When Olly first saw her, he felt
like he had drifted into a dream, the kind of euphoric phantasm that had him
smiling like a moron, and from which he never wanted to wake up.
He had staggered into
class five minutes earlier.
Olly’s reputation preceded him.
Avoiding eye contact, he made his way to the back of the room. Apart from him,
there were only three other white students in the class. One wore dreadlocks and
sat with a Latina girl near the front of the lecture theatre. Olly sniggered at
them as he walked by, figuring them for amateur activist wannabes whom he had
nothing in common with. He selected a seat in the corner, segregating himself
in his preppy upper class prejudices.
He was lounging lackadaisically in his
seat watching other students trickling in, ready to suffer in sullen silence,
when she breezed through the door. In faded black skinny jeans, a mustard
yellow blouse, an exquisite turquoise pendant, and beaded sandals, she stunned
him. She had braided hair. Long twists coiled intricately on her head like a
crown. A queen of her own making. Regal. Poised. Absolutely magnificent.
She turned her head and caught him
staring. She looked at him with such a candid intensity that he could not hold
her gaze. He felt exposed. Vulnerable. Anxious because he knew that in some
inexplicable way she could see through him. All his pain, his anger, and his
failures.
It was not so much love at first
sight, but rather a Taser to his heart that jolted him out of his life of
debauchery. Her name was Thandiwe. She was sunshine in bodily form. One look at
her and she made him want to do better. Be better. Be worthy of her. And he did
not have the foggiest idea how to accomplish that. He had never cared before or
bothered to make an effort. He was entering unchartered territory. And though
he would have sooner eaten his own fingers than admit it to anyone, sitting
unsuspectingly in that austere lecture theatre, he was undone for the first
time in his life.
The course was “African Literature:
Selected Writings from Zimbabwe.” Olly’s faculty advisor assured him it was the
only upper level class that fitted into his already packed schedule. Without it
he would have to take a summer course to finish his degree. Olly could not have
cared less about Africa, let alone its so-called literature. What did they have
to write about? Poverty and mosquitoes? It would be torture sitting through it,
but he had no choice. Taking a summer class was unthinkable. Olly had already
added a year and a half to his degree program due to sheer slothfulness and a
juvenile desire to infuriate and thwart his father. So now in his last
semester, he could not avoid the eight a.m. lecture. He needed a full twenty
one credits to graduate.
Oliver McShane’s family had always
had money so he did not see the point of school. As soon as he turned
twenty-five he would have access to his trust fund and with it a life that most
college graduates only saw on television. He was smart, cleverer than most,
having inherited the innate business acumen that had built and sustained the
McShane fortune for five generations. Had he applied himself, even just a
little, he could have been brilliant. He could have followed in his father’s
footsteps to become the next CEO of McShane Global Enterprises. And that was
the clincher. He did not want to be anything like the great Owen McShane, certainly
not after he walked in on him cheating on his mother with his “personal
assistant.”
Olly had just turned fourteen at
that time, and since then, he had rebelled against his dad in every hackneyed
way. Flunking classes, DUIs, selling marijuana. He even got married in Vegas on
his eighteenth birthday to a shady showgirl he met in a bar that night. Owen
McShane and his posse of family lawyers had to pay the girl a small fortune to
annul the marriage. Olly’s father forced him to enrol at Georgetown the
following fall, having set up a condition whereby Olly would not be able to
access his trust fund until he graduated from college. Olly was furious, but
with his freedom at stake, he had no choice but to comply.
Up until the moment he saw
Thandiwe, university had been an unavoidable persecution. But now, he sat up in
his chair and paid attention. For their first class, Dr. Ayoba had assigned
readings from the writings of Nobel Laureate, Doris Lessing. Thandiwe was one
of three African students in the class, and the only Zimbabwean. As such, Dr.
Ayoba and the other students were quite keen to hear her perspective. The first
time Olly heard Thandiwe speak he could sense that she had a stubborn streak. A
strength which echoed in her voice as a warning and a challenge.
