Hope Is Our Only Wing

by Rutendo Tavengerwei

  Tanyaradzwa looked at her in concern.

  “What did you say to me?” Paida asked, getting to her feet.

  The class suddenly went quiet. Paida quickly sat down. Shamiso turned to the door. Mr. Mpofu stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame, lips pursed, stroking his orderly chin hairs with his left hand. His right hand balanced a cane on the crooked tiles of the floor.

  “Why do I hear noise?” he whispered. He turned to Paida.

  She glanced at Shamiso and smirked. “Sir, we were trying to do the work you gave us yesterday, but the new girl created disruptions and that’s what caused the noise,” she said, her voice rich with confidence.

  “That’s a load of—” Shamiso began to protest.

  “I didn’t ask you . . . to . . . defend yourself,” he said lazily, swinging the cane like a pendulum. He stood there for a little longer, stingy with his words, drenching the class in suspense. Then his finger signaled for Shamiso to follow him.

  As she headed to the front of the classroom, her eyes met Paida’s. It sat there in her look. The war had officially begun.

  10

  Shamiso’s eyes followed the cane in Mr. Mpofu’s hand as it swung back and forth. Her left hand was clenched into a tight fist. Shame and rage buzzed around her.

  “You’ve not been here long . . . and you’re already making trouble?”

  She avoided his gaze in silence, all the words she would have wanted to use stuck in her throat. He gave his swinging cane a rest and placed his hand in his pocket.

  “Come,” he beckoned, heading into the staffroom. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if he was testing her. The first thing she had seen when she had arrived at this school was that the staffroom was out of bounds for students. The little cartoon stuck by the door would not let her forget it!

  She followed him inside and looked around the room in bewilderment. There were more teachers in there than she had expected. A few of the chairs were unoccupied, but most held teachers who were sitting at tables reading or marking scripts. Two or three hovered by the kettle, holding mugs of tea and engaging in conversation. None of them seemed to be in a hurry to get to class.

  “Muloy . . .” Mr. Mpofu summoned her from her daydreaming. She hurried toward him as he dug around in the messy order that was his desk, piled with newspaper articles and all sorts of books.

  “Channel your energy . . . into something worthwhile,” Mr. Mpofu advised, handing her a thick textbook. His brow furrowed as though he was thinking of something important. “Have the first chapter . . . on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

  Shamiso flipped through the book as she scanned to see how many equations he expected her to solve. Her eyes flickered in shock.

  “Sir, it’s more than twenty pages!” she protested.

  “Would you like more?” His face faked bemusement.

  Shamiso grunted.

  “Didn’t I say . . . you won’t be forgetting . . . my name?” he reminded her.

  Shamiso walked back to class. She still wasn’t sure that she liked him, but to her surprise, a grudging respect showed its head and promised to come out at full light.

  11

  Mr. Mpofu sat in his chair, eyes drooped, watching the girl as she walked out of the staffroom. He could tell that something had broken within her and he knew what it was. He had wanted to tell her of the day he met her father. The day her father had inspired him with his determination and hope for the future of the country. How infectious his energy had been. He had wanted to tell her that she resembled him.

  But the murmurs he had heard floating around with her father’s name made him nervous. His political views were slowly entangling him in a spider’s web. How could he pull her into that world? He sighed and held his head in his hands, reminding himself that it was for the girl’s own good.

  12

  The hostel was quiet when Shamiso returned later that day. The wind whistled in the hallway, and a few doors swung in tune. There was no sign of life. Everyone else was at the afternoon’s sporting activities.

  Shamiso lay on her bed, facing the ceiling and listening to her heartbeat.

  Somehow she couldn’t stop thinking about her father. She remembered how they would lie outside in the dark, looking at the stars. He always insisted that it released his creative juices and allowed them to run wild. There wasn’t much inspiration in the ceiling now—only old paint and a dangling dusty bulb.

