The Water Man's Daughter (26 page)

Nomsulwa hears the click of Mira’s phone faintly in her ear, puts her phone down, and tries to smile at Neil, who looks quizzically at her.

“Ngiyabonga, bru.”

“You should get going. I’ll just run in and get the T-shirts for you to hand out.”

Neil turns around and Nomsulwa brings the phone up to her ear again, as if Mira’s desperate voice would still be there. She has to find a way to meet him, talk some sense into him. How could he run away from the police? In her mind Mira is a boy again. He stands on the corner behind Nomsulwa’s mother’s store scratching at the scab on his elbow from the last time he ran too close to the brick wall of the community centre. She takes the little boy by the
hand and leads him back to her mother’s yard; she cleans the scab and puts a makeshift bandage over the elbow.

“I will marry you.” Mira pouts.

“You can’t, dumbo, we are cousins.”

“Then you have to be with me forever.”

“What about my husband?”

“He can live in the shed in the back.”

“With the chickens!” Nomsulwa and Mira laugh, stamping their feet against the yard’s dirt.

Before leaving the compound, Nomsulwa dials Mira’s cellphone. It goes straight to voicemail. She leaves a message, orders him to meet her in the town outside the compound early the next morning. She has to convince him to get back to the city before anyone finds out why he ran.

O
N THE WALK TO THE CLINIC
, N
OMSULWA WINDS
through the far side of the township where the water treatment plant is. It’s not spying, she tells herself, if she happens to stumble upon Claire and Kwanele finishing their tour. But the place is deserted, and it’s not until Nomsulwa gets closer to the clinic that she sees Kwanele and Claire deep in conversation, leaning against a wall, laughing and nodding.

The clinic is a small house, white walls stained red like everything else. It is on the edge of the town – sensibly away from the general population – but Nomsulwa senses that Kwanele didn’t call the meeting here by accident. When there is an outbreak, people move to the nearest outpost of safety. The clinic still boils their water, distributing what it
can. It has some food. And more is on the way as the next round of government assistance arrives in Victoria.

Kwanele sees Nomsulwa first and touches Claire’s arm so she’ll turn around. Claire waves.

They walk up behind a throng of women milling about the cordoned-off space. There are over fifty of them there, some carrying children, some dragging men behind them, a handful of reluctant participants. The crowd is talking; a low murmur of exclamations greets Nomsulwa’s small crew. Compared to the sea of red at her own meetings, this collection – a smattering of colour, small numbers – is not inspiring. But every meeting is an opportunity, and Nomsulwa remembers when her own organization had only a few grumbling members.

At the front of the crowd is a chair. Kwanele leaves Claire and walks towards it. He clambers on top and claps his hands.

“Sanibonani. Sanibonani!” he shouts.

The crowd orders itself a little. People turn to face the front. Nomsulwa walks over to stand beside Kwanele. She feels shorter with the height of the chair between them. She motions reluctantly for Claire to find a spot in the audience. Claire walks timidly over to the side where an old woman stands with her grandson and stops directly behind them. The old woman notices the white girl, but does not say anything, only nods at her, and Nomsulwa feels grateful for her kindness.

“Sanibonani!” Kwanele shouts again.

“Sawubona bhuti,” the crowd answers, not in unison, but like a wave running in circles around the room.

“Ninjani?” Kwanele doesn’t command a room like Mira, unable to extract booming responses from small crowds.

“Siyaphila,” the women answer Kwanele, more in sync now.

“Nam, ngiyaphila.” Kwanele launches in. “Thank you for coming today. I know many of you stepped out of the line for the clinic and I want you to know that I appreciate that. But we are here to figure out a way to eliminate the clinic altogether. We are here to bring the water back.”

The women yip and whistle. There are no walls to catch the sound, but the roof makes their calls echo slightly, or feel closer, as though the women are all huddled in a circle and not spread out under a glorified tent. Nomsulwa can see Claire is still, watching the growing energy of the crowd around her. She looks wary.

