Beneath the Riverbed

A story by MATSELISO MOTSOANE

In Mkhono, where I grew up, the trees stretched past the houses––so high it seemed their tips disappeared right into the clouds. The peaches there ripened like wildflowers in people’s yards, filling the whole place with a pungent sweetness that summoned the bees. The peach tree in my grandmother’s yard slanted to the side when the fruit was ready, heavy, almost like it was curtsying to serve anyone who came to pick. As a little girl, I thought, one day, that tree would just snap. But every year, it proved me wrong, straightening its trunk when the summer ended, and the branches had been picked clean. 

Months later, the tree’s gradual bend signalled the arrival of yet another colourful spring.  I remember the excitement in Mkhono when the seasons turned, and men woke early to make their day-long trips to the pastures where the cattle grazed. We had no fathers or brothers in our house, but I watched the neighbours––how the boys and men were sent off with an abundance of food for their journeys. Boiled cobs of maize and fresh sour porridge to fill them up. On their way, some of them would pick what was left of the peaches off the trees. The women also rose early to make their way to the fields. Our family fields were a twenty-minute walk south and lay on a slope towards the end of the village. Growing up, I heard stories of how my mother would escape her field chores by disappearing down that slope. I imagined that was how she left, never to return down the slope of our crop fields. I was curious about my mother, but I never longed for her. I had Nkhono, my grandmother. Nkhono was a large woman, tall and broad at the hips. When she walked, her waist swayed with such grace that I would follow behind her, trying to imitate the poise. I’d mirror the rhythm of her steps, placing my little feet in the prints she’d left behind.

Every spring morning, Nkhono woke at 04:30, fixed herself a warm cup of tea and some porridge for me. We cleaned up in the white enamel container with the flower pattern on the sides, me first and Nkhono after. I’d feed the chickens and draw shapes in the soil while waiting for her to finish her bath. “Hoja oa qeta lijo tseo––” she’d shout from inside the house. I was a child with a wandering mind and no appetite. She knew this, certain that I’d gotten distracted by the chickens or anything but my bowl of porridge. I respected my grandmother, loved her very much, so I always rushed back in to shovel the last spoonfuls of the sweet, creamy porridge just before she stepped out the door. By the time we were leaving, it would be 05:30, and the sun was rising behind the two mountains shaped like breasts erect with youth and fertility. She greeted it with a song, "Mphe Mphe ea lapisa,” and I hummed along all the way to the fields, only stopping occasionally to greet a neighbour or an old friend. 

*

What I miss most about Mkhono is Mahloli, the river. It ran past the fields, past the foot of the highest mountain and under a small footbridge that led to a world often unseen by our fellow villagers. This was the river that swallowed me in fragments and returned me forever changed. I’d sit for hours by Mohloli. Sometimes when grandmother told me I could take a break from the harvest, I quickly ran down to the riverbank and sat, conversing with the waters and its creatures––the tadpoles, frogs, and the little dragonflies that hovered on the surface. I went to those waters to think, to cry, to celebrate. On weekends and some afternoons, when my friends and I returned from school, we would swim in the river. Every second Saturday, my grandmother and I, along with the other women from the village, went down to wash our clothes there. It was there that I first saw small beads of sweat dripping down her temple as she kneaded clean a large mink blanket with her feet.

One Sunday morning after the baptisms at our church––these were infrequent, but when they happened, the congregation walked down to Mohloli in a song, led by the apostle, the elders, and the younger congregants at the back––the river changed. Usually, everyone headed back to the church afterwards, but I decided to linger a little longer. There was a lovely breeze in the air, after all. Alone, I strolled farther downstream to where the water got shallower and started gathering crystals. I found a shady little spot to sit on the bank where an old willow dipped the ends of its branches into the water. From the corner of my eye, one of the ‘older brothers’ from church, the one who would sometimes lead us in praise songs, took shape. Brother Tsietsi had a deep baritone that all the young girls swooned over every Sunday. During services, the girls would slowly make their way to the front of the congregation as the apostle finished his teaching which was always followed by singing. I never understood the fixation.

“ Beautiful,” he said, stopping next to me.

“Eh?” 

“The river, it is really so beautiful. Just like you.” 

I froze, remained seated, my eyes trailing the little tadpoles swimming over and around my feet. “Yes, it is. Thank you, brother Tsietsi.” 

He lowered himself to sit next to me, slipped his shoes off, then his socks and dipped his feet into the water. 

I pretended to look for crystals in the water, gradually rising, then walking up against the gentle current. 

After that, what I remember––

My back to him momentarily, and before I could speak or even turn my head

Him grabbing me

His fist around my mouth

My scream shut behind it

Him snatching up my skirt. 

Before my voice could find its way out of me, before it could name the thing, Brother Tsietsi was finished and walking out of the river. 

