Читать книгу The Book Keeper - Julia McKenzie Munemo - Страница 20

10

AT THE SOUND of my approach a few days later, Gogo came to the open door of her second-grade classroom and stood in the fading sunlight, clapping quietly in greeting. She made this now-familiar gesture to welcome me to this place, the last school she’d teach in before her retirement in a couple of months. Her eyes met mine without wavering, with neither pride nor reticence, just an understanding between us that it mattered I’d come. Mattered that I could accept and return her welcome. So I clapped shyly, and smiled.

Everything was tidy and in its place in Gogo’s classroom, and while there were no children at the desks that late in the day, evidence of them wasn’t hard to find. Stacks of books piled neatly here, art supplies and drawings over there, a chalkboard at the head of the class with the day’s agenda carefully transcribed. Gogo walked over to her desk to push in her chair and collect her purse and said, “Shall we take a walk around the grounds before going home?” It wasn’t really a question, and I welcomed another chance to see the sky.

We soon came upon the headmaster on his way to his car, and Gogo introduced me with actual pride in her voice. “This is my muroora,” she said, rolling the first r and extending the middle syllable for emphasis, so he knew she meant it, and so that I did. The Shona word for “daughter-in-law” wasn’t one I thought she’d ever use for me. There are just some words that don’t apply to white people here. But after she had held my hand on the way home from the cemetery the other day, something had shifted between us, and now she got to announce it, make it formal. My body relaxed at the sound of that word, and I shook the headmaster’s hand firmly, didn’t look away from his gaze.

But I didn’t know if there was a new term I should start using for her. I’ve always called her what Ngoni does, Gogo, a term borrowed from the Ndebele, the other main ethnic group in Zimbabwe. It means simply “Gran,” though she is more of a mother to my husband than a granny. When Ngoni’s father became ill, his mother left, and for a short time Ngoni and his little sister lived alone with Donal. There were scary days, ones Ngoni doesn’t talk about much, but in time Gogo and Sekuru—which is Shona for “Grandfather”—took them in. They nursed Donal in his illness and raised the kids alongside their own. Their youngest child, Tendai, is only a year older than Ngoni. Technically his aunt, she feels more like a sister to him. In those early days of our acquaintance, she was starting to feel more like a sister to me as well.

Once the headmaster went on his way, I turned to Gogo, hopeful I’d find a way to talk openly with her. I felt I owed her an explanation for what happened to me at the cemetery, the place where Ngoni was meant to finally, formally mourn his father, and instead it had been me who wept. But I didn’t know how to tell Gogo about my dad, about how he died. I didn’t even know how to explain that he’d been an unobservant Jew. It somehow made more sense to start with my grandmother Rose, how she’d forced me to decide between her and Ngoni.

“Listen to me, my daughter,” Gogo said when I’d finished, taking me by the crook of my arm as we walked toward her house. “When you married Ngoni, you became one of us, you became a Munemo.” She emphasized the surname, made it sound royal. “And from now on, when I need something, I will come to you.”

I smiled, but I didn’t know what she meant.

“In our culture, when the mother—or in this case, the grandmother—needs something from her son, she cannot go to the son. Once he is married, she must go to the muroora.”

I tried to imagine what sorts of things she might need from me, from Ngoni, and it took me a moment to realize this wasn’t about things—or it wasn’t only about things. So I said, “I will be here,” and squeezed her arm with mine.

“This is one of the ways that we tie a family together,” Gogo said, her eyes steady on the road ahead of us. “This is how we create bonds. When I need something from Tendai, I go to her husband. He speaks to her, and in this way we become more closely tied together. It will be the same with us.”

I didn’t know why this was her response to my admission about my own grandmother and how she’d hurt me, but I’d been learning in Zimbabwe that here it made sense to stay quiet, to wait for the connections to come clear.

Gogo paused for several beats, for several steps. We were almost home now—I could see the gray Durawall and the black metal gate just around the bend in the road—and Gogo stopped walking and turned to me. “People will study your heart.” She put the fingers of her right hand on her own. “They will study it, and they will know who you are. This grandmother of yours, she knows she has hurt you. And now anytime you want to speak to her, you will worry she will hurt you again. She has broken that bond. She is your only connection to your father, and just like that, she cut it.” Now Gogo pointed up to the sky and her face broke into a wide smile. She laughed as she said, “Maybe she doesn’t know that there is no racism in heaven.”

I bristled at this, though I tried to hide it from her. I’ve never been comfortable talking about God, and I can’t pretend to believe in a race-free afterlife—or in any afterlife, really. “But we are one,” Gogo said, and I smiled at her. I wanted it to be true. “Racism will really break your heart, but she has made her decision, and you can move on confidently now, knowing that we are tied together.” With this she hooked her arm back in mine and we walked toward the house. “It does no one any good to come between two people who love each other,” she said as we waited at the gate for someone to come unlock it and let us in. “That is why I welcome you, my daughter, that is why we are tied together.”

As we walked through the gate and into the house where she raised my husband, I felt a warmth I hadn’t at our wedding. I thought maybe this conversation was a threshold, one I needed to cross to really become married to Ngoni, to join his family.