Women Writing Zimbabwe

Delivery

Delivery Annie Holmes ‘FINALLY!’ OBI FLUNG HIS ARMS WIDE over the dining table – photographs strewn everywhere – and then beat a tattoo with his fists on the tabletop for emphasis. That got our attention, mine and my mother’s. ‘We may now,’ said my boyfriend, grinning over at the two of us, ‘reveal the main problem in inter-racial relationships.’ (I didn’t want to see my mother looking hopeful – the maternal eyebrows had shot up expectantly – so I concentrated on Obi instead. Which wasn’t difficult. He’d pretty much been my main focus since we met in June.) ‘It’s all about the aperture!’ he continued. ‘Apparently it’s impossible,’ he told Mum, ‘for your daughter and I to be visible in the same photograph.’ He drew me close, and pressed his dark face against my pale freckled one. ‘Say cheese,’ said Obi and we grinned at Mum. Then he pushed two photographs over the table as proof. ‘You can choose,’ he said to Mum. (Dangerous, I thought. Don’t tell her she can – she’ll choose me a white boy, preferably a doctor.) ‘Here’s me with all my features intact, next to a flare of light which we assume must be Percy,’ said Obi, pointing. ‘And now in this photo, we have the actual Persephone van Heerden, see? – nose, lips, eyes and all – standing next to a set of teeth floating in the darkness. Which would be me!’ Mum glanced at the photos and then peered at us over the frames of her bi-focals – her ‘you children!’ look – as the ringing phone summoned her of the room. But Obi was right. If Mum chose a picture in which one could actually recognise me, my new darling would be no more than a dark smudge at my side. ‘Kodak bars the gate even as racial walls come down,’ I proposed as a headline and Obi snorted. We’d been cracking each other up since Obi first arrived in Zimbabwe, fresh from London. Thus far – all four happy months – we’d laughed our way through any threats to the cheerful forward progress of our romance. 20 Mum returned, waving an address list at Obi. ‘Perhaps you could do something clever, dear, and get the computer to print all the envelopes. So savvy, you young people.’ ‘Mum, do you have the phone under your arm for a reason?’ ‘Oh yes, it’s for you. Someone called Toughie, I believe.’ ‘Tafi, Mum.’ I grabbed the receiver but of course Tafi had rung off by then. I wondered what she might’ve heard from under the maternal armpit. ‘Hold on, Toughie’ – Mum was born here but she still can’t get the hang of African names – followed by the clang of the ancient filing cabinet as Mum ferreted about for address lists, and then some swearing, perhaps , as she missed the ashtray and flicked ash onto the floor. I lay down on the carpet with the phone to call Tafi back – her briefings tended to be lengthy, so horizontal was the best position to take. Way above me loomed my tall, dark, delightful boyfriend and my short frowning irascible mother, consulting over the address list for distributing the Christmas newsletter. ‘She’s moved,’ Mum told Obi, crossing someone’s name off the list. ‘Who’s moved?’ I asked. ‘Praxides’ daughter. We used to post the Christmas letter to the daughter to give to Praxides, but the girl lost her job.’ (Obi checked down at me. Interesting? his glance enquired, or should I let it go?) ‘Percy’s told you about Praxides, hasn’t she, Obi?’ Mum asked him. ‘Percy’s nanny. Dear, dear Praxie.’ ‘All Greek to me,’ said Obi, grinning down at me. Mum ignored him. Obi had left Nigeria as a toddler to grow up with his mum in England, and he’d never had a nanny. When I was a kid, I thought everyone had a nanny. Dads, swimming pools, and three-speed bikes were optional, but mums, meals, and nannies – these were life’s staples, surely? And nannies came in just as random a range as mothers did. Kids compared them. Praxie scored pretty high, despite her strict side. She kind of made up for having the only mother who wore hats to school events. Not only straw sun hats or even those white canvas cricket hats – which were bad enough – but scary old-fashioned concoctions in colours like mauve or lemon yellow . ‘What’s with all...