The Cry of the Go-Away Bird Read online

  I watched her pass, fascinated. Her loose breasts swayed like ripe pawpaws on a tree, and she had the same stride as the slow-stepping ostrich that eyed her from behind the fence. I looked down to my own legs and saw knees scaly from scabs and grazes, and chubby white flesh. My skin looked an unhealthy colour in the noon light, veiny and blue. It did not have that polished-wood glow.

  In reality, no one was really white (white like blank paper, or clean washing); people were pink, sunburnt red, sallow or brown. White was a state of mind. White was being shunted hurriedly to the front of a queue, watched by a hundred resentful eyes. White was money, swimming pools, two cars. It was glow-in-the-dark, marking you at once on a black street. All those poems we learned at school about skin fair as snow, fair as petals or milk or cream, did not take the other side of it into account – the lack of pigment, the sickly, greenish tinge that white skin could have, the way it made us ghosts in a vivid country.

  Sean roared up on the bike. Mum looked up from her work and gave me a knowing look, and I glared at her and stomped off.

  I went out the back to sit with the ostrich babies, and watched one of them trying to run through a solid wall. They were even stupider than chickens, with long, adolescent legs.

  Sean found me. ‘Howzit! What are you up to?’

  ‘Watching the ostriches.’

  ‘All right.’ He stood with his hands on his hips, unconsciously (or consciously?) copying his father’s pose.

  ‘Hey, come here a sec,’ he said.

  I stood up and made a big show of brushing the sand off my knees. ‘What?’

  ‘Come on the bike. I’ve got something to show you.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Just come, man.’

  I walked with him, feeling the new bra move with my body. I crossed my arms over my chest, afraid he would see it.

  ‘What do you think about this land redistribution stuff?’ I said when we reached the bike. I wanted to show him that I was aware of the political situation, that even though he was older than me and starting to think about leaving school, I no longer thought of him as a big hero.

  ‘It’s stupid, man. They’ll never do it, ek sei? The farms are too important. We bring in all the money.’

  Sean had started talking like this lately. ‘I tuned him this’. ‘What’s the gwan?’ It was the way the black kids in my class talked. I could not blame him – I had started wearing an Oliver Mtukudzi vest and wooden jewellery, and listening to the same music Kurai listened to.

  ‘So you guys are staying here?’

  ‘Of course.’ Sean grinned suddenly. ‘I’ve got to take over the farm, hey?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Nah, but one day. Think I’ll make a good Big Baas?’

  I looked at him. I could imagine him joking with the workers like his father did, knowing each of them by name. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Ja, you know it.’ He was still grinning. My skin itched, and I scratched my arm, hard, raising a pink welt.

  ‘Ja, well, there’s more to running a farm than speaking Shona.’

  ‘Sure, I know.’

  I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t sound like it.’

  ‘Eeesh,’ he drew his breath in through his teeth. ‘You’re like a bluddy porcupine today. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I did not know what was up, except that it had something to do with bras and periods and seeing that beautiful African woman walk past. ‘I’m busy. I’m working with Mum.’

  ‘Agh, fine.’ He glared at me. ‘Suit yourself.’ He climbed back on the bike, gave me an exaggerated wave and kicked it into life. A few minutes later, Shumba came lolloping around the corner. He must have followed Sean from the house, and only just caught up. I poured him a bowl of water and watched as he gulped it down, smiling at me sidelong with his black lips and eyes.

  ‘Dumb dog,’ I said, and reached out to ruffle his ears. I heard the motorbike in the distance, and felt something watching me. A touch on the nape of my neck. I straightened up and looked around – nothing but gum trees. I thought I had imagined it, but the fur on Shumba’s back was lifted, and his lips were pulled back in a half-snarl.

  I felt like I had received a warning. The sound of Sean’s motorbike had faded completely, but I felt an urge to run after him, call him back.

  That night I lay awake for a long time. It felt like the land had taken a breath, and we were all waiting for it to exhale.

