We Kiss Them With Rain Read online

  Mvelo’s eyes were big with tears. She looked from her mother to Sipho with confusion. She couldn’t believe that he was ripping their hearts apart. She loved Sipho, but her mother was her world. She ran out of the room and locked herself in her bedroom. Sipho felt defeated. It was hard watching his little girl hurt because of him, but he wanted to speak grown-up talk with Zola.

  He had thought about his speech for days, but it was hard to find the words. He had begun to realize what was happening to him. The love he felt for Zola was the safe kind that most men want. They choose a woman who is not challenging to them so they can have a comfortable and predictable life. They choose someone who will cook and take care of their home and meet their physical needs, who they can provide for, and who will simply admire and love them in return.

  Nonceba on the other hand had been like a bolt of lightning. With Zola, he was balanced because he had control, but with Nonceba he was treading on more dangerous ground. He said it was out of respect for Zola that he did not want to lie to her.

  He didn’t seem to consider that Zola might pack up her things and leave. In his love fever for Nonceba, he simply assumed that Zola would accept it and continue to stay with him. He knew she had nowhere to go but back to the shebeen. And he knew she didn’t want the growing Mvelo to be exposed to lecherous, drunk men.

  Zola may not have been in the same league as Nonceba, but she was a woman with her own pride and she loved Sipho too much to share him. She didn’t waste any time before she packed up hers and Mvelo’s clothing. As a parting shot, she poured a bucket of water over his bed and peed on his shoes, and they headed back to where they had started with Skwiza, who welcomed them again with open arms and cooed over them. She was also unhappy with Nonceba, this new woman in Sipho’s life, because he was no longer a regular customer.

  Nonceba was a complex woman. She was descended from those who had died with blood-curdling screams and curses on their tongues; and those who were in touch with the earth in ways that empirical science could not explain. Her name meant “mother of sympathy,” and she was born in a small holding cell at John Vorster Square. Her mother, Zimkitha Hlathi, was in jail, but she was a free and defiant spirit. On the other hand, her father, Johan Steyn, was racked with worry for Zimkitha, his forbidden love.

  Now Nonceba’s feminine curves echoed the strong and proud Ashanti queen Yaa Asantewa, Sojourner Truth, Nongqawuze, Ellen Khuzwayo, Lillian Ngoyi and many warrior women of the world. Her will was fierce and resolute, like the defiant Boeremeisies who resisted English rule. She had the restlessness of Ingrid Jonker and the makings of a powerful sangoma in her but she did not want to acknowledge it.

  She had the kind of hair that many black women spend thousands of rands to achieve, yet she longed for cotton candy kinky hair, a broad nose, and the fuller curves that were associated with authentic blackness. While many black women envied her, she envied them.

  She hated the attention that she got because she did not trust it. She knew it was mostly based on her looks. But she had other gifts. She was intuitive about those who crossed her path. As a child, it made her sick because the heavy weight of all the sadness and sickness in the world was too much for a child to bear. The American doctors diagnosed her with all kinds of names and gave her pills, but over time she learned to manage her sensitivity.

  Meeting Sipho calmed her down because she trusted that his love was for the real her, and not simply for the outside package. She could finally breathe out. She made a good lawyer because she could detach from the argument, but instinctively gauge the weaker side and then go in for the kill.

  Sipho became a changed man in ways that frustrated many people in Mkhumbane because he was no longer available to them as he had been. The tsostis who used to rely on his representation in court, for crimes big and small, could no longer call on him because he began engaging in bigger corporate representation, at Nonceba’s suggestion. They thought of ambushing her, but they sensed that she was not alone. They felt she had other souls hovering about her, so each time they came close, they would feel shivers down their spines.

  The person who was most unimpressed with Nonceba was Sipho’s mother. “I don’t like her one bit,” she said, when he took Nonceba to visit the old woman in eMpendle. “She scares me. There is something not right with that girl. She has the ancient ones, amadlozi, all over her. What is wrong with a good Zulu woman like Zola?”

