Petina Gappah - An Elegy for Easterly

Now it was only after prayers for a child that she lay back, her eye only on the outcome. It is a matter of course that we will have children , Josephat had thought when they married. Boys, naturally. Two boys, and maybe a girl .

He no longer cared what came. All he wanted was to stop the pain. He eased himself out of Rebecca, lay back, and thought of his wife in Easterly.

The winter of the birth of Martha’s child was a winter of broken promises. The government promised that prices would go down and salaries up. Instead, the opposite happened. The opposition promised that there would be protests. Instead they bickered over who should hold three of the top six positions of leadership. From the skies fell chimvuramabwe , hailstones of frozen heat that melted on the laughing tongues of Easterly’s children. The children jabbed fingers at the corpses of the frogs petrified in the stream near the Farm. The water tap burst.

Mai James and Ba Toby argued over whether this winter was colder than the one in the last year but one of the war. Mai James spoke for the winter of the war, Ba Toby for the present winter. ‘You were no higher than Toby uyu ,’ Mai James said with no rancour. ‘What can you possibly remember about that last winter but one?’

It was the government that settled the matter.

‘Our satellite images indicate that a warm front is expected from the Eastern Highlands. The warm weather is expected to hold, so pack away those heaters and jerseys. And a very good night to you from your friendly meteorologist, Stan Mukasa. You are listening to nhepfenyuro yenyu , Radio Zimbabwe. Over to Nathaniel Moyo now, with You and Your Farm .’

This meant that Ba Toby was right. If the government said inflation would go down, it was sure to rise. If they said there was a bumper harvest, starvation would follow. ‘If the government says the sky is blue, we should all look up to check,’ said Ba Toby.

That winter brought the threat of more evictions. There had been talk of evictions before, there was nothing new there. They brushed it aside and put more illegal firewood on their fires. Godwills Mabhena who lived next to Mai James burnt his best trousers.

By the middle of that winter, all of Easterly knew that Martha was expecting a child. The men made ribald comments about where she could have found a man to do the deed. The women worked to convince themselves that it was a matter external to Easterly, to themselves, to their men. ‘You know how she disappears for days on end sometimes,’ said Mai Toby. ‘And you know how wild some of those street kids are.’

‘Street kids? Some of them are men.’

‘My point exactly.’

‘Should someone not do something, I don’t know, call someone, maybe the police?’ asked the female half of the couple whom nobody really knew.

‘Yes, you are very right,’ said Mai James. ‘Someone should do something.’

‘That woman acts like we are in the suburbs,’ Mai James later said to Mai Toby. ‘Police? Easterly? Ho - do! ’ They clapped hands together as they laughed.

‘ Haiwa , even if you call them, would they come? It took what, two days for them to come that time when Titus Zunguza…’

‘ Ndizvo , they will not come if we have a problem, what about for Martha?’

‘And even if they did, what then?’

The female half of the couple that no one really knew remembered that her brother’s wife attended the same church as a woman who worked in social welfare. ‘You mean Maggie,’ her brother’s wife said. ‘Maggie moved ku South with her husband long back. I am sure by now her husband drives a really good car, mbishi chaiyo .’

She got the number of the social department from the directory. But the number she dialled was out of service, and after three more attempts, she gave it up. There is time enough to do something , she thought.

And when the children ran around Martha and laughed, ‘Go and play somewhere else,’ Mai Toby scolded them. ‘Did your mothers not teach you to respect your elders? And as for you, wemazinzeve ,’ she turned to Tobias. ‘Come and wash yourself.’

The winter of Martha’s baby was the winter of Josephat’s leave from the mine. It was Easterly’s last winter.

On the night that Martha gave birth, Josephat’s wife walked to Easterly from a praying field near Mabvuku. She did not notice the residents gathered in clusters around their homes. Only when she walked past Martha’s house did the sounds of Easterly reach her. Was that a moan, she wondered. Yes, that sounded like a cry of pain. Without thinking, she walked-ran into Martha’s house. By the light of the moon falling through the plastic sheeting, she saw Martha, naked on her mattress, the head of her baby between her legs.

‘I’ll get help,’ Josephat’s wife said. ‘I’ll get help.’

She made for the door. Another moan stopped her and she turned back. She knelt by the mattress and looked between Martha’s legs. ‘Twenty cents,’ Martha said and fainted.

Josephat’s wife dug into the still woman and grabbed a shoulder. Her hand slipped. She cried tears of frustration. Again, she dug, she pulled, she eased the baby out. Martha’s blood flowed onto the mattress. ‘Tie the cord,’ Josephat’s wife said out loud and tied it.

She looked around for something with which cut the cord. There was nothing, and the baby almost slipped from her hands. Through a film of tears she chewed on Martha’s flesh, closing her mind to the taste of blood, she chewed and tugged on the cord until the baby was free. She wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. The baby cried, she held it to her chest, and felt an answering rise in her breasts. She sobbed out laughter. Her heart loud in her chest, she took up the first thing she saw, a poppy-covered dress, and wrapped the baby in it.

In her house she heated water and wiped the baby clean. She dressed it in the clothes of the children who had slipped from her. She put the baby to breast and he sucked on air until both fell asleep. This was the vision that met Josephat when he returned after midnight. ‘Whose child is that?’

‘God has given me this child,’ she said.

In the half-light Josephat saw his wife’s face and his stomach turned to water. ‘I will go to the police,’ he said. ‘You cannot snatch a child and expect me to do nothing.’

His wife clutched the baby closer. ‘This is God’s will. We cannot let Martha look after it. How can we let her look after a child?’

‘What are you talking about, who is Martha?’

‘Martha Martha, I left her in her house, she gave birth to it. She can’t look after it, this is God’s will.’

Josephat blundered out of the room. He knew with certainty that it was just as he thought. Ten months before he had arrived home, and found his wife not there. ‘She has gone to an all-night prayer session,’ a neighbour said. A wave of anger and repulsion washed over him. He had only this and the next night before he was to go back to the mine.

A wasted journey , he thought.

He had gone to the beer garden in Mabvuku. The smell of his wife was in the blankets when he returned, but she wasn’t home. The hunger for a woman came over him. He left his house to urinate and relieved himself against the wall through the pain of his erection. A movement to the right caught his eye. He saw the shape of a woman. His mind turned immediately to thoughts of sorcery. He lit a cigarette and in the flare of the match saw the mad woman. ‘May I have twenty cents,’ she said, and lifted her up dress.