Fly Away Home (10 page)

“A child knows her mother,” she said in as calm a voice as she could manage. What she really wanted to say was, “Hurry and get your things so we can leave now.”

“Are you sure it's no problem to take me all the way to Cape Town?”

“Of course not,” said Francina. “We're going home, too.”

“What were you doing in Johannesburg?” asked Lucy.

She didn't realize that the two of them had traveled all the way to Johannesburg to find her. Perhaps it would be preferable, Francina thought, if Lucy remained oblivious of this fact. She had agreed to come back with them; this was all that was important, and anything they said now might undo the progress they had made.

Hercules, however, had other ideas. “We came to find you,” he said. “That's how important you are to your family.”

Francina watched Lucy try to digest this new information. “My mother is ill, isn't she?” she asked at last.

He nodded.

Francina worried that Lucy might start crying again, but her eyes were dry, her voice calm.

“Then I must go immediately.” She stood up. “I'll tell the director I'm leaving, and get my things. I don't have much, just a toothbrush and some toiletries. I'll leave the clothes that were donated to me.”

Francina and Hercules watched her go, and both let out a sigh of relief.

“Let's bring all the potatoes and onions inside,” said Francina. “I told you we'd find a place for them.”

They hurried to the car and carried the bags back into the house. Lucy was waiting for them in the hallway.

“Just what we need,” she said, looking at the bags. “Someone dropped off a crate of carrots and celery this morning, so now we can make vegetable soup. The girls love it.”

Seeing Lucy smile, Francina was struck by her resemblance to Fundiswa, who had spent more than four of her five years apart from her mother.

 

From Johannesburg to Kimberley, a distance of two hundred and ninety miles, Lucy sat in silence, which she broke only to say thank-you whenever Francina passed her a bottle of water or offered her a butterscotch drop. But as they entered the flat, dry landscape of the Karoo, Lucy began to talk about her early years as a mother, when the boys were babies, and about how their father had never been a constant presence in their lives.

As the temperature rose, they all rolled down their windows, and the smell of dried herbs filled the car.

“Wild rosemary,” said Lucy. “It's wonderful with Karoo lamb.”

“You're a cook?” asked Francina.

“I used to love cooking,” said Lucy. “My favorite part was inventing something wonderful with the ingredients I had. I never used recipe books.”

Francina's mind began to tick furiously. If Mama Dlamini was offered a permanent position as head chef at the golf resort, her café would need a replacement cook. Lucy's boys would be far better off growing up in Lady Helen than in that dangerous neighborhood of Cape Town. And Zukisa could be near to her aunt. Francina felt a flutter of excitement as the plans formed in her head. But, as Hercules would say, first things first. Let Lucy and her family become reacquainted with each other before Francina had them moving to a new town.

W
hile Francina was away, Mandla sat every afternoon in Monica's office, doing his homework without protest, or staring silently out of the window—both very out of character for him. He was missing his brother.

Emergencies at the hospital kept Zak busy, so he'd not been able to go to Cape Town to convince Jacqueline not to take Yolanda to Australia, but he'd told Monica he planned to go this evening. Since he'd be back late, Monica decided to take Mandla to Mama Dlamini's Eating Establishment for dinner.

The queen of the café was nowhere to be seen.

“Is Mama in the kitchen?” Mandla asked Anna, the waitress.

Monica had secured a full-time job for Anna at the café so that she wouldn't have to rely on her usual source of income, which was illegal abalone picking.

Anna shook her head. “No, she's not here. Your gogo is cooking,” she told Mandla, referring to Francina's mother-in-law.

“Gogo!” Mandla leaped out of his chair and, without waiting for permission from Monica or Anna, went into the kitchen.

A minute later he came out, dragging Mrs. Shabalala by the hand.

“Hi, Monica,” she said.

“Hello. What a surprise. Why are you working here?”

Monica noticed that for an instant Francina's mother-in-law evaded her gaze. “Mama Dlamini has other work to do,” Mrs. Shabalala said eventually.

“Oh.” It was a reasonable excuse, but Monica could not shake the feeling that something was amiss. Mrs. Shabalala seemed uncomfortable, and glad for the distraction of Mandla's questions about the day's specials.

Eventually, Mandla decided on baked haddock with mushroom risotto, a combination of two of the evening specials, and he accompanied Mrs. Shabalala back to the kitchen to watch her work.

When the food arrived, it was clear that he had distracted her because the risotto was like porridge, the haddock dry and Monica's calamari fried to a crisp. But Mandla did not seem to notice, and Monica didn't say a word.

Later that evening, when Mandla was asleep and Monica had just stepped out of a relaxing hot bath, she heard Zak's car in the driveway and braced herself to bear the brunt of his frustration with Jacqueline. But when he came through the door, she saw his triumphant grin and knew that she had been correct to suggest he talk to his ex-wife.

“She's decided not to go until Yolanda starts university in a year's time,” he said. “Then it will be up to Yolanda to decide where she'd like to study—in South Africa or Australia.”