  Sipho nearly fell over when he remembered the disparaging things she had said about Zola. “Well, better the devil we know,” she muttered, when she saw the look he gave her, “than this strangeness you are now bringing to my home.”

  Sipho never took Nonceba back to the village after that, and it was on one of his weekend visits to eMpendle that the tsotsis took their chance. They saw his car was gone and thought they would wait until the middle of the night so they could ambush Nonceba in a confused state of sleep. They had learned this trick from the Boers back in the eighties when they raided the townships in the stillness of the night. The tsotsis aimed for the early hours of Sunday when only the spirits of the dead dared to roam the streets.

  The house was perfectly dark as they got closer. They knew everything about the house because when Skwiza kicked them out to close the shebeen, the party had often moved to Sipho’s house. That was before the arrival of this curse, Nonceba.

  They reckoned it would be easy. Sipho had no burglar bars. He lived as if he was removed from the world around him. He always said that living behind high fences and alarms simply enriched the security businesses that preyed on people’s fear. The tsotsis thought this was a good philosophy to have.

  The last one of the four tsotsis had just managed to climb into the dining room when the window snapped shut behind them. They looked at each other in silence, their eyes bulging. The house was sweating like a sauna and there was a strong smell of herbs. They stood there, transfixed, not knowing what their next move should be. Then Nonceba came out of the bedroom, carrying a clay pot. She sprinkled the contents of the pot around the house. She didn’t seem to see them standing there. She was talking to herself in a language they could not comprehend. The sound of it brought goosebumps to their skin.

  She went into the bathroom, and the dogs began to howl, which jolted them into action. One climbed on a chair trying to open the window, but it wouldn’t budge, so they headed for the door and tumbled out, too shocked to utter a sound.

  No one ever knew what changed these four from thugs to tea-drinking churchgoers. Not even among themselves did they care to talk about that night when they tried to attack Nonceba.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zola’s stay with Skwiza wasn’t long. She worked fast with some of Skwiza’s patrons who had found space and material to build a shack for her in a mushrooming squatter camp on the margins of Mkhumbane. She was hurt, and afraid for her daughter. Stories of child rape spurred her on to work fast to get Mvelo out of the shebeen and harm’s way. Zola was quiet by nature, but now, in her private pain, her silence was loaded with fear and rage and disappointment. It was so deep that she couldn’t bring herself to feel it. She just focused on survival and making a home for Mvelo. She began to look for work and sold second-hand clothes in town.

  It was hard for them, especially when it rained. Water would come through the cracks in the walls. Nature was cruel. It felt as if God was spitting on them. During horrible, windy storms, they held their hearts, praying that their shack wouldn’t get blown away. The wind was a bully, shoving them around.

  Then there were the smells. A nasty combination of rotting food and stale urine. They had a neighbor with irritable bowels and could hear every labored sound as he conducted his business in the bucket. They only had six long drop toilets in the area, so people improvised with buckets, especially at night.

  Some nights there would be sounds that made Zola very uncomfortable. She was especially unhappy about Mvelo hearing them, and would turn the radio up to drown out the moans next door. She never
did explain why their neighbors sometimes made these noises at night. Ever perceptive, Mvelo didn’t push the issue because she knew even before asking that she shouldn’t.

  Their first winter in the shacks was terrible. They survived three runaway fires that were triggered by neighbors’ paraffin stoves falling over. Zola and Mvelo were saved by having their shack right next to the road. Those in the middle always had to start over, with nothing but the corrugated iron saved from the fire.

  In one of those fires, a young boy died. He was asleep when it started. By the time his mother ran from the shebeen to their shack, it was too late.

  It was clear from that woman’s gut wrenching screams of agony that somebody somewhere would have bad luck for life. They had to pin her down to stop her from lunging into the flames. It was a pathetic sight, her dress flying up and her bloomers with big holes on display, as she fought off those who were stopping her from getting to her son.

