The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  There were so many people doing so many things that at first Sylvia didn’t see her mother. Then a salty dampness hit the air, the flame sputtered out, and she knew Ba Mayo was here. Sylvia stared at the strand of smoke trickling up from the candle into the air. She felt hands slide under her armpits and lift her up and away from the cake with its dead candle and wrong name and icing of frothy spittle. Sylvia’s legs wrapped automatically around the waist of her rescuer – it was New Aunty.

  ‘Get out of here!’ she was still shouting in a hoarse, shaky voice.

  Ba Mayo stepped towards them. She was shorter and rounder than New Aunty, and New Aunty’s skin was lighter, but face to furious face like this, Sylvia could see how much they looked alike.

  ‘You cannot take care of this child,’ said New Aunty, hefting Sylvia higher on her hip.

  Ba Mayo said nothing, tears rolling steadily down her calm face.

  ‘You are mistreating and abusing her. This is her first birthday party! Isn’t it?’ Aunty turned to Sylvia in her arms. Sylvia nodded. ‘This is Mutinkhe’s first party ever and…’

  Sylvia frowned at the name but burrowed her head into New Aunty’s neck. It smelled like cooking oil and washing powder and butterscotch. New Aunty was still reciting her list of grievances when Ba Mayo reached out and grabbed Sylvia’s arm. Sylvia flinched from her mother’s familiar damp palm, but Ba Mayo gripped harder. Sylvia wrenched her arm away.

  ‘I hate you!’ she said.

  Sylvia barely spoke English. Sylvia barely spoke at all. But from the safe, sweetsmelling compass of New Aunty’s arms, she turned to her mother and tried out those three English words that she had recently heard coming from Grace’s mouth. Sylvia thought she meant them, too, although she didn’t know whether she hated her mother for trying to take her back now or for losing her in the first place.

  * * *

  When Matha woke up the next morning she found the unga sack curtain rolled up beside her on the floor. Grace was gone, along with all of her possessions. Matha learned later that her cousin had moved into the bwana’s house in Handsworth Park. But Matha didn’t really care what had sent that frowning cow packing. No. 74 felt positively palatial without her – Matha could roll twice over on her mat and meet no resistance. No, Matha would not miss Grace.

  She would miss The Weepers though. Those young women, holding hands, telling secrets, arguing over who was sadder, crying like it was a hobby? They had rung the bell of her heart. They had made her feel like maybe she could love properly, that she could learn how to. But her new friends had abandoned her the moment she walked out of Nkuka’s flat that day. They had muttered and sucked their teeth at her. Their eyes had said: Are you not a mother?!

  Well. Maybe she wasn’t. Everyone else seemed to know that you should not believe a child when it pushes you away. That when a little girl says I’m not your friend, and turns up her nose, you smile patiently and take her into your arms anyway. But when Sylvia had looked at her and said I hate you in that reedy little voice, it was one strike too many to the fragile, cracked glass of Matha Mwamba. It shattered her, and so she’d said it back. ‘I hate you, too,’ Matha had croaked at her daughter, as if she were still a child herself, as if her weeping had not made her grow old but made her regress. We’re better off without each other anyway, Matha had thought as she walked out of Nkuka’s flat empty-handed, brushing off The Weepers’ protestations.

  And now they were all gone, even that smelly old bat Mrs Zulu, who had marched away from it all, given up her faith with all the petulance of the disillusioned believer, leaving her Bible behind in No. 74 like a chastisement. Left to her own devices, Matha wept quietly as she mukule’d her own hair, propping up a shard of mirror between her feet to see. She wept gently as she cooked kalembula on the mbaula, adding the bean leaves to the spitting oil, then chopped tomatoes, then diced onions. She wept calmly as she washed her dirty pots with sand under the communal tap and shook them dry. Matha Mwamba was alone but this time her solitude was a choice, her grief a consolation.

  * * *

  ‘Tinkhe, darling?’

  Aunty Cookie knocked on the door frame of the bedroom – Sylvia’s bedroom, her very own. Sylvia was sitting on the floor with her legs wide, a pile of Lego in the fork between them. She looked up and smiled at Aunty, then saw a man standing behind her. He was wearing a hat, which he removed now as he stepped into the room. His hair cupped his head on either side, leaving the top bare. Aunty reached down and helped Sylvia to her feet.

