Chapter 191 - Zenzele, My Love part 10

I am only dimly aware of our arrival at the village of the Zul. I drift in and out of strange dreams, tormented by pain and fever so that even my waking moments seem unreal and dreamlike. The faces that swim in and out of my vision are the faces of demonic creatures, summoned by my suffering like hungry flies after sweat. They are like masks, with empty sockets where the eyes should be. When I see them, I scream and thrash in Onani's arms. "They have no eyes!" I cry. "They have no eyes!"

Onani tries to tame my flailing limbs, but I am like a wild animal. He hisses as my nails rake across his cheek. "Stop it, Zenzele!" he demands, but his voice has no authority. He is exhausted. For all his brutality, he is frightened for me. Afraid that I will die. "Mother!" he wails as he stumbles through the village. "Where is my mother?" The eyeless people run away from him. One of them points.

"Onani?" a voice calls out. "Is that my son? Is that Onani?"

"Mother!" Onani gasps, stumbling toward the voice.

A face looms out of a dark doorway, but it is no eyeless mask. It is a woman. She has a kind round face with full lips and soft brown eyes. "What is this, Onani?" the woman asks. "Who is this child?"

"She is my woman," he says hoarsely. "I stole her from the Msanaa."

"Oh, Onani! This is no woman. This is a baby!" the woman says scoldingly.

Hope shines through my misery like sunlight through storm-darkened clouds. I hold my arms out to her, and she scoops me from Onani's grasp. She is a big woman with close-cropped hair. She folds me into the cleft of two enormous dugs and carries me into her dimly lit hut.

"Get the medicine woman," she says as she lays me on a bed of soft furs. She swabs the sweat from my brow and examines my swollen arm. Her touch is light and careful, but I howl anyway. I cannot help myself. The pain is so bad I lose my grip on the waking world and slide back into the boiling darkness.

I do not know how long I lie here, only that days pass. The medicine woman comes and tends to me. She is old, the flesh of her face furrowed like the bark of a tree, her hair a white cloud around her head. She gives me a bitter infusion to drink, and wraps my swollen arm in an acrid-smelling poultice. The kind woman with the round face cares for me when the medicine woman is gone. I dream of my family, my little brother Mtundu, and then I wake, and Onani is watching over me. He pats my hand-- my good hand-- and smiles at me. I smile back at him as I drift away. It is like floating in warm water. Onani must have many sisters, I think later, when I wake again, because I am constantly surrounded by grave young women. They stare at me with round eyes and whisper to one another behind their hands. They bring me food and drink and clean me when I soil myself. Finally, in the middle of the night, the fever breaks. I wake, thinking my bladder has let go, but it is only sweat. The big woman soothes me when I try to rise.

"Shhh... lie back, little one. You are not well yet," she says to me. The way she speaks is strange, but I understand her words, and I lie back as she has said.

"What is your name?" I ask. The words scrape through my throat like sharp stones, and I wince.

"I am Bula, Onani's mother," she says.

"My name is Zenzele."

"I know. Onani has took you for his wife."

I nod.

"You are a pretty thing, but too young to be married just yet." She smiles at my worried expression. "Don't fret, little one. I will look out for you until you are of age. Onani will just have to be patient."

But Onani has already had intercourse with me, I think. We are already married. Nevertheless, I am comforted by the woman's kindness. She has a gentle soul, like my father.