Bloodlines (44 page)

“I had hoped that if you were upset, it was because you were thinking the same things I was.”

“That’s enough, Brian,” I said sharply, pulling my hands away. “Step back, please. And I’d appreciate it if you would keep whatever you were thinking to yourself.”

“It’s you, Grace,” he said, ignoring me. He placed a hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off, but he seemed not to notice. “You’re all I think about,” he said urgently, “up here in the farmhouse. All alone. I thought, if you were having a hard time because you were lonely, I could keep you company.” His voice was breathless. “No one would ever have to know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said as sternly as I could. “You’re a married man with four children.” I pushed past him to the open door. “As far as I’m concerned, this conversation never happened. I’m leaving now—and when I get back I expect that you’ll have gone home to lunch with your family. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I walked out through the great room and down the hallway to the kitchen, where Selina was making my lunch. I didn’t look back, and I heard his boots on the floorboards as he made his way slowly down the passageway and out of the house. His overture was unpracticed and immature, and the fact that he had made it should have been reason enough to dismiss him immediately.

In a life filled with sins of commission, there are a few things I should have done, and didn’t. Of these, not replacing Brian McWilliams as fast as I could stands out as one of the greatest.

.

twenty-one

MICHAELA

Natal, South Africa
,
1967

K
habazela was away for two weeks; all I knew was that he was out of the country. There were articles in the news about a meeting at which leaders opposing repressive regimes throughout Africa had gathered in Lusaka, and I suspect that he was among them.

As usual, we had no contact while he was away, but there were moments when my yearning to have him with me was much greater than usual. At first I put it down to circumstance. I was ill for several days, nauseous and unable to get out of bed, and my wish that he was there to help me was followed by the stark recognition that even if he had been home, there was little he would be able to do other than bring me toast and tea. Even that would have been a comfort, but it was his absence that finally got me up and dressed.

When I saw Brian the day after our conversation, he behaved as if nothing had happened between us. I was satisfied that he had heard my message, and I congratulated myself on having put an end to any expectations he might still harbor. But a few days later I woke sometime after midnight to the sounds of raucous laughter and shouting outside. I put on my bathrobe, went to the kitchen and looked out the window.

Brian McWilliams stood in the silent yard, drunk, swaying shirtless in the winter night. His knees were bent, his trousers pulled halfway down his backside, and his pale chest and belly bleached white in the moonlight. His arms were outspread, a bottle in one hand, and he stood facing the house, singing and shouting at the kitchen door. I didn’t need to understand what he was saying in order to be disgusted by his actions, furious at the spectacle he was making of himself, and of the shame he was bringing to his family.

Before I could decide what action to take, Solomon came running into the yard with another man, and together, talking quietly, stroking his shoulder, they stilled Brian and gently led him back around the house. I watched through the office window as they supported him out of the yard, one of his arms over each of their shoulders. Solomon started the Jeep and the other man sat in the back with Brian as they drove him back to his wife. The next morning I asked Solomon about the incident, curious to know what happened when they arrived at the foreman’s cottage.

“This thing you speak of,” he said innocently, “that happened last night, I think perhaps you have dreamed it. I was at home with my family, and I did not come here to the farm.”

I looked at him, not yet understanding.

“I was not dreaming, Solomon,” I said, “I was awake, and I saw Mr. McWilliams drunk in the yard, singing and shouting. You were there with him, and you took away his bottle and I saw you sitting him in the Jeep and taking him home—”

“We do not speak of these things,” he interrupted quietly, his voice respectful as always, but firm. “It brings only sadness and pain to his wife, and it will shame him before those of us who work for him. No good can come of it.” He waved his hands in the air as if to dispel a bad odor. “It is over,
Nkosikazi
. Let it be done and forgotten.”

Under normal circumstances it would have been difficult to forget, but as usual in my life, I was overcome by the looming pressure of current events. The following morning, crouched nauseous over the toilet, as vomit erupted from my mouth and streamed from my chin, I counted the days since my last period.

When I told Solomon as we walked the next morning that I wanted to visit Lungile, he was not surprised, but I was shaken by his reaction.

“Lungile will be very happy to see this daughter,” he said, pointing at me and then rubbing his hands together in anticipation of our reunion, “and she will be full of joy to see that she is becoming a grandmother.”

