Black Water Days

A story by MBOZI HAIMBE

Twapenga can always tell what Chikondi has been up to by the colour of his bath water. Yellow means Chikondi has been playing close to home, building wire cars within their housing estate, Malata. Nothing grows in the denuded, sandy soil of Malata’s backyard gardens. The resulting tracts of smooth, bare ground are excellent for racing wire cars. Yellow days are not too bad. More dust than grit, the sand washes off easily and doesn’t wedge stubbornly in Chikondi’s short, curly hair. Twapenga’s mother-in-law likes to say, with fond cruelty, my Chikondi with the housefly hair. Such unkindness all because his curls are so tight, that they pepper his scalp in distinct little bumps. She says it with a smile too, pinching his cheek. Foul woman!

Red means Chikondi has been playing football in the neighbouring estate, Njolwe. Convoys of trucks churn the red gravel road as they take a short cut from Black Mountain through Njolwe, on their way to the mineral processing plant that squats on a derelict strip of Kabwe town. On red days, Chikondi will come home clothed in dust, his eyelashes smudged with a red coating that goes on to irritate his eyes.

Black water means Chikondi has gone too far, beyond the city limits, to play at Mugodi. On these days, the black days when he comes home dipped in soil so dark it seems harvested from the mid-night, soil that glints with silver specks so that her boy’s skin is spangled with stars like the heavens; these are the worst days. Because the soil from the crater that the kids call Mugodi has the thick sulphur stink of a thousand fearsome farts. That stink now rises from Chikondi’s skin. Twapenga cannot bear to be near him. As if the smell is not enough, the water has left a black, oily ring on her new bathtub.

Her husband completely remodelled the bathroom between Number Four and Number Five, replacing the mould-ridden suite with pure white everything, including tiles. She can still see the faint pink stains in the white grout between the tiles by the door. An indelible part of Number Five. She used to give them names but quit doing that after Number Three. Names are a jinx. But numbers are a shroud against inadvertent self-curses. 

Lathering a washcloth with soap, she scrubs Chikondi’s back. “Did I not tell you to stop playing at Mugodi? Why siu mvela? When will you start obeying me, eh?”

“I didn’t go ku chiMugodi, Mummy,” he says, voice cranking towards a whine. “No, not me.”

She lifts Chikondi out of the tub and sets him on the bath mat. He shivers. It’s a wonder he doesn’t rattle. All ribs and knobbly knees and protruding bones along his spine. He got to full term without a problem. Was the perfect height and weight, until he became mobile. She’d plonk him out there on the back verandah while she did her chores, and he’d crawl his way into the dirt, where he’d fill his chubby fists with yellow earth. Fill his mouth with it too, feast on it. She can’t figure out what changed. Why Chikondi is now thin and stunted. Why he doesn’t grow despite all the love, hope and fortified porridge she heaps on him. 

Her phone’s ring tone echoes down the corridor. She sprints to the kitchen, grabs the phone off the table. Too late to catch the call. But in time to see a voice note pop up on her WhatsApp screen. She plays it.

“Hey, babe. Sorry I’m stranded kuno, the car, you know…” Her husband, Masauso, trails off, distracted. Attention elsewhere. “It’s ma chani, ma spark plugs… I think they’re fried. Anyway, I won’t make it home tomorrow. But I’ll see you next Friday.”

Next Friday? What about this Saturday? Sunday? Surely it won’t take all weekend to replace spark plugs. 

She tries his number. A flat, automated voice informs her that, “the person you dialled is outside the coverage area or has their phone switched off. Please try your call—”

“Later,” Twapenga grunts. 

She plays the voice note again. A baby cries deep in the background. Indistinct, jumbled voices. A busy place. Supermarket? Hospital? Labour ward? Across the kitchen, the top drawer of the shelving unit hangs lopsided in mockery. She plays the note again, as Chikondi comes in cradling his entire collection of black, shiny rocks. Specs of glitter from the rocks stick to his pyjama top and the underside of his chin.

She wants to tell him not to scatter the rocks on her clean floor, but she is listening hard for the baby in the background. Is it a girl or a boy? Or her tormented imagination? Chikondi drops the rocks on the floor and follows them down. Turns them into cars chasing cars, complete with vroom and hooting noises. Soon, he throws in a siren. Nee-naw, nee-naaaw! Loud enough to cause tinnitus. She now can’t hear the background. Truth is she should be making dinner, instead of stalking voice notes. 

