The Cry of the Go-Away Bird Read online

  ‘Would you like a wem?’ he asked.

  ‘A wem?’

  ‘A jelly wem,’ he explained.

  ‘Oh, a worm!’ I said, over-pronouncing the word. ‘Yes please.’

  The man did not seem to mind my arrogance. He opened a jar and pulled out a long, multicoloured strand of gelatine. ‘Here is your wem.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘No, no.’ The man cupped his hands together and clapped them with a hollow clock clock sound. ‘You must say mazvita tatenda.’

  I copied his movement. ‘Mazvita tatenda.’ Two words both meaning ‘thank you’.

  ‘Why don’t you just say one word?’ I had often wondered this.

  ‘Because you are very grateful for the free wem.’

  When we got home, there were visitors on the stoep. There were always visitors.

  Chinhoyi was a small town where everybody knew everybody. People were always coming up to me and pinching my cheek, or patting me on the head, because they knew my parents. They had names like Hennie and Nicky and Marie, but I had to call them all ‘Auntie’ or ‘Uncle’, even though they were not related to me at all. The men wore shorts and long socks like Uncle Pieter, and they had hairy legs. The women had sunglasses pushed back on the top of their heads.

  There was always some new gossip. When people came over they drank gin and tonics in short glasses and complained about their servants, who always seemed to be stealing or doing something stupid.

  ‘Did you hear about Hendrik?’

  ‘Ja, his houseboy took off with their safe, hey.’

  ‘Typical bluddy munt.’

  ‘He had worked for them for years, apparently. It just goes to show . . .’

  ‘You can’t trust them.’ Someone stubbed out a cigarette. Everyone was smoking, and the ashtray overflowed.

  ‘It’s his own fault for putting temptation in their way.’

  ‘Ja, no, hey.’

  ‘Ja, no, hey’ was a long way of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If you meant ‘yes’ you nodded your head and raised your eyebrows. If you meant ‘no’ you said the ‘no’ part louder and shook your head.

  Everyone agreed that Hendrik was too soft with his servants. If you were too soft and sweet, you were snapped up like a fat buck by a crocodile.

  ‘Those bluddy munts. If we hadn’t come here they would still be killing each other.’

  They were always saying things like this. Or they said that the blacks would still be slashing and burning, there would be no land for farming, there would be no water, hospitals, roads, schools. But all this didn’t matter. You could not win.

  ‘They should be bluddy grateful.’

  I knew from listening to the adults that black people were like children, but also that they were cunning and not to be trusted. I knew that they did all the jobs like packing bags at the supermarket and driving buses. There were lots of them, like busy worker ants scurrying about around spilled juice on the kitchen floor. Adults said that it was hard to tell them apart unless you knew them personally. Women were always ‘girls’ and men were always ‘boys’, no matter how old they were. White men and women were ‘Baas’ and ‘Medem’.

  The whites were special, somehow. They did the important jobs; had nicer clothes and bigger houses. You never saw a poor white person. I thought that we must have done something to earn all these nice things. It made sense.

  Chapter Two

  Beauty smelled like Vaseline and Sunlight Soap in the mornings, and, as the day went on, she started to smell of fresh sweat and cooking fires as well. She had taught me a song about five green frogs many years ago, and we sang it together as she did the washing up or polished silver on newspaper sheets laid out on the lawn.

  ‘Five green frogs

  Five green frogs

  (The word ‘frogs’ must be shouted)

  Where can they be?

  Where can they be?

  (Here you shaded your eyes with one hand and looked around)

  Hiding away

  Hiding away

  Hiding away

  From me!’

  Beauty had also taught me how to count to ten in Shona. I said the numbers over and over until I could recite them without thinking. ‘Poshi piri tatu china shanu tanatu nomwe sere pfumbamwe gumi.’ Years later, I still said the words to myself just for the pleasure of their sounds and the way they felt in my mouth. I learned a strange mixture of English and Shona words that had the farm workers cackling with delight when I visited them.