“uNomsulwa, from the Phiri Community Forum, is here to tell you about our plan. Let’s welcome her.” Kwanele motions to his side, then steps down and starts to sing, “Somlandela,” an old song with a slow pace. The old women in the front of the room sing with their eyes closed and their voices straining, and soon everyone has joined in. Nomsulwa knows the words and sings along as well. At the end of the second verse, she is standing on the chair belting out the chorus, carried away by the emotion of the song, watching Claire start to sway in time to the music. Nomsulwa smiles at her and then immediately regrets it. She needs to get
through the meeting quickly and get Claire out unscathed. The less comfortable she feels, the faster she’ll leave. Nomsulwa motions for the women to quiet down and begins to speak.

“Sanibonani!” Nomsulwa shouts. She goes through the same motions as Kwanele. At the end of it, she waves her arm and yells. She owes it to these women to encourage them in their fight.

“Phansi Amanzi Phansi!”

The women respond: “Phansi!” Not a booming response, but they are warming up. The singing has encouraged their voices and now Nomsulwa can feel the energy rise to her. The Zulu accents cover the sound of the word Amanzi and Nomsulwa is relieved to see Claire seems to have no idea what the crowd around her is yelling about.

“Amandla!” Nomsulwa pushes her fist in the air.

“Awethu!” the women respond.

Then she begins in rapid Zulu.

“For months, your community has been struggling to find clean water. You have been saving for a little dribble from the tap when it is your right to have enough water all the time, for washing, for cooking, for drinking. It is not sufficient. Then you went to the river, because you had no choice, and you became sick from the water in the river. Now, your taps are dry, your river is poisoned, your families are ill, and we have had enough!”

The women yip again. They start to holler into the air. Nomsulwa can feel the explosion of a people without an
outlet. Kwanele, so good at soft words, trusting conversations, has not provided his community with a place to yell. They are furious, and their fury fuels the cries. Loud now. Claire looks at Nomsulwa with big eyes, scared, but also, Nomsulwa hopes, a little impressed, a little understanding of what all the anger is about.

A few of the men move to the front of the room and begin to toyi toyi, singing at the top of their lungs the harsh words:

They jump from one leg to the other, pumping up and down in unison. On the outskirts of the small crowd, women join in. The boy standing with his grandmother starts to jump as well. He looks at Claire and encourages her to try. She watches, tries to jump in time as if to be polite, and the boy begins to sing again, guttural and angry. Claire stops moving. She is paralyzed by the noise and the movement. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail and her face is flushed.

Nomsulwa whistles. The toyi toyi ends. She speaks, in Zulu, in a more sombre voice.

“We have money from eGoli to set up our own water system. One that Amanzi can’t control. We will all have to help raise the water treatment plant like you built your houses, together. But an engineer from the city will be here
to supervise, and Kwanele will make sure we have the materials we need.”

A woman yells from the front, “Will our taps run then?”

“No,” Nomsulwa answers. “This is not a solution. It is a temporary fix. Amanzi controls the taps and the pipes that lead to your houses. We can give you a place to get safe water, in the meantime.” She doesn’t look in Claire’s direction.

“Let’s take the pipes from them. What is to stop us?” an older man yells out. He is leaning on a chair, surrounded by his family.

The crowd likes his suggestion. They take up the chanting, this time in English. The old man leads them. “Down Amanzi, Amanzi Down! Away Amanzi, Amanzi Away.” The crowd toyi toyis, crouching when their voices get soft and then springing up when their voices grow. Their words string together, unintelligible, Nomsulwa prays.

But then, the old man starts a new chant.

“Kill the Water Men, the Water Men, the Water Men.”

“Kill the Water Men, the Water Men, the Water Men.”

The crowd pulses, the young people swerve in and out around one another, twisting as they narrowly miss their neighbours, holding their hands to the side or in front clasped together like a gun. The cry rises, louder than seems possible for the small number of people.

Nomsulwa sees Claire freeze. The accents don’t mask the lyrics. Nomsulwa sees she has registered the words. She sees her face turn redder, a harsh red as if the blood is no longer covered by fair skin. Before she has a chance to react,
sKwanele sweeps past her. He takes Claire by the hand and leads her out of the clinic into the sun.

Nomsulwa, eager now to end the meeting, moves away from the still-dancing children and stands on the chair again. She quiets the crowd.

