"Day of Vow" (cont'd as Part 2)

Day of Vow (cont'd Part 2 of the story)
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In the late evening when Zorina and her mother took the state worker's bus from the back road of the Theron Estate all the way to the dirt roads of the ghetto shanties of Sowego, the transition felt as normal to them as breathing. They were slightly higher class than most of their neighbors, because being the head maid for a family as rich and well known as Dutch Theron's was a major coup, and more than that, Zorina's status as glassmaker provided her the rank of a college graduate and surpassed all the menial factory jobs that the local men were allowed to hold. She and her mother were looked up to.

"I need time for the wedding dress", sighed Etah, Zorina's mother, as the two of them busied themselves setting supper in the small of their kitchen. "The hours inside the night just aren't deep enough."

Zorina, solemn and deeply breathing, tried not to burst into tears.

Etah was a hefty woman with a profound pair of buttocks and huge feet like a camel's. In the center of her face, she was pretty. She greatly resembled the beautiful American actress, Alfre Woodard, her spitting image, only Etah was fat and had much lighter skin. She wore a rag around her head and sometimes grimaced from the arthritis plaguing her knees and left shoulder. Her man had been dead for years, so her thinking skills weren't as whiplash quick as they had once been. Mainly, she let herself settle into acting acting a lot older than she actually was and looking like it, too.

"Oh�I've got to sit down."

"Big Mama, get off your feet now."

Zorina had the pot of red beans, rice and oxtails heating up (leftovers), and Etah would just have to make herself a little pan of peppercorn broth to go over the bread. Her late husband had always loved having his peppercorn broth over some bread.
"I've got to work some with that dress", restated Etah, and Zorina's heart jumped again at the mention of it. She could just imagine all the lavish white lace, satin, tulle�flowing beneath the soft pretty whiteness of Maritza Buitengracht�the proper young lady who was engaged to marry Golf Theron in just another month.

"Let her buy a dress in Durban, Mama. They'll shop and horse race this coming weekend as it is."

"Miss Lindy wants Maritza to wear the same dress that she wore. It needs lots of alterations, because that Maritza girl is no bigger than a strand of straw. Skinnier than you, Zorina, if that's possible."

"You think Golf really loves her, Mama?"

"I think he's like any other man entering marriage�he'll act out what he's seen others do. But it's Miss Lindy that picked her. Brought her back from Europe and set it up. She sure is a lovely girl, I'll say. Just as beautiful as a snow white princess from a land of angels."

Instantly, Zorina recalled the time that she and a friend had been in line at the cinema house and overheard a group of handsome black boys repeating a saying that's very popular among South African black men. Two boys told another boy: "White women don't need to take baths, because God made them clean by nature and they never smell".

Zorina blacked out just thinking about Maritza's long, golden tresses of angel's hair and the gorgeous way it flowed heavily down her back like wavy yellow sunshine. She floated away thinking about how Golf always held that dainty little white hand and kissed it just so�like it belonged to a Queen.

"I hate Golf Theron", Zorina heard herself say. Her voice tight and mean. It surprised and startled Etah.

"But what, my daughter?"

"I said I hate Golf Theron, mama. He doesn't deserve a beautiful white woman like Maritza Buitengracht, she's too good for him, mama."

Etah rallied back with her maid-like instincts. She insisted, "But Golf has always been a good boy! He's as handsome and kindhearted as a man could come, Zorina!"

Zorina almost mouthed off and reminded her mother of the time that Golf had told classmates visiting from his boarding school that Etah was part of an ancient ape tribe and then asked her, right in front of all those white giggling faces, to speak "planet of the apes language." But Zorina said nothing.

Teardrops, huge and wet began swelling and falling into an emotional breakdown as Zorina screamed out, "If I could rip out his throat, I'd do it! With my bare hands, I'd do it!"

"What!?"

Etah was no dummy. She'd seen that kind of bitterness in the eyes of black worker-bee women before, but she couldn't risk hearing what might come out of her daughter's mouth next. For if it came out to be rape, then Etah might have to do something about it, and courage had never been Etah's strongsuit. So instead, she jumped to her feet and slapped the living shit out of her daughter!

"SHUT�UP!"

The shock of it stunned Zorina to complete stillness, her eyes bulging and her back tense as though a pan of cold water had been dumped over her head. "Now you stop this jealousy you have towards white girls and thank our sweet lord for the privileges that you do have, you selfish black arse! I won't have you say another bad word against Mister Theron. He's a good boy, educated and handsome and he treats you like you're his own sister, Zorina! You don't know how spoiled you are by the Therons, that's the problem! He lets you call him Noble, and not even his own mother calls him that! What's that? You thought I didn't know your little secret?"

An iceberg moved between them.

"Alright then, mama", whispered Zorina. "I�love Noble."

Then she left her supper on the table and went up to bed.

