t go to the toilet, Michael’s cousins will be here soon.’

  Everywhere, people. Some look sleepy, others harassed, eager to be out of this crowded train terminal that is busier than a termite hill. South Africans look different from Zimbabweans, that is for sure. Plumper. Ordinary people back home, those not wealthy like the General and the Mistress, are thin like green maize shoots. But here they are more like well-fed cattle. Two women waddle past, clutching their handbags. One has bought a packet of Nik-Naks. A robust-looking man walks quickly as he talks on his cellphone. In his free hand he holds a paper cup of steaming tea or coffee.

  My stomach rumbles. I am hungry. We have not eaten anything for almost a day since our biscuits ran out.

  ‘Try to at least look like you know what you are doing and not like a country girl holding a hoe.’

  George’s words come out all distorted. His jaw is still swollen from where the driver slapped him.

  When we were a safe distance from the border, the driver let us climb out from under his stinking blankets. It was dark. Just a half-moon. Its watery yellow glow was not enough to see by. So our first vision of South Africa was of little more than shadows, punctuated by the lights of passing vehicles. But I could smell the bush. Dry tree roots and peppery sap.

  Now that we have crossed the border, the driver is silent. No more talk. No more stories. Just the sound of the truck growling beneath us, its aged suspension bumping over the dips as we turn off the main highway onto a dirt road. Suddenly the driver stops the truck and turns off the ignition. There, in the darkness of the bush, with the crickets, it seems, crying out for our help, he turns to George and demands more money.