“Do you know that there’s a beast at Mugodi?” she asks, scooping mealie-meal into a pot.

“A beast?”

“A big one. It lives under the soil and likes the taste of human flesh. Next time I hear of you playing in that place, I will feed you to the Mugodi beast. Wamvela?”

One of Chikondi’s larger rocks becomes a beast. It chases the little rocks under the table, where they screech in high-pitched panic. Twapenga adds cold water to the mealie-meal, stirring it into a paste with a wooden cooking stick. She then tops it up with hot water and places the pot on the gas cooker. 

“It won’t catch me.” Chikondi makes the beast eat two small rocks. “I’ll run away fast in the car. I told you, I’m going to buy a car, Mummy. With my stones. See? All these stones. The jerabos said I need two more stones. Only two more, big ones. Then I can buy a car. The jerabos said…”

Twapenga turns up the gas under the pot. The flames leap, those same blue flames dancing in her veins. She furiously stirs the bubbling porridge as she adds more mealie-meal. Pearls of sweat decorate her forehead. She pounds the porridge into nshima. From the corner of her eye, she catches the top drawer give her a lopsided leer. She springs across the kitchen and slams the drawer shut. It still hangs half open. She hauls it open and slams it shut. Again, again. Until her breath boils in her throat and the pungent smell of burning nshima permeates the air. The night-darkened window is a mirror, reflecting her wild gaze back at her. Chikondi sits frozen behind her. Her rage has consumed his voice. 

She cannot, must not, show him her face right now, the monstrous proportions of her anger. Her blazing grief. She stares beyond the window into the darkened yard as a forced calm slowly numbs her. 

And this is what she reminds herself: Masauso is a good man; a stable provider. The proof is out in the yard, in the grey shape of the lean-to shop propped against the wall fence. He built the shop for her after Number Six, and she named it Chikondi’s Corner and Bottle Store. 

She throws the window open to let the smoke out and switches the cooker off. Then, pasting on a smile, joins Chikondi on the floor. They will have burnt nshima and beans for supper later, but for now she runs a tender hand across Chikondi’s scalp.

“What did the jerabos say? Tell me.” 

*

Twapenga scrapes the leftovers of Chikondi’s breakfast into the bin and dumps the dishes in the sink. She turns the tap on, then watches from the window as he heads off to school with his best friend, Gift. Chikondi should be in grade three like Gift, but he had to stay back in grade two because he wasn’t making progress. The learning just wasn’t happening. Masauso complains about wasted school fees. He would complain even more if he knew about the private tutor she pays to help Chikondi with Maths.

She lets the cold water from the tap run across her knuckles and over her wrists. Enjoys the cooling touch on her inner wrist, which still stings from the multiple attempts Nurse Inonge made to draw blood at the clinic yesterday. Some specialist clinic for ladies with her kind of ‘problem.’ Her first time there, and Nurse Inonge stabs her with needles. She might not go back.

Anyway, what does Masauso know about Chikondi’s educational needs? He works out of town, for the Ministry of Agriculture. Her husband, the agriculturist. Leaves home early on Monday mornings and returns late on Friday evenings—sometimes. Solwezi Pleasure Life Lodge is Masauso’s home when he’s up there. He keeps a pile of lodge receipts in the lopsided kitchen drawer. No filing system. He just crams the receipts in, saying, “They will reimburse me. I can’t be spending my own money on work business.”

He still says that, work business, as if he’s fooling anyone.

Out in the yard, her young assistant waves at her.

Twapenga opens the window. “Good morning, Tasila, bwanji?”

“Just fine, Auntie. Mwauka bwanji?”

“I’m okay.” Twapenga blots her hands dry on a tea towel. “The power went last night. You can turn on the generator.” 

Tasila screws up her face. “Zesco also, with its load shedding.”

Power cuts, like the black mountain in the distance, are a nasty fact of life. But you can earn a few coins from both if you know how to hustle. 

“Generator, Tasila. Customers will soon start arriving.”

Turning away from the window, Twapenga ignores the nagging twinge that settles in her lower back. It’s nothing. A pulled muscle. Her back doesn’t stop twinging as she sweeps Chikondi’s rocks into a tidy pile by the table. Always tidying things up.

She went into the lopsided drawer one day to do just that, sort the receipts out. Make some sense out of them. It was during Number Six, those early, hopeful weeks when you want to share the news with everyone but you can’t, because it’s too soon. She had not even told Masauso yet. 

