The Cry of the Go-Away Bird Read online

Learning Shona properly for the first time, I saw that everything had two names, an English and a Shona one, side by side. This had not occurred to me before. Bread in Shona was chingwa. I had always thought that bread was something white and sliced that came in plastic packets sealed with a clip, while chingwa was brown and thicker and spread with peanut butter. Mombes were skinny animals with mbira ribs that lived on the bald, scrubbed lands in the rural areas. Cows were fat, glossy things in paddocks. It seemed strange that the two words really did mean exactly the same thing.

  When you learned an English word it stayed learned and it looked the same no matter where it was. Shona words were more complicated. You learned a good, solid word and then discovered that all sorts of extra bits got tacked on the end or at the beginning, to tell you whether the word was singular or plural, big or small, respected or not respected. English words stood upright in a straight line, not touching one another. Shona words blended in together and you could not have one without having a whole family of others.

  The kids at school had a language of their own, too. Lekker meant good. Mushi also meant good. The boys called other boys oens or oeks, and we were all called lighties by the older kids. When someone got into trouble, the whole class would shake their right hands as if they had just burned them on a hot stove, and say ‘Ee-ee, ee-ee, ee-ee!’

  I settled into the rhythm of classes, assemblies and break times. We sang the national anthem every day. The tune was meant to be grand, but somehow it was sad.

  ‘Simudzai mureza wedu weZimbabwe

  Yakazvarwa nemoto weChimurenga;

  Neropa zhinji ramagamba

  Tiidzivirire kumhandu dzose;

  Ngaikomborerwe nyika yeZimbabwe.’

  In English, it meant: ‘Oh lift high the banner, the flag of Zimbabwe. The symbol of freedom, proclaiming victory. We praise our heroes’ sacrifice, and vow to keep our land from foes. Oh God bless our country – the land of Zimbabwe.’

  I did not know what sacrifice they were talking about, but it probably had something to do with the War that no one mentioned. I did not know who our foes were either, but I assumed that they were comfortably Out There, far away, and unlikely to come any closer.

  I received a letter from Beauty that year. It was written on a lined piece of paper torn from an exercise book, in blue biro.

  Dear Elise

  How are you? I hope you are well. I am very well. I have found new job working for a nice family in Chinhoyi since the Madam has moved away. Everything is good here but we miss you very much. I hope you are happy in Harare.

  Love from Beauty

  I replied to that one with a long letter full of news about school and the farm and how much I missed her. Beauty sent a reply. I kept the second letter on my wall for weeks and always meant to answer it. But when it fell off the wall and down the back of my desk, I did not even notice.

  Chapter Nine

  Mum and Steve went to a party at the Coopers’ house one night. I begged to come too, but they said it was for adults only. When they got home I came through in my pyjamas. They had bright eyes and flushed cheeks. Mum was still holding a glass.

  ‘Mum, is that one of the Coopers’ glasses?’

  ‘Oh.’ Mum glanced down. ‘Yes.’ She seemed surprised.

  ‘Great evening,’ said Steve.

  ‘What’s in the glass?’ An unappetising brown slush clung to the bottom.

  ‘Hooligan juice.’ They exchanged glances and giggled. ‘Brandy and ice-cream.’

  They collapsed into the sofas. Steve got up again. ‘Shee-yit, I’m going to put the tea on.’ He meandered through into the kitchen.

  ‘So, Mum, what did you do?’ I was agog for details of the glamorous party at the big white house.

  ‘Agh, we had a braai, we had some drinks . . .’ Mum thought. ‘The farm managers played a game.’

  ‘What sort of game?’

  ‘They jab a toothpick into their foreheads and set fire to the end.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that hurt?’

  ‘Ja. The winner is the person who lets it burn the longest.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Steve came back and tickled Mum. She started giggling again, and I thought it was probably time to go to bed.

