Thokozani S.B. Maseko - Like a Lily on a Mountain, Love Grows on Rocky Terrains

Welcome looked at the woman holding his son. He couldn’t really blame her for being upset. He hadn’t exactly treated her with the courtesy due to a woman. Of course, judging from her mouth, the way her hair was misarranged like she’d just gotten out of some man’s bed, and the fact that it wasn’t just some man but one of the Dlamini’s, she really didn’t deserve to be treated like a lady. Still, some kind of shock seemed to be setting in. Tears rolled down her face, but she was laughing.

“You mean to tell me,” she said, nearly gasping for breath, “that I fell from a goddamn cliff, nearly drowned in the river, walked across the desert in the middle of the night, had rifles aimed at me, watched a woman die in my arms, all for the wrong child?” She paused, and Welcome lowered his eyes out of respect for the mother of his son. When he looked up, she continued. “… I tried to run away with a baby, got babynapped, and spent a day across the front of a horse, and it was all a huge mistake?”

“The wrong child?” Welcome asked. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“I’m looking for Musa Shabalala. Light in complexion, eleven to twelve months old. Somehow my sources must have gotten screwed up.”

“Screwed up?”

“Do you repeat everyone’s words, or is it just me?”

“Repeat you? I’m just trying to understand you. I reckon the ride jiggled your brains loose.” He looked at the mess she presented, her hair every which way, her cheeks flushed, her blouse off one shoulder. “Reckon that wasn’t all that got jiggled.”

She looked down and straightened her clothes, embarrassment painting her cheeks deeper still. “Look, Mister. This is your son? Fine. Let’s take him to the authorities, and you can clear up everything with them. You can take me back to my car, and I’ll go back to look for Musa, my Musa, if there’s still a trail to follow.”

The baby caught a lock of the Hannah’s hair and put it in his mouth. She didn’t appear to notice, so Welcome leaned over and took it away. Up close the woman was covered with tiny freckles. For a moment he wondered if they were spread over every inch of her body. The freckles were the one thing he hadn’t noticed from a distance.

“You ever talk sense,” Welcome asked her. “Cause your talk’s harder to follow than a flea on a buffalo’s fair.”

“I’m hard to follow. Am I the one who came riding up on a horse, grabbing an innocent woman and dragged her across the stupid desert?”

“Innocent?” he asked.

She blushed and looked away, shifting the baby in her arms and wetting the rag again, then returning it to the child to suck on. He wondered what he would have done about giving the baby water without her. He’d have thought of something. He always did.

“You’ve an interesting way of putting things, sweet Hannah. And I like the twang, too.”

“I’ve no trace … I have no trace of my mother’s twang – end of discussion on that.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Damned if she wasn’t red from her toes up to her hair. What an angry little cat he’d found, even if all her claws were hidden by her softness. He leaned back and let her anger burn out, only to be replaced by confusion.

“Okay. I can see how you thought going through the court would be an exercise in futility. But can you tell me why we had to spend the whole damn day on a horse? I realise that the Dlamini’s’ place is pretty inaccessible but …”

She rubbed at her hip again. She’d have a beauty of a black and blue mark there in the morning, he was sure. His own leg ached from the ride, and he lay nearly prone, placing his weight on his elbow while he studied something, but he had no idea what it might be. The Dlamini’s? He listened but heard nothing.

“I don’t think, sweet Hannah, I know. It’s April of 1973. I believe it’s Tuesday the third, but I was on the ridge a long time. It could be Wednesday, the fourth.”

She turned her head to him slowly. If he’d ever seen eyes that sad, he couldn’t remember them. She spoke to him like she was sort of in a dream, or one of those trances at a magic show.

“There aren’t any power lines. No wires. Not one car since I got here,” she said.

Welcome snickered and shook his head. “Listen to me,” he said, grabbing the woman and trying to get her attention. “Someone’s coming. No doubt, the Dlamini’s. I have to take off with Musa. You just wait here, and they’ll find you. It’ll be fine. Just give me the rest of the petticoat, just in case and then I’ll leave.”

She made no move to obey him.

“Sweet Hannah, I said give me your petticoat. Now let’s go.”

“It’s 1973?” she asked.

He nodded. He didn’t have much time.

“I have to go,” he said, deciding that he just had to do without her skirt. He took the last look at the woman. She shook her head, looking frantically around. Suddenly she turned away from him, and he could hear her heaving. He felt the bile rise in his own throat at the sound and he stood by helplessly until she had finished.

“Here,” he said, handing her the canteen. “Rinse your mouth.”

The woman took the canteen, but her hand shook so badly that Welcome had to help guide the container to her mouth. She drank and then spat.

“Now I really have to go, Sweet Hannah. Just tell Mandla the truth. It’ll be all right.”

She grabbed onto his sleeve, and he turned to her, cursing his stupidity for ever bringing her along. He should have just tied her up and left her there. He’d have gone twice as fast without her on the horse, and he wouldn’t be standing here now, knowing that the Dlaminis were on the way, and now he couldn’t leave her on her own.

“The truth?” she said. “The truth is that it can’t be 1973. That’s two decades ago. I can’t be here. I have a job, an apartment, a car with an airbag. It can’t be 1973; It can’t.”

Welcome thought about the first time he had seen this woman. He’d been intently watching the river and from nowhere, she appeared. A nagging suspicion crept slowly up his spine. Impossible. A year with the traditional healers, and he believed in legends. She simply had to be confused. She couldn’t be from 1993. That was ridiculous.

He felt the woman’s forehead. She had no fever, wasn’t delirious. The baby was fidgeting, no doubt hungry, and he knew that he had to get moving.

“I have to leave you, Sweet Hannah. I’ve got to go.” Still she held onto his shirt. He tried to take a step towards his horse, and she took one, too. “You can’t come along, Sweet Hannah, and I don’t have time …”

“Then are you going to waste it arguing?” she asked as if she’d suddenly come to her senses.

“No,” he said. “You aren’t coming.” He set her away from him, but when he got on to the horse, she was there.

“They’re murderers. Are you really contemplating to leave me with these monsters? And you need me, anyway. You don’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby.”

She put her foot gentle on the instep of his good leg. It set him off balance, and he leaned against her for a moment. For all her thinness, she was softer than he’d expected. She snatched the baby out of the sling and hugged him to her body.

“You need me,” she repeated, reaching out pushing him gently.

He nearly fell, but he caught himself against the horse, who shied away. If she hadn’t supported his foot and grabbed his arm, he’d have fallen, and he knew it. What a sorry excuse for a man he’d turned out to be. Before Thandi Dlamini, there weren’t ten men in the whole damn territory that would have dared push him, let alone a woman. Now some tiny wisp of a thing could knock him off his feet, but need her?