Halfway through filing the receipts, she found a non-smart, weird-brand mobile phone under the pile of paper slips. A crushing sense of premonition twisted her guts. Through the window, she watched Masauso and Chikondi kick a ball back and forth in the dusty backyard. Masauso waved at her, his broad smile brimming with affection. So innocent, that smile. She waved back, trying to decide whether she really wanted to change her life, or whether to rebury the phone under the receipts and pretend she never found it. Whatever she didn’t know about—the things on the phone—they were harmless as long as they stayed unknown, weren’t they?

She remained in the tortured state of not knowing all weekend. One minute reasoning that Masauso would never betray her in such a way. The next minute, grabbing the burner phone, determined to snoop through it and find out the name, number and address of Masauso’s Pleasure Life woman. 

In the end, she did not interrogate the phone. But come Monday morning, while Chikondi dozed over his breakfast and Masauso bolted his down so eager to be gone, she set a fresh mug of tea and the burner phone down in front of him.

Masauso abruptly stopped munching on his slice of bread and margarine. She looked him dead in the eye. He glanced away, silently giving her the answer she had been dreading all weekend.

Voice shaking, Masauso said, “Not in front of the boy.”

“In front of your parents then, and mine,” she said, her tone strained with the weight of unshed tears. “Call a family meeting.”

*

Twapenga stands at the till of her shop counting cash, distracted as children troop down the road that runs past the open door. They talk in loud voices, shrill laughter, flattened cardboard boxes tucked under their arms. Clearly headed for Mugodi. They’ll sit on the boxes when they get to the crater’s lip, slide down the slope and clamber back up to do it over and over again. 

She used to do the same as a child. The crater was smaller in those days. A mere dimple, before the mining company came with bulldozers and turned the dimple into an open pit mine of inter-connected craters. The Mine erected fences to keep trespassers out, and for decades, no children slid down the slopes of Mugodi. Then, whatever they were digging for dried up and the Mine moved elsewhere, leaving behind broken fences, the huge pit, and a hulking Black Mountain of excavated soil and rocks.

Twapenga abandons the till to stand at the roadside, from where she scans the children. Chikondi is not amongst them, thank goodness. The summit of Black Mountain, up ahead, is obscured by clouds of grey smog arising from all the activity on it. Twapenga takes in a shallow breath, a hand covering her nose. As always, the wind carries the sulphur smell of that smog, spreading it across the housing estates day and night like a warped offering. It seems particularly foul today.

She knows too many mothers whose sons have joined the jerabo crew, unlicensed miners. They dig through the mountain, scavenging. Some never come home again. Suffocated in collapsed tunnels, or drowned when sudden storms fill the shafts. Black Mountain is at its deadliest then, torrents of rain water running off its slopes to turn Mugodi into a lake of greasy water as thick and dark as molasses.

The jerabos never tell kids about the dangers of their work, but are quick to boast about the copper, gold and other mineral rewards, and those in tiny quantities, too. It’s this sort of bragging that lures Chikondi to go digging through the crater for his precious rocks. 

Twapenga rubs her lower back to dispel the pain, totally distracted now. The noise and diesel fumes from the generator stationed just outside the door don’t help. Standing by the recharging table, Tasila tugs a couple of phones off their chargers, swapping them over for uncharged phones. She obviously has a system going. Twapenga can’t decipher it. All she sees are snakes of tangled wires connecting the generator to the phones and laptops. With the never-ending power cuts though, the recharging side-hustle is worth the fumes, noise and writhing wires.

Tasila glances at her. “Are you okay, Auntie?”

Queasy, mild abdominal cramps, backache. And now, a sticky trickle between her legs. More alarming than the certainty of what’s coming, is her numb resignation to it. She arms herself with a bottle of orange Fanta from the dead fridge and a pack of paracetamol.

“Chikondi should be home soon,” she says. “Let him have whatever he wants for a snack, but keep him here. Don’t allow him to follow these other children to Mugodi.”

“You’re going somewhere?” asks Tasila.

“Just to take a bath.”

In the kitchen, Twapenga stoops to pick out a rock from Chikondi’s collection. The stone’s rough texture is perfect for scouring the hardened skin on her heels. She will have smooth feet, if nothing else. Sitting on the edge of the tub, she sips warm, sweet soda as tepid water gushes out of the mixer tap to fill the bathtub.