  Beauty told me about totems. ‘Mitupo are the animal spirits that protect the family,’ she said. She was polishing the floors, which always put her in a contemplative mood. I sat on a rag, legs crossed, so as not to spoil her work with footprints. ‘My totem is the buffalo. Like the buffalo, I am strong.’

  ‘Does it also mean you are fat like a buffalo?’

  Beauty took a swipe at me with the duster. ‘Don’t be cheeky.’

  ‘What’s my animal?’

  Beauty sat back on her haunches. ‘I do not know if you have one.’

  ‘A cat?’

  ‘Why not?’ She clicked her tongue and got back to her work. ‘Remember, it is unlucky to kill your totem animal.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill a cat.’ I remembered a dead kitten I had found on the farm – one of the wild ones. There were farm cats that lived in the barns and gave birth to endless litters of tiny tabby kittens. This one had not survived. When I found it, it was partly eaten away by maggots, its body falling apart into sandy crumbs when I poked it with a stick. It exerted a horrible fascination over me and I went back to visit it every day until it disappeared – either removed by one of the farm workers or carried off by some animal.

  ‘Still, you remember,’ said Beauty, and I nodded. It felt like a solemn vow.

  On the weekends, Beauty dressed in white robes and went to meetings. She did not talk about where she went, but I knew it was to some kind of church. When we were driving to our church on Sundays, I saw big groups of people, all in white, standing under trees and singing. It looked a lot more exciting than our church, where we had to stand up, sit down and kneel as if we were playing a big game of Simon Says. I asked Beauty if her church was like that. She pursed her lips.

  ‘It is not exactly like yours.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘We sing, and we praise God.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we are grateful.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Everything.’

  Beauty wore a cross around her neck. Sometimes I thought it was strange that she wore a cross and carried a talisman at the same time. I asked her about it and Beauty explained that, although she worshipped God and Jesus, she also had to be careful of the spirits and make sure to keep her ancestors happy. When I told this to Mum, she shook her head and smiled, but did not say anything.

  Mum had been behaving oddly lately. She had changed her perfume from something light and flowery, like the pot-pourri in our bathroom, to something smokier. It smelled good, but dangerous.

  She had also started cooking in the evenings. Usually Beauty made one of the five things we ate during the week: meatloaf, roast chicken, spaghetti Bolognese, sausage and mash, and, on glorious Fridays, sadza, white and stodgy as mashed potatoes, and relish which I could eat with my hands.

  Now, however, Mum started to make curries – yellow ones, with swollen raisins floating in them.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, pushing at it with my fork. The raisins wobbled.

  ‘Chicken tikka masala,’ said Mum.

  I gave Archie my plate to lick after dinner, but he did not like it either.

  ‘Elise,’ said Mum. I looked up. Mum only used my name when I was in trouble – otherwise it was Treasure or Darling or nothing at all.

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Do you miss your dad?’

  I thought about it. He had been dead for so long and I was so young when he died that his death was really only a way to garne
r sympathy. I felt guilty for not being sadder. ‘No, not really.’

  Mum touched my hair. ‘I thought so,’ she said.

  Soon after that, I went with Beauty to consult the N’anga, the witch doctor. Someone in her family was very sick and she thought they had been cursed. I was sworn to secrecy.

  ‘Why is your aunt cursed?’ I asked with great interest.

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘Did she do something bad?’

  ‘Kwete.’ No.

  ‘But why would someone . . .’

  ‘Shush! It is not lucky for you to speak of these things.’

  A worrying thought occurred to me. ‘Could I be cursed? If I go to visit him?’

  ‘I do not think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I do not think our curses work on white people.’

  ‘Oh.’ I thought about this. ‘What if a white person cursed me?’

  ‘White people do not have magic like this.’

  I felt insulted. ‘We might have.’

  ‘No.’ Firmly. ‘Now we have to go. Stay quiet, hey?’

