Mashave

The door to my room flew open but I did not look up. It was just a dream. There my mother stood a torch in her hand. She was wearing an apron and smelt distantly of warm baked goods. Somewhere inside the house, my brother was playing chess with my father. Both of them sipping tea from large mugs and nibbling lightly on cookies. They would be irritated that the lights had gone out. My father would curse and sigh and my brother would soon throw himself on my bed and break out into a long rant like he always. But, the house was silent. It was not a dream. But my mother really was standing at the doorway to my room. She wiped her hands down her apron and looked at me sadly. The world was still. The crickets had stopped chirruping, the evening birds had ceased to sing every living creature attempting desperately to answer the question that lingered in my mind. Why was she there? She knew I had no interest in speaking to her. We rarely exchanged words at all letting the tired moans of the old house fill in the silence. She stood silently as if she expected me to say something. I was grateful that the lights had gone out, that way she could not see the annoyance that had crept onto my face. “What are you up to?” she finally asked forcing warmness into her cold voice. I smiled. For a moment, we were just a mother and a daughter having a casual conversation. I would tell her about the painting of our house I was doing. How I had spent the whole day trying to get the perfect green for the beautiful grass that carpeted the garden. If someone stood outside my window and peered in what they would see was a mother and a daughter. To people who looked shockingly similar. Both with the same soft features. I wonder if they would see the coldness in our eyes or the hostility that now filled the silence. “What are you up to?” my mother repeated with the tone of someone who was beaten down and tired. “Are you busy?” she asked. It shocked me how hard she was trying to be normal, as if the three months we had lived together in that house in complete silence had not gone by. As if the only sounds that filled the house were those of the house itself. The dripping of the bathroom tap like a slow and steady drum, the distant creaking of the third stair that my father promised to fix but never got the chance to. I listened for those sounds but they seemed no longer to exist, as if the sound of human interaction made them retreat to the silence. Even if I wanted to answer her questions, I could not. The thick cloud of blackness had filled me and I was paralysed. The words were lost in my head like scattered puzzle pieces at the very thought of speaking my heart screamed, its high-pitched ringing bouncing in my ears. I wished she looked hurt, that she was offended by my silence but she stood with her soft gentle motherliness and soaked up the tranquillity like a sponge. “We’re going camping,” she said. I nodded. She stayed  still, waiting for me. I wished there was something I could busy myself with but there was none. I wished desperately that I could object, that I could say anything but despite my best efforts I could not form any words. I opened my mouth and let out a dusty groan like that of a car that would never run again. I felt tears of desperation well in my eyes and quickly brushed them away, but still she saw me. “Come outside nhanha,” she urged the soft Shona words rolling off her tongue softly. Finally, I nodded and followed her out to the tent that sat in the middle of the garden. I saw a younger me linking arms with my brother as we rushed into that tent eager to make up long exaggerated stories and waste the day away. Sometimes I heard my voice soft, wispy, and other days loud and song like each day just a figment of my imagination. She placed a hand on my back and led me to the pair of chairs that sat next to the tent. I did not want to be near her. I wanted to climb into the tent and hide away from her but my stomach raged and rumbled with hunger and the food the boiled on the fire made my mouth water and so I sat. I kicked my shoes off and let my feet  graze the grass slowly and gently the long blades of grass tickling them softly. The ground was wet and had the familiar smell of the mud that came with the rain. I figured the electricity had gone because of the rain and hoped that it would return soon. She mixed the mealie-meal that was bubbling in the large pot and paused only to wipe the beads of sweat that formed on her forehead glistening like the stars in the endless night above us. “I could teach you,” she said looking at me expectantly once again. Before, she would have said that I needed to learn how to cook if I was going to get married. A small part of me wished she would become a mother again. That she would not look at me as if I were a ticking bomb that sat on the verge of exploding. I wished she would shout at me and point out the faults in everything that I did. I wished she would not present me with constant questions she knew I would never be able to answer. I could teach you, she had said as if I could simply say no and return to sitting and doing nothing. She could teach me, but it was up to me whether I wanted to be taught. I nodded and moved closer to her so that I could see her more clearly so that I could hear her explaining everything she was doing but I was not there. Instead, I was watching a memory play before me a memory that sat in front of me bright as day.

 I reshuffled the deck of cards pausing every few seconds to use them as a fan. It was a hot day the type where your clothes clung to your body as if they were covered in glue and where the endless cups of ice cold water did nothing to quench your thirst. My brother sat with a triumphant grin as if he had won the game long before it had started. We played slowly each of us thinking our moves out carefully. In the next room our parents were fighting the sound of their raised voices echoing throughout the living room and bouncing off the walls. I wished they were not talking about me. About all the things that I had done. The door swung open and my mother looked angrily at me, I knew instantly I was in trouble. I was disposable to her, just a clump of flesh with which she could do anything she pleased. I closed my eyes bracing myself for the verbal abuse she was inches away from yelling. She told me to get up. Ignoring the violent shaking of my body, I got up and followed her to the kitchen. I stood up as straight as I could. I wanted to cry but my eyes had turned to sandpaper and scratched me every time I tried to blink. She touched my hands softly and traced the lines on my fingers. My heart was thumping against my rib cage, threatening to burst out of my chest. “You did this,” she said quietly. I nodded. It was my fault. She raised her hand and hit my cheek with all the force she could muster so that days later I would still feel the violent pang in my cheek as if there thousands of glass shards lodged into my face. “Disgusting girl,” she hissed. I nodded again. I already felt dirty, I wanted to claw away at my skin until it was all gone and I could finally be rid of everywhere her soft slender fingers had touched. “Now look what you’ve done. Your father is going now and he’s taking your brother,” she paused and moved so she stood next to my ear her warm breath sliding down to my eardrums. “Look what you’ve done demon child,” she whispered. I knew what she was going to say next. She was going to speak about the horrible curse I had cast on the family. How the shave that followed me would never let me go and would haunt anyone who got near me. It was then that I began to float as if time itself had stopped and I was floating in a dark glue. It was the Shave and they had taken my once again.

Rudo tossed her diary aside and looked from the pill bottle that sat beside her to the rising and falling chest of her husband who slept next to her. She crawled out of the tent and sat looking up at the stars and the beautiful garden, which was illuminated by the soft kiss of the moon. “Ru?” her sleepy husband called before coming to join her outside. They sat quietly for a moment. “Have you been awake long? You should take the medication,” he said even though he knew she would not. Rudo was tired of all the doctors and specialists that tried hopelessly to find what was wrong with her and prescribed her to endless amounts of pills. ‘These will help you sleep’ ‘These will help you anxiety’ they assured her. Rudo did not want help fighting the Shave. They were, after all, her ghosts. She let them keep her up at night. She let them bite at her feet and hold back her tongue. She let the thick black cloud wash over her and she wore her memories like a heavy coat but she had stopped letting them steal her happiness away from her. They were a part of her now but she would not let them take anything away from her. “Are you okay?” he asked. She nodded and smiled happily at him before resting her head on his shoulders. She listened to the soft sound of his snores until the soft yellow disc finally rose from the end of the world.