New American Stories

SHHHH by NoViolet Bulawayo

Father comes home after many years of forgetting us, of not sending us money, of not loving us, not visiting us, not anything us, and parks in the shack, unable to move, unable to talk properly, unable to anything, vomiting and vomiting, Jesus, just vomiting and defecating on himself, and it smelling like something dead in there, dead and rotting, his body a black, terrible stick; I come in from playing Find bin Laden and he is there.

Just there. Parked. In the corner. On Mother’s bed. So thin, like he eats pins and wire, so thin at first I don’t even see him under the blankets. I am getting on the bed to get the skipping rope for playing Andy-over when F — when he lifts his head and I see him for the first time. He is just length and bones. He is rough skin. He is crocodile teeth and egg-white eyes, lying there, drowning on the bed.

I don’t even know it’s Father at the time so I run outside, screaming and screaming. Mother meets me with a slap and says, Shhhh, and points me back to the shack. I go, one hand covering my pain, the other folded in a fist in my mouth. By the time we are at the door I know without Mother saying anything. I know it’s Father. Back. Back after all those years of forgetting us.

His voice sounds like something burned and seared his throat. My son. My boy, he says. Listening to him is painful; I want to put my hands on my ears. He is like a monster up close and I think of running again but Mother is standing there in a red dress looking dangerous. My boy, he keeps saying, but I don’t tell him that I’m a girl, I don’t tell him to leave me alone.

Then he lifts his bones and pushes a claw toward me and I don’t want to touch it but Mother is there looking. Looking like Jesus looks at you from Mother of Bones’s calendar so you don’t sin. I remain standing until Mother pushes me by the back of my neck, then I stagger forward and almost fall onto the terrible bones. The claw is hard and sweaty in my hand and I withdraw it fast. Like I’ve touched fire. Later, I don’t want to touch myself with that hand, I don’t want to eat with it or do nothing with it, I even wish I could throw the hand away and get another.

My boy, he says again. I do not turn to look at him because I don’t even want to look at him. He keeps saying, My boy, my boy, until I finally say, I’m not a boy, are you crazy? Go back, get away from our bed and go back to where you come from with your ugly bones, go back and leave us alone, but I’m saying it all inside my head. Before I have finished saying all I’m trying to say he has shat himself and it feels like we’re inside a toilet.

—

Mother had not wanted Father to leave for South Africa to begin with, but it was at that time when everybody was going to South Africa and other countries, some near, some far, some very, very far. They were leaving, just leaving in droves, and Father wanted to leave with everybody and he was going to leave and nothing would stop him.

Look at how things are falling apart, Felistus, he said one day, untying his shoes. We were sitting outside the shack and Mother was cooking. Father was coming from somewhere, I don’t know where, and he was angry. He was always angry those days; it was like the kind and funny man with the unending laugh and the many stories, the man who had been my father all those years, had gone and left an angry stranger behind. And little by little I was getting afraid of him, the angry stranger who was supposed to be my father.

Mother kept on stirring the pot on the fire, choosing to ignore him. Those days, you knew when and when not to talk to Father from the tone in his voice, that tone that could switch on and off like the lights. The tone he was using at that moment was switched to on.

We should have left. We should have left this wretched country when all this started, when Mgcini offered to take us across.

Things will get better, Mother said, finally. There is no night so long that doesn’t end with dawn. It won’t stay like this, will it? And besides, we can’t all abandon our country now.

Yes the wife is right it will get better my son and the Lord God is here he will not forsake us he will not for he is a loving God, Mother of Bones said, rubbing her hands together like she was washing them, like she was apologizing for something, like it was cold outside. Mother of Bones said God like she knew God personally, like God was not even something bigger than the sky but a small, beautiful boy with spaced hair you could count and missing buttons on his Harvard shirt, who spoke with a stammer and played Find bin Laden with us. That’s how it felt, the way Mother of Bones said God.

Then Father laughed, but it wasn’t a laughing-laughing laugh.

You all don’t get it, do you? Is this what I went to university for? Is this what we got independence for? Does it make sense that we are living like this? Tell me! Father said.

All I know is that I’m certainly not clamoring to go across the borders to live where I’m called a kwerekwere. Wasn’t Nqobile here from that Hillbrow just two days ago telling us the truth of how it is over there? Mother said. She stirred more mealie-meal into the pot.