  Chapter Twelve

  Whites, whites, whites, was all we heard on the news. We were being blamed for everything, but especially for taking land away from the blacks back when we were British and not Zimbabwean. I knew I was white, but I was a Zimbabwean too. Mum was born here. Steve was born here. How long did we have to be here before we were properly Zimbabwean?

  The Shona said that killing a person tied you to the place where you committed the murder. The blood spilled on the soil had a power that would draw you back, and ngozi – the vengeful spirits of the dead – would follow you. It must work with birth as well as death, I thought. There must be some primitive magic to tie you to the place where you were born, where you slid out of your mother bloody and gasping, mouth open like a dying person gulping for air.

  Munyu was a smiling, blue-black man with teeth too big for his jaw. He was a worker, to begin with, but was soon promoted to foreman because of his smile and easy friendliness; a friendliness that did not step over the line of proper respect, and made everyone feel good.

  ‘He knows his place,’ said someone.

  ‘He obviously loves his job,’ said another.

  ‘He’s a bluddy good guy,’ said Steve when he came home.

  It occurred to me that white people often said black people obviously enjoyed their jobs, because they were so often smiling and laughing or humming as they worked. Tatenda sang all day in the garden, so much that Mum started closing the windows on whatever side of the house was closest to him. When he shifted to a different job in a different part of the garden, she got up and opened those windows, and closed others.

  ‘Why don’t you just ask him to stop?’ I said.

  ‘It’s nice that he sings,’ said Mum. ‘I just don’t want to listen to it all day.’

  ‘Why is it nice?’

  ‘Because it shows he’s happy.’

  The Shona sang all the time. I did not think it meant that they were always happy.

  Mum suggested asking Munyu and his wife to our house for tea.

  ‘Ja, maybe it’s a good idea,’ said Steve.

  We were all treading warily then, trying to prove we were proper white Zimbabweans, not leftover Rhodies. Steve issued the invitation, and a date was set.

  It was strange seeing Saru serve tea to Munyu and his wife. Munyu took the china cup with gracious thanks, and held it delicately. Saru was clearly disgruntled. She sighed heavily and deliberately clattered things on the tray as she placed it on the table.

  ‘Thank you, Saru,’ said Mum.

  ‘Mazvita tatenda, Amai,’ said Munyu. Saru gave him a heavy-lidded, expressionless stare and stalked back to the kitchen with a stiff back.

  Mum made bright conversation with Munyu’s wife, Nyasha. So what do you do, Nyasha? Really? How interesting. And how long have you been married? The men perched right on the edge of their chairs, with their legs apart in a manly way, nodding and smiling more than was required.

  We had to avoid so many subjects. When we had white guests, Steve could relax in his chair and complain about the servants and that bluddy munt in charge of it all, and gossip about the farmers we knew. We could not talk about any of those things.

  I noticed Mum was wearing a colourful print skirt, vaguely African, and Steve was in his Lake Kariba shirt. Even I was wearing my wooden giraffe necklace. Munyu and Nyasha were in carefully Western clothes – polo shirts, slacks. When Tatenda came around to water the beds by the verandah, we all sat and watched him – whistling, dousing the plants with far too much water. Normally Steve would have told him off
, but not today. We sat and watched Tatenda, and felt a sense that the world was wrong, that things were not aligned properly today. Eventually Steve sent him off to the back of the house instead, which should have made things easier, but now we had nothing to look at but each other.

  Soon Munyu cleared his throat and got to his feet. He was still holding his teacup and had to take a step forward to put it down, almost colliding with Steve, who had got up to shake his hand. The china looked delicate and too pretty in his big black hand, and he set it down far too carefully. He and Nyasha made their excuses. Thank you, thank you, lovely, must do it again, come to our place. Nyasha clapped her cupped hands before shaking Mum’s.

  When they were gone, the whole house took a breath of relief. We sat down for another cup of tea on the verandah.

