When Hoopoes Go to Heaven (35 page)

‘It’s always hot, nè? So there can always be tea, instant-instant, without anybody who comes here needing to wait. A cup of tea plays a very important part in comforting a
person.’

‘
Eh
,’ said Baba, ‘you are sounding just like my wife!’

Jabulani grinned. ‘She’s a very good teacher, nè?’ Then he showed them the pantry, which you could walk right into to get butter and eggs from a fridge or things like
flour, sugar and icing colours from the shelves. The last room, with a toilet just off it, was a place where the staff could sit to have their break.

Mama, Baba and Benedict sat in the front room, the one that was like a comfortable lounge, to have tea with Zodwa and Jabulani. One of the ladies had made cupcakes for them. They were good, but
no cake was ever going to be as good as Mama’s.

‘We want to thank you,’ said Zodwa, spooning sugar into her cup of tea, ‘all of you.’

‘Yes,’ said Jabulani, ‘we wouldn’t have this new part of the business without all of you.’

Mama smiled and Benedict beamed, but Baba said no, he deserved no thanks himself, he had done nothing.

‘Pius, you are wrong,’ said Zodwa, and when she saw that Baba’s brow suddenly got a line across it, she said sorry, but he was very wrong. ‘Benedict brought the
idea,’ she told Baba, ‘and Angel brought the expertise. But you were a good husband and a good father. You supported them both.’

‘Yes,’ said Jabulani. ‘You didn’t have to accept having ladies in and out of your house for training.’

‘
Eh
, that was not about accepting!’ said Baba, folding the circle of paper his cupcake had come in. ‘That was about welcoming! Angel was bored before, she had almost no
customers. I was very happy to welcome a sense of purpose back into my house.’

‘This new part of the business has brought a new sense of purpose to us, too,’ said Zodwa. ‘Before, we simply concentrated on burying the late with dignity and respect. But now
we’re also focusing on helping others to celebrate the lives of their late. We’re helping to record why each and every one of those lives mattered.’

‘And,’ said Jabulani, ‘we’re even helping people to record why lives matter while those lives are still being lived.
Eish
, there are more and more orders for cakes
that celebrate why people are important to others now, cakes that talk about what people mean to each other now before they are late.’

‘Ubuntu is smiling down on us,’ said Zodwa, smiling herself. ‘The business he started is doing so well now.’

‘Thank you,’ Jabulani said to Benedict. ‘The edge you brought to us is too, too good, nè?’

Then Jabulani’s cell-phone rang, and he had to rush down the road to Ubuntu Funerals to sort out a delivery of wood for making caskets that was causing problems, and the Tungarazas left
shortly after that when a young couple arrived full of smiles, wanting to order a cake.

On the way home, Baba pulled up outside Mr Patel’s shop, just as Benedict had asked him to. Leaving Mama and Baba in the Microbus, he went inside quickly. Mrs Patel was behind the counter,
where she always was. Benedict waited for her to finish with a customer who was buying a Russian and some chips before he spoke to her.

‘I have something for you,’ he said, reaching into the pocket of his shorts. Mrs Patel looked at him suspiciously, perhaps expecting a worm or a snail. ‘I made it
myself,’ he said, handing her his small gift.

She examined it carefully, exploring the feel of it with a long, thin finger. He had spent a whole entire afternoon making it, an afternoon that had been full of rain and noisy, bored brothers
and sisters. It wasn’t as beautiful as it could have been, but it was the best he could do with what he had, which was an empty matchbox from Mrs Levine, some of the silver foil that Mama
used for covering her cake-boards, and the last of the children’s gold glitter.

‘It’s a frame,’ he told her. ‘You can put a small photo inside, maybe of somebody you love or somebody you miss.’ He didn’t want to say her son’s name.
She had never mentioned him to Benedict, and for Benedict to know would have meant that there was gossip. ‘It can fit in your pocket or your handbag, then that person is always with
you.’

