CHAPTER
ONE
The mail has come…I can see my fellow schoolmates tethering
in excited chatter in which I refuse to partake. My lack thereof of that
feeling I can see beaming on their faces is because I never got letters.
Boarding school in primary school demands that thread tying you to your home to
remain untouched, untempered with and intact. However, mine has been severed to
smithereens since I am the forgotten one. The child people only remember when
they see. As long as I am not in their line of vision I am a foreign city. A
foreign city that is only remembered when one is forced to go on vacation there.
Some see it as only a letter but that little package would bridge the gap
between me and my distant parents. Something I always anticipated but was
always disappointed to the point of having no expectations.
Disappointment mounting upon disappointment seemed to
the story of her life. Anga aneta
nekubaiwa nehupenyu kunge tsono dzinohoreswa.Sometimes she felt as though
she couldn't take any more of it since there was no more room for it in her
disappointment immersed life. All that was left was for her to scream ‘I AM
DISSAPOINTED OUT!!’ She should have drowned a while back from it but it took even
her by surprise how she was still alive and how she kept on surviving through that
horrid feeling. It was yet still a wonder to her how she still got up…she had
not a single pinch of hope left in her body that reeked with the stench of
disappointment. Ndicharamba
ndichishungurudzika kusvika kupi ko nhai veduwe? How much more could she
take? She quizzed the powers that be desperately. The question hung like a
pendulum swaying to and fro in the dead of an empty neglected room. Resounding
over and over again like the tik tok of the grandfather clock in the deserted
corridors of a convent.
Sei?
Baba’s death from that disease everyone in our society spoke about in harsh
whispers and frowned upon, fore ran that of mama whose death had not prepared me
for a sense of loss I knew I could never recover from. We had been taught in
bible knowledge class about the story of John the Baptist and him being the fore
runner of Jesus Christ. There seemed to be a resemblance with the deaths of my
parents the difference being john was paving the way for the coming messiah
whilst baba’s death had not paved the path for mama’s death in any way instead
the grief I felt was so heavy my shoulders ached….
Mama wrote me letters only when I found a way to twist
her arm about it. I wanted her to remember me without the unnecessary cohesion.
Disappointingly, this remained a far fetched dream that would never blossom into
reality. Like man being able to land on the sun...a dream no one attempted to
buy. Question me one day to explain to you how a mother is able to forget her
own child like she didn't birth her in those harrowing moments of labor. Worse
yet why she had not opted for the quick cowardly way out that would have blotted
me from existence without me having set foot into the world of human existence.
In response to your question, it still was a riddled mystery how a mother could
do that to her own flesh…her own colt that needed her milk till it was off age
and independent enough. I cannot answer your question because I refuse to
answer for her sins. She should answer, mama should surely answer. The platform is there for her to do so
adequately. Unfortunately, she is belly up and most probably weaving her tales
and giving those much needed answers to the lifeless bodies in the city council
cemetery. Of what use is that to me? This is one of the moments where I wish I
could trade places with one of those corpses and get my much needed answers.
I’m being worse than the word foolish in this moment
but that is as far as honest about my feelings as I can go. I know you wonder
how I could wish to be dead at this point in time when those corpses would give
whatever valuables they had in this lifetime to have a second go at life. Life
and death, far apart but yet so close. You could swear the two were walking
hand in hand depending on those involved. Maybe life and death could be
companions one day. It would be my deepest wish so that I could talk to mama. Finally put her on the stand. If this chronic
case of nostalgia could bring her back, she is already here.
Many questions …no answers. Whom is to blame nhai amai?
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