  The stubborn lump in her throat slid back, scraping and wiggling itself into comfort. Her eyes fought a stream of uninvited tears. She sat up and opened her suitcase, marveling at the sight of the laughing face next to her father’s, framed in time and posted on a photograph. She had stuck it to the inside of her trunk to remind her. And there, in the corner, was her precious pile of newspaper cuttings. Her hands ran over the top one and she pulled her father’s satchel close. She wanted him there with her.

  She unzipped the front pocket and a yellow envelope slid out. Her father’s writing danced across the top of it. She could see the ink was smudged, as though he had written it in a hurry. Her heart stood still for a second, her eyes scanning the writing on the envelope in hope that he had left it for her.

  Her eyes hovered over the name and address, someone called Jeremiah. She had never heard of him. The lump slid back into her throat, mocking her with thoughts of how all the pieces of her father that remained were related to his work. Just like all those boxes surrounding her mother in their little cottage. Neither Shamiso nor her mother had been able to face sorting through them.

  “What are you doing here?” A panting voice came out of the blue.

  Shamiso pushed the envelope back into the satchel. “Heavens! You made me jump!”

  Shamiso watched Tanyaradzwa drag herself across the room and onto her bed, which was next to Shamiso’s. Her gasps for air made it clear that she was desperately short of breath.

  Shamiso’s hand brushed over her wet eyes and she shifted her loot of paper next to her.

  “You aren’t supposed to be here, you know,” Tanyaradzwa spoke again, still trying to catch her breath.

  “You’re here!” Shamiso objected.

  “I’m allowed!” Tanyaradzwa smiled.

  “Are you okay? You don’t look too good.”

  Tanyaradzwa lay quiet for a while, then spoke softly. “You have an English accent?” She caught sight of the inside of Shamiso’s trunk and smiled at the picture of father and daughter.

  “Yeah, I lived there with my family since I was five.”

  Tanyaradzwa sat up slowly, resting against the wall.

  “Why did you come back to Zimbabwe then?” she asked.

  Shamiso swallowed hard. She picked up the papers and stared at them again. Her right hand shook slightly, sending tremors through the little pile of cuttings.

  Tanyaradzwa leaned closer, eager to make out what was written. Her eyes ran over the columnist’s name and back to the photograph stuck to the inside of the trunk. And just like that, her heart skipped a beat.

  PART TWO

  Three weeks earlier

  13

  Tanyaradzwa lingered by the door, almost frozen, staring at the memories of the last time she had been here. But she told herself today was a good day, in fact one of the very best.

  “Please come in. I’ve been expecting you,” the doctor said, holding the door open with the weight of her back and wiping the spectacles in her hand. Tanyaradzwa skipped into the room, her mother following right behind her. The doctor watched as mother and daughter giggled over something they had been talking about in the waiting room.

  The lights in the corridor flickered. The electricity threatened to turn itself off. The doctor frowned. The room was hot, and powering the building by generator was too expensive. The electricity would have to behave. After all, she would need it if it would be possible at all to save Tanyaradzwa’
s life . . .

  The doctor closed the door and walked to her chair. There weren’t many oncologists in the country anymore. The rich pool of talent had diminished, scattered across the globe in search of greener pastures. The few that were still available came at a hefty price.

  Mother and daughter sat in the cushioned chairs. The papers on the doctor’s desk flapped in the breeze. Tanyaradzwa leaned closer to the fan, enjoying the feeling as it ruffled her short Afro.

  The doctor, a light-skinned elderly woman with speckled gray hair, fumbled with the papers on her disorganized desk.

  “You look like you have been busy,” Tanyaradzwa began. The doctor nodded, explaining to them how hectic her week had been, with this conference to go to, and that place to be. A stack of papers fell to the floor as she shuffled everything around. Tanyaradzwa peeped at the newspaper on top.

  The doctor blinked. “It’s a shame about that journalist, isn’t it?” she commented, placing the papers back on her desk.

