Vimbai shrugged and sucked in a mouthful of maté through her teeth, trying to filter out the debris in the manner of whales. “She wants me to have more positive role models. See, I’m not African enough, and then I’m not American enough, and I’m not really anything proper. And my mom . . . she means well and she tries hard, but I know that she secretly wishes that I had grown up in Zimbabwe so that she wouldn’t have to deal with a spoiled American kid. Or she wishes that I would know more about the Diaspora, at the very least. She wants me to understand why it matters to everyone but me that my parents came over here voluntarily.”
Maya nodded. “We all have our problems, I guess.”
“I guess. And I know that mine are not important; they are just the ones I know.”
Maya finished her mate. “I understand. Well, I have a job and a roof over my head, so I have no reason to complain either; still it doesn’t matter if I do. Meanwhile, let’s take care of those who can’t complain even when they want to.”
Vimbai finished her drink and stood. “Oh, grand. We’ll go find the wazimamoto and ask them for Peb’s tongue.”
“That’s right,” Maya said. “What are you afraid of? You seem to have power over them.”
Vimbai sighed. “I hope it still works.”
Chapter 18
Vimbai and Maya decided to look for the truck—it was day, and the wazimamoto were more likely to be roaming around. Maya’s dogs trotted ahead, sniffing the ground, barking in short bursts and occasionally peeing on the ground, excited.
Vimbai thought guiltily that she wouldn’t really mind walking like this, through the plains overgrown by skeletal umbrellas and yellowing sedges, with rare clusters of what looked like forks piled high with calamari salad off in the distance—just walking and talking to Maya, about anything they wanted to talk about.
“Your mom sounds really cool,” Maya said. “And smart, too. I think it is awesome that your parents came from overseas and managed to make a good life here.”
“I guess it is good,” Vimbai said. “Only my mom complains so much, you never would guess that she is happy.”
“Maybe she complains because she sees how things could be better.”
Vimbai nodded, all the while imagining bringing Maya over to visit her parents. They would hit it off, Vimbai thought, her mother and Maya; they would really like each other. They would probably understand each other better too—they would sift through their collected experience, looking for similarities in stories of privation, shutting out Vimbai who really never missed anything. Maybe this is why her mother got so angry—maybe it was because they were too good as parents, they provided too well, spoiled her too much. They made it too easy for her, and thus failed to raise a child they could relate to. Vimbai could not decide whether it was truly sad, or if it was a ridiculous thing to feel bad about.
She was distracted from her thought by the appearance of something tall, stone, and domineering on the horizon—even if she hadn’t seen it in her dreams, she would’ve recognized it anyway. The Great Zimbabwe, this version made of concrete slabs and wrought iron. When they traveled closer, Vimbai saw that there were occasional Legos and plastic building blocks sprinkled in the great seams where one slab joined the next.
Maya’s dogs dispersed over the grassy area between the giant structures—houses of giants, Vimbai thought, temples of dragons. The sort of thing that made one want to believe in ancestral spirits and their ability to bring messages from the creator. Vimbai smiled and looked around her, a vague pride filling her heart with joy.
She wanted to look for people’s houses, for the round houses she remembered from her dreams as well as her travels to the outskirts of Harare, so perfect and almost fairytale-like, with their smooth walls and grassy roofs. She wanted to find people from her dreams and their winged boats, the delicate contrivances that allowed flight from the terrible draining of the wazimamoto. She wanted to hear the powerful whooshing of these wings, displacing the air with great beats, and the shouts of people in the boats, not looking back but intensely staring ahead of them, already forgetting what they had escaped, intent only on finding out what waited for them in whatever new place their boats carried them to.
But there were neither houses nor boats, and Vimbai sighed with disappointment. Maya wandered between the great stone contraptions, her mouth alternatively hanging open and shaping a delighted smile. “This is yours, isn’t it?” she asked Vimbai as if it was something she had made herself. “You have such wonderful dreams.”