And besides, all my family is here. What about my aging parents? What about your mother? And you, get away, imbecile, go and play with your friends before I chop off those big ears, what are you listening for? she said to me, like she always did every time there was adult talk or they argued, and they argued a lot those days.

Father left not too long after that. And later, when the pictures and letters and money and clothes and things he had promised didn’t come, I tried not to forget him by looking for him in the faces of the Paradise men, in the faces of my friends’ fathers. I would watch the men closely, wondering which of their gestures my father would be likely to make, which voice he would use, which laugh. How much hair would cover his arms and face.

—

Shhhh — you must not tell anyone, and I mean an-y-one, you hear me? Mother says, looking at me like she is going to eat me. That your father is back and that he is sick. When Mother says this I just look at her. I don’t say yes or nod, I don’t anything. Because I have to watch Father now, like he is a baby and I am his mother, it means that when Mother and Mother of Bones are not there, I cannot play with my friends, so I have to lie to them about why.

In the beginning, when they come over to our shack to get me, I stand outside the door and yawn as wide as I can and tell them I am tired. Then I tell them I am having the headaches that won’t go away. Then I tell them I am having the flu. Then diarrhea. It’s not the lying itself that makes me feel bad but the fact that I’m here lying to my friends. I don’t like not playing with them and I don’t like lying to them because they are the most important thing to me and when I’m not with them I feel like I’m not even me.

One day I’m standing at the door with just my head out and I’m telling them I have measles. I don’t know why I think it, but the word is suddenly there, on my tongue, speaking itself. Measles.

Is it painful? Sbho says. She is looking at me with her head tilted-like, the way a mother is supposed to do when you tell her about anything serious.

Yes, it is, I say. And then I add, It itches. Soon, it will become wounds and then I won’t be able to come out to play for a while, I say. I cannot read the look on Stina’s face but Godknows is looking at me with his mouth open. Bastard is just narrowing his eyes, watching me like I’m stealing something, and Sbho’s face is twisted, as if she’s sick with measles herself. Chipo is sitting down, drawing patterns with a stick on the ground.

What about the World Cup? Godknows says. You are not playing in the World Cup? We even found a real leather ball in Budapest because somebody forgot it outside.

Maybe my measles will be gone by the time it’s World Cup, then I can come and be Drogba, I say, scratching my neck to make like it’s itching.

True? Godknows says.

Yes, cross my heart and hope to die, I say.

Good, but you can’t be Drogba, can’t you see I’m already Drogba? Godknows says.

Liar, you’re lying, Bastard says. You don’t have measles and you’re not sick and you haven’t been sick. He is standing on one leg like a cock and chewing a blade of grass. He looks me in the eye and I know he wants me to say something back so he can say something worse. We are all standing there, everybody waiting for me to say something to Bastard, but I know I’m not opening my mouth.

We remain like that, and the silence is big and fat between us like it’s something you can touch when the coughing starts. It is loud and raw and terrible and at first it takes me by surprise. I start, but then I quickly remember that he is in the shack. By now it’s too late for me to do anything to hide it, and everybody is looking me in the eye, looking and waiting for me to say something, to explain.

I can’t think what to say so I just stand there, sweating and listening to the cough pounding the walls, pounding and pounding and pounding, and I’m saying in my head, Stop, please stop, stop stop stop stop please, but he keeps pounding and pounding and pounding until I just turn around and slam the door shut, behind me a voice saying, Wait!

What you got in there? What you got?

I hear Bastard’s voice close to the door, like he is going to maybe turn the handle and come in. I pull the latch and listen to him saying things and telling me to open and making jokes. When, finally, he goes quiet I sink down to the floor and just sit there, feeling tired. I look to the corner and he is looking at me with those eyes, wild, like he is some kind of animal caught in the glare of light on Mzilikazi Road, looking at me with his shrunken head, with his pinking lips, with his stench of sickness.

He coughs some more and I listen to the awful sound tearing the air. His body folds and rocks with each cough but I don’t even feel for him because I’m thinking, I hate you for this, I hate you for going to that South Africa and coming back sick and all bones, I hate you for making me stop playing with my friends. When the coughing finally ceases he is sweating and breathing like somebody chased him all the way from Budapest and up and down Fambeki, and when he says, Water, in that tattered voice, I make like I don’t even hear him because I’m hating him for making me stop my life like this. In my head I’m thinking, Die. Die now so I can go play with my friends, die now because this is not fair. Die die die. Die.

