A story by THERESA SYLVESTER

James’ mother shifts about on the sofa, trying to name the thing that keeps her engaged son coming back to me. 

“I know first love is the deepest,” she says. “… It can be difficult to cut old ties.”

She glances at my mother for support but Mum leans into me, watching Mrs Zimba sink in a quicksand of civility. The glass of water I brought her remains untouched on the low oval table between us. With each turn, the pedestal fan blows the flounced collar of Mrs Zimba’s white blouse to her chin. If she is wearing any perfume, it doesn’t stand a chance against my mother’s powdery scent. 

“Mapenzi, please. Stay away from James. Let him marry.” 

“Your son,” Mum says, crossing her legs, “is the one who should stay away from my daughter.” The crease in her black pantsuit is razor sharp, and the tip of her slingback heel points at the other woman.

Mrs Zimba fidgets with her flapping collar. It strikes me that James has his mother’s dainty hands. Unfitting for a man his size. 

“But as women, we have the power to turn men away,” Mrs Zimba says.

They both look at me, as if appraising me. Like I wasn’t embarrassed enough when I opened the door to find Mrs Zimba, not the mechanic who had kept Mum’s Toyota Spacio overnight and promised to return it up and running in time to get her to work. Now, the purple satin bonnet on my head and the pink sleep shirt I borrowed from my sister’s drawer are working in my favour. 

“I don’t know what hold Mapenzi has over my son but—”

“Do you think my daughter has a bottle of charms under her bed with a picture of James in it?” 

“No, no, no.” 

One more move and Mrs Zimba will land on the floor. She’s already on the edge of her seat.

“I’m trying to understand what happened on Saturday. One minute we’re at the venue of his bride’s kitchen party, James is presenting Dora with a huge gift basket and a bouquet of roses, all smiles. Next minute, pictures of him with Mapenzi are circulating everywhere. James was still in the matching chitenge shirt as his bride, meaning he didn’t even drive home to change, he came straight here. One of his friends told me Mapenzi called as they were leaving the kitchen party for their guys drink-up and James jumped into his car like there was an emergency. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. She calls and he drops everything.” 

 I feel Mrs Zimba’s glare but I hone in on the framed photo on the white TV stand. If only Beenzu was here to give me that closed-mouth smile in person. 

 Mum nods slowly.  “So what you’re saying is it’s my daughter’s fault your son has no self-control?”

Mrs Zimba stands up and heads for the door. It was just a matter of time before the sweet and sour combination of my mother’s soft voice and penetrating gaze got to her. 

 “This is upsetting for Dora as well,” Mrs Zimba says before stepping out onto the verandah.

Determined to have the last word, Mum follows her to the door. “Uyo Dora, or whatever her name is, is James’s concern, not my daughter’s.” She stands there as though making sure Mrs Zimba leaves our yard. 

When Mum turns to face me, her shoulders hunch. She notices me staring at Beenzu’s picture. I often catch her gazing at it too, when we watch TV. 

“What’s with you and this James guy kansi?” 

I don’t know how Mrs Zimba got my address but had the mechanic not been running an hour and a half late, she’d have caught me home alone. The unexpected presence of my mother emerging from the kitchen had clearly disarmed the woman.

At the rumbling sound of the mechanic pulling up to the house, Mum grabs her handbag from the armrest.

“Come and close the gate,” she says, squaring her shoulders as she leaves. 

I stand up and do as I’m told. 

*

The sun rays pushing in through the bedroom window are burning the back of my bare thighs. I’m laying on my tummy with my phone in my hand. The two photo collages of James and Dora at their kitchen party, and of James with me are still doing the rounds on Facebook. It has garnered over 500 comments on Nkani Yapya, a popular gossip page.

 I examine the half I’m in for the umpteenth time.

I was barefaced, barefoot, in the same nightshirt I’m wearing right now, facing James who leaned against the bonnet of his white Corolla with his arms crossed. What the people in the comment section don’t know is that the glum expression on my face had nothing to do with Dora. 

Looks like she’s begging him to choose her. LOL 

Find your own man! Shameless bitch!

You’re a special kind of idiot mama. The man is one step away from obtaining a marriage certificate. Elo his fiancee is prettier. 

Three of my friends who didn’t even know I had a boyfriend are defending my character.