“My
favourite work by Doris Lessing is a short story titled The Black Madonna,” she
said. “What I love about Lessing is the way in which she juxtaposes the grit
and the glory of Africa. In the same breath, she proficiently succeeds in both
critiquing and celebrating the society around her. Lessing displays an incredible understanding
of the human condition and yet a desire to keep probing and to keep learning.”
Thandiwe had an eerily
evocative voice. It made Olly think of the wild grandeur of Africa. She had the
motherland in her. History and mystery. A captivating conundrum. When she
talked of Africa, of Zimbabwe, of home, with such passion and unequivocal
conviction, Olly felt ashamed. He had enough money at his disposal to do almost
anything he wanted and still he had failed to experience the world. He stuck to
his clique and ignored anything and anyone that prickled him. His Guatemalan
nanny. Their Nigerian housekeeper. Their Mexican gardeners. They all had
stories to tell of the lands they called home and he had never bothered to
listen. It would be a slow and harrowing process, but Olly would begin to
realize how much he had missed out on. The richness and rawness of real life.
The feral magnificence of life outside the West. The aching beauty of Africa
and her people.
Of course Olly had not done any of
the readings assigned by Dr. Ayoba, or for any of his other classes for that
matter. However, hearing Thandiwe speak about the literature she loved with
such zeal made him wish he knew enough to make a comment in class. He wanted to
be able to say something scholarly and thought-provoking that would make her
notice him and give him a chance to approach her.
After the lecture ended, Olly went
straight to the bookstore to purchase the course reading packet – Doris
Lessing, Yvonne Vera, Charles Mungoshi, Peter Godwin, Dambudzo Marechera,
Chenjerai Hove, Tsitsi Dangarembwa, Shimmer Chinodya and Alexander
McCall-Smith. In a calculated effort to attract Thandiwe’s attention, Olly
spent most of the week catching up on Lessing and reading Vera for their next
class.
As Olly read stories told by
various Zimbabwean voices, he began to see the sadness in his snobbish approach
to life. How quarantining himself with the privileged and their “rich-people
problems” had made him grow weak and pale and desperate for some sunlight.
There was a world out there beyond exclusive night clubs and skiing vacations
in Aspen. A world of insurmountable suffering and superseding serenity from
which Thandiwe came from. A world which he now craved ravenously to know.
Though Olly made well-informed
comments and asked penetrating questions in their next class, he did not
attract Thandiwe’s attention as he had hoped. From his research on facebook, he
knew that Thandiwe volunteered with a literacy program called Illuminate. When
he saw a poster advertising that Illuminate would be recruiting new volunteers
the following Saturday in front of Copley Hall, he found the opening that he
had been looking for to finally introduce himself to her.
“Hi!”
He pretended he was just passing by.
“Hey!”
she smiled. “You’re in my lit class, right?”
Delighted that she recognized him,
he felt emboldened to draw closer. “Yes. My name is Olly.”
“I’m
Thandiwe. It’s nice to meet you Olly. Interested in hearing about Illuminate?”
Though he already knew
about the program from his research online, Olly let Thandiwe explain to him
how they worked with children of refugees from North and Central Africa who had
been given asylum in the United States. They conducted various programs and
activities to help the kids with their English reading, writing and oral skills.
It was not Olly’s usual cup of tea, but he had to step out of his comfort zone
if he wanted a chance with Thandiwe, so he signed up to help the next weekend.
After he wrote his name and contact
details on the sign-up sheet, Olly lingered at the table.
“From
Zimbabwe to Georgetown. How did that happen?” he asked.
“I’m
on a scholarship from UN Women” she replied. “I’m pre-law. I want to work as an
advocate for women particularly in the area of education.”
“What made you
chose that field?” he asked, curious but also wanting to hear her voice for a
little longer.
“Actually, it was
Doris Lessing’s 2007 Nobel acceptance speech that inspired my career choice,”
she replied as she pulled up a chair for him beside her. “In it, Lessing
describes a stereotypical young black woman living in poverty in southern
Africa. She is pictured holding a section from Anna Karenina which she fortuitously found as she waits for water
at the counter in the Indian store.
She can read and she knows the pages she is holding are about Russia. The girl
knows she is clever and she has been fortunate to have some education. Just not
enough to lift her out of a life of scarcity and suffering. She yearns for her
children to be educated so that they too can read great novels and much more.
