Short Writings from Bulawayo III

One by One My Leaves Fall

139 One by One My Leaves Fall Judy Maposa “We are gathered here today to pay our last respects to our departed sister. She has been a friend to most of us, a shining light in the community, but above all a dutiful and loving daughter to her parents. The pain we feel...” Dutiful and loving daughter. My beloved child. Flesh of my flesh and child of my heart. My Sipho. My gift. The last of my precious pearls. What do they know about it? Pain? What is pain? It is a word, a word carelessly flung out without the true knowledge of its meaning. They are all gone, my children. My four babies, all gone. I look around at this all too familiar gathering. They have all come each bearing their sorrow. Maybe some have come to witness my grief. How does a mother grieve when all the fruits of her womb are buried in the earth? They look at me. They see my bright-eyed stare. No tears there. Long dried up. Once, in the beginning, I could afford the luxury of tears. I remember the tears of joy when after the pangs of labour a child slid out of my womb. My blessings and my tears of joy. One by one I counted them as they were given to me. Sipho, Thando, Themba and Luba. One by one my leaves withered and fell. All dead. All gone. The tears of my sorrow were gradually spent when I nursed Thando and Themba. I felt their pain as only one who has felt the pain of childbirth can. Thando, the first male fruit of my womb. The strong, fun-loving boy who grew up to be such a responsible man. Responsible? Maybe not. I just do not know. What of the child who was brought to us when Thando was a mere shadow, a skeleton with hardly any breath lingering in him? Thando whispered that the boy was his child. So I had had a grandchild I had not known about. Now I have come to know him because his mother lets him visit us. His mother is not well although she has not said. I see the same darkness in her eyes. The clawing darkness of the disease that has eaten our children. My children. Thando, the boy who breezed through school, an athlete who brought pride to his father’s heart. Thando, who had been the youngest headmaster in the district and was clearly on his way to higher things. Struck down, just like that. We had begun to worry that he had not married but, with assurances that 140 a daughter in law was in the pipeline, we hoped. Then he stopped coming home as often as he used to. Out of the blue a telephone call from a concerned colleague asking us to come and talk to our son. We went up to his school, his father and I, and, when we saw him, we despaired. We brought him home. To nurse him and watch him fade. “Why? Why leave it so late my son?” “Mother, I did not know how to face it. How to face you and the world.” So I watched him fade, slowly, until life went out of him. The pain was raw, the tears a daily rain. We buried him, a statistic fallen into the belly of the disease. Five months later, before time had a chance to heal our sorrow, Themba came home. They say children are blessings from God. Some are more of a blessing than others, but to a mother’s heart all her children are special. Themba had always been different. He gave us more trouble than all the other children put together. Always getting into little scraps, which he carried over into adulthood. Instead of getting through secondary school, we got a call one day telling us that he had made it across the border to seek his fortune. Like so many young people faced with unemployment, he chose to try his luck in a neighbouring country. We accepted his chosen path. In my heart I prayed for him. I prayed that he not fall into bad ways and be returned to us in a coffin, a fate so common to these border jumpers. Well, my prayers were answered. Themba was alive when he came home. But barely. His young body was a wreck. Gangster wars. So we knew that our son had fallen and...