Fiction

Lucille Sambo 

                          CREDITS: KAJA MERLE

                 

                 HEAD IN THE GUTTER

It is in this cold, dimly lit kitchen, even though the sun had been blazing hot that day, that Tonde sits on the floor, with his mother, and an almost huge distance is placed between the two of them; eating in silence. His mother breaks the silence:

“You think you need salt until you don’t have it,” says my mother as she gulps down the chunks of tasteless cabbage. She always says such things in an attempt to make our poverty seem less atrocious. Sometimes she says “Man shall not live by bread alone but by the word of God”. I feel like gluing her mouth. I hate it when she makes our poverty appear less than it really is.

“Eat now don’t forget we have things to do,” she reminds me. I don’t need any reminders, after all, it is my life that is on the line. This night, after this salt-less cabbage ceremony, we must embark on a journey of healing and recovery. We have been doing this ever since prophet, who stays in the mountains, became well known for his miracles.

I dread eating because it will take us close to an hour to walk in the perilous night. But I must not be scared of course; because I am a man. My mother is doing this all for me because I am sick. Well not always. My sickness is bipolar, it comes and goes. When it has been triggered I wake up with a spoon in my mouth, drooling of saliva onto my mother’s lap. I hate it because I almost do not remember what would have happened. It takes me some time for me to fully recuperate from the injuries I would have procured during the frenzy.

We have been to the prophet numerous times already and this is the first time we will be going at night. It unsettles me but I am trying to brush the feeling away. You should see the way my mother looks at prophet. You would swear he is Jesus in flesh. 

My mother is everything I have left and I love her with all of my heart but sometimes she is stupid, but of course I can’t tell her that. The other time I called prophet a bastard and she made me see lightning. She slapped me so hard I became deaf for a moment. Prophet deserves the title. Let me tell you why. Third time we visited the prophet he instructed us to swallow raw egg yoke, break one on our doorstep, bury one in the ground and throw another in the South Direction. We did so but my sickness continued. He had promised that after all this my sickness would disappear. Why did I say he’s a bastard? Four freaking eggs! My mother and I could have boiled those eggs and eaten them. My mother is stupid because even though I am not healing she keeps us going back there.

“Your father was a very foolish man,” says my mother licking her plate.

“Why mama?” I ask. But I know the exact answer. My father had multiple mistresses in other villages, who only appeared on his funeral claiming they had his children. It was a bit funny, standing there watching these alleged children weep the death of their father. Some weeping louder than I even. My mother knew my father was bad, but this kind of bad made her scream on top of his grave and dig him out using her fingers. It pained my heart, not because she was in pain. Pain is an obvious bonus of life,but it pained me because I do not like drama.

 My mother caused a scene never to be forgotten, even now some of her fingers are still recovering from the incident. Obviously, I mean my father was only buried about two weeks ago. It’s sad now that I look back at the events of the funeral. My mother beating up her chest at the three mistresses and their children saying “I am his only wife. You will not get anything!” Right there, the ‘anything’. She said it as if my father left anything besides these tattered clothes and slippers I wear everyday. My father inherited land from his father, but sold it to feed his mistresses. Just like that yes, so all we have now is this hut whose roof threatens to leave us every autumn.

“Come on hurry, eat or should I throw it away?” This was an empty threat  of course. The type of food we ate in this house flies wouldn’t even bother to look at. Even if she threatens to throw it in the road for dogs to eat, they surely wouldn’t.

The only time he came home he came around was when he needed a break from his numerous mistresses. A break that left my mother broken, tears salting her facial wounds and the neighbours gossiping that her husband was bewitched. 

He drowned himself in the well in our yard, which was just foolish and selfish on his part since we are now left with the burden of walking to the stream to get water. Five Kilometers for drinking water. Five kilometers to bath. The only good thing that seems to have come out of this is that at least if I go to the river at the right time I get to see girls bathing. 

I hide behind the bushes and watch them sprinkle each other with water. One of these girls is Shingirirai who is the only one who seems to have a proper bosom and the rest of the girls just make me want to cry on their behalf because their chests look just like mine; flat.

 Shingirirai knows I like her. Every time she looks at me I look away because I am embarrassed to be walking in tattered slippers I inherited from my father. In this world you are nothing if all you have is nothing. I understand that now. But I still I wish I can marry her before she runs away with that man who comes with his Peugeot. If he marries her I think I will also have to find a well and drown myself in it. So yes, the only painful part about my father’s death was the fact that we now have to dig another well, which is expensive. Unlike my mother, I did not find it that easy to cry on my father’s funeral, but we had to. So to lubricate my eyes, I thought about the well.

