When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (14 page)

Outside, Benedict gave the three chips to his brothers and Olga Mazibuko, and the children continued on their walk. Right now, Mrs Patel was probably using that paper serviette to wipe her eyes,
just as she had done when he had been there with Mama. But that had been right before Mrs Patel and Mama had become confidential, so he knew it wouldn’t have been right to ask anything or say
anything. Anyway, Mrs Patel would probably have said it was just onions, which he knew from Titi could make a person’s eyes red and very wet.

He thought carefully about what Mrs Patel had said. He didn’t really know what doing nonsense meant, but he didn’t want Baba sending him away for doing it, and he didn’t want
Mama’s heart to break because he’d been sent away for doing it. He would have to be careful not to do it, not even by mistake.

The yellow Hi-Ace was already at the high school when they got there, but it was locked and Auntie Rachel was nowhere to be seen, so they waited in the shade of the thorn tree. When the
high-school children came out, Vusi Mazibuko told them that Auntie Rachel and his sister Innocence were in the office with Mr Magagula, on account of Innocence being in trouble. He wasn’t
sure why, but Elias Gamedze and Obed Fakudze from her class were in there with her.

They waited for a long time. The ladies selling mealies and bunny-chow left, classrooms were cleaned, windows were closed, teachers went home, and still Auntie Rachel and Innocence didn’t
come.

Then Daniel and Moses needed the toilet, and Vusi told Benedict where to take them. Leaving his poster and their schoolbags with Grace, he led his brothers in through the school gate and round
to the block of toilets at the far end of the school.

While he waited for them outside the toilets, a classroom door opened and a girl came out, the same girl who had saved the spider. Hauling her schoolbag onto her back, she headed quickly towards
the school gate. Benedict was still thinking about whether or not he should try to catch up with her and talk to her about spiders, when a teacher came out of the same classroom, putting on his
jacket. He seemed angry when he caught sight of Benedict.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in a big, booming voice.

Benedict suddenly felt very small. He lowered his eyes respectfully. ‘I brought my brothers to the toilet, sir.’

Moses and Daniel emerged.

‘Hah!’ said the teacher, straightening his tie and buttoning his jacket. ‘These toilets are for big boys only, nè?’

Looking down, all three boys nodded.

‘I don’t want to see you here again.’

They all shook their heads.

‘Very good.’ Turning on his heel, the teacher walked away.

Benedict hoped that the spider-girl would be at the gate and he could show her his bilharzia poster, but she was nowhere to be seen. At last Auntie Rachel came out of the office with Innocence.
She gave Innocence a tissue from her handbag and wrapped her in a very big hug. Behind them Elias Gamedze emerged with his father, Elias looking frightened, Mr Gamedze furious.

‘
Eish
, there’ll be a beating tonight,’ said Vusi.

Benedict was shocked. ‘Auntie Rachel?’

‘
Ngeke!
Never! Gamedze.’

Obed Fakudze didn’t come out, but sounds of shouting came from Mr Magagula’s office.

Her arm around Innocence, Auntie Rachel hurried towards the yellow Hi-Ace, handing her keys to Vusi so he could open for them.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ she said, and as everybody got in she made calls to Mrs Levine and Mama on her cell-phone to say they were going to be home a bit late.

On the way down the hill, nobody spoke. Auntie Rachel didn’t seem angry, but Innocence was upset and sniffed loudly. Benedict was finding it difficult to know what everybody was thinking,
but on the whole he felt it would probably be best not to say that his and Sifiso’s presentation had gone well.

It wasn’t until a man tried to flag them down and Innocence shouted, ‘We’re not a bloody taxi!’ that everybody laughed and began to chatter. And it wasn’t until the
yellow Hi-Ace pulled into the garage and the Quick Impact Corolla was there that Benedict remembered the Ubuntu Funerals van being there a few days earlier, and that made him remember his idea for
their edge.

‘
Eh
, I’m sorry,’ said Mama, greeting him at the front door and taking his poster from him. ‘Uh-uh. Jabulani already knew about those caskets from Ghana. He loves them but
a tradition like that cannot work here. Zodwa says it’s a
kwerekwere
tradition, it’s un-Swazi.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘And besides, people here cannot
afford.’

