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Litiya found her mother taking a walk along a tree-lined street,
wearing a stretch velour tracksuit. How did she find her mother,
accompanied by a girl who must have been her daughter, on this day
that could have been any other?
Litiya was in grade five and they had started learning about millions.
Though she was a good student, Litiya did not know what the number
“one million” actually meant. She had seen it on a page,
practiced adding and subtracting it. She knew it had six zeroes
but she could not visualise a million of anything. A million blades
of grass, a million grains of maize... Litiya decided it would be
a good idea to count to one million – to see the number. She
didn’t share this idea with her classmates as they ended their
lessons on Friday afternoon and hundreds of girls in blue smocks
and boys in blue shorts spilled onto the street as usual. Cars slowed
down, some hooted as the children blocked the roads walking in home
in groups of two, five even ten.
Litiya walked alone.
“One day someone will kidnap you” Auntie Nali joked
as she found her niece walking home that day. Litiya did not reply,
but smiled up at her. Auntie Nali was one of her extended family
that shared an unfinished two-bedroom house. They walked the final
fifteen minutes together weaving beside the road on a rutted mud
shoulder, past the rickety stalls of second hand clothes, past the
carpenters’ garish overstuffed couches, hopping across a small
garbage filled ditch and squelching through the mud to their home.
Litiya wasn’t the kind of child who needed company. The teacher
told them during their lesson on millions that there were at least
two million people in Lusaka – the teacher wanted to put the
number in perspective. She told them to imagine the busiest place
they had ever been in and still they would not have seen one million
people. Litiya did not find this advice helpful. The busiest place
Litiya had ever been to was Soweto market in town. Particularly
on a Saturday morning an endless stream of people walked, pushed
and dropped things. They called out across corridors, grabbed people’s
hands and shook them enthusiastically and sometimes kissing their
cheek in the excitement of unexpectedly meeting a loved one. Still
that was not a million people.
That Saturday Litiya decided her mission for the day was to see
a million people. She wasn’t excited or passionate about the
number, it wasn’t an obsession - she simply had nothing else
to do or to think about. Her family were all engaged in their Saturday
activities, all involving other people. Unless her grandmother,
Kuku, took Litiya with her to visit a friend or if her Aunt Frida
needed her to take care of Harry, the youngest in their household,
Litiya spent her weekends alone; flipping through old newspapers,
watching people through a gap in the fence or most often sitting
on the veranda of the unfinished house, staring into space, letting
time pass.
She stared into space so often that it worried her family. But over
the years they came to accept what they could not change. Shouting,
telling her off, or trying to engage her in a conversation, simply
delayed her trance-like state. When every activity was exhausted,
Litiya would find a quiet corner and stare time away.
The plates were washed, the floors swept and she knew she had hours
before dinner. It had rained the night before, but the mud did not
deter her. With a piece of paper and a blue pen scarred by teeth
marks she set off on her expedition alone.
She began by retracing the way she had walked with her aunt. The
main road going past their house yielded five hundred people on
foot and in cars. The further she walked and the more she counted,
the more she noted what people were doing; people at bus stops,
drunk outside taverns during the day, boys playing football with
a ball made of an intricate mass of condoms. Buses – a full
minibus held twenty one, trucks, big buses… she had to count
fast as they moved.
She came to her school, though it was Saturday the gates were unlocked
and fifteen students loitered outside in uniform, two more were
just inside, sitting too close discretely holding hands. Litiya
continued along the main road past the school, keeping clear of
the shallow ditch that ran alongside the road. There were no crowds
here, but groups of teens in fours and fives headed for the shops
and takeaways and Litiya made way each time using those seconds
to examine them. Litiya almost never came in this direction, she
had a vague idea of where the road led, into wealthier neighbourhoods,
with high walls and security company logos emblazoned on their gates.
She’d once passed through in a taxi with her Aunt on their
way to a kitchen party in a less ostentatious locality.
She was on four thousand and thirty when she turned onto a quiet
tree-lined road. She’d marked every hundred on the piece of
paper to make sure she didn’t lose count. She still wasn’t
that far from home. She had been walking at a leisurely pace for
forty minutes. She was only now beginning to sweat. Litiya considered
turning back when she saw how few people were on the street –
it would be wasted time. As she contemplated this option her mother
walked past, strolling casually across the road from her.
How did Litiya know that this woman, who had nothing unique about
her, was her mother?
Six years is nothing when you miss someone.
For the first few years after their separation Litiya had spent
much of her waking life wondering where her mother was and what
she was doing.
“Where is mummy?” She’d asked herself countless
time. “When is she coming back?” After a while she found
it is easiest to conclude that her mother was dead because it hurt
much less than to imagine that she could be strolling down the street
in expensive clothes with a girl who looked as if she were her daughter
chatting loudly by her side.
After those first few years, she replaced those hours of wonder
with hours of emptiness, she perfected the ability to think of nothing
at all and took to staring into the horizon with her mind completely
blank. Her extended family mistook these periods for loneliness
or introspection but it was actually the absence of both.