“Thank you,” Vimbai said, and felt a bit silly at being complimented on the quality of her subconscious. “This is something I’ve really seen—it’s The Great Zimbabwe.” She explained to Maya what it was, all the while keeping her gaze on the openings between the stones, where the green canopy of the surrounding forest, punctuated here and there by tall gray spires of unknown origin, met the grass of the clearing. Vimbai could not see any roads, and yet it offered no comfort.
She was not surprised when she heard the sound of engines, getting closer and closer. She thought then that the wazimamoto were like European ghosts, unable to do anything but revisit the places that had mattered to them when they were still alive. Like clockwork, their truck went in circles, regardless whether there were victims to be had.
“Quiet,” Vimbai whispered and took Maya’s hand. A normal protective gesture, she told herself, no reason for Maya to think anything was up and to reject Vimbai on the spot and outright. She pulled her along, to hide in the tall grass between the jutting cliffs and leaning slabs of the construction, parts of it resembling not so much the Great Zimbabwe but radioactive spill sites—those were always covered with concrete slabs, in indifference or foolish optimism, it was so difficult to decide. All Vimbai knew that every single one she had ever seen had cracked concrete with thin tree saplings pushing through the cracks, nothing contained, and thoughts about where the radioactive spill went were best left unthought and unanswered.
Maya followed her, and the two of them lay on their stomachs, behind a piece of concrete that jutted partway out of the ground, forming an inclined smooth surface that was so easy to hide behind. The noise of the engine came closer, and Maya barely had enough time to whistle to her dogs, who came to her call and lay behind the slab too, a rusty river of fur and pricked up ears, of bright black eyes and long pink tongues separating Vimbai from Maya like a legendary sword.
Vimbai waited for the sound of the car engine to get closer—so close, it seemed to be shuddering in her heart now, the ashes of Klaas, the thunderous choking beats that made her want to jump up, her hands over her ears, screaming, enough, enough, please stop!
Instead, she clung closer to ground, trying to disappear in the narrow space between the concrete slab and grass, her eyes squeezed shut. Maya’s elbow pressed against hers, and only this warm touch offered a measure of comfort. The scars on her inner arms glowed with a pale yellow light, as if they felt the approach of this specific danger. Or perhaps something different—just as the engine fell silent, Vimbai felt a gentle tap on the shoulder, and turned around to come face to face with the man-fish.
He did not seem much inconvenienced by being out of the water, and perched among the small saplings sprouting through the cracks in the stone. The man-fish managed to maintain a semi-upright position; his fins must’ve gotten stronger since the last time, Vimbai thought. Or maybe he found more souls to swallow, and this is what sustained him.
“Hello,” the man-fish said in his gravelly voice. Vimbai thought that if he only twirled his whiskers, he could’ve passed for an operetta villain. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing out of your lake?” Vimbai countered. “Don’t you need water to breathe?”
“Eventually, O girl who would not drown,” he said. “But now I am here to help those who help me—they cannot deal with you, apparently.”
Maya moved closer to Vimbai, crouching by her side, her knee touching the side of Vimbai’s thigh. “Neither could you.”
The man-fish ignored her, and turned his slightly glassy eye to the dogs, who whimpered but stayed close to Maya—out of loyalty, or possibly out of fear of something else hidden within this dream replica of a great monument. His mouth gulped air in quick, convulsive breaths, and his gill covers rose and fell like miniature beating wings. “What have we here?” he said. “Little fox-creatures, little girl’s imaginary friends—all little pieces of her soul, all tasty morsels.”
“What is he talking about?” Vimbai whispered to Maya.
Maya only paled in response and gathered her pets in a protective embrace.
“That’s right,” the man-fish said, leering. “You know I can suck them all in as if they were candy, slimy gummi worms. You know that these misshapen mutts are just little freewheeling bits of you, and if I swallow them, what will become of you, hm?”
Vimbai drew herself up, straightening between the man-fish and Maya and her whimpering creatures. “You won’t be swallowing anyone today,” she said. “You better tell us where Peb’s tongue is, and then we’ll be on our way.”