Zenzele: A Letter For My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

Author:J. Nozipo Maraire [Maraire, J. Nozipo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2021-07-23T05:00:00+00:00

Eight

To love is a beautiful, mysterious event; do not miss it. Be neither too cautious nor too absorbed. Too many of us reason with our hearts and experience with our heads. It cannot be so. The heart knows no logic beyond need and desire; the head has no senses except the common and the pragmatic. Neither, frankly, is particularly useful in love, anyway. Rely on your sixth sense, that little voice within. There is no preparation or protection from the joy and pain of relationships. They are inseparable twins. One follows another. And make no mistake: Love is not gay abandon; it is to be courageous, to take risks, and to be disciplined.

My father once took me aside as a young girl. I had returned from the fields alone. Mother had gone to take Mbuya Lizzie (her mother) some fresh beans from our garden. That morning, I had skipped school for the first time in my life. I had fallen in love, or so I thought, with a young fellow who had persuaded me to go climb the kopjes near Thirty Miles Point instead of learning about Livingstone and Rhodes. I have no idea to this day if my father knew of my deviant behavior or not. He was a man who saw much and said little. Like my mother, he believed that one’s deeds were more powerful than idle words. As I mounted the steps, I saw him sitting on the porch in his rickety old chair. The center sagged and one of the arms was broken, but still he would drag it out of the living room every day after work so he could sit on the veranda and smoke a cigarette as he watched the sun set. There was a splendid view of the river and the valley sheltered by a ring of mountains. I was absolutely terrified that he had found out. But it was too late to run now, so I mounted the remaining steps with dread.

“Good evening, Baba,” I said.

“My daughter, sit here a moment.” Whenever he spoke in that tone, that low, calm voice, he sounded like a cross between a priest giving a blessing and a judge meting out a sentence. He became omniscient and fearsome. I knelt down onto the cool floor of the veranda, beside the unsteady chair. In those days, you never sat in a chair in the presence of your elders, particularly not when you were in trouble. I bent my head low and awaited my sentence. I focused on the scurrying black ants climbing from the floor up the low side wall, their bodies gleaming ocher and crimson in the glow of the setting sun. I could hear the cling, cling of the cattle bells echoing in the dusk as Mukoma Eddie led his herd along the adjacent path.

“There is a story that I would like to tell you. Are you listening, my child?”

“Yes, Baba,” I whispered, not daring to look up. My head was already feeling heavy from shame.

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