Читать книгу The Ones with Purpose - Nozizwe Cynthia Jele - Страница 5

I imagined a dying person’s last breath as something resembling an exclamation mark, distinct and hanging mid-air like an interrupted thought. My older sister Fikile’s last breath before she dies is nothing of the sort. There is no rattling noise at the back of her throat. No relentless twitching. No clinging to life. Fikile dies with no more fuss than a switch of a light bulb.

* * *

I wake before the unforgiving December sun rises fast and fierce, before T-Bone starts howling and chasing his own shadow. People on the radio and television have said it is one of the hottest summers the country has seen in a while. Government officials have pleaded with the people to stay hydrated and keep the festivities indoors – a call unheeded by the residents of New Hope township, who go about spending their hard-earned year-end bonuses and savings. Smoke arises from braais and weddings and traditional ceremonies at every second house. Radios boom full blast with the latest House and Afro-pop music, and the children skip rope and kick tattered leather soccer balls and merrily suck on ice pops, leaving their mouths in varying shades of blue and red and purple. Even those whose dreams had perished in what was undeniably a bad year, a testing year, swallow their failures, collect their pride, put on brave smiles and join in the merriment. Of the heat, Ma said this year’s is as if the air was cooked first before being released. Miraculously people know how to breathe in it.

I lift the thin, white sheet, climb out of bed to brush my teeth and wash my face. I move quietly so as not to wake Sizwe next to me, unperturbed by the heat, his crescendo of snores sending tiny vibrations across the room. It is a wonder to me how, with his leanness and good health, Sizwe manages to create such a disturbance. I envy him though, for his ability to sleep through a crisis. I have managed no more than a couple of hours’ sleep since we brought Fikile back home from the hospital two days before.

For good this time.

When we last took Fikile to New Hope Hospital, Sister Luthuli, whom I know from the years of coming in and out of the emergency room, pulled me aside. This was after Fikile had come down with a fever that left her hot and cold from night sweats, her body drenched, and pain palpable in her twitched lip. Even Ma’s trusted mud-brown concoction of indistinguishable roots, chillies, lemon, garlic and honey had not been enough to break the fever. Her breathing was so shallow, as if the fever was feeding off it.

“She won’t get better, not here anyway.” Sister Luthuli said, not impolitely, that there was nothing the hospital could do for my sister at that stage. It wasn’t the first time she had told me this, preparing me for the worst. “Best to take her home and keep her warm and comfortable. I’ll give you something for her to take to numb the pain.”

“She’s not breathing properly, I can’t take her home, not like this,” I protested. “We don’t know what to do. I’m asking you to keep her for a few days until the fever subsides, please.”

“Anele, what I’m trying to say is, today your sister has a fever and shortness of breath, tomorrow she will have difficulties swallowing, and a day after that something else. Are you going to rush her here each time? Just look at her.” Sister Luthuli pointed at Fikile with her eyes. “She doesn’t deserve this treatment. Please Anele, let Fikile spend the last of her days surrounded by people she loves.”

I refused to look at my sister, instead stared the other away. A turbulent motion rose through my cheeks, settling behind my eyelids, hot and wet. I swallowed my saliva.

“Fikile’s body cannot cope anymore and there is nothing we can do for her. As much as this is hard to accept, the worst is almost over for you, and for her,” Sister Luthuli continued, exasperated. “This can’t be easy for her either. I know it is hard, especially for the children to see their mother like this. I went through the same with my husband. In the end, I decided to let him come home and die in the care of people who loved him, in the house he built, and the bed he slept on for years. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make, but I have no regrets,” she paused as if to select the words in her mind, “home is better than this place.” She squeezed my shoulder lightly before walking away. A few minutes later another nurse appeared and wheeled my sister away. I turned to Sizwe and held him tight.

Sister Luthuli’s words played in my mind; I couldn’t sleep. The following morning I brought Fikile back home.

