Echoes

A story by MUSONDA MUKUKA

We often forget about the slaughterhouse. The one that spirals past Munali Road.  The one that is close to the junction but still packaged away in the yellowing field that sits behind the flower shop but before the cemetery. 

It is a building we are able to not give much thought to unless we pass by it at an unfortunate hour or on an unfortunate day, the kind of day where a truck stands still with cages now empty of life. The animals that were in them moments ago unwilling and unaware of their destination but bound to it, nonetheless. The sounds we hear then are not pleasant ones. They permeate through the air and through the window. They echo louder than the sound of Kasaka’s voice and the hum of the CD on the radio, forcing you to think about the act even though you cannot see it happening.  But on separate days, days like this, the only indication of brutality as you drive past is the occasional sparse of feathers brought to flight by the speed of our wheels moving past. 

Kasaka ignores the flutter. She keeps her hand firm on the intricate stitches she has placed on the cover of the steering wheel— pink ribbons laced in a realm of black. Her fingers tap against them from time to time, punctuating and softening the drumming line of speed that is her thoughts. It is Kasaka’s job today to keep her eyes on the road and steer us safely to our destination. It is my job to watch the phones. 

The burden on me today would be considerably less if Elias were a more dependable man. He is flaky, even for his profession, and does not seem to understand his customer's urgency even as he feeds it. He will send through a price list on a Tuesday. You’ll ask for a delivery the next day but be met with only the acknowledgement of silence. All the while from Wednesday to Friday, you’ll encounter his face gleaming from statuses posted on multiple platforms. You’ll skim through fresh portraits of him— his head in hats bearing logos of cities he has never been to, his body propped up by the heels of pristine sneakers elevating him to heights that he could never reach naturally. All of this while our messages remain blue, while I jerk my head out of rabbit holes to fumble my way through assignments, while I’m on the edge of a craving that has me doing things like snapping at Patricia and Mulenga just for walking past my door too loudly, and while Kasaka’s sleep-deprived stream of thoughts results in a near-permanent buzz of notifications on my phone during the darkest hours of night. But today is not a day we are relying solely on Elias because today is not a day we can wait.

Patricia had alerted me to his arrival this morning. Her voice acted like an alarm long before mine had a chance to. Her voice was high and sweet when greeting, slipping into a language she did not use at home and as a result, I did not speak or understand. But my body heard the name at the end of her praise song. The title, “Theo” hit like a splash of water on my back, colder than ice could ever be. It made my eyes search for the nearest lock or door or window. It made my hands feel for the nearest shield or weapon. It made me call Kasaka so early that morning to warn her too that Theo was back today. I did not have to say more. I did not mention that he looked confident and tall, that through the window I could see he was striding instead of slouching, that the thing that had altered the course of both of our natures had not seemed to factor as even an indiscretion in his. We knew that already. All that was there to talk about was how we would survive.

 And this trip with Kasaka driving and the phones on my lap, as it had been for a while, had been the answer again. Each of the phones in my lap beeped with a false sense of urgency. Each message unimportant unless it displayed a price tag or an image with a pin. Kasaka sent the call out after she got off the phone with me this morning.  Elias, the closest and safest, contacted first in the hopes that he would do the rare thing of coming through quickly. And then as collateral an enquiry beamed out to a select few on her contact list. The kind of people for whom a fun night out didn’t just taste of Savannah and Mosi and the sound of Yo Maps. The kind who, with the urgency of their whole being, required something heavier and would never judge her for needing the same.  She got back fewer messages than she put out. Even fewer that led to someone viable. In the end, the only two seemingly active being one man in Olympia and someone else in a house in Chibolya. 

And now, she, I, the both of us,  were stuck steering her pint-sized orange car towards the compound we had only ever experienced through WhatsApp broadcasts from fearful family friends and news streams from anxious-looking ZNBC broadcasters. Chibolya was a place that to us existed chronically in the category of “over there.” 

“If the guy from Olympia messages in, say the next 10 minutes, we’ll still be able to turn around,” Kasaka said, her face tilted towards me in a half-smile. Her nature still trying to carve a silver lining in the dirt road quickly approaching. 

