by Rémy Ngamije
There must have been other women, unknown, and unnamed, because unloved women are poor markers of time’s passage. They melt into each other so that one face becomes similar to the next, kisses become a currency as common as the smallest cent and just as insignificant. But in the late September spring of that year Séraphin’s sentence was finally reduced and he was permitted to interact with civil society once more.
That was when he met Soraya. She was Indian, which was strange because Indian girls, according to Godwin’s extensive research, never dated black guys.
“They don’t even give us a second look, my guy,” said Godwin. “Richard, though, oh, they love this guy. They all think he’ll make Whindians of them.”
“Wh-what?” asked Séraphin.
“White Indians,” said Godwin. “They’re worse than Jewish girls.”
“What about Jewish girls now?”
“Come on, everyone knows. They’ll suck you and they’ll fuck you—”
“—but they’ll never marry you,” said Richard.
“Indian girls, you can forget about them. They barely like the colours in their own race pools so you can forget about hooking up with them.”
Soraya was the exception to the Godwin Principle.
“She actually likes black people,” Séraphin said. “And it isn’t because she’s travelled a lot. Slavers travelled too and look where that got us.”
Soraya and Séraphin had plenty to talk about. He gobbled up all of her travel stories – to Canada, to Spain, to Peru, to Chile, to Senegal, to Cape Verde – and she liked that he liked her stories. The first time they had sex the reiatsu of their connection could be felt a floor away. The second time Soraya nearly confessed true love.
If anyone noticed, and some did, they would have noted how Séraphin and Soraya began to spend more and more time together. They would even hang out when Soraya was on her period which, until then, was like thinking about visiting West Africa during an Ebola epidemic.
“So she’s not your girlfriend?” asked Richard one day.
“No,” replied Séraphin.
“But you hang out with her when she’s on her period,” said Godwin.
“Yes.”
“Then she’s your wife,” said Adewale. “Her father needs to ask for her dowry.”
There they were, dancing along to All Saints and S Club 7 and singing along to Vanessa Carlton at the Codfather in Camps Bay, with Richard, Yasseen, Godwin, Adewale, and James covering their faces in embarrassment. This was romance, awkward to watch. It was glorious.
If anyone had been present at the start of their end then they would have been in Séraphin’s room the night when they binge-watched episodes of Bleach, arguing about which captain was stronger, staking out claims on specific squad numbers. Anyone in the room would have noted, with their hands covering their eyes but leaving a slit between the ring and the little finger to peek through, the frenzied kissing in the blue laptop screen light and the symmetry of desire which resulted in the emotional shift from the lust thing to the L-thing, the strong language which is not permitted to be used without parental supervision or guidance. If they had been tuned to the mishap frequencies, they would also have heard the slow, rhythmic squish-squish sound of latex on flesh, and the tiny tear which permitted the condiments of love to bloom into life.
XXII
The Great Séraphin Council has been convened four times. Each time it was called to meet it was to respond to clear and present danger, threats which could bring the Séraphinic being to ruin. The first time the Council met was when Séraphin was round ten. He would have been in the fourth grade. The Council met in April of that year to meet a pressing need: Ralph.
Ralph was the kind of boy who spent his childhood trapping grasshoppers in an old jam jar. When he caught a good number he would stuff them, one by one, in the red ant nests which made walking on the pavement in Windhoek impossible. The ants swarmed up sneakers or open sandals and nipped at exposed flesh. Ralph watched the hungry hordes swarm over his offerings, the ants’s pincers clamped down on antennae and soft, segmented abdomens, dragging the meal beneath the cracks in the pavement. When he deposited a grasshopper further from the entrance, he ensured its hind legs were broken so it could not escape. First one, then two, and then many ants would overwhelm the grasshopper. Its wings would be clipped and be carried back to the nest, the translucence glinting, making the line of ants returning to their nest look like windsurfers on a clear day at the seaside. When the rainy season brought them out, he would collect millipedes, thick and fat and shiny, and watch them writhe in pain when he heated them in an old can of Kiwi Shoe Polish.