* * *

From my bedroom to Fikile’s room at the end of the narrow hallway, I pass Ma’s bedroom which she shares with her grandchildren. I picture the children, my daughter, Mvula, and nephew Bafana, piled on Ma’s queen-size bed, sagging in the middle from the years of use, and my niece, Lesihle, sprawled on the small mattress on the floor, exhausted from the previous day’s play. School let out earlier in the week; it will be another month before they reopen. The children were starting to complain of boredom. I hear the familiar murmurs of Ma’s morning prayers peppered with muffled sobs and careful nose blows. Ma cries a lot during her prayers these days, such that later when she joins me for tea, her face is mushy and raw as if she was up all night fighting invisible monsters. Prayers are her new habit. After more than a two-decade-long church absence, Ma woke up one day, shortly after Fikile’s diagnosis, and walked to Reverend Madida’s house. From then on, every Sunday, she dressed Mvula and waited for Fikile to take them to church. She started adorning herself with the black and purple cloth worn by the church elderlies, and attending Bible studies and prayer meetings with the women of prayer. She returned to society, the same society that had chewed and spat her out and left her in a black hole for years. Old friendships were rekindled; aunties who were present in our childhood but had not set foot in our house in years, and who, when they bumped into me or my siblings at the supermarket, in church or on the streets, looked at us with sharp embarrassment, once more began to make regular appearances. They told Ma how proud they were of her for bravely tackling the devil by his horns. They denounced alcohol, and in their high-pitched voices declared a new war on this destroyer of families.

Fikile’s bedroom door is a crack open.

“Fiks, are you up? It’s me, Anele,” I whisper as I walk in. My senses had long adjusted to the darkness and lingering scents of camphor and death. Fikile’s eyes are closed, but her moans suggest she is not asleep. “Did you get some sleep?” I lean over, touch her forehead and gently plant a kiss. Her ashen, paper-thin skin feels cool to my lips. I open the blanket and run my hand over the sheet, relieved to find it dry. “How are you feeling, are you in pain?”

Fikile slowly opens her eyes, moves her head slightly up and down, and parts her lips.

I bend over expectantly. I would give anything to hear my sister’s voice again. Fikile last constructed a sentence several weeks back, and even then it was nothing more than a whisper of her children’s names in the order she had brought them into the world – Khanya, Lesihle, and Bafana.

“What is it?” I lean closer. Fikile’s body has shrunk into itself under the blanket, leaving an outline, an approximation of the woman she once was.

Fikile starts to babble impatiently.

“Shh, okay, don’t say anything. I’ll get your medicines and something to eat. Will you try today?”

Fikile shuts her eyes. A lone tear rolls down her cheek, collects at her collarbone.

“Oh, you can just try, sisi, you don’t have to force yourself.” I wipe her face with the back of my hand.

I leave Fikile’s room in haste and close the door gently behind me. I move to the kitchen where I fill the kettle with water, and put it to boil to prepare sour soft porridge for everyone. I stand there transfixed, watching the bubbles from the glass kettle form slowly at the base and rise and pop. I feel parts of my body burst along with each bubble. The kettle snaps shut and stops.

I don’t hear Ma walk in.

“I dreamt of your father again.” She pulls out a chair and sits hunched over the table, her hands on her head. She does not look up when she speaks. “He was wiggling his finger as if trying to tell me something. His lips were moving but his voice was not there. I tried to tell him I couldn’t hear, but each time I moved closer to him he stepped back until he was only a figure on a horizon.”

“It’s only a dream, Ma. You’re tired.”

I pour water in the pan and stir in maize meal until the mixture is thick and smooth. After a few minutes, I lower the heat on the stove and make us tea.

“After all this time, I still sense your father’s disappointment.” Ma looks up, gives me the most direct look through her one good eye. Ma’s eyes are sunken in their sockets as if Fikile’s illness is also hers. “Do you blame me too?”

