Kudzai S. Ndanga
Kudzai Ndanga was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She now lives and works
in England, having gone there following the economic decline of her home
country.  She has had poems published in a  Zimbabwean anthology in 2009.
Writing and words are her first loves and she hopes to one day fully commit
herself to them.  
The Waiting, a Short Story by Kudza Sophia Ndanga

Amai came home three months ago. She came home with wounds on her breath and scars in her
tears. I saw the blood seeping from her wounded breath, smelled it too, because Amai slept on my
mat the night she returned home. Reminded me of when I had the fever as a child, how she slept
with me then, only now I am not a child anymore, even got my monthly bleeding four months ago
to prove it. I was so excited I could not stop shaking the night of her return; Amai had been gone
nearly a year and I had waited that long for the assorted Crystal sweets she had promised to bring
home for us. I especially like the toffees, if you chew them they stick to your teeth and if you suck
on your teeth even half an hour later you can still taste the sweetness. My two younger brothers,
Tino and Tichafa, like the hard ones because they last longer, but nothing ever lasts that long with
those two greedy boys. Baba, our father, says even Mutamba’s pigs eat less than they do.

As she had promised, Amai brought the packet of Crystal sweets, but she only gave us two each
and said we had to save the rest for Christmas, two months away. Baba didn’t send us to bed after
the evening meal the night Amai returned home; we sat in the kitchen with the ambers from the fire
in the hearth warming our cold feet as Amai told us how aunt Sekai and her family were faring in
Harare. I asked about my cousin Beauty. Amai said she was starting secondary school in the new
year. I should be too, but I failed my end of year exams for grade 6 so I have to do the whole year
again. I don’t know why Teacher wrote on my report that I had failed my exams; I didn’t really fail;
how could I fail when I had not even written the exams? I stayed home most of that term because
the headmaster came to our class with his whip and said that all those who had not paid school fees
should get out of his school. Amai went crazy that day, calling Baba all sorts of names for drinking
away the money she had saved for my school fees. That is when Amai packed a bag with her one
good dress and went to Harare to find work in the kitchens. I didn’t know if she had found a job
because Baba said no money came for school fees, only enough to buy a scud of beer from
Chaunga’s shop at the growth point, so I am still waiting to repeat grade 6.

Baba is always drinking, I think he takes the advert on the radio seriously and really does have “scud
after scud after scud”. Most nights he comes home drunk and wakes me up to make food for him.
Amai always said Baba drank to forget the pain of not being man enough. I don’t know what Amai
meant, Baba looks like all the other men I know in the village, drinking masese beer under the
musasa tree outside Chaunga’s shop all day, while the women tend to the fields and cook the best
sadza and stew they know how so that the village whore, Mamoyo, doesn’t entice their men into her
clutches like she did amai vaTaku’s husband two years ago. Mushonga’s wife says it was Mamoyo’
s way of cooking the testicles of a goat that did it.

After Amai left, Baba always seemed angry at everything and everyone; he said Amai was no better
than Baba vaTaku, leaving her husband and children like she had. He said no woman should do that,
maybe he just missed her but he was always shouting at her and calling her useless when she was
home so I doubt he missed her. Some nights when he came home from Chaunga’s store late at
night he would not wake me up for sadza, instead he would come into the hut I shared with my little
brother Tichafa, and lie down beside me.  He would say since my mother had left to whore around
in Harare then I could take over doing all of her duties. It was painful that first night. The pain stole
the air from my lungs and I struggled to breathe. I was sure Baba had taken a knife and cut through
me as I felt myself tear like a worthless piece of paper. I felt  wetness gush out of me and I was
sure I had urinated myself and if it wasn’t for the burning fire between my legs I’m sure I would
have been embarrassed. I tried to make him stop by telling him that Amai had gone to Harare to
work in the kitchens so that Tino and I could go back to school, but the only response I got was his
breath that smelt of masese and Madison cigarettes in my face as he forced his thingy into my
Sylvia. I cried that night, I cried for Amai to come back from the kitchens, but she was too far
away to hear me. When he finished Baba collapsed next to me and started snoring so loudly I’m
sure the walls of the hut shook. I lay still, on my back next to him, not daring to move, close my
eyes or even breathe too loudly for fear I would wake him up and he would start again. There was
blood on the blanket the next morning, there was blood dried onto the inside of my legs too.