His head held as high as the superheroes we used to watch at Lerato’s house. 

Mohloli flowed around my calve by then. I stood there, my eyes held in a trance by the little red waterfalls falling down my legs. The river sang to me, still, and that sound was the thing that held me together, that reminded me to breathe after what had just felt like hours of suffocation. I pulled one leg in front of the other, and let the weight of the water press against me as I heaved myself upstream. The song of the river turned into a roar, and I hoped as the water reached my breasts, the breasts Brother Tsietsi had apprehended, and then my shoulders, that the waters would wash me clean again. I held my breath as my head disappeared into the water until I was submerged. If there was anything that could restore me, it was Mohloli. 

I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut until something moved me to pry them open–– curiosity? 

The water plants danced around me, their opaque green against the water forming a kaleidoscopic marvel. I let the river swallow me gradually, and finally, with one mighty pull, I was in a deep blue, nothing like the waters above. 

I must have drowned, I thought as my body floated. I could no longer see the sand where the tadpoles burrowed or the dancing underwater plants. 

Here, there were caves. Caves beneath the water? I looked around me, surprised by how close to life this death felt. A woman floated by me with a dress made of light cloth adorned with shiny crystals like the ones I collected. I followed her quietly until we reached an open space in the centre of the caves where other people floated around like a school of colourful fish. If I had any breath left it would have been taken away by what I was seeing. What am I seeing? 

I swam closer, towards a group of children floating around an old woman. I noticed the pale blue hue of their skin and the clean incisions where their ears should have been. Two fleshy cuts on either side of their heads. The old woman, who moved less, hummed a tune that the children seemed to recognize but still received with the wonder that fills the eyes of any child. Even one who lives underwater. The children hummed back like it was a ritual or a game that they often played. A familiar call-and-response, one universal to anyone who was in touch with the eternal communion of life on earth. 

I swam closer, noticing as I glided along the soft current, other people floating gracefully around the cave and others hovering in corners, doing what seemed like a daily chore. A woman and two girls weaved wet pieces of reed together with small crystals making garments that created colourful patterns against the light. There was light, all the way down there. I arrived at the congregation of children and met my grandmother’s face. My Nkhono was here. With the gentleness only she could embody, she called me forward with her hand, and I approached. She cradled my face and then released that soothing tune, similar to what she was humming to the children. I spent some time in that cave, then we floated around one another and between the plants that danced with the water. 

Something––Someone, reminded me I needed air, and it––they pushed me towards the top until I could thrust myself out. The river gently delivered me back to the surface, where I swam out and sat on the bank for a moment. Stunned. The moon was out by then. Its ivory rays illuminated the sky and lit my path. The walk home was long enough to push what I had just seen beneath the riverbed to the back of my mind, leaving only the suffocation of Brother Tsietsi’s clasp around my mouth. 

I agonised over what I would tell my grandmother, if I should tell her at all. About the water people and about what led me to them. Would she believe me? Brother Tsietsi’s charm could blind even the wisest of our elders, the older women beamed at his performed humility. Every Sunday after service, he would walk around the church, greeting the elders, kissing their hands and feigning interest in their uneventful lives. How would I convince her that he, their beloved Tsietsi, was a ––

When I finally arrived, people were scattered across our yard. The women carried vessels of tea and water to others seated under a tree and outside the door of the hut where we slept. Their quiet chatter was silenced, and Mangoane ‘Mampela, a distant relative, hurried towards me. Her expression was a combination of relief and concern. She held me close and then asked in a whisper, “Honeng re u batla. Where were you?”

“I––”

“Come and sit down, let’s talk.”

“I am sorry, Mangoane, I didn’t mean to scare everyone. Nkhono o kae?” 

“She––that’s the thing, ausi, Nkhono passed away late this afternoon.” 

I looked past my aunt, fixed my eyes on the door and waited for Nkhono to appear. She couldn’t be dead. I had just seen her in the river. I stalked past Mangoane ‘Mampela, into the hut. There, the elders stroked my arms. A figure lay in her bed. In the jagged light of the solar-powered lamp, I could have sworn it, she moved. I edged closer and peered at the figure. It wasn’t my grandmother. The sunken eyes and the thin hair were nothing like her. My grandmother, who frequently wore her hair in braids, had large youthful eyes. Even behind the veil of her eyelids, I would have known it was her. This woman who slept in her bed, her eyes weren’t large and youthful. It wasn’t my grandmother.

I refused to attend the funeral. My mother didn’t either. Mangoane said that she told her she hadn’t made enough money to cover the trip. Instead, my mother sent some money to contribute to the burial, and what was left had to get me to the city. 

Before I left Mkhono to meet my estranged mother, I gathered some of my grandmother’s things and left the keys with Mangoane.

