seethed as if Joseph were a dog.
‘Go outside with that boy and play,’ said Loveness. Jacob’s eyes bulged and he started to protest. Sylvia cut him short with a look as she struggled thin plastic gloves over her fingers.
‘It’s okay, baby,’ Mrs Banda said to Joseph. ‘Go on and play.’
Jacob turned with disgust and swept through the curtain to the back, where there was a door leading to the yard behind the salon. Joseph followed, his feet dragging.
Sylvia gave Mrs Banda a tight smile – solidarity in motherhood at least – and began parting the reddish afro in horizontal lines from ear to ear. After the harrowing of those trenches came the dabbing of cool white fire into them, then the gentle combing to spread the chemical agent across the battlefield. Mrs Banda closed her eyes. Sylvia did her job. Loveness counted kwacha. The salon girls stood in a cluster across the room, watching and whispering, classing and contrasting.
This one even has green eyes. Iye. But look at how big the other one’s eyes are. And the eyelashes? Maybe she is Maybelline! Kikiki! You people, light is right. Ah-ah, but they are the same colour! Almost, yes, but Ambi-light and coloured-light are different, mwandi. Nooo! Same-same. Ambi it works very well. It means Africans May Be Interested. Hehehe! But on Bana Joseph, you can see tuma dot-dot-dots like a muzungu. Fleckos? Me, I think she just has too much face. Mmhm, and with those skinny lips. Did you see the gap in the teeth? Bana Jacob has such a nice figure. This other one is fat. But look at her high heels, they are very spesho and…
And so it went, the salon girls trying to solve the mystery of a cheating man by trying to see with his split vision. Loveness finally disbanded their gossipy circle by snapping her fingers at them. They scattered about, attending to pointless tasks – polishing bottles, cleaning brushes. The room brimmed with silence. Even the two boys outside in the back were suspiciously quiet. When the lye was fully applied, Sylvia pulled a shower cap over Mrs Banda’s whitesmeared hair and released its ruffled edge with a conclusive snap.
‘Sylvia,’ Mrs Banda began.
Everyone turned their eyes towards her.
‘Anh?’ Sylvia said, very quietly.
Just then, there was a commotion at the front door. Everyone turned their eyes towards it.
‘Odi?’ The greeting was muffled. A shadow crept over the threshold. ‘Anyone home?’ called the hairy white woman as she rustled into the Hi-Fly, holding a little brown girl by the hand.
WeeeeeweeeEEEEweeeeeeEEEeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeWEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEeeee. We.
On we drone, annoying on, ennuiing on with our wheedling onomatopoeia. Udzudzu. Munyinyi. Vexatious pests! But better than your barking with wet, pungent holes! We? We sing with our dry, beating wings. A plangent vibration adrift in the air, a song as gracile as the swarm itself, our buoyant undulant throng. Why do we sing? For love, naturally.
At dusk or at dawn – the tipping of the day – our males hover over a chimney or a steeple. Around this post, they form a grey haze, a swirling mass of seduction. One by one, the females fly in, braving the entomological gauntlet. With quickspinning wings, each strums a keen air as she swoops through the chaos of men, and with their hairy antennae, they track her.
Then comes the chase, the grapple, the fall – you humans have these rituals, too. The male on the bottom, the pair tightly lock, and after a minute or so, they part ways. On occasion, her grip is too tight and he’ll pay for a life with his nethers! If he escapes unscathed, he’ll do it again, six to eight times in his lifespan. But the female is done now – she has loved and lost once – and she has all that she needs for the breeding.
A puddle, a pond, a lake, a river: she moves over the face of the waters. Hovering, she curtsies, and thrusts from her bottom a hundred fertilised eggs. She dive-bombs the surface with babies-to-be until a battalion awaits there. She gathers them into a small tapered craft, a canoe half the size of a rice grain. Then with nary a glance, our mother departs, leaving us to hatch without her.
We are like Russian dolls of metamorphosis, each phase of us hatched from the previous. Split the shell, breach the slit, then shed the old husk. From egg to larva, the comma-shaped pupa, then the wingèd and wobbly imago. Step onto the water with delicate feet.