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I know it is early because the paraffin stove has flickered to a blue flame, and although our hut is still dark, I can see my hand if I put it in front of my face. I must have slept a little after all, but just before dawn the pains have woken me again. The mattress under me is soaked with the water that gushed from between my legs in the night. Something smells strange. I can hear Grandmother snoring quietly and my two younger brothers breathing deeply beside me. The pains are making me gasp but I cover my mouth with my blanket because I don’t want them to know how much I am suffering. I don’t want them to know anything. I stand up and immediately the cold air strikes my body like a blow. Winter in Lesotho is always hard, but this year we have even had snow in the lowlands, here near Maseru, our capital city.
I pull my treasured Basotho blanket around me. It was my mother’s and now serves me as bed-cover and winter coat. We Basotho love our blankets. The patterns – of maize, of crowns or animals - each mean something. There is a way for women to wear the blanket and a way for men to wear the blanket. If you become intimate with someone we call it “sharing the blanket”. My grandmother wants me to marry Lebohang and share the blanket with him when I finish school next year, but I have told her that Iam not ready yet. She has paid for my schooling and I have seen how hard she works to get that money.
She is much too old to still be a domestic worker but she works as hard as a young woman, and then she walks all the way home to save on taxi fares. I have seen how swollen her ankles are when she returns from a day of cleaning those big houses in Maseru West. I want to make her proud of me and give her a nice life before she dies. I have my own dream of getting a bursary and going to college; otherwise what has she spent her money on? I stand up, hugging my blanket around me for warmth and look down at my little brothers and Grandmother sleeping, each under their own blanket. I know that I need to go now because as soon as it is light they will wake up. And because the pains are coming faster and I need to scream but I can’t scream in here.
Outside, it is much lighter than in our hut. Our village is quiet. Even the animals, chained outside the huts don’t know it is morning yet. Little rondavels are everywhere, like mushrooms. Thatched, some of them, or roofed with corrugated strips of metal weighed down with stones. Some huts, like ours, are more modern and made of concrete breezeblocks. Down the valley, towards the Lesotho Sun Hotel the sky is a dark blue streaked with pink. Clouds hang in wisps over the flat-topped mountain and the other one that is supposed to look like a Basotho hat, our national symbol. In fact, the Basotho hats are made to look like the mountain – it is the other way around. I can smell the scent of paraffin from all the stoves and the coal that was used for fires last night. The pale, brown-tinged air drifts and settles over the houses in the valley, near the river. It is so cold that I feel as if the air is biting me. I double over as another pain knifes through me, and bent like this, I set off up the hill.
By the time I reach the long-drop toilet I am crawling. The pains are coming all the time and I don’t get enough time in between them to recover. The sky is almost entirely pink now and the clouds have disappeared. Like most winter days here, the sun will shine today. By lunchtime it will be hot, but now, at dawn, the temperature must be way below freezing.
On all fours, like a poor, crippled dog, I enter the long-drop. Darkness again, like a thick, suffocating curtain. In here, the stink of this place is so bad that it makes me retch. I crawl in and collapse on the ground, my face in straw and stones and other peoples’ shit. Quickly, because I sense that I am nearly at the end, I pull up my school skirt, worn all night for warmth, and pull down my knickers, looping them awkwardly over my foot. I unwind all the bits of material that for months I have wound around my taut, swollen stomach. This is what has kept me thin. I have been trying not to look under the cloths, but I am not stupid. I know what has been going on. Round and hard, my stomach is like an enormous squash in the backyard of our hut. I drop the strips of material down into the long drop. I won’t need them anymore. No time to think – another pain tears through me and I push. That is one thing my body does without anyone to tell me.
I don’t know how much later, I am sitting on the floor of the long-drop next to a bloody, wailing mound of flesh that I am trying to clean with grass. Too late, I realise that I was mistaken to throw the rags away. I could have used them now. I can smell myself; the warm, acrid scent of blood still draining from my torn body. I have no energy to clean myself and I can feel dried and drying blood crusting around my thighs and down my legs. My breathing sounds as if it is coming from someone else, in rasps. I don’t feel anything except relief that the pains have stopped. I pick up the alien creature that I have spawned and see that she is a girl. I remember Khotso, back from the mines, on the day we created her. His smile. His city clothes. I wonder if what we did was really wrong. To me, she has a look of him. She is dark, darker than me. I cradle her tiny black head and let her fasten her little rosebud mouth onto my breast. I register that she is beautiful and that she is mine. Could I keep her? I dismiss the thought. Her little claw of a hand clasps my finger and my heart stops. This must be a sign. The evil that Khotso and I did is here, in this little hand, for everyone to see. I count again to be sure. My baby has six fingers.