Benedict felt disappointed. He had so wanted his idea to be good! He had wanted it to be a nice thank-you gift for Jabulani, for spending all that time on the casket for his hoopoe. He had
wanted it to make Jabulani and Zodwa dance with happiness and send lots of customers to Mama as a reward for all the customers the edge was going to bring them.

But now he would still have to find another way to help Mama.

‘My friend!’ Henry came out of the kitchen with a mug of tea in each hand. They greeted each other warmly, though the mugs of tea meant they weren’t able to shake. Henry
stepped aside to let Benedict pass. ‘Titi has more, nè?’

In the kitchen, Titi was still filling mugs with spicy, milky tea from the milk saucepan.

‘
Eh
, you came late today!’

‘Mm. Because of Innocence.’

‘Innocence?’ Titi put the empty saucepan in the sink and began filling it with water. ‘Innocence at the other house?’

‘Mm. She got into trouble. With two boys.’

‘
Eh!
’ Titi’s eyes were big. ‘
Two?
’

‘Mm.’ Benedict picked up two of the mugs, looking forward to the warm, milky spiciness.

Titi’s eyebrows seemed to be struggling to meet across the top of her nose. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged as best he could with the mugs of tea in his hands. ‘Maybe she can go with that lady to Nelspruit.’

‘
Eh!
’ Her eyes still big, Titi covered her mouth with a hand.

‘Come, come, come!’ Henry was in the kitchen now, picking up two more mugs. ‘Let us tuck in to the tasty plate of fruit that Titi has prepared for us so beautifully!’ He
winked at Titi, who dropped her hand from her mouth and smiled shyly as she turned off the tap.

Benedict was glad that Henry was there. He needed somebody to speak to him like he was big and not the little boy the teacher at the high school had spoken to. The tea and the fruit would soon
make him put away the disappointment about his idea not being good, and when he told everybody about the success of his and Sifiso’s bilharzia presentation, his smile would quickly come
back.

After supper that evening, Benedict sat on his cushion under the lamp and looked for Sheba in the encyclopaedias, hoping to find out whose breasts they were on Mr
Quartermain’s map. Neither the Kalukawe River nor the Lukanga River had been in the atlas, but maybe their names had changed, like Allister Miller Street in Mbabane changing its name to
Gwamile Street on account of it no longer being more important to remember a
Mzungu
from the time of Swaziland’s gold rush than to remember King Mswati III’s great grandmother.
Even his own country had changed its name, from Tanganyika back in the old days to Tanzania now.

The encyclopaedia said that Sheba was a queen back in the days of the Bible, and she brought King Solomon lots of gold as a gift. It also said that some people called Rabbinicals knew that King
Solomon invited Sheba to visit him by sending a bird to her with a letter tied to its leg. The bird was a hoopoe.

Eh!

Benedict could feel his heart beginning to skip with excitement.

Then it said that people in Ethiopia knew that Sheba and King Solomon had been in love and their children and their children’s children had ruled Ethiopia until 1974.

Benedict was confused. There was a lot about King Solomon under Sheba, but he didn’t remember reading about Sheba under King Solomon. He paged forward until he found Solomon again. There,
at the end, it said
See also Sheba, Queen of.
Back at the end of Sheba, he found
See also Solomon, King
, and
See also Selassie, Haile.

He was paging back to Selassie, Haile when Mama’s cellphone rang, interrupting the background murmur of her conversation with Baba at the dining table. Baba shouted for the TV to be turned
down.

Benedict couldn’t concentrate on Haile Selassie being Emperor of Ethiopia, on account of Mama’s voice sounding strange.

‘
Eh?
... What?... Uh-uh-uh!... Mm-mm...
Eh!
... No!... Uh-uh... Of course... Yes... Mm... Immediately... Yes.’

Putting her phone down on the table, Mama took off her glasses and buried her face in her hands for a few seconds while Baba asked her over and over what was wrong. Benedict wondered if he
should get up from his cushion and go to her.

She looked up and put her glasses back on. ‘Benedict,’ she said, in a voice that made him feel suddenly cold, ‘come here, please.’

Instantly he knew he had done something wrong. But what? He cast his mind back desperately over the day. But there was nothing. Unless... Could that teacher have complained about small boys
using the high school toilets?

‘And Titi,’ said Mama more loudly above the noise of the TV that the other children were turning up because it wasn’t them in trouble.

Titi rose from the couch and looked at Benedict with big eyes full of questions. He gave her the tiniest shrug, and together they went and sat nervously at the dining table.

