When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (13 page)

Petros’s cough would go much sooner if he didn’t smoke. Really, he was too young to smoke! If he was her boy, she would tell him to stop.
Eish
, the smoke and the cows and his
dog made him smell very bad. She so wanted to wash his clothes for him! She never had, but if she ever did, while she was doing it she would want him to lie in a bath of nice warm water; she would
make it smell lovely with one of Madam’s special oils.

Did he have a nice thick blanket to keep him warm at night? She would love to crochet one for him like the one her mother had made for her. But when she had been clearing up at the end of the
birthday party that Madam and Doctor had made for the dairy manager, she had heard the dairy manager telling Doctor about Petros. Give him something, the dairy manager had said, and he gives it
away to somebody who needs it more. The two men had laughed about him giving things away like a rich man who already had everything he needed. But Mavis hadn’t wanted to laugh, her heart had
swelled with pride.

Such a nice boy!

But if she made a special blanket for him, she wouldn’t want him giving it away to somebody else.

Wrapping her own blanket more tightly around her, she left the bathroom. She would get back into her bed and crochet until sleep came back to her.

T
HERE WERE TWO REASONS WHY THE LAST FRIDAY
in June was an exciting day for Benedict, and he thought about both of them as
he bolted down his bread and tea at breakfast.

The first was that it was his and Sifiso’s day to get a turn presenting their project in class. They had chosen bilharzia, dividing the topic in two so that Benedict could do the life
cycle and Sifiso could talk about how not to get it and how to know you might have it. Bilharzia could make grown-ups too exhausted to work and it could make children find learning their subjects
at school very difficult, so it was a very bad disease. It couldn’t really make you late, but still.

After helping Sifiso to find a way to do his part without any words that would make him lisp, Benedict had spent many hours working on a big poster that showed bilharzia’s life cycle. Mrs
Patel had given him a large cardboard box that she no longer needed, and he had flattened it out to make a piece of board as big as himself.

He had drawn some pictures on the back of some used paper that Baba had brought home from the office, and then cut out what he had drawn and glued the pieces to the board. On either side there
was a person and in the middle there were some snails, people and snails being the two co-hosts of the story of bilharzia.

The person on the left was a man standing next to a river and using it as a toilet, with a dotted line arcing from below his waist into the water. Next to him was a group of little worms, with
an arrow showing that the worms were inside the man and he had bilharzia. There were lots of little worm eggs in what he had sprayed into the water, with an arrow showing the eggs getting inside
the snails that were in the water. Underneath the snails was a picture of the eggs hatching into worms, and an arrow showing that it happened inside the snails; then there were lots of little worms
swimming towards the other person, a child who was swimming in the water. Then next to the child was a picture of lots of little worms, and an arrow showing that they were inside the child now and
he had bilharzia.

It was a story that interested Benedict on account of people not being able to give the disease to each other: a person could only give it to a snail, and another person could only get it from a
snail. It was like malaria, which a mosquito got from one person and then gave to somebody else.

Despite trying his best, he hadn’t been able to find any information about bilharzia that said if the snail got sick. Was a snail just fine when the eggs from a person hatched into worms
inside it? People got really tired when the worms were inside them laying their eggs. Did the snails get tired too? And if a snail was too tired to swim, could it drown? People could avoid getting
bilharzia by staying out of water that had snails in it. But how could a snail avoid getting it? Water was its home. It couldn’t just leave if somebody used the water as a toilet.

If a snail ever gave a presentation about bilharzia, what would it say? Maybe Uncle Enock would have an idea.

The second reason for Benedict’s excitement was that Mama would soon be showing Zodwa the beautiful Ghanaian caskets in her magazine and suggesting them as an edge for Ubuntu Funerals.

Zodwa had arranged to collect her cake that morning, and it waited for her now on the coffee table as the family ate their breakfast at the dining table. It looked like a very large, very thick
version of Swaziland’s 20-cent coin with its wavy outline. Mama had baked two round vanilla sponges, one bright green, the other purple, and she had sandwiched them together with a layer of
red icing. Benedict had suggested the colours himself, choosing them because they were the colours of the
ligwalagwala
, the purple-crested lourie that was Swaziland’s national bird. It
was a truly beautiful bird with a shiny green head and neck, purple crest and wings, and a bright red eye that matched the flash of red under its wings when it flew.

Mama had cut away at the perfect round edge to make the coin’s wavy outline, nibbling at the bits she had cut away as she worked. She had covered the whole cake with a smooth, light grey
sugar-paste, and then set to work on another rolled-out piece of the same sugar-paste to make the design for on the top. Placing a real coin next to her on the table with the side facing down that
said Swaziland and had a picture of King Mswati, she had looked very carefully at the other side and asked Benedict for some help, on account of that side having a picture of an elephant’s
head.

Elephants were important in Swaziland, the king’s mother being called Indlovukati, The Great She Elephant. Benedict liked that the king was a lion and his mother was an elephant; people
really shouldn’t think of themselves as separate from all the other animals. There was a picture of Indlovukati’s head as a lady on the 1 lilangeni coin, and on the 20 cents there was
the head of an elephant.

Benedict had helped Mama to draw a simpler, less detailed version of the picture on the coin, and together they had cut it out of the sugar-paste and stuck it on to the top of the cake. Then
Mama had cut out sugar-paste numbers that said 20, and letters that said
years
instead of
cents.
That was because the ladies of Zodwa’s
inhlangano
, their savings society,
had been meeting for twenty years, and the special meeting to celebrate the twenty years was going to be at Zodwa’s house that weekend.

