Waiting (Pt1)

 Waiting (Pt. 1)

For a long time, we only had the veranda. When the sun rose, we would polish it, and when we were younger, my mother would polish it. She always woke up earlier than my sister and me, and by the time the sun was high in the sky, the veranda would gleam. Dazzling with a silvery glare. We would sit on the edge, drinking tea, having lunch, or watch the neighbours go by. Sometimes we would watch the peddlers sell their wares,

"Bhodhoro zai! Bhodhoro puti!"

But we were not allowed to sit, but merely perch on the edge, for fear it would undo all of my mother's hard work. I perched on it when I waited for the boy from down the way. The boy with the broad shoulders, tapered waist, and white shining teeth. He lived five, six, seven houses down and made me wait. For a glimpse of him as he came back from school, as he came back home from boarding school, from the university. Made me wait to see him, but most of all to grow up from when I was seven to the day I turned twenty-two. I love him with the brilliance of my mother’s veranda and the sureness of its shine.

The immaturity of my emotions is not lost on me, but they were steadfast these feelings, from primary school to high school to later when I saw him across the street on my twenty-second birthday.

Before him there were others. Others that walked by and said hello. Others walked by and didn’t say hello. I did not blame them, growing up I was small short, thin with limbs sticking out of my body like borrowed appendages.

“Why do you not feed her?” the neighbours asked my mother.

“Is she ill?” another chimed, “pamwe ane maworms.”

In the beginning, I would like to believe my mother tried to defend me. My face gaunt with eyes too large and a forehead made worse by the absence of body fat. But my mother, she loved beautiful things and I was not. How could she be proud of this creation that was me, not born of beauty, not growing into my looks but stagnant and small? How could she defend me and all that I was that she was not?

“Ah uyu here uyu, ndozvaari.” For that is what I was, an oddity, spindly, and marred by time which moved at a pace too slow for me. No one noticed me. Not even the boy from down the way. My mother, she noticed me, but she did not want to for I was not what she could defend.

That all changed the day my dad bought the swing. He must have bought it at an auction, or a second-hand shop because it was not brand new, but it would do. He placed it away from the veranda under the shade of the avocado tree. In the winter, before my mother planted her crop of maize seeds, I would sit in the dappled shade of the tree swinging back and forth alone. If my sisters joined me, I do not remember. I remember waiting for the ice cream truck on Sundays. I remember waiting for the boys to pass me by. I remember sitting in it waiting and watching. Watching for my friends and watching for my mother. Still to this day. I remember watching and waiting alone. As I grew older, my books joined me. Countless books. Some with their covers, beginnings, and endings lost in boxes and suitcases. Some borrowed from my friends and the library. I remember then that I read, waited, and watched.

I never took part in the world I merely observed it, waiting for it to pass by and see me. There were two boys from up the way. Dark and tall, as my memory has them. One thin with hanging limbs with a determined gait. Or that is how I saw him; I wonder instead if he was merely determined not to see me. Not to be observed. He would walk determinedly in a hurry to go by my swing and me, and he noticed me. Swinging and waiting The other stockier, his limbs attached correctly to his body. His head neatly placed on his shoulders. His brother with his square jaw, and square forehead, well he, he wasn’t placed correctly. He was placed in a rush and pushed out before he was fully formed. They could have been twins or brothers, they could have been none this. But it was easier to call them brothers.

From the day I decided to notice them, they passed by at lunchtime. Determined to walk by without a hello without a sideways glance or a backward flick. I made up stories of how they noticed me but waited instead, for me to grow up into my limbs, my eyes, and my forehead. We waited.