“Ma –”

“Do you? Because I know your brother hates me, your sister too, though she tries to hide it. I know deep down in her heart I’m nothing to her.” Ma begins to tremble in her seat. “You do,” she says, hurt when I do not respond. “My children hate me.”

“We don’t hate you, Ma.”

“Then why does it feel that way? I should have followed your father a long time ago.”

“Your tea will get cold.”

Ma looks at me, and down at the table as if only then noticing the tea in front of her. She pushes the cup away, shakes her head.

“You need some energy, Ma.”

She turns her eyes towards Fikile’s room. We sit for a while not speaking, each drowning in guilt – why is it Fikile dying in the room next door? I lift my cup and try to sip, but the tea has turned tepid. I take both cups over to the sink and empty them. I stir the porridge one more time and turn off the stove. I pour a little for Fikile and for Ma, sprinkle sugar and add milk to both.

“I doubt she will eat. She can’t even open her eyes.”

“How is she going to regain her strength if she refuses to eat?” Ma says, drying her eyes with the handkerchief, soggy and crumpled from all the crying. She follows me to Fikile’s room.

My mother rejects any notion that her eldest daughter will not overcome her illness and be well again. She carries this unwavering hope in her demeanour – head slightly bowed, lips stubbornly pressed – as we rejoice over small feats: Fikile sipping mouthfuls of water, making a gesture with her hand, lifting an eyelid, or when a flush of colour returns to her skin. My mother’s resolution pokes guilt at my conscience for not giving my sister a chance, for murdering her the day she received the results of her first mam­mogram showing a marble-sized lumpy mess in her left breast.

We sit on either side of the bed, me trying to feed my sister, and Ma forcing her own porridge down her throat in an exaggerated and illustrative manner meant to divert Fikile’s attention from the food. It is a trick she used with us as children when we were sick and refused to eat, something she had learned as a domestic worker and nanny years before she gave birth to her own children. It is a trick she believes can still do the job. Fikile refuses to open her mouth, and turns her face away.

“We will try again later,” I say. Fikile hasn’t eaten since we brought her home.

Doctor Thusi had warned us about the lack of appetite in dying people. He said it wasn’t uncommon, and the worst thing we could do is shove food down Fikile’s throat.

I fill up a small washing basin with warm water, remove Fikile’s diaper, and start to wipe her body with a soft cloth. Her muscles begin to relax. Her face is almost in a dreamlike state as I run the cloth over her cheeks, forehead, neck, under her emaciated arms, between her legs. She smiles, or her face contorts into an expression resembling a smile; I can’t help but smile too. When I’m finished, I rub peppermint and lavender oils all over her body to relieve pain. The essential oils were recommended by a sales assistant at the organic shop in town. I dress Fikile in her favourite nightdress, white with black lace trims – the lace tearing in places with wear – and cover her with a light blanket. Fikile bought the nightdress the day we went for her bra fitting post the mastectomy. She said she was still a woman and deserved to feel like one. Fikile falls asleep immediately after her bath. I rub a wet swab over her lips and apply Lesihle’s strawberry gloss. I stand back, happy with my work.

“You should have been a nurse,” Ma says. “You are good with people.”

Ma and I drift back to the kitchen.

“You must call your brother-in-law again. It is not right that he has not been to see his wife for so long,” Ma says. “How does he thinks she feels?”

“Your son-in-law only thinks about himself. He doesn’t care that his wife is lying here dying. Is it necessary to call him? If he wants to see Fikile, he will come. I don’t have the energy to run around after a grown man telling him what to do. You call him.”

I could count on my hands the number of times Thiza has checked on his wife and the children since they moved in with us several months ago at Ma’s insistence, after Fikile’s cancer progressed to her lungs, leaving her short of breath. Thiza had packed up Fikile and the children and brought them to our house that very afternoon. He did not stay long enough to see them settle in, his relief evident.

“Please, Anele,” Ma says, ignoring my outpour. “Please call him.”