The velour tracksuit was blue. Its velvety hues rippled in the afternoon
sun, the velour clung the woman’s hips, her stomach and thighs
accentuating their size. Her size was that of wealthy women. True,
women in Litiya’s life grew fat too. But not like this. Her
mother’s size exuded affluence; daily doses of red meat, chocolate
on demand, and parties steeped in imported beer and red wine, a
lifestyle that Litiya could only imagine.
Her mother hadn’t been as fat when Litiya last saw her, talking
to Kuku and Auntie Frida on the veranda. The two were nodding to
her mother’s proposal. Litiya sat with her cousin, a boy she
had never met before on a brown sofa, both watching curiously, trying
to hear as much of the conversation as they could. She had no warning
that this would happen, just a “come on, we are going to see
your auntie.”
Her mother had not been as fair-skinned before. Litiya shared her
mother’s natural complexion - a “brown” tone that
already attracted attention from the boys in her neighbourhood.
But Litiya was sure her mother’s colour had been enhanced
either by skin lighteners, or perhaps by the good life, a life out
of the sun, in which destinations were reached by car and where
other people were employed to tend the garden. Kuku often reminded
Litiya to stay out of the sun, her skin colour, her grandmother
insisted, was a passport to marrying a wealthy man.
“Yes” Kuku had agreed enthusiastically “times
are hard. But see how well your sister is doing” she swept
her hand through the air pointing out Auntie Frida’s part-finished
house, the same house that was yet to be finished, even today
“You can stay here with us” suggested Auntie Frida “then
you will not have to pay rent and it will be cheaper for you”
“No, no, no” Litya’s mother had declined. Litiya,
looking back at the evening, recalled her mother’s refusal
as too enthusiastic.
Had she already known that she would never come back for her daughter?
Had her mother planned to leave her own child and never come back?
Did her new family know that Litiya existed?
The little girl walking beside her mother was also overweight. She
was much darker than Litiya, perhaps her father was dark, and probably
fat too. The girl was talking incessantly at her mother. She spoke
in English, quickly and with confidence. She also wore a velour
track suit in radiant pink with “High School Musical 3”
emblazoned across the back. The girl looked about six. Litiya could
not imagine her being any younger. Obviously her mother was expecting
a new child when she dumped Litiya at her sister Frida’s door.
Litiya stopped in the shade of a tree where she could observe them
walking hand in hand, smiling and talking. Their fat wobbled in
unison. They were clean and everything about them was new. Litiya
didn’t need to look down to see the mud on her own shoes.
Litiya looked up at the clouds gathering. The two hadn’t noticed
her at all. She was certain that if her mother had looked at her,
she would have recognised her.
But why would she? She had probably glanced over and seen a girl
in cheap Chinese clothes and dismissed her instantly, thinking she
was in this street to clean houses. Her mother and half sister looked
as if they belonged in this street with its mowed lawns and security
guards. If she waited long enough, would Litiya see which of these
mansions was theirs? If she waited long enough would they emerge
in a RAV 4 with the windows rolled up and the air-conditioning on?
Should she go up to them and say hello, listen to them speak? Would
her mother’s still speak their language or would she pretend
to have forgotten – which, Auntie Nali said, was what happened
when people forgot themselves.
Litiya had stopped counting.
Her mother and half sister had been numbers 4034 and 4035. Litiya
hadn’t counted the few people that had passed in the meantime.
Going back home meant the count was over, she wouldn’t know
if she counted the same people twice. She chose to go home. There
was nothing to be gained from waiting.
Her grandmother was making dinner when Litiya got home. The radio
was playing and as usual it could be heard in every room of the
house and reverberated in the yard as well. Dinner was nshima and
beans. The nshima was bubbling ready to be stirred and moulded and
the beans had been boiling for hours. The usual smell of dinner
had settled on the household. Though familiar, the smell was sickening
today. Litiya looked at the food being served and felt poor.
Her grandmother spooned the food onto the enamel plates, her face
impassive, unsmiling. Litiya considered telling Kuku what she had
seen today. Kuku hadn’t seen her daughter for as long as Litiya
hadn’t seen her mother. Whose mourning was greater?
Auntie Frida came in, her youngest son in tow, the older boy was
already on the veranda where they ate all their meals, swinging
his legs off the edge, waiting to be served. Auntie Frida said she’d
rather die than lose her children – was that true? Had she
ever had the chance to be rich? Did she ever have to decide between
her children and her future? Did she know that her sister was a
few streets away wearing expensive clothes? That she had exchanged
her child for money. But Litiya was sure that Auntie Frida had also
believed that her sister was dead. Like Litiya, Frida probably also
imagined a burial without a service, without flowers or mourners,
buried in a pauper’s grave paid for by the city council.
How many people lived in her mother’s house? Did they sit
at a dinner table and eat with knives and forks? No matter how hard
she tried, images of her mother kept returning. Her grandmother
looked at her with a questioning eye.
Feeling the need to scream and cry, Litiya decided that nothing
would be gained by telling them about her walk. She picked up her
enamel plate and ate, unable to shake the feeling of being poor.
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