Keep barking keyboard warriors, Penzi doesn’t owe any of you an explanation. 

Doesn’t look like she’s holding him at gunpoint to me.

Unlike you bakolwe, Penzi is beautiful, inside and out. 

I keep scrolling. One guy suggests that, given my Tonga name, I’m probably open to polygamy. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not close to my father’s side of the family. He died in a head-on collision when I was five and Beenzu was just three months old. His relatives weren’t impressed with my mother, who had been cohabiting with my father since their university days. After the burial, Mum wouldn’t let them have the furniture or anything else they felt entitled to, and when they persisted, Mum’s sister, Aunt Chaiwe, a prominent lawyer, threatened them with legal action. And well, we haven’t seen them since.

Now that Beenzu isn’t here to pester me with questions about what our father was like, the fear of him fading away seizes me. Since Mum couldn’t speak of him without bringing up his drinking, I had made it my mission to feed Beenzu’s curiosity with embellished stories from my childhood. I’d flip through the photo album, bringing my father to life. Even at thirteen years old, Beenzu would desert her bed at night and squeeze into mine, her always icy cold feet stealing the warmth from my legs. She loved the story about Dad taking me with him in the red Toyota Starlet to buy a loaf of bread, only for us to spend the whole afternoon at a run-down roadside bar. He bought me char-grilled sausages from the grubby braai stand outside and all the grape Fanta I wanted. He drank Mosi, laughed with the chubby, dimpled bar lady, and sang along to Mashombe Blue Jeans until the few other patrons got sick of his music. It was the best day of my life. When we got home, Mum met us at the door. 

“Where have you been? Where’s my bread?” She shouted.

Her red T-shirt had big wet splotches of breastmilk on it. The baby—sweet, and ever peaceful—slept in the mesh bassinet. 

Dad went out again for bread. He never came back.

I start to cry, quietly at first. Then my chest heaves and my voice erupts from my mouth. Mum is still at work, there’s no one to tell me ‘enough now. You’ll cry yourself sick.’ I sob until my head pounds. 

I know I dozed off when I feel the weight sink into the mattress. It sits at the foot of my bed and strokes my feet, sending chills from my toes up to my throat. I scream, but her name is heavy on my tongue.

Beenzu! Beenzu!

*

“What happened?” James gathers me into his arms as soon as he disembarks from his car. I cling to him, and he holds me for a few seconds, then let’s go to shut the gate when he notices I didn’t close it properly. He’s worried that one of the passersby roaming the street could be the anonymous photographer who captured us on Saturday, and this annoys me. Shouldn’t my distress be paramount? When he reaches for me again, I step away. 

“What’s wrong?”His forehead furrows in confusion. Or is it the October sun making him squint?

“Your mother was here.” I hiccup the words like a child.

“What? When? I could have come sooner, but I had to sort—”

“Mum was around…and then Beenzu...Beenzu.”

 James grips my arms. “Mapenzi, breathe.” 

He smells new. Everything on him is unfamiliar. The minty fragrance he’s wearing, the black denim shorts, the leather slippers on his feet. Stitched on the left chest of his navy polo shirt are the initials CQB.

“Are you alone?” he asks.

When I nod, he takes my hand. “Let’s go inside. Kwapya.” 

He’s right, it’s too hot and the never-ending honking from Chilimbulu Road is making my headache worse.

In the sitting room, he sits by me, my hand still clasped in his. He listens as I recount the exchange between our mothers. I omit the part where Mum implied Mrs Zimba had raised an unprincipled man. Though James is no stranger to my mother’s reproach, he won’t appreciate that his beloved mother had been subjected to it.

“The people in that nonsense family WhatsApp group probably put her up to it,” he says, absolving her of fault.

My mother and I exited our family WhatsApp group for similar reasons.

“Even Aunties and Uncles with delinquents for children have something to say about my situation,” Mum said when Auntie Chaiwe called to mitigate the tension.

Mum’s parting words, your advice will carry weight when one of your children dies too, until then, leave me to manage my own affairs, had rubbed everyone the wrong way. They’d asked the only person my mother listens to to have a word with her. But Mum wasn’t having it. 

“Bring this up one more time and I’ll block you too!” 

