As we drove on to the
homestead I repeated the
comparisons I had made on
that first day that I went to
the mission, but this time in
reverse.
What I saw made it hard to
understand Babamukuru.
As far as I could see, the only affection
anyone could have for that compound
had to come out of loyalty.
I could not imagine anyone actually
wanting to go there, unless, like me,
they were going to see their mother.
This time the homestead looked worse
than usual. And the most
disheartening thing was that it did not
have to look like that.
When I went to the pit latrine that was
once a good one and built under
Babamukuru’s supervision and with his
finances downwind from the huts, I
gagged.
‘Why don’t you clean the toilet any
more‘?’ I reproached my mother,
annoyed with her for always
reminding me, in the way that she
was so thoroughly beaten and
without self-respect, that escape was
a burning necessity.
I did clean the latrine, with Nyasha’s
help. Not that I asked her to — I was
too embarrassed to do that — but she
agreed with me that the latrine had to
be cleaned, so that was what we did.
 Babamukuru put on an old pair of
khaki trousers and made my father
and Takesure help him fix a roof on
the hozi although he did not sleep
there.
 , we were greeted by depressing
silence.
 ‘You have come, Babamukuru. You have come,
Maiguru. You have come, Sisi Nyasha,’ and so on
until we had all been ritually embraced.

‘Yes, yes, we have arrived. At last,’ smiled
Babamukuru and
 Babamukuru did not like to waste time.

My mother, Netsai told us, was lying down
because she was not feeling strong these days.
 He had left the homestead late in the morning
with Takesure.
Babamukuru was shocked You say Takesure is
still here?’
‘Yes, we are still here, Mwaramu,’ called Lucia,
casually emerging from the hozi.

‘Even if you do ignore me,’ Lucia
continued, ‘it doesn’t mean I’m not here.

I wished Lucia would be quiet. Her case
was a serious one and it did not help to be
rude to Babamukuru.
 a wild woman in spite of — or maybe because of
— her beauty.
 her skin was not deteriorating and breaking;
it remained glowing and healthy.
 ‘Otherwise,’ they reasoned optimistically, ‘if
he had had sons, how would those sons have
taken wives? See now, the daughters will
bring cattle, the cattle will enable the old man
to work his fields, the family will prosper, and
when the sons are of an age to marry, by then
they will have accumulated their roora.’
Besides’, they added significantly, ‘a man can’t be sure about
daughters!’
my grandfather’s daughters gained a reputation for being
loose women.
‘But look at that Lucia! Ha! There is nothing of a woman there.
She sleeps with anybody and everybody, but she hasn’t
borne a single child yet. She’s been bewitched. More likely
she’s a witch herself.’
Thus poor Lucia was indicted for both her barrenness and her
witchery
my grandparents were only too happy to pack my aunt Lucia
off to look after her sister.
 Naturally, people said she had done it on purpose in
order to snare a husband.
 Takesure in spite of a strong aversion to labour, he
had been so ready to come and help my father
 Babamukuru continued to believe,in his
uncomplicated way, that Takesure had come to help
out on the homestead so that with the money my
uncle paid him he would be able to finish off the
payments on his second wife.
 . But Babamukuru was mistaken. The truth of the
matter was that Takesure wanted to get away.
 Takesure did not want to work
 Lucia, who had grown shrewd in her years of dealing
with men,
 Although she had been brought up in abject poverty,
she had not, like my mother, been married to it at
fifteen.
 Her spirit, unfettered in this respect, had
experimented with living and drawn its own
conclusions. Consequently, she was a much
bolder woman than my mother, and my father,
who no longer felt threatened by a woman’s
boldness since he had proved his mettle by
dispiriting my mother, was excited by the
thought of possessing a woman like Lucia, like
possessing a thunderstorm to make it crackle and
thunder and lightning at your command.
 my mother always insisted that the rumours about
her sister were no more than that.
 Lucia was a good worker, it would be useful to have
her permanently about the home.
 Not even for such advantages, though, would
Babamukuru consider keeping a bigamist in his
family.
 ‘Such things do not happen in my home,’ he
decreed.
 My father was much more afraid of
Babamukuru’s wrath, which he had experienced,
than of the wrath of God, which he had not, so
reluctantly he had promised to make sure that
Takesure went and took Lucia with him.
 But here Lucia was, embracing Maiguru
passionately, And she gushed on and on about
how Lucia threw her arm companionably around
Maiguru’s shoulders.
 Although Lucia had made up her mind that
Babamukuru was irrelevant when she began to talk
to Maiguru, not even she could ignore the authority
of that voice.
 ‘I’ve been listening to you laughing and talking for a
long time and wondering when you would remember
that somebody gave birth to you.’
 I was surprised at how difficult it was to be correct
with my mother when I managed so becomingly, so
naturally, with Baba and Maiguru.
 my mother continued unkindly, hiding the bite in her
voice under a laugh.
 ‘Must you sit on the floor? Yet there are chairs?
Tambu, go fetch a chair for Maiguru.’
 My mother was delighted with Nyasha’s bad
manners.

