The Father, the Son and the Storyteller
By: The Kalahari Review
Tags: Paul Khumalo, African Literature, Fiction, South Africa

Decades since then, I’m sitting at the kitchen counter in the dark, hoping my glass of milk will ward off the dream that haunts my nights lately — the dream in which my father gets shot.

I never knew my father. Yet I knew him. Ma has told me so much about him that when I close my eyes I can picture him.

“Your father had a clinic in Maheni,” Ma would tell me. “Back in South Garambia. It was just before Great Garambia split into the North and the South.”

As Ma told the stories, I could see my father’s dark skin and his white coat and the stethoscope around his neck.

Ma

Your father’s clinic sat on the summit of a hill. Its white walls were spotless like the nurses’ uniforms, its roof red like the crosses on their caps. Many sick came from Maheni and from villages beyond, trusting that your father would heal them. And he did.

One sunny day, a nurse spotted a girl struggling up the hill. The girl moved slowly, stopping often, her knees almost buckling. The nurse ran down to meet her. The girl was pregnant, the sister realised, and her dress was blotted with blood at the thighs. The nurse put her shoulder under the girl’s arm and helped her up the rest of the way.

“The pain is terrible,” the girl said, in tears. “I think my baby is dying.”

“Don’t worry,” the sister said. “We’ll help you.” She took the girl to your father and he saw to her immediately.

The foetus was still alive. But its condition was precarious — the girl needed intensive care. It would take half a day to transport her to the hospital in Garamb City. That was way too long and way too risky. So, your father opted to care for the girl at the clinic.

It proved to be a good call — two days later, the bleeding had stopped, the pregnancy saved — and the girl was discharged.

Three months later, she returned to the clinic to present to your father a healthy, happy baby. She told him she had named her boy ‘Tom’, after him.

Ted

Every time Ma finished, I would be elated and I would say, “I want to be like him when I grow up!”

Ma would smile, then.

Sometimes I would ask her what my father did when he wasn’t working at the clinic.

“Even greater work,” she would say, and her voice would grow fervent.

Ma

Not only did he heal his patients. He worked to heal the country. He raised his voice against Harenga’s government. He denounced the corruption. He said that Garambians can’t be dying of malnutrition while Harenga and his cabal lived in mansions and drove luxury cars. Garambia sat on a treasure of mangos and coffee beans and manganese — yet Garambians had less to eat than they’d had during colonial rule. Great Garambia, he said, belonged to all Garambians, and it was past time that Harenga gave the people the democracy he promised when we won independence.

Your father’s speeches drew huge crowds, and the crowds spread his words.

He began to receive death threats — a headless cat dumped at our doorstep, bloody graffiti on the walls of the clinic, SMSes asking if he wanted an early grave.

“You have to stop, Tom,” I told him.

“If I stop,” he said, “the people will stop. And Harenga won’t stop.”

So, Tom didn’t stop, and one night, while I was pregnant with you, they shot him.

“BANG!” I heard in my sleep. I screamed and sat up, calling Tom — “Tom! Tom! Wake up! Tom!” My ears were ringing, my heart drumming, my hands shaking Tom and coming away warm and wet.

Tom didn’t wake up. Screaming, I jumped out of bed, crazy with fear, screaming, screaming.

I turned my side lamp on, and at the door was a man in a balaclava, his smoking gun pointing at me.

I screamed again, crossing my arm over my breasts, covering myself with a sheet.

He cocked his weapon.

I tightened and whimpered.

His eye caught my pronounced belly. For a while, he gazed at it, his gun still pointed at me.

I stared at the trigger, mumbling, trembling.

He lowered the gun and said, “If you want to live, go. Leave Maheni, and never come back.”

I nodded vigorously until he left. Then I ran to Tom and checked his pulse. There was nothing.

I put my hands on my head and wailed. What was I to do without him?

I called the police. They came, took my statement and took fingerprints.

After they left, I packed a bag and also left — never to see Maheni again.

Ted

At this point, Ma’s eyes would narrow. “That’s what your father did when he wasn’t working at the clinic,” she would say. “He woke people up.”

I can almost hear Ma’s voice now as I gulp my milk — He woke people up.

Through Ma’s tellings, my father woke me up. He inspired me to study that part of Great Garambia’s history: Over the years, the crackdown continued against those who spoke out. Many left the country to fight from outside. Many stayed to fight from within — organising marches, fomenting disorder, sabotaging government, agitating for sanctions. When the sanctions came, they were heavy, eventually breaking Garambia’s back and sealing the Secession of the North.

