The day I was expelled, Headmaster Webster called me a disruptor of peace and a violent thug. Nothing in his response surprised me. I left my brother in his study and went back to my room. While closing the door, I heard him praying to Baba to help him. He was asking for a miracle, anything to help get me back into CH. My brother did not believe in anything, he did not believe in ghosts or that the dead could give a person answers. And so, hearing him pray meant that he had run out of options.

I listened to my breathing, I counted to ten, again and again. I stretched my arms into the air, reaching high enough so that I almost touched the lightbulb. I remembered Ziyabuya, the many places we travelled on foot as children, and the laughter, oh the laughter that left us wheezing for air. The zigzagging narrow paths, with houses so close to each other, it sometimes felt claustrophobic. There, Zazile would scream after me, “Ndlandla, this way!” and Treasure would join in, “This way, sisi!” and Nande, the voice of reason, would shout, “Why are we even this far from home? Let’s go home.” And when we finally made it out of the labyrinth, we would fall to the ground, hold our stomachs, and laugh. I wondered if I would ever laugh like that again. If happiness that left me breathless would ever find me again. If the love I felt looking into my sister’s eyes would ever come to me again. I wondered if heaven existed at all; if I would ever see my Treasure again.

Treasure held our parents’ personalities as well as their likeness in balance. She had our mother’s bravery and our father’s gentleness. When she smiled, I could swear I was staring at a young version of our mother, and when she became serious it was as if Baba was looking at me, guiding me. It made her interesting, just like our parents were. Of course, Bhuti didn’t believe that our parents were interesting; he believed that they were miserable and were defeated by life. I never held this opinion about them, not at all. I didn’t argue with my brother on such matters though; he had a habit of becoming too passionate. So passionate that you could no longer hear your own voice because he could make his voice louder than everyone else’s.

Our mother was a resourceful housewife, who cared for our shack and made sure that it smelled decent. She was angry most days, I could never tell who she was angry with, but she was unimpressed by most things. She was a lot more confident than our father; she could hold a conversation without shying away from it. When she walked, her steps were well structured; her back was always straight, she was never bent. She knew that she belonged.

Baba, on the other hand, was quiet, and tall, with slouched shoulders, he walked about like the world was sitting on them. It always seemed awkward when he laughed, because it seemed like laughter did not belong to him, as though someone had told him that seriousness and bleakness were the only emotions that he ought to have. I read something in school that spoke of a man who was beaten by police officers in the mid-eighties on his way to work. I wondered if such an act could diminish a person’s voice; if that was the intention of the beating in the first place – to quieten him. Only later did I learn that this man was my father.

There was a softness to my parents’ misery, mainly because it was never directed at anyone. It was theirs and theirs alone. I only felt it on days when cooking oil ran out, when Ma went to our neighbours to ask for some – I would always have the urge to save her from it. I could see the age in her eyes speed up, frowns coming up to her eyelids, looking like she wanted to let out a huge cry. It hurt to see her that way. So, whenever we were faced with a similar situation of a lack of food, I offered to go on her behalf. I knew she hated sending me, but she agreed because she truly could not stomach being poor.

Things were a lot easier when Bhuti came home. He arrived with food. The family that sponsored his education gave him food stamps whenever he was home for the school holidays. We ate everything: rice and chicken, cornflakes with milk, bread with cheese, orange juice, peanut butter, jam, jelly and custard. We ate like royalty; we ate like the people that lived at Mango Drive where Treasure and I went to school. I had snacks to share with my friends too, jellybeans, potato chips, and biscuits.

Of course, being at Cameron House improved my brother’s arguing skills. He wanted to argue about everything and anything that came to his mind. Not with me, I was too young to spar with him that way. Not with my father either, because he was too quiet to meet my brother’s passion. My mother, on the other hand, was always ready. Their most heated debate was about the supernatural. Bhuti knew Ma believed in the existence of ghosts, demons, and witches. He knew that she would argue about these things until her doek fell off, but Bhuti would insist on taking her on, as though thinking that he would change her mind about it. He enjoyed doing this, he enjoyed seeing her arguing her points, standing firm on her ideas, and not backing down. But at times I wondered if Bhuti thought he would change Ma’s mind, if he believed that he had the power to mould a woman like our mother just because he went to CH. Ma was the type of woman who would tell a flock of men playing cards by the roadside to fokoff! if they ever said something rude to her. She was well known in the township.

At CH, Bhuti had discovered that he no longer believed in anything. This did not affect our family as deeply as it would have others in the township, mainly because we were ‘heathens’. We never went to church. But Ma had seen ghosts. When she was a child, she was sent to a neighbour’s house to collect her mother’s pot. It had gone quite dark on her way back. She placed the pot on her head and proceeded to run, but as she did, she saw a long figure, one that was so bright it momentarily made her blind and caused her to fall on her head. After seeing that figure, she was never able to do her schoolwork. It was the ghost’s fault that Ma did not finish school.

“Witchcraft doesn’t exist, Mama,” Bhuti said. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for the figure you saw.”

“How do you explain it then? I was very intelligent; I was going to be a nurse and the witches took that away from me. First, they killed my father and then they drove me mad. Bhutiwakhe, I have seen things, in this life, I have seen things that you have only seen in films.”

“Grief is not witchcraft, Mama, it is a way of life. I don’t think you saw anything that night, you were just grieving your father’s death.”

“Arguing with you is tiring,” Ma said. “You always think you are right, even when I tell you what I saw. You say God doesn’t exist; I tell you he does. You say ghosts don’t exist, and I tell you they do. You say witchcraft doesn’t exist, and I tell you it does. I have seen all these things with my very eyes, what will you say next – that my eyes can’t see?”

“Trust me, it’s all in your head! You say you’ve seen God? There’s no such thing! How could you have seen something that doesn’t exist?”

“Bhutiwakhe! When I saw that ghost that took away my ability to learn school things, they said I would never be able to talk again. Who do you think saved me? How do you explain it?”

“Well, science, medicine saved you. From the sounds of things, you had a stroke.”

“A stroke? Ha! You are very simplistic in your thinking, you think books have made you smarter, but they have limited you! You mock me because I believe in God and my ancestors, but they are the ones that opened the way for you. They took you to that big school of yours, you must try to be grateful.”

“Geez,” Bhuti rubbed his head. “Learn to depersonalise things, Mama. I am not mocking you; I am telling you that the stuff you’re talking about does not exist. I’m at Cameron House because that old man was a founder of the school and paid for my fees, that’s all. It has nothing to do with your theories. You have to understand that there is a logical explanation for these things. We cannot make things up as we go.”

“They teach you this in school, Bhutiwakhe? They teach you to forget where you come from? They teach you that your parent’s beliefs are lies because they don’t fit into their tiny little minds and their square books? It’s too limiting, Bhutiwakhe, too limiting.”

I remember breaking their debate by asking Bhuti to put together a puzzle with me – which he did. As much as he loved to argue, I could also see the exhaustion in his eyes. Ma was just as exhausted, she was tired of explaining the ghosts she had to him. When she spoke of them to me, which was rare, I listened. The figures she saw had followed her most of her life. These figures came in dreams, pressed her to the ground, so that she was unable to wake from her sleep. They would choke her, she would try to scream, but her voice wouldn’t come, she would try to shout, cry, but her voice wouldn’t come.

“What did you do, Ma?” I asked. “How did you defeat them?”

“Defeat them?” she said, almost in disbelief. “Oh Nomandla, I have learned to live with them.”

—

Excerpt from BRAIDS & MIGRAINES published by Holland House Books. Copyright © 2025 by Andile Cele. 

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