‘Is that what you do?’ she pounced maliciously.
‘You sit in chairs but you can’t be bothered to say
hello to me!’
 Babamukuru was valiant. Overcoming his inbred
aversion to such biological detail, he took my
mother’s question seriously.
 It was at times like this that Nyasha was liable to say
the first thing that came into her head, and those
things were usually disastrous.

Lucia too was bored with this meandering talk.
‘Nyamashewe, Mwaramu,’ she interrupted,
beginning the formal greetings. Technically she
shouldn’t have begun the greetings.
 But these days people were not too strict about
such things, and being Lucia and being notorious
she could get away with this behaviour.
 It alarms me to think of all that carbon monoxide
hanging about in the air to asphyxiate people,
and all the inflammatory products of combustion
that we breathed in that had already by that
time made my father permanently asthmatic and
bronchitic.
 During that holiday I realised that some things
were not as they should have been in our family
 there were twenty-four people altogether on the
homestead, which was twenty-four stomachs to
fill three times a day. Twenty-four bodies for
which water had to be fetched from Nyamarira
daily. Twenty-four people’s laundry to wash as
often as possible, and Tete’s youngest was still in
napkins. Now, this kind of work was women’s
work, and of the thirteen women
 So Maiguru, Nyasha, the three helping girls and
myself were on our feet all day.


The mornings began early with heating
water for the adults to wash.
We took it in turns to go to Nyamarira, either
Nyasha, Anna and myself or the other two girls
 Maiguru worked harder than anybody else,
because as the senior wife and owner of the best
cooking facilities as well as provider of the food
to cook, she was expected to oversee all the
culinary operations.
 Babamukuru had bought a paraffin refrigerator
for his wife,
 One evening, just after the breaking of the new year
of I970, Babamukuru summoned a kind of family
dare
 I must say that I was very pleased when Jeremiah
came to me with that request, because it showed me
that he was becoming responsible about developing
the home.
 looking for work so that he would be able to finish
paying his wife’s roora.
 We all knew what was going on and my mother and
Mainini threatened to become quite violent in their
opposition to the system.
‘Have you ever seen it happen,’ she waxed
ferociously and eloquently, ‘that a hearing is
conducted in the absence of the accused? Aren’t they
saying that my young sister mpregnatedherself on
purpose? Isn’t that what Takesure will tell them and
they will believe it? Ehe! They are accusing Lucia. She
should be there to defend herself.’
 The mutterings and malcontent carried on, my
mother and aunts fanning each other’s tempers
until Lucia, who enjoyed battle and liked to be
ferocious at it, was seething with anger.

‘It is all right for you,’ she boiled. ‘They are
not telling lies about you. It’s not your names
they are spoiling. I am the one they are talking
about. I am the one they are judging up there.
 So what do we do, Maiguru? We are looking to you to
give us a plan.’
 Lucia insisting that Maiguru take sides
 the fear made it necessary to tighten up. Each retreated
more resolutely into their roles, pretending while they did
that actually they were advancing, had in fact initiated an
offensive, when really, for each one of them, it was a last
solitary, hopeless defence of the security of their illusions.
 Let them sort out their own problems, and as for
those who want to get involved the protests subsided
into stunned disbelief
 I was not born into my husband ’s family, therefore it
is not my concern. Takesure is not my relative. What
he does with Lucia is no business of mine — she is not
my relative either. If they make problems
forthemselves, well, they will just have to see what
they can do. But what they do does not concern me.’
 ‘She is proud,’ denounced my mother when Maiguru had
gone.
 . ‘See what a proud woman your Maiguru is,’ she sneered.
‘Proud and unfeeling. Do you think she cares about you?
Never! You are no relative of hers. It’s my blood that’s in
you. Not hers.’

