The Cry of the Go-Away Bird Read online

  ‘I have lived here since before you were born!’

  ‘Ja, and you’re bluddy lucky to have kept your job.’

  ‘Your father would never have spoken to me that way! I have known you since you were a boy. How dare you . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Machende arimuhapwa!’

  ‘Don’t make me bluddy fire you, boy!’ I heard Mr Cooper say to a man almost twenty years his senior.

  I knew what Jonah had said. I remembered it from Chinhoyi. It meant ‘your testicles are under your armpits’, which sounded strange in English but was one of the most terrible insults in Shona.

  On the following weekend, I saw Mr Cooper talking to Jonah in the garden again. They were calmer this time, but they stood with their arms crossed, further apart than you would normally stand if you were having a conversation.

  ‘The bush is practically dead anyway,’ said Mr Cooper.

  The bougainvillea bush was no longer green. It wilted, browned and slumped over the wall as if it were tired. The blossoms at its base had become a pinkish sludge.

  ‘It has been here ever since I have.’

  Mr Cooper waved his hand at the sad, straggly bush.

  ‘Look at it!’

  ‘I can fix it, Baas.’

  ‘I don’t want you to fix it. I want you to take it out. I have a cycad that I want to put there.’

  ‘The old Baas planted that bush.’

  ‘Ja, I know he did. He planted everything in this bluddy garden.’

  ‘The Baas planted that before you were born.’

  ‘I know he did. But I want it taken out.’

  ‘The old Baas would not have done it this way.’

  ‘The old Baas is dead!’ The word thudded in between them like a bird shot from the sky. ‘Now, you go take that bush out quick-quick,’ said Mr Cooper. He had, consciously or not, slipped into Kitchen Kaffir.

  Jonah said nothing. He hoisted his bhadza over his shoulder and walked to the bush. He struck its trunk once, twice, three times. It came away from the fence and started to fall. Jonah stood back, and Mr Cooper made an involuntary movement as if to catch it. Its leaves shivered and rustled as it hit the ground.

  ‘Well. Good,’ said Mr Cooper.

  The marigolds that edged the flower bed were crushed into juicy orange mush by the falling bush.

  Mr Cooper’s house and garden started to be quietly sabotaged. Tools went missing from the shed. This was not unusual – there was a complex barter system between the gardeners of all the farm managers and they regarded tools as communal property.

  Everything from the lawnmower to the hedge clippers disappeared from our shed at intervals, to be replaced by something that very clearly did not belong to us. When we needed something that was missing from the shed, Steve phoned up one of the neighbours, and they rolled their eyes ruefully at each other down the line, chuckling at the African-ness of it all.

  Everyone had heard the story of the gardener whose Baas asked him to bury two cans of petrol. We were all storing extra petrol those days, just in case (of what? A flight to the border?), and so we could all sympathise.

  ‘So this oek, he gives the two cans to his gardener and he tells him to bury them in the garden. The gardener says “Yes, Baas” and goes away. A few weeks later the Baas needs the petrol, so he asks his gardener to show him the spot where it is buried and dig it up. The gardener starts digging, but there is nothing there.

  ‘“Are you sure you put it here?” says the Baas.

  ‘“Yes, Baas, I buried it, just like you said.”

  ‘The guy scratches his head. He just can’t understand it. Then he asks, “When you say you buried it, what exactly do you mean?”

  ‘“I dug a hole, opened the cans and poured the petrol in, Baas.”’

  Howls of laughter.

  This time, however, Mr Cooper’s tools vanished and were not replaced. The hedge trimmers, the big spade, even the saw. Jonah came to Mr Cooper every day with hands outstretched, palms up.

  ‘Baas, I cannot chop the hedge because the clippers are gone.’

  ‘Then use the secateurs.’

  ‘Sah, they are gone too.’ There was a light in Jonah’s eyes as he said this.

  Mr Cooper knew the tools had some help in disappearing, but he played along. He bought new clippers. The new clippers went missing.

