This Thing Called the Future (3 page)

Zi stands close behind me as I step up to the little window and ask the man for some bread, a box of milk, and Coca-Cola.

The man in the tuck shop looks me up and down. “He's right,” he says. “You're becoming a beautiful young woman.”

I know why they're noticing me. Lately my entire body is rebelling against clothes. I'm finally becoming a woman and it's obvious I'll be curvy, like Mama. If only I had Mama's small nose and big eyes!
Oh, Babamkhulu,
I think,
why was I born the same day you died
?
Couldn't you have waited and passed your spirit into one of your other descendants
?

I pass my money through the hole in the wire netting, taking my things and turning away.

“Why don't you sit with me for awhile?
Lapha!
” The drunk man pats a stone step next to his bucket. He tilts forward, expectant, and almost falls off.

“Gogo's expecting me home,” I lie, juggling the milk, bread, and Coca-Cola in my arms. I glance down the empty street towards our house, calculating how long it will be before Gogo and Mama will be home. If he were so bold as to follow us, I'd still have to wait some few hours before they returned.

“Your grandmother will wait. I'm sure she is a patient woman.”

“No, Gogo expects me home
now
now.” I tilt my head at Zi. “Besides, she's only five. She can't walk home by herself.”

“She can stay.” He grins, showing off his front teeth, yellowed and bleeding at the gums. His dry mouth makes a soft sound,
pah pah
, as he smacks his lips together. “But it's you I want to know better.”

“No no no, my friend, leave her alone,” the tuck shop owner says. “She's just a child. Let her grow a bit more, eh,
Ndoda?
”

“What are you talking about?” He's so drunk, he can't even stop squinting as he looks at me, greed pooling in his dark eyes. “She's young and look at her—hey hey! So fat!” He leers at me. “She's probably a virgin.”

These older men are always obsessed with virginity. A virgin can't spread the disease of these days. But a virgin isn't protected from HIV—she can get it from one of these old men, if they are already infected. That's why I'm always telling Thandi to be careful with the men she dates.

“Sis, man, you're pathetic,” the tuck shop owner says, turning away and going back inside his house.

Left alone with the drunk man, I look up and down the street again. It's still quiet, but now one or two young men are loitering at the end of the street, smoking cigarettes and glancing our way.
They
will not offer to help. No.

“Come on, Zi, let's run.” I grab her hand, peeking back at the man, and at the red bucket, tilted forward like it's about to topple. “Quick quick.”

But the drunk man is fast, whipping his hand out, grasping my leg, pulling me toward him, whirling me around, his fingers streaking across
my thighs, his swollen eyes bugging out as I fall towards him. The milk tumbles in the dust at his feet.

“Ouch!” I screech.

“Come on, girl, give me some sugar,” he whispers, one hand gripping me, the other crawling up my leg, fingers like little spiders.

I try to wrench my leg free but he has a strong grip, that man, and even as I jerk away, he rears back and I stumble towards him. A flash of blue from his shirt as I crash beside him in the dirt. A sudden stinging pain as the ground peels away layers of skin. My lips kiss the earth and I roll away, scrambling through the dust, tasting rust, smelling the metallic scent of blood.

“Khosi!” Zi shrieks.

On my hands and knees, I look at the drunken man, my vision blurring. His features haze over until they resemble a crocodile's, with a long snout and big hungry teeth.

The crocodile opens its mouth, ready to swallow me.

“Hey, man! Leave her alone!”

I glance up and see Little Man Ncobo standing between me and my attacker. A flash and the crocodile is gone, the drunk man glaring at me through Little Man's legs. He creeps back to his bucket, spit and vomit drooling out of his mouth onto the dirt.

What just happened? Did I imagine that man turning into a crocodile?

I push myself off the ground and brush dirt off my skirt. My knee is bloody.

“Did he hurt you, Khosi?” Little Man asks, his voice low, like we're having a private conversation. I've known Little Man all my life and we're even in the same class at school. He's a scrawny guy, short and skinny, but for now, he's like some hero in the movies, rescuing me.

“I'm okay,” I whisper, ignoring the throbbing in my knee and trying not to limp.

He smiles at me and I can't help smiling back, suddenly noticing that his lips are the same blue-black color as his skin. In fact, I'm seeing all sorts of things about Little Man that I never noticed before. Like the way he leans toward me as he talks, close, his arm almost touching mine.
We have such different color skin—he's so dark in comparison. Like my
babamkhulu
. Like my
baba.

My skin prickles. How is it you can know somebody all your life and only start seeing them some few minutes ago?

“You're all covered in dirt,” he says, reaching out and brushing my arm.

His fingers are so gentle as they graze against my skin. I quiver, my heart beating fast. I'm not sure if it's racing because of the drunk man or because of Little Man touching me. Maybe it's both.

“What about the milk, Khosi?” Zi worries.

“Forget about it.” I feel bruised where each of the drunk man's fingers wrapped around my thigh.

“But we need it for Gogo's tea,” she protests.

“I'll get it,” Little Man says.

As he trots over to retrieve the box of milk, the drunk man begins to shout at me. “I'll be here when you change your mind, little girl,” he yells. “I'll be your sugar daddy! I'll buy you whatever you want! See? I have so much money!”

He reaches into his pocket and silver coins slip from his fingers into the dirt. He begins to comb the dust, searching for them.

Zi laughs. “Oh, you have too much money!” she calls.

“Don't be rude, Zi. Just ignore him.” Even as I chide her, I wish I had her courage. And she's only five!

The next time an older man attacks me like that,
I promise myself,
I won't be so helpless. They'll know just who they're dealing with.

But even as I make that promise, I wonder if I'll have the courage to keep it.

