The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  Isa swallowed and looked away and saw a clutch of boys crouching in the corner of the garden near the low white wall. They were probably playing with worms or cards or something. Isa watched them idly. Every once in a while, the four boys would stand and move a little further away, then huddle down again. Isa grew curious. Were they following a trail? They inched along the garden wall towards where it broke off by a corner of the house. Just around that corner was the guava tree Isa climbed every afternoon after school. The boys stood and stepped and crouched once more. Isa grew suspicious.

  She got up, absently brushing the ashes from her marigold dress, streaking it with grey. She looked down at the stains and bit her lip and squeezed one hand with the other, caught between her resolve to do a good deed and her need to change her dress. She glanced back at the veranda. The adults were roaring with laughter, slumping with drunkenness. Whatever wrongdoing was happening in her garden, it was up to Isa to fix it.

  * * *

  She raced diagonally across the lawn in her bare feet. As she neared the wall, she slowed and stalked the boys, tiptoeing right up to their backs and peering over their shoulders. At first she couldn’t see much of anything, but then she caught a glimpse of a thick-looking puddle at their feet. It was mostly clear but, as Jumani now pointed out in a hushed whisper, there were spots of blood in it. Isa’s eyes widened. Blood in her own garden? She looked back at the party. Emma was interrupting Stephie’s quiet read; Winnifred’s freckles were pooling into an orange stain in the middle of her forehead as she concentrated on the next croquet hoop; Ahmed, snot dripping dangerously close to his open mouth, stared back at Isa but he seemed sunstruck rather than curious. She glared warningly at him and turned back. The boys had disappeared around the corner of the garden wall. Isa took a deep breath, circled the mysterious puddle, and followed.

  She found them squatting at the foot of the guava tree – her guava tree, with its gently soughing leaves, its gently sloughing bark. Isa strode towards them with purpose, abandoning all efforts at sneakiness now. But the boys were too fascinated with whatever they saw to notice her. A whining and a rustling from under the tree drowned the sounds of her approach. Isa looked over their hunched shoulders, her throat tight. Lying on its side, surrounded by the four boys, was Ba Simon’s dog.

  Cassava was a ridgeback, termed thus because of the tufted line of fur that grew upward on either side of the spine. At the bottom of this tiny mane, just above the tail, was a little cul-de-sac of a cowlick. Ba Simon had named the dog Cassava because of her colour, though Isa had always thought her yellowish white fur was closer to the colour of the ivory horn her father had hung on the living-room wall. Today Cassava’s fur was crusted over with rust, and her belly, usually a grey suede vest buttoned with black teats, was streaked with dark red.

  The boys were whispering to each other. Isa’s first thought was that they had poisoned Cassava and were now watching her die a slow, miserable death under the guava tree. But then she realised that Cassava’s head was pivoting back and forth along the ground. Isa stepped to one side and only then did she see the oblong mass quivering under the eager strokes of Cassava’s long pink tongue. The mass was the cloudy colour of frozen milk but the way it wobbled was more like jelly – or the layer of fat on gravy that’s been in the fridge too long. It was connected by a pink cord to a slimy greenblack lump. Jumani reached a stick towards it to investigate.

  ‘No!’ Isa said in a hushed shout.

  Jumani dropped the stick and he and the others turned to her. Cassava whined and licked faster, her tail sweeping weakly. Just then the oblong thing on the ground jerked. Isa pointed at it, her eyes wide. The boys turned back. Where Cassava was insistently licking, there was a patch along the oily surface through which they could just glimpse a grey triangle. It was an ear. Isa took a seat beside the boys in the dust, her precious marigold dress forgotten.

  Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of reverence, the children didn’t try to touch Cassava again while her tongue continued to lap at the oblong mass. Occasionally a tobacco-tainted breeze would float from around the corner or laughter would flare up, crackling down to a chortle. But the grown-ups didn’t come. The children watched in silence, gasping only once, when the outer skin finally burst, releasing a pool that crept slowly over the ground.

