The Holiday Before
A Short Story by Keith Mundangepfupfu
I
I don’t quite remember the trip to Nyanga Mountains but I remember the feeling.
I was six or maybe five, feeling so excited as we all filed into my parents old yellow Pulsar. It was their first car and my parents loved it as if it were their last-born child. I remember sitting in the back of the car, Tinashe, my eldest brother on the right, Munashe, my middle brother on the left, and me in the center. I remember seeing the back of my mother’s head, her hair flowing down, freshly relaxed, silky, black, and shiny. My mother’s hair, just like her face, was always a striking sight. I can see the red roses on the back of her white floral dress; she bought it when she bought the new dining room table piece and refused to buy me a new pair of shoes. The car smells like my mother. Estée Lauder, her favorite perfume, engulfs all of us. My father bought it for her birthday just before she left. In the boot, there is a cooler box, with roasted chicken wrapped in old newspapers, vetkoeks, and boiled sweet potatoes. If I tilt my head just right I can smell the food seeping into the Estée Lauder.
I see my father’s hand on the steering wheel, I hear him singing a Catholic church hymn, from his days at the Jesuit school and I feel my mother smiling as she looks at him bellowing “Nearer My God to Thee.” I imagine that my father’s other hand is resting on the gear knob, while also gently grazing my mother’s side. They both pretend not to notice his hand but they feel it, and feel the tenderness and endearment it holds. My brothers reluctantly start singing along with my father — they know this hymn like any boarding mission school going boy knows the smell of tinned fish — very well. My mother looks back at me and touches my forehead. She smiles and says something funny, or maybe she just smiles at me; either way I giggle. It’s one of those expressions of laughter that comes not as a response to something funny but rather as a response to an infectious joy that demands more than a smile. We are happy.
I don’t remember how we arrived at TrotBack Inn. And I don’t recall what we did that week. I remember looking at a picture of me holding a big fish and smiling with no front teeth standing next to a tall dark man who I suppose was the instructor or the guide. I always wondered whether my mother or father took that picture and what happened after and before I posed for the camera. One image my mind can still conjure up, is of all of us sitting by the fireplace and singing. I am laughing and humming because I am still too young to know the words but everyone else is singing. I am not sure what song it is, but I can hear the melody in my ear as clear and loud as thunder in December. This is the last memory I have of my family whole, the holiday before we began to lose each other.
II
After my mother left Munashe stopped smiling. It was not something strangers or even his friends could have noticed because my brother did not smile with his teeth; it was his eyes. Whenever he was happy or someone said something funny he would slightly squint his eyes and his black pupils would dance against his white irises. Since his teeth began to grow uncontrollably on top of each other he had stopped smiling with his mouth. Most people would tease him that he was always so serious and did not know how to smile, but I knew he did. He smiled at me the day I told him I could now swim an entire width by myself. He smiled the day Mama bought him his favorite flavor of ice cream after he had come third in class. He smiled often when Mama gave him the biggest piece of chicken instead of giving it to me. But after Mama left us he never smiled again.
Tinashe is the one who found the letter by the brown table. My mother had bought before she ran away, in the dining room. The letter was not long, it was only a sentence that read: “Please be happy, and do not come looking for me.” My father read this letter while he was leaning by the door and looking at the gate. After staring into nothingness for what seemed like an hour he sat down on the stoop by the door, removed his glasses and started crying. I had never seen my father cry before.
III
In the weeks after she left Kubatana, and us, everything became smaller. It was as if her leaving had opened up a wormhole right in the middle of Kubatana and we were slowly being sucked in.
Kubatana is a small town, and like many small towns it is a place where no secrets exist. The town was started in 1904 by a white British man, George Wellington, who came seeking land to grow sugar cane. He had been told many times that it was impossible to grow sugar cane in the south. There was too much heat and not enough water, the cane would not survive. He had persisted and swore to ride until he found land close enough to the river fit for irrigation, and so he rode until he reached a piece of land that stretched for kilometers on end, untouched and close to a river he had passed on his way.
This land was veld and had many wild animals roaming it, and there were the Shangani people who lived along the river and used parts of the land he wanted to farm. So, one night he and his men set fire to the veld. It is said that the Shangani people woke up in the dead of the night and crossed the river, running away from the fire with only the clothes on their back. Mr. Wellington cleared the land in the coming weeks and the sugar cane grew successfully. And so Kubatana was born, out of the separation of a people from their land, in the south of Zimbabwe. My grandmother used to say Kubatana was a cursed town, a town for those in transit. It was a land where you could not build a home.