By the seventh grade, Ralph progressed from picking on insects to children on the playground. Everyone looked forward to his departure for high school at the end of the seventh grade that year and, sensing this perhaps, he proceeded to make the remaining months of that year a misery for students and staff. It was unsaid but generally known that the sisters at Séraphin’s convent school prayed twice as hard for deliverance from what was surely the devil’s own issue.
A boy like Ralph had boys who orbited around him like satellites drawn to the magnetism of his malevolence. Fearing victimhood, they chose to serve their overlord in his playground nefariousness. The dastardly quadruple of Ralph, Allan, Timotheus, and Simeon were greedy examiners of lunch boxes, taking whatever they pleased, whenever they pleased.
One week, Ralph and his minions stumbled across Yves, then in the second grade, sitting with his friends eating their lunch. They were sharing a Cadbury chocolate bar Yves had received, a rare and prized treat in their household. The boys usually had brown bread with a lick of peanut butter or red jam with the processed sugars sweetened beyond nature’s intentions. Yves, in his generosity, let everyone take delicate nibbles to extend its life. As the brown bar was passed around it was snatched in transit as it made its way back to Yves. Nobody had seen Ralph walking up to them. It vanished into his mouth. He permitted his underlings to lick the wrapper. Yves watched the disappearance of his chocolate bar and filled its absence with tears. His friends scattered to avoid further confrontations with Ralph and one of them, on the run, came across Séraphin who, at the time, was playing a violent game of dodgeball with some raggedy tennis balls. “Ralph took your brother’s chocolate,” Yves’ friend called out to him.
The Great Council was summoned.
Back then there were only six Séraphins. Each was colour-coded according to Séraphin’s favourite Power Rangers. Blue, red, black, green, white, and pink. When they heard Yves’ chocolate had been taken away from him they all assembled. The blue one karate chopped the air as he spoke. “We must find Ralph.”
Together they marched Séraphin around the schoolyard in search of Ralph. Something in Séraphin’s determined walk signalled some great action was afoot. Boys and girls followed him around like naysayers and believers following a prophet to see if he would deliver on some promised miracle. Séraphin found Ralph and his crew on the dusty soccer field. They had just interrupted the play, threatening to kick the soccer ball over the fence and into the street where it would surely be popped by a passing car. Ralph turned to face the approaching mob of children.
“You took my brother’s chocolate,” said Séraphin when he came up to Ralph.
“So?” Ralph said. His question hushed the entire field.
Séraphin bent down and heaped a pile of sand at his feet. It was time to kick grandmothers.
It was commonly accepted by the male population of the school, and some of the tomboyish girls, that the dispute resolution methods available to the average primary school student were boring and lengthy. Diplomacy involved too many words; and compromise was for the snivelling, sickly children who could never throw a decent punch. To circumvent all of these higher-level methods of conflict resolution, grandmothers were invented. Two boys who obstinately talked themselves into cross-purposes created a pile of sand or stones at their feet and invested within them the lov
e and respect only grandmothers can command. Each of the aggrieved parties declared they were right and the other one wrong. The piled grandmothers bore testimony to the veracity of each claim, and if either party was convinced justice smiled kindly upon them, they were invited to commit a most grievous offence and kick the other’s grandmother. Having one’s grandmother kicked demanded immediate retaliation. The other grandmother was subjected to an angry punt. With both grandmothers scattered, the necessary levels of disrespect communicated to each other, and a crowd of bloodthirsty primary schoolers goading the high-strung fellows – “Ek sal nie los nie! He kicked your grandmother! You must defend your grandmother eksê!” – it would be time for the fists to settle what words could not.
Because trial by grandmother could only have one outcome, it was not embarked upon lightly. Only evenly matched boys would stoop down to heap their sandy oumas. Ralph’s considerable size made it so that he had kicked almost everyone’s meme kulu while his remained unmolested. This situation angered many of the school’s pupils. When Séraphin finished mounding his granny, Ralph was shocked. The rest of the playground watched the big boy bend down and heap his sand. As he did so he said, “This is my grandmother. What’re you going to do about it, you refugee?”
