from an event to an atmosphere as the smell of mbanji drifted into the air, a gift from the radical UNZA students. Thoroughly tipsy, Cookie wandered into the kitchen to work on her sewing plans, which coincided with her romantic plans in the form of the perfect wedding dress: McCall’s #2020 pattern but with lace, tulle and beaded wrists. She was deep in a flow of tracing bow patterns from an old issue of Vogue when she heard a booming voice within the party’s cacophony. She looked up from her sketches. The voice boomed again. She jumped up and left the kitchen, squeezing past the bodies corrugating the corridor.
She stood in the threshold to her bedroom, craning her head around a tall bearded guy in a striped sweater. Godfrey was fast asleep in an armchair, Matha on the floor at his feet, her head tipped back onto his knee, his hand casually draped across her throat. The other guests, wilted by the weed and the late hour, were leaning around the room, gazing at someone in its centre, nodding their heads with furrowed brows, trying to seem sober. Cookie ducked around the tall guy and that’s when she saw that telltale helmet, blatant and ancient and stained as a full moon. Edward Mukuka Nkoloso was speaking, or rather, speeching, the gap between his front teeth issuing an occasional whistle whenever his vehemence took his own breath away. He poked a hole in the air with his finger. Sweat poured from under his helmet like his face was melting.
‘…appreciate this celebration, which is very important to recognise the triumphs we have achieved in the struggle for liberation. But I must castigate you youthies as well! You have been lazy! You have been slouching, eh? Where is your passion? Where is the unflinching resolution and unbending dedication to freedom and justice? I call upon you, especially the girls! You must think, eat, sleep and dream the struggle for freedom! You think you are already free?’
The party guests clucked and shook their heads in agreement. The bearded boy next to Cookie turned and scolded her, ‘You are not free, ba sista, you are not!’
‘How can we be free if we are squabbling like monkeys over a mango? We must unite! I call upon you, the youth, to join me at the African Liberation Centre, safe house for freedom fighters from our neighbouring countries!’
Here several of the guests clapped. A drunk Eve on the floor let out a languorous ululation like a glugging drain. Matha had stood up and she was beaming at Ba Nkoloso, nodding fervently at his words. Cookie’s feet grew slippery in her patapatas.
‘Revolutionary youth! In death, revolutionaries are solidly immortalised into a battling ram! Let us tighten our belts and let us be prepared to die in the ranks of the liberation struggle!’
Applause erupted like thunder. Praise rained down from the very ceiling. Even the Eves – these young women whose mouths pursed around their proper English, who carried their books in navy British Overseas Airways Corporation bags to flaunt their families’ flights to London – even they began to channel their mothers. They danced and sang the old songs, bending forward, raising their arms, trembling their fingers, shaking their heads in a fury of joy. The two men on either side of Ba Nkoloso lifted him up so that his fist could punch even higher.
Cookie pushed through this delirium of patriotism to the centre of the room, where Ba Nkoloso was rising like a column. She shouted up at him, and then screamed, and when all this still went unnoticed, she tore off her suit jacket. She did not go topless. Cookie was no Mama Chikamoneka. But she was wearing a mere camisole beneath her jacket and this drew attention. Young men and women backed away from her, their eyes locked onto the nipples poking through the satin. The noise in the room simmered to a murmur. Ba Nkoloso’s bearers lowered him in front of Cookie.
‘You,’ she whispered, her eyes quivering.
‘Nkuka?! Is that you?’ He smiled broadly.
‘Iwe!’ she said louder and poked him in the chest. The room gasped. This was horrifically rude. Ba Nkoloso raised a hand. ‘It’s okay. This one is like my niece. She is unruly, like her name. Hottest part of the flame: Nkuka! The ember! Her mother was a martyr of our revolution—’
Cookie leapt forward at the mention of her mother. ‘You let her die like a dog! You took her from us!’ –