—

Father cannot climb Fambeki since he is sick, so Mother of Bones asks Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro to come and pray for him in the shack. We sit in a corner, me and Mother and Mother of Bones, watching. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro sprinkles Father with holy water and then lights four candles: one red, maybe for the Father; one white, maybe for the Son; one yellow, maybe for the Holy Spirit; and one black, I don’t know for what, maybe for the black majority, which is what the black of our flag stands for. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is crouching and humming to himself as he does all this, and finally, when he is done, he spreads a white cloth on the floor, kneels on it with a Bible at his side, and thunders.

At first my eyes are closed just like they are supposed to be when somebody is praying but then I get tired of closing them because Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro just keeps thundering and thundering. To make the time go I count to one hundred and when I finish he is still going on and on. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on on on on on on on on on on on on on on: I warn you in the name of Jesus, demon — cleanse him, Father — you mighty lion and healer of the sick — I lay myself before you, Jehovah Jaira, what-what. I just sit there, biting the insides of my mouth till I taste blood.

Father’s eyes are open and the look inside them is that of waiting, like waiting for a miracle. I look to the side and Mother of Bones has her eyes closed and is praying fervently, a vein popped on her forehead. Mother’s eyes are open. She doesn’t give me a look that says she will kill me for keeping my eyes open during prayer, so I just stay like that, watching.

Mother’s eyes are tired and her face is tired; ever since Father came she has been busy doing things for him — watching him and cooking for him and feeding him and changing him and worrying over him. I think of praying for her so that her tiredness goes away but then I remind myself I have decided that praying to God is a waste of time. You pray and pray and pray and nothing changes, like for example I prayed for a real house and good clothes and a bicycle and things for a long, long time, and none of it has happened, not even one little thing, which is how I know that all this praying for Father is just people playing.

I’ve thought about it properly, this whole praying thing, I mean really thought about it, and what I think is that maybe people are doing it wrong; that instead of asking God nicely, people should be demanding and questioning and threatening to stop worshipping him. Maybe that way, he would think differently and try to make things right, like he is supposed to; even that verse in the Bible says ask for anything and you shall receive and, I mean, whose words are those?

After the longest time, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro finally says Amen, and opens his eyes. He wipes his dripping face and head with the back of his sleeve as he tells Mother of Bones that God showed him that my grandfather’s spirit, which has been in me all along, has left. When I hear this I smile; even though I never felt like there was something in me, it had still bothered me to hear Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro say there was to begin with.

He goes on to tell Mother of Bones that it doesn’t mean the spirit is gone because it has now got into Father and is devouring his blood and body, making him all bony and sick and taking his strength away. In order to avenge the spirit and heal Father, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro says, we need to find two fat white virgin goats to be brought up the mountain for sacrifice, and that Father has to be bathed in the goats’ blood. In addition, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro says he will need five hundred U.S. dollars as payment, and if there are no U.S. dollars, euros will do. When he says this, Mother gets up angry-like and boils out of the shack, slamming the door behind her.

God also told me that the wife is possessed too, by three demons. One causes her to be unhappy all the time, one is the spirit of the dog, and the last one gives her a bad temper, rendering her a dangerous woman. But for now we have to deal with the husband, seeing how he is the most urgent case, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro says, pointing his stick at Father.

—

They are huddling outside the shack when I open the door. Mother has gone to the border to sell and Mother of Bones is on Fambeki praying because she is fasting for Father’s health. She cannot afford the two virgin goats and the five hundred U.S. dollars that Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro said to get and there are no doctors or nurses at the hospital because they are always on strike, so that’s what Mother of Bones must do for now, fast and get on Fambeki and pray and pray and pray even though God will just ignore her.

It’s your father in there. He has the Sickness, we know, Godknows says.

It’s no use hiding AIDS, Stina says. When he mentions the Sickness by name, I feel a shortness of breath. I look around to see if there are other people within earshot.

It’s like hiding a thing with horns in a sack. One day the horns will start boring through the sack and come out in the open for everybody to see, Stina says.

Where did he get it, South Africa? He wasn’t sick when he left, was he? Godknows says.

Who told you all this? I say, looking from face to face. In my head I’m thinking just how much I hate him again, but now it’s for a different reason. It’s for putting me in this position where I have to explain to my friends and I don’t know how anymore because I’m tired of all the lying.

