I ate the bones of my father

We should have been a normal family in a tiny house with an orange door. We could have been known for brewing buckets of sorghum beer and cooking delicious goat stews for local funerals. Instead, we were the reason those funerals were happening. The problem arose because I look like my father; therefore, people assumed I was him. They were looking for him. Maybe I had been him all along. Father did something, and mother was aware of it.

An angry voice interrupted my thoughts, echoing in the woods. Behind the searching community, my house was on fire, as if the f lames belonged on that plot of land; it glowed beautifully, as if the sun had fallen onto the roof.

The light flickered between the trees and under the shrubs. The searchers passed through the forest, through bushes that finally brought them closer to where I was hiding. They still couldn’t see me, but I saw them. I smelled them.
Something inside me didn’t come from this body. Mother knew and kept quiet. I kept hearing my parents’ conversation again, and it settled in my head as my joints tightened inside my skin and my veins snaked through from my toes to my head.

There were several reasons why mother was quiet, and one of them was that father had the gift of disappearing; nights often fell on the roof without him. Mother and the steaming brown gravy pot she had prepared both waited for him. But Mother dismissed Father’s activity as a passing pleasure, an activity he did at night. ‘Men are built differently,’ she would say.

Father fixed cars in the community: if someone had a flat tyre, they called him; if they needed petrol, they called him; if they got stuck on the highway, they called him. Many people would visit and ask for advice or for a cup of sugar, or bring their broken cars, broken televisions, broken heaters and broken two-plate stoves for fixing. My parents were helpful and kind, always willing to hold the fort for the next guy.

However, nine days ago, things changed when Zakhona, the township beauty-pageant queen,disappeared. She was last seen bringing an empty Tupperware back to our house. There had been many girls before. The local radio listed the missing girls, their names and ages, like a shopping list. This one was Zakhona, Mr Mngomezulu’s daughter.

'Flying Cows and Other Traumas' is published by Jacana Media

Buy the book here