Things My Mother Left Me

Pulane Mlilo Mpondo, Nsuku Sithole

Description

“I hear them climb onto my roof, the men, they have given up all negotiations with the door. But the roof is no good either, it’s too hot up there, the corrugated iron that covers my home is quick to gather and boast of the heat. That iron roo

Sujets

• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature
• Littérature
• Novela corta
• South Africa
• Nouvelle, Quebec
• Nouvelle
• Littérature
• Littérature sud-africaine
• Littérature Sud-Africaine

Informations

• Publié par: Blackbird Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781990907098
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Things My Mother
Left Me



First published by Blackbird Books, 2022
593 Zone 4
Seshego
Polokwane 0742
South Africa
www.blackbirdbooks.africa
Mlilo Mpondo © 2022
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-990907-09-8
Also available in print.
Cover design by Nsuku L. Sithole
Editing by Alison Lowry
Proofreading by Alison Lowry
See a complete list of Blackbird Books titles
at www.blackbirdbooks.africa



Things My Mother
Left Me
Mlilo Mpondo





For my daughters Khonza'Okuhle Imbo lamaHlubi Mpondo, Hlabela eMbo lamaHlubi Mpondo, HlumaMbo lamaHlubi Mpondo and all the daughters that will touch this book.


Contents
The Burning of Temples
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
The Seer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
The Prostitute
1
2
3
4
5
6
The Seeker
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
The Prostrate
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
The Priestess
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Thank you's




1
The Burning of Temples



‘I had so little time to love him. And that love has survived all these years of separation … perhaps if I’d had time to know him better I might have found a lot of faults, but I only had time to love him and long for him all the time.’
— Winnie Madikizela-Mandela