 James springs to his feet. “Penzi, you need a bath.” He vanishes down the corridor. Water gushes out the tap and into the tub. I sniff my pits. The last time I dressed up and went beyond the gate, my sister died. I can’t unsee the look on Beenzu’s face as I tiptoed out of our yard, clutching my espadrilles to my chest. Her hushed pleading still rings in my ear. “Take me with you.”

James pulls me up gently. “Come.” 

He leads me to the bathroom, helps me out of the night shirt, my underwear. I ease into the water. It has the right amount of burn to it. James squirts some body wash onto a pink loofah before handing it over to me. I want to tell him it’s not mine. It’s her’s.

“Beenzu,” my voice is croaky.

“Shh.” James sits on the rim, facing me. “I’ll never leave you again. No matter what.”

Tears mist my eyes. He is a blur. 

*

When I was eighteen, my idea of romance was lunch dates, heart-shaped balloons for my birthday and Valentine’s Day, passionate kisses that would leave my knees trembling. Fantasies fuelled by scenes from movies I had watched, and from retellings my classmates who had boyfriends bragged about. At Kudu Girls Academy, the competition went beyond academics. Polished cars lined up in the car park at drop-off and pick-up. Behind the steering wheel were paid drivers or parents whose faces I recognised from TV or Newspapers.

I looked no different from those girls, with my white shirt tucked into a blue and black plaid skirt, my signature puff, laid and taut. But when Mum pulled into her RESERVED parking spot, she said, “You’re lucky to be here. Stay focused.” Those words were aimed at me, not at Beenzu sitting in the back.

 Although school finished at 14 hours, Mum and the staff stayed on till 17 hours. While the teachers worked on lesson plans, and marked test papers, she fulfilled her duty as Headmistress. She did random patrols of the school grounds, making sure students who remained on the premises were studying, not loitering or engaging in idle gossip. I was in grade twelve, a crucial examination year, yet Mum insisted I was better off studying at home. So when the bell rang, Beenzu and I met at her office to collect our bus fare. Mum felt it was essential that we were familiarised with public transport. That’s how I met James. 

As usual, Beenzu had her nose stuck in a book even though she had the window seat and could be watching the world as we snailed along in traffic. The other passengers were in their own banter, talking over the No school fees for government schools discourse on the radio. As we approached the Kafue roundabout, an elderly woman balancing fresh fruit on a big lubango on her head strolled by. The slogan on her T-shirt drew attention to her once-plump breasts. It read You Tonya, You Buy.

 I giggled. 

“What’s funny?” Beenzu asked.

“Never mind,” I said.

The passenger next to me repeated the slogan. I hadn’t paid him any attention til then. A sturdy man with a baby face. We laughed at what we’d witnessed and slipped into a conversation. 

He asked about my favourite subjects. English and History.

Dream Job? Something that didn’t involve numbers.

“I’m James, by the way,” he said.

I glanced over at Beenzu, who stared straight ahead, her thumb serving as a bookmark. My sister could sit through gatherings with a distant look on her face but could tell you exactly what the people around her said, and how they said it. I knew she wasn’t missing a word of this.

“Beenzu, what’s your sister’s name?” James asked.

She shot him a sharp look. “How did you know my name?”

James’s face split into a big warm smile. “I’m a mind reader.” 

“If that were true, you’d have worked out both our names.”

James tapped the tips of his fingers against his temples and closed his eyes. “The signal’s a little weak.”

My sister and I laughed. It took a few minutes for her to realise he’d seen her name on the cover of her book, written in her neat handwriting, which James complimented. None of the letters touched. They all stood straight and tall. 

When the conductor started collecting the fare, I worried that someone in the back might get off and James would have to give up his aisle seat and sit away from us. As though reading my mind, he pulled out his wallet and asked where we were dropping off. Sucked in by his charm, Beenzu told him our destination and my name. He paid for three. Turned out he’d be alighting with us. Home wasn’t far from the bus stop so we ended up talking at our gate. When James mentioned that he lived in Libala, I asked him why he got off the bus. 

“So we can make arrangements for our date tomorrow,” he said.

“Date?” 

“This time tomorrow, you’ll be meeting me at that corner takeaway,” he said.

I stammered that I had to study and cook supper before my mother got home.

“Give me your number. We’ll make a plan.”