  Newshounds were right on cue with cameras, notepads, and the same tired questions for the mother in pain. “How do you feel about your son dying in a burning shack?”

  “My son just burned into charcoal, how the fuck do you think I am feeling?” the grieving woman screamed, hailing insults at the cowering journalists.

  The next day, newspaper headlines were asking who was responsible for this structural violence. Zola gave Mvelo many lectures about the dangers of playing with matchboxes and anything that could start a fire.

  Sipho lay low for a while, waiting for Zola to calm down, and then he came to see them. He offered to help with Mvelo’s schooling and things for the house. What he felt for Zola was beyond what a lover felt. He had some form of familial responsibility.

  His offer brought out all of Zola’s pent up scorn and anger. She kept shouting at him, “We have known each other half my life, all the years you claimed to love me, and when I finally gave in and opened my heart to you, Sipho, what do you do? You thank me with a plate of shit.” Her voice was bitter with anger and fear and confusion about why Sipho now loved somebody else.

  She was trying to hit him with pots and hurling plates at him. He ducked, and went towards her, taking her blows until she fell against his chest exhausted, and cried like a small child. He rocked her to sleep, and then the three of them slept until he woke up in the middle of the night.

  He covered mother and child with a blanket and left a wad of R200 notes to rid himself of guilt, convincing himself that he was still a good guy. Then he walked out into a silver night lightened by the moon.

  Once, he had told little Mvelo to look at the moon and asked her to tell him what she saw inside it. They were lying on their backs on his lawn. “It looks like there is someone living inside it,” she had said, sitting up and looking into his eyes for confirmation.

  “Hmm, yes, I think so. It looks like a woman carrying a baby on her back and firewood on her head,” he said, outlining a picture with his finger. He said it so convincingly little Mvelo actually saw it as he explained.

  “Yes, I can see it too,” she said, jumping up and down with excitement and making herself giddy.

  He broke into his laugh and they collapsed into a laughing bundle. Zola stood there, quietly amused but trying to be stern, rebuking them for making noise at night like village witches. He thought nostalgically about that time as he headed back to his home that he now shared with Nonceba.

  After some months had passed, Zola could tell that Mvelo really missed Sipho and wanted to see him. She softened because she couldn’t stand seeing her daughter pining, and allowed her to visit Sipho and Nonceba at the house.

  This became a highlight for Mvelo, who had moved on from the anger of the break up with her mother and returned to loving the only father figure she had ever known. It was awkward at first, because she was openly resentful of Nonceba. Secretly, she thought Nonceba was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen and wanted to be friends with her, but her loyalty was with her rejected mother. She acted up to make Sipho’s woman suffer, but it wasn’t working. Instead Nonceba disarmed her with her charm and seemed to know exactly what her favorite things were. It wasn’t long before they were firm friends. But she kept up pretenses with her mother. With Zola, she acted like she wasn’t overly impressed with Nonceba.

  Mvelo had adjusted to living in the shacks. She played with children there, but she didn’t like it when kids from brick houses looked down on her at school. She learned quickly that children can be mean. She also learned to reject them before they rejected her. The kids in the shacks would stick together, giving her comfort and even confidence.

  A researcher from England came to do a study on the shacks and was surprised to discover the confidence levels of children there were higher than many of those living in proper houses. The children liked him because he gave them sweets and cakes, but Nonceba spoiled it for them when she chased him away.

  She had seen him several times when she came to pick Mvelo up. She asked Mvelo about him and Mvelo told her about his questions and how they enjoyed his sweets. “He speaks like the people on TV,” Mvelo told Nonceba.

  When the researcher’s study began to make the rounds in the papers and on radio stations, Nonceba thought it was time. His conclusions seemed to suggest that the shacks were not so bad; the children were happy and coping with the situation. Never mind the casualties of fire from paraffin stoves because there was no electricity. No mention of the lack of space or privacy that exposed young children to adult sexual activities.