The many Séraphins were debating the wisdom of their decision and division was about to make them recant their challenge. Nobody had ever stood up to Ralph. But something about the word “refugee” made them all stop their frantic conversation.
The word was common in Séraphin’s household. His mother inhaled deeply when she changed the channel to CNN and saw lines of people marching from home to hope in faraway African countries. His father uttered the word sourly at supper time when he complained about some menial duty his brilliant brain was required to solve at work. Then, after Therése said something comforting to him, he turned to his boys and said, “It is not bad to be a refugee. Some of the most important people in the world were refugees. Did you know Einstein was a refugee? But he was a white refugee. It is bad to be black refugee. If someone calls you a refugee, they are not being kind. They are calling you homeless and useless and cheap. We are not homeless. We are not useless. And we are not cheap. We are not refugees, Séraphin, you understand? We have a home here, and another one in Rwanda. Maybe someday you will return to see it, eh?”
Refugee!
Coming from Ralph’s chocolate-stealing mouth the word was as evil and as grotesque as the giant monsters which threatened to destroy a town unless the Power Rangers united to form the all-powerful zord capable of incinerating the evil after a hard-won battle. The word cut through all of the Seraphins’ arguments. The pink Séraphin looked at the others and said, “He’s gotta go.”
As Ralph stood up, his grandmother just completed, Séraphin delivered the sweetest and truest kick to it. Her ruin covered Ralph socks and shoes. Before Ralph could react, he was hit in the stomach by Séraphin’s tight, white-knuckled fist, which would have bent him in half had Séraphin not then launched himself at the taller boy and toppled him. They landed on the ground with Séraphin on top of Ralph, pummelling any inch of him he could find, all the while screaming in a hysterical voice, “Don’t call me a refugee! Don’t call me a refugee! Don’t call me a refugee!”
The “Fight! Fight! Fight!” chants drew the attention of the teacher on playground duty, who rushed to the field and separated the two boys. She struggled to hold Séraphin who remained a kicking and screaming bundle of righteous anger. Ralph lay in the sand, a brown thing, dirtied. He rolled over and spat out a mouthful of chocolate-coloured blood and a bit of tongue. He was rushed to the nearby hospital where the doctor told his weeping mother he would be all right. Only a bit of the tip had been bitten off.
Guillome and Therése were summoned to the school. In the principal’s office Séraphin was asked to speak his piece after his parents were told the story. The anger still burned through him and choked his words. All they heard as he cried was, “He shouldn’t have called me a refugee! He shouldn’t have called me a refugee!”
Ralph’s mother wanted Séraphin expelled. She would have been granted her wish had her son’s reputation not turned everyone against him. The school’s Sister Mother was moved to dubious mercy. It also helped that Guillome and Therése were stalwart members of the same Roman Catholic parish and their tithes were up to date. When Guillome asked the parish priest to put in a good word for Séraphin he agreed to do so. Ralph’s mother, outraged by the injustice of Séraphin’s continued presence at the school, moved her boy out of the school and after a period of home schooling, he was released back into society with a healthy fear of foreigners and a dislike for chocolate.
The second time the Great Council was called to a sitting was when Dale was on the receiving end of two ringing slaps. The Council, then, had upgraded its cool. As soon as the insult dropped from Dale’s mouth every single lightsaber – green, blue, red, and purple – had been drawn in misplaced but united fury.
The third time occurred later that same year. It was when Soraya fell pregnant. Three separate pregnancy tests and six blue lines stated a clear fate. Fatherhood before graduation, the thing Therése had warned him about before Séraphin left home had come to pass.
“But how?” asked Séraphin. When they had run out of condoms they looked at each other, temptation high, each ready to acquiesce to the obvious weakness if the other said it first. But neither ever gave in.
They had been careful.
They had followed the rules.