Lessing predicted that it is women like this girl who will define the future.
Women who despite their physical hunger are famished for books and learning.”
Olly’s piercing green eyes devoured
her face, adoring each of her features and taking in every expression she made
as she spoke.
“When
I read that speech, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life.”
“That’s
awesome!” Olly exclaimed. He was impressed and a little intimidated.
“And
your family?” he asked.
“I’m
an only child. My parents grew up in poverty in the rural
outskirts of the Vumba Mountains near the border between Zimbabwe and
Mozambique. It was through the education that my mum and dad received from
mission schools that they were able to carve out a better life for themselves.
My mother is a primary school teacher and my father worked his way up in the
hospitality industry and is now a manager at a small hotel.”
“They must be proud of you” Olly said, more to
himself than to her. He wondered what that would feel like, to have his parents
look at him with something other than disappointment and distrust. Thandiwe had
a rich and varied history that fuelled her dreams, making Olly yearn for a
vision of his own.
“What
about you?” she asked.
Olly had been dreading the moment
when the conversation would turn to him. Ordinarily he would have lied, but
Thandiwe’s earnestness demanded the truth. “Honestly, I’m here because if I
don’t get a degree I don’t get my trust fund.”
It was blunt and she appreciated
it. As he shared some of his family drama, he did not feel her judging him. She
smiled and nodded and laughed at his jokes. She was everything he had hoped her
to be.
Working side by side on Saturday
mornings at Illuminate swiftly became a standing date for them. Even though he
was uncomfortable at first, working with children who barely spoke English,
Olly dived into the program enthusiastically showering the kids with the
transcendental language of love. He had never been in a chaotic African
Diaspora setting but Olly could tell by her subtle looks that Thandiwe was
impressed with how he adapted to the foreign culture. After his second week of
volunteering, Olly summoned the courage to ask Thandiwe out on a proper date.
Never having been rejected by a woman before, he was terrified by the uncertainty
that lurked in the back of his mind. Little did Olly know that Thandiwe was
curious to find out how Oliver McShane would handle a Zimbabwean girl with afro
kinky hair. It made her titter to imagine it.
Olly picked her up for their first
date late Friday afternoon. When Thandiwe opened the door, he presented her
with a bouquet of flame lilies, the national flower of Zimbabwe. When she
purred with delight, he instantly forgot the exorbitant price he paid for them.
As she floated to put them in a vase, Olly took the chance to admire her and to
look around her room.
Thandiwe usually favoured jeans
that hugged her womanly figure. Olly had to take a deep breath to actively stop
himself from starring hungrily. However, for their date, Thandiwe wore a
knee-length rusty-orange coloured dress which contrasted with her
mahogany-coloured skin beautifully. The full skirt of her dress swished around
her leaving traces of her alluring perfume lingering in the air. She was a
whirlwind of exquisiteness. A celebration of Zimbabwe. As was the room in which
she lived.
A batik bedcover and pillows with
pictures of Africa’s “Big Five.” An exquisite soap stone carving of a woman
dancing and laughing, her skirt spreading in the wind. A masterfully hand-woven
basket placed on an intricately crocheted doily. An oil-on-canvas painting of a
man walking leisurely up a hill with his hands in his pocket, his wife
struggling to push his bicycle behind him, with a baby strapped to her back and
a sack of mealie meal balanced on her head.
“Why
do you like that?” Olly wondered out loud, as he started at the painting.
“I
don’t,” she said, laughing. “I see it as a satirical masterpiece depicting the
African way of putting the comfort of men first, and leaving women behind to
wage the daily war of survival. It reminds me, I suppose, to never allow myself
to be trapped by a selfish man.”
Olly was gutted. Deep down inside
he knew that the words applied to him. He was a self-centred man on an
intriguing road to redemption.
Not knowing how to respond to
Thandiwe’s cutting words, he turned his attention to the photos of her family
and friends in Zimbabwe. Olly tried hard but found it impossible to imagine her
other than what and where she was in front of him. The Thandiwe he knew, the
Georgetown University student, did not correlate with the Africa in his mind.