“Solomon, what are you saying?” I asked. “I have told nobody of this.”

He laughed in response. “I do not need to be told,
Nkosikazi
. I herded the cows when I was a boy. Now I walk with them every day. I look among the cattle to see which cow is ready to calf, which calf to be weaned, and which cow stands patiently by, waiting. I am an old man, rich in wives, and daughters, and grandchildren,” he said, smiling gently. “Do we not walk the fields together, side by side, in the morning when the heaviness is upon you? Do I not see you?”

He pointed with two spread fingers of one hand at his eyes, and then turned the fingers to point at mine. “There would be no wisdom in this old man if he could not tell that a child is being molded within you.” He stopped and turned to me. Cautiously, but firmly, he placed a hand on my wrist. “You are with Khabazela’s child. This is not an easy thing. But when the child is born, I will be grandfather to the child, as Lungile is mother to you. When we are among others, I will address you as we are accustomed, in the formal way of mistress and servant. But when we are alone, my daughter,” he continued without a pause, “it will not be right for me to address the mother of my grandchild so.”

This time, the journey to Zululand was familiar, but no less difficult. Solomon gave me directions to the road that came closest to Lungile’s homestead, and he told me where I would find a thick copse of trees that would keep the Jeep secluded while I was away. He arranged for a boy to meet me after dark, and he sent word to Lungile that I was coming. I arrived at the meeting point just as the sun set, and had time to drive deep into the trees, to obscure my tire tracks, and to camouflage the Jeep with fallen branches. As I finished and turned to the
veld
that rolled upward before me, I saw the silhouette of a donkey against the nearest hilltop, following a boy no taller than his neck.

I had brought a knapsack loaded with supplies, and the boy secured it to the saddle-blanket on his donkey. On this journey, I was determined to walk, and even if Sthembiso had come to meet me instead of the boy, he would have been no match for the determination I felt. Remembering my last journey, among the supplies I had brought for Lungile were two thick blankets. I offered one to the boy, wrapping myself in the other.

We arrived at the homestead after midnight, to find Lungile waiting at the fire, as she had waited for a stranger almost two years earlier. But this time we were not strangers, and we embraced, wordlessly. She led me to the hut that Khabazela and I had lived in, with the same chairs and table, and with a fire burning in a circle of rocks at the center. She sat me down and placed in my hands a bowl of steaming
mielie
porridge, and in the mix were small pieces of meat. This time I needed no instruction, and I ate with my fingers, ravenous for the food and for the caring it represented.

Lungile sat with me, silent, watching as I ate. When I was through, she lay me down on the bed and covered me with a blanket. I heard the sound of her feet slapping on the mud floor as she left, and went to sleep in the warmth of the fire, with the musky smell of old smoke in my nostrils. I was four hours from the nearest road, without electricity or running water, in a silent, doorless hut—but I slept the deep, secure sleep of a child in her parents’ home.

The next morning we ate together, and I offered Lungile the gifts I had brought—blankets, Red Roses tea, a pound of sugar, enameled mugs, candles, matches, several kinds of soap, hand towels and washcloths, and hooded sweatshirts for the children. She looked at them all approvingly, and she was most taken by the hand soap. It was perfumed with lavender, and she breathed it in with delight. Then she boiled water and we sat down together around her fire to drink hot tea out of her new mugs.

“You have come,” she said.

“Yes, mother. It gladdens me to see you.”

“It is good that you bring gifts. But what can this old mother offer you?”

“I am confused,” I said. “I come to ask for your wisdom.”

She looked down at my belly, and then up into my face. “It requires no wisdom to see that a child is being molded within you.” She paused. “The child of Mandla Mkhize.”

“Yes,” I said, “Khabazela’s child.”

“As the
sangoma
predicted.” She paused again, looking into my eyes, and I was unable to bear her scrutiny. I dropped my head. “Raise up your eyes, my daughter, and tell me about this confusion inside you.”

She waited for my answer, and I looked up again into her sun-wrinkled face. From the deep calm of her eyes shone the sure knowledge of answers to all things important. And I remember thinking, how is it possible for this woman, who knows so little of the world, to know so much? Whether right or wrong, she knew the world worked in certain ways; she knew the fixed principles that govern human behavior and destiny. The knowledge passed down to her from her fathers and mothers was unassailable. I envied her certainty then, and I remain envious today.