*

Twapenga sat between her mother and her aunt on a reed mat in her living room. Her father and uncle occupied the two-seater to one side of the mat. Across the room, on the other side of the coffee table, sat Masauso and his entire village. 

“Why did he bring so many people? I thought he was only supposed to invite a few relatives,” Twapenga whispered.

“Ssshhh! Your father is talking,” said her aunt. “This is why your marriage is in tatters, always questioning.”

What? Was her aunt seriously going to pin this on her?

“I have been faithful,” said Twapenga, the heat of anger in her voice drawing disapproving glances from her mother-in-law. Twapenga didn’t give a damn about the looks, or about the elbow her aunt jabbed in her ribs. “I have forsaken all others and he has not. He has not!”

“Is this true, son?” asked her father.

Masauso clasped his hands together, head low. “It is, sir.”

“I see.” Her father drew in a loud breath. “Will you now forsake your… other woman?” 

“I can’t.”

Twapenga exploded to her feet.

“Iye!” Masauso’s side of the room exclaimed.

“Sit down, Bina Chikondi, please,” whispered her mother.

No, Twapenga would not sit down. She glared at Masauso. “What do you mean you can’t?”

Now Masauso’s mother stood up, leaning heavily on her walking stick. A scowl distorted her thin features. “This is how you speak to your husband?”

Yes, when he’d cheated on her, this was the flavour of respect he deserved. She carried on as though the old woman hadn’t spoken.

“I don’t understand, Batate Chikondi. I have been a good wife. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. Everything in my power, I have done it. I am a good mother to—”

“Stop, Twapenga. Please,” said Masauso. “You know very well what the problem is. I said from the very beginning that I wanted children. Plural.”

That kicked the rage out of her. She dropped her gaze, buffed the harshness from her tone. “I’m trying.”

“The other one has succeeded where you have failed, daughter,” said her mother-in-law. “Two children. And more to follow. We, as a family, we will not forsake her. Neither will Masauso.”

Twapenga wilted, sinking. As soon as she hit the mat, the shock took hold. Her whole body quaked. She clenched her jaw but still her teeth chattered. Her mother wrapped sturdy arms around her. 

“Don’t take it so hard, Twapenga. We have all been through such,” said her mother. “Masauso is a good man and a stable provider. Don’t lose him over this.”

The tremors would not let her speak. They shook Number Six loose inside of her. Both camps watched with disapproval as she stood up again. She staggered across the room, those stares on her, the accusatory silence. Her shaky legs just about got her to the bathroom. She collapsed against the closed door and slid to the floor as blood gushed out of her in hot and urgent spurts. 

Number Six did not leave peacefully, but ripped his way out. A violent protest against her inhospitable womb. Twapenga stemmed her screams behind gritted teeth. She would not give the jury in her living room even a whimper, evidence to justify their condemnation of her.

“Twa?” said Masauso, knocking. “Twapenga, open the door.”

Open the door and then what? How would she cope? What would she feed Chikondi if Masauso decided to never come home from his side chick and their new family? She had dropped out of school to marry the cheating swine and had no independent means of supporting Chikondi.

“Twapenga, come on. The parents are ready to leave. It’s rude of you to let them go without saying bye.”

Faint, her vision blurry, she said, “One minute. Give me a damn minute.”  

Blood, so much of it, tunnelled between the tiles, eating up the grout; creating a network of crimson veins that fanned out from her and inched towards the bathtub. It took her several minutes to regain her feet, a lifetime during which she listened to her parents and Masauso’s lose patience and leave after throwing goodbyes to her through the door. Finally, she got the door open. Clung to it as a ferocious cramp expelled a fist-sized clot from her body. 

Masauso stared in grey-faced horror.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “You should have told me you were losing another—” he gulped the rest of his words back. Swallowed them hard. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

“It’s over now,” she said. “Just help me into the bath.”

Masauso’s tenderness as he lowered her into the tub brought a lump to her throat. But she would not cry, not over him. He knelt by the tub, keeping hold of her hand. Her mouth flooded with saliva, nausea rolling through her at the clammy heat of his traitor’s touch.

“I’m sorry, Twapenga.”

Sorry. Such a pitiful word. It would not fix the carnage he had committed, reducing her life to a wreckage. She withdrew her hand from the clutch of his fingers.

“You will build Chikondi a shop, in the backyard,” she said.

