Chapter 1 (When you say no, I say yes)
She ran as fast as her feet could carry her. The green leaves stretched on as far as one could see. She ran, her lungs were burning, she knew he was behind her, even though his foot fall was inaudible.
Her side cramped, she was no longer accustomed to running free.
She pushed the leaves out of her way, the cramp in her side became crippling. She stumbled over her own feet, but he caught her before she could fall.
She lay panting, trying to catch her breath, he lay on his back looking up at the sky. Invisible between the luscious green, it wasn’t harvest time yet.
The sky looked down on them, knowing what others might never know. He turned and looked at her.
“You are getting slow Madame.”
“Don’t call me that, not even in jest. You know I find it offensive.”
He smiled, his teeth so white against his dark skin.
“You have changed, on the outside, but not on the inside.” He ran his fingers through her black hair.
“Ngikukhumbulile kangaka.”
She leaned on her elbow. “I missed you more Inkosi.”
Time stopped for a split-second as it had so many years ago when that darn bull got wind of her. I know I loved her then, I know I will always love her, forbidden fruit, as the white people would say. I attended the farm school. I read every book I could get my hands on, to my father’s dismay, but I needed to understand her, I guess back then, so I could trust her.
I took a deep breath; the next words I didn’t want to utter. “Nichole I am getting married. My father says it’s not good for a man of my age to be without a wife and children.”
“Oh no. My God no. Inkosi please don’t, we can run away, please I…” I placed my fingers to her lips. I didn’t want to hear those words; my heart didn’t want to hear it.
“They will hang both of us, and soon you will be leaving, again. The maids speak, my mother Nandi still works in the big house. You are going to England.”
“What?”
I sat up and dusted the soil off my shirt. She pulled me closer, I wanted to resist, my heart told me to push her away.
“Inkosi, it’s only us, and the sky and the blue mountains. Hold me, I need you to hold me, or I shall break into a million pieces. Why won’t you allow me to say, what’s in my heart? All these years, we have known each other, grew up together. Played together. Those were the best years of my life. You are the best thing in my life. When my beloved Sheba died, you were there for me. She was my best friend, when I couldn’t speak to her, I spoke to you. You two were the reason my heart kept beating, past all that was done to me. Bloody hell Inkosi, look at me…”
He looked up at the sky willing his heart to remain calm, it thumped in his chest. She the one with the golden hair, spoke to his heart like the dew on a flower.
Inkosi spoke without thinking. He did mean what he said next. He was hurting, he wasn’t allowed to feel this way. No warrior felt weakened by a woman. It would bring shame to his tribe. To his father.
“Why? Because I am your slave?” I slapped him, I didn’t mean to. He grabbed both my hands in his.
“Such beautiful hands should never hurt. I know what ugly hands did to you as a child.”
I tried not to cry, silent tears rolled down my face, as so many had when I was a child, my pillow soaked, because I never knew my sin. In hindsight I think she loathed herself more than she loathed me, and the only way to vent was to take her anger out on me.
He wiped my tears away. “So much pain, now and then. Inkosi if I lose you, I have lost everything that’s precious to me.”
I pulled on his shirt, I needed to feel his arms around me. “No umfazi.”
“Woman? Inkosi that’s exactly what I am, and you are a man. We are free to make our own choices.”
Inkosi looked up at the sky. “No we are not, your Government says so.”
“Screw them, bloody bull shit. Inkosi why don’t you look at me when I speak to you?”
I looked into her eyes, and I smiled. when she became really angry her eyes would turn grey.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, Nichole, I am admiring you.” I bit my lip. I had to know, so as a lady I threw all my inhibitions in the river that ran past the farm. One I had swum in a dozen times. I looked up at the sky. Even as a child, a Hawk would circle this time of the day. Next to my bedroom is a patch of green grass, surrounded by a white picket fence.
When I wasn’t in Boarding School, my schooling stared at the age of five. I would lie on my back on the grass, and look up the three Pine trees, then past it at the Hawk. I pondered many times over the years, if I was looking up at the same Hawk, as I am doing now.
“Inkosi, have you ‘been’ with her?” He shook his head no, relief flooded my being.
“No, my king does not allow this, all young maidens must remain untouched.”
“I thought that was a myth. That you find your pleasure by lying fully clothed on top of her until…well I won’t utter such vulgarity.”
Inkosi pulled me closer, in his tongue, his name means, chief or king, I had to study languages in the girls only Boarding school. It was nothing more than a prison for girls. The older girls would watch us make our beds, and if it wasn’t made to perfection, it was thrown to the ground and you had to do it all over again.
You got up at five am, bathed then ate at six pm, then chores. I don’t know what time school stared. After school, you did your assignments. Then you had a break for a while, I was a loner. Sheba and Inkosi were my only friends, I would go home on weekends and holidays, sometimes I wondered which prison was worse. At three pm, the older girls, would quiz you, and that would go on for hours. Then you bathed, and dressed for dinner. We didn’t have a television, so we would play board games or listen to the radio, it was lights out at six pm. You could stay up later as you got older.
I pulled Inkosi closer to me, and inhaled. “You smell nice.” He bellowed with laughter.
“That’s not what the whites say, they say all kaffers’ stink.”
“Shut up. I don’t care what they think, what I think and say needs to take preference.”
Inkosi stroked her hair, no longer the colour of the sun, time had changed it, it had changed her to. She became more beautiful. How that was possible remained a mystery to his mind.
He rested his chin on top of my head. “It does, what you say, means more to me than I can tell you. When we played together as children, I think you were of six years then, you never looked at me at the other whites do. Still you don’t look at me as if I am any different to you, every time you leave, I fear you will come back different. I see your heart has not changed, only your body.”
