ON THE GRAVESTONE

I walked into the small bend then into the small cemetery outside the old cathedral, my hands in the battered jacket pocket. Its gate squealed solemnly when i pushed it inside despite the new coat of a pale-white paint on it. There was no sign of life in the place, a sharp contrast to the mobs flooding the streets outside. Even the wind seemed to be afraid of this place for its howl was almost silent as if afraid it would wake some souls or bad memories.

The grave stood under the willow tree, aloof and some distance away from all the others. It was one of the oldest around there, made of cheap granite with its sides already chipping away. There was a wild assortment of plants growing on it but did little to hide the name.

               Elizabeth O Alison

              Born 1899

              Died 1934

I had traveled all the way from Africa just to know of this woman whom I apparently had a relation with. I wiped some dust off the surface and placed the withered rose on top to appease her. I then sat on a rusty, weather-beaten bench under the very tree and looked into the air to think. I reached into my trouser pockets, fished out a half-smoked cigarette and put it in my mouth but then couldn’t find my light. It had dropped through the holes in my trouser and had lodged inside my woolen boots.

Hers was a complicated story. She was born to parents Stephen and Hannah who were both small scale farmers with twenty acres of land between them. They had ten cows, quite a number of chicken and some pigs. Farming was their main economic activity and she loved it, until she was twelve. She all of a sudden refused throwing grains to the hens, collecting eggs and even riding with her father in the old ox-cart to the market, stuff that she had always done and liked. Her poor parents didn’t make much of it and thought it was the adolescent phase and she would be back to her senses soon. She never did. She ran away when she was fifteen, eloped with some boy who worked as a coolie at a nearby train station and set off to another state. Her father’s health started failing him the moment she left. The doctor said that it was exposure to harmful agro-chemicals and he hadn’t long to live unless he performed some special chest pumping treatment on him. He didn’t want it in the first place but his wife couldn’t bear seeing him die off like a dog and sought a loan to give him a new lease of life. He was treated and even seemed to get better. Times became tense though due to some tsetse fly infestation which wiped off almost all animals in that part of the state. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there came a bunch of locusts which wiped away all green, then came the sun. The lenders didn’t care or even understand. They sympathised and explained that their hands were tied and all they wanted was their money. They gave out a notice that the farm would be auctioned off in a week’s time. The old man couldn’t wait to see all he had made for himself all his life disappear in the gong of a hammer. He was found hanging in the barn by his wife who was wondering why one of the calves she had tied outside was roaming free. The sight sent shockwaves through her and she started moving backwards in fear. She had left the well uncovered when she went to check the calf and only realized when it was too late. They were found there two days later by some lending official who had come to tell them that the bank had given them up until the end of the drought to make the clearance, government orders.

Elizabeth’s life with her knight though wasn’t quite like she expected. The first week was fun but then it dawned on her that this wasn’t a fairy-tale and she had to be a wife. She had to scrub the coarse floor, wash the threadbare clothes and cook the scanty meals in the smoke-filled kitchen. Her living in the farm had taught her a life of plenty but back here, they had to scrape by using the little they could get. The drought was frustrating the train trade since they cut off most of their trips due to lack of crops and animals to transport. Her husband Henry was increasingly becoming hostile to her as he tried to come to terms with the situation. There were times when he had to steal to put food on the table, first a hen, then a duck and even a lamb. He found this way convenient and easy enough and soon developed the courage to go for something bigger to last them a couple more days. He went out and came with a freshly killed goat in a sack and dumped it at her feet. An argument ensued over ethics and he walked off after hurling expletives at her and even asking her to get them a meal next time. The bounty took them through a whole week but then it needed replenishing.  Henry had walked off that morning, a rope in hand and full of confidence and headed to the rich man’s farm. He got in as he always did and went to the pen where the animals were housed. He didn’t get there however. From nowhere came dogs about half his size and he had to take off. He got to his hole in the fence but his shirt got stuck. He tried twisting it but wasn’t fast enough. They were soon on him tearing away huge chunks all over him, taking advantage of the fact that he couldn’t move. Somebody called out and the dogs ran back to their kennels. Two burly servants came running and he was sure he saw one grimacing and shaking his head pitifully. He felt himself being lifted into the air and a sharp pain jarred his whole body then he blacked out.

