Читать книгу Into the Sun - Takalani M - Страница 5

THANDEKA

Who is that? I ask myself as I watch him drive away. I have never seen him around here before.

Hiding in the shadows of the fig tree, I wait a little longer to see where the Range Rover will turn. It goes straight to the gates of a beautiful house that I always admire when I go there to drop off eggs. Ma Angie, one of my clients, stays in that house. He must be here for Ronnie’s funeral. This morning everyone in the village was talking about the fact that he passed away in an accident on his way back from a drinking spree with his friends. He was with a visiting relative, a young boy, who also died – may their souls rest in peace – and his girlfriend is now unconscious in the hospital.

What a tragedy.

I didn’t know Ronnie too well, even though he was friends with my ex-boyfriend. It is so sad to lose young lives, always sad.

Come to think of it, that guy looks like an older version of Ronnie. He must be Ronnie’s brother. He must be.

I hurry home with the bucket on my head. The money I received from the stranger will help me a lot. I would never accept money from strangers but I didn’t have any other choice tonight. There are so many orders to deliver tomorrow and now I don’t have any stock. But with this money, all I need to do is to wake up early and head back to Mr Mulungwa’s farm to buy new stock to fulfil the orders.

When I walk into the house, Thulani is on the couch watching TV with a bottle of beer in front of him on the table. A few more empty bottles are on the floor next to his feet.

‘Are you ever going to stop drinking?’ I mumble, placing the bucket on the table. He drinks whenever he gets a chance to do so – which is every day. Every single day.

‘Why would I stop when it helps me numb the pain?’ he says.

I let out a disbelieving huff.

He turns to glance at me with a creased forehead.

‘What pain?’ Thulani is a carefree spirit. No woman or a child to worry about. What pain is he talking about? We have mourned our parents’ death by now and we have accepted our poverty by now. We are both just fighting to survive.

‘I don’t prefer to cry every night like you do. I’d rather drink myself to sleep,’ he drops like a bomb.

I stare at him. Does he hear me crying myself to sleep every night? Probably. I have never stopped crying since the day I was rushed to the hospital to deliver my baby. It was just a few weeks after the encounter with Vhonani and his woman. I thought I was going to give birth to a premature baby whom I would nurse until she was strong enough. Instead, my baby was stillborn. From the moment I held my dead child in my arms, up to today, a day hasn’t passed without me crying. It is the only way I know how to survive – to cry the pain away. Her lifeless body haunts me.

After the words spoken by Thulani just now, I should have started crying instantly, but tonight I feel peace in my heart.

Listen, your angel is watching over you. When you feel lonely, remember that she is watching over you from heaven. I remember the stranger’s words that made my evening. I will never forget them.

I walk to my bedroom and take the money out of my pocket. I need to call Mr Mulungwa to place an order for early tomorrow. If I go to the farm in the morning, I will be able to make deliveries by the evening.

‘What the hell?’ I silently say to myself.

I see a lot of two-hundred-rand notes in my hand. I thought it was a lot of twenty-rand notes when he gave it to me in the dark. I count the money. It amounts to six-thousand rand! I only make this kind of money in months – many months. No ways. I put it back into my pocket.

‘Thulani, do you know Ronnie’s brother?’ I ask. Thulani knows the whole village. There is no family he doesn’t know. I am the opposite; I keep to myself as much as possible.

‘Which one? The eldest or the one before Ronnie?’ he asks and burps. Thulani though. If he could just stop drinking so much. If he did, he would be a perfectly charming gentleman.

‘I don’t know which one he was. I think I saw someone who looks like Ronnie tonight.’

‘I bet he is the one before Ronnie. His name is Rudzani. The other one works in Johannesburg. There is no way he is here yet.’

I start pacing up and down the kitchen, not knowing what to do with the money in my pocket. How can I accept six-thousand rand from a person I do not even know? I have never done it before and I am not going to start today. What if they demand it back from me at a time when I can’t afford it? Or what if they think I owe them now? Thulani stares at me while I contemplate what to do. He is almost drunk, if not already, and telling him about the money in my pocket is not even an option.