Mrs Patel looked at the frame for a long time before she held it to her chest. ‘So much of happiness you are bringing to my heart,’ she whispered, and if she hadn’t been
looking right at Benedict as she said it, he would have thought she was talking to the photograph of Sandeep that wasn’t yet inside the frame. He hoped that the happiness his gift was
bringing to her heart might help it – even if just a little bit – to unbreak.

‘Chilli-bites,’ she said, smiling and using the hand that wasn’t holding his gift to bring a plateful out from the glass cabinet on one side of the counter. ‘Very nice.
Fresh today, nè?’

Benedict took one, biting into the warm, spicy ball of fried batter. He chewed and swallowed before he asked his question. ‘Did you bring it, Mrs Patel?’

‘Yes. Yes.’ Her head disappeared behind the counter, and when it popped up again she had let go of his gift and there was an envelope in her hand. With her other hand she passed
Benedict a paper serviette. Finishing his treat, he wiped the chilli-bite grease from his fingers before he took the envelope from her.

‘Thank you, Mrs Patel. I’ll bring it back soon.’

‘No, no. Keep. Keep.’

He began to thank her, but Mr Patel came in from the back with a new load of paper bags and plastic spoons, and Mrs Patel waved Benedict out of the shop with the back of her hand.

Back on the front seat of Baba’s red Microbus, Benedict slipped the envelope into Mama’s handbag before securing his seatbelt.

‘We were just saying,’ Mama said from the seat behind, ‘how proud of you we are.’

‘Yes,’ said Baba, easing into the Saturday afternoon traffic. ‘That business we just went to, it’s there entirely because of you.’

‘Mama trained the ladies.’

‘But why did she have ladies to train? Because you had an idea. One small idea for a unique selling point, and the result is a business that’s thriving, a business that’s
putting food in hungry stomachs by giving people work. That is the dream of any businessman.’

‘Or any businesswoman,’ said Mama from behind him.

Baba seemed not to have heard her. ‘
Eh!
How can I see you as a small boy now that I’ve seen the business that you built? I’m very proud of you today, Benedict. Very
proud indeed.’

‘And me,
shujaa wangu
,’ said Mama, reaching forward and giving his shoulder a squeeze. ‘And me.’

All the way back down the Malagwane Hill, Benedict felt like he really was Mama’s hero, and Baba’s too. His chest swelled with pride. Baba had compared him with a grown-up
businessman! Now that he had started a business, he must surely be big.

Surely he could do it now?

He was certainly ready to try.

Saying that he felt like visiting Auntie Rachel’s chickens, he asked Baba to drop him at the beginning of the driveway. Mrs Levine happened to be driving out just as they got there, and as
the red Microbus had to stop outside the farm gate for Mrs Levine’s pale blue Corolla to pass through first, that was where Benedict got out. Baba drove Mama up the hill, leaving Benedict
behind to watch the red Microbus disappearing around the bend beyond the shed.

Now he had to manage, otherwise he would never get home.

He looked at the cattle-grid.

The more he looked at it, the more it began to look like a gate that was lying on the ground, a gate that had been pushed over.

An upright gate said keep out, but lying down it said welcome, come in. It looked a bit like a bridge that wanted to make it safe for him to get from here to there.

The metal bars of the grid were really so close together. Surely he couldn’t possibly be small enough to fall through the gaps?

Two of his fingers began to cross, but he stopped them, certain that he didn’t need their help.

Holding his breath, he ran quickly across the bars.

Eh!

It was so easy!

He turned round and walked back over them, then danced back across them again. Grinning widely, he began to walk slowly up the long driveway, stopping every few steps to turn and look back at
what he had done.

Tomorrow he would walk along the narrow bridge to the just-in-case pump in the middle of the dam. He knew he was big enough to do that now, he no longer had to stand and look at it from the edge
of the dam like one of the little ants that wanted to get to the jar of honey in the middle of the dish of water. He would stand there in the centre of the dam and turn round slowly, slowly,
slowly, taking in how all the things he knew from the edge looked from the middle.