  ‘Six sugars, she had in her tea,’ said Mum as if she were talking to herself.

  ‘Ja, well . . .’ said Steve, letting his sentence trail off. Everyone knew that blacks had lots of sugars in their tea.

  ‘Nice couple,’ said Mum.

  ‘Ja, very.’ Steve heaved himself out of his chair. ‘Did you see Tatenda soaking those poor bluddy plants? I’ve told him a hundred times.’

  ‘I’d better tell Saru about dinner,’ said Mum.

  Everything was all wrong. I felt a painful tenderness towards Munyu and Nyasha. I wanted to run after them and tell them not to worry, it was our problem. We were the ones who could not seem to get rid of our old ideas. Perhaps Mugabe was right, in some ways.

  ‘What is the Baas thinking?’ Saru said to me in Shona as she did the washing up. She had broken a glass already, as she tended to when she did the washing up in a heightened emotional state.

  I lounged against the bench, drinking a Coke. If Mum were here she would have told me to do the drying up, but when I did Saru and I spent all our time apologising whenever we brushed against each other, and it was less stressful just to let her get on with it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Bringing such guests.’ Saru knew by now that I did not report any of our conversations to Mum and Steve. This meant that I heard a lot of the neighbourhood gossip, as well as some interesting insights into my own family.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Saru tutted to herself. I could see she was genuinely upset.

  ‘Why . . .’ I thought of how to phrase it. ‘Why didn’t you like the guests?’

  ‘It is not right,’ said Saru. ‘I should not have to serve them.’

  Saru and Tatenda had their own world within ours – their secret jokes, their Shona conversations, their good-natured pilfering of small items – like students passing notes behind a teacher’s back. And, apparently, their own rules.

  Maybe we were not the only ones still clinging to old ideas. We saw blacks on the news saying, ‘These whites treat us like dogs. We won the war for Independence, and they lost. They should not be allowed to treat us like this. They should behave like people who lost a war, instead of like British Imperialists.’

  We heard stories of the workers on white farms turning against their masters, just as we heard stories of the workers rising up to defend the big Baases. I could not imagine Tatenda and Saru having the same thoughts about us. Saru smiled constantly – the first thing I saw in the morning was her smile, and as she left in the evenings to go back to her family, her teeth were a white slash in the darkness. Tatenda sang, whistled and hummed all day, cracked jokes, flirted, played with the cat. Did they really wish us gone? Or worse?

  Once I had this thought I started to notice things. I noticed how Saru would sometimes look at us with a cold, absent gaze, as if a mask had slipped for a moment. I noticed the way she smiled unapologetically after Mum reprimanded her (awkwardly and unwillingly – Mum had never learned the regal white way of dealing with servants) for some error. I listened to the songs Tatenda was humming, and I was sure I could hear some of the pro-Mugabe tunes in there. But I could have imagined that.

  White farmers appeared every day on the news and in the papers.

  Mum thought that the land should be redistributed. ‘We did take it away from them,’ she said, ‘and we need to give it back if we’re going to move forward as a nation.’

  ‘Bluddy ridiculous,’ said Steve. ‘Half that land wasn’t even arable until the whites sank wells and cultivated the soil.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ I said, siding with Mum. ‘They were here first.’ The word ‘they’ sat strangely in my mouth. I would rather have said ‘we’. My whiteness felt like badly fitting clothes.

  ‘Ja, well, the farmers now aren’t the bluddy first settlers who took the land. They inherited it or bought it legally and they shouldn’t have to give it up.’

  ‘I’m not saying they shouldn’t have compensation,’ said Mum. ‘And they wouldn’t have to give up all the land.’

  ‘Ja, and give it to people who’ll grow five mealies for their families and export nothing. The economy will collapse, man.’

  ‘Not if people are trained properly,’ Mum said. ‘I think this is a good thing.’

  ‘I’m sure Mugabe will keep the whole thing legal and above board,’ said Steve with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘All I’m saying is that if they do it properly I think it is a good idea.’