People in Kubatana didn’t really care about one another but were good at pretending like they did. The woman next door always gave us salt and cooking oil towards the last days of the month but she always made it a point to loudly mumble how my mother was married to a no-good man as she walked away. We would cook for distant relatives who came to visit every month, soon after pay day, and after they left we would complain about how they never came for anything but our food. When the man who lived down two houses from us was fired for downloading pornography at work we all laughed about it at the dinner table.
This is why I knew that none of the people who came to our house after she left came to genuinely see how we were doing. They were all coming to see for themselves if it was really true. And if it had really happened. But many excuses were given: our neighbor from church, whose wife was cheating on him with the man from the pharmacy, said he had come to see if we were registered to attend the church conference; Mai Jose, who sells eggs and airtime, came to tell us that her eggs would not be on sale for two weeks because she was going to South Africa. Our next neighbor came unannounced in the beginning of the month with cooking oil and salt — she said she thought we might need it. Somewhere through the process of this protracted postmortem I stopped eating and laughing. My father didn’t notice and Tinashe didn’t know how to talk to me anymore. Munashe left soon after my mother left and went to stay with my grandmother in Harare. I don’t recall if and when I started to eat but I remember the first time I laughed after they both left.
IV
The first time I laughed from my bones I was with Honai. He had come to visit and we were in my room, which used to be Munashe’s room. I imagine he had said one of his corny jokes or maybe he had teased me about my eyebrows or maybe he had said nothing. He had the ability of soliciting laughter just looking at me. Whatever he said, it sent my body into a whirlwind of laughter. It was uncontrollable. Unadulterated. Honai unearthed me and he did it unknowingly.
My father was out late, again, and he had not said where he was going, again. Tinashe had left as soon as he heard the car pull out of the driveway. Tinashe, left the house often then; he like me, could not stand being in the house. The shadows of my mother and of Munashe lurked everywhere. The side of the bed Munashe used to lie on, the mahogany dining room set my mother bought, the unused sanitary pads in my father’s dressing table, her jewelry set, the Estée Lauder on what used to be her side of the bed, Munashe’s Stephen King books that lined the walls of my room. Their shadows ate with us, watched us as we struggled for words to say at dinner, sat with us when we were watching the news at eight, laughed with us when we rarely found something that made us laugh.
I did not blame Tinashe for leaving; if I were him I would have left too. But I had Honai. I had his smile, his stupid jokes, his endearing jabs, his eyes — which dug through my fear and grief — his hands. His long, soft as feathers, hands I can still feel on me.
I remember the first time I felt his hands on my skin. It was before Munashe left; I remember the excitement and the danger. He had come to collect a book from Munashe; I can’t remember which book it was. Honai read a lot. Munashe wanted to shower early so he told Honai he would not be walking him home. I was outside doing God knows what, most likely just wasting time until Honai came out, shielded by Munashe, waiting to wave goodbye and see him smile. Then he came out of the house alone. Unguarded. I must have offered to open the gate for him and the next thing I remember is us walking down the street. We passed Mr. Chimunya’s house, my father’s longest and oldest neighbor. They had met before my father had married my mother. We raced to Mr. Chiguva’s house, this I remember because I won and laughed at him because I was faster even though he was older and stronger. I now wonder if he let me win just to see me smile and laugh at him.
He came up to me and said that “sometimes the elders should let the young lead.”
“Well if that is your excuse for being an old madala, I’ll take it.”
He came up closer, held my gaze.
“Well maybe I just wanted to see you run. Free.”
I did not say anything back.
He came up so close I could feel the tip of his nose, see the small hairs hidden inside, and feel his breath on the top of my mouth.
“Maybe.”
I fought back, helplessly.
He raised his right hand and reached for my waist. I can still see my body retort and collapse into his touch. I see myself wanting to look at the neighbors’ houses, to see if anyone is outside or looking through the window. But his eyes were like a vacuum, sucking me in, whole. His left hand reached for the side of my face. I was on fire, not wanting to stay but afraid of moving. Then blank. My mind shut down — my body was leaving me, going to him, into him, through his eyes. His hands hardened gently, squeezed my flesh firmly but surely, and he pulled me closer. Never blinking and his voice steady he said, “All I wanted to do was see you.”
