Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

Things will get better, Mother said, finally. There is no night so long that doesn’t end with dawn. It won’t stay like this, will it? And besides, we can’t all abandon our country now.

Yes the wife is right it will get better my son and the Lord God is here he will not forsake us he will not for he is a loving God, Mother of Bones said, rubbing her hands together like she was washing them, like she was apologizing for something, like it was cold outside. Mother of Bones said God like she knew God personally, like God was not even something bigger than the sky but a small, beautiful boy with spaced hair you could count and missing buttons on his Harvard shirt, who spoke with a stammer and played Find bin Laden with us. That’s how it felt, the way Mother of Bones said God.

Then Father laughed, but it wasn’t a laughing-laughing laugh.

You all don’t get it, do you? Is this what I went to university for? Is this what we got independence for? Does it make sense that we are living like this? Tell me! Father said.

All I know is that I’m certainly not clamoring to go across the borders to live where I’m called a kwerekwere. Wasn’t Nqobile here from that Hillbrow just two days ago telling us the truth of how it is over there? Mother said. She stirred more mealie-meal into the pot.

And besides, all my family is here. What about my aging parents? What about your mother? And you, get away, imbecile, go and play with your friends before I chop off those big ears, what are you listening for? she said to me, like she always did every time there was adult talk or they argued, and they argued a lot those days.

Father left not too long after that. And later, when the pictures and letters and money and clothes and things he had promised didn’t come, I tried not to forget him by looking for him in the faces of the Paradise men, in the faces of my friends’ fathers. I would watch the men closely, wondering which of their gestures my father would be likely to make, which voice he would use, which laugh. How much hair would cover his arms and face.

—

Shhhh — you must not tell anyone, and I mean an-y-one, you hear me? Mother says, looking at me like she is going to eat me. That your father is back and that he is sick. When Mother says this I just look at her. I don’t say yes or nod, I don’t anything. Because I have to watch Father now, like he is a baby and I am his mother, it means that when Mother and Mother of Bones are not there, I cannot play with my friends, so I have to lie to them about why.

In the beginning, when they come over to our shack to get me, I stand outside the door and yawn as wide as I can and tell them I am tired. Then I tell them I am having the headaches that won’t go away. Then I tell them I am having the flu. Then diarrhea. It’s not the lying itself that makes me feel bad but the fact that I’m here lying to my friends. I don’t like not playing with them and I don’t like lying to them because they are the most important thing to me and when I’m not with them I feel like I’m not even me.

One day I’m standing at the door with just my head out and I’m telling them I have measles. I don’t know why I think it, but the word is suddenly there, on my tongue, speaking itself. Measles.

Is it painful? Sbho says. She is looking at me with her head tilted-like, the way a mother is supposed to do when you tell her about anything serious.

Yes, it is, I say. And then I add, It itches. Soon, it will become wounds and then I won’t be able to come out to play for a while, I say. I cannot read the look on Stina’s face but Godknows is looking at me with his mouth open. Bastard is just narrowing his eyes, watching me like I’m stealing something, and Sbho’s face is twisted, as if she’s sick with measles herself. Chipo is sitting down, drawing patterns with a stick on the ground.

What about the World Cup? Godknows says. You are not playing in the World Cup? We even found a real leather ball in Budapest because somebody forgot it outside.

Maybe my measles will be gone by the time it’s World Cup, then I can come and be Drogba, I say, scratching my neck to make like it’s itching.

True? Godknows says.

Yes, cross my heart and hope to die, I say.

Good, but you can’t be Drogba, can’t you see I’m already Drogba? Godknows says.

Liar, you’re lying, Bastard says. You don’t have measles and you’re not sick and you haven’t been sick. He is standing on one leg like a cock and chewing a blade of grass. He looks me in the eye and I know he wants me to say something back so he can say something worse. We are all standing there, everybody waiting for me to say something to Bastard, but I know I’m not opening my mouth.

We remain like that, and the silence is big and fat between us like it’s something you can touch when the coughing starts. It is loud and raw and terrible and at first it takes me by surprise. I start, but then I quickly remember that he is in the shack. By now it’s too late for me to do anything to hide it, and everybody is looking me in the eye, looking and waiting for me to say something, to explain.

I can’t think what to say so I just stand there, sweating and listening to the cough pounding the walls, pounding and pounding and pounding, and I’m saying in my head, Stop, please stop, stop stop stop stop please, but he keeps pounding and pounding and pounding until I just turn around and slam the door shut, behind me a voice saying, Wait!

What you got in there? What you got?

I hear Bastard’s voice close to the door, like he is going to maybe turn the handle and come in. I pull the latch and listen to him saying things and telling me to open and making jokes. When, finally, he goes quiet I sink down to the floor and just sit there, feeling tired. I look to the corner and he is looking at me with those eyes, wild, like he is some kind of animal caught in the glare of light on Mzilikazi Road, looking at me with his shrunken head, with his pinking lips, with his stench of sickness.

He coughs some more and I listen to the awful sound tearing the air. His body folds and rocks with each cough but I don’t even feel for him because I’m thinking, I hate you for this, I hate you for going to that South Africa and coming back sick and all bones, I hate you for making me stop playing with my friends. When the coughing finally ceases he is sweating and breathing like somebody chased him all the way from Budapest and up and down Fambeki, and when he says, Water, in that tattered voice, I make like I don’t even hear him because I’m hating him for making me stop my life like this. In my head I’m thinking, Die. Die now so I can go play with my friends, die now because this is not fair. Die die die. Die.

—

Father cannot climb Fambeki since he is sick, so Mother of Bones asks Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro to come and pray for him in the shack. We sit in a corner, me and Mother and Mother of Bones, watching. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro sprinkles Father with holy water and then lights four candles: one red, maybe for the Father; one white, maybe for the Son; one yellow, maybe for the Holy Spirit; and one black, I don’t know for what, maybe for the black majority, which is what the black of our flag stands for. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is crouching and humming to himself as he does all this, and finally, when he is done, he spreads a white cloth on the floor, kneels on it with a Bible at his side, and thunders.

At first my eyes are closed just like they are supposed to be when somebody is praying but then I get tired of closing them because Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro just keeps thundering and thundering. To make the time go I count to one hundred and when I finish he is still going on and on. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on on on on on on on on on on on on on on: I warn you in the name of Jesus, demon — cleanse him, Father — you mighty lion and healer of the sick — I lay myself before you, Jehovah Jaira, what-what. I just sit there, biting the insides of my mouth till I taste blood.