There’s something I didn’t tell you about the well incident. It all actually happened at night. You see, here our yards are really far apart so it takes time for the next yard to come to help after we have called, screamed and shouted. Even when my father used to beat up my mother or force himself into her, no one would come to help us. When I was a child I remember hitting him on the head with the clay pot. He bled into the morning but my mother nurtured him until he had healed, and when he did, he held me up to the wall and challenged me to fight since I was now ‘a man.’ Since I had become a man to understand that what he was doing was wrong I had to prove my manliness to him. When I couldn’t, there was no way I was going to start punching my father,besides he was way stronger than I and my mother combined,he gave me a beating of my life which left a huge scar that runs across my face.

I’m sorry for digressing, as I was saying. It was at night. I had had a fairly good day, herding the only cow we are left with. We were left with sorry. Yes we ate the cow for the funeral. My fathers children from outside the marriage had to be fed. I knew my father would be home in the afternoon, so my plan was to come home late at night so that I didn’t have to face his mockery, his disgusting face and his shameless demeanor. 

Our well at that time was at the backyard. I returned home just when the stars had begun to embezzle the night. I had just put the cow back in the kraal and begun walking home. I had to fetch water for the morning. I start for the well to see my mother with my father. They couldn’t see me. My mother asked my father for help, and in a blink of an eye had pushed him into the well. I ran to my mother, who knelt beside the well weeping. I just held her and after some moments we entered the kitchen for some food. I told you he had committed suicide because that is the story we tell people now. What man has ever chosen the grave over a woman? With the kind of man my father was, he would have never killed himself, ever! So yes, I have noticed ever since that day, my mother and I have absolutely nothing to talk about. I think between us, we are afraid that we might end up exposing the deed we executed. I say ‘we’ because I also took the decision to keep the secret. So yes, my mother knew my father couldn’t swim so he drowned like a frog. I say that not with the intentions of talking ill about the dead. But yes he drowned like a frog… not that I have seen any frog drowning. I say frog because I imagine my father trying to hop up for air, hopping again to stop the water from entering his lungs; exactly like a frog.

Today in the morning I waited for Shingirirai by the shops but she acted as if she did not notice me. That’s what poverty does. It makes me invisible and irrelevant. I think she doesn’t like me because I know her secrets. She also attends prophet’s church because she also has issues. Shingirirai was told by prophet that she would never get married unless if she was delivered by the “man of God.” My mother tells me these things when we are not fighting. She told me that at first Shingirirai was told by prophet to take her feces and inside look for a seed and burn that seed. She has been dating many guys for a longtime but she still has not left her parent’s home because no man wants to have a barren woman. Being barren is an insult to mother hood. So to rid of this disease Shingirirai will do exactly what her name means “Persevere” in order to be wife material. Shingirirai went to relieve herself and kept her feces. She looked for the seed and didn’t find it. I can imagine her taking her fingers and poking her feces searching the seed. No matter how beautiful she is, feces are feces, they are not pretty at all. Sad though. I have a feeling the prophet forgot to tell her to swallow a seed before she looked for it. Maybe that’s why she is still barren. I don’t know.

When Shingirirai wasn’t healed prophet proposed another method of healing. She was to cut her hair off her head because it was a magnet for all uncleanliness. I’m not sure about that, but I think what prophet meant was that it made her look beautiful and therefore that attracted men.Even when she cut her hair I still found her beautiful. In fact it made her face more visible. 

My mother told me the reason why Shingirirai doesn’t come to prayer anymore. This was what made me profoundly doubt prophet, although it only cemented my mother’s faith. When it seemed that everything was not working to heal Shingi, prophet was inspired again. This time he announced it at prayer, but I wasn’t sure that this was the reason Shingirirai had stopped coming to prayer. It was a normal prayer session. Prophet stood up with his staff, in his brown garment which had once and told us the congregants that he had the final solution to Shingirirai's problem. He announced that God had instructed him to make Shingirirai his wife and that way she will always be closer to a divine man of God, that would drive away all the bad spirits that were blocking her womb.

“That is nonsense. Listen to this man!” I wish this could have been Shingirirai's mother, but no, it was me. Something came over me. I was fed up with his lies.

“Sit down this boy!” shouted my mother. “Man of God is talking.”

“He just wants to marry her! You could have just said so without having to make her spread her feces! You are shit!” I screamed.  

