I looked at the clock next to the battery stereo and realized that I have been sitting in front of the table ever since Teboho left. She had a phone in her shaky scruple hands after reading an email that was the third and last from all the universities she applied for. The email was acknowledging the application and informing her that it was unsuccessful. That email and my passport which would expire in a month meant our hands were tied, a fatal flaw.
It was almost sunset. I heard the birds chirp outside. They were heading home. Those were the words I never missed from my grandmother's mouth growing up. She would tell me one should know the day was over when a flock of birds fills the sky heading home. I always questioned myself if we were ever like birds in our hearts. Were feelings ever set back home at the end of the day? I grew up to learn that we do have homes inside of us. It is all up to us if we fly our feelings home. I grew up to learn that sometimes our feelings fly to our hearts pits, where they turn to shackles. As an adult, I now know that sometimes our feelings fly home. Sometimes we make home- cooked meals and feed our souls. We align ourselves with our feelings. Some days are better than others.
By seventeen forty-six it was already darkening. The summer rain gust seemed to make the day darken more. I lit the candle. The wax had already melted to the ends of the holder. I turned off the boiling water on the paraffin stove. I was saving the paraffin. My aunt took a while to come back. Our landlord had cut off our electricity for almost three weeks now. There were some weeks where my aunt was only able to pay for our stay. Mr. William never had the power to throw us out. He had learned that my aunt and I would have no place to turn to. He was an evangelist, kind enough to people like me and my aunt, foreigners.
Mr. William was one of the oldest citizens that resided in Langa. Apartheid riots and gunships just found scatters of his radical spirit one day. He once told me he was seventy-nine years old but never to any day had I ever got to believe him. He looked like sixty years had just kicked in. He would give me verses to read and sometimes read with me and unfold truths that gave me a greater heart. He would give me courage. He would hold my hand and pray with me to the ends of spiritual touches. His hands were old and at ease, they were warm.
Slowly the flicker dimmed till it was dark, with enough space for my thoughts to fill up the room. I thought about what Teboho came to tell me earlier. With the life I was living was I ever going to make it to University? Was moving here really a better life? I remembered days when I was still in the DRC, the folk tales greyer than the grey hair of the old women that told us around the fire. I missed my friends, Tajiri and Ushauri, how lately my mind flew to those days. I mostly missed Tajiri. How he would cry out to me about his name. We were so young but yet old souls. He would ask me how
he ended up with a name that meant wealth when it was just the opposite. He was just a village charity boy forced to herd the cattle every day after school. "Why did they call me Tajiri when I live in this dust? I hold this stalk with pangs in my stomach, how is it wealth, Alex?" I would always open my mouth to the same response, "It is in your heart. There is a tree growing in your heart, of wealth, right there. There is already a world in there. Its branches will someday heal another heart. It is in your heart Tajiri." For every day under the sun, he slowly began to live life like he felt the branches in his heart with its flowers blooming and its roots tightening. I would see it in his face. My words were molesting his mind with honeycomb thoughts and the smirked tears of sunflowers. They were dressing up his sun and his world.
I also thought of the night I ran away from home to tell him I am leaving. Images of that night are still so vivid. They wake me up in the middle of some nights. They visit me like spirits.
After my uncle's funeral, it was decided by the family that I was to move to South Africa with aunt Maisha. It was where uncle Richard lived. We had fixed my study permit. That meant from the day I was issued the study permit it was valid for the next four years of my academic years in South Africa concerned. My aunt applied for a work permit which allowed her to stay in South Africa for five years. It took us a long time to save for the 603100.00 Congolese Franc. My uncle would send us the money and we would also save up from the maize we sold as well as Sisi's sewn clothes.
Words that Tajiri said that night are still a heavy prick in my heart, a memory
bred every morning and lives up in me whenever I need it closer to myself.
"My mother and father died and left me, you are doing it too? You are also leaving me Alex? You made me believe in a lot of things. You put my heart in a place where no doubt reigns, the world of wealth in my heart, the branches, you remember? That was all you. I was now living in that world for you. I was becoming a better person. I even stopped swearing at the priest at church after stealing his money to buy cigarettes. I stopped telling people to shut up when they told me everything that happened to me happened for a reason. Who will I be now?" I had never seen Tajiri cry like that, his chest was pounding. It seemed painful.
"I told myself that one day these branches in my heart will turn into a glade of two tamed hearts, that one day life will serve me revolutionary enough to make this world ours." I think of his words now as an adult and realize that Tajiri was way ahead of his time and very smart. His vocabulary was so heavy.
I remember I stood there with my eyes aching and my throat dry. The moon was looking at me and Tajiri's voice crinkling was giving me pain.
"I am sorry, Tajiri I know all the things I said to you. I am sorry it seems like dreams but we can breathe life into our dreams if we don't give up on them" I said, with my whole might already broken.
"Men do not cry Tajiri", he said, wiping off tears shyly and aggressively. "Many things have cut my heart but not like this, I never dreamt of this, but here it is, a dream with its breath. It is okay, Alex. I'm not going to say I'm not sad. Go try out a new life. South Africa, I've read about it. I have heard stories. It holds a history of liberal men. It might be where your dreams come true. We have been children in the struggle, of the sun in crimson soil. Perhaps this is a breach for you. God be with you."
My memories flashed off when aunt Maisha pranced into the room wet. Summer rain, I did not hear it.
"Alex you did not place the bucket where it is leaking, look now. Did you even hear the rain? Where is the lighter? Here is a new candle, pass the lighter."
"Sorry aunty, I was fast asleep," I replied quickly placing the bucket next to the bed, where the roof leaked. I had to lie. How could I tell her I had been lost in the dark thinking about the day a huge part of who I am was tarnished into rags?
My aunt worked as a cleaner in a hotel kitchen near a place called Randburg. I had never been there. I would only hear about it. We would eat surplus food from room service orders when the head chef was kind enough to give her. On some days I would wait for her to come home so we would cook anything she came with. It was after we ate bread and sausages with black coffee when the candle was off again. I was back in my thoughts. The mind was a carrier of thoughts and consumptions of the unknown.
"For the grace of God that brings salvation appeared to all men. It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self- controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope."
- Titus 2:11-23
Those were the verses I lastly read from the rubber brown faded bible.
"The thought of God gives me the strength I never had. It gives me rebounded hopes, not for me alone but for all, in spirit. Alone He is God. Amen."
I said that in my silent prayer looking at the silhouette of my aunt in the ceiling from where she was sleeping. The shady silhouette was formed by the little spec of light that poked in through the window crack before I went back to my thoughts. I always asked myself about the light, about where it came from, about why it formed the same shadows every night. It was a good testimony that sometimes light wanders around anywhere in human
life, even in cracked hearts. It chooses to light in any way of a human in the ordinance of ordains seeking.