The gifted one_A short story

I’m standing in the middle of a dry Oshana which seems to stretch on endlessly, from where I stand to the horizon. I look across to see thousands of grey mud cracks, curving up, as if to smile at me. Traversing the sea of mud cracks is a group of barefoot children in rag tag uniforms. They trot along, each with a homemade sling bag on the shoulder. I stop to catch my breath and as the morning breeze dries my brow, the gap between me and them starts to grow, I fall further behind. My short legs start to ache, the sandals on my feet feel like anchors, so I stop, I look back and I can’t even see home anymore. I start walking again and out of nowhere she walks towards me, long legs eating up the ground like a marathon runner. She reaches into her bag and flings a plastic bottle of Ontaku at me (a drink with the energy equivalent of 3 red bulls). I gleefully accept, opening it slowly to avoid it frothing and overflowing, and I chuck down a few refreshing gulps. She asks if I can run and I shake my head, she looks down at me and pats me on the head. She beams a blinding smile at me. In that moment she is everything – sister and guardian angel in one. She picks me up without as much as a grunt and puts me on her back. She picks up speed and passes the children, only when we reach the edge of the Oshana does she put me down, and by the time the other children catch up, we’re already at our destination – school. This is my earliest memory of my big sister Valeria.

***

The first to chase Valeria were the boys. By then, I was old enough to walk long distances without being carried, and she had grown a chest that spoke for itself, thighs that curved like the graph of a parabola, and a behind which had an attractive force that made married men forget that they were. Puberty had blessed her. 

Tshuuveni Emvula was one of those boys, he had a hungry look in his eyes, and he was on my sister like a horny mongrel on a bitch on heat. I knew what he wanted from my big sister; men are all born programmed with the same source code. I would grow up and want the same thing from their little sisters. That didn’t stop me from getting a puppy, I called him Kali, and in a few months he grew so big that Tshuuveni was training for the Olympic 100 meter sprint, every time he stepped anywhere close to our homestead. Valeria was still protecting me – from the bullies, from sickness, from myself. She fed me, and nursed me, sometimes I even forgot that I had a mother. 

After our father died, suddenly, and in the manner that aroused maximum suspicion – in his sleep (even though, he’d been coughing his lungs out for months). My mother shipped my little brother and me off to live with our aunts in town. Unfortunate events have bad timing. I only saw Valeria and my mother during school holidays; we were now in a long distance relationship .She and my older siblings migrated with our mother, she settled on a piece of land given to her by my maternal grandfather, my father’s people took their brothers wealth and sent her back to her own, she left with nothing.

***

The second to chase Valeria were the mean girls, her classmates – angry, jealous, sadistic bitches. Valeria excelled in her grade 10 exams, my aunt, who was now a person of importance, decided that it was worth pulling her out of the village school and bringing her to town, even if it meant she had to repeat grade 11. The first few times I went to visit her at the hostel, they assumed that I was her boyfriend, I was only 3 years younger but my chin had already started blackening into what would become a bush of a beard.

Then the fights started, she was sent home with a face that was more wife-smacked-by-no-good-husband than teenage girl after a cat fight. My aunt threw her weight around and the principal assured her that the deviants would be dealt with, but Valeria didn’t want to go back.

“First they stole my books, but I passed. Then they started stealing my stuff, but I passed. Now they did this.” She said, pointing to her eye, which was black, bruised and closed like a boxer’s after a pounding. 

“They said that they would ruin school for me.” My aunt rubbished her claims, she told her to toughen up.

“One of them said that she would SHOW me.” 

My aunt’s face slowly went blank; draining of emotion as though she’d received news of somebody’s passing. My classmates had SHOWED me and the results had driven fear into her. She had told me the same thing, toughen up, but these things don’t fear tough. I saw and heard things, things that others couldn’t see nor hear. Then I fought beings in my sleep that disappeared back into the darkness when the lights were on, so she initially assumed that I had fabricated it. She called it the side effects of an active imagination, but the scars around my neck and on my torso the morning after said otherwise.

Valeria and I had two main things in common; we both had really huge heads and we both excelled academically, something my mother was proud of.

“Is this her?” A podgy lady once asked my mother at a wedding, whilst admiring Valeria.

“Yes.” My mother beamed, exuding intense pride, “She’s the gifted one.” 

My aunt scolded her later, “Bertha, don’t be naïve, stop flaunting your blessings.” 

My mother grew angry, insisting that her sister wanted her where she always was – in her shadow. 

My aunt saw it differently, “While you pray at night, for success, for the prosperity of your children. Others pray against you.” My mother remained silent. 