Prophet acted like the bigger man. Held his staff and looked at me. Gestured to his boys with his staff to take me away from the “holy” place of prayer. I say ‘boys’ because he calls them that, but these are actually men with drooping goaties with tales of age and poverty. Most of them are older than him. But then again, they have no power so their relevance is null. They seem to like their roles of being prophet’s dogs so I do not feel sorry for them for having to bend their cracking and overused backs to carry out prophet’s commands. I was carried out by the ‘boys’ kicking and shouting obscenities. At this moment my mother was already pleading the prophet for forgiveness. Shingirirai looked embarrassed. Not sure because I had embarrassed the prophet or because I had embarrassed myself by standing up for her, or embarrassed because everyone now knew about the feces ordeal. The prophet insinuated that only his ‘divine’ seed, was able to get the barren Shingirirai pregnant. I was saving her couldn’t she see that .That ungrateful bastard. Yes I do admit that all that defense was because I too have my own intentions with her, and this foolish prophet is making it difficult. But I am glad she is no longer coming to prayer, but now that has only given her the platform and freedom to be out in the world with that ‘Mr Peugeot’. I know that once he learns that she is barren he will want out. If Shingirirai vexes me I will tell him for her. My mother gave me a mouth beat of course after the incident. Like I already said before sometimes she slaps me, as old as I am. Sometimes I just wish to hold both her hands against the wall, and slap the stupidity out of her head with another hand. 

Prophet is known for such things anyway. Just last month another couple came to prayer to be helped conceive. Prophet instructed one of his wing men to help the woman. Which meant sleeping with the woman of course. The husband agreed. At the end of this mess, the couple still did not conceive because of “of their lack of faith,” said Prophet after congregants demanded answers. 

Eventually prophet forgave me, because my mother begged of him. I need to be healed but honestly at this point I have given up. I have made peace with the fact that I will have to live enslaved by this disease. But for the sake of peace in this house, I am going with my mother up the mountains today. Something makes me want to believe that prophet can heal. 

“We should not live by sight, but by faith,” said my mother. It turns out I was thinking out loud, and of course ‘Moses’ here already had the answer. Let’s see if my mother’s faith will feed us tomorrow. If it wasn’t for this drought this story would have totally not started the way it did. Perhaps it would have begun with me chewing on a succulent mealie, therefore I probably would not have sounded as bitter as I sound right now. 

I am inside prophet’s little hut now. It’s just one room,with a little radio on a stool. I had to take the radio off the stool so that I can sit. My mother is sitting on a mat by the floor. This is where women seat. Below men. Men must look down at them. Prophet too sits on his bed looking at my mother who is facing down waiting for prophet to commence his ‘magic.’ As prophet is mixing, I  don’t know what but it smells bad, my mother gestures at me to take my shoes off. I start thinking if I would have to drink that. I never trust his potions. The other time he told my mother that my sickness began when I saw something bad. A bad spirit which was sent by one of my relatives who did not want me to succeed. I don’t remember seeing that spirit but anyway… prophet knows everything. So he gave me a mixture consisting of water and lemon,oil and a powder whose name I do not remember. All I had to do was apply the concoction into my eyes every time I woke up. Lemon into my eyes! I thought he was joking but nope I had to. I tried it the first day but I soon discarded the potion. Even if it were supposedly good for my eyes I was sure it would have left me blind.

Prophet begins mumbling sounds under his breath. Facing his door he instructed us to get on our knees, and face where the sun rose from. I know where it rises from but in his house I don’t . He looks at me like a small kid and points where the Sun rises from. I feel dumb because that’s what he wanted me to feel anyway. He makes weird noises as usual, as if in frenzy and begins praying for us, shaking our heads and throwing water at us. This was fun when I was young but now it leaves me with a concussion, I hate the feeling. He is now focusing mostly on me, moving away from me and examining me from a distance but he’s not really looking at me. I wonder what he is seeing around me. I always fear when he does that. It makes me feel naked and exposed.  In my head I am seeing monster like creatures hovering around me, perhaps that is what he is directing away from me with his staff. I look at him looking at me. I hope he doesn’t see that i think he is a joke.

Prophet tells me to go outside to find crystal clear stones. We always use them to cast out  spirits, but the annoying part is that they are hard to find. So I walk out, around the yard and begin my search. It’s surprisingly cold today, but I finally do find the stones, six of them. I walk back towards the door and overhear the prophet  saying:

“Don’t tell him.”

“God will punish us,” responds my mother.

“He will always be my son, that will not change,” says prophet.

I stand by the door for a second but the conversation continues back and forth over him being my father. I feel like vomiting. I drop the stones by the door step and disappear into the night. I do not know where I am going , but I know I am tired as well. I will keep running until the sun rises.

                                            

Lucille Sambo is a 23 year old storyteller and wanderer. She uses her words to connect with people; to make them feel like they are not alone in this world.Born and raised in Zimbabwe, but currently working in Germany, Lucille dreams to explore the Film industry as a writer.