She’d heard the stories; stories of men who morphed rocks into glass with their bare hands, of men who dipped their thumbs into a bowl of ash and turned it into fire, of men who transformed into wild animals, and stories of men who caused disastrous storms in the night. Except, for Mmadjadji, these were tales of her own fore-fathers. These were her ancestors.
As a child, she was most intrigued by the story of her grandfather, the famous Storm God who is said to have created both havoc and peace in her village. She had heard conflicting rumours: some said he was an angry madman, while others said he was the greatest god in her family. So, one early morning, Mmadjadji asked her mother about him.
Mmadjadji’s mother was sieving maize-meal in a container while Mmadjadji poured the sieved maize into a bucket. Her mother was wearing a yellow dress, the one she liked. She liked it so much that she wore it four times a week. Mmadjadji was dressed in a white, dotted dress that she hated. She disliked how it clung to her chest but floated around her hips. She would lift her tiny feet as if running on burning coals, and cry and scream for her mother to rip the dress off her body. Regardless, her mother always forced her to put it on. Years later, whenever Mmadjadji thought of her mother, she always remembered her in that beautiful yellow dress, and she, crying in her ugly white dress.
“What did he do? Why did our people love and hate the Storm God so much?”
Her mother responded simply, “He healed sick people.”
Disappointed, Mmadjadji said, “That’s it? He didn’t do anything else, like trigger rainfall, just as The Rain Queen used to?”
Mmadjadji wished she had lived in the era of The Rain Queen. She idolized her. The thought of a woman powerful enough to compel the clouds to shed tears whenever she felt like it, fascinated her. She had heard that presidents from all over the world would visit her village of Bolobedu in fancy private jets just to plead with The Rain Queen to put them out of their misery. Their crops were dying, they said. People were crumbling with thirst, they claimed. Because of this, the people of Bolobedu worshipped her. And although Mmadjadji loved The Rain Queen, she was also jealous that she was not a part of her family.
Mmadjadji’s mother looked at her, offended. “You think healing people is not a great thing?” she shook her head, “Once, when the Storm God was angry at his children, he caused a storm that lasted a year.”
“Haaa!” a disbelieving Mmadjadji gasped, “Did people die from the storm?”
“No, that’s what was strange about that storm. But, because people wanted to farm and go to work, they begged him with money and fruit baskets, and apologized on behalf of his stubborn children.”
“Mmawe, what else?”
“Mmadjadji…” her mother warned
“Tell me, please.”
“He also cursed sinners and made them sick. Your grandfather detested sinful people. He followed The Book, word by word. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. A man or a woman must not lie with another man or another woman. Thou shalt not commit adultery. One should respect their mother and father, and so on,” She handed Mmadjadji the last load of the mealie-meal to pour into the bucket. “The Storm God was a man with a pure heart, and that’s how he wanted others to be. When one of his neighbours stole another man’s goats and sold them, he made him impotent and thin; so thin, you could spin him around your fingers like a stick,” She chuckled as she said this and Mmadjadji giggled.
“Because of these things, our whole family was afraid of him. Sadly, your grandfather died of old age, not long before you were born. However, like the other gods before him, he sees everything we do, and he speaks to us when we need answers.” She watched Mmadjadji, who looked at her with attentive eyes. She then told her, “Years from now, when you become a woman, you will bear a son, and he will become a god too.”
Mmadjadji quickly looked at the ground, sudden tears in her eye-sockets and she asked her mother, “Does Papa have a good heart like his father? Is Papa like the Storm God?”
Her mother rose to her feet, picked up the filled bucket and said, “Your father is our god now, isn’t he? So, he will be like the great Storm God–even better.”
*
Not long after this Mmadjadji found herself surrounded by almost all the elders in her family. Her mother had called a family meeting.
“How could she be pregnant so young, are you sure?” Mmadjadji’s aunt had asked her mother. “Isn’t she just twelve years old? Has she even bled yet?”
“She has been menstruating since she was nine,” her mother responded. Mmadjadji hated the way her mother said that. It was as if it was all her fault. Everyone, from her grandmothers to her uncles, kept gawking at Mmadjadji’s stomach with discomfort, as if she was carrying the devil.
“Abortion is the only solution; there is no hiding this,” one of her uncles bluntly suggested. “Our gods will punish us all if the baby lives, the Storm God has communicated this to me.”
Sitting there with her family, Mmadjadji felt disgusting and unwanted. It was just like that scorching hot afternoon the year before, when her father climbed on top of her, put his big, sweaty hand over her lips, and hissed: “You need to feel like a woman, you are not a boy. You may dress like one, act like one, but you will never be a boy…
“It will be over soon. Shh, keep quiet.” He further warned her when she struggled.
That day, she’d felt demons grasping her skin and a monster breathing fire all over her body. Everything at that moment, from her father’s hoarse voice, his steaming hot breath, to the two ravens that suddenly flapped their wings and sat on the window panes, numbed her. It was as if her body was no longer hers. She didn’t move until her father, the proclaimed god, was done. When he walked out of her bedroom, Mmadjadji had felt a twinge between her legs; her inner thighs felt as if someone had repeatedly beat her there with a hammer. She touched herself and there it was…blood. Red.
During the meeting, no one in the family asked her who’d tiptoed into her bedroom, dug through her clothes with their long nails, and planted the seed in her belly. No one asked about the numerous times he had touched her. Not a single mouth mentioned her father.
Mmadjadji did not grieve for the baby after her mother purged it from her stomach and dumped it into a toilet pit. After it was removed, she felt a sudden change in her body. She was no longer Mmadjadji, the daughter of some famous gods she never met. She was now someone else. She hated her father. She hated her mother. She hated her entire family. And she loathed the gods with every inch of her flesh. Mmadjadji did not grieve for the baby because it was her own funeral.
