the world. Together, she and her shadow took pleasure in small things. The crispy, crinkly sound of certain vegetables and pieces of rubbish. The reflection of her face in a bucket of water. The immensity and float of the sky. The jerky crawl of inswa from the holes in the ground after the rains.
* * *
One day, when Sylvia was five or six – her mother did not keep track of birthdays – her quiet life opened and sound and fury flooded in. Sylvia woke, as usual, to her mother sneezing salt. The sky beyond the raised curtain at the shack entrance was the colour of a rag that has been washed too often. Sylvia lay there, listening to the doves’ song lilting down-up-down, down…down…until the sun finally stretched its arms overhead. She sat up and imitated it. Ba Mayo was outside, lighting the fire for breakfast. The unga sack curtain was still – Aunty Grace had already left for her job cleaning for an apamwamba family in Handsworth Park.
Sylvia loved this time of morning, when everyone was too inside their nighttime dreams or their daytime plans to pay any mind to the daughter of the witch at No. 74 Kalingalinga. Sylvia picked up her yellow bucket and padded outside, making her way to the communal latrines to pee, then to the tap to fill up. The tap had already grown its two tails – a tail of water snaking along the ground, and a tail of sleepyheads in the queue. When she reached their conjoined head, she filled her bucket, lifted it over her head, nestled it onto her unkempt afro, and quickstepped home, the water rocking contentedly above her.
In the yard at No. 74, she swung the bucket down and set it at her mother’s feet. Ba Mayo patted her head in thanks, then crouched to blow the coals of the mbaula. Sylvia padded back inside to fold up their sleeping mats. Why did so many insects die in the night? She counted a moth, a trail of fallen ants and four mosquitoes that had all drowned in a puddle of her mother’s tears. Kalingalinga was still gathering its morning sounds – crowing, calling, complaint. Sylvia contributed the soft scratch of her handbroom as she bent double and swept the dead insects out, one hand behind her back.
When she stopped, she heard someone crying. Ba Mayo cried all the time but she was never loud about it. Sylvia went outside and found her mother standing over the mbaula, the pot of nshima porridge on the coals trying to bubble through its own heaviness. Ba Mayo’s fists were on her hips, her head pivoting back and forth like a bird as she searched for the source of the noise. On the ground a few feet away, a woman with scruffy grey knots of hair was sitting, sobbing loudly, a big book by her side – it was their neighbour. Sylvia knelt in front of her and clapped her cupped hands in greeting. Then she helped the older woman to her feet and led her to her mother. ‘Ba Mayo!’ she shouted. ‘It is Ba Mrs Zulu!’
The porridge on the coals had finally overcome its weight and was bubbling enthusiastically. Sylvia rescued it, pouring portions into three tin bowls. She took two over to the women, who were now sitting under a tree, and squatted nearby, sipping porridge from her spoon, watching them. It was Sylvia’s first lesson in varieties of grief. Mrs Zulu fretted with the book on her lap as she howled, her tears diverted by her wrinkles. Ba Mayo’s jaw jutted, her tongue exploring her teeth as tears slid steadily down her smooth cheeks. Punctuated by Mrs Zulu’s hiccups, the quiet between them seemed quieter. Then after a few minutes, as if struck by an idea, Ba Mayo stood up, leaned over and slapped Mrs Zulu across the face. Sylvia sputtered. Mrs Zulu gulped. Ba Mayo disappeared into No. 74.
* * *
Mrs Zulu had been deferred but she remained undeterred. She began posting hand-scrawled advertisements around the compound: ARE YOU CRYING? NOT TIPICO SAD PEPO, ONLY TRULLY SAD. WOMAN ONLY. SEE M. ZULU IN NO. 78 FOR INTAVEW. BEHIND THE BUTCHARY. It was rumoured that Mrs Zulu’s application interview consisted of just one question: ‘Is there a cure for your suffering?’ If the woman nodded or implied that there was a balm for her misery, Mrs Zulu would erupt: ‘Yes? Then no, I am not here