I held up one of the phones on my lap, crossed two fingers behind it and held them up to the Rosary beads dangling off the rearview mirror that Kasaka’s mother had placed there upon purchase of her car and declared, “I have my fingers, rosary beads and airtel signal crossed.”

Kasaka let out a giggle, or at least a portion of it. The full thing— the whole thing that had been present when I met her and had bounced across both our backyards and ricocheted off classroom ceilings had faltered since what had happened after Theo had, and the incident. These days its emergence was a rare occasion and since his return this morning, it seemed hollower than ever.

“But if this man doesn’t comply,” she delved, “are we armed well enough?”

“We have a rosary bead and pepper spray, but I don’t know what good that is,” I said trailing off.

“Against junkies,” she laughed.

“Exactly!”

 With our heads forward and fears pushed slightly to the side, the scenery around us began to change. The mishmash of buildings that Lusaka was made out of as well as white and yellowed walls that spoke of degrees, taxes, and corporations, faded into what made the outskirts of it. The mobile money booths, the market stalls, and the cheap-to-run businesses that made up the bulk of the population seemed to now consume the landscape with an air of desperation. And in that orange car, with the embroidered steering wheel, and the phones on my lap, it was hard not to feel that we were choking beneath it. 

“We nearly forgot,” Kasaka exhaled, whether it was in relief that she remembered at all or just that there was a new topic to distract us from our surroundings, I do not know. “Chuma, did you get the funds from your mom?” 

I held up my phone and showed the message reflecting the money transfer with Patricia’s name on the other side of it. “I told her the environment in the household was academically stilting me and I needed money for a private library membership.”

Kasaka let out a stream of chuckles that elevated her cheekbones. “I swear our bank balances are fuelled by Catholic guilt”.

“Something good has to come from it,” I countered, laughing. Somehow this banter, this wit, this back-and-forth that had always been there between us, even from the first shy wave, balanced and even sometimes eclipsed everything that came after his arrival. Our sense of safety in our bodies was gone but slipping the same words back and forth at each other, like nothing had happened. It was so easy to remember how things used to feel. 

The road became rockier, the terrain more unbalanced, and Chibolya approached, sprawling, all-consuming and almost a living thing. And all the effort that one would use to upkeep a building, paint the walls instead of letting them flake and replace shattered windows with more glass instead of Shoprite plastics, seemed to have gone into the energy of survival. People milled around in talk, in movement, in activation, in suspension and interest at the shiny orange car and the two of us inside it. 

On the road, right in front of us, a stream of pollution ran through with empty chip packets and other discarded plastics for bubbles. God only knew what the water was composed of. Or how the adults were able to walk past it and the children through it. I spied a girl, one not old enough yet to be in school, her legs on the floor over it, a stick poking through it, the way I used to make my Barbie dolls swim through the swimming pool. Her eyes, large and doll-like, fluttered up at me with interest, but I kept my face straight, devoid of pity or any type of overenthusiastic joy. The only one capable of pointing out the contrast to her was me. 

Kasaka turned the music louder as we delved deeper into this maze, the GPS occasionally breaking through with directions and milestones.

“2Ks away,” a digitised British voice purred at us as we noticed a man dangerously close to the road. He was swaying slightly. His eyes lifted up away in a dangerous, blissful oblivion. His face was pale, not from any deficit of nature but from an evident lack of nurture. His focus on something neither of us could see.

We remained silent as we drove forward.  

The house was not one I would have given that name. It was rather a relic of something that used to be a cottage but had lost any semblance of that word since. Various materials, plastics, wood and sheets occupied the space where a roof should have been. A door, wooden, decaying and covered in splinters. Yellow newspapers bearing headlines that were now history, boarded the windows. Against our hope and judgment, the GPS crooned, “You have arrived at your destination”.    

Our eyes met and hands rose in sync, our fingers competing in a choreographed childhood game that before had decided who got to pick what movie to watch and who got to play with the prettier doll and was now deciding who was going to get the drugs and who was going to guard the car. 

“Rock beats scissors,” proclaimed Kasaka “I’ll stay here and guard,” she said, peeking around the vicinity at the passersby and standers-around. “And also raise the alarm if you’re gone for more than—” She paused and looked at the clock on the display of the car, “10 minutes?” 

