The Cry of the Go-Away Bird Read online

  ‘I told you, we’re nearly there.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’ Mum turned to smile at me. ‘Just be patient.’

  I slumped in my seat and watched the sky change colour.

  ‘Here we are.’ Mum pulled up outside a house. A man was waiting on the stoep.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Steve,’ said Mum. ‘One of the farm managers. Come on.’

  We got out of the car, and the man started towards us. I recognised him – he had been to our house before. He was blond and tall, with red skin on his face and a beard like all the men had.

  ‘This is Steve,’ said Mum.

  I had never called an adult by his first name before. Everyone was Mr and Mrs This or Auntie and Uncle That. I decided to avoid calling him anything. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Elise,’ he said. His accent was thick, with clipped and flattened vowels. He reached out a hand, and I shook it. ‘Come in.’

  His house was small and brown, with brown furniture and brown curtains and black-and-white pictures on the wall.

  ‘So,’ said Steve. ‘Elise.’

  I sat.

  ‘How are you getting on at school?

  The maid brought out tea. I cupped mine in both hands. ‘Good,’ I said. I saw Mum glaring at me and added, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Do you have any plans for high school yet?’

  Why did adults always ask this? School was something I endured for six hours before I escaped back to the farm and Beauty. I knew that I might have to go to boarding school next year, but I tried not to think about it.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. I swallowed a mouthful of tea. It was hot, and too sweet. Mum and Steve talked for a while. I sat, letting my mind drift, and watched the way Mum put a hand on Steve’s arm when she laughed.

  There was a head above the television – a little buck with big eyes. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, interrupting.

  Mum sighed, but Steve leaned forward. ‘A Blue Duiker.’

  The duiker looked at me with melting plastic eyes. ‘Did you kill it?’

  ‘No, a fella gave it to me when I was working on a game farm,’ he said.

  I touched the duiker’s head. I had expected its fur to be soft, but it was bristly and hard like the brush Beauty used for scrubbing floors.

  ‘Don’t . . .’ said Steve, but Mum shushed him. I drew my hand away.

  ‘Sorry.’

  We drank our tea. Mum and Steve sat close together. Their arms were resting on the couch, side by side, but not quite touching.

  ‘Steve might be visiting us more often now,’ said Mum.

  She and Steve were both staring at me as I drank. It made it hard to swallow.

  ‘All right,’ I said, and I watched them exchange glances. The Blue Duiker on the wall gazed at me mournfully, as if it knew a secret that I was yet to find out.

  Chapter Three

  This is what happened the day we found a snake in the garden.

  I was playing with Archie next to the compost heap when I saw leaves and grass start to slip and move, as if someone were moving the garden hose, but the hose was not there. I screamed ‘Snake!’ and Mum came running to grab me by the arm and Archie by the scruff. Maxwell the gardener ran up with a big spade. Inside, behind the big French doors, Mum had her arms around me as we watched the gardener circle the snake, holding his spade. There was a sharp movement. Maxwell darted forward and crunched the metal edge into the ground. Then the snake reared up, high as Maxwell’s waist. Its head was gone, leaving a big red hole ringed with white. It stayed there for a minute and then dropped down.

  Dreaming of snakes was a sign of trouble ahead, Beauty said. That night I saw snakes as tall as buildings, and ran through them trying to reach something on the other side. I did not tell Beauty about my dream, afraid of what she might say.

  The day after the snake was killed, we drove to Uncle Pieter’s farmstead, down a long dirt road that made the car hop from wheel to wheel. Sometimes I was allowed to sit in the back of the bakkie and watch the wake of sand kicked up by the wheels. More often, however, I sat inside, to keep my clothes from getting dusty. On hot days my legs stuck to the leather seats and felt like raw chicken getting slowly cooked. We could not wind the windows down because of the sand and the bugs, and the bakkie did not have air-conditioning.

  On this day, however, I was allowed to sit in the back. I watched the groups of farm workers walking along the road. They had been strolling in the middle, but moved to the side with good-natured smiles and shouts when the bakkie caught up to them.