Masauso nodded.

Twapenga fixed her gaze on the rising water. “And you will transfer the house deeds to my name. Mine alone.”

Masauso bowed his head. 

*

Twapenga turns the rock over, tracing its jagged edges with a fingertip. Glossy when wet, with metallic glints on its rough surface, the black stone is beautiful. It leaves silver specs floating on the surface of her bath water. She props her leg on the edge of the bath and scrubs her heel with the rock. The dry skin, tenderised by water, falls away in soft, white flakes. When her heel is smooth and pink, she lifts her other foot out of the water, and gets to work on it. By the time she is done, Number Seven has painlessly slipped out, leaving the water the colour of Chikondi’s red days. 

Twapenga’s numbness is complete. She has lost too many babies in this bathroom, yet she feels nothing. Her marriage is all but over. Why should she keep trying to give Masauso the sons and daughters he craves? Her body is battered. She is tired of putting it together for Masuaso to batter some more with his need to fill the house.

“Mummy!” Chikondi calls outside the door. “The lady is here.”

“What lady?”

“The nurse one.”

Nurse? She’s not expecting a nurse, or anyone else for that matter. She steps out of the cooling water, grabs her towel from a hook on the door.

“She’s waiting outside,” says Chikondi.

“Bring her inside to wait in the kitchen, I’m coming.”

It turns out that the nurse is none other than Inonge from yesterday’s specialist clinic. Seated at the kitchen table, she has a satchel with her that may or may not contain needles. Inonge listens, her gaze intent, as Chikondi introduces her to each rock in his collection, which he has arranged in single file across the table. It could take a while.

“Chikondi, go and play outside,” says Twapenga.

“But I’m hungry.”

“Auntie Tasila has some biscuits for you. You can eat them in the shop.”

When Chikondi has zoomed off, Twapenga lowers herself into a chair with a sigh. Inonge looks her over, then beetling her eyebrows, asks, “again?”

“Just now.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Mwale. I can come back another day if—”

“No, it’s fine. You’re already here.” Twapenga pulls the edges of her robe together and tightens the sash. “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Water? It’s hot, I’ll get you some water.”

She abruptly gets up and fills a glass from a jug of boiled water on the counter, sets the glass down in front of Inonge. Ultra-fine particles settle to the bottom of the glass, where they form a thin, rust-coloured film.

“Do you always drink tap water?” asks Inonge.

Twapenga eyes the untouched glass. “Don’t you?”

“I also notice the rocks, the ones Chikondi plays with. They’re from Mugodi.”

She wishes Inonge would get to the point of her unexpected visit. Busy as nurses are, she can’t have come all the way to Malata to talk about rocks and water. 

“Why are you here?”

“I got the results of your blood tests this morning,” says Inonge. “Sorry to bring you bad news, but you have extremely high levels of lead.”

Twapenga figures she is supposed to know the importance of what Inonge just said. She lets the silence speak her ignorance. 

“You’re not alone. Twapenga. A number of women around here suffer miscarriages because of lead contamination from the soil, water, and even dust particles in the air. It’s also stunting the growth of some of our children. Mugodi and Black Mountain are ground zero for the contamination.” Inonge opens her satchel, taking out a needle, syringe, and vial for collecting blood. “We should get Chikondi tested so that we can include him in your treatment plan.”

Twapenga starts to laugh. When Inonge shoots her a puzzled frown, she tries to explain.

“You and your needles. Elo you don’t even know how to find veins. The slaps you gave my wrist yesterday, God bless you ba Inonge!” All said amid fits of laughter.

Inonge gazes at her, solemn. “I’m not getting the joke.”

She tries, truly tries to smother the laughter; presses a hand across her mouth. But the giggles bubble up through her nose. She surrenders, snorting and wheezing. Masauso, his family, her family, they found her guilty, heaped shame upon her. And all this time, it wasn’t her fault. She is not to blame. There’s no joke here. Only the joy of vindication.

Her phone rings in the pocket of her bathrobe, vibrating against her thigh. Laughter waning to a smile, she pulls the phone out. Masauso. She knows him well, well. He’ll spin some story about the car’s crankshaft or cooling system to further delay his return home. She hits decline. He immediately phones again, as though convinced her decline was a slip of the thumb.

Twapenga firmly declines, switches her phone off, and throws it into the lopsided drawer, where it joins the deceitful receipts.