By the time I have walked to town it is lunchtime, and it is hot. I am faint with hunger, pain and with fear. On the way, I found some rags dumped outside one of the Chinese garment factories. I have wrapped the baby in them and she looks like a bundle that could be anything. The bus stop area is crowded, as always, with hundreds of people. Makeshift stalls line the streets, covered with strips of cloth or metal sheets to protect the hawkers from the sun. Women sell blackened, barbecued knobs of sweetcorn that we call ‘mealies’ and colourful clothes are hanging on rails. Young boys hold out watches and sunglasses to passers by. I can smell cooking, sweat and dust. I am full of fear in case I see someone I know.
Clutching my baby to me, I make my way to where the minibus taxis stop to pick up passengers. As if from another world, I can hear the honking of taxis and the yelling of people. I join a straggling line of people waiting to get on a taxi that says ‘Khubotsoana’. Following others, I climb the steps and carry my bundle onto the bus. I sit down next to a large woman whose thighs pool over most of the ripped and soiled plastic seat. I try not to hold the bundle as if it is a baby. Instead I perch her on my knees, as if she is something I have bought. I am willing her not to make a sound. I fed her in the shadow of a tree before we got to the busy part of town, so I know she will not cry from hunger. She is still and I am sure that she is sleeping. Or dead. With six fingers, perhaps that is better.
The driver clambers up and sits at the wheel, turning the key in the ignition. With a splutter, the engine catches. My heart feels as if it is about to jump out of my mouth. I must leave now, or go back home with a baby, and this I cannot do. I think of the shame of having to tell Grandmother. Lots of girls in the village have had babies and not known or not told who the father is. One more baby would be nothing new, but I know that Grandmother would be angry and hurt and disappointed in me. Her hard work would all have been for nothing. She would see the six fingers and know that my baby and I have been cursed forever because of the evil done by Khotso and me. And Khotso must never know. He has a good job in the mines and a wife in South Africa. I would be a burden to him. Anyway, I have my own plans and dreams. I want to make Grandmother proud. I want her to see me qualifying from college with my head held high. Instead, I am a child with a child. This is the best way.
I wrap the cloths more tightly around my baby and lay her casually on the seat next to the big woman as I stand and look around, pretending I have forgotten something. “Look after my things for me,” I say, as I move down the centre of the taxi toward the open door. “I forgot to get fruit. My mother will be furious.” As I pass the driver I mutter something about being back in five minutes. I doubt he will wait for me.
I slip into the crowds and it’s easy to melt out of sight. No one pays any attention. I hide behind a stall of woven baskets to watch what will happen next. I am conscious once again of my soreness as I crouch down awkwardly. My whole body suddenly aches for my baby – yet I am not even certain that she is alive. If she is alive, I pray to God, let someone kind find her and care for her. Someone who will not mind the six fingers.
The people in the bus are paying no attention to my bundle on the seat, not even the woman I was sitting next to. The driver starts the engine and I can see the woman looking around. She shouts something to the driver, no doubt telling him that I am coming back. The taxi judders, engine still running, spewing out clouds of black smoke from its exhaust. No one is getting out to look for me. No one can see me.
With a shrug, the taxi driver decides he cannot wait any longer. The taxi moves slowly forward, parting the milling crowds, honking constantly. It gathers speed as it reaches the junction. It turns the corner and is gone.
My whole body feels bruised and tingling. I ache to hold my baby. Tears are running down my face. One of the ladies on the stall turns to me, puzzled. “What are you doing here, my daughter?” she asks in the polite way that we Basotho use. “Nothing, my mother,” I reply, surprised that my voice can sound normal. “I am just saying goodbye to someone.” I wipe my face with my skirt, ease myself up and make my way through the noisy throng of buyers and sellers. At the junction I take care to look away from the direction taken by the taxi as I turn towards home.