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CHAPTER SIX

BREAKING PROMISES

Now that Gogo is gone, the days feel endless. It isn’t that I am doing more work than before. In fact, I am doing less because I no longer need to care for her like I did while she was dying. But Gogo was always so joyful, even when she scolded and even when she was so sick she could barely breathe. Now her love is gone. That’s not true, it is not gone exactly, it is just changed. Now she is one of the ancestors and it is no longer give and take. Her spirit is right here in the kitchen corner and her voice is in my head, talking, talking, talking. Khosi, do this. Khosi, do that. I am just a tool in her hands.

In fact, she is glaring at me.

What else could I do, Gogo? I ask.

Gogo hasn’t been dead for a month and just today, I broke one of the promises I made to her—that no matter what, I’d finish school. I’d matriculate and then go to university.

You promised, Khosi. You promised you would finish school.

Yebo, impela, I promised, Gogo. I did. I know it.

I stare at the twenty rand note on the counter. It is all I have left after paying Zi’s school fees this afternoon. There wasn’t enough money for my fees also. And I have no one to go to for help. It’s just me and Zi. Completely on our own. I have become what they moan about on the evening news: “a child-headed household.”

I told all my teachers I’d return, soon, but I’m not sure any of us believe it. And it’s the worst possible time for a student like me to quit—right in the middle of my matric year. The final year before university. I can’t suddenly go somewhere else, like one of the fee-free township schools. They don’t offer the same courses I’ve been taking. Even if they let me attend for the final half of my matric year, they’ve been preparing students for an entirely different set of exams than the ones I’ve been preparing for these past three years. Instead of being tested in Afrikaans or calculus, both classes I’ve been taking in preparation, they might test me in history and accounting.

For a long time now, my dream has been to go to school and be a nurse while also practicing as a healer. I was initiated as a sangoma just before Gogo caught pneumonia. The goal was to make some money as a sangoma while finishing school, to help pay my fees, but we all hoped I would get a bursary too. That was before, when we still had Gogo’s pension from the government, and Uncle and Auntie were giving her some money each month to help raise us. Now, Zi and I are completely dependent on the money I make as a sangoma, for living as well as for school fees.

And it’s not enough. At least, not yet. After all, I’m new. I still have to establish myself, create what my business teacher called “a customer base.” It could have been more difficult if my teacher had asked me to go somewhere else to practice since she is already practicing here in Imbali. But Makhosi said there was more than enough for both of us and she will send me her overflow. I am grateful that she loves me that much, that I’m not just somebody she trained. I am truly her daughter.

Even so, there hasn’t been much overflow. I need more customers if Zi and I are going to eat next month. But Gogo still expects that I would be able to pay for my school fees too?

I know I promised, Gogo, but that’s before I knew how hard it would be. Would you have made me promise if you knew? I’d like to think you’d release me from an impossible promise.

But the dead broker no compromise. Right is right. The eye crosses the full river, Khosi, she used to say.

In other words, if I wanted it, I would make it happen, no matter how hard or seemingly impossible.

But Gogo, I do want it. I want to finish school more than anything. How am I supposed to go to school if I don’t have the money to pay for it, eh, Gogo?

Sometimes when I talk to her about these things, the conversation is a one-way street. All she does is glare at me from wherever she is sitting or standing.

But now she speaks.

Don’t tell me what what. You’re a sangoma, my child, she says. You have a way to make money. Enough money to pay for school.

Perhaps in time, yes, but not so soon. That’s what I want to say but I leave the thoughts in the part of my head she can’t hear. It feels too disrespectful.

Plus, and this is not something I say to her, her daughter’s accusations—my auntie’s anger—may have made the neighbors afraid to visit me, to consult me as a sangoma.

But now that I’m not in school, I’ll certainly have enough time to work. I don’t say that to Gogo either.