  Mum was in charge of calculating and giving out the wages to all the farm workers. This happened once a month, when a long line of black men in bright orange, blue or green overalls snaked from Mum’s office. There was a festive atmosphere, as people laughed and joked and planned their trip to the shebeen after work, to spend some of their pay packet.

  Some of the workers had Shona names, but others were in English: names like Jeans, Lettuce, Hatred, Oblivious, Killer, Murder, Doesn’t-Matter, Enough, Lovemore, Loveness, Gift, and a thousand others. I liked the Shona way of naming a child after a particular meaning.

  I helped Mum by slipping the money into named envelopes and holding them out to the workers.

  ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you, Medem.’

  ‘Mazvita tatenda.’

  A parade of faces, each one different. Steve sometimes said that all blacks looked alike, but he could not look into each face, as I was doing, and say the same. I finished handing out the envelopes and sat on the front steps of the office, tilting my closed eyes up to the sunshine to see the red patterns inside my eyelids.

  ‘Howzit.’

  The voice was familiar. I looked up. A pair of strong brown legs ending in dusty feet in flip-flops. A Zimbabwe cricket team shirt. Blue eyes.

  ‘Sean.’ I wondered whether to jump up or not. I decided not to, because I had a small hole in the back of my pants that had not mattered when it was just me and Mum and the workers. I tried to remember what colour underwear I was wearing. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Ja, hi.’ Sean stepped over me and inside, to see Mum. He gave her a message from his father.

  ‘Phew, hot day,’ he said when he was finished, making a point of drawing the back of his hand across his wet forehead.

  ‘Could you get us some Cokes?’ Mum asked me.

  The Coke fizzed in the glasses and shone red in the sunlight. ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I was not sure whether to stay. I hovered in the doorway. If I went out, I could not come back in. It would look like I was coming back to see him. I made the decision and went outside, to sit under the trees behind the office and trace patterns in the dust.

  Sean stayed for a few minutes, sipping his Coke. When he left, Mum made me come back inside to say goodbye.

  ‘Agh, no, Mum.’ I was whispering, hoping our voices didn’t carry.

  ‘Come on, don’t be rude.’

  ‘I’m not being rude. I just don’t want to come and say goodbye.’

  ‘What are you getting so worked up about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You like him, is that it?’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Well fine, then, come and say bye.’

  I was dragged inside. ‘Bye, Sean.’

  ‘Ja, bye.’ He looked amused.

  As soon as he was gone, I wriggled free from Mum’s grasp and back outside. I could hear her laughing, and I wanted to kill her.

  The next time I went with Mum to the office, I made sure to wear my nicest denim shorts. No holes. I hung around on the front steps, filing invoices.

  ‘Why don’t you come inside?’ Mum called.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘But it’s hot out there.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  The terracotta steps were cool under my bare legs, and most of me was in the shade. And my waiting paid off.

  ‘Howzit.’

  ‘Hi.’

  Sean was standing in front of me. ‘Do you want to come for a ride?’

  ‘I’d have to ask Mum.’ I could not believe I had to say this again, but Mum would kill me if I went off without telling her.

  ‘Ja.’ Sean was impatient. ‘There’s an elephant on the game farm.’


  ‘An elephant? I thought there were just buck and zebra.’

  ‘That’s why I want to go look at it, domkop.’

  ‘Is it a good idea? I thought they were dangerous.’

  Sean was losing interest. ‘It’s fine. Do you want to come or not?’

  ‘I’ll come.’ I scrambled to my feet. I was wearing flip-flops. ‘Are these okay for riding the bike?’

  ‘Ja, you can ride in anything.’

  Mum had told me to wear proper shoes when I was on the bike, but hopefully she would not notice. I went inside, but Mum had gone. She must have walked down to the other office to deliver something. I wrote her a note and stuck it on the computer screen, where she couldn’t miss it.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said when I came out.

  ‘Good. Hop on.’