‘Can you please come with me to Ronnie’s house?’ I beg. He flatly refuses, telling me that the family is in mourning. I should be listening, but he doesn’t understand. I have six-thousand rand that I need to give back to this Rudzani.

Fine! I will go there alone.

I rush out of the door and head straight to Ronnie’s house – it isn’t far. Chances are, from tomorrow morning, I might not be able to see Rudzani again as they follow the traditional rituals of mourning and plan the funeral. The Range Rover is parked outside the garage. The same Range Rover I was in just a while ago. I bite my nails as I enter the main gate. My heart is drumming as I slowly stroll to the kitchen door, praying that he is the one to come to open it.

One knock on the door and I change my mind.

These people are mourning. Maybe I can just go home and hide the money until the funeral.

I swivel away from the door, but it opens before I can disappear.

‘Hawu, Thandeka, are you delivering eggs this late?’ Ma Angie calls out.

Dammit!

Taking a few steps back to the door, I flash my nervous smile to Ma Angie. The door is wide open, revealing Rudzani having supper in the kitchen. He sees me and stands. ‘I am not delivering eggs, Ma Angie,’ I say.

‘Are you here to see me?’ he asks while standing behind his aunt. This is the first time I notice how handsome he actually is. He isn’t smiling, but his eyes are welcoming.

‘Yes, please,’ I say after clearing my throat. ‘Ma Angie, I will deliver the eggs tomorrow afternoon.’ She tells me to only deliver next week, then makes way for her nephew.

‘Hey, are you all right?’ he asks while closing the door behind him. It is now just the two of us outside in the dark. My heart is beating fast.

Why am I feeling like this? I should be ashamed of myself. The poor man is here to mourn and bury his brother. And me? I am busy staring at his broad shoulders and his handsome face.

Get it together, Thandeka.

‘I came to give you this.’ I take his hand, like he did mine, and place the money in his palm. I suck in a breath when I feel a tingling inside me. This feeling, so weird.

‘But I said you should keep it.’

‘I cannot keep this much money coming from a stranger. I can’t.’

‘I won’t be a stranger if you tell me your name and I tell you mine.’

‘I know your name.’ When he asks me for mine, I tell him.

‘Please keep this money, Thandeka. Please keep it.’

‘If you insist, I’ll just keep one thousand to cover the cost of the broken eggs. I honestly do not need the rest.’

‘Why don’t you keep it all? Then you can supply my aunt and family with eggs until what I gave you is depleted,’ he suggests before we are interrupted by the door opening behind us. No one comes out. ‘Look, they might be looking for me. We are about to have a meeting inside. I need to go.’ He takes my hand and closes my fingers around the notes. ‘Excuse me.’

Suddenly he seems very sad and I am reminded that the poor man has lost a sibling.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say as he walks into the house. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

* * *

It is Friday late afternoon, near dusk, with the sky getting darker by the second. This is always the best time for me to sweep the yard. I hate mornings, so I have settled on sweeping the yard and doing my household chores when the sun sets. During the day I do the sewing for my customers and run my egg business. My life is boring. It is a life so different from the one I lived in Soweto with my parents. Life was wild and fun there, unlike here.

Thulani is hardly home. He is either at work or on a drinking spree somewhere. He does construction piece jobs, buys groceries for us and drinks the rest of his money away with his buddies. I, on the other hand, have no friends, except for my neighbour’s daughter, Maria.

This past week I have been thinking about Rudzani a lot. Weird. My heart can’t seem to forget about him. Vhonani has left me with a scar and I am not going to trust again easily. Warming up to Rudzani is out of the question.

But, Rudzani’s words to me on the side of the road that night did give me peace. Listen, your angel is watching over you. When you feel lonely, remember that she is watching over you from heaven. While I was weeping alone for a whole year, no one ever told me anything like that. That day, when I met him, was the last time I wore my mourning outfits. Before, I couldn’t let go of my sorrow because it felt as if I would be letting go of my angel. He reassured me that she would always be with me.