“He won’t pick up anyway,” I say begrudgingly as I dial my brother-in-law’s number.

I am wrong, Thiza answers his phone. I tell him Ma wants him to come see Fikile.

“I’ll try,” Thiza says as if I asked him to swing by the shops to buy bread and butter.

“Try what? Just come. She is not getting better.” I hang up before he responds. “Please don’t make me call him again.”

I would be lying if I say I know when the pleasantries between Thiza and I faded, replaced by strained tolerance. For the longest time, we have moved around each other with practised care, fully aware of what lies beneath the pretence.

“You must exercise patience with him. You’re not the only one suffering,” Ma says.

I could smack Ma for insinuating that Thiza cares; instead I walk out of the kitchen.

Sizwe is awake, dressing to get ready for work. I am once again relieved that I could take my festive season leave early to help Ma care for Fikile and the children.

“How is she?” Sizwe asks.

“She still won’t eat, but at least her temperature has dropped.”

He comes over and puts his arms around me. I rest my cheek on his shoulder. The material of his overalls feels scratchy and hard on my skin. I’m comforted.

“What am I going to do if Fikile dies?” I whisper to him. “I’m scared.”

“Shh, don’t think that way,” Sizwe says.

I close my eyes, ashamed. I am killing my sister again.

* * *

Throughout the day Ma and I take turns to sit with Fikile. We feed her again, or attempt to feed her. We fill her in on the latest developments in our household, the latest gossip from the stokvel ladies, some of whom have come to check on her, and the progress of the new church building that, according to Ma, looks like one is already entering heaven. I don’t know if Fikile hears us but we speak to her anyway.

After dinner, we bring the children in to see her. Bafana has the most questions. “Is Ma going to open her eyes? Why does she sleep the whole day? Will Ma play with me again? Where is Dad? I want Dad.”

My daughter, Mvula, who is not yet four years old, tugs at the hem of my dress, staring at her aunt without speaking. Later, she finds me alone in the kitchen, latches onto my leg like a tick and says in a small, cracked voice that she doesn’t want me to get sick.

Lesihle sits quietly at the top of the bed, next to her mother’s head, her face full of unshed tears. When it is time for them to go to bed, Lesihle asks to spend a few more minutes alone with her mother. I hear soft sobs behind me as I close the door. My eyes prickle.

Sizwe comes home soon after the children are in bed. I let him wash off the grease and heat, and, after a few moments with Fikile, bring him a plate of food and a beer. We sit on the veranda not saying much. Only after midnight does Sizwe lead me inside the house to our room. I stop in Fikile’s room, lean over her bed to check her breath. Satisfied, I turn her body, and watch her sleep in her morphine-­induced state. In bed, Sizwe takes my hand in his and kisses my forehead. He closes his eyes and falls asleep.

Three hours later, my eyes push open.

I slip out of our bedroom into Fikile’s room, find a space next to her and lie still. Lying next to my sister reminds me of when we were younger and the roaring thunderstorms would wake me from sleep, dazed and panicked. I would leave my single bed and crawl into Fikile’s next to mine. My sister would groan, spread herself across the bed, covering every inch of space and in her sleepy voice tell me to grow up and get off, that the lightning was far away and could not hurt me. I didn’t believe her, and would push and beg until she made room for me. She would tell me not to touch her, that she didn’t need extra heat. Of course it was impossible for our bodies not to rub; still I would sleep on the edge and will myself not to move, intent on pleasing my sister, and grateful for her small mercies.

I wake up with a jerk an hour or so later. Fikile is dead.

Because I cannot believe that my sister is gone – shouldn’t she have sent a signal, a warning, stirred some drama of sorts? – I lean over, holding my breath, watching intently for the movement of the blanket covering her body. I run my fingers over her face, feeling the thin skin along her cheek bones, prominent and sharp from the ravages of her illness. I place my index and third finger under her jaw right next to the windpipe and press lightly. No sign of life there either. Eventually I pull back to steady the quivers shooting through my body, blood pounding in my head, my mouth cold and too numb to call for help.