  ‘I want you to meet somebody,’ she said.

  The man stepped towards Sylvia and shook her hand. His felt limp and bony at once, like sticks wrapped in a rag. ‘Hallo,’ he said stiffly. ‘I am your…daddy.’

  ‘Anh?’ Sylvia asked.

  The man was looking at her with confusion as well. Aunty rubbed Sylvia’s shoulder firmly. ‘Remember what I told you, Mutinkhe? I’m your mummy now. And this is your daddy.’

  Sylvia considered. Then she sat back amongst her toys. ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Wakwata imyaka inga?’ the man asked, peering down at her.

  ‘Mutinkhe is five,’ Aunty said. ‘Like I told you!’

  ‘She’s so small!’

  ‘Hallo, Daddy,’ Sylvia piped up in English, trying to help. ‘Me, am Sylvia. I like to play.’

  ‘Let’s leave you to play, then, Tinkhe,’ Aunty said loudly. ‘You can get to know Daddy later.’ She stepped closer to the man. ‘I think she got used to that Sylvia nonsense at my sister’s,’ she said under her breath as she guided him towards the door. ‘In any case, you can see she looks just like you.’

  ‘But are you completely sure, Nkuka?’ Sylvia heard the man ask. ‘Were you not careful?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Aunty with a smile, ‘but with a man like you, with so much power, sometimes these things can break through.’

  ‘Why did you not ask me for…assistance? Why did you not tell me all these years?’

  ‘My relatives helped me out,’ Aunty said sweetly. ‘I did not want to bother you.’

  ‘I do not understand how I could have missed the pregnancy…So many months!’

  ‘You don’t remember? When you took that work trip to Luapula? And then when you were back, I told you I was having problems so we could not…’ Aunty glanced at Sylvia, who promptly lowered her head and concentrated on fitting two Lego pieces together.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is a possibility,’ the man muttered, shaking his head. ‘But—’

  ‘Listen, big bwana,’ Aunty said coyly. ‘I am not having any problems now, so…’

  She twined her fingers in his and pulled him through the open door towards the one across the corridor, her white high heels making pocking sounds, his black Bata shoes shuffling. Just before Aunty shut the door to the master bedroom, she leaned out and gave Sylvia a warning look, a finger over her lips. Sylvia smiled and turned back to her building blocks.

  1984

  In the fourteenth year of her life, Sylvia Mwamba fell in love three times. The first time, she was electrified with that desire that hits teenage girls as fiercely and randomly as a bolt of lightning. Sylvia, struck, had fixed her eyes on a boy at school named Mwaba. The only person she told about it was her best friend, Mutale, who was still in the dark when it came to desire. The girls were both in grade seven, but Mutale was two years younger. Sylvia had started school late, Mutale early – the reverse was true of their periods. Mutale was bright, smugly uncontested at the top of the class, and she looked the part: wiry, bespectacled, supremely indifferent as to the state of her hair. Sylvia, by contrast, was highly conscious of her appearance, though she couldn’t afford to improve her clothes or hair. Aunty Cookie’s patronage – the ‘Mummy’ act was only for Mr Mwape’s visits – was strictly limited to food, shelter and school supplies. The muddled mass of students found Mutale too smart, Sylvia too poor; the girls talked to each
other because no one else wanted to talk to either of them.

  The day love’s lightning struck Sylvia, the girls were sitting under the veranda outside a classroom during their ten-minute tuck-shop break. They ostensibly wore the same uniform: blue dresses, white knee socks, and black mules chalked with dust from the schoolyard stones. But if you zoomed in, you’d see that Mutale’s shoes were Bata-bought, real leather with sturdy binding; Sylvia’s were salaula, secondhand (or secondfoot), battered about the toes. Mutale’s socks were grooved fields of pristine white; Sylvia’s were grey, dimpled with stitches where she’d mended holes. Mutale’s dress was starched to paper-doll starkness; the seams on Sylvia’s sprouted threads like weeds from cracked pavement. To wit, Mutale Phiri lived in a three-bathroom house in Ibex Hill, with a gardener who watered the grass three times a week; Sylvia Mwamba lived in the Indeco Flats, where the plumbing often took sick days.