I intertwined my fingers with his. “I don’t know why they call you black? You are bloody brown.” He bellowed with laughter once more. His laughter made me laugh.
“Kiss me Inkosi.” He shook his head no. “Negeke nigkwazi.”
“Why can’t you kiss me? I don’t know what has gotten into you, I am hardly back for a day, and you won’t even look at me, nor will you answer my questions. You won’t hold me. What have I done? Tell me.”
The first drops of rain fell in Zululand. Inkosi believed the rain was sent by his Forefathers when they deemed it so.
“Wosa nami.” I sat obstinate in the rain. “Like hell I will, I shall sit here until you answer me.”
Inkosi stood up, I had not noticed how tall he had become, nor how broad he was. His wet shirt clung to his sculpted body.
He looked down at me. “Spoilt white girl, come with me. Nigiyakuthanda. If I let go of this hold on my heart…I don’t want her to beat you again, because of me.”
He disappeared between the tall stalks of sugar cane.
I sat in the rain as I have done many times, just to vex Veronica. My Stepmother. My biological mother had given birth to a premature baby, and believed I would die.
I heard Veronica calling me. Shaka found me, so named after a great King.
Shaka kaSenzangakhona was born in seventeen-eighty-seven. Born in Zululand. Died at the age of forty, no one really knows how old he was, the year eighteen-twenty-eight.
He was an exceptional leader, I read up as much as I could, I believe Inkosi’s lineage intertwines directly with King Shaka. For now, my Shaka is a large black Labrador. I didn’t name him. He had a habit of taking me by the hand when I cried, and running with me, he did so now. I can’t tell the difference between my tears or the rain either.
The house was enormous it had three living areas, two dining areas, two kitchens, five bedrooms, a bathroom and an outhouse. No electricity. That never troubled me. I know the house belonged to my grandparents, my grandfather farmed, and if memory serves, my father was either a cop or a park ranger. I spent too much time away from the farm.
I adored my grandparents, and truthfully I believed my dad walked on water. It was the ‘import’ that got my goat. We all shared the house. When the cat was gone Veronica could play.
Veronica tapped her foot at me. “When I call you come!”
“Yes, mother.” She slapped me across my face. When no one was home, she sure made up for the times she couldn’t beat me.
“Did you go to him? The kaffers?”
“Mother do not call him that.”
“Why not, did you dip him in milk, and is he white now? You reek of him, go to your room and wait for me.”
I had done this a dozen times or more. It no longer fazed me. the longer you are hurt, the less it actually hurts, it becomes more of a frustration, a waste of time, precious time.
I was bent over the bed; I knew the drill. She brought a wooden hanger this tis time.
I didn’t know Inkosi was watching. My windows had no lace on it, and no bars. We had nothing and no one to fear, that’s how I let Inkosi in, for years, via the window.
I realised she was beating me. “You will cry; I’ll make sure of it.”
She broke the hanger on my bottom. I wouldn’t cry, not for her.
In hindsight I think she loathed herself more than she loathed me, I was a means to take her frustrations out on. I loved the farm, the coal stove with its brass knobs. Gran would cook the best meals on that stove, I loved the smell of the chimney, I had to get buckets of rainwater from one of the many tanks, and boil water in a large kettle to bathe, I loved it.
My grandparents had gone to town, it’s a long distance. The maids were done for the day, it was only Veronica and I in the big house.
“Show me, show me how he touched you.” I think I blinked several times, before her words sunk in.
“I beg your pardon?” I looked at her, as if she just fell from Mars.
“I said show me. You will amount to nothing, but a whore like your mother, now pull down your pants and show me, how he touched you.” She pulled a clump of hair out of my head. I unzipped my shorts, and pulled down my panties, I still won’t cry. She pushed me down on the bed.
“Touch yourself, I want to see what he does to you.” I did it, out of fear, this wasn’t the first time, she made me do it, when we were alone at night, she would pull me from my bed, and tell me to show her how I touched myself, today she blamed it on an innocent man. I wasn’t old enough yet, too fight her, the day would come. I will always come back to this farm as long as those I loved lived.
She never touched me, not like that, the fact that she watched, was shameful enough. I scrubbed myself in cold water. I was so relieved when I heard the car stop outside.
Inkosi looked away. He had seen this before, too many times. How this woman could do that to Nichole he didn’t understand, even when they were small, he would watch as Nichole got beaten, bloodied noses, bruises, that she hid under her clothes. He couldn’t save her, he wanted to, but no one would listen to a kaffer, they would blame him, they would tell the cops he abused her.
Inkosi went to his house and bathed. Nandi, knew what was happening in that house, she had seen the bruises, and the blood. Inkosi hugged his mother, but refused to eat. Nandi never forced him, she knew he would go to Nichole, something terrible must have happened again that day.
I left the window open, and locked my door. Many years back, Inkosi and I were playing in my room, with a set of toys, my Gran had brought with her from England, not plastic, it was made of tin. A whole circus. It was one of the very few times, my dad got angry, he kicked the locked door in, but Inkosi was already gone. It was the first time I felt afraid of him, but never again, I know I lied, when he asked me if Inkosi was in my room.
If only he knew, the real monster shared his bed every night. The day I found out she was with child, I knew the abuse would escalate, I wanted to tell Gran, but I know grownups never believe children. And I was scared they would send Inkosi away. Sheba slept by me every night, I think she loved Inkosi as much as I did. I came home from Boarding school, I think I was eleven at that time, and someone had poisoned Sheba, she was an Alsatian. She was my best friend.
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