Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying

When Noria and her son arrived at her parents’ home, she immediately sensed that something was amiss.

‘Where is mother?’

‘She is not here, Noria. And what do you want here anyway?’

‘Napu has expelled us from his house. Where has mother gone?’

‘Hospital. She was struck by illness. And since as a doctor she could not cure herself, we took her to a white doctor in town. She was immediately admitted to hospital. They say she will be there for a long time.’

We thought Xesibe would be happy without his tormentor, but again we were wrong. He claimed that he was miserable, and desperately missed his wife. Nevertheless, we could see that he enjoyed being master of his own compound. Without That Mountain Woman around, he was able to be very firm with Noria. Even though it would have been very useful to have her help in the house, he insisted that she go and find a job so as to feed her child. ‘Mistake is your child, not mine. I am not giving you a single penny for his upkeep. You must go and find a job.’

Noria found a job as a sweeper in one of the government offices in town. She left the village at dawn every morning, got into a mini-bus taxi, and arrived in town two hours before the offices opened. The nightwatchman opened up for her, and she cleaned the offices. By eight, when the office workers arrived, she had finished cleaning. She was required to be around to make tea when the big bosses wanted it, or when there was an important visitor. She knocked off at three in the afternoon, and caught a taxi back to the village. This commuting would have been very expensive, and indeed would have swallowed her entire monthly salary, had it not been for the good relations that she enjoyed with the taxi drivers. She was able to travel without paying any fares.

Some days she went to the hospital to see her mother, who was slowly waning. The doctors said she had cancer of the womb. But she was always in high spirits, and her tongue had not lost its sharpness.

‘Who looks after Jealous Down when you’ve gone to work?’

‘He looks after himself.’

‘He does not even go to school?’

‘He’s still too young, mother. He will go when he’s older. And by that time I’ll have enough money to pay for him.’

‘Your father is a very cruel man. He has enough money to send all the children of the world to school. With a rich father like that, you don’t even need to work. But I know, he is doing it to spite me.’

Vutha, meanwhile spent each day blissfully playing in the mud. He developed scabies all over his body. Xesibe said that rather than let the boy behave like a hog at home, he should go and look after the calves in the veld. Noria said that her son was not going to be anyone’s herdboy. Her son would go to school instead, and receive the education that had escaped her, and become a teacher. But even as she said this, she knew that the money she was paid for sweeping the government offices was barely enough to feed them. Xesibe seemed to enjoy to see his daughter suffer.

One morning when Noria was serving tea to the big bosses, a tray laden with cups and saucers slipped from her hands and crashed to the floor. The china broke into smithereens. Noria was summarily dismissed from work.

Depressed and miserable, she went to the hospital to tell her mother of the misfortune that had befallen her. Another patient, whose bed was next to her mother’s heard her story and said, ‘I was only admitted yesterday, and I have been told that I am going to be here for a long time, like your mother. I was working for the Bible Society as a sweeper. Why don’t you go and see them? I am sure my job is still vacant.’ Noria thanked her, and immediately went to the Bible Society. She got the job.

She was much happier at the Bible Society. The women who worked there were Christians, and acted as a support group. There was one particular woman who was always expensively dressed, yet she was only a sweeper like Noria. Once Noria had got to know her, she asked, ‘How do you manage to look so smart on your salary? Or do they pay you more?’ The woman told her that she had other means of earning money. Sweeping at the Bible Society was only a front that gave her respectability in the eyes of her family and neighbours. The work that really paid was in the evening at the hotel. ‘You can come and join me tonight and see how I work.’

That evening Noria went to the hotel with her new friend. She knew that in the village her son would probably go to sleep on an empty stomach. Xesibe could not be bothered with feeding his grandchild. In fact, in the evenings, he had taken to visiting his friends for a drink of beer that extended to the small hours of the morning. Then he sang his way home, and slept on his bed without bothering to take off his clothes or even his gumboots. Noria’s hope was that Vutha would be wise enough to join the herdboys for their evening meal, which they cooked for themselves outside their hovel. One day Vutha would understand that his mother loved him very much, and that she was doing all this for him.

At the hotel, Noria learnt the art of entertaining white men who came from across the seas. In return, they bought her drinks and paid her a lot of money. Unlike her friend who introduced her to the trade, she did not find it necessary to continue working at the Bible Society. She had no need to preserve a respectable front. After all, she was earning more money in a single night than she earned in a month of drudgery either in the government offices or at the Bible Society.

She bought her son new clothes, and school uniform. She enrolled him at a private school that catered for children of his age in town. She employed a woman whose only job was to look after Vutha. In the mornings, the woman bathed him, and dressed him in his new school uniform. Then she took him to the taxi rank where he caught a mini-bus taxi to town. Our tongues began to wag about this whole suspicious affair. Did Noria think that her child was too good for the village school, where all the children of the village, including Noria herself, had gone? Anyway, whoever heard of such a young baby going to school? Where did she get all the money to spoil the brat, and to buy herself such wonderful clothes that looked like those worn by women in magazines? What kind of work was she doing? We saw her come back from town in the mornings, and leave in the late afternoons. Sometimes she only met with Vutha at the bus stop when he was coming back from school, and she was leaving for her night work. Xesibe added to the mystery when he assured us in the drinking places that none of Noria’s new-found wealth came from him.

Sometimes Noria went to see her mother in hospital, accompanied by one or other of the white men she entertained. They bought fat cakes and fish and chips from a cafe and took these delicacies to That Mountain Woman. Oh, yes, the town had grown so big that it even had a cafe that sold fish and chips. That Mountain Woman would become very excited, and would address Noria in our own language so that the white men would not understand her: ‘You hold tight, my child. Your father thought he could destroy you. But you are strong like your mother. I am going to get well, and when I am out of this damn hospital I am going to teach that scoundrel a bitter lesson.’

Vutha was in his second year at the private school in town, and things seemed to be working out well for everyone, until one morning Noria found the woman who looked after Vutha crying.

‘It is your father, Noria.’

‘What has happened? Is he dead?’

‘I wish he were dead.’

The woman explained that at night, when Vutha was asleep, Xesibe tried to creep between her blankets. He wanted to take advantage of her, but she refused. He had tried it before, and when she had refused him the first time and the second time, she thought that he was going to give up. But he began to threaten her with violence, and wanted to take her valuables by force. She said she was going to pack her things and go, since she was not prepared to stay in a home where the man of the house could not control his raging lust. She was a church woman, and a married woman with a husband and children. The fact that she was in need of a job did not mean that her body was for sale.