THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Why Him?
Written Mongezi Leslie Cakathiso
Perhaps, a wrong father birthed me. This thought drowned me into deep oceans of hatred and curiosity. What mechanism selected and bestowed me to my parents? Is a person’s consciousness restricted to their genetic material they inherited from their parents? What makes me, me? Imagination embraced a multitude of possibilities; to be a child to other biological parents but still maintain this consciousness. But reality denied, left me with this father. The urge to escape this man’s cruelty led me to this absurd thought.
Last night, my father came home intoxicated. His speech blurred into dissonance as a radio with a bad signal. Eyes hardly opened. He woke up still with the pungent alcohol stench all over himself this morning.
“Thando, where’s my money?”
I took him to bed. We staggered together, but God knows I didn’t search his pockets. After a violent door knock, I opened the kitchen door, let him and his friend in, and gave him his food. My sister placed it in the microwave just before she left the house at dusk. He was conveyed in his friend’s car upon his arrival. Uncle Andile, who was also slightly drunk, brought him home; time for cricket choirs and the twinkling stars arrived, so human animal primitiveness was out hunting for the species so that it self-destructs. The sooty, dingy streets were infested with drug-made zombies prepared to confiscate lives to hand over to their master, addiction.
“I said where’s the money?”
His gaze lightened up the whole room. A crimson-eyed cruel creature; a devil with eyes seemingly plunged in blood.
“Dad, I didn’t take it.”
His intense, dreadful, negative energy inflated my eyes such that I stared with a gleam from tears of fear. As he neared, I reversed in an attempt to evade him. With his huge, hairy hands possessing a power grip as firm as an ape’s, he gripped my neck and lifted me up, off the ground. He panted. His warm, stinky breath blew my face and goose bumps grew. Alcohol, old sweat, armpits, and yellow teeth with plaque all formed a strong odour that nauseated me. He fiercely threw me, down to the floor, precisely where he spitted his bolus with contempt, yesternight. The morning mist flew as the dawn’s sun chased it away. I landed not with my head but my back. Nonetheless, I still felt agony.
“Dad, what are you doing?” I invited a slap. As I opened my eyes, the blood’s acrid odour irritated me. The sun rays that penetrated the windowpane, burned my skin. He gave me a semi-coma.
“Thando, my goodness! Are you okay?” My sister, returned from her boyfriend’s home. I felt a sharp stinging pain in my nose. As I caressed the nose, I suspected I was smearing it with blood. My hand met my eyes to confirm. I panicked as I saw coagulated blood. I wiped it with my T-shirt.
“Who did this to you?”
“Your father.”
My heart palpitated with animosity. Warm tears crossed my face to my chin like rivers meeting at the ocean. I wiped them off with a tight fist. She stretched out a hand for me to grab, but I shook my head. My eyes ascended from her rejected, weighed-down hand to the curve on her belly that grew from flatness, almost to a sphere over the past five months.
“Don’t feel sorry for me!” Nolwazi knew I didn’t mean that and replied with a sigh. I guess it is what men do to ease themselves from shame of being seen as weak. The grumpy old man was definitely at his oasis to quench his thirst again.
I limped through the corridor from the dining room, to my bedroom. As I stood before a sideboard mirror, I saw the consequences of the painful disaster my face endured; a hill on the mouth, a mountain on the forehead. Pain, why do we feel pain? It is a defence mechanism, it hinders us from hurting ourselves, but when we do self-harm, it means life is more painful than the pain we ought to put ourselves through, for death. I had enough of this life. I wanted to end it. If I would be numb in my attempts, I would end it, casually, easily, at a snap of a finger.
The five-digit trails which were a result of a slap that thundered on my face, triggered a malicious thought. I wished he had died, not Mom. In 2010, I woke up on a pattering midnight, to an argument between my parents. I curse that day!
“Did you expect me to understand when you impregnated your student, Sibusiso?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. We don’t have skeletons in the closet; skeletons are within us, they support our very being. It all made sense, they lied to us! The Department of Basic Education dismissed him; he didn’t resign as we, my sister and I, were led to believe.
My bedroom is adjacent to theirs and given how father yelled and the nucleated houses, it was impossible not to hear. I’m certain the whole neighbourhood heard clearly. They knew everything. In townships, news travel faster than light, something my introvert mother hated.
“So you were retaliating, huh?” Sibusiso said. He shouted with his coarse voice. Beneath my blankets, buried as a corpse, I only prayed the tension ceased.
“No, I didn’t say so,” Cikizwa said. Cikizwa is my mother. As her name implies, she was adorned with beauty. Nolwazi is her duplicate – she resembled her mother’s dark complexion, golden brown intense eyes and a calm temperament.
“But you retaliated! Who’s the father?” Father cried bitterly.
“Please don’t do this, I’m sorry,” Cikizwa said. She sobbed.
Three shrill gunshots that emanated from their room pierced the night’s chaotic atmosphere; transformed it into serenity. Tears filled my eyes. Wailing sirens of police cars interrupted the momentary silence. How could he shoot a woman with children, his children, like that? Even if he felt remorse, it was too late. Mom gradually lost her warmth, forever. That’s how our home lost its breath.
We held numerous conversations with my sister, but not how and why mother died. We would debate about consciousness, existence, evolution, religion, but not about mother’s death. Illegitimate pregnancies conceived, one by mother and another by my sister at sixteen. Unwelcomed karma came knocking and kicked in. Most teenagers bear children nowadays; it might be an evolutionary trait; it ensures the species continues to exist. Adultery is polygamy and ensures variation. Only in my father’s absence was I allowed to say such a thing. I was hurt too, at least by a single incident. Nolwazi was expelled from school due to her pregnancy. Mother’s case on the other hand, excited me; a slight possibility I could not be this man’s son. He returned yesteryear, in 2018, from prison. Peace permeated this house in his absence, for eight years.