“Catch it if you can, Zi,” Little Man calls, throwing the box of milk into her outstretched hands. “Good catch.” He grins at her and she grins back.

“I'll walk you home, Khosi,” he says.

“Thank you.” I'm glad Gogo is at the funeral. I can hear her voice grumbling in my head if she saw me with Little Man:
You can't even walk home for some few minutes without meeting some boy
?
What am I going to do
with you
?
Don't you become one of those bad girls, always chasing after men.

“Hey, it is not a problem,” he says, his arm stroking against mine for some few seconds. It makes me shiver. “Cold?”

I nod, even though it's not true, and keep my arm near his, hoping we'll accidentally touch again.

He glances at Zi, who's watching us, curious. “You feel warm to me,” he whispers, so low she can't hear.

It suddenly feels like a dozen monkeys are dancing in my stomach.

That's when it hits me. I have a
mad
mad crush on Little Man.

All this warmth is leaking out like tears from my eyes as I smile at him. Maybe I'll regret it later, letting him see how much I like him, but I can't hide it just now.

I try to forget about what happened with the old woman and the drunk man, focusing instead on Little Man, my rescuer. But that night, nightmares flood my mind.

The worst is the one that finally wakes me, sweating and shivering and hot-cold all at the same time.

I'm flying high above Imbali, looking down through the smog at dozens of zigzag streets, twisting here and there, house after house after house crowded together, stair-stepping their way up and down hills and all the way to the city of Pietermaritzburg. An ambulance flashes its lights as it speeds around bends in the roads, goes down a wrong street and hits a dead end, backs up and turns around to try again to get out of the maze that is Imbali.

And then I see her. A witch—
my
witch, the woman who lives at the top of the hill—as she sneaks through the winding streets, as she passes each sleeping house, observing them all briefly until she comes to ours. And then she stops, staring right at the bedroom window where I sleep with Mama.

Though she doesn't say a word, I know she's daring me to come out and challenge her. I can hear her cackly voice speaking in my head:
Hah! So! You think good always defeats evil, eh
?
Well, why don't we find out, Nomkhosi Zulu
?

Don't do it
, I whisper, but my body ignores my brain. It gets out of
bed even while I scold it, even as I shout
Stop
! It walks to the window, and there I am, looking outside, watching that witch walk around and around and around the perimeter of our house, digging small ditches, scattering a white powder on stones, placing the stones in the holes, refilling each ditch with dirt, then stomping down until nobody can find the spot where she dug.

Muthi
. She's scattering a potion around our house, one that will harm anybody who steps into our yard.

No no no! Stop
. I try to speak the words out loud but my voice strangles against the muscles of my throat.

She pauses to look at the bedroom window again, spreads her lips into a thin grin, and provokes me with her wordless taunt.
What are you going to do about it? How are you going to protect your family from this
muthi
?

What did I do to deserve this?
I ask.
Why am I your target
?

She laughs.
You think you and your family are innocent? Ah, but there was an opening to evil. You invited me
.

I didn't invite you
, I argue.

Somebody in your household did. And now I'm daring you to come outside and we'll see who's stronger. You or me. Hah
!

Who invited evil into our lives? I can't imagine Mama or Gogo or Zi doing anything that would cause this attack. Did I do something? I think back back back, months back. Of course, there are always these things that we should do for the ancestors, to ensure their protection over us. My family is not as faithful as we should be. But surely, our omission isn't so big that it would open the door so a witch thinks she is perfectly welcome in our home.

Our eyes meet. My fear collides with her hatred, like two
khumbis
in a car accident. I start to shake and shiver.

There's no way I'm going outside and facing her, alone.

And she knows it. She knows I'm a coward. That's why she laughs, her mouth open wide, gold glinting on her front tooth. She laughs and laughs and laughs. At me. But it's the strangest thing.
There's no sound anywhere
, like God opened my eyes and plugged my ears.

She puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles until a baboon
lumbers over from the shadows and kneels. She climbs on and rides away, still laughing.

Mama shakes me awake. “Khosi,” she's shouting, “
vuka
! Wake up!”

I'm standing next to the window, the same window in my dream.

“You must have been sleepwalking,” Gogo says. She looks like she wants to ask more, but respects my privacy too much.

Zi isn't so respectful. She's sucking her thumb, the scarf we managed to tie on her head last night clinging to a single knotted plait. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“No!” I deny it quick quick. But I know this much: dreams don't come out of nowhere. They are signs, sent from the ancestors as warnings. They've bothered me for two nights in a row now. What
is
it they're trying to tell me?

I close the door to the toilet and sit on the edge of the bathtub, looking down at my feet, following the cracks in the linoleum from one end of the room to the other, trying to forget what I saw.

Gogo has trouble getting out of bed the next morning, sore from her walk up the hill to go to Umnumzana Dudu's funeral.

“Why don't you stay in bed, Gogo?” I suggest. “God will understand if you miss church just once because you are so tired.”

But no matter how tired she is, or how sick, Gogo always goes to church. “God never says, ‘I'm too much tired, I don't think I'll forgive your sins today,'” she says now as she struggles to sit up.

I glance quickly down at her swollen knees. Gogo gasps as she tries to stand and I reach forward to give her support. We hobble into the dining room, where Gogo collapses on the sofa and Zi sits beside her, patting her arm. I pull a little table forward and lift Gogo's feet to help bring the circulation back.

“I'll go to the
sangoma
after church and get some
muthi
to bring the swelling down,” I say. I need to see the
sangoma
myself—to talk to her about the dreams…about what happened yesterday…about the drunk man who looked like he turned into a crocodile…

Mama stands in the doorway of the kitchen. “She needs to go to the doctor, Khosi,” she says.

“The
sangoma's
herbs always work, Mama.”
Please, Mama, I need to go.