Turning again to look back down the hill, he wondered how long it was going to take the cows to understand that the cattle-grid was really just the same as a pushed-over gate. It would mean
trouble for Uncle Enock if they ever did, so Benedict would never say.

Because he kept turning back to see how far he’d come, it took him a long time to make his way all the way up to the house. When he got there, Mama was sitting on one of the couches
looking at a magazine. His brothers and sisters were down at the other house, and Baba and Titi were both in their bedrooms taking a nap. Benedict decided he would tell Mama that all this time
he’d been afraid of falling through the gaps in the cattle-grid, and that now he was too big to be afraid. He went to sit next to her.

She smiled at him. ‘Your envelope from Mrs Patel is there,’ she said, pointing to the dining table.

‘Thank you, Mama.’

‘Are you going to tell me what’s inside it?’

‘Uh-uh. Not yet.’

‘Okay.’

‘Mama, you know the cattle-grid at the gate?’

But Benedict could say no more to Mama, because a quiet knocking sound began to reach them from the kitchen. Was somebody knocking to come in there? They both went to look, and Mama opened the
back door.

Mavis was standing there with a blanket of bright squares draped over her arm and a Cobra floor-polish tin in her hands. ‘Sorry to disturb, nè? I want to ask, can I come for
ordering a cake? A cake for somebody late?’

While Mama spoke to Mavis on one of the couches, Benedict settled at the dining table to concentrate on the cake for the cleansing ceremony that was about Petros. He had known so little about
him, very little more than the story about his treasure. But the cake couldn’t say anything about the treasure, on account of the treasure being a secret that nobody was allowed to know.

Inside the envelope from Mrs Patel was a piece of card the size of one of the pictures in Mama’s photo album, and on it was a smaller version of the picture of the god called Krishna on Mr
Patel’s wall. Benedict was going to ask Mama to make a cake that looked like that picture. Okay, Petros wasn’t an Indian somebody, and he didn’t believe in the Indian
people’s gods. But Petros and this god both loved cows, and Petros’s dog and this god both had the same name, so it seemed a really good choice.

On the couch, Mavis was asking Mama to make a cake decorated like her blanket for the cleansing ceremony that was about her long-ago baby boy. It was the middle part of her blanket that was
important.

It was the middle part of Benedict’s picture that was important, too. All the trees around the edges didn’t matter so much, and they could maybe go around the sides of the cake. Mama
could make them look more like the trees that grew on their hill. It was the figure of the god that was important. Mama would need to make some parts simpler, and he wanted her to add a golden dog
next to the cow that lay at his feet. She could make the young man’s face brown instead of blue, and she could leave out the flute, on account of it being Petros’s own voice that had
called the cows. The really important part was the gold trouser and matching shirt that the god was wearing. That part was about the secret stone treasure that Petros had valued as much as real
gold.

Eh
, Mama was going to love doing all the colours and brushing on plenty of her Dusting Powder (Gold).

M
RS LEVINE WAS MAKING A PARTY FOR BENEDICT’S
whole family. Baba said she shouldn’t, on account of the Tungaraza
family not needing a party, but Mama said she should, on account of a party being exactly what the Tungaraza family needed. Mama said they had many things to have a party about, not to mention that
they needed the chance to say goodbye to all their new friends.

School had already finished for the year, so Benedict was happy that Mrs Levine’s party was going to give him the chance to be with Giveness and Sifiso one last time. The Tungarazas were
going to travel home to Tanzania to meet Josephine straight after Christmas, but they didn’t yet know where they would go to from there. Baba had some new jobs to choose between but he
hadn’t chosen yet, it still depended. Anyway, Baba had said he was going to take all of them to the clinic for tests just as soon as they got home. They were all going to have their blood
checked and their chests looked at, so they were all going to be fit and healthy and strong enough to go absolutely anywhere at all.