  There it was, lying in a patch of damp dirt, trembling as Cassava’s tongue grazed its sticky body. It was the size of a rat. It was hairy and pink. Its face was a skull with skin. Below its half-closed pink eyelids, its eyes were blueblack and see-through. But no, that was just the sunlight dappling through the guava tree leaves and reflecting off them. If you looked closer, you could tell those eyes were opaque.

  The boys grew restless. Cassava was still licking but nothing was happening. The mystery was revealed, the thing was dead. What else was there to see? They got up and strolled off, already knocking about for other ways to pass the afternoon. Jumani offered Isa a hand up but she shook her head. Awed, resolved to maintain her dignity and her difference from the boys, Isa stayed with Cassava and the dead pup. She was so absorbed in that hypnotic tongue rocking the corpse back and forth that she didn’t notice the girl until she spoke.

  ‘He et all the bebbies?’ the girl asked, then answered herself. ‘Eh-eh, he et them.’

  Isa looked around and saw nothing. Laughter fell from the sky. Isa looked up. Ba Simon’s daughter was sitting in a wide crook of the tree, head hanging to one side as she smirked down. Chanda was nine, close enough to Isa’s age, but they weren’t allowed to play together because of an unspoken agreement between Ba Simon and Isa’s mother. Once, when they were much younger, the two girls had been caught making mud pies together. They had been so thoroughly scolded by their respective parents that even to look at each other felt like reaching a hand towards an open flame. Isa’s entrance into the Italian School had made their mutual avoidance easier, as had her innate preference for adult conversation and her recently acquired but deeply held feelings about the stained men’s t-shirt that Chanda wore as a dress every day.

  Isa glared at Chanda’s laughing face.

  ‘He ate what? But anyway, it’s obviously a she,’ she said.

  Chanda descended expertly from the tree, flashing a pair of baggy pink panties on the way down. Isa concluded that Chanda had been secretly climbing the guava tree during school hours and that she had stolen the panties off the clothes line. Chanda lowered herself to the ground.

  ‘His stomach has been velly low,’ she said. ‘And then pa yesterday? He was just crying-crying the ho day. Manje ona, just look. He is eating the bebbie.’

  Isa was horrified, then dubious. ‘How do you know?’

  Chanda, standing with her feet apart and her hands on her haunches in imitation of Ba Enela, nodded knowingly. ‘Oh-oh? You don’t believe. Just watch.’

  Cassava’s licking tongue had not changed its rhythm, but her teeth seemed to have moved closer to the dead-eyed skull. Isa shuddered and scrambled to her feet. Mustering all her courage, she stretched out her bare foot and kicked the dead puppy as hard as she could away from Cassava. It tumbled away into the dust, a guava leaf trailing it like an extra tail. Cassava growled ominously.

  ‘Did she do that yesterday too?’ Isa demanded, reaching behind her for Chanda’s hand.

  Chanda was silent. Cassava began scudding her distended torso across the ground towards the puppy. Isa glanced at Chanda’s face, which, in reflecting her own fear, terrified her further. Cassava wheezed and growled at the same time. Her thin legs twitched.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Isa said breathlessly.

  And they did, their hands still clasped, Cassava baying behind them.

  * * *

  Isa felt buoyed by running, like it had released something in her. She let her legs go as fast as they wanted, relishing the pounding of her feet on the dusty path towards the servants’ quarters. It had been a long time since she had
visited this concrete building at the bottom of the garden. When Isa was a very little girl, like Emma, there had been an emergency. Her father had drunk too much gin from his bleary glass and tumbled to the ground, his football stein clutched unbroken in his hand. There hadn’t been anyone to take care of Isa while her mother veiled up and drove the Colonel to the hospital. So Isa had gone home with Ba Simon for supper.

