Page 13 - The Mending Season

twoAlthough the aunts said I already looked like I was holding fifteen by its heels, I was just about to turn thirteen the year my eldest aunt, Mmamane Malesedi, returned home with a plan to give me a new life and change peoples ideas about us. It was the end of 1989 and I had all the signs of what Mmamane Malebone called a blossoming woman: breasts, bigger buttocks, plus hair and sweat in all the places no one talks about. Miriam Makeba, fresh from exile, was belting out revolutionary tunes on the radio, sounding so subversive she made me nervous. I kept turning her down and putting my ear close to the speaker. I could hear what all the fuss was about: she was magic! I pushed out my chest and shook my upper body to “Pata-pata”, a dance move I was especially enjoying at that time. I watched my breasts shake slightly, utterly fas­ cinated by my suddenly voluptuous body moving to the beat ofthe once-banned music.I hadn’t seen Mmamane Malesedi for some time because she lived where she worked. But there she was suddenly, standing in the doorway ofthe kitchen, her shoulders sagging, hands hanging at her sides, as if her body was a burden she was ready to lose. Her pale blue dress with white flowers looked like it was meant for someone with a bigger waist and broader shoulders. I stood staring at her, then I looked at her feet and noticed the worn-out leather on her shoes and the heels that could not stand another journey. The dust of the township dirt roads covered her feet, almost reaching all the way up to taint the white on her blue-and-white dress. When13