Читать книгу The Madams - Zukiswa Wanner - Страница 5

Chapter 1

Nosizwe the Clothes Horse

Nosizwe does not work out, and eats whatever she wants. Although she was not blessed with the prettiest Xhosa face, she is one of the few who does not possess the Xhosa passport – otherwise known to all as the humongous butt. She does, however, possess a physique that is perfect in every way – pert breasts, well-toned ass, a waist that would make a wasp jealous, cellulite-free thighs, killer legs . . . And as if that weren’t enough advantage, Siz, as I call her, is one of those few black South African pre-independence children who were born with beaded silver spoons in their mouths.

Her father was a businessman and her mother a pretty, twenty-years-younger nurse, who saw an opportunity and grabbed it. Her dad already had children aplenty from one marriage and several flings, and was lucky to have been born and gone at a time when Aids was unknown. Such was the power of her mother’s mojo that when Siz’s father died when she was five, he stipulated that everything in his will belonged to this pretty young nurse, and had even set up an exclusive trust fund for Siz and her younger sister Nomalizwe, known to all as Lizwe. Not only did Siz’s father leave a will at a time when few, if any, black people did so, but also in those days children born out of wedlock had no claim on the estate (to protect the many white children who had ‘coloured’ siblings?) so Siz, her mother, and her sister inherited the man’s vast business interests as well. The first wife didn’t contest the will because she was under-educated and therefore ignorant of the law and her children’s rights. Besides, she would have had the fight of her life on her hands had she tried. ‘Why?’ you ask. You have to know Siz’s mother to understand. She is one of those characters who, when she walks in and out of a room, leaves you feeling as though you have been through a powerful hurricane. Today, with her children out of the house and as a grandmother to Lizwe’s six-year-old son, her word is still law. Shit, her word is even law to Mandla, Lauren, Lauren’s husband Michael, and I, and we are not even related to her.

But Siz’s mother is not just a pretty face with hurricane mojo; she has brains and ambition to match and managed to turn a two-bit business in Langa into a chain of supermarkets in the Eastern and Western Cape, while still maintaining great contacts with the then-banned South African political parties, without seeming like a sellout for having money. As if all that were not enough, her second marriage was to one of the leaders of the United Democratic Front who did a stint on ‘the Isle’. With her business acumen and his political connections, Siz’s mother became a ‘must-know’ post-1991. When Black Economic Empowerment came into play, all the honkies wanted to partner up with her. She now co-owns a bunch of companies, sits on numerous boards of directors, and is a multi-millionaire in her own right.

Unfortunately, as most people know, rich parents are either very generous or very stingy, and Siz’s mother falls into the former category with her last born and the latter with her first born. Sure, she armed Siz with a preppie South African private girls’ school education to matric level, and a posh public school for A-Levels in the UK, and then an even more expensive private university in the States – specifically Hawaii, where Siz and I met. But she was strict on Siz, trust fund or not, and gave her a measly allowance every semester, allegedly to foster responsibility. ‘After all, you are the first born. You are supposed to learn responsibility,’ Siz would often mimic her mother after one of our drunken episodes on dollar-pitcher night at Moose’s. I smile, as one can only do with a full belly, when I remember the times that girl and I lunched on stale hot dogs from 7–Eleven.

For my part, I could not help her much financially. I hated calling home to ask for funds; my father would tell me about some distant cousin he had just assisted financially in one way or another, and I would end up telling him, ‘I was just calling to see how you are.’ There we were in what the rest of the world considers a paradise, Hawaii, without two pennies to rub together. Paradise lost? Indeed.

It was different with her baby sister, Lizwe, though. Lizwe is clearly the apple of her mother’s eye. She didn’t have to work for all the seven years she spent doing her undergraduate at NYU. Lizwe, you see, could never make up her mind what she wanted to study, and so touched on Information Systems, Pre-Med and, eventually, when even her mother was getting fed up, got her degree in Business Studies.

When Nosizwe graduated and returned home, she begged and scraped to find employment but did not ask for help from her mother, not wanting to deal with any more emotional guilt about ‘everything I’ve done for you’. Eventually she hooked an executive job with a French multinational company in Johannesburg. The way Siz tells it: ‘My blackness was imperative and my intelligence apparently just an added advantage, so I am forever having to prove myself to those white boys in suits.’ She now lives two blocks from me in Lombardy East because, I flatter myself, she needs me as an anchor in her dramatic life.

Although she is very judgmental (like her mother) with a strong sense of wrong and right, Siz has never been a very good judge of character when she likes someone. This may explain her marital union. I think homegirl watched too much Soul Food because, like Bird, she married an ex-con who her mother detests with a passion. I am sometimes a little unsure whether Siz has remained married to Vuyo because she is trying to ‘show’ her mother, or because he is one of the sweetest, funniest, most loving, most charming – and not to mention ‘prettiest’ – boys a woman could hope to catch.

He’s also the only person we know who can stand up to Siz’s mother. With his athletic physique, his zero-curse-word vocabulary and a teddy-bear personality, Vuyo can aptly be described as a Gentleman-Thug. He has a steady job – which is more than can be said for a lot of the black male population in South Africa. But there is a down side to Vuyo. Two of them, to be exact.