  “Ahh, chokwadi, death is a thing to behold. It seems like only yesterday when he was reporting on the Campbell land-grab case! And now he’s gone,” Tanyaradzwa’s mother responded.

  The doctor cleared her throat. Some things could not be spoken about so openly.

  Tanyaradzwa fidgeted, unwilling to engage in a conversation about politics. Excitement teemed inside her like a purring kettle. This visit marked the official start of her remission. The doctor had assured her of that the last time she had seen her.

  “How’s band practice going, Tanyaradzwa?” the doctor asked as she pulled the chair with its creaking wheels closer to the desk.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you—we’ve been asked to perform at the music festival again this year. I’m quite excited. I actually have practice today,” she fizzed.

  The doctor smiled. “I hope I’m invited. After last year’s performance, I don’t think I can ever enjoy hearing anyone else sing besides you.”

  Silence crept in for a moment. The doctor scribbled something on her pad. Tanyaradzwa made no effort to read it. After all, everyone knows that doctors spend a full year of med school learning how to write illegibly, as though creating a secret code. Tanyaradzwa looked around the room. The poster of the human heart still hung there on the wall close to the door.

  The doctor rested her elbows on the desk, holding her hands close to her mouth. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked Tanyaradzwa right in the eye. “I’m afraid I don’t have good news.”

  Tanyaradzwa glanced at her mother, confusion swirling around her. Her legs stopped swinging.

  The doctor peered at her from behind her thick bottle-carved spectacles. “Are you eating, Tanyaradzwa?” she asked suddenly.

  Tanyaradzwa’s brow furrowed. What did that have to do with anything? She looked again at her mother, who was staring steadily at the wall. No emotion leaked from her face. She seemed to already know where this was going.

  The doctor sighed. “The tests show that the cancer is back.”

  “But . . .” Tanyaradzwa began. “But you said—you said once I was in remission, you said . . . you said I was fine!”

  The doctor swallowed. “I know, and I’m sorry. The cancer seems to be rather aggressive.”

  Tanyaradzwa’s mother brought her head down. Her elbow rested on the chair’s arm and her nose sat in the face of her palm. Tanyaradzwa sat, expressionless, staring at the doctor.

  “Am I going to die then?” she blurted out. The doctor hesitated. Tanyaradzwa picked up the flicker in her eye. It was impossible to miss.

  “Like I said, the cancer is aggressive,” she replied. There was no easy way to deliver such news. She propped herself up. Her voice became softer, her determination stronger. Her hands rested neatly one on top of the other.

  “This time there is a very small tumor growing on your vocal cords and wrapped around one of the major nerves in your throat. We can operate on the tumor now, but I’m afraid it is very risky, given where it is located. If we are not careful, then you might end up losing your voice . . . or worse.”

  Tanyaradzwa scratched her nose. “Then I guess you’ll have to be careful?” She blinked with feigned innocence.

  The doctor swallowed. “I’m hoping that how we did it last time will work again now. So I’m going to recommend chemo and radiation, possibly in higher doses. I mean, the tumor is small enough for this to be a possibility.” She shifted position. “Are you planning to change schools?”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” her mother said at the same time.

  The doctor took a deep breath. “We can have you taking something to keep the tumor from growing.”

  Tanyaradzwa watched as the doctor’s lips moved. She could hear nothing. The noise of her thoughts drowned the doctor’s voice. Her mind wandered, fear infecting her thoughts and doubts blooming. This morning she had woken up with the hope of a new beginning. But now the bubble had burst. Her reality had changed in the blink of an eye.

  14

  The wind carried Grandmother’s words through the window to Shamiso as she lay in bed, a voice—one that Shamiso barely recognized—that now carried colorful stories of a younger version of her father.

