her cargo pants creased at the joints. She had just flown in from Malawi, where she worked as a wildlife conservationist.
‘I invited her to stay but she said she wouldn’t want to impose,’ said Gran, flustered.
Aunt Carol sipped her tea. ‘They were only married for a year, Mum.’ She herself was unmarried.
‘They must have meant something to each other,’ said Gran. ‘But Salina did seem awfully calm to learn she was a widow.’
‘It is very rude,’ said Grandpa. ‘She has dishonoured my son.’
They stared at him. He had always had a strained relationship with his son. Now that Lee was dead, Grandpa seemed unusually interested in honouring him, or at least in displaying that honour to others. Grandpa had six siblings, two of whom had had eight children each. Having long kept his life with his white wife and coloured children separate from this ‘village’, as he called it, he had recently reconnected with the relatives to organise the funeral. They had eagerly inserted themselves into the arrangements. They loved Lee with an assumed bloodlove and boasted of his successes – and there would of course be plentiful leavings, bones to pick, at a funeral of this calibre.
When his grandparents came home from choosing the coffin, Joseph could tell that they had argued. Gran looked bewildered, Grandpa fractious. Gran told Joseph later that it had been a madhouse at the warehouse in town, a dozen relatives vying for the honour of selecting the perfect box. In the end, Grandpa had bought a gold-plated coffin lined in white satin, the most expensive one in the place. The funerals, both the home one and the church one, would be opulent and grand. Dr Lionel Banda would receive all the ceremonial honours due to him.
* * *
The home funeral came first. The mourners – relatives, friends, colleagues and patients – trickled into the house in Handsworth Park over the course of three days. Women knelt on the sitting-room floor and wailed. Men sat outside in armchairs and murmured. Joseph was sent to the TV room, where all the ‘kids’ – those under twenty – had been banished. The girls were heaped on the sofas, dabbling on their phones, chatting and laughing. The boys lay prone on the floor, gazing at the flat-screen TV, where Serena Williams and some white woman were driving a neon ball back and forth across flush green parcelled in white. The volume was up. Grunts and pocks and hushed British voices filled the room. Joseph sat in a corner and took out his phone.
‘Joseph!’ Ba Grace’s voice came from the doorway. She was holding Farai by the hand. ‘Please, you must take care of your bluther and give your mother some time.’
Joseph got up reluctantly and led the boy into the room by the hand, Farai looking forlornly over his shoulder at Ba Grace’s retreating back. The two of them sat in the corner.
‘You’re my brother?’ Farai asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a car?’
Joseph shook his head.
‘A bike?’
‘No.’
Farai proceeded to interrogate him about every vehicle imaginable: planes and motorcycles and vans and trains. Finally, Joseph collapsed onto his back and begged him to stop. Farai giggled and put his small heavy head on Joseph’s stomach, sighing ‘Hokay, hokay.’ For the rest of the afternoon, Farai was content to sit next to him, his hand coiled inside Joseph’s while they watched the tennis match.
When it was over, they went to the kitchen together to fetch a drink, Farai trotting at Joseph’s side. The house had been rearranged, furniture shoved to the walls, bookshelves turned to face them, valuable items locked up. It didn’t seem like home. They passed the open door to the veranda, where the men chatted quietly in mbaula-lit dimness. They passed the open door to the dining room, where Gran and Aunt Carol sat in silence at the table. Gran looked frail beside her muscular daughter, cowed by the traditional chitenge wrapper she was wearing. Their faces were human and sad in the evening light.
In the kitchen, Joseph took two Fantas from the battalion in the fridge, handed one to Farai, and searched for a bottle opener. One of Dad’s colleagues came in and plucked a Mosi from a crate on the floor. Joseph felt intimidated until he zoomed in on the doctor. His white lab coat was wrinkled and stained; his afro was flat on one side and speckled with grey; a withered black stethoscope hung from his neck, a prop too far.
‘You are the sons of the