In the dim light of her bedroom, fully unaffected by the sound of mice playing in the walls, Zorina stood naked in the half mirror staring at herself. She couldn't imagine how anyone could think for a single moment that Maritza Buitengracht was more beautiful than she was. Obviously, Noble knew the truth. He was the one who always insisted that Zorina looked exactly like the gorgeous movie actress Thandie Newton (only Zorina was four shades browner)�and wasn't it Zorina's hair that had fascinated Noble when she was just a child? Hadn't he marveled at how soft it was�natural, springy African hair worn in a medium fro? Hadn't Golf liked putting his hands in it often (without permission as white people do)?

From Golf, Zorina had learned that nothing gets dirty faster than white skin. Or can smell more foul. So black men in South Africa certainly didn't know what they were talking about.

Carefully, just as she did every night, she applied several coats of pure vitamin E oil to the burn on her bottom.

Zorina thought this whole entire world must be insane to think that Golf could find a better woman than her. But then again, white men were different from other men Zorina had observed. White men admired themselves and their race far too much not to give birth to purely white children. That was the catch, Zorina realized. It was their own white children that they loved so dearly, more than life itself, and for that, she couldn't help but respect them.

Zorina pulled the covers over her head and drifted off to sleep.

Once asleep, she was back at Children of Christ Protectorate School. Eve was holding her hand. She could see the charred door again�lava red beneath the blackened wood. The only classroom was burnt down around it, smoke everywhere. Most of the children beneath the rubble were burnt to a white crisp. It was a black school (without whites or coloureds), so the fire brigade didn't arrive until the next day. But Zorina had escaped with her life.

She had lived to see the newspaper headlines that blamed the fire on radical white men protesting Mandela's new South Africa, and within hours, the entire world was outraged to learn that white men had burned up forty-two innocent little black children. Riots broke up�for three days straight.

Riots.

But Zorina and Eve looked at each other now.

They knew that it wasn't white men who had deliberately burned those children to death, the teachers, too.

Etah laid in bed like a whale and cried like a baby. Above her head hung the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that her husband had proudly nailed to the wall on the very first day that they had moved into the house. In fact, after carrying Etah over the threshold, the portrait had been the first item of decoration that he'd carried into the house, even before a single piece of furniture. His mother had cherished it all her life and given it to the young couple as a life's luck gift. She bid her son to respect it as if it were she herself. So Nopopie had adored the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, and now by laying beneath it at night, Etah felt that she was especially close to her late husband's spirit. She believed that through Elizabeth II, Nopopie could hear her more clearly.

"Nopopie�it is me, again. Etah", she cried. "I feel as if none of our children have understood the warning in your murder, dear husband. The way those white devils kicked holes in your stomach and left you in the church restroom to die. Like you were just trash, dear husband."

The police had claimed Nopopie assaulted one of them after they had politely asked to see his traveling permit.

"I worry about Zorina", she wailed, tearfully. "I fear she's been compromised, like your mother and sister were when you were just a boy and couldn't protect them."

His smell came into the room, because Etah missed him.

She missed the way he said grace at mealtime.

She missed the times when he drank and cursed the white overseers who worked him mercilessly at the mines, making him bef every week for that pitifully low paying job, and then talked down to him like he was a boy.

She missed the times, right after Nopopie had brutally beaten her (clocked her upside the head with his boot)�the times afterward when he would pull her long, wide skirt up over her head and plunge his manhood deep inside her. She ached for the banging and the wretched sobbing�of a man sincerely sorry about the cruel ways in which he abused and humiliated her.

"I love you, my Etah!"

"I know you do, Nopopie. I know you do", she used to cry, so patiently, as her eyes were swollen shut and blood ran from her nose and busted lip.

Other times, he would beat her up and then take out his manhood and urinate right in her face. All in her hair and down her pregnant belly. "I can't afford all these kids, bitch!"

But she missed him now so much that she'd gladly go through it all again. Every moment of hurt and humiliation. Just to see him, touch him and know again�that he loved her.

Etah got up and put on some music. Miriam Makeba, Etta James, Burning Spear. She took her head rag off and greased the thick, soft African bushhead. Hot tea was sipped down. Prayers to Jesus Christ were hummed, spoken and cried passionately. She promised herself that she would clean up Miss Lindy's massage room real good tomorrow and get that blasted dress worked on.

Then she slept�and snored tremendously.

Eve's monkey had been missing ever since the fire.

Zorina bolted upright in bed!

Awake.

Breathing hard.

Wondering if it were Eve and Jesus Christ again�outside her window, standing barefoot on the dirt road�calling her.

She wished it were�but it wasn't.

She wished Winnie Mandela was her mother, but she wasn't.

She wished everyone knew that Golf Theron just couldn't get her out of his mind, but she as a kaffir girl, and therefore, no one would ever believe it.

She wished her classmates hadn't screamed so horribly as their flesh burned, their bones crackled like firewood and their lungs strained, coughing.

She could still hear them.

She could hear every last one of them.

Crying out wretchedly for their mamas.

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