V
After she came back, she was empty and in search of something to fill her up.
We never spoke of where she had gone or why she had left. All we spoke about was God. A God that I never knew before. Her God could only be found at 3:00 am outside in the bushes or high up in the mountains. Her God was never happy with how anyone else prayed except her. He was unforgiving and knew not of love but of discipline. There was always a war to be fought, always a need to be scared and to be on our knees fighting. We all had to be vigilant, always on the lookout for the devil because with her God the devil was a frequent visitor. The devil was my father, her parents, her church leaders, her friends, and sometimes even her children. The devil was everywhere and everyone — we could not tire.
Her prayers would often begin with a frantic declaration of how the devil had no power, how the cat that she saw in the kitchen then later in her dreams, sent by the devil, would not win. Then a list of wants and desires would follow: God, make me rich so that my neighbors will know your name; bless my chicken project and prevent the church deacon from stealing my blessings and killing my chickens; bless me and give me children with money and not the ones I have who have nothing and can’t buy me groceries and pay for my rent; bless my harvest and my fruits so I can be able to live even if my children refuse to look after me; give me more strength to do your work so that the devil will see how good you are to me. Sometimes she would end by asking God to defeat the devil, who would either be her husband or her parents, sometimes both, and even her tenants who did not pray to the same God, so were of course the devil.
I remember one day a woman came to see us. She must have been in her late 30s but she looked older, defeated by life. She told her she had been sent by a woman who lived next door to her and prayed with her. The only people my mother knew besides us were people she prayed with. The young woman’s problem was that her husband was cheating on her and taking all his salary and giving it to his small house, leaving his wife and the children destitute. Midway through her story she began to cry and my mother told her that God did not want our tears, only our prayers. She feared her husband would leave her and her children. She was desperate. I asked when she had been married she said at 14 her parents had married her off and told her never to come back.
My mother stepped in and began advising her. The first thing she said was that her problem was one God could fix but it would require strength and resilience, something she could tell this woman lacked. You have to be strong and smart. You must fast and go seek God in the mountains so he can hear you clearly. The angels that are able to fix this problem are not found in our cemented homes; they are not found at church, but in the mountains. Praying in the mountains was essential. The woman also had to start sleeping with her husband. She had stopped since he began the affair because she was afraid of contracting HIV — my mother reminded her that she was still his wife and if God was to help them she must be found fulfilling all her wifely duties. Pray when he is away but when he is home cook for him, smile for him, wash and iron for him and most importantly, share your bed with him, she said. This is the only way God will help you.
In that moment, I knew that the woman speaking was not the mother who left our house so many years ago; this was a woman I did not know, one who left looking for something to fill her and mend her. She had found it but she had also lost me.
VI
No one ever told my mother why even after we found her, we never came to visit. Sometimes I think I should have told her but then I remember how she was in the end and see how telling her would have not changed anything.
When I was seven or maybe six — I am not sure now, but I know it was before my mother left — my mother came back from work early. She removed her brown shoes by her door and walked in with only her black stalkings. I ran to her, hugged her, and wrapped my feet around her waist. She put me down and sent me away because she wanted to change. I left her room and instead of going back to my room I wore her brown shoes and began running up and down the corridor screaming, “Hello, how can I help you? I will be with you shortly,” giggling and prancing, ’til she came out and told me to go to my room and leave her shoes.
“Only girls wear those shoes!”
I heard in her voice amusement and that is the last time I remember hearing glee in my mother’s voice.
Claustrophobia is the fear of small and tight spaces. I knew of the fear but I never knew anyone who suffered from it. After we found my mother we realized she was claustrophobic. We were in my small car, myself, Honai, Tinashe and his girlfriend and my mother. We were not squeezed but we were tightly packed, and soon after starting the journey my mother began to scream and push against the window. She could not breathe and kept yelling to be allowed out of the car. She wanted air. She wanted to escape. I hit the brakes turned to her and told her to breathe.
“You are going to be fine. Breathe. Breathe. Look at me, you will be fine.”