  I followed Beauty to a part of the workers’ compound to which I had never ventured before. No grass or flowers here, just red dirt. People stood in front of their houses sweeping the ground until all the grass had gone and it was all red and dusty. Uncle Pieter called these people Sweepers.

  ‘Now there is a Red-breasted Sweeper,’ he would say, pointing out of the car window to a man in a red shirt. ‘It is a shy and retiring specimen.’

  In this part of the farm, there were more Sweepers than I could count. There were also thin dogs with their ribs showing and their tails down, and piccanins in shorts and colourful shirts. They looked at me curiously as I walked beside Beauty.

  ‘Hello! Hello! How are you?’ they shouted, showing off their English. I glanced at them, secure in my position as a Baas’s daughter, and said nothing.

  We passed a shebeen, a drinking hall. There were a few men outside, sitting on the edge of the stoep and drinking Chibuku Scud – a sweet beer that came in big plastic tubs. I had persuaded the gardener to let me have a sip once, and it tasted like milky sweetcorn and batteries.

  Beyond the tin-roofed houses I could see huts. The walls were made of earth, and the roofs were thatched.

  ‘The N’anga lives here,’ said Beauty. She looked nervous. ‘You must be quiet, you hear?’

  I nodded. There was a sign outside, written in blue paint on a white-washed stone. Two words, and a number.

  ‘What does it say, Beauty?’

  Beauty had her High School Certificate and liked to show off her learning.

  ‘NGANGA. WITCH DOCTOR. 122.’

  ‘What does the number mean?’

  ‘It is his address.’

  Of course. I followed Beauty as she walked up to the hut door and knocked.

  ‘Gogogoi.’ Meaning ‘knock, knock,’ like the jokes.

  The N’anga was a younger man than I had expected. From a distance he had always looked stooped and old, but up close his face was only slightly lined. He wore a mangy, feathered headdress, one feather sticking out at a rakish angle over his ear, and a leopard skin was draped across his shoulders. It was smelly and looked dusty, but I knew that to wear a leopard skin was a sign of great power; the leopard was an important animal that produced potent muti, and this particular leopard had been an old man-eater that had killed a three-year-old boy. When the hunters caught and killed it, they brought it to the N’anga, who cut its heart out and ate it in front of the whole village. It imbued him with power.

  ‘Come, come, come.’ The N’anga’s speech was fast. ‘Come inside, sister.’ He saw me and said something in Shona that I did not catch. Beauty replied, and started to usher me outside to wait for her, but the witch doctor grabbed my arm.

  ‘No, no, she must come in.’ He grinned, showing a gold tooth. His hand felt dry and scaly and his palm was bright pink.

  Beauty looked worried, but did not contradict him. ‘You stay with me,’ she hissed.

  I was delighted. The opportunity to see inside a N’anga’s hut was too good to pass up.

  It was very clean. The floor was swept and there was a small pit for a cooking fire. There was a tidy pile of bones in one corner of the room, and I positioned myself with my back to it.

  ‘Now, how can I help?’ The witch doctor spoke in English rather than Shona, giving me a sidelong glance from one yellow eye. Showing off.

  Beauty told him the story of her aunt: how she had suddenly become sick, was coughing and covered in sweat, getting thinner and thinner.

  The N’anga nodded gravely. ‘She has indeed been cursed,’ he said. ‘It is because of something your ancestors did. But I can help.’

  He picked up a handful of stones and chips of bone, muttered something and threw them on the ground. He spent a while staring at them while we waited. Then he heaved himself to his feet, straightened his loincloth and wandered over to the shelves. He selected a jar of something orange and powdered. ‘You must give this to her to mix in water and drink,’ he said. ‘I will also make spells for you tonight and tomorrow night, asking for the curse to be lifted.’

  ‘Thank you, N’anga,’ said Beauty respectfully. She clapped her cupped hands together in the traditional gesture of a woman receiving something from a man. I watched as she gave him a bundle of crumpled notes. I could see it was a lot of money.

  ‘And you,’ he said, ruffling my hair with his scaly hand. ‘You are well behaved?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sir,’ I added.