  Mr Cooper’s chickens stopped laying eggs – or, at least, there were no eggs there when I went to collect them. A dead rat floated in the pool. Slugs infested the rockery. Torrential rain blocked his gutters and pooled water in the ceiling.

  ‘Jonah doesn’t control the weather,’ said Mum when Mr Cooper listed the problems.

  I was not so sure. Our gutters had become blocked as well, and Tatenda was away visiting his family in the gwash.

  ‘Can I borrow Jonah?’ Steve asked Mr Cooper.

  ‘You’re bluddy welcome to him,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘Good riddance.’

  And so Jonah came to work for us that week. I avoided him as much as I could. He hunched over the gutters, high up on his ladder. Whenever I went outside I saw his dark shape on the roof and felt his eyes on me.

  I started finding dead things everywhere. A baby bird, fallen from a tree. A sticky ball designed to catch flies, covered in crawling things, dropped as if by accident just outside my window.

  ‘The wind must have blown it there,’ said Mum.

  A neat line of shrews, their tiny triangular mouths open in shrewish laughter, lined up on the back doorstep.

  ‘Archie must have been hunting,’ said Mum.

  Archie showed no interest in the shrews at all, after giving them a disdainful sniff.

  ‘But there aren’t any marks on them,’ I said.

  ‘Cats can be so cruel,’ said Mum, which did not really answer my question.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ve had a run of bad luck, that’s all.’

  A few nights later, Archie stumbled in through my bedroom window, his mouth filled with green froth. His eyes were wide and mad.

  ‘Looks like he tried to eat a frog,’ said Steve. He prised Archie’s jaws open.

  ‘We’d better take him to the vet.’

  ‘Good thing he came back,’ said Mum, trying to comfort me. ‘When cats are sick, they sometimes just disappear.’

  I knew Archie would not. He stared at me with milky, panicked eyes as I wrapped him in a towel ready to take to the vet. His legs were stiff and his whole body trembled.

  We woke our vet by banging on the door.

  ‘What the yell is it?’ he said out of the window. He was the hairiest man I had ever seen, and that night he was only wearing boxer shorts. His chest hair was fascinating, but Mum hissed at me to stop staring.

  The vet forced something into Archie to make him vomit. His little jaws worked as he emptied his stomach, and his ears were flat back on his head.

  ‘What do you think caused it?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Poison,’ said the vet. ‘Could be he licked some rat poison one of your neighbours laid down. Or perhaps some insecticide.’

  Mum and the vet bemoaned irresponsible people who left these poisons lying around where anyone’s pet could lick them up. I stroked Archie, seeing the familiar blue flicker of static along his black back.

  The next morning we were pale and dark-eyed. Saru made us a big pot of porridge, as always, and we poured molasses and milk on to it. That morning the molasses seemed to ooze even more slowly, and the porridge seemed even stodgier and more difficult to eat.

  ‘Morning, Medem,’ said Jonah when he came to the back doorstep to get his cup of tea. His eyes flickered to me, and then down to Archie in my lap.

  ‘Archie was sick last night,’ said Mum. ‘He ate some sort of insecticide or poison.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Jonah.

  ‘Have you laid any poison down anywhere, Jonah?’

  ‘Yes, Medem. For the rats.’

  ‘Well, I would rather you didn’t do that. Go and get rid of it, please.’


  ‘Yes, Medem.’ He disappeared.

  ‘Well, mystery solved,’ said Mum, and went back to eating her breakfast.

  I felt uneasy all day. I watched Jonah working in the garden. He was whistling to himself.

  I watched as he took a barrowload of compost to the heap at the end of the garden, then wheeled the empty barrow back. It had a squeaky wheel that shrieked with every turn.

  When it was Jonah’s lunchtime, he disappeared for a while. Now that I could not see him, I felt even more uncomfortable. In the morning, Archie was recovering from his poisoning, stretched out on a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel. In the afternoon, he had disappeared.

  ‘Mum, Archie’s missing.’

  ‘He probably just wandered off. Cats do.’

  ‘He always comes when I call him.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Go inside and ask Saru to make us some tea, hey?’