Zodwa had told Mama that the twelve ladies in the
inhlangano
met once a month to support one another, and every month each one of them put the same amount of money into the group’s
savings. Then they took turns for everybody’s money to come to one of them so that once a year each of them got a turn to get a big sum of money. It was a way of ladies helping one another
when the banks didn’t take them seriously.

The last step in getting the cake ready had been the most exciting, on account of Mama getting the chance to use something new for the first time ever. Auntie Rachel had told Mama about a shop
over the border in Nelspruit that sold everything you could possibly need for making and decorating cakes. Imagine! And there was a lady in Mbabane who made regular trips to a clinic in Nelspruit,
taking ladies and girls who had got into trouble and needed to go to South Africa where there wasn’t a law against helping them. Auntie Rachel often gave that lady some money and a list for
buying vegetarian things, so she knew that Mama could give her some money and a list for buying cake things.

Using one of the children’s paintbrushes, Mama had dusted very lightly over the whole cake with her brand new Dusting Powder (Silver).
Eh!
Now the cake looked just like a shiny new
coin!

Benedict knew that Mama didn’t like a cake to have just one colour, but silver was a very special colour for a cake to have, unlike white, which was Mama’s worst single colour. And
besides, there were three more colours inside the silver. Zodwa and her
inhlangano
ladies were going to love it!

Sifiso was nervous during their presentation. Knowing that he would be, he had written some notes on a piece of paper, but holding it made his shaking more obvious.

Standing next to him at the front, Benedict watched the class. Giveness was listening carefully, even though he had heard the presentation already during break while they had practised it. But
Giveness seemed to be holding his breath.

Some of the boys near the back were listening carefully, too. Benedict knew he could quiz them on what Sifiso was saying and they would get zero because they were only waiting to hear a lisp
that they could laugh at. They were going to be disappointed. Some of the girls were paying attention, and one or two even seemed to be writing down some of what Sifiso was saying.

Then it was Benedict’s turn. He propped his poster on top of Miss Khumalo’s table, and with Sifiso holding one side of it and Giveness the other, he pointed with his ruler to each
stage of the life cycle as he explained it. When he indicated the dotted line arcing from the man into the water he heard somebody near the back whisper the word
pipi
, then some others
laughed. And all the girls made faces when he talked about the worms inside the man and inside the child.

Sifiso had dropped a bit of red icing from his purple cupcake onto the board during break, so the eggs hatching inside the snail were a bit greasy, but nobody seemed to notice.

When he finished, everybody clapped for both of them.
Eh!
Benedict felt himself smiling all the way up to home time.

On the way to the high school, he took his poster into Mr Patel’s shop to show Mrs Patel what he had done with her old cardboard box. She was busy serving customers, spooning bright orange
curry into plastic containers and filling paper bags with chips and big, fat sausages called Russians.

Indian people weren’t like Christian people who had just one God who had to do everything for everybody. No. They had lots of gods, each with their own work. Some of them even had lots of
arms and hands so that they could do lots of work at the same time.

Of all the gods on Mr Patel’s walls, Benedict liked Ganesh the best. Ganesh was a man with the head of an elephant, and his job was to move away the things that were standing in your way
of getting something done. He had his big, strong trunk and four arms to help him to move things, so there wasn’t really anything he couldn’t manage. Benedict wondered if the
king’s mother, the Great She Elephant Indlovukati, was as strong as Ganesh. Perhaps they knew each other, or were even family.

While he waited for Mrs Patel, Benedict looked carefully at the picture of the god called Krishna. He could see at once why Petros had chosen that name for his golden-brown dog. Dressed in a
softly draped gold trouser and a matching sleeveless jacket, Krishna wore white beads around his ankles and a long necklace of pink and white flowers as he held up a golden flute, just about to
play it. He had only two arms, and unlike the other gods on Mr Patel’s walls, his skin was blue.
Eh
, his face was so beautiful! Beneath a golden headdress decorated with a feather from
a peacock’s tail, his eyes were ringed with black – just like Petros’s dog – his lips the colour of Mama’s when she wore her lipstick for going out. A cow rested at
his feet.

How Mama would love all those colours!

When Mrs Patel was ready to look, she was just like the girls in Benedict’s class: she didn’t like the worms on his poster. She thought it was best for the worms not to be in the
shop with her food, but she thanked him for showing her and gave him three chips, telling him he should continue to be a good boy at school.

‘Don’t be doing any nonsense,’ she told him.

Benedict began to nod then changed his nod to a shake on account of nonsense not being something to nod about.

‘Nonsense is deadly bad.’ Mrs Patel wiped grease from the counter-top with a cloth as Benedict changed his shake to a nod. ‘Nonsense can make your father send you away,
isn’t it?’

Benedict didn’t know what to do with his head now, but he was sure that keeping it still might make him look like he wasn’t listening, and it would be rude not to listen to somebody
who had just given him some chips as a gift. He felt that what his head was doing must make him look like one of the Indian men who used to work with Baba at his old job in Kigali. That man’s
head had bobbed this way and that on his neck, never quite showing whether he thought what somebody was saying was right or wrong.

Mrs Patel continued. ‘That can break a mother’s heart, isn’t it?
Break
it!’ As she slapped the damp cloth down on the counter, her eyes began to blink very
quickly. Reaching for a paper serviette with one hand, she nodded towards his poster and waved the back of her other hand towards the door. ‘Go, go.’