Many died. But their memory lives on. In those who knew them, in those who knew of them, in those who will one day return and rebuild South Garambia.

The memory of my father lives on in me. Sometimes it haunts me in this dream that jolts me awake and makes me get up and put milk on the stove.

In the dream, I’m a foetus, curled up inside Ma. All around me is fluid, glowing and warm. Through the fluid I can hear Ma’s heartbeat. Suddenly it thumps faster, so loud it taps my skin.

In the dream, I open my eyes. Ma’s belly is translucent, and I can see outside her. A man in a balaclava is pointing a gun at her heart, and Ma is screaming.

The man glances down, locks eyes with me. Something in his eyes softens. He lowers his weapon. When the barrel is pointed at me, his brow hardens.

Then, BANG! Fire.

And I wake up, sweating. It’s hard then to sleep, and I come to the kitchen and warm some milk.

The memory of my father lives on in my waking dreams. Growing up, I dreamt to be a doctor, like him. This delighted Ma. She encouraged me to pursue medicine — and I did. I’ve been practising for twenty years. Yet, I feel I should be doing more. Like my father, I want to wake people up. But this, Ma discourages. And she discourages any talk of returning to South Garambia.

“Your home is here,” she says, sometimes scowling as a headache blitzes her temples. “Your people are here. Forget Harenga. The old man will die soon.”

“But blood trumps borders,” I tell her.

She snorts. “You’ve never even met my family.”

“Because you never let me,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. I worry about all Southerners.”

It bothers me that South Garambians die, on average, ten years earlier than us Northerners. It bothers me that their lives are so miserable.

To ease my mind, I built my practice amongst Southern expats in Yando, a township many of them call home. There I have found not only patients. I have found friends. I have found allies. I have found sisters. I have found brothers.

And lately, we talk of returning to South Garambia to rebuild our country.

This, I don’t tell Ma. Not in her condition.

Last year, Ma began complaining of a persistent, excruciating headache. I sent her for tests. It turned out she a tumour in her head.

That felt like a punch to my stomach.

I took Ma to my friend Simena for a second opinion. Simena is an oncologist, and her scans confirmed that Ma had breast cancer, and that it had spread to her brain.

When I told Ma, her face fell. Then quickly, she brightened up and said things would be all right.

Simena told me that chemotherapy and radiation could buy Ma time. But Ma declined both, saying they would keep her in pain and hold up its end. “I am thankful,” she told me. “I’ve had a long life.”

Ma has not had a long life. She makes things up to comfort me — like she did with milk when I was small.

Right now, the milk is not working. I’m too wound up about Ma because her condition is deteriorating. Yesterday she sounded so frail on the phone. I told her I’d visit her this evening.

“Good,” she said. “It’s time we got my affairs in order.”

I finish my milk, go to the window and part the curtain. The horizon in the East is greying. I look at my watch. My first consultation is only at nine. I may as well drive to Nambeville now to see Ma. She’ll be surprised.

She will smile.

By the time a golden ray peers over the horizon, I’m on the highway, taking the Nambeville off-ramp. The township is awakening. Children are walking to school. Vendors are setting up shop. Taxis are hooting, recruiting. At traffic lights, hawkers are threading through traffic, selling newspapers and batteries and cool-drinks and sweets.

The houses are rows of look-alike blocks, squished close together. My childhood home could fill my current house seven times. Several times, I have invited Ma to come live with me. But she refuses. Nambeville is her home, she says — her neighbours are here. Her congregation is here. My home is comfortable, yes, but the people are distant.

I park on the street, walk up to the back door and knock. Dineo opens and the smell of oats puffs out. My glasses steam up as I go in.

Dineo has been caring for Ma for six months. “How is she?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “She won’t eat.”

I sigh. That’s never a good sign.

I go to Ma’s room. The door is ajar, and I find her sitting, propped up by two pillows. She’s so thin. Her hair is wispy, as airy as a dandelion, and it shows her shiny scalp. Her eyes are set deeper than before.

I tap the door three times.

Ma looks up. She smiles. “Hau, Teddy Bear! You sneaky boy. You said this evening!”

I smile and shrug. “I had more time than I expected.”