The Africa he saw on television. Malnourished children with protruding
kwashiorkor bellies. Buzzing flies. Undulating grasslands stretching out in
mind-numbing monotony. He wanted Thandiwe to belong to him, with him, in his
world. Olly was beginning to grasp the nuances in Thandiwe’s disposition that
sprang from being a product of two contrasting cultures, two loves. She was
torn by a duality of existence, a paradox to Americans like the distinction
between the ‘v’ and ‘w’ sounds in different dialects of Shona which Thandiwe
had hopelessly tried to teach him. Olly knew that if he failed to embrace this
about her, he would never know her at all.
Olly took her to Nandos on 8th
Street for their legendary Mozambican-Portuguese flame-grilled peri peri
chicken. A little taste of home. Bom proveito! When Olly ordered their meal to
go, Thandiwe looked up at him quizzically. Holding her hand for the first time,
his heart threatening to bust out of his chest, he led her to the Lincoln
Memorial. They ate their meal sitting on the historic steps where Martin Luther
King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. They spoke intermittently but mostly
they shared the silence between them. Olly struggled to put into words the
emotions that buffeted inside of him.
“You know, I’ve
been here so many times but I never comprehended its significance. I never
cared. I want to be the kind of man who deserves a woman like you.”
Olly startled Thandiwe with his
naked honesty. When she leaned into him and pressed her lips to his, he felt
her violent desire for him swirling in her breast, rising, rising, rising. Olly
felt like his whole body was filled with sunlight in that instant. He was
energized and he responded by intensifying the kiss, tenderly and yet
demanding, cupping her face in his hands. The ardour and depth of her reaction
awakened him in a way that both frightened and thrilled him. When he finally
pulled away, she was smiling up at him. Her eyes alight. Infernally beautiful
and utterly bewitching.
Thandiwe reclined her head on his
shoulder and held onto him. In his ear, she whispered, “Please don’t break my
heart.”
“How
about I marry you instead?” he replied, an idiotic grin of consuming passion and
adoration spreading across his face.
“A
little too soon for that, don’t you think?” she laughed.
Tilting her face so that she could
see the sincerity in his eyes, he said, “I can wait. I will wait.”
After that day, Olly sought
Thandiwe out whenever he could. Like a sunflower seeking warmth and light, he
could not resist her. When they could break away from their studies at the same
time, he took her out to eat and experience the DC together. Sushi at Momji,
Pizzeria Paradiso, and a wild assortment of ethnic restaurants. Always holding
hands. Laughing. Blushing. Adoring. He
loved that Thandiwe had a healthy appetite for food and more so an insatiable
hunger for life. She had a slim waist and full hips in the archetypal African
fashion. She had not succumbed to the salad-eating, gym-obsessed life of
frugality that plagued most DC women her age. Thandiwe made him think of rich
dark chocolate that melts in your mouth conjuring up your happiest memories and
filling your whole body with warmth. She was a woman built for comfort rather
than for whatever craziness was in vogue. She was everything that Olly was not.
Her soft intelligent coffee eyes and his probing olive ones.
About a month after they started
dating, Thandiwe finally felt brave enough to offer to cook for Olly in his
apartment. When she entered his condominium in the West End, he saw her smile,
and knew she was impressed by how neat it was. He had hired a cleaning service
to sort out the mess. He had also equipped his kitchen with everything that the
sales assistant at Target said he would need to impress a girl.
Thandiwe made him a traditional
Zimbabwean meal of sadza, nyama with
Royco Usavi Mix she had found at the
African Food Market, and muriwo. She showed him how to eat with his
hands in the customary manner as they listened to the raspy voice and haunting
melodies of his sazita, his namesake, Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi. The musical voice
of Zimbabwe. Olly learned that Tuku was famous for his lyrics which tackled
everyday social and economic issues, and his unique merging of modern and
traditional instruments. Even before Thandiwe translated the words for him,
Olly was enthralled by the poignant tenor of the music. He could understand now
why she missed her home so much. A home which she worked tirelessly to support.
