with them at the Inters stop, and stood behind a tree to watch as Grace dragged Sylvia up the outdoor steps of the Indeco Flats and opened a door on the second storey.
As soon as she saw the door shut, Bonita took the next bus back to No. 74 Kalingalinga. Matha was nowhere to be found, so Bonita hurried over to No. 78. She found Mrs Zulu sitting on the ground, her granddaughter standing over her, tying her grey hair into knots.
‘They have taken Sylvia!’ Bonita cried breathlessly.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The aunty has taken Sylvia. I saw it with my own eyes. Ba Matha is missing too – and No. 74 has been ransacked!’
Mrs Zulu rose, so slowly that her granddaughter kept trying to finish the hairdo, her chubby arms rising up and up, until the head finally slipped from her grasp.
‘It is a state of emergency,’ Mrs Zulu declared.
She sent word to The Weepers to gather immediately. When all nine stood before her in various states of frowse and undress, she announced the situation. Someone wondered if Matha and her daughter were together at the Indeco Flats? Mrs Zulu doubted it, she doubted it extremely! Mrs Zulu had her suspicions – she had always had her suspicions! – about that misnamed cousin of it. Grace! The Weepers clucked in concert. Should they go back to the flats? No. Not yet. Mrs Zulu decided they should camp at No. 74 Kalingalinga and wait for either the victims or the perpetrator to return.
None of The Weepers wept that day. And that night, scattered in groups in the dirt yard, none of them slept either. They sipped tea and slapped at mosquitoes and shared their blankets and kept vigil. And when Matha returned alone from Aunt Beatrice’s the next morning, they rejoiced. They wrapped their arms around her and lifted her onto their shoulders. They sang her name in the melody of a hymn.
Matha did not protest. How was she to tell these loyal women that in the night, in the exile of Aunt Beatrice’s steps, she had given up on her daughter? That she had followed in her mind a trail from Sylvia nowgone to Sylvia neverbeen? That she had come home this morning without even trying to search for her. Matha was too ashamed to confess. She let The Weepers carry her along, let them cry tears and sing songs on her behalf, as Mrs Zulu led the charge to the Indeco Flats.
* * *
Sylvia woke up with a small person’s hangover, a dizzy, fuzzy feeling born of sugar and adrenaline. Yesterday had ended in a way she had never thought possible. She had been permitted to bounce on a bed. An actual bed. With actual springs. Up in the air and down again and right back up once more! Sylvia had never felt so light, so tossed. She had never imagined a ceiling that she would want to touch. And New Aunty had not spanked her for any of this. This beautiful woman had just sat smiling on the other bed in the room – two beds! in one room! – and watched, spots of brightness in her eyes, as if she had just stopped crying, or was about to start.
Sylvia kept expecting New Aunty to cry, maybe because she resembled Ba Mayo – there was something familiar around the dip between the eyes. Plus New Aunty was doing all the things Ba Mayo always did, bathing Sylvia and feeding her and plaiting her hair into mukule. But although Sylvia kept checking all day, she never saw New Aunty cry. This was wonderful because when New Aunty wrapped her arms around her, it wasn’t damp or sticky. But it was also confusing: wasn’t crying just what one’s mother did? All day, every day? This tearlessness was both a respite to Sylvia and a dry, empty space.
Sylvia soon forgot about it, though, so busy was she living her new life. There was the food she had never tasted – the sweets that stung her mouth with riotous pleasure – and the toys and the clothing in colours she’d never seen. She was still wearing the sparkling pink dress that had ballooned around her as she propelled herself up and down on this actual bed in this actual room that New Aunty had said could be all hers, hers alone. Sylvia assumed this was a lie – who in the world had a room all to herself? – but things