“I think the condom tore,” Soraya said. They were in her Sea Point apartment. Outside, the promenade was full of early evening joggers and couples walking hand in hand. As Séraphin gazed out of the window the number of baby strollers being wheeled around the green lawn seemed to double and quadruple in response to the present predicament. Soraya was sitting on the couch, knees pulled to her chin. “What’re we going to do now?” she asked.
The question echoed throughout the Great Chamber of the Séraphins. The tiered, circular room stretched all the way up to an unseen ceiling high above. On each tier, rows of Séraphins sat looking down at the central stage, which was bathed with light from an unknown source. There were great and powerful Séraphins from recent times, and older ones from days gone by. Most were products of daydreams, popping into existence from the ingestion and assimilation of pop culture, niche reading, the fantastic imagination and needling anxieties of a boy not yet a man. The bottommost rows of the Great Chamber were reserved for the strongest, the Lord Séraphins, who embodied the most constant strains of thought, while the rows higher up were occupied by the youngest Séraphins, often forgotten but still floating around.
The first of the Lord Séraphins stood up and left his seat. He walked to the stage to address the Great Chamber. His afro was round and black, his brow furrowed with concern. He wore emerald green armour. He was grave and his stoic nature was unlike most of the other Séraphins. His company was not sought after. Before he spoke he produced the three pregnancy tests from some secret pocket. The tests hovered in the air above his gloved hand. All of the assembled Séraphins looked at the floating plastic wands of doom. When the Afro Séraphin spoke it was slowly and deliberately. “We have to tell Mamma and Pappa,” he said.
“And what do you think they’ll say?” asked another of the Lord Séraphins. This one’s hair was braided into neat rows and beads jangled at the ends. His basketball vest was a deep red, accented with black and white. The Ballin’ Séraphin’s determination on the court was respected by all and his tendency to use a few dirty tricks to change the outcome of a Sunday pick-up game was generally frowned upon until it delivered victory. “Congratulations, Séraphin, this is exactly what we were looking for. Grandchildren. Who’d want degrees when you could have children?” He looked around the Chamber. “One does not simply disclose a pregnancy. There’s judgement there that does not sleep.”
“Then what do you suggest we do?” another Lord Séraphin asked. He was shorter, a
nd wore a black T-shirt with Bruce Lee caught in mid strike. He pulled off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. His was the heavy task of completing readings under self-imposed pressure, ensuring assignment deadlines were met. The Late Night Séraphin was perpetually overworked.
“We do the right thing.” The oldest of the Lord Séraphins left his seat to come and stand next to the Afro Séraphin upon the stage. His white staff struck the ground with an echoing boom. The White Séraphin’s skin was an even brownness and his armour was white and filigreed with gold. His cape was golden. His jewelled sword belt held a longsword of fine craftsmanship. His counsel was binding but his pronouncements were few and far between. He preferred to let the others manage their own affairs. “We’ve all done this thing,” he said. “Deliberate or not these consequences may be, the outcome remains the same. We have to bear them out as best as we can and accept whatever fate comes our way.”
“Nigga, please!” said the Ballin’ Séraphin. “With all due respect, m’lord, I disagree.”
“What would you suggest we do then?” asked the Afro Séraphin.
“We have to ask Soraya to have an – ” He hesitated. He felt the consequences of what he was about to say thumping in his chest like the banes in Pandora’s box, seeking release. He feared what he would unleash so instead he said, “I – I don’t know.”
“You have not the courage to use the word and yet you seek its reprieve,” said the White Séraphin to the baller. “We must do the right thing. We must keep it.” His words silenced the Great Chamber.
“No.”
The word drifted from the highest tier in the room, falling like a wounded bird and landing with a thud on the centre stage upon which the Afro and White Séraphins stood. The Great Chamber looked up as one. The top of the chamber was obscured for an instant by something which launched itself from the topmost tier and spread its black wings, gliding down the chamber to land on the stage in a whoosh which buffeted the two Séraphins. When its massive wings were retracted and folded it turned to face them.