In the city, my mother found me a school and a job. I ran a small vegetable stand every day after school until the year I turned 18. I walked from the stand one evening and passed by a pond where groups of school kids usually sat in the afternoons, passing around a single 2-litre ginger Twizza. By sunset, the pond was a mirage against the loud plastic-ridden city. A man pulling around a cart of scraps approached from the opposite end of the pond. Soon, he and I were standing on either side. He parked his cart and sat, his worn clothes hanging like heavy, oily flags from his body. After a brief rest admiring the water and its insect tenants, I decided to continue walking. Before I walked off, the man said, “You should send her the letter.” 

 I wrote a letter to my grandmother shortly after they said she died, and I left Mkhono. I carried it with me until the folded creases turned dark, forming a pattern of rectangles on the paper when it was unfolded. I rarely read it back to myself, but sometimes, I listened keenly to the conversations of strangers, about healers visiting mystical waters during their initiations. Every time I walked past an initiate, laden with white and red beads, I imagined asking them if they could please deliver this message to my grandmother when they went to the waters. Did they even know they could go beyond the riverbed? I never asked. 

When I got to the house my mother hadn’t yet returned. It was a Friday, and she would arrive later, barely holding on to the latest boyfriend she frequented the neighbourhood bar with. She looked a lot like my grandmother, more than I cared to admit. Her hairline dipped towards the middle of her forehead like an arrow, just like Nkhono. When her back was turned to me, I saw glimpses of my grandmother, it was her wide hips, her movements which seemed slow and small when she performed a task. This enraged me because she is nothing like Nkhono. On nights like that one, when she stumbled through the door and slurred a demand to be served dinner, I loathed the most that she looked anything like Nkhono. She polluted my memories, her drunken mess bleeding into images of my beloved. 

I reached into the wardrobe for the single suitcase I had brought with me from Mkhono, feeling past the clothes, to the very bottom where the letter lay untouched. 

Nkhono, ke nna, it started before I told her how much I loved her, what Brother Tsietsi had done to me and that I had to leave because she was no longer there. I said I would miss her and that I was looking forward to coming back to Mkhono and seeing her and all the people who lived in the water, where I last saw her.

I wish I could have stayed, but I couldn’t breathe for long down there. Why didn’t you come back with me, Nkhono? There is nowhere else for me to call home without you. 

I asked if the other people who lived with her had families up here and if their loved ones knew that they hadn’t died and that they lived in the water. Between the questions were continuous declarations of my love. I remember writing the letter thinking that she had to know how much I loved her. Thinking back, I also meant for this letter to be received by the village. I wanted my home to know that I didn’t want to leave. I wasn’t my mother, I would return. 

Months later, I stopped by the pond again, unfolded the letter and sent it off into the water. 

The next morning, I watched the frosted grass shimmer against the rising sun as I filled our water pails at the tap. The water hummed the tunes I had heard in the caves beneath the riverbed. When the water was halfway, the final drop rippled and turned into an image of Nkhono. She smiled, her eyes youthful, just like I remembered. My letter had arrived, surely. 

 * 

It takes a bus and two Quantum taxis to get back to Mkhono. I have been on the road since 05:00, and the sun now hangs like an oven light in the sky. I am squashed into the back seat of this minibus. My left arm is pressed against the right arm of an older lady, and sweat pools between us. I doze off to the view of a panorama of mountains, fields and houses, and I am roused by the stinging smell of vinegar that fills the vehicle. Someone is due for a snack, salt and vinegar chips and a golden lekoenya. A slight movement of my thigh lets some air in between the compression of our bodies in this wheeled baking pan. 

The red dust that seasons my All-Stars as I exit the taxi comforts me. Across the road, at the bus stop, is a local grocer alongside its sister tavern, where the villagers with heavier pockets buy their beers. The rest drink traditional brew in dark huts. A limping, slurring mess walks towards me as I fix my bags. 

“Ausi, can’t you spare 2 maloti for a cigarette?” 

Brother Tsietsi? Only, a shadow of the big guy who left me in the river those years ago. His shoulders are still broad, but they stick out awkwardly from his now thin body. A scraggly beard frames his face, and eyes that don’t recognise me, but I could never forget those hands. I tell him I haven’t got the money as I walk away, but he persists. 

My ears burn. I turn to refuse, but I am met by the desperate eyes of another man. “Brother Tsietsi?” I say with no place to release the rage. I step back with a shaky “sorry.” 

The curtsying tree bends against the wind to greet me, her peaches a thin and dull orange. I leave my bags by the door, take my shoes off and walk to the river. The land around me is barren––nothing like it used to be when Nkhono was here. The river sings softly. I dip my feet in, searching for my friends, the tadpoles. Only one or two holes in the sand suggest they have been here. I walk further up until Maholi reaches my knees, and then my thighs. I wade slowly against the current. Completely submerged, I await the pull with eyes wide open. I have waited years to be in this water, to go home to my grandmother.