* * *

It is a while before I leave Fikile’s dead body and step over into the narrow corridor towards Ma’s bedroom. I tap once, let myself inside. In the dark I make out her silhouette, on her knees beside the bed. Ma does not look up. She continues to pray, harder, faster. The sound comes from a deep place in her body and squeezes out of her through her throat, pained and coarse. I expect the children to wake up, cranky, disturbed from their sleep; no one stirs. I remain standing for another minute, then gently shut the door behind me, and go to wake Sizwe. He sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on his thighs, head in his hands, his body shaking. I sit next to him and bury my face against his chest.

The first call I make is to Doctor Thusi. He answers his phone on the first ring, like someone who is prepared for action; a combat soldier. If he was sleeping, he does not give any signs. I inform him of Fikile’s passing. Doctor Thusi is mute for a moment. I fear I may have to repeat myself. As I open my mouth, he speaks, his voice clear and steady from years of counselling and healing. He tells me he will come straightaway.

I proceed to call members of my family. Auntie Betty swallows her heartache in a single sigh and promises to catch the first taxi to our house. Auntie Ntombi sobs on the phone and asks me over and over to say it isn’t so, until I hang up on her just as she is calling one of my cousins to come to the phone to help her understand what has just happened to her niece. My younger brother, Mbuso, answers on the third ring. I only say: “It’s Fikile.”

“I’ll be there before noon,” he says in the quietest tone.

Thiza’s phone goes straight to voicemail.

“He switches off his phone at night; obviously, he doesn’t want his whores to disturb him when he’s pretending to be a family man,” Fikile once said. I don’t leave a message. Ma suggests that Sizwe drives over to Thiza’s house to find him. It’s a pointless mission, both Sizwe and I know he won’t find him there, but neither of us have the heart to tell Ma. So Sizwe drives to Thiza and Fikile’s house in the other section of the township to tell him his wife has died.

My father’s younger brother, Uncle Majaha, does not pick up his phone, and after a familiar recording of a baritone voice commands the caller to “Khuluma” – a crude message as Ma has pointed out to my amused uncle on several occasions – I leave a message: Fikile is gone. My father’s older sister, Auntie Nomzamo, asks me to pray with her for Fikile’s soul. She prays to the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Almighty, the Alpha and Omega, the King of Kings. She prays until my right ear is hot and buzzes. My phone battery dies and that marks the end of our conversation.

“Is she coming?” Ma asks.

“We got cut off. Why wouldn’t she?”

“I never know with your aunt, that woman never liked me from day one.” She wants to say more, but her voice does not let her. Instead she swallows, sighs. “We shall see.”

“She will come, Ma. Fikile is – was – their child. This is not about you or Aunt Nomzamo.”

I’m numb from making all the calls. We agree to contact the remaining family members later in the day.

* * *

Half an hour later Sizwe returns without Thiza but with Maria, our neighbour and family friend. We call her Auntie Maria. The look of disappointment at not seeing Thiza is evident on Ma’s face, she does not say anything. Auntie Maria is distracting her with sobs. A pink satin nightdress shows underneath Auntie Maria’s loose blue pinafore, the red doek is skewed on her head. Waves of tremors like small earthquakes spread from her chest and shoulders and roll down to her layered belly. When she gets closer to Ma, she flings herself down in front of her, bellowing: “Fikile! Why leave us? Why?” This goes on for a while, until Ma, who has been swallowing her tears, lets them pour out.

Sizwe turns briefly to me, pleading with his eyes: do something. I shake my head. Ma maintains that when people come to pay their respects to the aggrieved family it is rarely about the deceased; she says people are there to mourn their past personal losses, and that as an aggrieved family it is important to keep your grief in check and not to get caught up in other people’s emotional tangles. I am convinced now that Auntie Maria is weeping for her dead husband.