  Hennie and I had invented a game called ‘Sweet and Sour’ that we played in the back of the truck: we waved at someone, and if they waved back they were sweet, and if they did not they were sour. I waved at a worker now, and he chased the bakkie for a while, grinning, before falling behind.

  The farmstead was down a long driveway, lined with thin, whispery gums, sharp-scented like medicine. On the other side of the driveway was a row of long, low chicken sheds. They smelled of feathers and must and they made a racket.

  The house was right at the end of the driveway, behind tall gates that were kept closed for the dogs. There were three dogs – two big and one small. Phineas ran to the gate when we arrived, waved and grinned as we drove through, then ran after the dogs, who always escaped when the gate was opened.

  Auntie Mary was waiting in the doorway. ‘The weary travellers!’ she said. She always said this when we arrived, even though we only lived down the road. Auntie Mary joked about everything, even Phineas. He was the garden boy, and he stole from the farm all the time. She called him the Trinepon Man. Trinepon was something sticky Uncle Pieter used to fix things in his workshop, and Phineas’s hands were so sticky that things stuck to them and would not come off – things like tools, small change and food.

  She hugged Mum. Mum’s shoulders looked bony and small. ‘How are you?’

  Mum replied with something, but I could not hear her. I walked into the kitchen, flanked by dogs.

  ‘Hi Hennie.’ He was hovering in the doorway, carrying his BB gun over one shoulder – he had probably been out shooting pigeons on the farm. He was already taller than me, although he was a year younger. He wandered in, dragging his feet on the floor.

  ‘Walk properly,’ said Auntie Mary. His white-blond hair was standing on end, and she patted it down.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Shush, stand still.’

  Hennie rolled his eyes at me as his hair was flattened. She finished and pushed him away. ‘Put that gun down. Do you two want to ride the horses?’

  There was something artificial about the way she said this. Mum slid her eyes away.

  ‘Ja, okay,’ said Hennie.

  ‘I’m happy here,’ I said.

  ‘No, no,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a lovely day, you don’t want to waste it inside. Go with Hennie.’

  ‘But the worker hasn’t brought the horses round yet.’

  ‘I know,’ said Auntie Mary with that same brittle tone. ‘Why don’t you help your uncle feed the chickens while you’re waiting? He’s over at the hen house.’

  ‘Agh, nie, Mum,’ said Hennie. ‘The hen house stinks.’

  Auntie Mary clapped him across the back of the head. ‘So do you. Go on.’

  Mum and Auntie Mary had their heads close together, talking. I looked over my shoulder at them as we left the room.

  Uncle Pieter was a big beard in the sky, on top of a pair of hairy legs in vellies, sturdy boots made from rawhide. His voice was so loud that we heard him long before we arrived at the hen house.

  ‘Why are you two coming to shuper me?’ he asked when we arrived. ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do?’

  ‘Mum asked us to help you feed the chickens.’

  ‘Agh, all right then.’ Uncle Pieter winked at me with one leathery eyelid. I knew he was deliberately gruff with us – it was his way of joking – but I was still a little nervous of him. A piece of biltong
hung permanently from his mouth, and he chewed on it all day. As far as I knew, it was always the same piece of biltong.

  The workers tipped out trays of tiny, incubated chicks on to the shed floor. They were sweet and fluffy, but there were hundreds of them running around, and the cheeps echoed off the corrugated iron roof and hurt my ears.

  ‘Shit!’ said Uncle Pieter when he opened the door to the chicken run. He called over one of the workers.

  He told us to stay where we were. I did not move forwards, but I could see what he was pointing at – a mess of feathers, gloopy chicken poo and blood, right against the wall of the run.

  ‘Nyoka, nyoka, nyoka,’ the worker said, over and over. Snake.

  It was probably still in the hut somewhere, or just outside the wall. Snakes do not run away after they have fed; they sit with their eyes half-closed and rest until they get hungry again.

  The chickens clustered in the far corner. They seemed quite unconcerned, slapping about on their scaly feet and pecking at the ground. Uncle Pieter took us out of the building. Looking back, I saw that chicks were already pecking at the remains of the dead one.

  ‘We’ll just ride the horses today, ja?’ said Uncle Pieter. ‘Don’t worry about the snake. We’ll get it.’

