By Gloria Huwiler

Malita, apart from a small similarity with her father under the eyes, was a mold of her mother, Maggie. Full lips and high cheekbones. All whimsy and fury. At three she would sing on end floating in her armbands, or shake her fingers at apple sellers scolding them as she stole their fruit. Hans, her father had found her humming in a vat of engine oil a mechanic had forgotten to put away after fixing the truck. Her hair utterly blackened, she had looked up at him grinning. He was endlessly charmed. She quickly learnt new words and ordered her parents about with them. She had too much to say on every subject. Strong opinions shouted passionately across the table as her younger sister Claudia watched, mute. 

When Malita turned eight, they had gone on holiday to Namibia. Maggie hadn’t packed extra shoes. Rather, she had decided they’d all get new kudu shoes.  Malita had been picked up directly from ballet class, as they drove from Lusaka on the two-day journey. At a shop in the quaint town centre of Swakopmund, everyone had picked out a pair of Swakop vellies: handmade artisanal ankle boots in local kudu leather. Malita protested. She stared at Maggie, eyes mocking her hypocrisy. 

-Your Gogo was a Princess. She had Ngulu. The spirits instructed her not to eat meat. We must not either.  

Little Malita had accepted vegetarianism without question. Not so much because of the tale of whispering spirits but, because she’d seen a goat strung from a tree, heard it shriek as the gardener slit its throat, and knew immediately she wanted no part in it. In fact, Malita had recently given up scrubbing up after watching a programme about whale fat use in bar soap. She only washed with shampoo. Yet here her mother stood, donning a pair of vellies, asking her to choose a pair of her own. 

After two days walking the streets of Swakopmund in ballet slippers, Malita’s heels ached. She peeked beneath the slim soles. Made in France. Pure pig’s leather. The realization had dampened something in Malita.  

A few years later, Maggie had felt her own spirit dampening at the sight of her daughter. Maggie dreamt of her deceased grandmother eating capenta. What the dream signified, and why capenta, Maggie hadn’t questioned. Rather, it was taken as a literal instruction. Gogo had to be honoured and capenta was her meal of choice. Fish was apparently sanctioned by the spirits. So all the family were summoned to a dinner where a great dish of it was served. Malita remembered seeing guests stare sceptically at it. It was clear neither she nor they personally had any great love of the little dried fish. Nevertheless, the guests had nodded and spooned small helpings onto their plate obediently. Someone had had a dream, and not just any dream, a dream of a deceased relation. Capenta had to be consumed. 

Hans had looked on with equal cynicism. He was not convinced of the sanctity of dreams, much less that vague messages required strict observation. They were simply the fanciful whims of his fanciful wife. At least this dream had only led to a call for a dinner. It was not taken to be the determining factor in decisions about money or career undertakings… yet. He resented that his reasonable, logical arguments were easily questioned and undermined, while the surety of divine revelation through a dream… that was another matter entirely. What he resented most however, were the disapproving glares he suffered from his daughters as he wolfed down his mustard drenched bratwurst. 

At the great capenta dinner, Malita had been ten. She had ultimately determined that capenta and nshima, the traditional staple, were not her thing. She had grabbed supplies from the kitchen and scuttled off to the bottom of the garden. There, out of sight, she had made herself spaghetti, ironically, in the African kitchen. Maggie had found her later, forking up noodles from a plastic plate. She was overcome by the reflection she saw.

Where did I go wrong? Maggie thought. She had once worn her raging Afro and chitenge frocks, a visual testament to her reclamation of ancestral worth. Indeed, she had given her first daughter a traditional name. But Malita couldn’t help notice how many more complements Maggie received when she finally caved, dispensed with her chitenges and straightened her hair. It was clear, luscious locks, flailing in the wind, outranked her cotton-wool halo. Was that it? Malita had watched her conform? Maggie wondered. They stood in the garden, beside their ‘African kitchen.’ Indeed, the capenta had been cooked here. More ‘Muzungu’ families, that is to say, western leaning ones, had relegated the cooking of fragrant delicacies to outhouses, a concession Maggie had accepted. Maggie observed the distance between the African Kitchen and the main residence. As though a little part of oneself had been relegated to an outhouse. It seemed her daughter had inhaled this discrepancy. Maggie scolded, demanding Malita immediately return to the celebration. 

But that was all the strength she could muster. Maggie felt too old to shave her head, and let her natural curls balloon upright any more. She had become accustomed to the greater ease she’d received as she’d exchanged chitambalas for khakis and linen blouses. Exhaled in the better customer service at the bank, the levity at embassy parties. The capenta dinner was all she had left in her. To see Malita turn from it was scalding. 

Claudia, the youngest, had been named after Hans’ sister. He had insisted, branding her with a German name, as his own. The genes seemed to agree. Yes, she was darker, naturally, but she had his light auburn hair. She could bend herself in circles and soar through the air on gymnastics bars- a disciplined stoic. Maggie had noticed how Claudia and her father placed the end of their fingers together, as though clasping a small ball between their open palms when arguments broke out. Chaos pushed them into a meditative state. They watched, deduced, and parceled out responses. The minimal critical action required to survive, no wasteful outbursts.  It had frightened Maggie when she had caught sight of them once, side by side - a mirror of each other, fingers holding a little invisible ball as she raged. So much raging lately. 