In her own time, Auntie Maria rises from the floor and takes a seat next to Ma.

“I don’t know what to say,” she speaks with a voice full of grief. “I just don’t know.”

“We are waiting for the hearse, Doctor Thusi is also on his way,” Ma says with regained composure.

I have known Auntie Maria since I was a child. She moved into the house next door to us a few years before my father’s death. Auntie Maria arrived one day in a small bakkie with only a few belongings – a bed, a two-seater sofa, sealed boxes. She didn’t have a fridge and for a few months shared ours. Ma kept an entire shelf for Auntie Maria’s perish­ables – long-life milk, eggs, Stork margarine, occasionally polony and cheese, which we eyed with drool dripping from our mouths. We watched the two men unload boxes and take them into Auntie Maria’s house. They were gone within an hour. Auntie Maria remained behind, alone. Ma waited for what she called a respectable amount of time to pass before crossing our yard to the new neighbour, Mbuso and I trailed along.

We live in an old section of the township, a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone; new arrivals stand out like thorns. We learned that Auntie Maria had moved to the house next door after her husband’s forgetfulness became too much to bear. He had forgotten small, insignificant things at first, but soon he couldn’t remember how to tie his laces, would pause mid-sentence in the middle of a conversation before continuing on an unrelated thread, and once looked at Auntie Maria steadily and said, “Gogo, where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you.” That’s when Auntie Maria had taken him to the mental hospital for assessments. A few weeks later he had almost burned down the kitchen after leaving a piece of paper on the hot stove, claiming his mother had asked him to start a fire to prepare the evening meal.

“I couldn’t handle it, Margaret,” Auntie Maria explained. She had taken him back to the hospital and left him there. She told Ma that their house became too big and empty once the children moved out. Her husband died shortly after; he did not know who Maria was. Ma, fighting back tears after listening to Auntie Maria, pointed at us and said we were now also her children. The two women had burst out laughing. Many years later, after my father’s death and Ma’s breakdown, Auntie Maria became our other mother.

* * *

Doctor Thusi arrives. Sizwe opens the gate and lets him in. After a polite exchange of customary greetings and passing words of comfort to the grieving mother, I lead the doctor to the room with Fikile’s dead body. The hearse has not arrived.

He sits next to her, lowers the blanket covering her face, and stares with afflicted resignation, wounds raw. Doctor Thusi loved Fikile. Years ago when she and Thiza were separated, years before her cancer, Doctor Thusi had declared his intention – he wanted to take Fikile as a wife. My sister declined his advances. The doctor was wounded. He wrote Fikile a long letter, his writing precise and not resembling the medication scripts he scribbled daily for his patients. He wrote that he could not understand how she refused him when he was offering her so much more than the man who had fathered her two children, a man not worthy of a fine woman like her. My heart will forever yearn for you, the doctor ended the letter. And it did, long after Fikile went back to Thiza and fell pregnant with Bafana, and he, Doctor Thusi, married a nurse from the local hospital and built her the loveliest house in New Hope.

Doctor Thusi takes Fikile’s limp hand, holds it to his chest. I look away. “Your sister was a beautiful soul. I’m sorry I couldn’t save her,” he says, choking on his tears. I want to tell the doctor he can’t possibly blame himself for Fikile’s death, that, if anything, he had given her the gift of a few more years with us. Instead, I pat his shoulder and leave him with his despair.

Dawn begins to break.

One by one, the children file out of Ma’s bedroom wiping sleep from their eyes as they stumble to the fully occupied lounge. A hysterical Lesihle squeezes her slim frame in between her grandmother and Auntie Maria. Ma’s voice is cool and con­trolled over Lesihle’s fiery screams. Mvula cries, and Bafana looks at me with tears filling behind his eyelids.

The hearse arrives. We stand outside on the veranda watching it take Fikile’s body away. We slowly walk back inside the house.