‘And why does she think differently from the rest of
us? She thinks she is different. She thinks she’s perfect so
she can do what she likes. First she kills my son —’
 But my mother was in a bad way and there was
no holding her. The things that were coming out
had been germinating and taking root in her
mind for a long time.
 When, Lucia, just tell me, when, did you ever
contain yourself? Do you even know what it
means, you who were in the blankets with my
husband the moment you arrived?
 Because Maiguru is educated. That’s why you all kept
quiet. Because she’s rich and comes here and flashes
her money around, so you listen to her as though you
want to eat the words that come out of her mouth.
But me, I’m not educated, am I? I’m just poor and
ignorant, so you want me to keep quiet, you say I
mustn’t talk.
 They’re a disgrace to decent parents, except that
Maiguru is not decent because first she killed my son
and now she has taken Tambudzai away from me.
 As we drove on to the homestead I
repeated the comparisons I had made
on that first day that I went to the
mission, but this time in reverse.
 Oh,yes, Tamubudzai. Do you think I haven’t seen
the way you follow her around,’ she spat at me
fiercely, ‘doing all her dirty work for her,
anything she says? You think your mother is so
stupid she won’t see Maiguru has turned you
against me with her money and her white ways?
You think I am dirt now, me, your mother.
 Just the other day you told me that my toilet is
dirty. "It disgusts me," that’s what you said. If it is
meat you want that I cannot provide for you, if
you are so greedy you would betray your own
mother for meat, then go to your Maiguru.
 After all these years and all these things, do you think
I am still a child to be distracted by the nonsense in
the house? Nonsense I have lived with and seen
every day for nineteen years? No, I cannot be
distracted, but the matter is serious and it concerns
you.
 Nyasha closed her face and said it did not matter;
that my mother had shown us her suffering just as
Maiguru was always showing hers.

‘Ma’Chido,’ Babamukuru insisted, his voice
breaking ever so slightly, ‘I have invited you to sit
down and listen to this case.’

‘Shame,’ sympathised Babamunini Thomas. ‘She
is so tired, too tired even to sit and listen. But it is true.
Maiguru works hard. Ya, she really works hard to
keep things comfortable here.’ And Babamukuru was
pleased enough to let the matter pass.
 She just refused to go with me. Ehe! I told her,
Mukoma said we must go, and she laughed!

‘I was afraid, Mukoma, truly afraid,’
Takesure quavered. ‘You know what is said of
her, that she walks in the night?’
 She’s probably the one bewitching Mukoma
Jeremiah’s children, so that he will marry her.
She wants Jeremiah, not me!’
 . We just watched her as she strode in there, her right
eye glittering as it caught the yellow paraffin flame,
glittering dangerously
 Look at him trying to hide because now I am here.’
 In two strides he was beside him and, securing an ear
between each finger and thumb, she dragged him to
his feet.

‘Let me go, let me go,’ he moaned.
 We were all laughing outside.
 The next thing that I remember clearly was my
father starting out of his chair and Lucia warning
him to stay in it if he preferred Takesure with
ears.
 Then Babamukuru, who was wise, told my father
to sit down and let Lucia speak.
 ‘Tell me, Babamukuru, would you say this is a man? Can it be a
man that talks such nonsense? A man should talk sense, isn’t it'?
 It was because this man, this Jeremiah, yes, you Jeremiah, who
married my sister, he has a roving eye and a lazy hand.
Whatever he sees, he must have; but he doesn’t want to work
for it, isn’t it, Jeremiah?

In the house Babamukuru was deeply perplexed and
annoyed with my father for stirring up this trouble.

‘Ehe! ’ agreed Takesure, still smarting it
seemed, from the look on his face. ‘We need a
good strategy to outsmart that woman. She is
vicious and unnatural. She is uncontrollable.’

‘Tete, what do you say? You should know
how best to handle a woman. What do we do in
a case like this?’ asked Babamunini Thomas
deferentially, but Tete declined the honour.
 The solution is for Jeremiah to behave sensibly, but
he has never been very good at it.’

‘Maybe some medicine,’ suggested Takesure, ‘to
fix Mukoma Jeremiah. Ehe! To fix him. So that he
cannot be influenced by that woman.’
 Do not misunderstand me, Mukoma, I am not saying
you are tight-fisted. I am only saying we have
problems these days. I-i-h!
 They are coming from somewhere. It’s obvious.
They are being sent. And they must be made to
go back where they came from, right back! It is a
matter for a good medium. A good medium to do
the ceremony properly with everything — beer, a
sacrificial ox, everything. We must call the clan
and get rid of this evil.’
 Every time you speak, senseless things come out
of your mouth. Surely, my young brother, you
know that what you are saying is impossible. I
do not allow such things to happen here.’
 ‘Do not think I have not been considering these
things,’ Babamukuru said. ‘Do not think I have
not seen the things that Jeremiah has described.
Oh, yes, I have seen them. For a long time now
these misfortunes have been on my mind.
 our mother, our mother always insisted that
Jeremiah must have a church wedding.
 the more I saw of worlds beyond the homestead the
more I was convinced that the further we left the old
ways behind the closer we came to progress.
 I was surprised that Nyasha took so much interest in
the things our grandparents and great-grandparents
had done.
 she became quite annoyed and delivered a lecture
on the dangers of assuming that Christian ways were
progressive ways.
 she became quite annoyed and delivered a
lecture on the dangers of assuming that Christian
ways were progressive ways.
 ‘It’s bad enough,’ she said severely, ‘when a
country gets colonised, but when the people do
as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.’