THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Free Like A Dead Body
Written by Kamogelo Tselane Mashilo
Midnight-coloured shawls veil slouched shoulder blades. Soggy eyes are affixed to the crimson earth beneath our feet, they gesture respect with bended necks. My dear Aunt Jeminah tosses a tired gaze at me and clenches my hand, her sweltering palm squelched up against mine. A sneer paints itself on my face as I stare at his casket. He cannot die enough deaths and I cannot bury him enough times.
“I am sorry for your loss, Thami,” they all say, with that same deceitful look. I want to tell them that it is not a loss and that I want to rejoice and paint the town red and yellow and all the colours happiness might be. I want to say that I am free, but not like a bird. Free, like a dead body. But I must not say anything, I know. I simply nod in response and carry on with my day.
Pastor Nkosi invites his gang of salvation-pushing fanatics to begin a chorus. The man in the casket is my father. He and Pastor Nkosi were friends from as far back as I can remember. He was there when I broke my right wrist while trying to fly because I was sure that the low rumble of trees meant that I was a superhero. He was there to celebrate with my father when he finally got a job. He was also there for us when I lost the only person who ever mattered to me. He was there as a voice of reason in those last few years when my father traded in the bottles of beer for so-called redemption. He was always there, with his broad saint-like smile and puppy-dog eyes to tell us that God has a plan for us.
“A plan? Gladys, are you out of your mind?” exploded my father upon hearing those exact words from my mother one time when I was in Grade 4. They were having their daily squabble again.
“Yes. A plan, Mandlenkosi and you would have one too if you weren’t such an alcoholic,” my mother retorted. “We are drowning in debt, we can’t afford the groceries, we have no money to buy electricity and Thami needs a new pair of school shoes,” she continued.
“And your point is?”
“If you were pulling your weight, things would be different,” she said, lowering her tone.
“I am trying my best, sthandwa sam’. You know I love you.”
“Maybe love is not enough. Maybe it never was.”
I waited patiently for my father’s response from under the heavy tiger-faced blanket but it never came. His words could no longer hold her captive as they once did when she was young and still prone to purchasing the dreams that came from his tongue.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the Godless, jobless lesser man.
I wore those same old open-mouthed pair of school shoes that gave me sores on my heels for the rest of that year. The bigger boys nicknamed me ‘Pac-man’ after the beloved arcade game character who swallowed cookies and ghosts because like him, my shoes had a wide-open mouth and swallowed dust and pebbles wherever I went. I became a joke and the joke became my life.
Aunt Jeminah jerks her hand away from mine and catapults me back into the now. She is slowly swaying her arms from one side to the other. Grace of Christ church choir is already deep in song, lamenting in honour of uBaba. There is no soul that is too heavy for their voices to ascend.
I listen to the heaving hums of baritones and sopranos melting together in the wretched wind. A multitude of cheeks gleam with wetness in the light of the curtained sunshine. Bulging clouds hang aloft, it might rain later. My mind swiftly remembers how it too rained on that cursed summer’s day. I get to thinking about the day that life became this itchy Christmas sweater, this cancerous mole on the surface of my skin, this thing and above all, this thing that just won’t die.
It was a Sunday— the uncomfortable type that comes at you quicker than reality. My mother, being the earnest and biblical woman she was, had nudged my father into a petty job as a gardener for Mr. Van Tonder, her previous employer. The pay was less than something but it meant everything to those who had nothing. He worked Mondays to Thursdays which meant he still had enough time to slug around Kwa Joe on his three day weekends. He had been paid that Friday evening and he had not returned since.
I remember the details vividly. My mother and I were on our way back from church. We treaded through the maze of shanties, tiredly shuffling our heels on the coarse gravel. We stopped on the way to buy a packet of tomatoes from a vendor. My mother handed the man a crisp R10 note and we journeyed back beneath grey clouds.
As soon as we got home, we were greeted by a partly open door and a muffled Whitney Houston belting one out for the heathens. I gripped the clanging metal and opened the door. We stepped inside and saw my father fanned out over the couch. He was blacked out and motionless. The jarring rhythm of his snoring travelled to and fro our earlobes.
“Kshhhhh,” the radio hissed its static from atop the coffee table.
“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody. I wanna feel the beat with somebo–”
“Kshhhhh, kshhhhh.”
“This is 95.7, Voice FM. It is thirteen minutes to two and you are tuned into Soul Sundays, your number one midday show bringing you only the finest oldies every Sunday from 12 to 2.”
“Kshhhhh,” chimed in the static once again.
“–emember, today’s question is what song best reminds you of that first love when you were burning with youthful ignorance and passion.”
I caught a glimpse of my mother getting lost in nostalgia as she half-answered the question in her mind. She noticed I was watching and quickly snapped out of it.
“We’ll take one last caller before wrapping up today’s segment.”