Henry had woken up in a cheaply furnished hospital swathed in bandages, a cuff on his hand fastened to one of the rails. His wife was there watching and clutching his hands. He had looked at her pitifully and realized that the little girl, whose breasts were barely out of her chest, was pregnant. Theirs was now a funny relationship. He didn’t love her, he pitied her. Before he got attacked, he would stand a small distance away and watch her struggling with her household chores and always felt guilty. Henry was discharged a month later and taken to the community penitentiary where he died after two months due to some infection, they were never specific. Elizabeth had to do something to feed her and her new baby. She went to the rich man that Henry had tried to steal from and got a job. She was put in charge of the vast vegetable garden that took her about two weeks, working from early in the morning till late in the afternoon, and had to start all over again. She was after about two weeks promoted to the main house where she ran the cleaning activities. The terms though didn’t change, she had to work for food and that was all. Meredith, for that was the name she had given to her child, was soon a quiet two year old. She was thin and wispy and didn’t talk a lot. She had had a turbulent childhood and almost died from measles seven months past. She would not be a beautiful child, that her mother knew but she was clever and that would be helpful. Life had started getting better by day, then something happened. Elizabeth got pregnant by her boss who was a man of class and with a huge name. She didn’t want him to know so she kept mum but then it would be seen. She hoped she would have had a plan then but she didn’t.  It didn’t take long for her to find herself back in the hellish plains with nothing but her born and unborn to her name. Like any woman would do when left without another option, she left for her parent’s place. It would be a three day journey on foot but she would hitch a train if she hurried and arrived before schedule. She was lucky. She found a produce train just about to leave and she was soon in it, squeezed among some crates of rotten farm produce. They would stop about two kilometres from her home and she would walk all the way there.

She got there around nine the next morning. It wasn’t such a long walk from there but she felt afraid after so many years way, after all the pain and mental anguish she had caused her parents. She didn’t know that it was the least of her fears, that she had bigger things to worry about.

The farm looked different even from a distance and she felt something gripping her insides. She looked at her child who was even more confused than her and she swallowed hard. They closer the band was getting, the more she felt like turning back and running away but she couldn’t. The home was outright different from the moment she walked in. There was no sign of the hens she used to feed, only a couple of pigs in a sty and three horses tethered in the compound. They all turned when she walked in and stared. She could see the hatred and bile in their eyes, as if her very presence nauseated them, but who would really enjoy looking at her? A nineteen year old looking thrice her age, dirty and stinking, with a belly sticking out like a benign tumour?

Her heart was already bursting with apprehension when she reached the door. She raised her hand to knock but let it hung in the air for a while before feebly rapping the door. The attempt didn’t seem to have had any effect so she tried it a bit harder, not noticing she held her daughter’s hand so hard it hurt. She however noticed her very white knuckles and the increase in heartbeat when she heard some footsteps making their way to answer the door.

“I am sorry Ma about...”

“Sorry, can i helps you?”

She lifted her face at the strange voice and she felt blood drain from her face and her throat all of a sudden dry. She tried to say something but couldn’t really make any sense. She noticed some movement from the corner of her eyes the woman reaching for something right behind the door. It didn’t take rocket science to know she was reaching for a gun, thinking that a mad woman was coming in to kill her, probably a paranoid woman.

“Wait, please don’t. We are, i am a child to Stephen and Hannah, the owners of this farm, my name’s Elizabeth and this is my child Meredith.”

“Jack?” she called out and a hoarse voice, probably due to years of tobacco addiction, responded from somewhere inside the house.

She heard a chair creak and waited a full minute before Jack appeared and looked over her head.

“Oh, who might you be?” he asked but before she could answer, the woman did.

“They are the Stephen’s children, who we bought this farm from,” she answered in her terrible English. “Come in, we have a lot to talk about, how about a bath or a meal first?”