These days when Baba comes to my mat at night, I don’t cry anymore. It has stopped hurting, I
don’t even bleed, not even my monthly bleeding. Sometimes I do the multiplication tables that
Teacher taught us in my head so that when Amai comes home with the school fees I will still
remember. Sometimes I hear Magumo and his wife fighting in their hut and wonder what it is she
has done this time, maybe she forgot to fetch his bath water from the river again. She can be stupid
like that sometimes.  Sometimes Baba’s sweat falls into my eyes as he pumps away on top of me,
and then they sting so bad and bring tears but I am just glad it is not my mouth; imagine Baba’s
masese smelling sweat in my mouth, how disgusting that would be!

The night Amai came home Baba had been drinking scud after scud again and when the bus came
delivering my mother from its belly, Baba was sitting under the Musasa tree as usual. To hear
Mushonga’s wife talking you would think my mother had changed so much and grown two heads
in the time she was away that no one recognized her, not even Baba, when she got off the bus. She
said they could smell Amai’s perfume all the way in Nharira, the next growth point to ours where
she worked in a bottle store, but Mushonga’s wife has always been known for her mouth that no fly
would dare land on for fear of being swallowed into her big hole that is never closed. Amai had
smelt nice when she came home and she was wearing a blue dress that I had never seen before and
her once-cracked feet were covered in shiny red high-heeled shoes that matched her red lips. She
looked beautiful. She was even carrying a hand bag! Only Chaunga’s wife owned a hand bag in the
whole village and hers was old and plain, Amai’s shone as though she had polished it with Kiwi shoe
polish and had gold metal clips to lock away its secret holdings. I saw her coming down the dirt
road and after long moments of squinting through the glare of the sun I shouted to the boys that
Amai was home and ran like Mutamba’s two best bulls were after me and fell into her arms
moments before Tino came barrelling at us from the paddock where he had been tending the cows.
Little Tichafa was crying while sitting on his bare bottom in the sand where his little legs had
probably tripped over themselves and landed him. Amai went to him and lifted him high in the air
which only made him cry harder that she had to put him down, then he put his stumpy arms out to
come to me. That is when I first noticed the wounds on Amai’s breath as she struggled to breathe at
the sight of Tichafa crying to come into my arms to escape hers. I saw the pain of every breath and
the tears she tried to wipe away with the hem of her blue dress before we could see them, but I saw
the scars they left behind on her beautiful cheeks.

My brother and I were talking at the same time trying to tell Amai about all the things that had
happened since she had been gone, about Mushonga’s cows that had gotten into our garden one
night and eaten all the green veggies I had tended so carefully and about Magumo’s wife who had
finally had enough of his beatings and gone back to her people a month before. Tino, being the loud
mouth that he is, is the one who asked why she had not sent money for school fees. Amai looked at
us, puzzlement showing on her foundation layered face. She said she had sent money for school
fees every month and did not understand why Baba would tell us that the letters she wrote contained
nothing but empty words.

That night when all the exchange of news had been exhausted Amai went into the hut she shared
with Baba; I lay awake thinking of all the things Amai had brought back. The pink dress with lace on
the sleeves and collar for me and the brand new Tommys from Bata, the shirt and trousers for Tino
with the matching black tender-foot shoes, the blue and white sailor suit for little Tichafa with tiny
Sandak shoes, the wounds on her breath and the scars in her tears. I was glad to have Amai home
again, but she had changed. She seemed stronger and defeated all in one look. I feared the new Amai
would not stay too long in the village where news arrives by way of Mushonga’s wife who would
have sourced it from the various passengers on the afternoon bus that stops for a break at the bottle
store in Nharira. The best you can hope for in the village is a good husband who works in the city
and sends money at the end of the month while you try not to think about who is cooking for him in
the city where you are only sent when your mother-in-law decides it is time for another baby, and
the harvest is finished with. Amai looked like she belonged in the kitchens of Harare now with her
painted lips and powdered face, not in this village that does not even have a dress shop.