“And you thought to visit your old Ma. You are a good boy, you know that?”

I grin. “How are you, Ma? Dineo says you won’t eat.”

Ma chuckles. “Dineo has a big mouth and she uses it well.” Ma coughs, and her voice grows thin. “But she takes good care of me.”

“And the Hospice sisters? Do they still come?”

Ma nods. “Their pills help.”

She pats the bed. “Come,” she says. “Sit. There’s things to sort out before I’m gone.”

I sit, and the smell of hospital wafts from her.

She clears her throat. “I grew up in South Garambia,” she says. “In a shack in a township called Maheni.”

I frown. That’s not right. Maheni is a village, not a township. Ma grew up in a hut, not a shack. Are the tumours affecting her memory?

No matter. It’s been long since she last told me about Maheni and about my father. This may be the last time.

I pay attention.

Ma

I grew up without a father. My mother was hardly around. I resented her for that. All day she cleaned offices in Garamb City, returning late at night only to leave again before sunrise. Most Saturdays and most Sundays, she volunteered for the Garambia Liberation Front. So, I almost never saw her, and I grew up calling her ‘Sisi’.

It was my grandmother that brought me up, and I grew up calling her ‘Mama’.

My father, only Sisi knew, and she never talked about him.

There were many of us living in the shack — me, Mama, Sisi, my two aunts and my four cousins. Only Sisi worked, and Mama did the best she could with the little money Sisi made.

Around my thirteenth birthday, the police stormed a meeting Sisi was volunteering at. They shot her — three bullets in the back.

I was heartbroken. More than I thought I should be as it was Mama who was the mother to me.

At the funeral, they draped her coffin in the green, gold and red of the Garambia Liberation Front. Many activists came and spoke.

That was the last time we saw them.

With Sisi gone, the money vanished, and with it, the mielie meal and the bread. The family was devastated.

I left school and looked for a job. Finding one proved difficult. Sanctions were hurting Great Garambia — manganese mines were shutting down, coffee factories were downsizing, housewives hired no help. For months I found no work.

I began to feel desperate. And worthless. The family became bones in skin.

Eventually I tried the slums. There, I met this man they called Spinza. He said he would pay me well to accompany his clients to important functions. Sometimes the men would want to be pleasured. Then he would pay me more.

He threw an advance onto my lap. Five-hundred shillings. My heart leapt. I’d never seen that much money. It could feed us for a month.

I felt filthy thinking of it. But I was exhausted. The family was hungry.

I swallowed my pride and took the money. I told Mama I found a job sorting mangos.

Ted

I gape at Ma, horrified, revulsed.

Ma looks down, wringing her hands.

I avert my eyes and shift on the bed.

There’s a knock, and Dineo enters, bearing a tray laden with two bowls of oats and a bag full of meds. “Time for the pills, Ma,” she says.

Maybe she’s confused. That’s not how the story goes.

Ma waves Dineo away, wincing.

“It’s all right,” I say to Dineo. “I’ll feed her.”

Ma could not have been a …. I shake my head.

As Dineo leaves, I add sugar and milk to Ma’s oats. She couldn’t have. I scoop a spoonful and raise it to her mouth. “You must eat, Ma, so you can take your — “

“I’m only sick, Ted. I’m not a child.” She doesn’t look at me, but she opens her mouth.

I feed her. She went to church every Sunday.

She takes the oats with her lips and chews slowly.

I feed her again. She’s always been a good woman.

And again. It can’t be.

By the fifth feeding she raises her hand. “Enough.”

My head is shaking as I put the oats away.

I gather her dose.

Her voice is thick when she says, “I’ll have those when I finish. I must keep a clear head.”

She looks up at me. She’s holding back tears. She puts her hand on my knee and I want to jerk it away. “I know it’s hard for you to hear this,” she says, “and I’m sorry. But it’s true.”

I drop the pills on the tray and they scatter.

My heart is thumping. I take a breath and add sugar and milk to my oats.

Ma

It was either that or starvation.

Every day I prayed I’d find a different job, and soon.

I don’t know how Mama found out. But boy did she beat me. With every stroke of the belt, she yelled. “You’ve brought! Disgrace! To the family!

“You are such! A disappointment! A Cheap! Filthy! Whore!”

When the beating stopped the yelling continued. “What people must think of this house! They must think I run a brothel! I’m embarrassed to show my face in the streets.