Mama looked at them, shaking her head. ‘I’m so disappointed in you,’ she said, and immediately tears began to prick at the back of Benedict’s eyes.

Mama looked at Baba.

‘Yes,’ he said, uncertainly.

‘Gossip,’ said Mama, ‘is a very bad thing.’

Gossip?

‘Yes,’ said Baba again.

‘And to gossip about a child!
Eh!
’

‘
Eh!
’ Baba agreed.

‘More especially,
that
kind of gossip.’ Mama took off her glasses, reached down through her neckline for a tissue, and began to polish the lenses, shaking her head sadly.

Benedict and Titi gave each other a quick look that said neither of them knew what they had said about which child. Baba looked just as confused.

‘Angel, perhaps if you—’

‘Pius, these two have been gossiping.’ Mama put her glasses back on. ‘They’ve been telling everybody that two boys have impregnated Innocence Mazibuko!’

What?

‘No, Mama!’

‘No? Then why did Mavis at the other house shout at Innocence for getting pregnant at less than fourteen years just like she had done herself? Innocence went to Rachel in tears, and Rachel
found out from Mavis that Titi had told her and Lungi, and it was Benedict who told Titi.’

Baba made tutting noises against the back of his teeth.

Benedict was very confused. ‘I never said she was pregnant.’

‘Yes!’ said Titi. ‘You said she would go to Nelspruit with that lady.’

‘Only because she’s in trouble,’ said Benedict. ‘She got into trouble at school with Elias Gamedze and Obed Fakudze. Her brother Vusi said she was in trouble. When girls
are in trouble that lady takes them to Nelspruit.’

‘
Eh!
’ Titi covered her mouth with both hands.

‘
Eh!
’ Mama covered her mouth with her tissue.

‘
Eh!
’ Baba got up and went to sit on the couch, even though it wasn’t yet news.

Mama explained to Benedict about different kinds of trouble, and about being in trouble being a way of saying pregnant. He asked her if his first mama had been in trouble with him, but Mama said
no, there was another way of saying pregnant and that was being blessed, and it just depended. He wasn’t quite sure what it depended on, but he nodded when Mama asked him if he understood. He
was just so relieved that he had misunderstood rather than gossiping, which he knew to be a bad thing.

Titi had gossiped, though. She knew it was wrong, and she said she was sorry over and over again.

The two of them had to go down the hill with the torch and say sorry to Innocence and Auntie Rachel. While they were still on the steps there was a loud racket as some monkeys scrambled across
the tin roof of the house, scurried across the garden and plunged into the bank of banana trees. But they were both too busy choosing their words to pay attention, and they barely noticed the
month-end sounds of the dairy workers drinking their wages further down the hill.

Just outside the Mazibukos’ front door, they found Auntie Rachel’s mother, Mrs Levine, sitting on a deckchair, a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other.

‘Hi, there,’ she said. ‘You two are in trouble, hey?’

Benedict and Titi nodded, not really wanting to talk to her but thinking it would be rude not to. All they wanted to do was go inside and get it over with.

‘Me too,’ said Mrs Levine, taking a large sip from her glass and setting the ice-cubes in it clinking.

‘
Eh!
’ said Titi, nudging Benedict with her elbow.

‘You’re in trouble?’ he asked, knowing that Titi was wondering if Mrs Levine might mean the kind of trouble Titi had thought Innocence was in. She was a smallish woman with
white hair cut short like a boy’s, but her middle was rather large.

‘Mm-hm.’ She pulled on her cigarette, making the end glow red.

‘What did you do?’ The question was out of Benedict’s mouth before he realised how rude it sounded. He made mistakes like that when he was nervous.

‘Christ, what
didn’t
I do?’ Mrs Levine rolled her eyes, took a big gulp of her drink and swallowed hard. ‘
Ag
, but we don’t have all night, hey? You
better go in.’

Saying
Christ
wasn’t nice, but Benedict didn’t say. Maybe it was okay if a Jewish somebody said it.

They knocked before going in.

At first, Innocence, Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock were angry, but when they heard how Benedict had made his mistake, they smiled and said it was okay and he should wipe away his tears.
Innocence told them that Elias Gamedze and Obed Fakudze had brought a bottle of brandy to school and asked her to hide it in her schoolbag. She’d forgotten that it was there, and when
she’d opened her bag to get a book, Miss Dube had seen it.