“I have a riddle for you,” James turned to Beenzu, who stood a few feet away, pretending not to listen. “Promise me you won’t cheat and Google the answer.”

She nodded impatiently. 

“What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it?”

James became our best-kept secret. 

By the time Mum found out about him, he’d spent many afternoons in her house, teaching us how to play cards, telling us funny stories about his days in boarding school. When I told Beenzu that James’ charismatic personality reminded me of Dad, she became enamoured with him. He kept her occupied with riddles and brain teasers and got her hooked on chocolate-coated ice lollies. One day he only brought two with him, not the usual ten-pack. After he’d sent my sister to the shops for more, he tipped my chin up so we were looking into each other’s eyes.

“When you’re twenty, I’ll be twenty-seven. It’s not that big a gap.”

James was already looking to the future. I liked that very much.

The ambush happened two weeks later. Beenzu had not long gone to the shops for her lollies. James and I were in the bedroom.

There was clanking at the door. The key fell from the keyhole to the tiled floor. Then it sounded like another one was inserted in its place. While we surged for our clothes, Mum burst into the room and locked us all in. 

She stood arms akimbo, scowling at James, who pressed against the burglar bars on the window behind him. At least he had managed to pull on his boxers. I was holding my dress over my body. 

 “So this is why homework isn’t done and supper isn’t ready on time nowadays.” 

Mum grabbed James’ cargo shorts from the chair in front of the small dressing table.

“Madam, please,” he squeaked. 

She took his wallet out of his pocket, removed his National Registration Card and scanned the back for his year of birth.

“You have no shame? Undressing for a schoolgirl?” 

Mum threatened to involve her lawyer sister and the police. Tendons stood out of James’ neck as he pleaded for mercy. After giving him an earful, she hurled the shorts at him and unlocked the door. James bolted with his clothes in his hands, and crashed into Beenzu in the corridor.

“Don’t send him to jail,” I cried.

A backhand slap landed on my face.

“Shut up!” Mum said under her breath. “You want to embarrass me? How will parents trust me with their girls if news that I can’t control my own daughter gets out? This stays in this house. It ends right here.”

That was the day I learnt to scream in silence. 

*

“You bathed,” Mum says, kicking her shoes off at the door. “Good…Good.”

She dumps her bag and keys on the table and pinches a slice of salted tomato from my plate. James had cut some up for me after failing to coax me with a variety of choices. Chicken and Chips and coleslaw from Trudy’s restaurant. Nshima with village chicken from some eatery in Rhodes Park. 

“Whatever you want, I’ll go and buy it,” he said.

I’d opted for his company instead. He is a busy man nowadays. Managing logistics of the courier motorbikes that zip through Lusaka traffic delivering all sorts. Running me a bath and fixing me a plate of salted tomato with a light sprinkle of chilly powder, just how my father liked it, was like a balm to my aching soul. James has never bought me flowers or taken me out on a date, but he knows me.

At 16:45, he kissed me on the forehead.“Let me go before your mother catches me here.” 

“I’ll make us a proper meal after my evening walk,” Mum says, picking at my hair. “You should join me. You don’t want to end up with muscle atrophy.”

Atrophy. The definition would be flying out of Beenzu’s mouth right now. She loved big words. A Google search leaves me horrified. Turns out muscle isn’t the only thing that can waste away. The mind, too. If I lose that, I lose my memories. My father. My sister.

When I look up from my screen, Mum has changed into a loose-fitting chitenge dress. “Are you coming?”

I turn away and face the TV. 

She closes the door. Her footsteps fade. The gate clicks. I watch the wall clock.

In about twenty minutes, she’ll come in with a plastic bag filled with dried twigs, empty sweet wrappers, and God knows what else. 

“I cleaned that place yesterday but look at this rubbish. People throw litter and walk over where Beenzu died.” 

Mum will sit on the carpet and weep as if all the women who had occupied every space in this house to help us mourn my sister are still here. As if the men who had pitched up the tent on the grass are in there, solemnly sipping on Chibuku. They are all gone now. Everyone packed up and carried on with their lives, with their families. It’s just us two now. 

I brace myself for the disappointed look she gave my father when we’d returned home without the bread. 