  ‘Bluddy Kaffir-boetie,’ said Steve. He said it jokingly, but I saw him twirling his glass, watching the ice melt into the gin, and I wondered if he would be a bitter old Rhodie one day, when the harsh African heat and the dust and the relentless struggle had worn him down.

  We hardly ever went into the central city. Our lives revolved around our house, the farm, the shopping centre and school. The rest of the country might as well not have existed for all we saw of it.

  Biking down to the farm shop one day, I rode up on to the footpath and almost hit a little black girl who was walking with her dad. The girl’s hair was braided close to her head and fixed with little pink ribbons at the end of each stiff ridge. Someone must have spent hours getting her ready. She squealed and jumped aside, and I swerved.

  ‘Sorry!’ I said, but her father had already started shaking his fist.

  ‘You bluddy white kids, you think you own the place!’ he shouted. ‘You could have killed my daughter!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I stopped a few feet behind them.

  ‘You think you can do whatever you want, but this is our country! Go back to Britain!’

  I felt like I should stay there and debate this with him. Convince him that I was a real Zimbabwean, despite my skin, and that I was not going to run away to a country that was not truly mine. Instead, I jumped back on the bike and pedalled as fast as I could.

  The next time I realised that I was a ‘White’ with a capital letter was when I accompanied Kurai to the driver’s licence office. She was desperate for the freedom of a car. Technically you had to be fifteen to get a learner’s licence, but everyone knew you could bribe the officials to give you one earlier.

  ‘Sha, imagine being able to go wherever you want, whenever you want,’ she said.

  Our world had shrunk so much that it was difficult to think about going somewhere new.

  We went to the licensing office and joined the queue. It snaked out of the main buildings, out of the iron gates, and out on to the road. There were over a hundred people in front of us.

  ‘And, of course, I need to pee,’ said Kurai. ‘Typical. See a loo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Typical.’

  We stood in line with the others. I noticed that I was the only white person there. A group of men stood a few metres away, not in the queue. They pointed at me and talked rapidly amongst themselves in Shona.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Kurai.

  She shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  One man split away from the group and came over to us.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, with an ingratiating smile. He was missing his two front teeth.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. Kurai just raised her eyebrows.

/>   ‘You want driver’s licence?’ he asked me.

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘I get it for you, cheap-cheap.’

  ‘Uh, no thanks.’

  ‘Five hundred dollars,’ he said. His face was close to mine, and I could see the shine of sweat on his upper lip.

  ‘We’re not interested,’ said Kurai.

  The man shrugged and went back to his group, waving his hand at us in what I hoped was a friendly way.

  An official poked his head out from the office and spotted us. A couple of minutes later, a man in uniform came down the line.

  ‘Are you queuing for a driver’s licence?’ he asked us.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kurai.

  ‘Come.’ He led us into the office, past a row of accusing faces.

  ‘Is it just because I’m white?’ I asked Kurai in a whisper.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘But they hate me.’

  ‘Maybe, but you have money. Or, at least, they think you do.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘No, but it’s better than standing in that queue for another two hours. I still need to pee.’

  When we got inside, the officials were smiling and friendly. Kurai got her licence without any trouble.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ said one of the men when we left. We walked past the accusing faces again.

  My skin had such power, good and bad.

  Several weeks later, I asked about Munyu and his wife.

  ‘Oh,’ said Steve, ‘I thought I’d told you. Munyu died last week, suddenly. Turned out he had AIDS.’

  ‘What about Nyasha?’

  Steve shrugged. But we both knew.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The workers on the farm started to complain about tokoloshes. According to legend, they hid under beds and attacked their victims in the night. The workers raised their beds high on bricks, so that they could spot any lurking tokoloshes. Others claimed to see leopards walking upright like men. A child went missing from one of the compounds.

  ‘He wandered into the Bush,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘Probably got snapped up by a mangy lion too slow to catch buck. Nothing mysterious there.’