  Nonceba pounced on the researcher the next time she saw him. “Are there no children in England? Why would you fly all the way from there to do your study here?” He tried to reason with her but he was no match for her. “You can’t fool me. You can’t fool them either.” She pointed at the children. “It’s your sweets that they like, not your study, and they’ve read you well. They shape their answers to suit what they know you want to hear.”

  She hit the home truths and drew blood with her sharp words. Then she calmly watched him slink into his car, red-faced and furious, on his way to find some other shantytown on the continent, still avoiding the problems in his own country.

  Mvelo was shocked and embarrassed because Nonceba was right. They did answer in ways that made the researcher happy because they wanted to get the sweets. In the shacks, children liked to imagine happy houses with all the trappings. They took comfort in dreaming because all things are possible there. If their teachers asked them to write an essay entitled “My Home,” in these compositions they all lived in mansions with stables of horses to ride around green hills; their fathers, although in real life most of them didn’t know their fathers, were owners of chocolate factories where they ate chocolate until they were sick; and their mothers, most of whom were domestic workers, were pretty and wore expensive clothes and perfumes. The children were mostly imagining their female teachers.

  Mvelo learnt many things from Nonceba. Nonceba loved head-wraps and colorful African prints. She never shopped from chain stores. Everything she wore made her look pretty. In her early teens, Mvelo was insecure inside, but she portrayed a different exterior. She began to mimic Nonceba’s style, in the hope that she too would be pretty like her. Her friends laughed at her and her African print dresses, but she didn’t mind because Nonceba said it was OK to be different. It hurt at first when others laughed but she began to truly believe in being OK with the way she was.

  At first it was Nonceba’s words that kept her strong, but soon it was her own inner voice growing confident. She began to look at herself in the mirror and realize that she could never look like Nonceba. She was darker, her hair was kinkier, and her nose was broader. Her hips and behind were also filling out. But the way she looked no longer repulsed her as it had at first. It made her curious and excited.

  Nonceba chose to speak her mother tongue. She responded in isiXhosa to her other black colleagues at the law firm, who preferred to speak English, even among themselves.

  IsiXhosa was her language. She
and her grandmother had used it between themselves when they moved back to the States. It was the only thing her grandmother Mae could hold on to after she gave in and decided to go back to the country of her birth. They did not want to forget that they were Africans. Mae had ditched her surname, Wilson, and proudly declared herself Mrs. Mae Hlathi when she had married the good doctor, Nonceba’s grandfather.

  Sometimes Sipho felt sorry for the interns at the office. They would come in bright-eyed, willing to do anything to have Nonceba as a mentor because she was a light-skinned American. CJay, whose real name was Cetshwayo Jama Zulu, received Nonceba’s standard response. He came in with a pseudo-American accent, thinking that he would schmooze Nonceba with his charms, which never failed him on campus.

  “Right, let’s begin with getting to know you. What is your full name?” Nonceba asked, looking at his CV.

  “My name is CJay,” said Cetshwayo.

  “I see that,” she said, “but who are your people, CJay?”

  He looked confused.

  “I mean, if I stripped away your cool act, who will I meet?”

  Now CJay was getting pissed off. “Yo, man, look, cut a brotha some slack. I’m just lookin’ to finish my credits and get myself a job to make some dough. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “CJay, have you lived in America?” Nonceba was keen to cut through the bullshit.

  His eyes shone. There was no better compliment for him than this, an American thinking he was the real thing. “Oh no, doll, it’s just something I picked up.” He grinned like the fool he was.

  “Firstly,” Nonceba was done with having her time wasted, “I am not your doll. And secondly, you don’t fool anyone except yourself with this nonsense, Cetshwayo Jama Ka Zulu. Listen to the sound of it. The southern Nguni language is a beautiful thing. Why do you want to pretend to be a half-baked American? You come from a long line of proud people, but instead you’ve chosen a path of faking accents and a rootless existence. You use this language with bitch this and bitch that. You think it is so cool to go around calling yourselves nigga this and nigga that. Do you even know the pain that is pulsating in this hybrid of a language that you have taken and claimed as your own?