  Instead of spaghetti con carne, they had eaten nshima and delele, the slimy okra dish that always reminded her of the shimmery snail trails on the garden wall. Ba Simon had been as kind and as chatty as usual, but the servants’ quarters had been dark and cold and oddly empty, his wife and daughter hidden away despite having cooked the meal. Isa had been relieved to hear the soft shuffle of her mother’s hairs on the floor later that night…

  Isa stopped with a cry – she had stepped on a sharp rock. Her halt jolted Chanda, who was still holding her hand. Isa let go and lifted her foot to examine the sole. It wasn’t bleeding but there was a purple dot where the rock had dented it. An arrow of fear pierced Isa’s exhilaration, deflating her back into her sulky self. She lowered her foot and turned to see how far they had run. The Corsales’ garden was big enough to encompass a small field of maize and greens, which Isa glimpsed now through the tangle of mulberry bushes to her right, with their slight limbs and stained roots. She turned to look ahead. Another patch of green, the vegetable garden behind the servants’ quarters, was visible in the distance, just beyond the avocado tree with the old tyre swing. She really ought to go and tell Mama about the dog.

  When Isa turned to inform Chanda of this with her most grown-up voice, she found herself surrounded by three other children. There was a boy who looked just like Chanda, and two younger girls, toddlers, who looked just like each other. Isa stared at them. She had never seen twins in person before. They stood with their hands clasped behind their backs, their bellies protruding like they were pretending to be pregnant. Isa sometimes played this game in the bath, pushing her belly out as far as it could go until her breath ran out. But this did not seem to be what the girls were doing. A picture of Cassava’s low stomach from last week flashed through Isa’s head. One of the girls was probing the inside of her cheeks with her tongue. The other was making stuttery noises.

  Chanda apparently understood her because she replied in Nyanja, pointing at Isa and shaking her head. The boy looked at Isa, smiling broadly. He stepped forward and held out his hand, making the same upturned tray Isa had made for Doll’s goblets. Isa stepped back, unsure.

  ‘Bwela,’ Chanda implored. ‘Come. Come.’

  She pointed to the servants’ quarters to show where Isa was meant to come. There was bluish smoke and the sound of splashing water coming from it. Isa relented.

  * * *

  The children walked together through the tall grass towards the building. It was squat and grey and had no door, just a gap in the facade for an entrance. There were no windows, either, just square holes drilled into the concrete for ventilation grilles. As they approached it, the boy ran around to the back shouting something. A young woman Isa had never seen before appeared from behind the quarters, carrying a metal pot, her wrists and hands wet. She wore a green chitenge wrapper and an old white t-shirt. Isa noticed immediately that the woman wasn’t wearing a bra: you could see the shape of her breasts and the dark outline of her nipples.

  The woman smiled at Isa and waved, and called out, ‘Muli bwanji?’

  Isa knew this greeting and replied in an automatic whisper, without smiling, ‘Bwino.’

  When the woman reached Isa, she stretched her hand out to shake but didn’t bend at the knee or touch her right elbow with her left hand as blacks usually did. Halfway through the handshake, Isa realised that she was the one expected to curtsy. She hurried to bend her knees but they seemed to be locked and she managed only a jerky wobble. The woman lifted her nose imperiously. She turned to Chanda and demanded something. Chanda shrugged and ran up the three steps and into the quarters, dribbling a forced giggle behind her.

  ‘Ach,’ the woman said and sucked her teeth. As she headed back to the rear of the building to finish her washing, she gestured for Isa to follow Chanda inside.

  Isa gingerly made her way up the steps and into the velvety darkness within. The concrete floor wasn’t dirty – it was polished to a slippery shine – but the dust on her bare feet rasped as she entered. There was a strong coppery smell of fried kapenta with a tinge of woodsmoke. As she pressed forward, the smell took on an acrid note that she dimly recognised as pee. It was so dark that she couldn’t see anything except the gold grid on the floor where sunlight had squeezed through the ventilation grille. The fuzzy squares seemed more radiant for having been through that concrete sieve. As she moved into the lattice of light, it travelled up her legs until it was glowing on her stomach. She raised her hand into the light and it made her palm glow like the orange street lamps on Independence Ave…

  A chuckle from the corner interrupted her reverie. Isa looked around, concentrating on the darkness, willing her eyes to adapt until they could just make out three dark figures sitting in a corner. There was a young woman, younger than the one outside; an old woman, who was mumbling something; and Chanda, who sat cross-legged, fiddling with an ancient cloth doll with a familiar shape. Isa worked out that it was the faceless ghost of the doll who had preceded Doll. She felt a little shocked that it should be here then even more shocked that she had forgotten it to such a fate. She stepped towards Chanda with a notion of accusing her.