In Claudia, Hans, believed he had found an ally in the growing war. She was a calm rational creature, surely at some point, she’d see sense and free herself from the absurd shackles of her mother’s beliefs. Yet as the bitterness grew between her parents, Claudia became increasingly distant, quiet and introverted. She seemed to move through life like a horse with side blinders. She’d cosy up to her father, but did not go so far as to join in any admonishment of her mother. When in her mother’s company she’d happily follow instructions, throwing grains into a river to honour the water spirits with little question. In fact, despite being so like her father in manners, Maggie found Claudia to be a much easier child. While Malita pointed out hypocrisy, and attacked Maggie for the mixed messages she felt she’d received, Claudia obediently accepted wherever it was that Maggie had landed. It wasn’t that Claudia was unintelligent or insensitive. Even as a child, without expressing it, she seemed to accept her parents as people, flawed shapeshifters, with a maturity lost on Malita. 

At eighteen Malita had been accepted into a prestigious university in England. She had presented her high grades as an entitlement to the overpriced institution. Maggie implored Hans. So he’d sold his beloved car, and started to chart a course of savings and sacrifices.  In spite of festering resentments, he would honour this part of the parenting contract. But Malita could sense the cracks were expanding into an abyss. Once his enthusiasm for her had been boundless, when he laughed and rejoiced at her mother. Now, she had noticed the warmth in his voice fading when her voice answered the phone, too similar apparently, to another’s. 

A night before Christmas Eve, Hans had received a call requesting reverse charges. Of course, he thought. Malita had missed her connecting flight home to Lusaka from university. She needed money for an overnight hotel in Addis Ababa. She had nothing left after the ticket change. She couldn’t even buy an orange juice. She was crying. There was a Western Union at the airport. 

-Could you send something? Quickly? 

He had pulled out a wad of crumpled notes and handed it with distaste to Claudia, along with the number Malita had carefully dictated over the phone. Claudia hopped to it like a military cadet, her orders received, and headed to the nearest Western Union. 

The next day they waited. They hadn’t gotten another call. Should they pick her up? Which flight? Nothing. Maggie panicked. 

-What did she sound like when she called? Was she OK? 

Hans remained entirely calm, grunting.

-You’ll just see a taxi drive up to the house and then she’ll jump out and ask for taxi money. 

A few hours later a rickety blue taxi rolled into the car park. Malita hopped out and skipped into the living room. 

–Anyone got any kwacha? 

He sighed, closed his eyes momentarily, and reached into his pocket.  

Malita had returned home high on Afro-centric intellectualism. University had catapulted her back in time. Afro raging, quoting Angela Davis and James Baldwin, she stood, a lighter replica of young Maggie. Maggie smiled, relieved Malita had, she believed, finally come into her own.  

Malita announced she had had a dream; Gogo had been in it. She was to become an activist singer. A singer, Hans thought. Indeed. Well, there go the thousands I’ve just sunk into the education you demanded. Sanctioned by the ancestors. How convenient.

In Malita’s recklessness he thought he had visible proof of Maggie’s absurd parenting. In fact, Maggie had recently reinvented her brand, bolstered by new age books that imparted a more accepted mainstream vein of the tales her grandmother had spun. She had a radio show, brandishing her latest variety of wisdom, ‘following one’s inner guides,’ and had won the nation’s love. His own contributions, the roof over their head, the tuition he painstakingly scraped together, received far less attention. 

Hans stared at Malita as she started a rendition of Redemption song on her guitar. Her voice was hauntingly familiar. Dear God, he thought. It will never end. Reborn, twenty again and calling me daddy.  That had been the final straw. On boxing day he called his lawyer. Though he quoted vegetarianism and mutually incompatible beliefs, Malita thought it was quite obvious that what he truly despised was simply being second fiddle. He was no natural peacock. His wife reminded him of this in her effortless brightness. Beside her he’d always fade, and with time he had come to resent it. 

A few years after the divorce, Maggie left the city. Her daughters had both graduated from university and lived abroad. Maggie had given up the radio show. Alone, now she yearned to return to her grandmother’s village. Finally she moved to a small house there, by a lake. She shaved her head and exchanged her stylish city possessions for Zambia’s finest Bata, blue, Pata Patas.  

Malita thought the unpretentious plastic flip-flops her mother wore daily, garish. She was going through a new stage, or as Maggie viewed it, just another step on a path that seemed to circle back in endless loops. She’d abandoned singing and taken up work in a gallery in New York with a sizable collection of African Art. Malita’s critical eye had found use in analysing the construction of an image, as she’d pump out essays and press releases about dichotomies and contradictions. She’d reinvented herself with a new wardrobe of elegant natural linen suits, with the occasional ethnic nod. Maggie thought it all terribly familiar.  

Claudia worked in a London bank. She was quickly rising with the discipline of one accustomed to shutting out noise. She called her parents often and parcelled out equal affection. She wore her black corporate suits and had almost made a uniform of them outside of work as well. In neutrality she thought, she could avoid unearthing old worms. Hans approved of the choice of banking, at least.   

They spent the next Christmas at the lake with their mother. Maggie exclaimed she wanted to dispense with Christmas gifts altogether.

-Let's just buy a large box of patas patas and have everyone pick out a pair so they can pata pata their way into the New Year in honour of Miriam Makeba.   

Malita laughed, protesting. She had returned home from New York with elegant slippers, a white one-piece swimming costume and chiffon wrap, and a Hermes scarf for Maggie’s head. Maggie had smiled and accepted the gifts, but didn’t wear them. She had recently resorted to sewing chitenge to old bras and knickers as bikinis. Malita peered at the increasingly tattered threads, lace peeking through, with disapproval.  Maggie attempted to explain-

-My darling. Its just so hard to find a bikini with the right fit. 

Gloria Huwiler (@GloriaHuwiler) is a Zambian-born slashie who in publishing this short story can add /fiction-writer to the list of hyphenates. Her poetry was selected for the Black Spring Press Group’s Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2019 - 2020.

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