*

Mum sleeps like the dead. She doesn’t know I’m in her darkened room, standing over her. For a woman who moves through the world with staidness, her snoring is chaotic. She bleats and splatters and growls. This is why I got away with feeding Beenzu my thumb when she was a baby. We lived in Chelstone then, in a small two-bedroom house. If she cried, I snuck in and tended to her so my recently widowed mother could rest. To alleviate her young sister’s suffering, my Auntie Chaiwe hired a maid who came in to cook, clean and wash six days a week. Still, Mum appeared beat down and drained. 

This house has my mother’s name on the title deed, locked away in the nightstand attached to the headboard. Mum went from being a teacher to headmistress early on in her career because she is a hard worker. We now have an extra bedroom and a water tank outside. 

She is in deep sleep but I tell her not to worry about my muscles atrophying. When she is at work, I wander from room to room and have one-sided conversations with Beenzu like we did when she couldn’t talk and I took her around the house, naming random objects.

Wall.

Speaker.

Light.

Beenzu was almost three, and her delayed speech worried Mum. All the doctors said the same thing. “She’s fine. She’ll speak when she’s ready.” 

Even a strange grey-haired woman who’d come to our house to probe inside Beenzu’s mouth while Mum held my wriggling, screeching sister said the same thing. “Ali chabe bwino.”

And when she was ready, Beenzu’s first proper word was my name. She startled awake from an afternoon nap on the carpet, muttering Penzi, Penzi, while looking about her in a panic. Mum and I gaped at each other in astonishment.

I’ve been using the same trick to summon Beenzu to life.

Remember the time I chipped the paint off this wall and you suggested pasting it with Colgate so Mum wouldn’t notice? We got away with it for four days.

Whose turn is it to do the dusting? The subwoofer is starting to look furry.

Practice walking around with your eyes closed during the day so the house doesn’t feel scary when the lights are off. 

I tell Mum I’m grateful she hasn’t listened to anyone who suggested she put the house on rent or, worse still, sell it. The same people who said, “Moving will help you and Mapenzi get back to normal.”

But we continue living here even though Beenzu was killed at the end of our street, where the road curves into a Y. 

“What if the killer decides to confess?” Mum said after the Whatsapp group fiasco. It was two months after we’d buried my sister.

“Don’t tell me you think the police are still investigating the matter?” Her naivety surprised me. “None of those people looked like crime solvers to me. Does this country even have a forensics department?”  

Mum fell silent for a while. “I’ve heard of stories of killers going to confess to the victim’s mother. Maybe they’ll come knocking on my door when the burden starts to drive them mad.”

*

I woke up thinking of Dora this morning. Apart from the recent purported love triangle involving James, her social media presence is strictly business. Last year, her brand, Courier Queen Bikes, earned her a feature on the list of 30 young Zambians to watch out for. No one is bashing her on Nkani Yapya. At twenty-five, she is an inspiration to many women with Startups. 

The house suddenly goes quiet. I slide my phone under my pillow and pretend to be asleep. Mum always listens to the radio while getting ready for work and turns it off right before leaving. The jangle of her keys gets closer; she’s coming to say goodbye. I don’t stir when she opens the door. Her overpowering scent rushes in though I’m certain she popped her head in here for a few seconds. I only push the duvet off when I can no longer hear her car. 

I remember the commotion after my father’s funeral. We were shut in the bedroom while Auntie Chaiwe and other members of my mother’s family were outside arguing with my father’s relatives.

Mum mumbled as she paced about. “You get a loan, buy a car, let your man drive it so he can look good. You try so hard to elevate him, and he dies in an accident because he’s stupid drunk. Now his family comes for you saying they want his share. Which share?” 

None of it made sense back then, I was just a little girl. At nineteen, I’m old enough to correlate my mother’s story with Dora’s. The car James drives belongs to her, and she is, without a doubt, the influence behind his makeover. In her muted two-piece suit sets, she looks like a young version of my mother. A firstborn daughter Mum would be proud of. I haven’t attended a single lecture since Beenzu died. The tuition fee Mum paid is going to waste. 

“No one goes to KGA to end up studying Social Work,” She’d said. But she didn’t fight me on it. Getting into university, though not on a bursary, was enough.

I don’t know how Mum puts herself together every morning, faces the world, then comes home and crumbles all over again.

I get out of bed. I toss Beenzu’s galaxy print duvet this way, fluff it that way. I just can’t make her bed the way she used to. I know it’s because she never put much thought into it, whereas I’m trying so hard to emulate her. 

