“This one’s spirit is strong,” she says.
“Khosi.” Gogo’s voice is low but strong. “We must go now.”
But I’m like a doll in this old woman’s hands.
“Khosi,” Gogo says, now more urgent.
The old woman lets go suddenly, almost shoving me backwards. “Yebo, hamba.” Her mouth breaks open into a wide grin. “Yes, go now with your weak old gogo. But I will come for you just now, Nomkhosi Zulu. Soon, I will come for you.” Her laughter twists and coils, snake-like and cold. “And nothing on this earth can stop me.”
I stumble against Gogo, who puts her arm around me. She is shaking, even more badly than I am. We hurry away, not daring to look back.
It isn’t until we’re around the curve and out of the old woman’s sight that we stop to look at my arm, bleeding from where her fingernails dug in.
“Oh, no,” I moan. If a witch is able to get some of your body dirt from your clothing or your skin, she has the power to harm you.
I breathe deep before asking the burning question. “Do you think that old woman will really come for me? Is she really a witch, like you say, Gogo?”
“Angaz’, Khosi,” Gogo says. She looks as worried as I feel. “We will ask the sangoma to make some muthi to protect you.”
The right muthi can protect you from all sorts of evil. But in the wrong hands, that same muthi can be used against you. You have to be vigilant–and hope and pray that both God and the spirits of your ancestors are strong with you.
“What will Mama say?”
“Eh-he, I don’t know.” Gogo’s hands still tremble as she holds onto me, her energy dwindling as if the old woman has already consumed her strength. That’s what witches do, after all. They suck the life out of people, to make themselves rich or to make themselves live longer. “She is not believing in the old ways. It will be difficult even now to convince her that we must go to the sangoma about this problem.”
“Mama is never here,” I point out.
Gogo nods and we silently agree to keep Mama in the dark about this. We walk, quiet and tired. The whole world looks washed out, like a grainy black and white photo—the kind of photo published in history textbooks that shows early missionaries to Natal, as this part of South Africa was known then, with the first Zulu converts, formal and stiff in their European clothes.
I sneak a sideways glance at Gogo. “I wish that woman didn’t know my name.”
“Yebo, impela,” Gogo agrees.
Your name is all a witch needs to have power over you.
“Gogo, how can that woman have so much power when she is so evil?”
Gogo’s eyes grow dark, and I can see within them the memory of growing up in the shadow of the white man, when their power over Africans was absolute. “At the end of time, God will defeat all evil,” she says. “But in the meantime, we must suffer. Perhaps this suffering is cleansing us from our sins.”
“What did she mean when she said, ‘This one’s spirit is strong’?”
“Yo, Khosi! I have always known that,” Gogo says. “You were born the same day your grandfather Babamkhulu died. I believe he gave you part of his spirit as he departed. Even then, I told your mother, ‘Isithunzi sake is strong, you watch. Khosi won’t be like us. Her spirit won’t stay the same all her life—it’ll grow with time.’ And up to this day, you look just like Babamkhulu. This to me says I am not wrong.”
In the picture we have above the mantelpiece, Babamkhulu looks like an old black bird, shrewd with very dark skin, small eyes, and a beaky nose. Do I really look like him? I’ve always wanted to look like Mama, beautiful with smooth brown skin and wide, full lips, a big bosom and hips that sway like a tree when she dances.
“Maybe Babamkhulu’s spirit will keep you safe now,” Gogo says. She clasps my arm and rubs the spot where the witch dug in with her claws.
“Maybe,” I say. I don’t feel like my isithunzi is strong. I don’t feel like there is anything of Babamkhulu about me. I’m just a teenage girl, vulnerable like anybody to the evil spirits that are invisible but hovering in the air all around us.
CHAPTER THREE
MAD CRUSH
After Gogo and Mama disappear into the Zionist church, I almost turn around and run home. But I could never outrun a witch. All she needs to do is hop on her baboon and come racing after me. So I keep my pace slow and deliberate, like I’m not afraid of anything.
Zi is like a tiny bolt of lightning, bristling energy as she skips ahead of me down the dirt road, whirling back and forth from house to house, going right up to each fence. Dogs bound out, hurtling toward her, barking furiously.
“Khosi! Khosi! They’re coming to get me!” she screeches as they slam against the fence, the thin wire trembling under their weight. Zi throws her arms around me, thrilled with terror, her black eyes happyscared as she looks up at me.
The people smile indulgently at us as we pass.
“What will you do if one of these dogs escapes?” I ask, scolding her a little. Because Mama is gone throughout the week, and because Gogo is so old, I can’t help but be Zi’s second mother. Besides, it takes my mind off everything else. “What if it comes running out and tries to bite you?”
“Then I’ll make friends with it,” she says.
I laugh. That is exactly what Zi would do too. She makes friends with everybody and everything. When Zi settles down and stays beside me, clinging to my hand, I ask her something that’s bothering me. “Zi, do you think I look like Babamkhulu?”
“How do I know? I’ve never met Babamkhulu,” she says.
“You’ve seen his picture on the mantel.”
She screws up her little face as if she’s trying to remember. “You look like Khosi,” she decides. “Babamkhulu looks like you!”
Maybe I should have known better than to ask a little girl to reassure me that I’m beautiful.
We reach the tuck shop, a small shack built in front of the owner’s house and stocked with small items—biscuits, bread, milk, oranges, cool drinks. When I see the man sitting on a red bucket in front of the shop, tipped back and leaning against its tin wall, looking as though he’s been enjoying too much beer at Mama Thambo’s shebeen, I look around to see if other people are nearby. But the street is empty.
It’s true, drunk men are everywhere in Imbali. You can’t avoid them but you must steer away from them as best you can. When men are drunk, evil enters them and who knows what they will do?
His eyes are just tiny slits in his swollen face and he slurs his words as he looks at me. He looks like he’s in his late forties. “Girl,” he says, “you are toooo much beautiful.”
My heart beats just a little bit faster.
“Thank you, Baba,” I murmur, calling him “father” to emphasize his age, to remind him how young I am. Anyway, what does he care that I’m only fourteen? Lots of fourteen-year-old girls in Imbali go out with men his age. Even my friend Thandi dates older men.
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.