I heard Amai shouting at Baba. Something about money that had been sent and scud after scud that
Baba had consumed. I feared that maybe Tino and I would get in trouble for asking Amai about the
school fees, so I quickly got up off my mat and went to listen outside their door to determine
whether it was worth running away to my aunt’s in Wedza to avoid Baba’s wrath when Amai
returned to the kitchens (because I just knew she would). I heard Baba shout about how Amai
should be ashamed for coming back to the village after everything she had been up to in Harare,
with such venom in his voice. I wondered what was so bad about Amai working in the kitchens; he
was the one that had spent Amai’s money on scud after scud. I heard Amai tell Baba in a voice filled
with such pain and desolation that it made me feel as though I had never heard her speak before,
about how she had struggled to get a job and how when she finally found one it was hardly enough
to do anything except buy a bag of cotton for her bleeding every month. I heard her tell him how
she had had no choice but to earn more money for her children anyway she could. Baba’s voice
rose even higher as he asked Amai how she could open her legs for all of Harare and then dare to
come back and expect to sleep on their bed. My mother sobbed harder while Baba called her a
whore and told her to get out.

Amai must have remained where she was because Baba shouted even harder and I could hear from
the sound of his voice that he was probably spitting as he spoke. I hoped Amai was nowhere near
him because Baba’s spit always tasted of masese but maybe she liked it that way but I sure didn’t.
That is when I heard the first slap and Amai started crying harder, but still, I heard more slaps,
probably punches too and maybe a few kicks. I knew the sounds well; I had learnt to recognize
them by the sounds they solicited from the women, because it was always the women, Magumo’s
wife, Mushonga’s wife, even Mamoyo got beat up by scorned wives sometimes. I stood up ready
to shout at Baba to stop beating Amai when I heard a rustling behind me. I looked back and saw
Tino standing there with his finger across his lips and an axe in his right hand, tears pouring down
his smooth cheeks, fear in his brave young eyes. For a moment I thought to let him go in and do
what he could, and then I thought about what would happen if Baba survived the thrust of the axe at
the hands of his young, brave son and I knew it could not be. I walked slowly towards him and
gripped his wrist as hard as I could and for the first time since he was a baby, I pulled him to me
and hugged him as hard as I could as he cried on my chest. I heard the boulder that held the door to
Baba’s hut shut being moved and I knew one of them would be coming out soon so I grabbed my
brother’s wrist again and we ran back to our mats.

As I lay on my mat pretending to be asleep I heard the door open gently and I knew it was not Baba
this time. I looked up and by the illumination of the candle stick she held in her hand I saw her limp
across the tiny space toward where I lay. She sat down beside me on my mat and put the candle
down beside her, her back leaning against the wall. I looked up at her and that is when I saw the
wounds on her breath as she laboured to let air in and out of her lungs. I saw them bleed too, saw
the blood coming out of Amai’s nose with each breath and trickle down her chin to her chest where
it soiled her beautiful blue dress. I know the pain of breathing, I wondered if I had wounds on my
breath too. The tears were flowing down her cheeks, and this time she made no effort to wipe them
away as they left their scars behind. I thought, as I lay down looking at my mother, of all that I had
heard that evening as my parents fought, and I knew then that the wounds on Amai’s breath and the
scars in her tears went far beyond Baba’s fists, beyond the kitchens and beyond the streets of
Harare where she had given herself for my brothers and I only to end up paying for Baba’s scud and
possibly Mamoyo’s too. The wounds were deep and had taken a lot more time than a year to
appear, I wondered why I had never seen them bleed before, why the scars in her tears that seemed
to be older than Amai was, had never been visible to me.

Maybe Amai’s wounds and scars first appeared when she had been forced to leave school to marry
Baba after she had gotten pregnant behind the bush near the bus stop at the growth point. Maybe it
was when Baba was made redundant from his job at the mines in Zvishavane when the white men
left after the war veterans ran them out of their homes, or when Baba got fired for being drunk at
his job as a conductor on the buses and never bothered to look for another one. Maybe it was seeing
her children dressed in tattered clothing worse than she ever wore when she was young. Maybe she
had inherited them from her own mother at birth just like she had her nose. I never asked her where
the wounds and the scars had come from, but after that first night of Amai’s return, I began to
notice that all the women in the village seemed to carry them too, some deeper than others. I even
looked at my reflection in the window of Chaunga’s shop and saw the wounds in my own breath
too and the scars in the tears I cried as I looked at the wounds in my breath. Maybe there was still
time to save myself because the wounds had not started bleeding; maybe I could still save Amai too.
©ksn