To earn extra money for her
extended family in Zimbabwe, Thandiwe braided hair in her dorm room on Sunday
afternoons after church. The first time Olly saw her turn afro kinky hair into
a mosaic of intricate designs, he was dumbfounded. Up until that moment, Olly
had been struggling to come up with a thesis for his final paper in Dr. Ayoba’s
class. He wanted to do well in order to boost his GPA from previous semesters
and of course to impress Thandiwe. Olly
watched in amazement as geometric patterns seemed to flow through Thandiwe’s
fingers intuitively and an idea dawned on him for his paper.
Olly learned that Thandiwe had been
taught how to braid hair when she was seven years old by her older cousin
Lydia. Her forehead would scrunch up as she concentrated on holding the hair
correctly and interweaving it accurately both with and without extensions. She
envied the older girls who did not even have to look at their hands while they
worked. Once they had evenly partitioned and sectioned off the hair based on
the shape of the head and the thickness of the hair, they chatted away, usually
about boys, while their fingers took on a life of their own. Practice does
indeed make perfect and in due time, Thandiwe’s muscle-memory also kicked in
and she was fully initiated into the social art of hair braiding. When they
were not gossiping and laughing, they hummed together in harmony and solidarity,
the amalgamating African manner of enduring work.
For all the complaining that black
women do about the texture of their hair, Thandiwe loved it. Afro kinky hair
was wonderfully versatile. Other girls, as soon as their mothers would let
them, were quick to chemically straighten their hair with relaxers, but
Thandiwe had always preferred hers natural. She could straighten it with a flat
iron when she wanted a clean polished look, then shrink it back by wetting it
when she wanted a more unruly “ethnic” style. She could plait it into corn rows
flat against her head or make it stand up and out like the contorted branches
of a baobab tree. Most of the time, she added extensions and wound them with
her hair into long twists that she styled in an assortment of fetching designs
which thrilled Olly to no end.
After years of braiding countless
heads of hair, Thandiwe was tickled when Olly showed her a journal article
about “The Art and Science of Hair Braiding.” He had come across it while
working on his final paper. In an emerging field known as “Ethnomathematics,”
academics were beginning to recognize the mathematical genius in what many
African women do unthinkingly. She smiled knowing how true this was. How so
many of the women in Africa, in Zimbabwe, did not have opportunities to pursue
formal education but they were smart in their own right. Braiding hair,
balancing pails of water on their heads, dancing rhythmically to different
tunes and beats. Everyday, they display incredible intelligence and instinct
which should be marvelled at and not left to fade into the tedium of everyday
life.
Olly loved every facet of the woman
who Thandiwe was. He knew he would never fully understand her, a futile effort
like trying to contain the waters of the Victoria Falls in a tea cup. But, he
also knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would love her in all her
complexity, and all her simplicity, for as long as he drew breathe. In that
final semester of his studies at Georgetown, she spoke to his heart, to his
spirit, of a more gentle and unadulterated way of life. An unhurried,
sun-soaking, African approach to being that finally facilitated his
metamorphoses into a man of valour with endless possibilities.
Inspired by Thandiwe’s craft,
Olly’s final paper was titled: “Afro Kinky: The Versatility of African Hair as
a Metaphor for the Ingenuity of the Zimbabwean Literary Imagination.” When he
finished writing it, he asked Thandiwe to proof-read his work. He waited in
nervous anticipation as she turned each page. When she got to the end and
sighed contentedly, he could tell by the look on her face that she was falling
in love with him. And he knew in that moment that he would always love her.
Olly invited Thandiwe to spend the
summer after they graduated with his imperious family in Martha’s Vineyard, and
she accepted. Owen McShane could not deny the positive change he saw in his son,
after Olly had accepted an internship position McShane Global Enterprises.
Still, he was wary of Thandiwe, not knowing how to relate to her. Olly’s mum,
long resigned to being a spectator in the war between her husband and son, had
embraced Thandiwe and made a concerted effort to welcome her into their home.
She could not thank Thandiwe enough for inadvertently bringing her family back
together.
Whatever challenges the future held
for Olly and Thandiwe, together or apart, Mama Africa had gripped Olly’s soul
and would never let go. He would
always be cradled in her embrace.
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Short Fiction
Poetry
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