“That's wonderful news,” said Monica. She was a little suspicious that Jacqueline would suddenly change major plans so quickly. Still, Zak could be highly convincing when he tried. Many people who had donated large sums of money to the hospital could attest to that.

She wondered briefly if she should voice her uncertainties, and then decided against it. She and Zak had another year with Yolanda, and hopefully the girl would decide not to leave at the end of it.

He put his arms around Monica. “You were right to suggest I talk to Jacqueline. Sorry I was such a jerk about it.”

She nuzzled her head against his chest. “That's okay.” She wondered if he'd choose this moment to talk about the child they were desperate to have together.

“Did Sipho e-mail today?”

Monica nodded. “He went to watch Connor's football practice today.”

“Are you sure you're talking about our Sipho?”

“Unbelievable, isn't it?”

Sipho's mother, Ella, had encouraged him to play soccer when he was a small child, but he had never been interested in sports. Sipho was in the same class as the son of his host family now, but because Sipho had skipped a couple of grades he was two years younger.

“He also said that Connor gets a lot of attention from girls.” Monica had reread that part of his e-mail, but Sipho had not revealed his opinion of Connor's popularity. Sipho himself had only ever mentioned a girl if he was working on a school project with her, and then it had only been to explain her role or lament her tardiness in meeting deadlines.

“Connor is seventeen. I wished I had attention from girls at that age,” said Zak, laughing.

“Don't try and tell me you didn't,” teased Monica.

“You should have seen how thick my glasses were. Like milk bottles.”

“I still would have fancied you.”

Zak planted a kiss on her lips. “Keep telling me that, okay?”

With the mood between them light and their emotional intimacy restored, this would be the perfect time to broach the delicate subject of whether or not to try another round of fertility drugs. But perhaps because she didn't want to destroy their mood, or perhaps because she herself didn't want to face making a decision, Monica could not bring it up. She wondered if he would.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

He hadn't, but fortunately, she had some leftover chicken from the night before, which she reheated.

They didn't usually eat in front of the television—much as Zak tried to convince her otherwise—but tonight she brought his plate through to the living room. He was watching the news.

A crime reporter was interviewing a member of parliament about the government's decision to no longer publish crime statistics.

“What a farce,” said Zak.

Monica was glad that her beat as the
Herald's
editor and reporter no longer covered national political issues, which she found very wearing.

As one talking head replaced another on TV, Monica found herself growing increasingly upset with Zak for not broaching the subject of her fertility treatment. She knew it was irrational. She had served him his food in front of the television; she had waived her chance to bring it up earlier when he'd kissed her. But she couldn't help herself.

The news ended and she picked his empty plate up off the floor with an exaggerated sigh.

When he came into the kitchen to make tea, he found her washing the dishes and crying quietly.

“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice full of concern. “This is not about me leaving my plate on the floor, is it?” He turned her so that she was facing him. “It's about us not having a baby.”

“I can't make all the decisions on my own,” she said, sniffing. “It's hard.”

“I don't want you to make decisions on your own. But you haven't mentioned it for ages. I was starting to think that you'd given up on the idea.”

“Why would I give up on having a baby?” Monica buried her face in the drying cloth.

“Let's talk about this,” said Zak. “Tomorrow when you're not so upset.”

He put his arms around her and for an instant, as she breathed in the faded scent of the cologne that he'd put on that morning, she allowed herself to believe that everything would work out, just as Dudu kept telling her it would.

 

The next evening, as Mandla was preparing for bed, Monica and Zak talked and decided they would try one more round of fertility treatments.

F
undiswa, who had no memory of her mother, welcomed Lucy with enthusiasm. The little girl was simply happy for the attention, but the boys, especially Xoli, punished Lucy by staying out more and treating her to silence whenever they were home. For a few days after her daughter's return, Zukisa's aunt was able to sit up in bed and eat with a normal appetite.

Francina and Hercules were delighted to have Zukisa home, and promised to drive her to Cape Town every weekend to check on her aunt. Happiness reigned again at Jabulani Dressmakers.

With almost surreal timing, the spring wildflowers appeared the day after Francina's return, clothing the usually severe koppies in flamenco skirts of orange, white, yellow and purple. Every inch of open space in town, from the grassy medians to the park at the end of Main Street, was covered with colorful vygies, violets, gladioli and daisies. The first tour bus arrived that very afternoon.

The flowers marked not only Francina's triumphant return, but also the return of a daily routine that Monica had never grown accustomed to, though it was her fifth round of fertility treatment. In the past, Sipho had watched, enthralled, when she'd given herself the hormone shots in the belly, but Mandla ran out of the room when it was time for her injections. If Zak was home, he'd sit with her and tease that if she ever wanted to change careers there would be a job for her at the hospital.