  ‘Good, good.’ He brought down a little plastic bag of brown powder.

  ‘This is for you.’

  ‘For me?’ I glanced at Beauty uncertainly.

  ‘You must drink this. Will make you grow up strong.’ He passed it to Beauty, who hesitated and then took it.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  The witch doctor bent down until his face was only inches from mine. I could feel his spit land on my nose, but didn’t dare move. ‘You have misfortune following you,’ he whispered. ‘I can see the eyes of your ancestors behind you, and they have told me.’

  My eyes were dry. I realised I had not blinked. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  Beauty put her hand on my shoulder. ‘We must go, N’anga.’

  ‘Something has happened to you,’ the N’anga said, still staring at me. ‘You have been marked.’

  ‘Elise.’ Beauty looked worried. ‘It is time to go home.’

  The witch doctor seemed taller, his eyeballs like egg yolks in his dark-leather face. He was grinning. The relentless hum of the crickets outside sawed and screeched at my ears. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again the room seemed lighter and I could hear the birds above the crickets’ song.

  ‘Drink the powder,’ said the N’anga. He patted me on the head. ‘It will make you strong.’

  Beauty tugged at my arm. ‘Come along.’

  We left the N’anga’s hut with both our little packets.

  ‘Fambai zvakanaka,’ he said as we walked away. ‘Go well.’ It was what you said to someone going on a journey.

  ‘Beauty,’ I said as we walked away, ‘Can I carry my medicine?’

  ‘No,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I told you. Black people’s medicine does not work for white people.’

  ‘But it’s mine!’

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘He said I was cursed.’

  ‘He did not say that. He said he saw misfortune behind you.’

  ‘Same thing.’ I reached for the packet, but Beauty held it out of reach.

  ‘The N’anga is old. He does not know what he is saying.’

  ‘Okay.’ I stuck my hands in my pockets and kicked at a stone. I would persuade Beauty to give it to me later, I thought.

  Before I could form a plan, however, Beauty took out the packet of powder and opened it. She shook it out. A fine brown film floated down to the red dust of the road and was lost.

&n
bsp; ‘Beauty!’

  ‘This medicine is not good for whites,’ said Beauty. Her mouth was set in a straight line. ‘Come along.’

  ‘But what about the evil spirits?’ I asked.

  Beauty reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled out a little bundle. I could see feathers, twigs and leaves, tied together with twine. A talisman. ‘This keeps you safe from tokoloshes. Or ngozi.’

  I had never heard of ngozi. ‘What are those?’

  ‘Ghosts who are looking for revenge.’ Beauty put the bundle back into her pocket.

  ‘Can I have one too?’

  ‘I will make you one.’

  I thought about the visit to the witch doctor. He was nothing like the white people’s doctor, who was a very old man with a white coat and a jar of sweets on his desk. The white doctor did not believe in spirits.

  ‘They’re dropping like flies,’ he said, ‘and they blame it on spirits, or curses, and go to the bluddy witch doctor. All they need is a packet of condoms.’

  I had seen condoms before, on the side of the road. Beauty always tutted and turned her head away when we saw one.

  I asked Beauty if her aunt was getting better.

  ‘I think she will, when we give her the muti.’

  For a while I wondered who was better, the doctor or the N’anga. The N’anga was undoubtedly much more interesting to visit, but in the end I decided that maybe the doctor and the N’anga were both right. When I had an earache or a runny nose, the doctor fixed it, but as far as I knew he could not do anything about the evil spirits. And I knew they existed. Even Mum believed in them.

  When we got home, Mum was fizzing with excitement.

  ‘Beauty, where have you been? It’s getting late.’

  ‘Sorry Medem.’

  ‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Come on, Elise.’ She hurried me into a bath and clean clothes.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going to visit a friend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just someone I want you to meet.’

  Mum drove us to a neighbouring farm. I had not been there before, but I knew it belonged to one of Uncle Pieter’s friends. Hennie went there sometimes to shoot pigeons.

  ‘Where are we going?’