Blood, Sweat, Tears

We are told to count our blessings, to focus on the beautiful things in life and to make peace with our past, but each time Yibanathi closes her eyes, her mother's weeping face—as she poured sand on the cold bodies of her only brothers—plagues her mind.

The villagers speak in whispers; faint words fly from ear to ear of how the devil's breath stole the lives of Amahle's sons. This blaze of the forest that the pale woman, dressed in white and sunscreen, called polio had once again reaped where it did not sow.

Yibanathi lifts the pail of water onto her head and treks back to her mother's house, ignoring the itching in her left leg. From the red mud path leading to the entrance of their home, she sights her mother—Amahle, sitting by her brothers grave, calling out their names, Bhekizikwe and Kagiso, begging them to lay on her belly and talk to their little one as they used to, pleading with them to beat drums with the spoons and pots while she danced.

Yibanathi drops the pail of water on the floor, spilling a bit of the semi-clean water on the mud earth, and rushes to her mother's side. She slings her arm around her shoulders and tries to pull her off the ground, but Amahle claws at her hands and pushes her away. Tired of struggling with Amahle, Yibanathi sits on the floor with her and strokes her back, whispering words of comfort into her ears till she rises. Halfway to the front yard, Amahle dismisses Yibanathi and drags herself inside the house to rest, her eyes vacant—almost lifeless, her brown skin wrinkled by pain and hardship.

Yibanathi tries to retrace her steps back to the pail but somehow finds herself standing over her brothers grave again. She found them locked in a tight embrace, soaked in faeces and vomit, their bodies cold to the touch like the Okri river at night. Her cries shook the walls of their home, threatening to dismantle the pillars keeping it sturdy. She screamed their names, but they just laid there, deaf to the world, deep in the forever slumber. At that moment, the words of ugogo echoed in her ears, "Ukufa akunasizotha".

Amahle deemed it fit to lay them to rest together, for they had come into the world together and were taken away together; they were the perfect twins.

***

Just as bad things come in threes, the dark cloud hovering around this household was not satisfied. Yibanathi awakes with a piercing scream in the middle of the night, clutching her left leg as the pain intensifies. Her fingers scratch at her skin in search of the source of the pain but find none; her leg trembles on the bed as she cries out in pain, desperately waiting for the break of dawn when the pain would cease.

On nights when her body is wrapped in a blanket to keep warm, her left leg feels like it was on fire, the flames constantly gnawing at the bones in her leg. Then, on scalding nights, the sensation in her leg worsens, the feeling of ants crawling under her skin, the constant jiggling she could not control. The pale woman in white called it "restless legs" and said it was an aftermath of polio that Yibanathi had suffered as a child.

That night, when she could no longer bear the pain, Yibanathi wraps her leg in a cloth soaked in cold water to ease the pain and begs her mother to cut it off with the machete she hid under her bed, but Amahle refuses, telling her that she would feel better in the morning. But Yibanathi doesn't want to wait till morning; she can't, so she picks up the sharp machete and strikes the flesh above her knee, her loud bellows drag Amahle back to her bedside.

"Wenzeni?" her mother screams, her eyes absorbing the horror in front of her. The bone in Yibanathi's leg is seen through the deep gash; her blood drenches the sheets underneath, her flesh frayed at the edges.

But Yibanathi doesn't care anymore; she wants the pain gone, so she raises the machete again to deliver the final blow, but her mother holds her hand, whispering prayers for her daughter's life to be spared.

"Ngicela umama", Yibanathi whimpers. She needs the pain to end, for the world to stop turning, for her younger brothers to run into her room and hold her waist tight and wipe her tears like they used to.

Just then, the house of stones Yibanathi built around her pain comes crashing down, her body trembling as her tears fall. She misses the songs ugogo would sing to them at night to help them sleep. She craves her embrace like a thirsty deer lapping up water at the riverbank. She misses the loud laughter of her brothers as they play in the river at noon. She wants to hug them and cry into the locks on their heads.

She lifts her face, eyes pleading with her mother to end it all, and Amahle nods, tears dripping down her face. She holds the machete, her tears becoming one with her sweat; she raises it, looks at Yibanathi's weeping form and whispers, "Ngicela ube nathi".

With all her might, she strikes the exposed bone once, and the machete slides through, slicing the flesh beneath; blood splashes onto Amahle's face, mixing with the tears and sweat. She wraps Yibanathi's severed leg with a fresh cloth and rushes into the kitchen to collect the herbal mixture the nurse uses to sedate her whenever her restlessness occurs.

Yibanathi drifts in and out of consciousness. She could hear ugogo singing sweetly at her bedside. Bhekizikwe and Kagiso's voices are also heard as they sit on ugogo's laps. "Hlala, ujabule, sula izinyembezi, ungakhali, konke kuzolunga", their voices resonate in her mind as a calming peace sweeps her away for the first time in a long while.

Glossary

Ukufa akunasizotha - death has no modesty

Wenzeni - what have you done

Ngicela umama - please, mama

ugogo - grandmother

Ngicela ube nathi - please be with us

Hlala, ujabule, sula izinyembezi, ungakhali, konke kuzolunga - be cheerful, be happy, wipe your tears,

don't cry, everything will be fine

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