  “Then when my granddaughter Shamiso was born, there were complications. But just like her father, she’s a little fighter, that one. And he was so determined that she would make it. He would carry her on his back and tell her about the war as though he had been there.” The audience laughed. Shamiso remembered the many times her father had narrated the story of her birth. She had loved hearing the part where he had to be begged for visitors to be allowed to hold the baby. “He was always quite the storyteller. Even when he was only a boy, when we told folktales around the fire, he would always volunteer and his stories would never end . . .”

  She listened as her grandmother attempted to make the audience laugh again. It was what her father would have wanted. He had always been one to make jokes.

  Now she could hear singing coming from outside. There were a few distinct wailings; probably from her grandmother, whom she only really knew from the photograph her father had kept in his wallet. He had never spoken about her. Shamiso had been aware of the money he sent to his mother, but that was about it. It was strange that their only connection had been a bank account number. Now she was in this woman’s house, in her bed, mourning her son.

  The last time she had been to her grandmother’s farm, she had been a toddler, back before they had moved abroad. She hadn’t even remembered the banana trees lining the entrance. She wondered if they would have made this trip at all had her father not died. Or if her grandmother had not insisted that he should be laid to rest on his father’s land and not in some cemetery in the city.

  She watched as speckles of dust danced in the light coming through the window. They held her attention for a moment, spiraling toward her as the door opened. Her eyes immediately slammed shut. She could hear footsteps quietly approaching.

  “Shamiso,” she heard as she was gently shaken. “You need to eat, mwanangu.” It was her mother’s voice.

  She cringed. The soft hands resting upon her hurt. Her mother’s frame, close to her on the bed, hurt. Her mother hurt. Shamiso lay there in silence, unable to move.

  “Shamiso,” her mother tried again. “They are going to let us view the body soon.” She took her hands off Shamiso’s back. The bed rocked softly. Shamiso could still feel her presence there. She opened her eyes and turned to face her. Her mother’s hands were pressed over her mouth, cupped as though muffling screams. Shamiso watched the stream of tears that rolled down her hands, past her nose and through the spaces between her fingers.

  Shamiso felt it too, whatever it was. The whole world was collapsing. The walls that had held it together were giving in.

  15

  The last time, there had been something sitting in her neck. She had not known it for a while and
had suffered for her ignorance. When the doctor had finally detected it, Tanyaradzwa had to muddle her way through a series of radiation sessions. They had taken her hair, a bit of her weight and a few friends. Tanyaradzwa remembered the pity she had received from those who tried to be supportive; and how she had resented it. She had moved schools to start afresh. And two years at Oakwood had allowed her to keep a careful distance. No one knew who she was or what she had been through.

  But even through all that, the cancer had not messed with her voice. Tanyaradzwa fidgeted at the prospect of the work the band had to do in preparation for the upcoming music festival. She glanced at her phone to check the time. The car turned off the Robert Mugabe Road into Glenara.

  “Mama, I am meeting the guys for practice, remember?”

  Her mother kept driving for a while, then answered, “You have to rest, Tanyaradzwa.”

  Tanyaradzwa could see the stress that colored her mother’s brow. The cancer sat proudly in between them, third-wheeling. Tanyaradzwa could only imagine the distress all this was causing her parents. Surviving it once was enough. Twice would be a show of just how fragile the human spirit was.

  Tanyaradzwa broke into a soft song. Usually her mother would join in; it was their “thing” when they drove together. But today her mother kept her eyes on the road and Tanyaradzwa eventually brought the song to rest.

  She focused on the view outside the window as the car moved past the trees in Tongogara Street. The clouds floated in the sky, forming and re-forming into moving shapes. The sky was blue. Her world was exploding, but the sky was still blue.

  Her gaze shifted to the people in the street. They were a collection of stories, every one of them part of the grand narrative of how things were. When the car stopped at the lights her eyes rested on two men selling airtime on the corner. They were in the middle of what looked like an entertaining conversation. She marveled at their carefree laughter.