I grip Zi’s hand even tighter. I can’t forget Auntie’s face, her lips curling, her nose twitching in sudden sneezes as she demanded the right to go through Gogo’s things and take what she wanted. “I am her daughter, I should have her clothes,” she claimed. “It is tradition.”
As a sangoma, everybody believes that I revere and respect tradition more than anything else. But I must tell you, sometimes tradition cloaks thievery. Not that I cared about Gogo’s clothes, but I would have liked to keep the simple beaded jewelry and headdress, just to remember her.
Instead, I have the house to remember her by, which presents a different problem.
For now, though, all I must think about is making it through the funeral.
Zi and I stop first at the washing station to clean our hands before we enter the house after having visited the gravesite. Inside, family members are already feasting. I scan the queue for Little Man and his parents. To me, and to Gogo, Little Man is family but I understand that nobody else recognizes that—yet—so he must stay outside with the others. Maybe someday the rest of my family will understand that even if we are only 17, we have been together for three years, ever since Mama’s death. He is much more than a boyfriend.
Inside, there are no places for us to sit except the floor, so we take a corner and wait for one of the ladies to bring us plates of food. I suppose we better get used to sitting on the floor. Auntie also claimed the sofa in the living room and the table in the kitchen. I’m hoping my uncle will step in and tell her no. No, no, you cannot leave Khosi and Zi with nothing. This is their home too… that is what I hope he will say.
Auntie flounces over to the floral sofa she wants. She sits with a big plate of food balanced on her lap, glancing at me from time to time as she chews the meat off a bone.
“Mm mm, I’m just saying, why did my mother die so suddenly after she made a will and left the house to Khosi?” She is talking to Gogo’s niece from the Free State, who drove all night to get here for the funeral.
“Sho, is it?” The niece bites into a hunk of meat.
I put my plate of food down on the floor, stomach churning. What’s going to happen after all the food is eaten and the neighbors go home? What will Auntie say then? Or do?
“I’m sure Elizabeth’s daughter would never harm a soul,” the niece says. “I know Khosi is a sangoma but she doesn’t practice this thing of witchcraft, does she?”
“I never thought so, not while Mama was alive.” Juice drips down Auntie’s wrists as she mixes gravy with phuthu and scoops it into her mouth. “But you never know with sangomas, not these days. It is very suspicious that my mother died so soon after she wrote that will.”
“What what what, you really believe she is umthakathi?”
I can’t listen to this. “Come, Zi,” I say, and we stand and walk out of the house. As we pass, my aunt cackles under her breath, knowing she’s scored a point against me.
I slink outside, an unwanted dog in my own house. The crowd of people waiting to eat is as long as ever and the yard is already festering with trash and flies. This is going to be some clean up job… I only hope my family members, the vultures who have descended for food and a chance to take all of Gogo’s things, will stay long enough to help me clean up.
I wait in the yard, saying goodbye to neighbors and friends as they leave. “Hamba kahle,” I tell yet another neighbor, who looks satisfied by his big meal.
“Sala kahle,” he responds.
The priest who spoke at the funeral takes my hands gently in his. Droplets of sweat glisten in his short, wiry hair. He must be sweltering in those dark priest’s robes.
“Baba,” I greet him.
The fact that I am a sangoma lays between us, unspoken. I have never felt that I couldn’t be both Catholic and a sangoma, I have never felt there was a contest between God and the amadlozi, but I am not sure that he—or other priests—feel the same way. And it is true that God is silent and the amadlozi speak to me all the time. Why would God choose to be quiet when I know he could speak? So perhaps there is some contest after all. I am not sure what to do with this split in my heart.
“Khosi,” he says. He lifts a hand and lays it on Zi’s head. “I trust that we will see you and Zi at mass on Sunday, like always. That you will be as faithful as your grandmother was all her life.”
“Yes, Baba.” I skirt his eyes to look at the sky.
Zi gives him a hug. He makes a rumbling noise in his throat, a little sound of love and affection, and perhaps some sorrow too.
“I’ll be praying for you,” he says.
“Hamba kahle,” I say, in return. I’m glad for his prayers. We need them more than ever.
After everyone is gone, Auntie sends her husband to borrow a friend’s bakkie so they can take Gogo’s sofa with them now now.
“It’s OK, Auntie Phumzi,” I say. “It is late. Come back tomorrow. The sofa will still be here. It is not going to disappear overnight.”
She laughs. “Oh, no, by then you will bewitch it. I must take it now, before you do something evil like you did to my mama.”
“I would never hurt Gogo,” I say. I look from Auntie to my cousin Beauty and then to my uncle Lungile. “Beauty?” My cousin and I have always been different, in many ways, but she and I are close in age and played together growing up. I would like to think she is an ally. “Uncle?”
The awkward moment stretches out like a pot of phuthu and amasi that must feed too many mouths.
“Let us just focus on the future,” Uncle says finally. He scratches his head, as though trying to distract us from what he is saying. “Let us leave this thing behind us.”
“What thing?” I ask. “This thing of Auntie accusing me of something I would never do? Do you really think I would hurt Gogo? Gogo, the only mother I had after my own mama died?”
“Nooooo,” Uncle says. “But you must listen to your auntie.”
It is nonsense, what he is saying. If I did not kill Gogo through witchcraft, but that is what she is saying, why must I listen to her? I can see I have lost my family through this.
“Take what you want.” I am angry now. It burbles up in my chest, the same anger I once felt towards Mama when I realized she stole money before she died. “I do not care about things. I have Gogo’s spirit with me, which is more than you will ever have. And I have the house, you cannot take that.”
Somehow those words take Auntie from one thing to another, and in seconds, she is screaming. “We’ll get the house back, you little witch,” she yells. “You don’t deserve it! You killed her!”
“Phumzile!” Uncle Lungile shouts. “Quiet! You can’t say these things, Mama is just now buried… Please, let this thing rest.”
“Auntie,” I say, pleading with her. I try to catch her eye but she refuses to look at me. “We are family. We are blood. Please, let us just let this thing go away.”
But she won’t stop. She’s in my face, shouting. “It will never go away!”
Suddenly, I’m no longer afraid. None of the others can see Mkhulu or Gogo in the corner, but I can. They are shaking their heads—at her behavior, yes, but also at me, warning me to let this go, not to retaliate. So it’s true, I’m not afraid. But my calm seems to convince her more than ever that I am guilty. I reach out to touch her forearm, to soothe her.
She jerks her arm away and raises her hand to slap me. “Hheyi, wena, you think we don’t know what you have done? Hah!”
My cheek tingles from her slap. But the hurt feels good. Not like this thing of Gogo’s death, a sting that will never go away.
“What