hand in the sheets. ‘Lionel? Lionel!’ She turned to Joseph and it seemed for a moment that her skin was blazing with eyes. ‘Get the doctor, Joe! Now!’
But by the time the doctors had rushed in, Dad had closed his eyes and nuzzled back into his coma. Joseph’s grandparents whispered about which ‘she’ he had meant. Before the stroke, Dad had asked after Thandi and Farai in England. But maybe he had meant his new wife Salina?
On Sunday afternoon, his lungs gave up and the doctors put him on a respirator. It took a while to adjust to the staticky sound of the breathing tube, and to the light spatter of tracheal blood visible in it. His bare feet were yellow and cracked and they would intermittently curl inwards as his shoulders rolled forward. The nurse came in and punctured their hopes. No, she said, this was not a sign of life. It was pronation, an involuntary convulsion of the body. Oh.
‘It’s time to gather the family,’ Grandpa noted grimly, and went outside to make calls.
Tears rolled from Gran’s unseeing eyes. She wiped them with her hand repeatedly, uselessly, a windscreen wiper in a tornado. Ba Grace cried with her, a brief squall. Joseph didn’t yet feel his grief so he cried at a remove. He cried for his grandmother’s crying, quietly, so as not to disturb it.
* * *
Joseph’s mother arrived early Monday morning, a small boy clutching her hand. Joseph hugged her stiffly and waved down at his three-year-old brother, whom he hadn’t seen since Farai was an infant. Farai had inherited their father’s golden skin and dark brown eyes but their mother’s reddish hair. Hers was hidden now under a black chitambala, a sign of her haste. Joseph could tell that she had been weeping the whole flight over, too, even though on the call to London, he had only heard Gran say: ‘Lionel’s sick. Come home.’
Mum had learned that he was dead once she got to the house, once she had been settled with a cup of tea and Farai had been extricated from her lap. Joseph and Grandpa had driven to the hospital to pick up the death certificate, so they missed the drama. Ba Grace filled them in on how Mum had reacted.
‘But Bana Joseph? She was cry-ying, bwana,’ she said, making bee-like patterns around the room, bouncing Farai in her arms. The boy was weeping, his head kneading rhythmically into her shoulder. ‘I was with this one so I could not help. That ka lazy muntu’ – her disdain for the gardener was palpable – ‘he was not around. So Madamu was the one who held her down. Iye! Mwebantu. Hm? Hm.’
Ba Grace made to papu Farai, adopting a precarious pose: her body bent perpendicular, with the boy balanced belly down on her back. She cast a chitenge over him like a sail, tied its corners in a knot over her heart, and rose with him strapped to her back. Farai slipped a thumb in his mouth and melted against her.
Gran came in and stood in the middle of the kitchen, stricken and silent. Grandpa went over and put his arms around her. Joseph realised he had never seen them like this. He almost laughed at the incongruous sight – the short black man and the tall white woman, gently rocking.
* * *
The will seemed simple at first. Lee had named Agnes his executor, and everything was to go to Salina apart from some funds for his two sons’ education. But it seemed Lee had neglected to update part of the document: his bank account and houses in Lusaka were still bequeathed to Thandi. This meant that the most complicated estate items – three houses in three different neighbourhoods – were now her responsibility. Thandi had started to build a new life in England. She had a job at a travel agency and was working towards right of abode for her and her sons. An inheritance in Zambia was more of a headache than a gift.
Salina apparently felt the same way. When Gran called to inform her of Lee’s death, she sighed. ‘I told him he would only reach death sooner if he went to greet it.’ She was Virus-positive too but she had refused his experimental treatment. She told Gran she would fly into Lusaka for the funeral and went on to enquire about the new upscale Radisson Blu hotel in town.
‘Typical,’ Aunt Carol muttered. Her face was puffy from crying,