Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [60]
I wiped my face and said, “Masikatii?”
“Taswera, maswerawo?” they asked.
“Taswera zvedu,” I lied.
And we all grunted in recognition of one another.
“Where are you going?” asked the taller child after a respectable pause had allowed us a decent amount of time to stare at one another.
“Mozambique,” I said, blowing my nose.
“You are one?”
“No,” I said, “we are two.” I lit a cigarette and waved it at the flies that had come to feast on my tears and sweat.
The older boy fished at his feet for a dry stalk of grass, which he put to his lips and pretended to light, in imitation of my cigarette. He eyed me sideways, hungrily, and waved his pretend cigarette blade of grass at me. “Fodya? Madam? One stick?”
I shook my head. “You’re not enough years. How old are you?”
“Ah come, mummy!” The boy laughed. “I am many years.” He pointed to his younger companion, of whom he was obviously guardian.
“No cigarettes.”
“Ah, mama.”
I stood up. “Okay. I’ll give you something to eat. I think there’s something for you.” I dug into the back of the black tin trunk. K’s green peppers, nuts, and wild mushrooms had fermented into a bubbling brown-green stew. The potato chips and beer had survived.
“Hurrah.” I emerged victorious. “Here,” I said, handing the children four packets of chips.
Then I sat with the children and they tried to pretend that they were not half starved and I tried to pretend that I could not see that this was the first food that had passed their lips for some time. I lit another cigarette. The children finished the chips and licked the packet. Then the older child lifted his eyes to mine and smiled crookedly, and he didn’t need to say anything.
I sighed. “Okay,” I said, “just quit before it kills you.” I handed him a cigarette from the packet and my own cigarette with which to light it.
The child sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and shut his eyes, a transformed smile on his lips.
The smaller child grinned up at me winningly, his lips greased with chips.
“No,” I said. “I’m certainly not giving you a bloody cigarette. So don’t even try.”
I hoped no one was at home feeding chips and cigarettes to my children.
WHEN K FINALLY BATTLED his way back through the bush to the car, the children had fallen in a gentle half doze next to the car and I was drinking warm beer.
I asked, “Are you okay?”
He nodded, but I could see from his jumping jaw that he was tense.
K frowned at the pickup. His look made me feel as if I should have been doing something useful with myself in his absence—as if he, in the same circumstances, would have had the vehicle gleaming inside and out by the time of my return. All I had to show for three quarters of an hour of free time was a few cigarette stompies, empty chip packets, a drained beer bottle, and two starving children.
“My friends,” I said, pointing a toe at the children.
He nodded.
I said, “Your mushrooms, green peppers, and nuts turned into mushrooms-green-pepper-and-nut wine. The kids ate all the chips.”
He said, “I’m not hungry.” He walked around the pickup and kicked the tires, and then he said, “We need petrol.”
So together we lifted a container of petrol off the back of the pickup. We made a siphon out of a used water bottle, holding it open into the lip of the tank with a licked-open penknife. I held the cut-lipped water bottle and K poured; the liquid throated down into the belly of the pickup. A great wash of the fuel splashed up my wrists and dried in an itchy, oily film.
“Sorry,” said K.
“It’s okay.”
The children roused themselves and offered to pour petrol for us. Their stringy arms would not have held anything much heavier than a very slim dream aloft for long. K’s unexpected smile surfaced. He said something in Shona and gave the children a few dollars each and they dissolved back into the bush. He picked up another twenty-liter container and began to pour that into the tank.
“I should just swallow this,” he said, watching the last