Claustrophobia can sometimes be an indication of trauma, and my mother’s eyes confirmed it for me. Her voice begging for air, her screams, all told of a suffering that I would never understand. I often think we got too small for my mother. We began to suffocate her and she had to leave, she had to breathe. But while in search for air she had suffered. A suffering that stole her ability to find joy. Claustrophobia is not contagious but my mother’s asphyxiation was. Her trauma sucked you in, yet never allowed you too close to see its root. We never went to see her because we did not want to run, or be forced to find a God only we could speak to. We did not want her trauma. We did not want to become her.
VII
Kubatana comes alive during Christmas. All the young people come back from the city to see their parents, the ones working outside the country come late at night, thumping music in their newly-bought expensive-looking cars. The town does not sleep during Christmas week; music is playing from morning to evening. The returners who want to show off come with expensive table sets, brand new flat screen TVs, big double door fridges, and groceries that are spilling over the top of the car being held together by wornout string.
The last Christmas I remember was after she had come back, and I decided to go back and visit my father. Tinashe had said he was coming from Botswana with his now pregnant fiancé and I had casually said that Honai and I were driving down from Harare. No one had heard from Munashe since he crossed the South African border after he finished writing his O level exams. My father called often then but rarely spoke about her, and I never asked. A week before Christmas he called me asking if I was coming. I told him I was and asked if he needed anything.
“Your mother is sick; the doctors say she may need to be sent away.”
This is all he said to me and hung up the phone. As I approached our street I could hear my father’s voice thick voice in my head. I thought of the time I saw him cry and wondered if he had cried after our call. His voice sounded as if it were about to crack and give in.
Honai had not asked me how I was going to introduce him but we were both thinking about it. Before I left Kubatana and went to Harare my father alluded to the fact that I was single and going to the big city — a ripe moment for me, he had called it. I smiled hesitantly and did not respond. My lack of romance had been a quiet gale in our house, and in Kubatana. People speculated that maybe I was impotent or bewitched, some blamed my mother for leaving — that was the reason I did not like women — or perhaps I was going to be a priest and wanted to give myself to God.
Mai Jose once said to me, “Asi wadii waita musikana nhai. She should walk with you when you come to buy airtime. Walking alone is not right especially for boys your age.”
“I am perfectly fine walking alone,” I replied sternly.
One woman at church preached about the peril of sin. She barreled loudly how God would reign down on Kubatana if we began to live like Sodom and Gomorrah. At first I thought it would be paranoid of me to think she was preaching to me until I noticed all the women turn to me as they bellowed “Amen!”
But after being away from Kubatana for so long I could no longer pretend. I could not put my head down and imagine I was not there. Being with Honai particularly emboldened me and I knew I was going to tell my father and Tinashe. On the days I miss my father’s laughter and singing, I regret telling him about Honai. And on the days I hear Honai screeching Oliver Mutukudzi in the shower, I forget that my father banished me from the place I used to call home. Home has become nights spent talking to Honai about how one day we will run away and leave Harare, to a place where we can hold hands outside. Where we can love in public without fear or care. Home has become a dream that I sometimes see when I am awake.
VIII
I remember in Psychology 201 learning about memory and its peculiarity. The professor said the mind remembered past events based on present emotion. So if Jane was happy and reminiscing about her ex-boyfriend James, she would remember all the fun and happy moments she shared with James. But if Jane were crying and angry and thinking about her ex James she would remember how much of an idiot he was and then feel happy about breaking up with him. I found this quite fascinating because the one thing that regardless of how I felt would always make me happy was the thought of Honai. He seems to be the one person I can conjure up and smile as I do so. It used to be the same with my father and Tinashe but not since the last Christmas we were all together. Not since I brought Honai home with me.
My psychology professor made me question if all memories are just figments of our imagination. If they are, how come we have scars and pictures and letters to corroborate our memories? Could it be that our whole lives are just a manifestation of imagined events? Could it be that I never really fell in love with Honai? Could it be that my father never really stopped loving me? Could it be that my mother never left us? Perhaps all of this never happened and perhaps my family never fell apart.
“Writing and Rhetoric fueled my passion to write, and it equipped me with the fundamental elements I would need in my pursuit.”
Keith Tinotenda S Mundangepfupfu is from Zimbabwe and currently studies at Wesleyan University. He started ALA in 2013 and can be reached by email at Ktmunda@gmail.com.