  I went inside and sat, pretending to read, listening for the sound of Archie coming in through the window. The light went purple with evening, and cold stars punched holes in the sky.

  ‘He’s still not here, Mum.’

  ‘He’ll be back when he gets hungry.’

  I could not sleep. I was listening for the sound of paws on the windowsill, waiting for a weight on my feet. They did not come. In the morning I was out on the dewy grass before anyone else was awake, calling.

  He did not come home that day, or the next. By now Mum and Steve were worried too, and we expanded our search. Steve set Jonah to searching as well, and he thrashed the hedges with a stick, whistling under his breath.

  We found him. A neighbour’s gardener came running. He had found a cat in a bush at the side of the road. It looked like our little katsi.

  Archie was limp, his black fur plastered with mud. His tail was still fluffy, though, and it twitched in greeting.

  ‘Do you know what happened?’ Mum asked the gardener who found him.

  ‘It must have been the boys, Medem,’ he said. The blacks generally thought whites were mad for treating their pets like people, but there was real sorrow in this man’s voice.

  We had all seen the gang of local boys, ranging in age from eight to twelve, who wandered around our area from time to time: ringing gate bells and running away; vandalising walls and gates; teasing dogs. It seemed a logical conclusion. And yet. Archie’s back was clearly broken. Someone had picked him up and snapped him as you would snap open a cream-of-tartar pod to get at the flesh inside.

  I did not know whether to pick him up or leave him lying still. His nose was dry and coated with mud – he would never put up with being so grubby if he was well. His pink tongue came out weakly, whisk whisk, tried to clean, but flopped back into his mouth.

  ‘Go and get Steve,’ said Mum. She bent down and picked up Archie. His little cat mouth opened in a pained triangle, but he made no noise. ‘I’ll take him to the vet.’

  At home, I waited for Mum to come back from the vet’s. I could see Jonah working in the rockery. He was smiling and humming. All the darkness and fear of this day seemed to cluster around him.

  He looked up. I ducked my head down and pretended to be reading. When I lifted my eyes again, he was still looking at me. He smiled, slowly, and lifted a hand in greeting.

  When Mum returned, it was with a cardboard box. I looked inside and saw limp fur and a paw, pink and dry. We took the box outside and Mum asked Jonah to dig a hole in one of the flowerbeds. He was still humming something under his breath as he dug.

  I watched him as he leaned on the spade. Mum lowered the box into the ground, then stepped forward and shovelled a spadeful of earth into the grave. It hit Archie’s fur with a soft patter-patter, like rain. A grain of soil rolled down his face and settled in one pink nostril. I waited for him to twitch, and then remembered.

  Mum put her arm around my shoulders, and I did not shrug it off.

  Jonah smiled, and filled in the hole.

  Jonah painted the outside of the house that weekend – another job Steve had put off for a long time.

  ‘Will you keep an eye on him?’ said Mum. It was Saturday, and she and Steve were off to get the groceries. Everything kept going up in price, which made the weekly shop a long process. Mum spent most of it rummaging at the back of the shelves, hoping to find something with the old price tag on it.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Just keep an eye,’ said Mum.

  ‘What do you think he’s going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was sharp. ‘Look, just stay in the house while he’s there, okay? Just in case.’

  Theft by servants was a common complaint among the whites, and people almost assumed that it was going to happen.

  An idea settled under my skin like a putzi fly, coiling and curling.

  Mum and Steve were going to a party that night. Mum needed her gold necklace.

  ‘Steve’ Mum’s voice from the bedroom was distant.

  ‘Ja?’

  Mum came through with a jewellery pouch. She unrolled it, and we all stared at its complete lack of jewellery.

  ‘I saw Jonah standing in the bedroom,’ I said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘I told you not to let him in the house.’

  ‘Ja, well, I went to the bathroom, and when I came out he was in the bedroom.’

  ‘Did he say why he was in there?’

  I shook my head. Mum and Steve exchanged glances.

  ‘Well, that’s that then,’ said Steve. He looked relieved.

  We went around to Mr Cooper’s house to tell him, and he fired Jonah on the spot. I hugged Mercy when we said goodbye. She was in tears, but her husband was standing straight and ominous beside her.