“I won’t have a whore in my house. I won’t. When the sun rises, I want you out!”

I was humiliated. I was angry. Early the next morning, I left.

I felt so lost. So afraid.

I had nowhere else to go. So I rented a room in Spinza’s whorehouse. The room was grimy and smelly and dark. I was so alone. So ashamed.

Just until I find a proper job, I told myself. And I kept praying for one. And looking.

Every Friday when Spinza paid me, I sent a postal order to Mama. She never replied. But she never returned the money.

About three months later, I found a job as a cashier at a Cash ‘n Carry. I was so relieved. So grateful.

I left Spinza’s and shared a room with my new workmate. Her name was Rumbi, and quickly, we became friends.

Things were looking better. I even thought of visiting home. But I feared Mama would turn me away. I felt dirty.

Then a month into the new job, I missed my period. I was worried. Too afraid to check.

Again, the next month, I missed it. Petrified, I prayed. I bought a test. It came out positive.

I cried. For hours. Now I couldn’t go home. How could I, carrying such a child? A reminder that I was a cheap, filthy whore.

There was the job too. Always, women came to the Cash ‘n Carry begging the manager for work. When the baby came, I’d be out. How would I raise my child then?

I opened up to Rumbi, one night. She sympathised. She’d been in the same situation just last year. She told me about this nurse who’d helped her end the pregnancy. The sister knew her work. She was a midwife at Harenga Academic. Her name was Sister Mabutu, and she was discreet — the police would never know.

I took Sister Mabutu’s number and made an appointment for next pay day.

I felt horrible. Every day I thought of the baby. I tried not to. The more I tried, the more I thought of it. Sometimes, I dreamed of it too, and I woke up feeling guilty.

When the day came, I felt torn. I considered not going. But it was best that I go. So I went.

Sister Mabutu lived in a flat in the inner-city. She was tall and thick and unsmiling. She wore glasses that made her eyes look big.

“You brought the money?” she said when she opened the door.

I handed her the envelope. Six hundred shillings.

She tore it open and counted the notes. She nodded. “Come.”

I followed her to a bedroom. The linen over the bed was stamped with ‘Garambia Academic Hospital’. The panes of the window were painted black and the only light came from a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.

While I undressed, Sister Mabutu covered the bed with an absorbent lining. Then she had me lie down. Father, forgive me, I thought as I took her pills, as she collected her instruments. After a while my eyes became heavy.

I woke up to pain blaring in my womb. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. But the pain steeped and my teeth ground.

Sister Mabutu’s eyes grew. She staunched my blood with rags, again and again.

“When you get home,” she said, “stay in bed until you stop bleeding.”

I lay for a while, waiting for the pain to subside. It worsened. Eventually, I got up.

I felt dizzy. Sister Mabutu walked me out and gave me a pack of pads. “Call when you get home,” she said, her voice shaky. “So I know you reached. You hear?”

I nodded.

“And if anyone asks me about this, I’ll deny I’ve ever seen you. Understand?”

I nodded again and left.

Every step was torture. All I wanted was to curl into a ball and bawl my eyes out. Somehow, I reached home and went straight to bed.

I woke up woozy and faint. I smelled blood and felt a warm wetness between my legs. Rumbi was floating over me, horror on her face. She talked, but I grasped nothing. She changed my pad and my clothes and the room spun around us.

The next thing I remember, I was lying in a hospital with a drip in my arm. My waist felt like it was stabbed.

The floor was scattered with dust. A fluorescent light kept flickering. A cockroach crawled across the wall.

A nurse came in. Her name tag said, ‘Sister Beauty’. She smiled and told me I was at Garamb City Hospital. “Can I call your parents?” she asked.

Her question made me cry and I couldn’t stop. Sister Beauty patted my back and gave me a glass of water. When I finally quietened, I told her I didn’t want anyone to know where I was.

She said she understood.

She changed the drip and made notes in a file. She said that I needed a gynae, but that the hospital had none. The last one, Dr. Edwards, had recently left for North Garambia, seeking asylum. The town he lived in now was three hours’ drive from Garamb City.

“So far!” I said. The thought of travelling that long in pain made me want to die. “I don’t have a passport, even.”

“The closest gynae in South Garambia is in Smithsburg. That’s a day’s drive. The road is really bad.”

My heart sank.