  Only then did Isa see the baby sitting on the young woman’s lap – she moved closer – and sucking on the woman’s breast. Isa knew about breastfeeding, but she’d never seen it in action before. She couldn’t tell whether the baby was a boy or a girl. It had short hair and was naked but for a cloth nappy. Isa wanted to turn away but she couldn’t stop looking at how the child’s lips moved and how the breast hung, oblong and pleated like a rotten pawpaw. The women were still deliberating, clearly about her. Chanda, who was responsible for this intrusion, for this straying, sat staring at Isa, absently twisting the old doll’s arm as if to detach it.

  The baby began to cry. It did not wail – this was an intelligent sobbing, like it wanted something. Isa stared at it and realised it was staring back. Its mother lifted it and bounced it on her lap. After a moment, the old woman started laughing, a rattling laugh that devolved into a cough and then rose back up again to the heights of gratified amusement. She said something to the woman. The woman laughed too. Chanda joined in with a forced high-pitched trill.

  ‘What?’ Isa asked.

  They kept laughing. The woman stood, holding the baby so it faced Isa. She gazed at its sobbing face, which was distorted with wet concentric wrinkles, like its nose was a dropped stone rippling a black pool. The baby shrieked, wriggling its arms and kicking its legs. Was she supposed to take it in her arms? The room echoed with laughter and weeping. Was she supposed to laugh too?

  ‘What?’ Isa demanded.

  The laughing woman began shoving the baby towards Isa’s face in little jerks.

  ‘What?! What?!’ Isa shouted.

  The baby’s face came so close to hers that their noses touched.

  ‘Muzungu,’ the woman said.

  As if at the flip of a switch, Isa burst into tears. She turned and ran from the building, tripping down the steps in her haste, her breath hitching on every corner of her young-girl chest. As she ran past the mulberry trees, the beat of her feet released a flock of birds from their boughs. They fluttered past her and flickered above her bobbing head, their wings a jumble of parentheses writing themselves across the sky.

  * * *

  The night brought the breeze and the mosquitoes. The guests waned in number and spirit. Isa’s mother planted bristling kisses upon their cheeks and sent them off to navigate Lusaka’s roads and their drunken dramas on their own. The Colonel was still in the garden, doz
ing in his chair. One hand clasped his football glass to his belly, the other dangled from the armrest, swaying like a hanging man. In the old days, his wife had dragged him to bed herself. But over the years, his boozing had swollen more than just his ankles. These days, she just ordered Ba Simon to do it.

  ‘A-ta-se! I’m not carrying that cornuto to bed. The man’s earlobes are fat,’ she grumbled, leaving her husband to the night, the breeze and the mosquitoes.

  Isa wandered around the yard, yawning, picking up Mosi bottles of various weight under Ba Simon’s direction. She hadn’t told anyone about the dead puppy yet, or about the residents of the servants’ quarters – did they realise how many people lived there? – or about the laughter and the baby and how she had been named. Isa felt tired and immensely old, old in a different way from the times she played teacher to the other children. Old like her father was old, a shaggy shambling old, an old where you’d lost the order of things and felt so sad that you simply had to embrace the loss, reassuring yourself with the lie that you hadn’t really wanted all that order to begin with.

  She collapsed on the grass beside the Colonel’s chair. The wicker creaked in rhythm with his snoring. She put her fingers in his dangling hand.

  ‘Papa?’ she said softly. ‘Dormendo?’

  Isa spoke Italian to her parents only when she was very tired. The Italian School had helped her recover some of the simple Italian her parents had used with her as a toddler. But like most of the other expats in Lusaka, the Corsales generally spoke some muddled version of English at home. Isa slapped a mosquito from her shin.

  ‘I went to the servants’ quarters,’ she said.

  The Colonel’s whiffling snore continued. Isa got up and went and sat on her stool beside Ba Simon, who was vigorously scrubbing the grill, singing the same tune from before:…waona manje wayamba kulila…Isa could barely muster the energy to gainsay his song with her own. She only got partway through ‘Drive My Car’, her mother’s favourite song, before she decided to ask him a question.