A Walk to Remember: Turn the Other Cheek

Copyright © 2012 by Renny Tsikai.

ISBN:  Softcover   978-1-4691-4467-2

             Ebook      978-1-4691-4468-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 1

I was born Tsitsi Zindoga. The surname Zindoga was my mother’s. At age four I had no idea what a surname was. Let alone what my surname was! For some reason my mother did not want to talk about it, although many of her people were quite ready and willing to do so.

"Baba wako unowaziva here?" they would teasingly ask me. I do not remember having had to answer the loaded and oft-repeated question. They always would tell me who my father was although I never could quite work out why this piece of knowledge was so important.

Ndi Simukai.

That my grandparents loved me so unsparingly more than made up for any discomfort I might have suffered as a result of the constant interrogation about the identity of the man who had sired me (May their beloved souls rest in eternal peace!). I was a spoilt muzukuru (grandchild). I was their first and that made me a queen. No one touched me. My aunts and uncles worked in the towns as house maids, drivers and builders on construction sites and they brought me clothes whenever they visited. All the kids I played with had a person they called Baba. For me, however, it made no difference because I was happy. I had all I wanted and I was better than them when it came to material things. I had lovely clothes, and money to buy sweets. My grandparents made sure of that. I did not need a father.

*     *     *

I started school at St. Michael’s, the school nearest where we lived. I did my Sub A and Sub B there. I was playful, very playful. When I was in Sub B I failed a Shona spelling test. This was because I did not know my syllables. My mother’s sister and brothers were at Berejena with me. Whenever I got into a fracas they protected me. No one could touch me!

One day my mother came home with a handsome gentleman. Soon I too had someone I called Baba. Calling him that was not difficult since I knew he was not my father and I did not need one. At the time I felt like he was being imposed on me. Little did I know that not having a father was a curse. I was quite unaware of the stigma behind being called a bastard, an illegitimate child, someone with no totem. I was called a wild cat and so many other names. But in my blissful ignorance I cared little for such annoyances. I was honestly happy.

When my mother was legally married, I went to stay with her and her new husband in Mutare (Former Umtali town). I went there to do standard 1, the equivalent of what later became Grade 3. My mother and her husband now had a child—their first. Her name was Chenai. I now had a sister. Overnight almost, I had become a big sister!

But life in the towns had its problems. I discovered that my identity and age had to change. I was no longer Tsitsi Zindonga but Maidei Pomhodzai. I learned later that when my mother got married, she and her husband had to have children in order to qualify for a big house. Therefore, my mother’s younger sister, Maidei, and her brother were registered as their children. When I went to live with them I had to renounce my identity and become Maidei, the name on their town pass. I did not care what name I was known by because I was happy. Although having a father and a younger sister were exciting, life was still the same because during the holidays I went home to my grandparents and my friends, and was especially happy to be with Sekai at the end of the term.

My Standard One teacher was Mrs Chifamba. I don’t remember everything that happened in that class, but I remember being hit on the knuckles with a ruler. I was above average in my studies. At home, I was taken as the first born. That meant that I had to do most of the work, for example, washing the plates, watering the garden and looking after the baby. But the man I called father did not want to reprimand me. My mother was the one who used to do the necessary things whenever I did something wrong. He knew and I knew he had no right to touch me.

No one could lay a finger on me except my mother. I was quite clear in my mind that I did not want her to touch me either. Every time she wanted to beat me, there was a scene. At school I would jump from one desk to another if the teacher did so much as try to beat me with her notorious stick. Whenever this routine started the whole class hid under the desks. The commotion must have been heard from miles around! With Mother, things were even more dramatic. If she used a stick on me I grabbed it and broke it into pieces. She would then use clenched fists or clap me with the insides of her open palms. As for my peers, starting a fight was something else. None of the kids dared start one. In any such fight I became something of a wild cat, scratching, pinching and punching. Kicking too!

In general I was happy. I went through Standard One and Two easily. In Standard Three I was in the top class—3A. The teacher was horrible and I became horrible too. I used not to comb my hair to upset him. He told the class that my hair was a typical example of unkempt Bushman hair. To my horror I went to Standard 4A with him again. God, I suffered. I was on detention nearly every week. He had two pieces of hosepipe, one green and another black. He called them Green Mamba and Black Mamba. Whenever it was reckoning time we were asked to choose between them. That year was a nightmare. It was probably because I got away with most things at home. I thought I was untouchable, but this teacher showed me that I was not. Those were years of a strange kind of innocence.

CHAPTER 2

January, before I went into Standard Five, was the turning point of my life. From that time, tears rolled down my cheeks nearly every day. I was no longer the happy-go-lucky girl that I had been. No longer was I the ‘I-don’t-care’ type. I now habitually wore a long face.

It all started on this late January evening. At first I thought it was some kind of sick joke. The devil visited my family. It was a sad day, not just for my mother, as I realised later, but for me too because it changed my life for good. My step father did not come home early that day as he usually did. Sadly, he never came back at all. A man came to tell us that he had been shot dead and that his body was in the mortuary. My uncle, the one who later became my guardian, burst out laughing.

How can he be in a mortuary? he asked.

My mother was restless.

I brought you this news.

Without another word, the stranger stood up and left.

Mother’s wailing accentuated the confusion. It was in the evening around seven. Despite her desperate wailing Mother still looked unbelieving. Could it