  Sylvia sat with a bag of crisps in her lap, listening to her friend. Mutale generally gravitated towards two topics: her plans to become a nurse, and her new baby brother, whose bodily secretions were making her reconsider her choice of career. Today, she was expressing her wonder and disgust that an infant’s poo smelled so much like whatever it had eaten. Sylvia knew the only way to make someone listen to your shit was to listen to their shit – or their baby brother’s. But Mutale, mashed popcorn spilling onto her lips, was still going on about soggy nappies and a rainbow of poo and Sylvia hadn’t even managed a preview of her own news. She had actually spoken to a boy! And he had spoken back! Her stomach dove every time she thought about it. Sylvia looked down at the tomato crisps Mutale had bought for her at the tuck shop. Sunlight bounced off the shiny red packet, casting a pinkish smudge on her socks.

  ‘…just makes you think,’ Mutale was shaking her head. ‘How can I even be a mother when—’

  The bell rang. Mutale finally noticed the dismal impatience in Sylvia’s face.

  ‘Pass me a note in fourth?’ she offered.

  * * *

  Sylvia composed the note during third – physical education. For the fifth day in a row, she would not be allowed to participate because she did not have a proper PE uniform. Sylvia was too ashamed to tell her aunty she needed new shorts – her period had leaked last month, sealing the fate of the old ones, which were already thin as paper and torn in places. The PE teacher didn’t even bother telling Sylvia off this time, silently directing her with a pointed finger to the side of the court. Sylvia sat on the ground, tucking her skirt between her thighs to cover her panties. She watched the netball game – shouts hitting the air, hands hitting the ball, bodies hitting each other – paying special attention to a bosomy girl named Nancy, her rival in romance.

  Sylvia pulled her geography notebook out of her bag. The handwriting under each dated entry always started off fine, then gradually keeled forward, slanted flat, then straggled below the lines – she often fell asleep during class. Perched on her sentences like leggy red insects were the teacher’s excitable marks, all exclaiming what Sylvia already knew: that she did not care for geography. She tore out a page from the back of the notebook to write the note:

  Hi. Am feeling confused I dont no whats going on with me but am going a bit insaaaane. I wish I could freese the world jast to think. In the morning HE toked to me. I got a bit emoshanalll. Am not gonna cry but I want to do samthing crazy.

  XOXOXOX,

  Sylvia

  p.s. Thanx for the crisps

  p.p.s. Lok your lips and thro away the key

  This momentous incident had taken place that morning, while everyone was waiting for the morning bell. Mwaba, a precociously tall thirteen-year-old often seen with his arm around Nancy, had been standing at the back of a crowd around the car window of someone’s older brother – cigarettes or beers were being exchanged. Sylvia had mustered up her courage and tapped Mwaba on the shoulder. He’d turned with a raised eyebrow. She’d mumbled a greeting.

  ‘Okay, hi,’ he’d replied, staring at her with a puzzled look, as if a chicken had suddenly turned its head to him and spoken. There was a long pause.

  ‘Checkit, I’m gonna bounce,’ he’d said finally and moved deeper into the cluster by the car. Sylvia had stood dumb, ringing with wonder, watching as he disappeared amongst the backs jostling in front of the older brother’s Benz, joining in the collective sound of disappointment – ‘Nooooo…’ – as something fell outside the car window and landed with a thud.

  * * *

  Sylvia handed the note to her friend at the start of fourth period, as they settled in their chairs before the hulking black typewriters at their assigned desks, Sylvia’s directly in front of Mutale’s. Mutale read the note, rapidly scrawled a reply, and passed it forward to Sylvia:

  I need to open my typewriter before the teacher comes. What do you mean you want to do something crazy? Don’t do anything stupid. It’s just a (disgusting) boy!!!!!

  God bless you and your family,

  Love,

  Muta

  Sylvia’s brow and stomach knotted. She shoved Muta’s useless note beneath the corner of her typewriter as the teacher, a short fleshy woman strapped into a blue skirt suit, walked into the room.

