hido went into Standard Six in the year that Babamukuru returned from England. This meant that he was going to secondary school the following year. Babamukuru had intended him to stay on at the mission to counteract the unAfrican exposure he had been subjected to in England, but Mr Baker, as Nyaradzo’s father is called, arranged for Chido to take the entrance examination to his son’s school. So determined was this good missionary that Chido should have the best in life that he personally drove my cousin to Salisbury, where the examination was taking place. Not surprisingly, since Whites were indulgent towards promising young black boys in those days, provided that the promise was a peaceful promise, a grateful promise to accept whatever was handed out to them and not to expect more, Chido was offered a place at the school and a scholarship to go with it. Nyasha was sure that Mr Baker had had a hand in that scholarship. To ease his conscience, she said. ‘A word with the headmasters’ she told me when Nyaradzo was not present. ‘You know how it is, bwana to bwana: “The boy needs the cash, old man!”; “He’s a good boy, what. Pity to waste him. We'll see what we can do.” So Chido gets his scholarship and Mr Baker feels better about sending his sons there in the first place. Really! The things they get up to to pull the wool over our eyes. Really!’ Nyasha’s analysis made sense because Babamukuru did not approve of European habits, easy options or unnecessary expenditure. Without the scholarship Chido certainly would not have gone to that school and Mr Baker would have had his sons’ superior education nibbling away at his conscience. The upshot of all this was that Chido did go to this boarding school and by the time I went to the mission he had adapted remarkably well to private-school life. He had acquired the usual courteous, self- indulgent, private —- school habits and was firm friends with the Baker boys. As a result I did not see much of him or of the Bakerboys, except for a day or two at the beginning or the end of the holidays, because their school ran according toa calendar that was different from the one we used at the mission. Since Nyasha was in Form Two in that year, my first year at the mission, she was writing her first set of public examinations. Actually, they were her second set, because she had sat her Standard Six examinations, but Nyasha, who had benefited froma head-start programme for gifted children in England, pooh- poohed those Standard Six examinations. Characteristicall

the way she had begun to call me ‘Sisi’, because she was older than I and so did not need to cali me that; nor had she done so when she came home for Nhamo’s funeral or when I arrived, a matter of a few hours ago. Not that it was important in i

urther than I had even thought of reaching, was beginning to indicate that there were other directions to be taken, other struggles to engage in besides the consuming desire to emancipate myself and my family. Nyasha gave me the impression of moving, always moving and striving towards some state that she had seen and accepted a long time ago. Apprehensive as I was, vague as I was about the nature of her destination, I wanted to go with her. I did not want to be left behind. And being so young, time measured in hours and half hours, was important, so I did not want to spend three whole weeks away from my cousin. Knowing I would be at a loss without her, I was tempted to ask Babamukuru whether I could go with them to the mission, but in the end I decided not to because I knew he would refuse and be justified in doing so. There was much work to be done in the fields, in the garden, in the home. And, of course, I could not leave my mother, who was not well. We all gathered in the yard, my father, my mother, Takesure, Lucia, my little sisters and myself, to wave them off, with everybody laughing and talking, saying my uncle must be sure to come back soon, bringing Maiguru, Nyasha and Chido as well with him. And then my relatives were in the car, rolling out of the yard and out of sight. A sigh escaped from us and we all felt oddly relieved. “Whew! It was good to have Mukoma here, it was good,’ observed my father, ‘but it puts a weight on your shoulders, a great weight on your shoulders!’ ‘It’s true,” nodded Takesure, leering lasciviously at Lucia. ‘Dhiya! There’s nothing to be afraid of any more. Won’t youcome back to the Aozi tonight?’ ‘Maybe if you cut my hands off,’ retorted Lucia. ‘Then you might be useful.’ “But you have the hands and you are still here. So you are waiting, aren’t you? Just waiting to come back into the hozi.’ Lucia was careful not to be provoked. ‘You know why I’m waiting? For my sister, isn’t it? As soon as my sister makes up her mind what she wants, you won’t see me here any more.’ My father and Takesure found this amusing. They had a good laugh at Lucia’s expense. ‘Now what is this lam hearing!’ gurgled Takesure. ‘The woman

blessing but one that

‘Even if you do ignore me,” Lucia continued, ‘it doesn’t mean I’m not here. And anyway, Mwaramu, maybe you can tell me plainly: where do you want me to go? We both know I can’t go home. Their sending me here in the first place, it was because there was no food, and no work either at that place, isn’t it? It’s true, you know it. So where do you want me to go? As for going with Takesure, ha-a-a! I know it’s the way you joke, Babamukuru. What would I go to do at Takesure’s home?’ I wished Lucia would be quiet. Her case was a serious one and it did not help to be rude to Babamukuru. Lucia was my mother’s sister, several years younger than my mother and a wild woman in spite of - or maybe because of — her beauty. She was dark like my mother, but unlike my mother her complexion always had a light shining from underneath the skin, so she could afford to scoff at the skin-lightening creams tha@other girls used. ‘Fanta and Coca- Cola!’ she laughed. ‘Aiwa! Not me. I prefer to be the same colour all over.’ Asa result, her skin was not deteriorating and breaking; it remained glowing and healthy. My mother’s family was very poor, poorer even than my own. At the time that my father took my mother, there were no cattle at all in my grandfather’s kraal. Because of this, some people had believed it was a blessing that the first two of my maternal grandparents’ children were girls. ‘Otherwise,’ they reasoned optimistically, ‘if he had had sons, how would those sons have taken wives? See now, the daughters will bring cattle, the cattle will enable the old man to work his fields, the family will prosper, and when the sons are of an age to marry, by then they will have acculuated their roora.’ The wise and the cynical disagreed. ‘Who knows?’ they dissented. ‘If there had been sons earlier, they would have helped the old man on the land. The family would have been better off than they are now. Besides,” they added significantly, ‘a man can’t be sure about daughters!” Thus the debate continued in my mother’s village, way up in the north-west of the country, until my father, visiting a distant relative, saw my mother, impregnated her and was obliged to take her home with him. It was unfortunate that it happened this way because, under these circumstances, my grandfather could not

I’m glad,’ said Nyasha when we began to talk seriously, ‘that we have to share this room. It means we’ll be friends. But you curled your lip at us when we came back from England, so I didn’t know what was going to happen when you came. I just said to myself, P'll try to be nice, I'll try to be friendly and we'll see what happens.’ ‘But I did not sneer at you,’ I protested, speaking in Shona. Our conversation was laboured and clumsy because when Nyasha spoke seriously her thoughts came in English, whereas with me, the little English I had disappeared wh