She passed the school on the left, then the park on the right.
Everything as it used to look, yet different. Driving back along the street now as an adult she was surprised she still felt the sting of betrayal so deeply.
She saw the gate to his back garden now in front.
Katie tried to suppress the feeling but the memory came back, stronger and more vividly with every familiar land mark.
She pulled up at the curb, the path beside the gate stretching away from her. She could deny the memories no more.
That day she had skipped up the path to the garage den, her white and pink skirt jumping around her legs as she bounded. “He could come with her, it didn’t all have to be over. They could go together.” This was all she cared about in the world. Her precious Michael, her childhood playmate, her first kiss and now her lover. They would travel the world together.
Katie had cupped her hands at the den window, peering through the embracing darkness and down onto the double mattress on the floor where she and Michael had spent so many stolen moments, with a knowledge he would be lounging with his head in a book, his black-all-over costume blending into the shadows.
She had seen his outline, with his back to the window, reading as always she thought. In delight she drew back the door, the loosely fixed pane of glass rattling joyously as it grated across the flag stones.
Michael had started, rolling towards her, panic written bold across his young face. The paleness of his boyish white skin bright against the darkness of the fabric of his unbuttoned shirt. The girl had started too, her skirts pushed up to her waist and her tights at her knees.
They had stayed like that for what seemed like an age. Him half-naked, his nipples hardening in response to the draught. The girl lying there exposed.
This was the first time she had been back since. Her house looked the same but today it stood ready to greet guests. She parked and climbed out, stroked down her skirts down and walked boldly in, red handbag swinging beside tight calves and stiletto heels.
She let him catch her in the privacy of the garden as she ate canapés. The moment had hung in the air since she had walked through the door, the words unsaid, waiting to be heard.
“I thought it was over.”
“Oh it was!” She looked puzzled, more expecting an apology or explanation.
“No. On that day. I thought it was over with us, when I asked her round. My mother told me you didn’t want to see me ever again. She said you had someone else.”
“Michael, You know there was never anyone other than you” Katie’s face started to pink, appalled at the thought. “Where the hell did she get that from?” she spat angrily.
“I know that now. She told me after that she’d made it up to help me forget about you. I cried for two days after you and I argued. She said she couldn’t bear it so said that to make me ‘get over you’.”
“How could she. How could she do that. She knew you meant everything to me. How could she be so…. evil. Where the fuck is she?” Her whole body shook, rigid as she looked angrily at those gathered on the lawn, some now staring.
“She’s dead, Katie.” He shouted back. The onlookers turned embarrassedly back to their conversations.
She felt the anger drain from her and with it the past. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes.
“No! Michael.” She whispered her hands on his shoulders, longing to lock her fingers behind his neck once more. She looked into his eyes, and at the lines on his face. They seemed to carry so much sadness and pain.
Wordlessly they lent in to embrace, their bodies colliding at first in the awkward way of teenagers and then gripping each other as adults.
“Simudzai mureza wedu weZimbabwe.” The voices sing out across the school yard weak in number and strength, barely audible from Mrs Mawunga’s house.
She takes short sharp drags from her mug of sweet tea, the metal hot against her lip, sadness threatening to overcome her.
A year ago 400 bright students would have stood every morning to sing the national anthem, their voices filling the dust-red school yard and floating out into the sparse bush beyond. They were smartly dressed in what they had, their well-worn yellow shirts impossibly clean and jumpers well-darned. Most clutched plastic bags behind their backs containing school books, mealies and part-chewed sugar cane.
Although she can’t see, today she knows that the group will number only 40, clothing tattered, their school books, plastic bags and pencils gone and food brought only as currency to pay school fees and settle debts.
“Kalibusisiwe ilizwe leZimbabwe.” The singing finishes and the headmaster speaks.
She is glad his words can’t be heard from her house as she prepares to leave. She can’t stand to listen to another regulation pro-government speech or be forced to swear allegiance to the president.
She knows the children will now be entering the only classroom still in use to be taught by the remaining teacher.
Not long back an impossible number of children would throng into her classroom, at first 2 to a desk, and then when they kept coming, three to a desk crammed leg to leg on the bench seats. 48 faces, wide eyed and ready. She would begin taking the register for no other reason than to mark their presence.
Now the register is a debt collection exercise, onions, potatoes, mealie-meal, all scarce but acceptable methods of payment for schooling. It won’t get better either. It hasn’t rained even a spot since last March.
Oh how she misses the rain: the damp smell, intense heat and humidity that is almost unbearably oppressive. Your clothes go moldy – there is no way to get them dry. Firewood is wet through, a pot of water taking an age to boil. The borehole runs fast but cloudy. Churned up by the influx.
Even after the rain stops the marks of the downpours are still visible, a trench carved deep into the surface of the dirt road to the village, preventing even the headmaster from driving along it in his “Bee-Sixteun-Hunred” yellow and white Mazda bakkie.
Today the road is broken down, not by the rains but by poor maintenance. It doesn’t matter. Even the headmaster has swapped his bakkie for food.
Bartering has become the way, hyperinflation rendering money valueless. Looking around her house one last time, there is little left to see. The sofa is gone. Exchanged for food. The comfy chairs were broken up and traded as fire wood. The bed frame and table swapped as scrap metal.
With one hand she picks up a bundle. She has wrapped everything she owns in an old blanket tied at the corners: a metal mug, a heavy cooking pot, a bed sheet, a second blanket and two shoes.
She sets off walking slowly up the long straight road to the village. A small broken figure against the vast undulating landscape.
At the end, if I have
just one little wish
it will be to grasp
a handful of light
and pour molten hope
into the hearts of those
who watch me go.
To make them see
that to live is to love,
and to love is to laugh,
and for life to return
they must break a smile
for I will, I know.