The shots were not so bad. It hurt while she was administering them, and sometimes a bruise appeared on her belly the next day, but the anxiety was far worse. As she discarded each syringe in the safety canister that Ivy, the nurse, had given her, Monica knew that she was one day closer to the time of waiting. That awful two-week stretch as she waited to take the pregnancy test always felt like two months. At work she often felt light-headed, and once she had to rush to the bathroom to be sick. But the side effects of the shots were nothing compared to the stress of waiting.

On the day the wait began, Anna, the waitress from Mama Dlamini's Eating Establishment, came to see her at the office with news that provided a pleasant diversion. Four years ago, Monica had learned that a gang of foreigners was poaching abalone off the coast of Lady Helen. The tip-off came from Anna and three of her friends, whose own poaching—on a much more minor scale—was threatened by the gang's presence. After the police in Lady Helen arrested the gang members, Monica had warned the women not to continue their illegal early-morning activity or they, too, would be apprehended. She had found them jobs: one cleaning in the newspaper office; two with her friend Kitty, who ran a local inn; and one—Anna—at Mama Dlamini's Eating Establishment. At first the women had been reluctant to accept these jobs, since taking a mere seven abalone a day had earned them enough from the chef at the golf resort north of town to put food on their tables. But Monica had managed to persuade them of the very real possibility of arrest and a large fine.

Six months later, she had helped them form a limited corporation and to apply for a commercial abalone picking license. These were notoriously difficult to get, and, according to the word among fishermen, went only to government cronies. For three years in a row the ladies' application had been turned down, but this year it had been approved. Now, as licensed abalone pickers, they would be able to pick more than the daily four allotted to recreational pickers. And they would be able to sell their catch, something recreational pickers were forbidden to do.

“What about your jobs?” Monica asked as Anna stood to leave. She hoped the women wouldn't consider quitting their employment for the more lucrative world of abalone picking.

“We're old-fashioned,” said Anna. “We'll go back to the way we did it for years—getting up before dawn, wading into the shallow water to look under the rocks, and not taking more than seven to sell to the restaurant at the golf resort.”

Monica wondered if she was imagining that Anna seemed uncomfortable when she mentioned the resort.

“It only takes an hour or two each morning,” continued Anna. “We'll all be at our jobs on time.”

Monica was relieved to hear that nothing would change.

Anna paused at the door. “Thank you, Monica. You made this possible.”

The irony of Anna's gratitude did not escape Monica. She had been the one who'd stopped the women from doing what they'd done for years. In a way, it was only right that she was helping them start again. Something else did not escape Monica's attention: the slight bump under Anna's dress. The woman was pregnant again.

As her footsteps grew fainter down the hall, Monica found herself growing more and more upset. She threw a pile of junk mail into the recycling bin with such vigor that the tub tipped over. It wasn't fair. Anna already had two children. The youngest was not even two years old! Why did God allow Anna to have babies so easily, while Monica had to struggle and suffer like this? She looked out the window and saw Anna walking back up Main Street toward the café. Life wasn't fair. God wasn't fair. Monica slumped in her chair, sobbing.

“What's the matter?” asked Dudu, coming in with a cup of tea. She set it down on the desk and put her arm around her boss.

Monica couldn't answer her.

“Oh, honey,” cooed Dudu. “Those nasty hormone shots are just making you feel bad. Have a sip of nice, strong tea.”

Monica stopped crying and sniffed.

“It'll happen, don't worry.” Dudu righted the recycling bin and picked up the junk mail and used envelopes from the floor.

Dudu meant well, but in truth, it might
never
happen. The world was full of childless women who had given up their quest. And the majority had probably also been told not to worry, that it would happen in good time.

“I'm going to go back to work now,” said Dudu. “But I'll check on you in a while.”

Monica nodded.

After she had left, Monica tried to get started on a story she had been meaning to write for weeks about the discovery of a new species of jellyfish a few miles up the coast. But she couldn't concentrate.

And this was only the first day of waiting.

 

Mandla continued to mope around in the absence of his brother. Although Sipho had usually spent every afternoon in his bedroom doing his homework, it had been enough for Mandla to know that he could go in at any time—to ask his brother a question, to enjoy the reaction he got from rankling him, or just lie on his bed and study the posters of wildlife that had hung on Sipho's walls since he was a young child.

Mandla was glad to have Francina and Zukisa back, but ever since their return, Zukisa seemed older to him, more distant and far too prim for a fourteen-year-old. In short, she was no longer any fun, and fun was something he felt was lacking in his life. He was marking off the days on his calendar until the family's departure for the United States.

The return of the migratory birds to the lagoon north of town piqued his interest briefly, but even that didn't seem as enjoyable without Sipho's wild enthusiasm. This annual event, the official start of spring, always brought out exuberance in Sipho. He'd run around whooping with joy and punching the air with excitement. Mandla notified his brother by e-mail that the whimbrels had returned first this year, and that the seagulls had resisted relinquishing the lagoon they'd controlled all winter long.

Reading between the lines of Sipho's reply, Monica knew that he was feeling homesick and out of place.