“Nebula!” I shout excitedly. That’s the word she’d used when I called her choice of bedding childish.

She’d be proud I remembered. 

I say it over and over again until it echoes through the house and comes back to me in her voice. 

This is the sign I’ve been waiting for.

*

Mum jolts in alarm when she realises someone’s in bed with her. She feels around for the bedside lamp.

“It’s me,” I say quickly through chattering teeth. “Don’t turn on the light.”

 She settles beside me, but her body is still tense. “What time is it? How long have you been here?”

Thick blackout curtains make this the darkest room in the house. For Beenzu’s sake, we’ve always had sheer curtains that filter light into our bedroom at all times. She never got over her fear of the dark.

Mum’s palm is all over my face, searching for my forehead. “You’re shivering and sweating. You have a fever.” She’s about to get out of bed, but I grab on to her.

“Don’t go.”

“I’m going to get the thermometer—”

“No, stay with me for a bit.” I hug her tighter. 

“Okay, just for a minute. We need to work on breaking this fever.”

“I couldn’t teach her how to move in the dark,” I whisper.

“Huh?” Mum asks.

“When Beenzu learned a new word, she’d memorise its synonyms. She never shied away from complicated formulas and equations, but I failed to teach her how to move in the dark.”

 Mum’s body softens. “Tell me, what happened that night?” Her tone is butter.

My heart thuds against my ribcage. It should be easier to confess in the dark, when you can’t see the suspicion that clouds your mother’s eyes each time she looks at you. I had spent all day going through the details so that when I present them to Mum, they aren’t as tangled as they are in my head. I even wrote them down on Beenzu’s index cards, but that made things worse. The sequencing was all wrong. 

There’s only one way to fix it. I roll over, facing away from Mum. I tell her a story.

There was a girl who lived with her mother and Baby sis. Father was dead, and Mother was sad. Years passed. Then one day, Mother looked at Baby sis and said, “You should be talking by now. Other children your age can string sentences together. All you do is point and make noises.”

She dressed the toddler in a pretty pink dress, and took her to the doctor with her older daughter in tow. She dragged them from one doctor to the next, in the hopes that one would tell her what was wrong with Baby sis. 

“You’re part of the problem!” Mother lashed out at Girl. “You need to stop speaking for her. It’s slowing down her development.”

Girl understood exactly what every gesture and grunt meant while Mother, who had just given Baby sis a cup of water when she actually needed the toilet, didn’t. 

“From now on, we will ignore her noises and pointing.”

“It worked, didn’t it? Beenzu started speaking the very next day,” Mum jumps right into defence mode. 

Turns out Baby sis had an impressive vocabulary. She went about the room, touching things. 

Wall. 

Speaker.

Light. 

Mother clapped and scooped her up in her arms. 

Girl was neither smart nor dull. All the teachers said the same thing. “She’s doing her best.”

When Baby sis was seven, she told Girl about a conversation that had happened when Mother’s sister came to visit.

“Maybe Girl rubbing shoulders with the daughters of ‘ma some of us’ will pay off in future. Hopefully, they will remember her and toss some opportunities her way.”

“Why are you saying it like that? Your Auntie Chaiwe didn’t mean—” 

“I’m saying it how Beenzu told it.”

Girl and Baby sis always looked out for each other. 

When Mother found out Girl had been entertaining a certain man, she was equally disappointed in Baby sis for not alerting her. 

“You have a bright future ahead of you. Don’t let your sister take you down the ditch with her,” Mother warned.

Baby sis helped Girl locate the spare key to the nightstand and stole back Certain Man’s NRC. Baby sis also got on the phone and reassured him Mother hadn’t reported him to the police. It took some pleading but Certain Man gave Girl his address. Baby sis stayed home to cover for her in case Mother decided to catch them off guard again. Certain Man took his NRC but wouldn’t invite Girl inside his yard and it ate her up all night.

Convinced he was hiding something, she went back the next day. The thatched gate was open, so she wandered into the cramped yard. A small house stood alone to one side, and four semi-detached rooms crouched on one end. One of those doors was open. Girl recognised Certain Man’s laughter coming from it. There he was, sitting on a low cowhide stool.  