  His hand was heavy when he rested it on my shoulder. It was not comfortable, but I did not want to move away because I knew he was being kind.

  The horses had arrived – or, rather, one of them had. ‘The only one I could catch, Baas,’ said the worker.

  Uncle Pieter helped me into the saddle. I could feel the hot metal of the stirrup through the thin rubber and the horse’s hair on my bare legs was hot and gritty. I patted its neck and watched a little cloud of dust rise.

  I wanted to ride by myself, but Uncle Pieter hefted Hennie up in front of me. He was warm and heavy, and his hair tickled my chin.

  ‘Move back,’ he complained, wriggling his bottom on the saddle.

  ‘I can’t move back.’ I pushed him forwards slightly. We jostled until we reached something approaching comfort. Uncle Pieter slapped the horse’s rump and said something in Shona to the worker, and we started to amble around the garden.

  ‘Can we go out on to the farm?’ I asked.

  The worker grinned. ‘All right, Medem.’

  He led us out of the gate and on to the white road, thick with creamy dust. We passed fields of cows, flicking their tails lazily to keep off the permanent cloud of flies.

  I had been thinking. ‘Do you think something’s up, Hennie?’

  ‘Like what?’ Hennie was not someone who picked up on nuances.

  ‘I thought Mum wanted to talk to Auntie about something.’

  ‘Probably.’ Hennie shrugged. ‘Probably woman stuff.’

  ‘I’m a woman.’

  He snorted. ‘Ja, sure.’

  ‘Mum says I’m a young woman.’

  ‘Nah. Although you do have boobies.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘You do too.’

  My boobies were the bane of my existence, two little nubs that made it uncomfortable to sleep on my front and stopped me from running around without a shirt on in the hot weather. It was very unfair. Hennie made a move as if to grab them and tweak the nipples. He had done that before, and it hurt. As there was clearly no point asking Hennie any more questions, I pinched him instead.

  When we got back to the house, Mum and Auntie Mary were sitting on the verandah.

  Mum’s napkin was in tatters in her lap and she was twisting a little piece around her finger.

  ‘Did you have a good ride?’ she asked as we ran up. ‘I have some exciting news.’

  I glanced at my aunt, but all I could see was a fixed smile.

  ‘We are moving to Harare.’

  I blinked. ‘Harare?’ The capital. I had never been there. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve got a job there,’ said Mum.

  ‘In Harare?’

  ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity,’ said Auntie Mary. ‘You’ll like it there, Elise.’

  My face felt hot and fat, as if it had been stung by bees. It took some effort to move my tongue. ‘When did you get the job?’

  ‘Well, Steve got a job first,’ said Mum. ‘You remember Steve.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘On a farm.’ Mum was smiling. ‘And he wants us to go with him. There’s a house ready and waiting for us. It’s very exciting.’

  Hennie was standing on one leg beside me, saying nothing.

  ‘Sit down and eat your lunch,’ said Auntie Mary.

  I could not talk to Mum during lunch. When she spoke to me, I felt my face numbing into a mask as I mumbled back. My hands seemed twice as big as normal, as if I were wearing big, fleshy oven gloves. I could not touch her at all without feeling my body straining away in the opposite direction, and when I asked her a question I had to remember to raise my voice at the end and not speak the whole thing in a monotone.

  As soon as we got into the car, I started screaming. ‘You can’t just change everything without telling me!’

  ‘Well, things have changed,’ said Mum.

  ‘What things? What am I supposed to do in Harare?’

  Mum snorted a laugh. ‘The same things you do here. Go to school, play with your friends.’ She had a glow about her, like someone with a secret.

  ‘What about Beauty? She has a family here! You can’t just ask her to leave everything behind.’

  ‘Beauty is staying.’

  On car trips, Mum and I played a game where Mum drove over bumps at high speed so that we could get that floating, empty feeling in our stomachs. I felt that now.

  ‘We can’t leave Beauty behind.’

  ‘This is her home, Elise,’ said Mum. ‘She is happy here.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be happy here without me,’ I said, and I truly believed it.