She sat there not hearing the rest of the woman’s babbling which now seemed to be coming from a distant hollow. Her brain was trying to process the information, her parents’ death, the loss of the farm... it was all too much. She wasn’t conscious of the tears falling from her cheek and the woman too didn’t seem to notice them till Jack put a hand on her shoulder. She took Elizabeth’s hand and squeezed it tight then settled on the sofa next to her. That was all Elizabeth needed. Her dams burst and the wail she had stifled forced its way out of her throat, one haunting cry. She buried her head inside one of the cushions on the seats and lay over to cry. Here she cried for Henry, her mother, her father, her child and her life in general. The woman’s hands massaging her shoulder broke her further and she cried even more. Everybody who heard that sound would tell you it was one of heaps of pain and torture, the cry of a woman whom life had battered back and forth and tossed aside. It was the cry of accumulated sorrow and untold suffering. The only thing that lessened her cry was the small hands that tried to force her head up and the innocent question of why she was crying. She asked where the grave was and was led into the corner of the house, Jack following her to maybe give her company though his real fear was she would attempt something stupid. He sat there by the grave till her tears were spent and her sorrow subsided then gently led her to the house where her little child was innocently sipping from a milk mug, not knowing or even asking the kind of pain her mother was going through. They were lucky she had eaten before being told all about the happenings of the place for she didn’t touch food the whole day and the next morning.

She felt better in about a week and was soon in stride with the farm activities. She had somewhat regained her earlier nature though one would notice the faint shadows of sorrow whenever she walked. She would get into bad moods every once in a while and go silent on everyone but they understood and even felt her pain. The barn was now ready for occupation, cleaned and fumigated, all her little possessions in the world stacked there and one small wooden bed, a rickety table and a dressing mirror. She wanted to buy a small oven and start making her own meals but Jack insisted they be taking their meals from the main house since they were a part of the family.

Meredith soon got into the habit of calling Jack grandpa and Alice, for that was the woman’s name, grandma and they really loved it for their two children had been married of ages past.

Elizabeth worked till her eighth month when they stopped her and told her to rest. Time was drawing closer and closer but she had a problem. She had never felt the child kick or move. She had this fear that the child was in a bad state but always pushed it to the back of her head. She didn’t have to speculate much for a week later, she gave birth to a thin, pale and undernourished child that looked more like a disease than human. It was buried outside the cattle shed without much ceremony and was forgotten within two weeks. She would always have another when she got better.

Elizabeth was now putting much back into her work and the Jacks were happy for her. She was doing that to stop herself from thinking about her problems, or so they thought. She never said this to anyone but her driving force was the fact that she felt she had failed her parents. She was working to earn trust then strike. This was her farm, her inheritance yet she was here living at the mercy of the intruders, a servant when she should be the queen. That was something she believed she owed her parents, at least get back what was theirs, atone for her sins and earn the right to be called a daughter again. The tomato season came and the orchards were soon painted red with the crop. She would, every thrice in a week hitch an old ox and take them to the train station where they were loaded and carried away to the city. The train evoked memories of Henry, though he was a pain in the ass sometimes, he was still the man she loved and married and she did miss him sometimes. There was this man in the wagon, though she didn’t know what he did, who always came with a small board for her to sign off her delivery. He always smiled at her and with time found themselves holding small conversations about the weather and the trains and in no time, she couldn’t wait for the next train day. He was a handsome and well built man with a charming smile and a nice sense of humour. He wasn’t in anyway like Henry though because he was the blackest man she had ever seen. His name was Timothy. His charm won her over and one warm day, the last day of summer to be specific, they consummated their love in an abandoned wagon for he was going away. The train had pulled off the station and she waved till it became a speck in the distance. She felt a huge part of her had been tugged away and was now heading to a faraway land. She had a feeling she would never see him again.

When she got home however, things were not normal. The normally jovial household was now tense and everybody looked up at her when she walked in. Meredith rushed to her and led her to her seat.

“Elizabeth, we have treated you like our daughter since you came here, given you all you have and given you family.” Jack started and she knew where exactly he was headed.

“I heard you were fooling around with a nigger at the station, you very well know it is not good for our image and that of the white folks? You...”