“It is dangerous to dig up the pipes. Police will come and investigate, and we can’t afford to take that risk. We will use the money we have to build a treatment centre. It will be a farther walk than the river, but the water will be safe. Over time, if it works, we can raise the money to install a permanent distribution system.”

Nomsulwa keeps talking, keeps explaining the plan she and Kwanele organized when she arrived. She talks about how much money there is, how there will need to be another influx of cash in a few months if they are going to complete the project. She emphasizes the fact that the cholera deaths will end if the people go to the plant rather than the river to get their water. Many of the older women think the dehydration is contagious. Nomsulwa assures them it is not.

She is speaking as quickly as she can. But her mind keeps slipping back to Claire, her reaction when she first realized the focus for the anger and frustration of the people around her.

“W
HERE’S
C
LAIRE?”
N
OMSULWA DOESN’T GREET
Kwanele when, short of breath from running, she gets back to the compound.

“She went upstairs.”

“I shouldn’t have brought her.”

“You thought it would be good for her?”

“I just–”

“You didn’t think. I know. That girl takes the reason out of you. The meeting went well. The girl will recover. Anyway, it’s about time the water men saw the damage they cause.”

“She’s not a water man,” Nomsulwa snaps. Kwanele raises an eyebrow, but Nomsulwa can’t stop herself. “She’s a girl whose father was just taken.”

“Water man or not, it was only a meeting. She’ll get over it. Though maybe you should take her back to the city. Not sure she’s too fond of the desert people any more.”

Nomsulwa thinks of Mira’s panicked voice. She can’t leave yet.

“Tomorrow, first thing.”

“Suit yourself. Whatever you want to do.”

Nomsulwa remembers the day her father died. The news that he had opened a parcel in his bunker.
How could anyone hate one man so much?
was all Nomsulwa could think then. Enough hate that they would build a bomb, place it in a small box, and leave it in a house where anyone could pick it up. He was just one man.

C
LAIRE IS SLEEPING WHEN
N
OMSULWA MAKES IT
to the room. Nomsulwa doesn’t try to wake her for dinner; she sits with the group, picks at the beef stew and pap, but eats with no enthusiasm. Neil plays a song, “Malaika,” Nomsulwa’s favourite, but she doesn’t sing along. When the strumming is finished, she says a quiet goodnight and heads upstairs.

Claire is still immobile, but her breathing is less regular. Before making her own attempt at sleep, Nomsulwa tells her, “We’ll leave first thing in the morning, okay?”

Claire mutters, “Good.” Her voice is thick and rough. Then she tugs the sheets up higher, obscuring the delicate rise of her bare shoulder in the soft light.

N
OMSULWA HAS VIOLENT DREAMS
. S
HE WAKES UP
with a start and has to deliberately open her clenched fists. It is the middle of the night, the time when everything is finally quiet and the moon is close to setting. The bedroom is still lit sparsely by the silvering light. She turns to check on Claire and sees only an empty bed with the covers tossed against the far wall.

She must be in the bathroom, Nomsulwa thinks. She waits for ten minutes and then begins to worry. She gets out of bed, covers her bare arms with a sweatshirt, and walks out into the silent hall. There are no lights, and it is darker away from the windows. No sounds echo through the centre, no soft padding of feet or clinking of glasses from the kitchen. Downstairs is empty too. The dishes from dinner are half cleaned. Some are piled, spilling discarded food over their sides, waiting for morning. Behind the long wooden dinner table, the door to the firepit out back is slightly ajar. Nomsulwa’s heart sinks. She wouldn’t.

On previous visits, Nomsulwa has passed out next to the old, wide fire hole that sits behind the centre. Neil, having sung her to sleep, would slump down on his guitar
and the two of them would sleep off the evening’s beer, waking up shaking violently from the cold. It is freezing now, the desert night snuffing out all life that dares to struggle through its shift. Nomsulwa is sure that Claire will be shivering in a corner, but she’s nowhere in sight. Instead, soft tracks in the sand lead out past the fire, through the gate, and into the wide, sandy landscape.

Oh my God
, Nomsulwa thinks.
Has she become suicidal?

In the open-toed shoes Nomsulwa slipped on before leaving the room, she feels the ice-cold sand sting her feet. She hopes that Claire hasn’t gone far, but each step makes her more nervous.