An Elegy for Easterly (10 page)

We dance our dance of sorrow as the daughters-in-law keen for the new arrivals. I am a stranger in my own home, surrounded by women who wear my clothes without asking, emptying my bowels by candlelight in the middle of the night for it is only then that I can be private without someone banging on the door, asking, ‘Who is there?' and then saying, ‘Ah, is it you, Mary, how long do you think you will be?'

Just when I think that I cannot take any more, the phone call comes that promises that this time Peter really will be on the Friday morning flight.
Mai
Lisa takes it upon herself to call back those relatives that had left. She insists that she come with us, for is it not her child who has made the arrangements? And anyway, she says, my mother is not in a fit state to go. But my mother insists on going with us and we cannot refuse her.

We make our way to the airport as we have done before, and wait with others as we have done before. The scenes are the same as the last time we were here, happy relations waiting for something nice from London. Jonathan doubts that Lisa really will come. So we expect Peter to be unaccompanied, and Jonathan identifies himself to the airline.
Mai
Lisa adds to the tension of the wait by mistaking every young woman of Lisa's build for her daughter.

‘There she is, I see her, Lisa, Lisa, psst, here, Lisa',
only to have her waving arm fall to her side as she says, ‘Ahh, honestly, this is what old age does. I need glasses, surely. Ahh, there she is, Lisa, psst.'

But there is no Lisa among the passengers. Jonathan checks again with the airline, but there is nothing for us. He cannot find the words to tell us, and he only shakes his head. My mother begins to laugh, a sound that is worse than any crying.

Mai
Lisa stands aside and studies the contents of a curio shop through the glass windows. All the while, I can see her stealing glances at my mother. As I watch her pretending interest in a zebra-skin rug, I feel rage so bitter that it is like bile in my mouth. I am unaware of the first hot tears that course down my cheeks. They are the first tears that I have shed, but I do not cry for him, they are tears of hatred for him and his miserable little life and what he has done to our family.

My mother's moment of hysteria does not last and it gives way to her usual catatonia. She lets Jonathan and Mukai lead her away.
Mai
Lisa pants after us. ‘Not to worry,' she says, ‘she will be on the next flight. The next flight, definitely.' She mumbles theories that no one wants to hear. I try to shut out her voice, and concentrate so hard that I do not hear my name being called. A hand on my shoulder brings me back from myself. It is a woman in the faded green and beige livery of the national airline.

‘You are surely Mary Chikwiro,' she says. ‘I have a picture of you here.' Through my tears I see a picture of me with Lisa and Peter sitting beneath the mango tree outside our house, weeks before Lisa left for England. The woman smiles again and says, ‘I have something from your cousin Lisa. She said it was a special delivery, and didn't want to have to go through customs.'

I blink away my tears but she is oblivious to my distress.

‘People send me with things, you know, nice things from London. I charge only fifty pounds per package. It's a living, isn't?'

She now seems to notice my mood and says quickly, ‘Here is the package. Enjoy.' She smiles uncertainly as she thrusts the package into my arms.

I take the box and walk towards Jonathan who stands some metres apart from the women. We both look at the package wrapped in gaudy purple and silver paper and tied with purple ribbon. I open the box to reveal an urn of dark wood. Peter's name is engraved on a brass plate on the lid. There is nothing to say. We follow my mother and
Mai
Lisa out to the car park.

In the Heart of the Golden Triangle

Y
ou hear your mother say to
Mai
Mufundisi that her daughter has a big, big house deep in the golden triangle. ‘Right in the heart of the golden triangle,' you hear her say. In the golden triangle, you live a stone's throw from the Governor of the Central Bank. In the street behind the French Ambassador's residence, your house is next to the residence of the British High Commissioner. You try to remember that you are to call him the British Ambassador now, because your President pulled your country out of the Commonwealth.

Your maid brings you morning tea in bed. She says she did this with the British High Commissioner's wife, remember to call him Ambassador. You drink your tea at leisure because you do not have to work. Your husband is the Director in the Treasury Department of a Big Merchant Bank. ‘We have branches all over Africa,' their
adverts say, ‘but our roots are here in Zimbabwe.'

You call your maid Joyce and she calls you Madam. You don't admit this to anyone, even to yourself, but you employed her only because she worked for the British High Commissioner remember to call him the British Ambassador before he was asked to leave the country for stating the obvious in a country where the truth can be spoken only in the private chambers of the mind.

‘She makes flaky puff pastry that is as light as a feather,' you say to your friends as you drink afternoon tea. They complain about their maids, and you listen and chime in with stories of maids that you have employed, maids that you have sacked and maids that have stolen from you.

‘Maidei stole my Ferragamo shoes,' you say. This happened five years ago, but the incident still rankles. Joyce is not Maidei, she is coming along nicely, you think, you
hope
because you could not bear to go through another maid; you have been through thirty-five. After you drink the morning tea that she brings you, you get up, but you may as well lie in because in the golden triangle there are never enough things to do.

You spend the day looking for ways to fill in the hours, to stretch them out so that they run into each other. There are brunches and lunches, and teas, and
dinners. You have eaten through the menu at Amanzi and Imba Matombo. There are tombolas and cake-bakes and bring-and-buys. There are concerts at your son's school.

Your son was in the same class as the President's son, before the President complained about the fees and withdrew his son to be home-schooled. Your son goes to a school that was too expensive for the President. It gives you a thrill, just to think about it.