  I was more familiar with the bike by then, but the noise always surprised me. It filled up my ears so tightly that no other sound could creep in.

  The sand on the road stung my feet and rattled inside the bike frame. There were two dark patches of sweat under Sean’s arms, and I worried that I might be sweating as well.

  A tuft of hair stuck out of the back of his baseball cap, shiny and almost white in the sun, and I could see Shumba running behind us if I turned my head away from the burning wind. Two long lines of saliva streamed from each side of his grinning mouth like the strings of a kite. Eventually he tired and fell behind, panting.

  ‘Where’s the elephant?’ I yelled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The elephant!’

  ‘Jonah saw it by the waterhole.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’

  ‘Drinking.’

  ‘No, what was Jonah doing there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jonah!’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Has anyone else seen it?’

  ‘Nah. I wanted to find it first.’

  ‘All right.’ I was quiet for a while. The only other time an elephant had wandered on to the game farm, it was a rogue male who charged one of the workers and had to be shot. I knew we were not meant to go on to the game farm without taking one of the workers with us – someone good at tracking who would know if there was a leopard nearby.

  My hat was whipped off my head. ‘Hey!’ I nudged Sean. ‘Stop.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My hat.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Hat!’ I jabbed him with my finger. His shirt was damp with sweat. ‘Stop.’

  He pulled over, and the world became miraculously silent and still. The hot air fell on to us like a blanket, and my body started to sweat all over.

  ‘My hat.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s not on my head.’

  ‘Were you wearing a hat?’

  Showed how closely he looked at me.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘How far back?’

  I gestured vaguely.

  ‘Well, shee-yit, man, we’ll never find it. It could have blown off anywhere.’

  I supposed this was true.

  ‘Look, I’ll grab you one of my old hats when we get back, hey?’

  ‘All right.’

  We roared off again. I did not even know what part of the farm we were in. And Sean had not brought a radio with him.

  We stopped by a big waterhole. I could see mosquitoes hovering above the flat, metallic surface.

  ‘It was round here,’ said Sean. He jumped off the bike and waded through the long grass to sit on a rock next to the pool. I followed him, shading my eyes with my hand. I wished we had gone back for my hat. I could feel the sun like an itch on my scalp – it would turn pink, and Mum would be furious.

  We sat there for a long time, waiting.

  ‘I think Jonah was lying,’ I said.

  ‘Why would he lie?’

  ‘Well, why would he be down here looking at elephants? When does he ever come on to the game farm?’

  Sean shrugged. ‘It’ll come.’

  ‘Sure.’

  We sat in silence for a while.

  ‘What happened to your Mum?’ I asked.

  He picked at the dry grass at our feet.

  ‘She died,’ he said. ‘Cancer.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sean had built up quite a pile of grass by now. He could not seem to sit still. Even when he tired of pulling up the grass, his knee jiggled and he hummed under his breath.

  ‘My dad died,’ I volunteered.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Ja, car accident.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ he said. ‘With my mum.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I mean, I did. But these things happen, hey.’

  ‘Ja.’

  We sat for a minute.

  ‘You’re good to talk to,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ I could not swallow. My heart travelled up my throat and stopped right up under my chin.

  ‘You’re almost like a boy,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said again. I flicked a fly off my knee. ‘Well, people have always said I look like a boy.’

  ‘Ja, you do a bit.’

  ‘Ja.’

  We sit.

  ‘Maybe I should have been born a boy,’ I said. I was still hoping for some sort of contradiction.

  ‘Ja!’ He was enthusiastic. ‘We could have gone camping.’

  ‘Well, we can still do that.’

  ‘Not overnight, though.’

  ‘No, not overnight.’

  We sat for half an hour, slapping insects on our arms and legs. I could feel the sun sizzling deeper into my skin.

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to come,’ I said.

  Sean took a breath, and let it out. ‘Ja, no, hey. All right, I’ll take you back.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He did not help me to my feet. We headed back to the bike. Before we got there, however, there was a cough from the Bush, and a sound like tearing fabric.