  ‘Elise.’ Mum took a hand off the wheel and held it out as if to clasp mine, but I hung back. ‘You can’t be selfish about this. We can’t ask Beauty to pack up everything and move to Harare.’

  ‘Why not? She would like Harare.’

  ‘Elise.’ That was her No Arguments voice.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘When are we going?’

  ‘This weekend.’

  I felt as if I had swallowed a lump of something hard and bitter that stuck in my throat. I leaned my head against the hot glass of the car window, wanting it to hurt and burn.

  ‘I hate you,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t mean that.’ Mum leaned over me, and I shrank back. I inhaled her familiar, flowery perfume for a second, and heard a click.

  ‘Seatbelt,’ said Mum, who had buckled me in. The seatbelt was too tight across my chest, but I could not loosen it.

  I clung to Beauty for the next few days as if I were a baby again. If I could, I would have climbed up on her back and sat there as I used to do. I followed her around as she did all her chores and did not help Mum pack any boxes. Mum did it all herself, kneeling and lifting and sweating in the heat that wrapped around us all like clingfilm, while the cat slunk anxiously through the clouds of newspaper and sellotape.

  ‘Everything that happens, happens because it is meant to,’ said Beauty. I shook my head and rested it against her warm shoulder. I could not believe that this was happening for a reason. What possible good could come of it?

  On the final evening, Beauty came round to collect her last pay cheque, and to say her goodbyes. I launched myself towards her.

  ‘Elise.’ Mum’s cold hand closed on my arm, then released me. I buried my nose in the meat of Beauty’s arm and inhaled her smell. Vaseline, cooking fires, fresh sweat, something pungent and herbal. Her skin was as familiar to me as my own.

  ‘Fambai zvakanaka,’ Beauty said.

  ‘I will write,’ I said.

  ‘I will write too,’ said Beauty. I had seen her labouring over letters before, painstakingly forming the words in blue biro on sheets torn out of an exercise book.

  ‘Elise.�
� Mum stood in the doorway. ‘Beauty has to get home. It’s getting dark.’

  Beauty tied her dhuku over her head. It was white and crisp, fresh every day and smelled of ironing. It flattened the wiry hair on her head and made her look nondescript, like every other maid and nanny walking home. I could see them outside, coming out of the farm managers’ houses, starting their walk down the kopje to the farm village. Their voices floated up to me in strings of long, rounded vowels and shrieks of laughter.

  ‘Chisarai, Beauty,’ I said.

  ‘Chisarai,’ she said, and ‘Goodbye, Medem’ to Mum. She reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled out a little bundle of herbs and feathers. ‘I said I would make you one,’ she said. ‘It will protect you from the evil spirits. Better than muti.’

  I took the bundle, still warm from her hands.

  ‘Fambai zvakanaka,’ she said again. And she was gone.

  ‘Now we have to start looking again,’ said Mum when the door was shut. ‘Bluddy nuisance. And in Harare! God knows what servants are like up there.’

  ‘Is that all you care about?’ I said.

  ‘Elise, try and see this from my point of view, won’t you? You need to be grown-up about this.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘She was a good servant, Elise, but she couldn’t have stayed with us forever.’

  ‘Beauty is my real Mum,’ I said. I watched Mum’s face melt and dissolve, and I felt nothing but fierce joy that I had hurt her. She was in her dressing gown. The sleeves were too short for her and her bony elbows poked out. I pushed her out of the way, feeling soft flannel and skin under my hands, and ran out of the back door.

  ‘Elise!’ I heard her calling.

  I sat in the long grass, crouched down so low that I could barely see over the top, and watched the sun going down. The smell of the earth changed from freshly baked bread to something darker, more mineral. A fine spray of dew settled around my shoulders. When the final ray of the sun flared once, briefly, like a match being lit, darkness drenched the hills and I said goodbye. Only in my head – there was no need to be soft.

  ‘Elise!’ Mum called again. I unfolded my limbs with difficulty and walked back to the house. I came inside, still smelling of night, and buried my face in Mum’s dressing gown, smearing it with snot and tears. It smelled of fresh laundry and the remnants of her perfume, like dying flowers. It felt like a betrayal.