Come Sunday: A Novel (39 page)

“SHE DIED three months after he did, you know?” I say.

Beauty nods.

“Nobody really knew why. My grandmother wouldn’t let them do an autopsy.”

“Ai,”
Beauty says, shaking her head. “It was not right that she died so young. Miss Louise had life again; she had made her fist.” Beauty raises her arm in the old salute of African power:
Amandla!
“I have often wondered what happened to the lion at my door.”

“There’s no way to know.”

Beauty looks at her niece and nods her head. “Fetch the bones.”

After she has set the parcel on the floor, the niece helps Beauty out of her bed. I take her other arm and the old woman eases down until she rests on her knees. From the parcel, she unwraps a buckskin, impala perhaps, and lays it out in front of her. She straightens up only slightly as Nontlé removes her
doek
and replaces it with a headdress of beads, bells, and feathers. Around the old woman’s shoulders she places a colorful blanket, and my grandmother’s old maid has been transformed into a sorcerer. When she says, “The ancestors can tell us things no one else can,” I am surprised to hear the familiar voice and not something that sounds like a record played backwards. Swaying her head till the beads clack and the bells ring like wind chimes, Beauty nods at Nontlé, who empties the contents of the pouch into her wide, craggy hands. Once they are sealed between her fingers, Beauty raises her hands to the ceiling and shakes them, and chants in a tongue I do not understand.

The fragments land in a haphazard fashion, and I am surprised to see not only bones, which look as though they might have been pilfered from my grandmother’s oxtail stew, but shells and stones and the claw of a bird. In Beauty’s right hand Nontlé places a short stick, the end of which is bushy with horsehair, and immediately the old
sangoma
bends over to examine her wares. Unsatisfied, she begins to run her hands over the objects, Braille-like. Only once does she point to a shell and ask her niece, “Which one?” After she gets her answer, she straightens her back and sits quietly. After several minutes her pearly eyes find mine.

“The ancestors have answered about your mother’s death,” she says.

I nod, afraid to speak, afraid she will decide not to tell me. She makes to get up and Nontlé and I help her rise and get back into bed. The niece then removes her headdress and draws the blanket from her shoulders. While I stand next to Beauty’s bed, the niece packs up Beauty’s magic as though it were an abandoned game of checkers. Only when she leaves the room does Beauty speak.

“Your mother’s death and your father’s death are the same,” she says, shaking her head. “I am very sorry.”

“You mean . . .”

“She died from the poison, yes.”

“But how is that possible?”

Beauty rubs her eyes, moist now. “Very, very dangerous is
impila
; even when a drop touches the finger it can find a way quickly to the insides. Your mother knew this; I told her. Miss Louise was not afraid anymore; she said if she was going to die, better from trying than from Boss Harry’s hand.”

It is claustrophobic, this little room with its caving ceiling and moving walls. “Beauty, thank you for helping me, but I think I should go now,” I say, wanting, more than anything, to slip free of Africa’s clutches.

“The ancestors have spoken of your death too,
klein miss
.”

Blood running cold, isn’t that how the expression goes? The chill that has been blowing in through the window is now racing through my veins, and I recall Jenny’s prophetic words,
They come in threes
.

“It is a warning from the great Qamatha, the One Above All,” she continues.

“Please, Beauty,” I say, “I think I’ve heard enough for one day. There is a lot to take in.”

Ignoring my request, she says, “You are being poisoned too,
klein miss
, by your own heart.”

“Please, I really must leave!”

This time it is her hand that grips mine. “You have the bird in your path,” she goes on. “The bird is the messenger. Look beyond your immediate situation; the healing is on the horizon if you choose it.
Umntwana
,
you are your mother’s daughter; you now must be a warrior like her.” Beauty releases my hand.

Suddenly in the dusty room the particles of light seem to merge so that I see what Beauty has seen all along. Whether conjured by her magic or my wishing-hard, my mother appears before me. Not the demure housewife with an apologetic slump of her shoulders or the mother who left her child on Africa’s doorstep. Around her eye is not the violet smudge of a bruise but a stripe of red clay, and over her upright shoulder is not a shawl but a
kaross
. Standing before me is my mother the warrior, beckoned from the plains of Africa’s ancestral grounds. She smiles and it is as though the sun has just risen. I smile back at her, this vision or ghost. And then she is gone before I can decide which. “Now you can go,” Beauty says. “Now it is time for you to go home.”

The taxi, before turning north, deposits me in front of the Bredenkamps’ store. It feels good to stretch my legs, and I am hoping the half-mile walk to the B&B might do my head some good too. Only two cars are parked outside, and on the store’s veranda is a huddle of old tribal men sitting on orange crates and smoking their pipes. I walk into the cool of the store and push through the small turnstile, hoping to put aside—at least for a while—thoughts of witch doctors, avenging mothers, and poisoned fathers.

“Good day to you,” says a male voice, and I turn around to see where it has come from. “Up here,” it says when I don’t see anyone. Leaning out the window of an elevated office above the cigarette counter is a gray-haired man with a beaming smile and a cigarette-clutching hand waving in my direction. Etienne’s manager.

“Hello,” I say to the lined, friendly face.

“Just in time for sausage rolls, straight out of the oven. Four rand fifty each or twenty rand for six!” he says, cigarette gesturing to the right. I follow its direction and see the sign that says BAKERY.

“Thank you, I’ll try one.” I nod, before walking down an aisle of canned food.