“But …” her eyes darted to the door. She came close, leaned in and whispered. “… I can arrange for you to get to Dr. Edwards. My brother-in-law is a truck driver. He can slip you through the border.”

That’s how I came to North Garambia. In agony, hidden amongst bags of coffee. Sister Beauty’s brother-in-law was Albert. After we crossed the border, he took me to Himbaru General Hospital.

The floors were clean. The walls were bright. Computer screens shone and a voice spoke over the intercom.

Albert stayed with me until I was admitted.

While I lay in a ward, receiving blood, Dr. Edwards came in. His head was bald. His face was chubby.

The moment he saw me, his brow furrowed. He looked at me sideways. “Have we met before?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“Hm,” he said. Then he asked what had happened.

I feared I’d go to jail, but if he were to help me, I had to tell him. So I did, leaving out Sister Mabutu’s name. As I spoke, Dr. Edwards nodded, and he sighed, and he shook his head.

When I finished, he asked a nurse to bring an ultrasound machine. He pressed my waist to see where I hurt. While he did, he asked me about myself — How was school? Where was I from? Ah. Maybe that’s why I looked familiar. He grew up in Maheni, too. Still had family there.

He smeared blue gel on my waist and took an ultrasound scan.

The ultrasound showed a quick, tiny pulse.

“Huh!” he said. “The baby is alive.”

My heart quaked. How? And how could I have lost so much blood but the baby be alive?

What was I to do now?

“Do you want to terminate, still?” There was kindness in Dr. Edward’s question, but I hated it. I didn’t want to make that decision again.

I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Dr. Edwards’ eyebrows lifted. “I know who you remind me of! She had the exact same mannerism. Claudette Gberangba. Also from Maheni, actually.”

Sisi. “She was my mother.”

“Really? I knew her. We were in the GL Front together.”

He shook his head. “Great woman, your mom was. Fierce.”

I snorted. If she hadn’t gotten herself killed, I thought, I’d be back home, in school.

“Always fought for what is right. I knew you reminded me of someone.”

I shook my head. “All I have of her,” I said, “are her mannerisms.”

Dr. Edwards tilted his head and squinted at me. “Uh-uh. You are more like her than you realise.”

“I’m not like her!” I said, suddenly cross. “I don’t want to be like her! I don’t want my children one day to never see me because I’m so busy being great for other people!”

Dr. Edwards was taken aback. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realise — “

I shook my head. “Actually, you are right, Doctor. I am like her. I dropped out of school. I fell pregnant young, like her. Great lady, my mother. And me, great offspring!”

Dr. Edwards was at a loss. After a while, he said, “Sometimes greatness is born of trying circumstances.”

I scoffed. “As are poverty and suffering and death,” I said, my voice shaking.

Dr. Edwards smiled a little. “Claudette would have said exactly that.”

Whatever! I thought, rolling my eyes.

“Anyway,” he said, looking at the screen again. “Do you still want to terminate?”

I wondered if I could trust him. It didn’t matter. I’d told him everything. I sighed. “I don’t want to go to jail.”

“Don’t worry. It’s now legal to terminate a pregnancy in North Garambia.”

Oh, I thought.

Then I thought about the baby inside me. What if there was a reason they had survived?

“Look,” Dr. Edwards said. “You don’t need to decide now. I need to see you again anyway. The lining of your uterus is torn. I need to go in and fix it. But before that, your body needs to recover. Come again in seven days. We can terminate then if you choose to.”

I felt relieved. I nodded.

I didn’t know where I’d spend the week. But the next day, when I got discharged, Albert fetched me and brought me here. To this very house. Your Aunt Smangele was Albert’s cousin. She took me in and cared for me.

Over the next week, I thought a lot about Sisi. Why she had left school. Why she had worked so hard for the family and for the GL Front. I hadn’t thought much about it before. I had only resented it. Thinking of it now, I understood a little.

Aunt Smangele cared for me like I was her daughter. It made me miss Sisi and wish she had done the same for me.

A few days before the appointment, I thought again of the child. If I kept it, it would likely grow up as Sisi and I had. With little, and with little prospect for more. Did I want that?

Greatness grew in trying circumstances, Dr. Edwards had said. He was right. I had to grow up. I had to break the cycle.

When I saw him, I told him I wanted to terminate.

He nodded. I felt no judgement from him.

“Before you arrived last week,” he said, “Sister Beauty called ahead to explain your situation. So, I’m going to do the repair and the termination for no charge, okay?”