  ‘Goodbye Jonah,’ said Mr Cooper. He had a no-hard-feelings voice and he held out his hand. Jonah stared at him until he dropped it.

  ‘I did not steal from you,’ said Jonah to Steve as he left. He had his arm around Mercy’s waist, and they looked small and shabby as they walked out of the iron gates. All their possessions fitted in one suitcase. It had Mr Cooper’s name printed on the side.

  Steve snorted. ‘Typical. Even after the fact.’

  Jonah looked back as he shut the gate behind him, and stared at me. And then, with a clang, he shut it and was gone.

  ‘Good riddance,’ said Mr Cooper.

  I went into the khaya after they had gone. It smelled of pine cleaner and floor polish.

  Mercy had scrubbed the red floors to such a high shine that I could see my reflection looking up at me from beyond my feet.

  The last time I had been there was over a year ago, when I came to play with the girls. The house looked even smaller empty. There was an enamel pot sitting in the dead centre of the kitchen floor, upright. I wondered if they had forgotten it, or just left it behind. It looked like an offering.

  There was something pale in the dirt outside the khaya, by the gutter. I bent down to pick it up. It was the snapped-off arm of a Barbie, with its disproportionately small hand cupping a handful of dirt on the end of a gleaming tube of pink plastic. The girls were in high school now and probably did not want it.

  I carefully scooped out a handful of earth, dropped the arm into the hole and covered it up.

  We celebrated the year 2000 in our backyard, with fireworks. Steve propped them up on the lawn, lit the fuse and then ran backwards saying ‘Shit, shit,’ as they started to fizz and crackle sooner than expected.

  Mum was indoors. She had washed her hands of the whole thing. ‘If you set the hedge on fire, don’t come running to me,’ she said.

  The adults drank on the verandah.

  ‘Here’s to a better year,’ said Steve.

  ‘Cheers.’

  I heard the glasses clinking. An owl flew above me, white and dusty as a moth, and landed on the roof of the house with a clatter of claws. Owls were a bad omen.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ said someone from the verandah, and drunken voices started singi
ng what they remembered of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We got a call from Uncle Pieter and Auntie Mary, from their farm.

  ‘Ja, hi,’ said Auntie Mary in a bright voice when I answered the phone. ‘Can I talk to your Mum?’

  I passed the phone over. I could still hear Auntie Mary’s voice, higher than usual. Mum said lots of yeses and nos and nodded her head as Auntie Mary talked.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mary,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to anything.’

  When she hung up, I asked her, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Auntie Mary just had a visit from some people saying they were going to take over the farm.’

  ‘That’s not nothing.’

  ‘Well, it’s going to come to nothing. Don’t worry.’ Mum touched my hair.

  The farm invasions had begun. Unofficially. At least, officially unofficially. Everyone knew that Mugabe supported them, but he was still insisting that the War Vets acted on their own. Police were slow to respond to distress calls from white farmers, and the squatters were cocky and unafraid.

  Auntie Mary kept in touch on the terrible Chinhoyi phone lines. She sounded like she was shouting from the bottom of a well.

  ‘Ja, everything’s fine,’ she said every day.

  From five in the morning until eleven at night, a gang of War Vets beat their drums, sang revolutionary songs and waved clubs and bhadzas outside the gates of the farm.

  ‘They’re a bluddy nuisance,’ said Auntie Mary.

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I’m not scared.’ And I knew she was not. ‘I’ve already been through one bluddy Bush War, I can cope with this. But I’m worried about Hennie and the poor bluddy workers.’

  I passed the phone to Mum. I could still hear Auntie Mary’s voice through the receiver.

  ‘What are the workers doing?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Getting on with their jobs,’ said Auntie Mary. ‘We don’t want them to get involved. Pieter thought about getting some of them together to throw the squatters off, but I think that would just cause more trouble. And he doesn’t want them to get beaten up because of us.’

  ‘Are they sympathetic to the War Vets?’

  ‘What War Vets? All I see is a bunch of bluddy ZANU PF youths.’