The first is that he came with the baggage of two ghetto-fabulous babymamas, who seem not to care that Vuyo is a married man now. The second is that Vuyo loves his two bastard sons and Siz is barren and so, unsurprisingly, she resents the brats.

Vuyo always had a way with ladies and prior to Siz coming into his life, had two simultaneous girlfriends from Zola in Soweto. They hated each other and, maybe each hoping they could get one over on the other, they both got pregnant. Both hoodrats had sons and, out of spite, both named their boys Vuyo.

Vuyo loves his boys, but unfortunately for the babymamas, this was not enough reason for him to marry either one of them. Not long after he and Siz got hitched, the ghetto-fabs dumped their brood on Siz’s doorstep. Siz tolerates having Vuyo 2 and 3 around because, jealous chick that she is, she prefers to have her man home with her than visiting babymamas.

In spite of her issues, Siz has got to be one of the staunchest friends any person could have. She is one of those people who loves and hates with such passionate fervour that I feel lucky to be on the love side of her coin. This is not to say that we always agree. We had some big fights in college, which almost always began with her complaining about the guy she was dating. I, foolishly, would play my ‘leave-him’ Sis Dolly role and shake my head derisively when she did not. I now know not to give my opinions, because she will repeat them to her man, and when they are back in honeymoon mode they will end up blaming me for all their problems. I tell you, our friendship is working out much better because I am no longer a busybody.

Siz is a shopaholic and her wardrobe hangs like the who’s who of Milan Fashion Week. This girl will travel to Paris just to buy clothes. She never takes heed when I tell her that clothes don’t maketh the woman, my philosophy being, ‘I don’t walk around with the price tag out so why buy one outfit for four grand when I can buy twenty for the same amount at Mr Price?’ I once asked her why she insists on going to London, Paris and New York to shop for designer wear when our homegrown Sun God’dess’ are just as good? ‘Girl please,’ (insert eye-roll) ‘until I hear Halle on Oscar’s red carpet saying, “It’s a Sun God’dess”, I am not buying. I ply my trade back home and not overseas, that’s all the Proudly South African I need. So you and your folks at Nedlac can continue with your local designers.’

Aside from her misguided clothes budget allocation, Siz is a very generous soul and is always giving. In fact, whenever she goes to Europe on a shopping stint, she makes sure she brings all of us something – she is the one who introduced me to my one designer weakness: my Mahnolos.

With her warm and giving nature, Siz recently made a gesture that is typically her by going home – ‘home’ to me and her being anywhere in the Eastern Cape – and taking some distant cousin from Zwelitsha, with no livelihood and three children, to come and live with her and help take care of her stepsons. Siz has actually taken time to enrol this distant cousin, Pertunia, in weekly sewing classes which she pays for. She drops Pertunia off and picks her up again on Saturdays, while she spends the day with the step-children whose existence she detests – a true sacrifice. Considering that Sisi Pertunia is a very distant relative – a relation by clan name only – this is really big of Siz.

Lauren asked her about this. ‘Honestly Siz, doesn’t getting a maid and training her for something better defeat the whole purpose of hiring help? Just when she is getting used to all your bad habits, she’ll be telling you she is leaving. Hello!’

I am in agreement with Lauren on this but Siz was not buying it. She merely put her palm in our faces and said, ‘Y’all talk to the white ’cause this black ain’t listening.’

This social consciousness is admirable, but even her mother, ‘Madam Negativity’, told her she was going to regret it, because ‘darkies always bite the hand that feeds them’. Nosizwe responded that so long as those darkies’ stomachs were full, she was happy. (But she said it to me – saying it to her mother would result in one of those meaningless curses that affect one’s psyche so much that any time anything goes wrong you assume it is because of the curse.)

Finally, Nosizwe is my son’s official godmother. While neither Mandla nor I are religious, we were both raised by staunch Catholic mothers. It happened then that one day, about a month after Hintsa was born, I took him to visit his doting grandmother in Soweto. She summoned me into the living room, sat me down and, in the manner of mothers-in-law who have something serious to talk about, asked me when was the last time I attended church.

Now, I havn’t been to church since I was sixteen. Mandla and I got married at a registry office and we both still avoid funerals due to our aversion to organised religion. So I found myself lying that it was a few weeks ago. She smiled the smile of mothers-in-law who know you are lying but plan to just let it pass, and bluntly ordered me to get the child baptised.

This meant having to attend mass regularly and paying church dues so Mandla and I could seem like devout members of the congregation. But I did not mind as much as I thought I would; Mandla and I saw the positive side of the whole thing in two words: Catholic education. Having both benefited from it, we agreed that a Catholic education is probably the greatest weapon you can arm a child with, in spite of the bad rap that the good Church has taken in recent years.

This being the case, the boy was baptised. Siz was made godmother and that was the last time either Mandla, Hintsa’s godmother or I set foot in a church. When the priest asked us to affirm our faith by vowing to raise the child as a Catholic and promising to ‘conquer Satan and all his works’ we all felt no guilt in saying ‘aye’. I suppose, should guilt nag us in our golden years, we will all go to confession and say so many Hail Marys. Siz being godmother to my son means nothing more to her or Hintsa than that she buys him a present every time she makes a business trip to France. But that’s between Siz and her godson.