You leave the house, alternating your BMW with your Range Rover. The security guard whose name you can never remember almost breaks his leg as he runs to stand by the gate which does not need to be opened because it is automatic and electric. He salutes you as you drive out. You head out to the school to listen to your son play the piano. He misses most of the notes. Mrs Robinson, the music teacher from England, sits with a tight smile on her face, but you don't notice it. You drive with your son to Sam Levy's. You talk on your phone while he bullies other children off the jumping castle.

And you think,
Maybe I should do some shopping
.

There is very little shopping in the golden triangle. You buy your milk and bread at Honeydew. In the supermarket, every month, you buy three hampers in bright colours, hampers carefully chosen to approximate the basic needs of your maid, gardener
and security guard: Perfection soap and coarse maize meal, cooking oil and dry beans, corned beef ground from the unmentionable parts of the cow, dried
matemba
fish that taste of nothing but fish bones and brains, Lifebuoy soap.

There is nothing in the shops for you.

When you want to shop, you fly out, out of the triangle and up, up on the wings of freedom, on South African Airways you travel together with the wives of Cabinet ministers who do all their grocery shopping in Johannesburg, even as their husbands promise to end food shortages. There you buy your proudly South African products in Rosebank and Sandton because as you said to your friend Bertha last year, Eastgate has become just too cheap. You sat behind the First Lady on your last flight.

She flipped through
True Love
magazine.

Your eyes met as you passed to take your seat.

You did not like her eye make-up.

In the golden triangle your children speak only English, English sentences that all begin ‘Mummy I want …', ‘Mummy can you buy me …', ‘Mummy where is daddy?' Daddy is often not there, he is out doing the deals and playing the golf that ensures that you continue to live in the golden triangle. You say
this to the children, but your son is old enough to know that golf is not played in the pitch blackness of the night. You stop his questions with a shout. He turns and locks himself in his room.

You breathe out your remorse at yelling at your son but you cannot tell him the truth. That you share your husband with another woman.

Imbadiki
, she is called. That is not her real name; that only means she inhabits the small house while you live in the big one in the heart of the golden triangle. Her name is Sophia. She is twenty-five years younger than your husband. You know this because you had your husband followed. Not that he even tried to hide it. No man can be expected to be faithful, he has said often enough. It is not nature's intention. He said the same thing to you when you met in secret away from the eyes of his first wife.

And as you gasped beneath him, above him and beside him, as he put his hands on your haunches and drew you to him, you agreed, no man could be expected to be faithful, yes, you said, oh yes, you said, just like that, you said, right there. You are fifteen years younger than he is, and his wife before you was five years younger than he was. You go to the gym, where you have a girl who plucks the hair out of your eyebrows, and the hair from under your arms, and the hair from your pubis. You pay someone to scrub
your feet and to pummel you with hot stones.

The small house cannot become the big house.

You worry because you have not found condoms in his pockets. You find yourself hoping that he keeps them in the small house. You watch for the tell-tale signs of illness which crosses over into the golden triangle and touches your gardener Timothy and your security guard whose name you can never remember. They both have the red lips that speak their status. The only red lips you want are from lipstick but you fear that you may have them too if your husband continues to establish small houses all over the city.

You have parties in the golden triangle, where men braai meat and talk about business while you sit with other women and talk about, you are not really sure what you talk about. You see your friends at these parties, Laetitia, who used to be a teacher before she married a banker. Tendai, who used to be a model before she married a banker. Bertha who used to be a secretary before she married a banker. You talk about your old friend Norma who used to be the small house of a banker before she married him, and who was evicted from the golden triangle, and now lives in a house in Ashdown Park that has a yard of only a quarter of an acre.

‘
Akadhingurwa
Norma,' you laugh about it when you are drunk with your friends and Oliver
Mtukudzi is playing on the stereo. In all the malice of your
Schadenfreude
, you make it all about her, she was getting full of herself, Norma, you all agree. Away from your friends, the ice grips your heart and you work out twice as long at the gym to keep Norma's fate from your door.

You watch Timothy plant birds of paradise in the narrow space between the lawn and the driveway. You imagine the driveway lined with the flowers, driving through four hundred metres of birds of paradise, driving past their purple and orange plumes. You have the sudden urge to scream, but you don't know why, all you know is that no one can hear if you scream behind your walls; your echoes will be absorbed in the verdancy of your garden, in the garden furniture that you imported from Italy. Your scream will bounce off your Jackson Munyeza tennis court to ripple silently in your Jackson Munyeza swimming pool.

You see yourself at sixteen, always you go back to how you were at sixteen, surrounded by other schoolgirls in a world where achievement was everything. Who gets best marks, who can run the fastest, who can come up with the best tricks to plague the nuns. You were happy to see an old school friend the other day, and you fell into each other's arms. Your voices rang out as you cried out in happy reminiscence.

Do you remember, do you remember?

She turned to your children and said, ‘Your mother was a really good discus thrower,' and she turned to you and said it was nice to see you Catherine, and you did not tell her that your name was not Catherine, she had confused you with someone else because you did not throw the discus at all.

‘It was the javelin,' you say to yourself at the traffic lights. It is all you can do to stop yourself crying. ‘It was the javelin.' High, high, flew the javelin, higher, always higher. The cars behind you honk. Moments later, you turn into Glenara. You drive over three potholes, one after the other, but in the cushioned comfort of your four-by-four, you don't feel a thing.