When the sun hid its face from Earth, the monster crawled out of its pit, back to our home, its territory, its house. The door knock persisted.
“Vulani maan, this is my house.”
The moment I undid locks on the kitchen door, my hands shook like an old person’s. Nolwazi was about to finish cooking. Her chicken stew’s aroma caused me excess salivation. I swallowed constantly. I ushered him in, his eyes glazed but he stood on his own. Andile’s car roared as it drove off. The pleasant smell beckoned Dad, but he didn’t forget his daughter didn’t sleep at home.
“Nolwazi, where did you sleep?” She was on exile. Whenever father returned, someone turned to a punching bag. The man needed no reason, but this time he had an excuse.
“Are you mute?”
“No Father,” Nolwazi said. Her fidgeting tiny hands started sweating. Tears engulfed her eyes.
“Then answer me!” That hellish fire ignited his eyes once more. My blood boiled, my body burned.
I already prepared for the day, the war. I wanted to avenge Mom, my sister and I. The endless throes. I clenched my hands into tight fists.
“Leave her alone!” I witnessed my pregnant mother’s death; I didn’t want that happening to my sister.
“People are talking, you are pregnant!” he aggressively flashed his yellow teeth and winced. He pointed me with a trembling first finger. “And you, you stole my one thousand rand; Andile saw you.”
Why did Andile lie? Maybe, he stole it himself. Sibusiso never bought us groceries or anything. We sustained the home with piece jobs, but he had the guts to tell me I was a thief? They were both unemployed, but Andile drove a luxurious, latest Audi. I heard rumours he was a drug dealer, certainly he used Dad to sell. Father always had money, but he spent it on booze and women.
The finger returned to Nolwazi. “You are a slut, just like your mother.”
An invisible dagger stabbed my heart as I saw Nolwazi’s head hung down and tears flowing like a stream. A few drops hit the floor. We all stood, Dad and my sister, near the table with cutlery and a stove with the glistening pot of chicken stew on top of it. Father grabbed a sharp, shiny knife. It made a clicking sound as he drew it and made a gentle collision with spoons and forks. Nolwazi shivered. He slowly approached her.
During the wee hours, when he was one step away from her, I pulled the trigger, the barrel pointed towards my own father. Three cracking sounds of fireworks. Rat-tat-tat. Each bullet for each person I love including myself.
“Like father, like son,” I said. Nolwazi cried, shouted for help with her eyes shut and her ears covered. Her father’s blood smothered her white, loose dress. A mutilated corpse on the floor; three holes on his forehead, blood oozed after it spurted. I saved her. I saved myself, us.
What was Mom thinking? Why did she cheat? Why did father cheat in the first place? Why do people cheat? Cheating is natural and most species in Kingdom Animalia prove it. Every organism increases chances of its gene pool survival and transfer by increasing its number of partners. As humans, we deem things we practice the most as immoral. It’s amusing that we define love as something other than what it truly is – selfishness. Both romantic and platonic love. No one wants to be cheated on, but many people cheat. We expect love to be something magical, while our very own selfish actions defile it.
I was surprised by how Father reacted to Nolwazi’s pregnancy. He did exactly the same thing to someone’s child. That’s pedophilia. Not even a single day have I thought how Mom is, where she is if she still continues to exist as a life-force. I was bothered by how her absence made me feel. Isn’t that selfishness? Probably it’s because I don’t believe in supernatural beings; that I don’t consider her a life-force.
I am convinced that consciousness is limited to biological factors. That there’s no escape. Your biological constituents; a sperm cell and an egg cell that resulted to the final product that is you, are the only factors which could ever result to you and this consciousness you have. This would disprove reincarnation if true. I need to prove it, and when do we become conscious, before or after birth? Is consciousness energy? If it is, it could justify reincarnation. Consciousness could be the greatest form of energy that observes itself, other energies and matter. Thus, it can neither be created nor destroyed but transferred from one body to another. I hope Sibusiso does not awake.
Nostalgic childhood memories resurfaced on my gallery of imagination. Nolwazi recited her poetry.
‘Does God Exist?
A dream
We are subconscious
Natural is not real
Supernatural is the perfect existence
At sleep, we perceive
Existentia not as this real
Events chaotic, reasoning not impressive
Awake to vividly think and feel
Likewise, after death
We think and feel realer than in this world
Comprehension of the truth
The truth about the existence of GOD
The dead know He is no myth
While we ask ourselves, “Does God truly exist?”’
Existentia, a word she coined; everything that exists whether a living or non-living organism. A compelling artwork for a seven-year-old. Her performance blew my fourteen-year-old mind. She believes there are three levels of consciousness and existence; that God exists more than we do; He is more conscious. She swayed from left to right as if a pendulum, heartfelt every word from her art piece. Her face beamed with innocence and excitement. Those were the days; when father still bought us sweets, read us stories. Love turns to pain, pain to hate; the more you love, the more you hate.
Just like how police and forensic vehicles did nine years ago when they took Dad and Mom’s corpse away. They formed an alliance of kaleidoscopic flashing lights and siren symphonies. Nolwazi carried her hands over her head, her face gleamed with tears. My life was over. But that’s not how I viewed it. Handcuffs set me free, I found a better way; escapism from my sorrows and woes.
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 