And I don’t say anything to Little Man when he comes over later that night. Perhaps because he has such excitement spilling from his eyes. He rattles the gate, sending Nhlanhla into a tizzy. She gallops toward him, goofy and long-eared, while I hurry out, fumbling with the lock. He picks me up, swings me around, grunts oof, and kisses me hard on the mouth. It leaves me breathless, he keeps his lips planted on mine so long. I take his hand and pull him inside. Zi is with my neighbor so if he’s going to kiss me like that, he can do it without God and everybody watching, the sun shining on us with a bright intensity, almost as though scrutinizing our kisses.

As soon as the door shuts behind us, leaving Nhlanhla outside, shivering with whimpers, he reaches for me again.

I lean with my back against the wall and let him kiss me. Little Man has always liked to kiss me though usually they were stolen good-bye kisses, between the house and the gate when we were sure Gogo wasn’t watching. Now he plants a series of quick, sweet ones on my lips, taking little breaths in between, and then a few long ones that make my knees shake. I grab his jacket to hold steady.

“I have a job,” he announces.

“What?” I stare at him. This was not the plan. I’d take a step away but my back is literally against the wall. “I thought you had a bursary. That you were going to school.”

“Eish, Khosi, I’m tired of school,” he says. “I need a break.”

It used to be when I stared at him, we were eye to eye. It made me feel more like equals. Now I have to look up up up at him, an elephant looking up to a giraffe.

“You never said that before,” I say. “You were always studying. You liked science and math. You were—”

“I needed to pass matric,” he interrupts. “It would be shameful to fail. But now, I’m going to work. So I can help you and Zi.” And he leans in to kiss me again. His fingers graze my hips, his hand a firm grip on my back.

A little ball of anger mixed with happiness forms at the pit of my stomach. I am not sure which emotion is stronger. Of course I want—need—help. But I don’t want him to quit school for me. “No,” I say.

“Listen, Khosi,” he starts speaking fast. “I know what you’ll say but we have been together always, since we were young, and if I am making money, I can help you, so you can finish school. I can go to school next year.”

“This was not the plan,” I say.

The amadlozi murmur on the opposite side of the room. I ignore them. I can’t help wishing that sometimes they’d butt out. I can’t help wishing that sometimes I had a choice about this, a choice to say, No. Not right now. Come back in an hour or two.

“Gogo dying was not the plan either,” he says.

“What if you don’t get a bursary next year?” I say.

“They tell me it will wait for one year,” he says. “And besides, it is too late. I’ve already done it.”

Perhaps now I should tell him that I have withdrawn from school. But I feel too much shame. He sacrificed it all, for me, and for what? For nothing. So I keep silent.

“What is the job?” I ask finally.

“I’m working for a taxi,” he says, “collecting the money.”

“But—”

He holds up his hand to stop me. “It’s a good job,” he says. “My route goes by your school, so we can take you in the mornings and again at night. See? And you won’t have to pay. The driver will take it out of my wages.”

“Little Man,” I say.

He puts his arm around me and cuddles me against his shoulder. “Shhh,” he says. “Don’t say anything. The only thing I want to do is help you and Zi. That is all.”

It would be so wonderful to feel like I’m not alone. To know that Little Man and I—

And soon we’re kissing again and the kissing keeps going and…and… We’ve never had time like this. Gogo is always around or Zi.

I should stop this.

I melt into his arms.

I should stop this… but…

His lips march up my arm to my neck, little ants nibbling. He nips my collarbone, uses his tongue to lick the skin down down down. His fingers caressing the small of my back, inching their way up my shirt and gently trailing across my waist. An explosion of birds flapping in my stomach and heart and…

Khosi. A warning from Gogo.

Not just now, Gogo.

You promised…

Yebo, Gogo, yebo. I’ve broken one promise and I’m about to break another. But this is not one you need to witness. You stay here. In the living room. Don’t follow me.

“Little Man,” I whisper.

He freezes. Lips puckered, about to kiss my nipple. Fingers gripping the extra flesh around my hips.

“Ngiyakuthanda, Khosi,” he whispers, as though ashamed.

“I love you too,” I whisper back.

Don’t follow me, Gogo. Don’t you dare follow me. And that goes for the rest of you too. Mkhulu. All you amadlozi. I don’t need your judgments or your eyes on me. Stay here. All of you.

“Woza,” I say. And lead him down the hallway to the bedroom.