  ‘Shush, man,’ said Sean. I did not even realise that I had made a noise.

  ‘It’s the elephant!’

  ‘Ja, shush.’

  Sean crouched down next to the bike, and I did too. The grass raised red welts on my bare legs, and it was almost unbearably itchy. An ant crawled over my big toe.

  There was a crunch from the scrub, and a deep, heartfelt sigh. An ancient, blinking eye emerged from the Bush, followed by wrinkled, tortoise-like skin. The elephant moved softly, lifting each foot and putting it down with care. A fly buzzed around its velvety eyeball, and a great fringe of lash blinked it away.

  ‘Eesh, man,’ whispered Sean. ‘Look at the size of that thing.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I was sure the elephant had noticed us – no matter how quiet humans try to be, they are no match for an animal’s ears – but so far did not see us as a threat.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ said Sean.

  The skin on the elephant’s knees was creased into folds like the skin on my knuckles. The wind dropped. Even the ant on my toe paused in its senseless exploration of my feet and looked up, as if it were worshipping the elephant too.

  The elephant used her nose to investigate a bush, running it over the leaves like a loving finger, then looping her trunk around them, like a grey, wrinkled bride holding a ragged bouquet. She stuffed the leaves into her mouth and chewed with a great sloshing, grinding noise that echoed off the kopjes.

  It could have been five minutes or forty-five before the elephant left. I did not know. I did not see her go. I was amazed that something so large could just disappear into grey-brown scrub without a trace.

  We did not move straight away. We waited until the spell had broken, the birds had started singing again and the wind had started humming through the tall grasses.

  ‘That was lekker,’ said Sean. ‘Glad you came?’

  ‘Ja.’ My legs tingled with pins-and-needles, and my skin itched from the grass. ‘We should go back.’

  ‘Come on the
n, let’s get moving.’ Sean climbed on the bike and tried to start it.

  It coughed once, then was silent.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bike won’t start.’

  I thought he was joking. ‘What?’

  ‘Bike. Won’t start.’

  I realised he was serious. I was suddenly very aware of the noises of the Bush around us – twigs cracking, an eerie bird call, something sliding through the long grass.

  ‘What are we going to do? Did you bring a radio?’

  ‘Nah.’ Sean stood like his father did, legs wide apart, hands on hips. He looked tough and capable. I could tell he was worried, though.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘It’ll start.’

  He tried the bike again. Nothing at all this time. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘What can we do?’

  The sun dipped towards the horizon, and the shadows were splayed across the ground like lizards flat on a wall.

  Sean sat down. ‘We can’t do anything.’

  ‘We could walk.’

  ‘It’s miles. And I don’t want to leave the bike here. And I don’t want to walk through the Bush, it’s not safe.’

  ‘Sitting in the Bush isn’t safe either. At least if we walked we’d be getting somewhere.’

  ‘I said no,’ said Sean, drawing himself up to his full sixteen-year-old height.

  ‘We’ll wait here.’

  We sat in silence, watching the shadows move and lengthen. When the first cricket started to shrill, I felt my bare legs getting chilly.

  ‘What if no one finds us?’

  ‘They will,’ said Sean.

  ‘What if we have to stay the night?’

  ‘What if, what if.’

  ‘But what if we do?’

  ‘We’ll be fine. I know all about camping. And how to make fires.’

  Jackals roamed the farm at night, and worse.

  We sat there for hours. The sunset was an orange flare before the darkness. The crickets were deafening. Every noise was magnified. The cold pinpricks of stars were no comfort, and made me feel dizzy. I dropped my head on to my knees.

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ Sean’s voice was unexpected and flimsy in the dark world.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Campfire.’ He pointed. There was a small yellow fire in front of us. I had lost all sense of distance, so was not sure whether it was a campfire a few kilometres away, or a candle flame hovering in front of my face.