My mother turned the radio off, putting DJ Sandz-O out of his bleating misery. A beer bottle laid overturned on the coffee table cover which had been mapped by a large splotch. There were two unopened bottles underneath the table and a few scrunched up R10 notes. We tidied everything up and finally slipped out of our Sunday outfits and into our snug clothes.
He awoke about an hour later while my mother was preparing supper and I was laying out my school uniform to be ironed . He arose like the storm of a man he was and stumbled his way to the kitchen. He stood at the door with a demented look on his shaggy face.
“I’m hungry,” he slurred, half-drunk and half-father.
His words went unanswered as we ignored him and went about our duties. She began humming a tune that she used to sing when I was young and bursting with curiosity.
“Gladys, I’m speaking to you!” he thundered coldly.
My mother pretended not to hear the blizzard in his voice or the earthquake in his stagger as he took sizeable steps towards her. She took no notice to him as she nonchalantly continued stirring the scalding hot pot of beef stew.
He grabbed her just above the elbow and she quickly turned her body towards him.
“Thami, can you please fill the water bucket up for me, it looks like it might rain,” she asked.
I obliged and grabbed the empty bucket to the tap outside to fill it. I could hear them arguing from inside the house in between the whirring swooshes of water hitting water. I could now feel the vehement scurry of the wind as it laid claim to everything I knew.
It took what felt like hours for the bucket to fill up. When it did, I immediately closed the tap and grabbed the rickety bucket handle. I steadily hurried back to the house. At 11, there is no amount of parenting that could undo the trauma of what I saw next.
As I entered the kitchen, I could sense a stiff coldness. They stood only an arm’s length apart in the centre of the room. Silent, as if to let their hearts do the negotiating on behalf of their voices. I carefully placed the bucket on the stand and joined the chorus of silence. Almost like the calm before the storm.
“Woman, what did you just say to me?”, he asked as if he had not heard her the first time. She looked straight into his pupils and did not flinch. The tension was so solid, it pinned me to the spot.
A five-fingered lesson bolted through her face, ramming her body onto the floor before she could open her mouth. He mercilessly grabbed her dreadlocks and stood her up. He then jostled her onto the kitchen counter and used both his hands to strangle her. Her arms fluttered as she laboured for a morsel breath of air. A wheezing cough squeezed itself out of her body as she struggled to escape his thick-limbed grip.
She looked at me the same way a starved dog looks at a stranger, behind those hazel-brown eyes you could almost see her clawing for liberation. Or death; I still can’t tell the difference between the two.
“Baba,” I pleaded softly. “Baba, you are hurting uMama,”
He slowly loosened the noose of his hands before completely letting go of her. She fell down coughing as she tried to catch her breath. He wiped the countertop clean, dropping everything as he slid his arms in hysteria before holding his head. He burst out of the house, ready to rain elsewhere. The sky had already began pouring by then.
I went over to help her but instead we just sat on the floor bawling our eyes out while she held me in her warm embrace. He returned three days later carrying a heart-shaped box of chocolates in his right hand to make up for the love they no longer shared, and a new-found authority in both. The abuse carried on for years after that incident and she took it every night until one night when her body couldn’t and she passed out in the middle of their ritualistic fights. She died when I was seventeen and all of me followed her.
Ever since that day, that cursed summer’s day, I’ve been trying to pick up the pieces of a broken home. He quit drinking months after her funeral. He claimed to have found the Good Book but I know that it is his cold sweats and night terrors that drove him to religion. He once went four nights without sleeping, just tossing and turning in an effort to escape his own filthy conscience.
Back at the funeral, Pastor Nkosi reads his obituary as the body is slowly lowered. He clears his throat as if to cock back the lies and begins.
“Mandlenkosi Titus Ngwenya, known to friends and family as Mindlos was born on July 7, 1969 to parents Joanna and Albert Ngwenya. He was born in our small township of Sizolethu where he lived all his life. At age 19, he met the love of his life, Gladys Maleka who passed away five years ago.”
Suddenly, a gut-wrenching feeling colonises my innards. My toes curl up and that day replays itself over and over again in my mind. How dare he mention him and love in the same breath?
“He spent the last few years serving God. He passed away on Tuesday, the 17th of September 2012 at the age of 43 after being stabbed 6 times on his abdomen on his way back home.”
“He leaves behind Thamsanqa and the rest of his extended family. May God help you through these hard times, son.”
If only he knew that this is the softest time has ever been to me.
“To some, an uncle. To others, a friend. To your woman, a man. To your son, a father. And to me, a brother. We thank you and may your soul rest in peace.”
His words nauseate me so much that I want to vomit. That man was many things but he was never a father.
After the funeral, they ask me how I am doing. I hope the saliva used to deliver that question drowns them. I hope their tongues swallow themselves. I hope he wakes up, just so I can see him die again. Do not ask me how I feel, no. Rather ask where I buried the knife.
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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3
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