I realised then that Himbaru General was a private hospital. The treatment would cost a lot. Why do it for free when he didn’t even know me?

My hand went to my chest. My eyes brimmed. “Is it because you knew Sisi?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’s because sometimes we all need a little help.”

“Thank you,” I said pushing back tears, and he left for the operation theatre.

As I changed, I thought of what he’d said. So many people had helped me. Rumbi. Sister Beauty. Albert. Aunt Smangele. Dr. Edwards. There was no way I could repay them.

As I lay on the hospital bed, being wheeled into theatre, tears rolled out of my eyes, into my ears.

I shifted to the operating table. The anaesthetist told me what would happen next. Over her mask, her eyes were smiling at me.

Inside me, in a place so dark and so cold for so long, I felt warm. Where did that come from? (My family was still destitute. I was in hospital, in a foreign country.)

I knew where. Strangers had helped me, and that felt good.

The anaesthetist injected a liquid into the drip. She put an oxygen mask over my mouth and told me to count from one to ten.

I nodded.

“One.”

When this was over, I would help others too.

“Two.”

My hand went to my belly. If strangers could help me, maybe I could help my baby?

“Three.”

Maybe if I did and I gave it my all, things would turn out okay.

“Four.”

Maybe the cycle broke that way.

I filled up with hope and light. For myself and for you.

“Five.”

Yes. That’s how I would break the cycle. By raising you. By loving you.

My eyes were getting heavy and I felt myself drift away.

They were going to take you out of me!

No. I shook my head.

No, I tried to say. I was so drowsy I couldn’t use my mouth and my words came out garbled — “I’m keeping the baby! I want to keep the baby. I want to keep my baby.”

At least that’s what I thought I was saying as I faded away.

Ted

My world is shattered.

“I’ll have the pills now,” Ma says, nodding towards them.

One by one, I pick them up.

“When I woke up,” Ma says, “I was back on the bed, back in the ward. As I pieced together what had happened, my stomach clenched. I touched my belly. Were you still inside me?

“Dr. Edwards came in, and before he opened his mouth I asked if you were still inside me.

“He nodded. ‘We only did the repair,’ he said.

“I sighed, relieved. I knew then everything would be all right.”

Nothing is all right, I’m thinking. Everything is broken!

“Seven months later,” Ma says, “I gave birth to you in the same hospital. I named you Edward, after Dr. Edwards.”

Of course. Dr Edward. I shake my head slowly. I feel like I don’t know who I am.

“Often I wondered, as I watched you eat and sleep and play, who you would turn out to be. How being fatherless would shape you. I wondered about myself — how a father like Dr. Edwards could have shaped me.

“Maybe if you believed you had had a father, one like him, you would turn out better than me and become the best Ted you could be.”

My brow furrows. “And I believed you!” I say. “I believed everything you told me.”

Ma looks up at me, droopy and frail. She nods. “I’m sorry to have hurt you, Teddy Bear.”

My breaths are coming heavily. As I lift the dose towards Ma’s lips, my hands are shaking.

She opens her mouth and I tip the pills onto her tongue. I raise the glass to her mouth and manage not to spill.

Ma downs the pills. Then she says, “A month later, I returned to the hospital for your immunisations. I met with Dr. Edwards over his lunch break. He bought me coffee. We talked about you. We talked about home. I let him hold you, and I told him your name.

“His eyes filled with tears. He said he was honoured. He put his finger in your tiny hand and you clasped it hard and smiled.”

I bury my face in my hands.

“That was the last time I saw him. Two months later, I read in the newspaper that he’d been blasted by a parcel bomb Harenga’s people had sent to him. He died in his consultation room, along with his secretary.”

I shake my head. My anger at Harenga heats up.

Ma takes a deep breath. “I was surprised how heartbroken I was.

“I never returned to Maheni. I wanted the best for you, and South Garambia was not it.

“Aunt Smangele assured me that this was now my home.

“Over the years, as you grew, as you began to ask about your father, I thought again of Dr. Edwards. The story of Dr. Tom emerged. As I told it, your belief in him grew. Your belief in yourself grew. The tale kept up. The tale grew.

I sit up.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me now. But one day, I hope you can.”

A part of me wants to. Another wants to scream at Ma.

I exhale. I put my arm around her and I hold her close to me.

She lays her head on my shoulder and begins to doze off.