I fill the shopping basket with two cans of ravioli, two cans of halved pears, and, on impulse, a jar of artichoke hearts—enough to get me through to Monday’s airplane fare. I wander down the center aisle
and take a furtive glance at the office window, and since the manager is no longer there, I take a U-turn down the wine aisle for Pinotage Cheap ’n’ Nasty. Since it is to be a night of indulgences, why not candy too? I peruse my childhood favorites: Caramello Bears, licorice (still sold without wrappers), Smarties. It is my mother’s favorites I reach for—a box of Wilson’s Mint Imperials, its scent infamous for veiling the breath of liquor. At the produce section, I pick out a huge grapefruit and a couple of bananas, then head to the bakery. “One sausage roll, please,” I ask the young girl in her oversized baker’s jacket. She is too shy to look at me directly and, keeping her head bent like a Karoo sunflower that hasn’t seen rain for months, pushes the packet toward me.

On the way to the checkout stand I lean over the stack of newspapers for a copy of this month’s
Fairlady
. While the cashier rings up my purchase, the manager sticks his head out the window again.

“Find everything, miss?” he asks.

“Yes, thank you,” I reply.

“Got one of them pies, did you?”

“Yes, I did, thank you.”

“If it’s not the best sausage roll you’ve ever tasted, come back for a full refund,” he says cheerfully.

“Okay,” I say, and hand the cashier two twenty-rand notes.

“Going to get your Lotto ticket?” he asks. “One million rand in the coffers and the big draw is at four o’clock tomorrow.”

“Next time, maybe.”

“Won’t be a next time this big.”

“That’s okay, all the same.”

When I walk out with my two bags, I hear him call “Goodbye,” but the doors close behind me before I can turn around and reply.

THE ALARM CLOCK is missing. I notice its absence immediately, and the groceries drop as I rush to the bedstand and look under it. The clock is gone! Turning wildly, I notice that the apricots are gone too. Cleo’s bunny is no longer at the foot of the bed and my boots, parked
earlier on the floor beside it, are gone too. Sal’s locket, which I took off last night and left next to the washbasin, is no more. I run outside and around the back of the
kaia
, searching madly for the culprit, and succeed only in startling a pair of guinea fowl, which shuffle into the bush. I rush back to the front door of the
kaia
, heart pounding, feeling the anger rise to my face. Idiot! You lock your doors in Africa, I chastise myself, noticing the padlock is missing too.

“Bugger!” I swear. “Shit!” And then I cry because I have so little anyway and someone has taken my shoes and Mrs. du Toit’s pilfered apricots my mouth was all set to eat. And Cleo’s Easter bunny.

“Thieving bastards!” A nameless black face comes to mind. “Thieving bastards, the lot of them,” I can hear my father say. “Thieves and murderers!” I almost nod in agreement. Why are they always black faces, the ones with the hands that wrench wallets from pockets or pies from windowsills? The hands that stab farmers and their wives on the moonless nights. Hands that grind mountain plants into hemlock.

Picking up my handbag, I race up to the main house. The door is open but the burglar gate is locked.

“Susannah!” I call, jabbing the doorbell, hearing it ding-dong down the hall.

Delia is the first to the door. “What is wrong, madam?”

“Someone has stolen my things!” I say through the bars.

Susannah approaches. “Dear God!” she exclaims, pushing Delia aside and unlocking the gate. The hounds, late in detecting a guest, are all fired up and barking, and rush down the driveway as though leading a cavalry charge.

“What’s missing?” Susannah asks, huffing beside me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I just came back from Langa; the alarm clock is gone, and my shoes, and a few of my daughter’s things.”

We crowd into the little
kaia
, dogs too. “Off!” shouts Susannah when one of them jumps on the bed.

“I left early this morning, but I could have sworn I locked up,” I say.

“Is anything else missing? . . . Money? Passport?”

“No, I had them with me in my handbag,” I answer, and then sit
down on the bed with my head in my hands, exchanging composure for a cry. “They took my necklace, and the apricots,” I say between sobs.

Susannah pats my shoulder, “There, there,” then hands me the tissue she has balled up in her sleeve. “It’s clean.”

“I go get some more apricots,” says Delia, but before she leaves she adds, “Pepsi, madam! I know it was Pepsi!”

Susannah seems irritated at the suggestion, as though she is tired of refereeing two bickering children. “But he’s not even here today, Delia; it’s his day off.” Pulling a chair from the table, Susannah sits down on it and pats my knee gently. “I am so sorry, Abbe. We will get to the bottom of this, I promise you. People talk around here.”

“My alarm clock,” I cry.

“Of course we will replace that, and whatever else you need.”

“No, it’s my alarm clock from my home.” And she doesn’t understand. She cannot know how it has measured my breath and tears, my longing for Cleo. My favorite clock because it had all its numbers printed on its face, not like the others carelessly skipping numbers—12, 3, 6, 9—as if certain segments of time could just slip by unnoticed. She cannot possibly know what I now admit to myself, that the clock kept a vigil for me while I lost track. Since leaving Hawaii, the hours and days have stacked up without my counting. Other ghosts have elbowed their way in and a youth left years ago has been around every corner.

My tissue-bearing, knee-patting landlady sits in front of me, “there-there-ing,” while I try to find solid ground. “My daughter died,” I say, looking up and into her face. “She got hit by a car over a year ago and that clock is about the only thing that’s kept me company.”