I am the only one they sing to. Tap… Tap…Tapping on mahogany-framed windows serves only to announce their arrival, because I had already let them in years ago.
On nights when the wind sleeps, my little sister is always the first to come in and the dogs bark outside our bedroom window, disturbed by the potent odor of fear and blood that shrouded her death. I am not afraid of her when she is alone; she was a happy child. The other house cleaners never see her desperately trying to play with guests under the trees that lined the brook running through the estate. I often witness these singular moments of fun cut short by my brother pulling her back into the shadows.
I do not fear my brother, but his arrival always shocks my body into a pneumonic fit. Two bunkbeds flanked the window in the servant’s quarters. I slept in the bottom bunk on the left side of the room. The other women were somehow immune to the smoke and stiff scent of burning flesh that blanketed our room until dawn. I rub Vicks around the rim of my nostrils to thwart the smell, but each year the coughing and wheezing get progressively worse. Between the stifling smell and my brother’s blackened, faceless body, at nights I sometimes forget how to breathe. He is the one in my head. He calls me “murderer”—my fire burnt him alive.
Although his body was brittle, my brother somehow seemed stronger in death. He was always a few steps behind my sister or carrying her on his back. I wonder if it is so that she did not have to use her legs often. Could she even feel pain now? They shot her in both knees. I blame myself for putting her in harm’s way, and I wonder if he does too. Maybe their spirits would have moved on if she were never constantly lurking on the edges of my shadows. I saw her that June night when my mother lost all her children.
Although my mind had tried to erase her face, my best friend’s eyes were unforgettable. She was standing amidst the flames, singing Kula ma kula ka cani, guiding the spirits of my siblings to the center of the burning pastureland. It was the first night I truly saw her ghost. Before, there were only shadows, whispers, and the occasional breeze that would sometimes blow her veil across my face. I could ignore her then. But there she was that night, the white powder that caked her upper body blended in seamlessly with her wedding dress- she looked like a marble statue. She wrapped what was left of my brother in her veil and cradled the young student as if he were her newborn baby. Blood stained her white dress after my sister rested her head on the curve of her hips. I can remember her placing her wrangled left arm on the crown of my sister’s head, which was the auspicious moment when they became a trinity tethered together by fire and blood and forever bound to follow me. She stretched out her hands calling me into the fire. If my desire to die was a little stronger I would have probably walked into death to be with them. But maybe death is a gift I do not deserve—I was no hero. My fire did not burn for justice, it was never to purify. Revenge cost me everything and gained Soweto nothing.
She stands outside the window most nights singing kula ma kula over and over again, as my siblings find new ways to wear down my resolve. When the moon is full, I am at my weakest, her powdered face glows behind the window and I am forced to remember 1976. On these nights, I can feel the song pulling my spirit into the darkness. But if I am, to be honest, I kind of stopped fighting long ago. Although I do not deserve death it seems less scary than remembering. But maybe in many ways, I am already dead. How could she forget how many times we were buried alive under the white rubble of the gold mines? Or all the pieces of ourselves that faded like the ink on our pass as we laid awake starving in prison? For years we pretended to be men so that we could feed our families. Did she not remember time stripping our dreams from us? The white death welcomed her before I could say I love you.
The barking never wakes my co-workers. My coughing never concerns them. They never hear my screams. They never hear the song. They never see them because they are mine In Memoriam.