“That is witchcraft my sister, there are those with dark hearts and even darker intentions. While you petition God, they petition the same God against you. That is witchcraft!” My aunt wasn’t always superstitious, but a childless marriage had altered her stance.

***

The voices were the third to chase Valeria, and unfortunately unlike the horny boys, and the mean girls, she could never outrun the voices – you can’t run from something that is a part of you, it’s like trying to run from your own shadow. 

Her friends said that it started in class. “She just started talking to herself, like she was on the phone, but with herself.” One of them said, while the other explained how Valeria got up and walked, and kept on walking, further and further from the school. By the time that my aunt found her, she was barefoot and lost. We brought her home, but Valeria got out of the car and started walking. I called out her name and for a second she stopped, she turned towards me, she could hear me, but clearly I wasn’t the only one talking to her. There was a civil war going on inside my sister’s head, like something had taken hold of her and it was refusing to let her go. I closed the gate; she kept walking around the house, circling the yard. Whenever she got close to the gate, Kali, recently relocated to town, barked her around back into her loop. Eventually she got tired and passed out; she was admitted to the psychiatric ward the next day.

During her first stint in Saal 16, I visited her almost 3 times a week, during school holidays I went every day. Whenever my aunt cooked something I brought her a home cooked meal: beef, mutton, or lamb, never chicken because it gave her allergies. It was my turn to take care of her. I also took her crossword puzzles and a pen, I left them with a nurse because even though it was a hospital, Saal 16 was basically a prison and prisoners and sharp objects is not a good combination. 

“I want to go home, I feel trapped in here.” She once said, tears pooling in her eyes. I promised her that she would, once she was better. 

“Will that ever happen?” She asked. “Will it ever stop?”

I then realized that she felt trapped inside her own head, just as I did sometimes, especially in my dreams. Valeria never got better. The psychiatrists tried different combinations of drugs, but they only worked for a short while – when she took them, but eventually she’d always go back to walking. She walked into the walls sometimes. She’d joke about it, “I got into a fight with the walls in the corridors,” pointing at her bruised lip.

After 6 years, my oldest sister suggested alternative treatment, “Omunona na falwe paantu.” The child must be taken to the elders. They took her to a healer, deep in the forests along the border with Angola. A month later she came back a gaunt imitation, as if they tried to starve it out of her, but she had calmed down. Her walks were infrequent and periodic, like solar eclipses. My sister’s life stagnated; it was stuck at the same point, like a scratched CD. She stayed in the village, while her peers finished university, got jobs, and started families. The only one to ever come around and check on her was Tshuuveni, now Sergeant Emvula. If news went around that I had come home, he would drop by and we’d joke around, he’d always reminding me that had things worked out differently, then he’d be my brother in law. I would always remind him that Kali could still run.

***

The spiritual warfare in my dreams got more intense during my tenure at university, my aunt believed that the spirits were initially sent for me but got Valeria instead, and they were now trying to tie up loose ends. I tried my best to pretend that I was a normal functioning young adult, but my mind became a cacophonous hell of endless thoughts. What if she was right? Was I the cause of what had befallen Valeria? 

My trips home became sporadic as academic commitments and my blossoming relationship with insomnia took their toll. The last time I went home, I was awoken by my mother’s shouting; I pulled myself out of bed to find my mother trying to cajole Valeria out of a midnight stroll. Valeria was doing a loop around the homestead, old Kali was standing guard at the entrance, when my mother tried to usher her indoors, Valeria pushed her away, she fell backwards and I caught her in mid-fall. I was shocked at how powerful Valeria was during walkabout, but it showed how old our mother had become, chasing after Valeria had aged her. 

“Meme, go back to sleep, I’ll watch her.” I said, she protested as usual, but eventually agreed at her third yawn. Old Kali and I watched my sister as she spun around the house, walked into the boundary wall, and almost stepped into an extinguished but still smoking fire. Despite the loudness of Kali’s sporadic barks, I could hear my siblings snoring; my sister had become the burden that only my mother and I wanted to bear. I cursed the thing that tortured my sister, it stole her future and the memories we should have created and shared.

I woke up the next morning with a stiff neck; I had fallen asleep on a chair. My sister was kneeling next to the entrance, as I got closer; my heart sank into my chest. Kali lay dead next to her. Valeria was stroking her hand across his unmoving chest; I stood there and watched her staring at him, like she’d lost a lifelong friend. Eventually Valeria got up and walked into my arms, she cried inconsolably into my shoulder, when she stopped the only thing concealing the spot where she cried her soul out was the fact that my t-shirt was black. We buried Kali later that day, at sunset. That night it rained non-stop, as if Mother Nature herself had decided to weep for him.

End.