fell swoop – then flying off, leaving him to stare at his bloodied stumps…He woke with a start and stared at his alarm clock for a good three minutes before he realised the numbers there were not the unbudging time, but another price tag.
Casting a look of disgust at Isa still sleeping beside him, he sat up and went to take his bath. When he found yet another tag bleeding its ink into the soap, he decided to make a thorough sweep of the house. He gathered all that he could find and went out to the yard behind the kitchen, where he lit an mbaula. Pyjamas dampening in the dew, he dropped handfuls of price tags into the embers, humming ‘Awaara Hoon’ to himself as the curling, blackening action began.
* * *
Sibilla had taken advantage of her grandmotherhood to resume doing some household chores, to let her body serve as it wished. She had gone outside to pluck some fresh eggs from the chicken coop for breakfast when she saw her son-in-law with his bonfire. She paused and put her hands on her hips, peering through her hair at him. What on earth was he doing? The smell of burning paper was pleasant but there was another smell, bitter as tarmac. Ah. Ink. He was burning the silly little price tags.
Sibilla felt a wave of pity for the man. Motherhood hadn’t warmed up Isabella one bit. Even with the extra padding pregnancy had lent her figure, the woman’s bones were still made of ice. As soon as Daddiji left for work, Isabella spent her whole day sticking numbers on things, the frenzy in her eyes somewhere between panic and glee. Now she seemed to have infected her husband with her mania.
‘It is just okay,’ Sibilla mumbled and proceeded to the chicken coop. Naila would be awake soon. The child needed breakfast – and protection.
Sibilla refused to intervene in a paper war, but she was growing concerned that, unbeknownst to her parents, little Naila was becoming obsessed with money. Sibilla had recently discovered a world globe covered in the girl’s rickety scrawl – Naila had priced all the nations with a felt-tip pen. The prices were laughably off and Sibilla had been amused to see that Zambia was worth the most: K100. But Naila had started collecting stray kwacha, too – from the kitchen table, her mother’s purse, her father’s bedside table – and storing it in an old cigar box. Sibilla was disturbed by this – the bills were worth very little but it was still theft – yet she hesitated to tell the girl’s parents. She wished to remain non-aligned in their peculiar Cold War.
* * *
The Saturday that this price war finally came to an end began with Isa at Shoprite doing the food shopping. Naila was at home with her nonna, Daddiji snoozing over a Times of Zambia. Isa wandered the aisles and compared the imported goods, running her fingers over the plastic-wrapped produce and the colourful boxes of cereal. The wheels of her mind were rolling along like the four wheels of her trolley – except only three of them were running smoothly. The fourth wheel stubbornly stuck and spun. Part of Isa’s mind was fretting. This tag campaign could not last forever, and it was the only thing standing between her and another pregnancy.
The truth was, Isa’s reluctance to have another child didn’t really have anything to do with money. It had to do with an image she couldn’t shake. It was from three years ago, when Naila had only just learned how to walk. That day, Isa had been standing in her underwear in front of her closet, trying to decide what to wear, when she felt a pinch. She winced and looked down. Naila was clutching Isa’s calf, gnawing at her knee like a holy fool. She was probably just teething, rubbing her gums against the bone, but Isa frowned down at her in befuddlement. What a stranger this human still seemed to her.
Shaking her head, Isa turned back to her closet and caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror. She stopped and stared at the unfamiliar bulges, almost architectural, that now carved her torso. In a flash, she thought: This child did this to me. And right then, in that moment of petty regret, Isa saw that she was bleeding, a splotch spreading up her white panties like