Everybody knows, you ugly, Bastard says. We want to come in and see for ourselves.

There is nothing to see, I say. There is nobody in here. I realize that I am whispering, like I’m just talking to myself.

We saw your mother leave and we know your grandmother is on that kaka mountain wasting her time, so why don’t you let us come in and see, Bastard says. He is already opening the door and letting himself in like he lives here. They all pile in, and I follow them like it’s their shack and I’m just visiting.

We kneel around the bed, around Father, who is perched there like a disappearing king. This is the first time I am coming this close to him without Mother making me. I keep expecting for somebody to laugh at Father’s bones but nobody makes a sound; it is all quiet like we are maybe at church and Jesus just entered and coughed twice. I am careful not to look anyone in the face because I don’t want them to see the shame in my eyes, and I also don’t want to see the laughter in theirs.

We don’t speak. We just peer in the tired light at the long bundle of bones, at the shrunken head, at the wavy hair, most of it fallen off, at the face that is all points and edges from bones jutting out, the pinkish-reddish lips, the ugly sores, the skin sticking to the bone like somebody ironed it on, the hands and feet like claws. I know then that what really makes a person’s face is the meat; once that melts away, you are left with something nobody can even recognize.

Bastard picks up the stick-like hand lying there beside Father as if somebody left it behind on the way to play. He cradles it in his like it’s an egg and says, How are you, Mr. Darling’s father? I have never heard Bastard sound like this, all careful and gentle like his words are made of feathers. We all lean forward and watch the thin lips move, the mouth struggling to mumble something and giving up because the words are stunning themselves on the carpet of sores around the inner lips, the tongue so swollen it fills the mouth. We watch him stop struggling to speak and I think about how it would feel to not be able to do a simple thing like open my mouth and speak, the voice drowning inside me. It’s a terrifying feeling.

Where do you think he is going to go? Sbho says.

Can’t you see he is stuck here and he is never getting out? Chipo says.

I mean when he dies, Sbho says.

I turn to look at her and she shrugs. I know Father is sick but the thought of him dead and gone-gone scares me. It’s not like he’ll be in South Africa, for example, where it is possible to tell yourself and other people that since that’s where he went then maybe one day he will return. Death is not like that, it is final, like that girl hanging in a tree because as we later found out from the letter in her pockets, she had the Sickness and thought it was better to just get it over with and kill herself. Now she is dead and gone, and Mavava, her mother, will never ever see her again.

To heaven. My father is going to heaven, I say, even if I don’t really think there is a heaven; I just don’t like the thought of him not going anywhere. I hear myself saying my like he is maybe my favorite thing, like he is mine, like I own him. He is looking like a child, just lying there, unable to do anything, and then I’m wishing I were big and strong so I could scoop him up and rock him in my arms.

Is that why Mother of Bones is always on that mountain praying? Is she praying for God to let him into heaven? Sbho says.

I don’t know, maybe, I say.

Heaven is boring. Didn’t you see, in that picture book back when we used to go to school? It’s just plain and white and there is not even any color and it’s too orderly. Like there will be crazy prefects telling you all the time: Do this, don’t do that, where are your shoes, tuck in your shirt, shhh, God doesn’t like it and will punish you, keep your voice low you’ll wake the angels, go and wash, you are dirty, Bastard says.

Me, when I die I want to go where there’s lots of food and music and a party that never ends and we’re singing that Jobho song, Godknows says.

When Godknows starts singing Jobho, Sbho joins in and we listen to them sing it for a while and then we’re all scratching our bodies and singing it because Jobho is a song that leaves you with no choice but to scratch your body the way that sick man Job did in the Bible, lying there scratching his itching wounds when God was busy torturing him just to play with him to see if he had faith. Jobho makes you call out to heaven even though you know God is occupied with better things and will not even look your way. Jobho makes you point your forefinger to the sky and sing at the top of your voice. We itch and we scratch and we point and we itch again and we fill the shack with song.

Then Stina reaches and takes Father’s hand and starts moving it to the song, and Bastard moves the other hand. I reach out and touch him too because I have never really touched him ever since he came and this is what I must do now because how will it look when everybody is touching him and I’m not? We all look at one another and smile-sing because we are touching him, just touching him all over like he is a beautiful plaything we have just rescued from a rubbish bin in Budapest. He feels like dry wood in my hands, but there is a strange light in his sunken eyes, like he has swallowed the sun.