turned from the scar to look at her sister and realised that Matha was asking for a place to stay.
It was tight and tenuous living in the hostel. Cookie paid her roommate with a Wrap-A-Rounder Dress (#9119) to find another bed so Matha and Godfrey could use it. Their furtive coupling, their chatting and canoodling, kept Cookie up all night; in the mornings, her washing and rattling woke them up. The room felt ruffled, night and day trading off in a noisome relay.
About a week after Matha and Godfrey had moved in, Cookie came home from Typing II class to find a troop of young men in green outfits lounging in her tiny bedroom. They were propped at different levels of the room – on her desk, her floor, her bed – like monkeys in a tree, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and fingering instruments, imitating the notes of a song plinking out from the Supersonic, which they had filched from the communal kitchen. Godfrey flashed his big white grin at her from his perch on her pillow. ‘Shani, mulamu?’ he said, then went back to pick-pick-picking at the strings of his guitar.
‘Not your sister-in-law,’ Cookie muttered as she stomped out of the bedroom and down the corridor, pushing past a dreadlocked guy dabbling on what looked like an electric kalimba. In the kitchen, three Eves were at the table, sulking over their homework. Matha was standing at the stove, whistling obliviously. She had tied a chitenge under her arms for an apron and was clutching a big flat wooden spoon. The nshima in the pot before her was roiling and leaping like a rowdy crowd. Matha glanced at Cookie as she recklessly added more mealie meal to it.
‘Howzit, sisi?’
‘Who are these muntus, Matha?’
‘The Just Rockets!’ Matha laughed, then her eyes softened. ‘Friends, Nkuka. Comrades!’
‘We are not supposed to have males in the hostel,’ Cookie huffed. ‘You know that.’
Matha gave her a look. ‘Really, Nkuka? You are one to talk about having males – ow!’ She winced as a bubble on the surface of the nshima burst onto her thumb.
‘Ach,’ Cookie sucked her teeth as she crossed the kitchen in two strides and grabbed the spoon. ‘You were always so bad at this,’ she said and took over stirring the thick porridge.
She couldn’t say more, not with the Mwape situation, and certainly not with an audience – the Eves in the corner were already staring and whispering. Matha smiled sweetly around the singed thumb she was sucking as she backed out of the kitchen, then darted out into the corridor. As soon as she was gone, the Eves in the kitchen launched into a griping session. It was too loud in here, it was too crowded, how could they study? Cookie placated them by inviting them to the party. The Eves glanced at each other, then giggled and ran off to change clothes.
Cookie seethed as she continued to prepare the food, her sweat making her trouser suit (#2120) feel even heavier. But muscling her way through the cooking lit a spark in her marrow. By the time she served the meal – nshima, kalembula and kapenta on shared plates to be held on the laps and palms of the guests crowding the hostel – Cookie was flushed and tingling.
Watching with pride as everyone stuffed their faces, she drank a well-earned Castle and looked over the new arrivals in her bedroom: Youth Brigaders and musicians and a few students from the fancy new University of Zambia. Debates leapt back and forth across the room, arguments bouncing about as if this were a football pitch, the question a spinning ball. The two beds had been propped on their sides to make more room, and several Eves were dancing between them, hips circling in loose loops, lips between their teeth.
Big Gold Six played ‘Ti Chose Smith Bampando’, which tumbled into ‘Four Year Plan’, which gave way to Spokes Mashane. Alick Nkhata’s voice honeyed out from the wireless and the rock musicians rolled their eyes as the Eves closed theirs dreamily. When the Dark City Sisters came on with ‘Langa More’, Cookie opened another Castle and joined the dancing. The wayaleshi did its best, bleating out those swaying, rocking soul songs, songs that stretch the time of courtship to accommodate comings and goings, lingering and touch. The guys and girls danced with coiled control, brushing the tips of their shoes and bumping the edges of their hips. The brink was the point.
The music receded