THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Little Nights
Written by Andile Dube
I was too drunk to even notice my little girl leave with her mother. I only remember the squeal of our only suitcase scratching against the door. Layla, my little goddess, placed a drawing on my belly before she walked out. I couldn’t make out what it was at first but as the substances wore off, it began to look more and more like the giant white doll we had spotted in town the week before. She usually drew the things that she wanted the most.
My wife heard that I was getting my act together and she offered me a lifeline back to Layla’s life again. Having almost burnt down the one room we were renting with Layla inside during one of my escapades, seeing her once was more than I deserved. They were both staying with another man, a better man than I would ever be. I couldn’t compete. I was actually proud of my wife.
I got on the bus to the big city to see my daughter for the first time in a year. I was broke for the entirety of the twelve months but I couldn’t go empty-handed. That is why for two days and two nights prior to that trip, I had been working on a farm as Gogo Sebata’s nurse aide. I had enrolled into multiple nurse aiding courses before but fell out along the way in every one of them. Amongst the papers my wife had left was a pamphlet about a free nurse aiding course which offered as a courtesy by one of the ambitious politicians in my neighbourhood and so there I was, back in the fold again but this time, I finished.
Monica welcomed me to the farm. Her eyes looked through me in a very disconcerting manner. I was caught up in her artistic wrinkles I didn’t even notice the farmhouse filling my peripheral. I stretched my neck to take in its vastness. Not a spot but my fingers stained the oil paint. Monica stopped talking altogether.
“You will tell me when you are done,” she said.
“I’m done,” said I.
“The petrol for the generator is over there,” she pointed.
We walked into the house and again, she weighed me with her sharp stare. There were tiny thuds coming from above the ceiling, very haphazard in their nature. They kept ticking in my ear until Monica spoke again.
“I called for a female nurse aide,” she said before we walked into the open living room.
Gogo Sebata was folded into her wheelchair, facing an array of portraits.
“They bring her peace you know?” Monica said, “That is Naledi, her daughter.”
I only nodded.
We walked into a long corridor. At the end of it was a bed, on the other, a traditional artwork in the form of a spiral. I walked away from it before I turned and walked back towards it with the same fascination as Layla when she first ran her fingers through my beard.
I placed my hand on the spiral. It was gentle yet gritty on the fingertips. It felt like reed but lighter. A maize leaf it was. I pressed my hand on it a bit deeper and all the days came back to me in a rush. The ward sister looking at me with disgust when I held my baby for the first time. The security guard asking me to wait outside because the alcohol might affect the premature babies. The days rushed back even more vividly. My father-in-law giving me money to buy Layla some diapers after I had ran through my moonlighting pay at the local shebeen.
“I don’t have all day,” Monica called out. “Over there you will find lighters for the gas stove. One of them is faulty but the other is okay.”
“My apologies.”
“This will be your room,” she said pointing to the bed at the end of the corridor. “I know there in no privacy, but you have to see her choke on her dentures or fall from the wheelchair at a distance.”
I felt naked the more I took in the openness of my room. The view gave me solace, however. It was the maize field. Ever green in Monica’s words. It was so vast it curved with the earth.
“The Sebatas had so much money from this field that they were able to fund a whole insurrection during the colonial days. After that they mainly used it to fund the Naledi foundation.”
“Naledi Foundation?” I asked.
“Her daughter took her own life,” she said handing me a journal.
“Can’t imagine myself without my Layla,” said I.
“Hm,” she replied. “That will be everything. I will be back after three days. Just fill your name in this journal.”
The journal had a long list of names, mostly women’s names. The list was a reflection of the time Gogo Sebata had been ill.
“Three days?”
“I have a family matter to attend to, you will only be paid after that.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I know you heard them,” Monica said.
“What exactly?”
“The thuds from the ceiling.”
I had long forgotten about them, until now. Only then did I hear them more clearly.
“We have cat-sized rats roaming the ceiling boards. Downside of keeping corn,” she said. “Don’t let them scare you at night.”
Gogo Sebata only blinked, no more or less. She didn’t even flinch when I pressed the insulin against her veins, but her fingers moved slightly. I took out her dentures and fed her porridge. I put them back in and changed her diapers and the rest of the day was just me waiting for the day to end.
The first night was uncomfortable as any first night anywhere away from home should be. I stayed up until midnight, twisting and turning on the single bed. I got up and placed Layla’s drawing on top of the dusty wardrobe before I went back to bed again. I finally found the sweet spot which gave me the view of the sky reaching maize stalks swaying back and forth against the night.
When that spot became uncomfortable, I sat up to the view of the long corridor and right there at the end of it, wearing the night gown I had slid onto her before I slept, was Gogo. She was facing the spiral. My tongue rolled as I tried to scream. The hairs on my skin stood tall and when she placed her hand on the spiral, I slammed back onto my bed with an intense whiplash.
From above, the tiny thuds got louder than my heartbeat; hundreds of them. It felt like a very short moment before I sat back up again and on the end of the same long corridor was nothing but the spiral and the morning sun.
Gogo was still where I left her the evening before, but I couldn’t shake the feeling from the previous night. My body was heavy on my back and there was an itch I couldn’t quite place until I agonisingly bent down to put my crocs back on. My toenails were filled with mud and right from my room were muddy footprints which ran all the way to the outside. I followed them with a mop, and they disappeared into the thickness of the maize field.