“Stop, just stop, she cut him short. What do you know about me? What do you know about my relationship? Why should i care about white folks and they are the ones who killed my parents? And you, look at you, you wanted my parents dead so you would take everything... you, you...” her voice broke off and she stood up in a fit of rage and left the room. The three shocked people stared at her receding back with mouth wide open till she disappeared into her room.

She sat still in the pitch-dark room looking at the little streams of light seeping through the holes on the sooty roof. They were almost like her, struggling to light a dark place but they just weren’t enough. She too thought she had finally found a place to light her life but she was wrong, very wrong. She had to find a place and start over again. She had to abandon the ambitions that had been an impediment to her success, she had to leave this hub of hatred and sin and find a ground pure enough for her child to grow, a ground without vipers or poisonous weed, a fertile ground for her offspring to grow. No matter how much she hated these people now, she knew what they were saying was somewhat right. Black people were second generation and were not allowed to mingle with the pure bred white folks and yet, she was probably pregnant with a black life, one that would never be given a chance to grow among the whites. She would leave that very night with her child and her small load. She had enough money and would travel into the city to meet her black man again. The city, she had heard, was somewhat tolerant to the black folks so she was sure she would start over again.

She had caused this people enough mental anguish and she knew that even if they let her stay, things would never be the same again. She could see the pain in their faces when they told her all this. They were definitely arm-twisted and backed into a corner and there is nothing they could do. She would at least write them a letter and thank them for everything.

“Ma, what are you doing?”

She sat Meredith on the bed and let her rest her head on her lap.

“We have to go sweetheart, we have to go, this is not home anymore.” Her voice was breaking and she could feel tears coming to her eyes. Go to sleep dear, I’ll wake you when we are about to leave.

The sun soon set and she got her things in order. They hadn’t yet come to see her, probably thinking she was still pissed which was good enough for her. Nine in the night. The dogs had gone silent and every place was shrouded in the night air, there would be no other opportune time to leave without their knowledge. She quickly signed the long letter over the dying candle and tiptoed across the farm to the farmhouse that she knew all too well. A piece of cloth she had packed in a hurry sealed her fate. The final remains of wax slid sideways and the dying flames attached themselves to the cloth, getting life once again. She was on the other side of the house where her view of the barn was hidden. A scream she knew all too well was what drew her attention and she ran back.  She saw the figure, her only child struggling out of the house with a great fire on her and the house.

“Ma, mama, ma...” She was screaming. The door of the farmhouse burst open and a half-dressed man walked out in a battered vest and a gun in hand. It took his slow brain quite a while to process what was actually going on and when he did, he saw Elizabeth running towards a burning figure coming from the house.

She didn’t feel the heat or even fear the roar of the big flames. Her wasn’t moving when she got there. There was a strong, chocking reek of smoke and burning flesh all around and she chocked, not on the smoke but the tears in her eyes. She was now a hot, charred figure, her Meredith was dead, just when she was about to discover her new life. She felt the earth spin around her and everything going silent. She stood and walked away, not feeling the flames, unseeing to the panic of the people around her. She never knew how she found her way out of the gate, neither did she know how she found her way to the train. The last most people remember of her was a stinking woman on a passenger train who seemed to have lost touch with the world calling Meredith under her breath. That was about the last time she was consciously seen around the place.

She was heard of about a year later when she was admitted to a mental asylum right in town after some well-wishers salvaged her from the back alleys with a black child in her hand. They concluded she had been raped by the black urchins on the street and offered to take the child since they would be traveling to Africa to farm, at least that’s what the records at the mental institution said.

That is how my father came back home and sired only one child before he was murdered while defending his white parents from some disgruntled black workers at twenty six years. That child had saved up enough money over the sixty years he had lived and was now here to seek answers about his past. He couldn’t find answers in life so he looked for them beyond life, on the gravestone.

I didn’t seem to be getting the answers I was seeking so I stood up and walked back the way I had come, through the streets and into the shelter for the homeless, maybe I would find what I wanted the next day. I would again wake up and go look on the gravestone.