“I don’t think anything too tragic can happen in less than ten minutes,” I blurted and then hit by a memory, remembered. The air in the car seemed suffocating, memories rising like a wave that could drown us both. I exited the car without saying another word and headed to the building that could provide some relief.  The door in front of me was fragile enough to fall to pieces as I pushed it open.

I was not met with this cottage. Not in my mind. Instead, I walked into the house of a man seen this morning by Kasaka and in both our nightmares many a night before. I walked into the memory of Theo. Panelled floors and leather couches. Crooked smiles and eager winks. Scholarships and sports blazers. And friendliness, the kind that poured for you from the bottle so many times you couldn’t believe your luck. Couldn’t believe you were getting this drunk for free. Until the 5th time. When it hadn’t just been a party. When you had both woken up. Not like you usually did during sleepovers, using each other’s bodies as pillows. But both your bodies and your clothes, grotesque and arranged for the pleasure of a man you did not permit.  

The aftermath plays like a supercut of our worst moments. Every new memory you tried to cut through hit a boomerang to your past. A glass of whiskey is no longer just a glass of whiskey, it’s a weapon formed against you and an excuse for why it was used. Ten Minutes is no longer just ten minutes, it’s the time you were too distracted by a YouTube skit to pay proper enough attention to the glass. Your best friend is no longer just your best friend. A person you used to experience life with is now someone you just escape with. And the man responsible for it all has returned today. The same as he always was. And now we were here. 

The sharp stench of sweat and of man cut through the past and brought me back to the present. This house as lifeless as it had appeared from the outside was abuzz with the presence of people in movement and business in action. A large man in a T-shirt sporting the name of a designer fashion house appeared to be lecturing a smaller one. I could tell from the distortion of the logo and the texture of the fabric that it was a knockoff. But that did not seem to matter to him; the message he was trying to communicate remained clear. He continued to speak to the smaller man in chiding tones as I descended further into the mismatched room— blue armchairs with a metal coffee table. A bar fridge with a small flat TV running soapies on top. And multitudes of powders and pills stretched across a table facing it. Only when I was a metre away from him with my eyes on the merchandise on the table did he acknowledge that he had seen me at all. 

His attention switched to me and so did his speech. His tone shifted from casual to business. A confirmation of names and recitation of numbers. The ping of cash sent, received, and a bundle placed into my hands, his fingers touching them for too long for it to feel comfortable, but this is an intrusion too common to be jarring. 

With the powders in my pocket and the man in my mind, I returned to Kasaka still secured by the car. She unlocked the doors and beamed when I pointed to the bulge in my front pocket that wasn’t there before. She turned the radio louder, put the car into drive and began to speed away from the “house” with its newspapers bearing ancient history, from the stream that ran through the dirt road, and the speed of our tyres leaving the desperation with a splash. 

We headed to my house. Patricia and Mulenga had left it vacant for the evening for some holy endeavour. “It’s called, Swapping Coins for Christ or something else that reeks of exploitation,” I said laughing as we burst through the door.   

Our jackets hit the coat hangers. Our shoes came off before the carpet. We passed family portraits, winged statues of Michaels and Gabriels until we reached the lounge set in the backyard. White powder falling like dust on our student cards. We were close enough to breathe in each other.  I pressed a hand over one of her nostrils as she inhaled hungrily. She did the same for me, the beginnings of a dazed smile on her face. 

The stars above us both begin to glimmer in a way that we know the rest of Lusaka cannot see. Here and now we follow sensation, move together and lie flat on the coolness of the grass, hands spread outwards like angels. Mosquitos buzzing above our heads like halos. I see a fleck of white residue above her lip, below her nose. I take my finger, dust it off and place it on my tongue. She begins to chortle, the laughter a pleasant stream echoing off her ears. My cheeks rise threatening to join in, I turn on my side and see, vaguely in the distance— That house. Theo’s. The lights flashing, the bass booming in a way that can only mean a party.  The first chortle escapes me. I point Kasaka towards it and she collapses on herself. Our laughter manic, joined, doubled together. Louder than the memories of then and louder than the party now. A symphony of joy, or madness or acceptance. It is unclear. All that is certain is it is a sound.