‘A real woman wakes up and sweeps the yard at dawn,’ Maria calls out while walking towards our house.

‘Hai suka! Not me.’

‘Who is going to marry you?’ she asks, her hands on her waist.

I wave her words away as she crosses the swept yard to where I am standing. Who said I want to be married?

Maria scans me with a furrowed brow. When she finally notices what she was searching for, she asks, ‘You are not wearing black?’

I flash a smile at her.

‘What happened?’

She means well.

‘Let’s just say I now believe my angel is watching over me, and when she does, she has to find me smiling.’

‘I like that. Now put the broom down and let’s go.’

‘Where to?’

‘Ronnie’s house for the funeral preparations?’

I know she means cooking. As always when there is a death in the community, we will band together to make sure the funeral is conducted with dignity. Even if you don’t really know the family, you go. But today I’m hesitant.

‘Do we really have to go?’ The last thing I want now is to be bumping into Rudzani. For some reason, I am scared of how he makes me feel. I can’t get him off my mind and that scares the hell out of me. He is a man – just like Vhonani.

Maria lectures me, telling me to shove my own feelings aside. She thinks I’m scared the funeral will trigger the memory of my daughter’s burial. She is wrong. I have moved on now.

And I realise there is no running away from this responsibility. After all, this community helped out at my own daughter’s funeral. People came together to make sure that I could send my daughter off in the proper way.

Maria waits for me in the kitchen while I change into something decent. When I return to where she is seated, she has already taken down my apron which was hanging behind the kitchen door. She has also picked the sharpest knives from the kitchen drawer to take along.

‘I hope to see my crush today,’ Maria shyly says as we walk out of the gate.

‘Your crush?’

‘Ronnie’s brother. His name is Rudzani.’

It is weird that my heart skipped a beat at the mention of his name.

‘If only he was not such a player. If only.’

‘Is he …’ I swallow hard, ‘… a player?’

My heart drops. I don’t even know why I am disappointed. He is nothing to me but just a stranger who delivered a god-sent message.

‘Oh, yes. Rudzani dates so many women and dumps them just as quickly. He is a flirt. But who wouldn’t be with all the money his family has? All he has to do is to empty his pocket and voilà … all women run to him.’

Oh, wow! And I fell for his tricks, didn’t I? For some reason, I feel disappointed.

‘But you still like him? Even when he is a womaniser?’

What am I asking? It shouldn’t matter if she likes him or not. But it does.

‘Well, I just fancy him,’ she blushes. ‘He’s so attractive! He has his type of women. Not girls like me. I just like him from a distance. You, Thandeka, I think you could match with his brother. His name is Gundo. He is the eldest, but so uptight. He is reserved and your kind of guy.’

‘I don’t want a match, Maria. I don’t trust a thing called a man,’ I spit. Mostly because she just told me that the guy I have been thinking about the whole week is a serial womaniser. Why would I walk into a lion’s den with my eyes wide open? I would be a fool to do so.

‘Is this because Vhonani broke your heart?’ she asks lightly, without realising how much damage Vhonani caused in my life. I literally cried for a year. A whole year. But I didn’t tell anyone about that. Vhonani broke me and left with a piece of me. I’m not whole. When I don’t give her an answer, she lets it go. We walk for a few minutes in silence. Maria asks if I am fine. I nod at her. I am fine – I am just disappointed that Rudzani turned out to be what Maria said he was. I was not looking to be his girlfriend. I just thought he had a good heart, but it sounds like he uses women.

There are many cars parked outside of Ma Angie’s house. From down the street we can see people walking in and out of the yard.

‘More hands, please. Oh, please hurry to the back! You young ladies like to drag your feet,’ an old woman yells as we approach the gate. Maria and I pick up our pace.

There he is! The man I didn’t want to run into. He smirks at me – a lustful smirk it now seems to me. He gives me a nod and lifts his hand to wave. He isn’t getting back a wave from me. I have no time for men like my ex-boyfriend. If he thinks I’m to be flattered, he must think again!