1
Where are the children, where are my babies, I can’t find them, I can’t see through all the grey, it blinds me, it chokes me. I must find my babies, I can’t leave them behind in this grey that fills my home. The stench of petrol soaks everything. The fire is climbing up my mother’s maroon curtains, I have to take them down, they are all I have of her besides a pocket-sized Bible and my complexion.
But where are my babies? The roof is too hot, too hot for me to think, too hot for me to gather my thoughts. My thoughts are scattered everywhere, underneath the bed with my photo box, on the room divider with Nyaki’s Grade One graduation picture on it, wearing her powder-blue tunic, grey jersey and navy-blue blazer, holding her gold certificate, she was so beautiful. But I can’t find her or her baby sister. I can hear screaming from the other side of the door, there is a lot of noise, a lot of wailing. They are trying to break in, to break us out, but I can’t think with all of that noise scratching through my head. I can hear sis Tsholo’s voice in the growing crowd calling for more water, but I struggle to hear Mam’Josephina, she must be in a corner praying. Thank God for her quiet. Their pulling on my door is no use, have they forgotten that doors are padlocked from the inside? I do not remember where I put the key, I will have to find the axe. But first I must find my children.
I hear them climb onto my roof, the men, they have given up all negotiations with the door. But the roof is no good either, it’s too hot up there, the corrugated iron that covers my home is quick to gather and boast of the heat. That iron roof makes life uncomfortable, it bakes and heaves with the heat, playing musical chairs, making us unwelcome visitors in our own home. That roof is cruel, and now it is burning the soles of the men who are trying to save our lives.
I hear Nyaki scream ‘Mama!’ on the other side of the room. Our home is small so she cannot be too far, but the grey in my lungs, in my eyes and in my bones makes it impossible to reach her. I stumble over collections of my life. I trip over a box I do not recognise and fall onto a carpet that does not look like my own. I do not know these things that keep me from my children, gatherings of my life, testaments of my existence, they look unfamiliar, my home is unfamiliar, my life is unfamiliar. All I see, all I know is the raging fire that has come unwanted in the middle of the night like the young women who knock on strangers’ doors looking for their men or for a cup of milk to feed to hungry children who refuse to fall asleep. These women, this fire, these people outside my door, are all making noise. I ask God to still my mind so that I can find my children. ‘Mama!’ Nyaki cries, almost screaming, from a corner that takes an eternity for me to find. Again, ‘Mama!’ and I am in the kitchen, screaming her name like I am giving birth to her all over again, and she runs to me, holding the baby in her arms. They have been hiding beneath the kitchen table with the plastic floral tablecloth, under it a red plastic basin filled with cold water and dishes that I had told her to wash earlier this evening.
I take Pabi from her sister’s small arms and tie her to my back. With Nyaki’s hand in mine and Pabi on my back, we crawl towards the front door, past my mother’s maroon curtains which have turned an excitingly sinister and almost biblical orange. I stare at them and think how lucky Moses was to have found God in his fire. Nyaki tugs at my nightdress and jolts me back to a now that I do not want to be in. The irony, it is children, with their stubby hands and feet, plump cheeks and fragile existence, who are always pulling you back to a life you would much rather pretend wasn’t there.
I find the door. Its heat is blistering to the touch. It is yet another thing that has conspired to keep us in here, to keep it from burning alone. I curse at it, kick it for its lack of empathy and for all the times it did not open quickly enough when I came home running from the rain, for the times it knocked against my children’s elbows when they ran past it, and especially for the times it caught my face and did not move when their father threw my forehead at its handle. This door handle, this floor, this roof, this carpet, this room divider, this cheap kitchen table, they all know my body well, they know it intimately. They know the sound of a body cracking, the thud of knees falling, the scratch of nails grabbing at any surface they can find. They know my screams, my fears, my madness. Each keeps pieces of me gathered in cracks with dust I can’t reach, quietly seated. And right now, in this very moment, this fire is threatening to bury all of me along with these collections that contain the dust and parts of my life. This cannot be how I die, not where I have lived, anywhere but where I have lived.
I tell Nyaki to wait at the door and I run back to the kitchen to get the axe. I know exactly where it is. The last time I saw it Mlambo was holding it above my head. He cried while I pleaded. That night, while he slept, I had wrapped it in old clothes and newspapers, tied them in a Shoprite bag and tucked it inside the oven.
The kitchen is filled with grey and I try to find the stove five steps away from where my children had hidden beneath the table. My body is filled with too much grey, it is in my blood too, a part of me now, so it does not sting and choke as much. In the kitchen I bump my pelvic bone against the protruding kitchen sink, the unfinished sink, with boxes of unused ceramic tiles underneath it, and feel my way to the stove. The hotplates burn my palm, all four plates are on high, even though the big plate in the upper left corner has not worked for over seven years. I feel for the oven door handle and pull it open, feel inside for the thing that once had threatened to rid me of my life. I look at it with burning eyes and, for a moment, hope that this time it will save us.
Running back to the front door, I trip over Thembi, Nyaki’s plastic doll. Half of her face is burnt off, but I know Nyaki will like knowing that Thembi made it out alive. Yes, I decide, we are making it out of here, alive. Nyaki takes Thembi from me and holds my gaze, and I, beside my two children, with grey in their blood and coals in their chests, grip the axe firmly and hit violently at the chain.
The axe grows hot and heavy in my hands. I hit at the chain again and again and then, suddenly, there is a gust of water in my face. My nostrils try to find air, but the water in my nose closes them. I am on the floor gasping. The orange is gone, it is black, my eyes sting, I concentrate on a fading flickering light in the distance. The grey evaporates from my bones, out of my skin, through my tear ducts and out of my eyes. I see shoes that do not belong to me. We are outside, I am outside. My children. Where are my children? My eyes are shut, I am choking. I scramble in the dirt around me, feeling for small feet. ‘Here she is,’ says a voice I do not recognise. I touch my back and feel for Pabi, then open my arms and Nyaki comes crashing into me.
I don’t see her, but I know it is sis Tsholo from the weight of her body against mine. She is big and muscular with soft hips that hold me upright. Her face is dry. Tomorrow she will tell me that she didn’t cry because ‘you only cry for the dead, and I knew that you had more living to do’. Mam’Josephina is across the street, holding my children with blankets around their backs. Absentmindedly, I wonder who these blankets belong to. No one from Joe Slovo has ever had the luxury of blankets to spare.
There are people everywhere, all of them on their feet trying to put the fire out. Men in boxer shorts and white vests, women with towels wrapped around their waists and pantyhose on their heads, everyone is gathered around a big orange that now stands where my house used to be. At least a portion of it, the unrelenting walls, refuses to fall. I am not sure how long I sit there and watch it, but as the fire dies, burying in its rubble portions and chapters of my life,