I felt the previous night’s dream stinging into my every thought. I went back to feed Gogo her breakfast. Her stare on this particular day was uncomfortable. She opened her mouth and held the spoon tight with her dentures.
“Let go,” I pleaded with her, but she held on. She slowly turned her head and spit it out in the direction of the door. I dialled Monica to understand Gogo’s behaviour, but she never picked up. I went outside to dispose of the rest of her porridge. Against the pristine wall was a hoe and a digger. It wasn’t an alarm with the place being a farm before anything, but those footsteps were there, all around the tools.
Halfway to the big city was a mall. I walked past a kids’ shop on my way from the loo and it called out to me, certainly, the giant white doll. I looked closely at the price tag but my reflection at the shop’s window jumped at me. I was bent. My arms were hanging on my shoulders. The bus’s horn snapped me out of the sorry view, and I ran back to it. The doll, against my will, kept me at the farmhouse for the second night. Toiling for the money to buy it was the least I could do for my daughter.
That day had been rough. I couldn’t walk a room without bending over my knees to rest. When you sleep without properly studying for an exam, you usually have a nightmare where everything is falling apart. The question paper is too heavy, you cannot open it. The time is rolling away too fast, and your pen has run dry. I had a similar nightmare. Gogo was begging for her insulin, and I couldn’t open the refrigerator to get it. In another instance, the vials were stone frozen. Her screams for the insulin got louder. There is a point in the dream where you realise that it’s just a dream. I came to that realisation and the reality that I passed out without giving Gogo her insulin.
I snapped out of my sleep right into the chattering of my teeth. Above me were the stars and I was involuntarily ploughing the ground with a hoe. The maize stalks were so tall I couldn’t tell where I was. I forced my fingers to let go of the hoe but there was still digging all around me. Making my way through the stalks, I met a very short person or thing ploughing. One in front, another beside and all of them everywhere, quietly ploughing away. They were in sync as if in a hive.
They all stopped at once and started marching. My bones were stone cold, running was out of the picture, I just walked fast in front of the short things. At some point I started running towards the lights in the distance. It was the house. I burst into the door and Gogo was lying flat on the floor right beneath the spiral. I packed my bag and stopped. I did not need the clothes. I tried to reach for my daughter’s painting above the wardrobe, but it was just too high for me until I hopped on the bed and retrieved it.
Gogo was still there, cold on the ground. I thought of the crime I was committing by walking out of the door. I was potentially throwing away any chance of ever seeing Layla again, so I ran back to her and felt for her pulse. She was still there, barely. I sat her on the wheelchair and ran across the house to the refrigerator to get insulin but the door between myself and the insulin was the one from outside. It went open with a loud screech and the short creatures marched through with their muddy footsteps. I did not find the heart or the courage to jump over them. I got scared and ran back to Gogo whilst covering my ears to block the hundreds of wet thuds. Her temperature was dropping fast.
Maybe I should leave the witch and disappear into the world, I thought. Why am I trying to save her? I wondered.
I took the petrol and sprayed it all over the living room carpet and the corridor. The lighter couldn’t go off. I dropped it on the floor to go and look for another one.
“You are not going to take this field away from me,” a voice said from behind. I turned and a hoe handle ran across from face. I could feel my nose on my chin. I was dragged across the corridor and in the darkness, I could see the small creatures climbing through the trap door into the ceiling. The bitterness of blood filled my mouth. I spat out a few of my teeth before I was back into it. I was heavily fastened into Gogo’s wheelchair.
“There was a reason why I called for a female nurse aide. They never forget to give her the insulin to last her the night.”
It was Monica. The beautifully aged caretaker of the farm. Gogo’s body was lying beside me on the ground. Her fingers were still moving but she was wasting away.
“I served this family when I was still a child. The very moment they could afford better people than myself, they kicked me out, but I had lost all the days of my youth toiling away, young man. Rich people take and take, and they never give. It was my turn to take so I took Naledi away from her and used her blood for a ritual which would make me forever rich, and you tried to take that away from me.”
The more she spoke, the louder the ceiling rumbled with the thuds. Finally, a flick. Gogo, in her miserable state, got the lighter I had dropped to work. The flame ran across the carpet to the corridor then to the wall with spiral. When the spiral went ablaze, a yellow glow came from the outside. The whole maize field was ablaze.
Monica ran outside, lamenting, “You won’t take this away from me!”
I propelled myself with my feet and fell through the door to the outside of the house still fastened to the wheelchair.
From inside the house, people’s cries came. It was mostly screams from women, hundreds of them. Even more. Monica took sand by the buckets and poured into the field but the flames blazed even taller. Eventually she sat on the ground then wiped her tears before she stood again.
“Untie me I won’t say a word,” I begged, “I just want to see Layla again. Don’t take that away from me.”
She stood and walked towards me with a blank face. She knelt and undid the ropes she had tied me with. She walked slowly to the edge of the field and stood there for a while.
“Don’t do it,” I tried to save the real witch.
She walked into the flames and disappeared into the glow.
I finally got to the big city. My wife was with her new husband and Layla. It was her smile with the missing teeth that made my eyes water.
“Daddy, you look shorter,” she said before she gave me a tight hug.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I couldn’t get you the doll that you wanted.”
“What doll?” she asked.
I took out the drawing and she giggled.
“That is not a doll daddy, that is you in your nursing uniform.”
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
PUBLISH'D AFRIKA 