They are Coming

Chapter 36

142 Chapter 36 When they arrive, MaNdlovu is sweeping the kitchen. Seeing her husband and the two boys close on his heels, she looks worried. Ngwenya brushes past her without speaking, throws himself on the sofa, and sits staring at the ceiling. Ambition and Ntando sit down side by side on the bench. ‘Your silence scares me.’ MaNdlovu feels a knot of panic in her stomach. Something’s happened. Ngwenya sighs. MaNdlovu says gently, ‘Ntando, will you please go home now?’ . The little boy’s face falls, and he puts his head on Ambition’s shoulder. ‘I’m not chasing you away, Ntando. I’ll call you back soon, okay?’ ‘Take Freeman’s money back to him, Ntando,’ Ngwenya adds. ‘Tell him I’m sorry Ambition can’t go to the shops right now. We’ll call you later to play with Ambition, okay?’ MaNdlovu closes the door behind Ntando and sits down. ‘Uhambe njani?’ MaNdlovu asks quietly. Ngwenya raises his head, and takes a deep breath. ‘Mr Nkani is dead,’ he says flatly. ‘Oh no!’ MaNdlovu gasps. ‘It’s said he was beaten up last night by the Green Bombers when he tried to stop them stoning his house.’ ‘No! Please God, no!’ ‘A report about the murder was made at the police station last night by Mrs Nkani, and she told the police who the culprits were.’ ‘Have they been arrested?’ MaNdlovu feels a mounting sense of dread. 143 Ngwenya shakes his head. ‘The police told them that it was not the Green Bombers who killed him, but thieves who were trying to rob his house.’ ‘And Senzeni?’ ‘I’ve been to the Ilanga Youth Centre to look for her. There’s no one there. They’ve all left. It’s as if nobody has ever lived there.’ ‘Last night she told me she’d been promoted and was going to work in the rural areas,’ Ambition says in a small voice. Ngwenya stares stonily at his son, though he is looking somewhere beyond him. ‘What do the Green Bombers mean by “work”?’. MaNdlovu is weeping. She feels her heart will break. Ambition looks at his father, tears are streaming down his face too. Something breaks inside Ambition. He cannot bear to see his parents crying. Their pain engulfs him, and he buries his head in his mother’s lap. ‘I am here,’ a small voice says from the bedroom doorway. *** Ambition had no words to describe the feeling that swept over him when he heard that voice. It was like an electric charge; he shuddered and looked up. His mother’s hands tighten around him. Tears are running down her face but she’s stopped weeping. Senzeni is standing at the bedroom doorway, holding the curtain aside. She’s wearing her cream T-shirt and the matching skirt. Ambition ’s eyes move between his father and his sister. Ngwenya is looking at Senzeni too, frowning as if he cannot believe it is her. The room is filled with silence. His mother looks both disbelieving and fearful. ‘Have you come back, Senzeni?’ Ambition breaks the silence. Senzeni looks up. Her cheeks are rivers of tears. Suddenly, she starts moaning, a sound that comes from somewhere deep inside her, and throws herself at her mother, who reaches out to catch her. Senzeni is crying helplessly. ‘I have come back home,’ she sobs. ‘Please can I stay?’ ‘This is your home,’ MaNdlovu croons. ‘Hush my child. You are home now.’ ‘They killed Mr Nkani,’ Senzeni says, her chest heaving. ‘They hit him with stones while I was talking to Ambition at our gate. They killed him, Mama. So I came back here in the morning. I came through the back 144 while you were sweeping at the front, and I have been lying under the bed.’ ‘Stop crying, Senzeni,’ Ngwenya’s voice is firm. ‘You’ve done the right thing and no one is going to punish you for it.’ MaNdlovu puts one arm round Senzeni’s shoulder and the other around her son. She cannot quite believe that the nightmare is over. It has happened too quickly. But with her son and daughter beside her, she feels very comforted. Ambition suddenly jumps up. He needs action to relieve all the tension. He quickly slips through the hole in the hedge. There’s no one in Ntando ’s backyard. He runs across it and slips through a hole...