  Mrs Makaza taught all of the typing and secretarial classes. The students called her Yakuza and they feared her mightily. They removed the black plastic lids from their typewriters as Yakuza waddled to the front of the class, stiff-backed and regal despite all that juddering flesh. She smacked a stack of white paper onto her desk. The rustling in the room ceased. Then she faced the students and snapped her gaze up. Her eyes bulged under her thin-tweezed eyebrows.

  ‘Begin!’ she trumpeted.

  The prefect bolted to her feet, ran to the front desk, fetched the stack of paper, and darted down the aisles handing the students two sheets each.

  ‘Heads forward!’

  Sylvia sat up straight. She imagined herself a soldier, one of the rigid bodies that stood in front of the Zambian White House when the national anthem played on TV Zed at 1700 hours each day.

  ‘Put your peppas in!’

  The shiver of the sheets slipping into slots.

  ‘Scroh!’

  A sound like fingernails on jeans as the students scrolled their sheets.

  ‘Fingahs on the keys!’

  A crowd of mice stomping in unison.

  ‘Okay! Begin! A. Spess. A. Spess. A. Spess. A. Full-stop.’ Yakuza began to stalk the aisles to the marching beat of the students’ typing. ‘S. Spess. S. Spess. S. Spess. Nexti-line.’

  Overlapping shwings as the students hit the release levers, sending their carriages flying to the right.

  ‘A-S-D-F. Spess. Semi-cologne-L-K-J. Spess.’

  Now, individual letters rose ranks and became words, which became battalions of sentences.

  ‘The red fox jamped ovah-the-fence,’ Yakuza barked. ‘Nexti-line.’ Shwing.

  Soon the typewriters were clattering, no longer in unison but for the cascade of metallic shwings at the end of each line. Sylvia fell into the rhythm, her carriage chuck-chuck-chucking, her typebars kicking high to land their feet on her page. It was a respite: typing strange sentences about animals she had never seen, being told what to do and being relatively capable of doing it.

  Only when Sylvia smelt soapy sweat and dusty pantyhose did she realise that Yakuza was hovering over her shoulder. Sylvia kept typing but her chest rose with anticipatory pride. Her lines were perfect. Routine had done wonders for her spelling and not once had her typebars tangled. She was caught off guard when Yakuza abruptly snatched the note from under her typewriter.

  Without preface, as if continuing her dictation, Yakuza read Mutale’s note to Sylvia out loud: ‘I need to open my typewriter before the teacher comes.’

  Methodically, all the students except Sylvia and Mutale began typing it out. This was an unusually coherent sentence for Y
akuza but it made a kind of classroom sense. One boy even smiled, noticing that all the letters in the word typewriter were in the top row of the keyboard.

  But then Yakuza went on: ‘What do you mean you want to do something crazy?’

  The clattering of keys dwindled. The students blinked up. Yakuza strolled to the front of the room as she went on, even spelling out Mutale’s punctuation – the parentheses and exclamation points in ‘(disgusting) boy!!!!!’

  ‘So…’ Yakuza murmured in conclusion. This was ominous. Yakuza never spoke below the volume of a shout. ‘Who is this “disgusting boy”, Miss Phiri?’

  Sylvia was still facing forward but she could sense Mutale shaking her head behind her.

  ‘Okay, fine. Let us ask the peppatrator herself.’ Yakuza turned to Sylvia. ‘Miss Mwamba?’

  Sylvia cast her eyes down as titters fluttered across the classroom.

  ‘Anybody?’ Yakuza opened the question to the class. ‘Who is the “disgusting boy”?’

  Sylvia didn’t even catch who said it, so deep was her shock when two voices shouted out:

  ‘Mwaba!’

  ‘It’s Mwaba, Mrs Makaza!’

  Everyone laughed. Sylvia turned and accused Mutale with a glare. Mutale shook her head and crossed her heart and mouthed ‘Hope to die.’ The other students grinned guiltily as the call and response with Yakuza continued: Oh, that one? He’s handsome, eh? Ah, no, Mrs Makaza, he is not, she just does not know, this girl. Oh-oh? So it’s not Mwaba Kashoki? No, it’s the younger one, Mwaba Ndala. That one? Yes! The brother to Simon. Oh-oh? He is handsome? NO!