He shot up and blocked the entrance. “Is everything okay?” 

“Yes,” Girl replied. 

“Who is it?” A female voice asked from behind him. 

“Let me walk you to the bus stop,” Certain Man said, pointing Girl to the gate.

“Who’s in there with you?” She asked. 

A girl pushed her way through. She, too, was in her school uniform. She looked Girl up and down. Girl fixed her face like her mother’s and stared back. The other girl turned to Certain Man, expecting him to do something. He kept his eyes on Girl. Other girl stormed off. 

“Where’s this going?” Mum butts in again, shifting restlessly.

“It will all make sense in the end,” I say. Beenzu loved my stories. She savoured every word, every pause. 

 Again, Certain Man offered to walk Girl to the bus stop.

“Let me see your home.”

 He stepped aside. 

It was no bigger than the kitchen of the house she grew up in. There was a single bed, a radio perched on a chair and clothes hanging from a metal rod screwed in the wall. It smelt manly and musty. 

“Where’s the stove and plates?” She wondered out loud.

He told her everything. He didn’t live in shared accommodation with friends. His Mother lived in the main house with six of his siblings. This was his sleeping space. The other rooms had tenants in them. 

Girl noticed his mother standing by an open window. The woman glanced at them and carried on shooing away a fly with a tea towel. Certain Man told Girl that because she had handled the situation with such grace, he’d always be forthright with her. 

Sometimes she found him alone or with a girl. No two were the same. Some came in their uniforms. Some in dresses, or in a simple top and a chitenge. Tall girls. Short girls. Pimply-faced girls. The one thing they all had in common was that they were teenagers. It didn’t matter. He always chose her over them.

Mum sits up. The lamp goes click, and light floods the room. “This isn’t love. It’s manipulation.”

“When James got a job at Courier Queen Bikes, I was happy. I thought he’d have no time for anyone else. One day, Mrs Zimba was waiting for me. She’d seen me walk in and out of her yard many times. She told me they had an important visitor and closed that rickety gate in my face. There was a CQB branded vehicle parked outside. James didn’t pick up my calls or reply to my texts. It hurt so bad. Not sure how I managed to write my exams.”

“What does this have to do with Beenzu?”

“He called me that night. After seven months.”

Mum lets out an exasperated sigh.

“He laid his cards on the table. He can’t turn his back on Dora when she’s the one paying for his mother’s insulin––and then he told me he was outside.” My voice hitches. 

There’s stirring behind me. When I peer over my shoulder, Mum is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her head in her hands. “What time was this?” 

“1 am. I could hear you snoring when I crept past your bedroom window.”

“Where was your sister?”

“She followed me to the gate, I told her to go back inside, to text me if Mum wakes up. But she said she missed him too.”

“Did she come back inside?” 

“I don’t know. It was so dark. I d-didn’t look behind.”

I had sprinted towards the glowing park lights of James’s car instead. While I sat in a dimmed bar drinking grape Fanta, desperately trying to recapture a feeling from my childhood, my baby sister was dying.

Mum leaps at me. “This can’t be it! My baby’s story can’t end like this. Strangled by the roadside while I slept? It can’t.” She shakes me. Digs her nails into my arms. 

When I snuck back in at 3 am, I shouldn’t have assumed Beenzu had forgotten to lock the door, and she wasn’t in her bed because she’d gone to sleep in our mother’s.

I should have known from the mournful look of the neighbourhood women who came knocking on our door three hours later that they bore bad news. 

When my wailing mother asked, “But how is it that you didn’t hear your sister leave the house? How? How?” I should have come clean then.

What happens after killers confess to the victim’s mother? When does the madness stop? 

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THERESA SYLVESTER is a Zambian writer based in Western Australia. She is a Tin House scholar. She is also an alumna of Faber Writing Academy, as well as Stuyvesant Writing workshop where she studied under Nicole Dennis-Benn. Her stories have been published by Shenandoah, Black Warrior Review, Midnight & Indigo and in Rockingham Writer’s Center Anthology. In 2022, her short story Fracas Street won the Quarterly West Prose Contest, and her other story, Blank Speech Bubbles won the Black Fox Writing Contest. She has been longlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Kalemba Short Story Prize, and been a finalist for a Writing Fellowship at A Public Space.

*Image by Alex Frood on iStock