By Olivia Cheney
Featured in Caesura 2020: Imago
Sipho
There is a view I remember that still takes my breath away. It was up in the mountains of eSwatini, a small homestead carved out of the slope. The earth was spread out below, its rolling hills green and golden under a fierce blue heaven. The horizon was shrouded by heat that the wind couldn’t blow away. It was a view kings would pay for. Yet the house that looked out on it was made of baked mud and straw that could wash away with the next rain. The toilet was a hole several meters from the house. The people were hard and the dust reflected in their hungry eyes. It was my first time visiting Sipho’s homestead. The day I found out who she was.
She came unexpectedly, like a sudden gust of wind, brought home by my mother. That in itself was surprising. My mom always prefers to have a few days’ notice when company comes. But bringing her was the only thing to do. She had found Sipho sitting in the dirt outside the maternity ward of the public hospital. No food, no family. The other pregnant women had been sharing their own food with her. So she came to our home. She was my age and my height but her belly was distended with a baby who was almost ready to come out. I led her to my room and she lay down on my bed.
We had been neighbors, but I didn’t recognize her. She had lived in the orphanage down the street because her family was too poor to care for her. Then one day she was gone, she had to go home, they said. She became pregnant, so they sent her back to her family. She went back home alone and, when the time came, they sent her on the long trip to the hospital alone. We shared my room. My mother laid plastic under the sheets in case her water broke in the night. Even when she had lived in the orphanage, her bed hadn't had the thin layer of foam mine had. That night, she filled the tub with steaming water and soaked in it for hours, relishing the luxury of being covered by water for the first time since she was a baby.
At dinner, my father reassured her that she could stay until the baby came. She said “siyabonga” and filled her plate with more bread and meat. On the second night, her contractions started in earnest. I woke up to the sound of fierce pain, of her leaving the room and coming back. Her water broke in the bathroom, washing over the tile floor. Mom and Dad got up to take her to the hospital, warning me not to go into the bathroom before it had been sanitized. They didn’t want to risk infection. I went back to bed and when I woke up, the baby had been born. They brought Sipho and the baby from the hospital. It was 150 Rand, about ten dollars, to discharge her and buy the baby’s medicine. The baby was a girl, new and soft, with little tufts of hair covering her head. Her mother named her Nongcebo, “person of wealth.”
I drove with them back to the homestead, taking a supply of milk, corn meal, diapers, and baby clothes. We went up the mountain on the long, bumpy, dirt road, taking her back to the house of mud, to the people trying to live. We met the grandmother who cared for the children, and the uncle who held my hand too long while we greeted. As we sat on grass mats and smiled at everyone, I knew Sipho wouldn’t stay. She shifted uneasily on the mat, staring at nothing. When Nongcebo cried, she quieted her absentmindedly. Her baby weighed her down but couldn’t pin her. Hunger for something more, anything more, clouded her eyes to the view and blocked her ears to the baby’s crying. Like her mother before her, she left. How could she stay when she knew there was more to be had. She had known for a long time, and she couldn’t push the knowledge away. She left to find something more for herself. Who can blame her? Sunsets don’t fill the stomach.
Olivia Cheney is a freshman English major who enjoys drinking tea and baking bread. She spent over 6 years living in Southern Africa, and considers eSwatini home.