What happened to her remained engraved in her mind. The memory ate at her insides like a worm. So, when she turned eighteen, after matriculating high school, Mmadjadji packed her belongings and left Bolobedu.
Years later, she would realise that they did not ask who had impregnated her because they knew.
*
Bontle came into Mmadjadji’s life like the sun ascending in the morning after a cold night.
“May I copy your notes? I can’t see the board,” murmured a girl sitting next to Mmadjadji at the back of the classroom in their second-year Modern Physics lecture. The girl’s dark-green braids were tightly held together in a bun. Her skin was so radiant, it was as if she bathed in turquoise. “I stumbled on my glasses this morning when I was getting out of bed.”
There was a pause as Mmadjadji looked into the girl’s eyes. “How did you get to class then?”
“A friend literally held my hand, walked with me from my residence and dropped me here,” The girl laughed, “So, may I? Please?”
“Sure, go ahead.” She smirked. “Besides, I am used to girls pretending to be blind after noticing how cute I am.”
The girl laughed, a hasty loud laugh that got her a stern look from their lecturer. At the end of that lecture, the girl wrote her phone numbers at the edge of Mmadjadji’s note. It read: My name is Bontle. I know who you are, Mmadjadji, Mother of the sun. I will be waiting for your call.
Soon after graduating from university, they were married and living in Randburg, far away from Bolobedu.
*
Mmadjadji did not talk with her family and neither did they talk to her. However, a newspaper article brought her news about her family. Her father, the most respected living being in her family, had succumbed to colon cancer.
“That man was no god!” she exclaimed and then cursed after reading the paper. What has he done for her village ever since they gave him the title anyway? She asked herself. She had shouted like this once when she was still at varsity after reading an article online. The article said her father had been invited to The Rain Queen’s house, to bless the new Rain Queen of Bolobedu. She felt like standing on a rooftop and announcing to everyone that her father wasn’t the man they thought he was. Gods don’t rape and impregnate their daughters!
She then wondered: were there ever any gods in her family in the first place? The stories about the Storm God and his fore-fathers, were they made up? Was her childhood all a lie?
“You want to go back?” Bontle asked, lying on the bed next to her.
“I don’t know.” She did not know how to stomach her father’s death; kick a leg in the air or wallow in misery.
Mmadjadji and Bontle lay there gazing up at the wooden roof above them in their three-bedroom house. They moved into the house shortly after their small traditional wedding eleven years ago; a gathering of friends and Bontle’s close knit family, now Mmadjadji’s family too. Even though Bontle’s mother is a religious and godly woman, she supported her daughter’s marriage. She had sat in the front row that day with tears in her eyes.
Bontle shifted on the bed, moving closer to Mmadjadji. After a while, she said to her, “Whatever you decide, you know I will support you,” turning her head to face Mmadjadji, she adjusted the glasses on her small nose. Mmadjadji’s eyes remained shut and her lips vibrated in anguish. She spoke softly, and rubbed Mmadjadji’s her shoulder, “Love, I will go with you if you want. I know that after everything he did this must be difficult for you,” when Mmadjadji didn’t say anything, Bontle decided, “You are going home. It is final.”
*
Time had come and gone like a train nobody seemed to want to catch. Life had carried on. Sixteen years since she left home and three weeks after her father’s funeral, Mmadjadji sat in the living room opposite her mother.
She looked around. Everything in the room felt the same. The same smell was in the air. The same walls stared back at her. And the same sofa she had sat on years ago now felt flatter under her. On her right was her bedroom door. She tried to ignore it – old ghosts of her childhood might still be in there. The ceiling still looked the same too, with more holes scattered around. The only thing that looked different was her mother.
She looked at the deep lines on her mother’s forehead. She glared at her black, grey, and brownish hair. Her mother’s skin was worn, resembling that of an elephant. Mmadjadji could not believe this was the same woman she had held such resentment against all these years. Her mother was incredibly old and weak.
Bontle sat on Mmadjadji’s left side, holding her hand. She was dressed in a red Pedi traditional attire. Her eyes looked everywhere except at Mmadjadji’s mother.
Before Mmadjadji opened her mouth, she held Bontle’s right hand tighter, as if to say: don’t leave me with this woman. She then asked, “Where is he buried?”
“Mmadjadji, my beautiful daughter, I am happy you are home.” Her mother said, smiling, not answering her question. Mmadjadji couldn’t tell whether the smile was sincere or bogus.
Mmadjadji’s mother reached for Mmadjadji’s hand, but Mmadjadji refused to move her hand toward her. Her mother eyed Bontle, and then asked, “O’khe stabane?”
“I am. I will always be a lesbian.”
She sighed, “I know. I know, I am your mother. Have you forgotten that I raised you?”
“No, you didn’t raise me. You crushed me every single chance you got because of what I am,”
She shook her head and spoke, “Mmadjadji, you know this is a sin. This is not our tradition. Our family does not—”
“Please stop. Stop it.” Bontle interrupted “Mosadi, how can you tell her about family when none of your family members and your terrible gods treated her like one? Especially you. You are her mother; the one person she expected to protect her.” Bontle looked into the old woman’s eyes, “I mean, as a woman, how do you sleep at night?”
Mmadjadji tapped Bontle on the back. However, Bontle didn’t yield, “Your daughter was assaulted by her own father, multiple times. Where were you when all of that was happening in this house? Did you know? And if you did, o dirileng? Nothing? Nothing! No, wait… the only thing you did was kill the baby!”
Mmadjadji’s mother raised her finger at Bontle, “This is a family matter, you shouldn’t get –”
“This is my wife. I am the closest family you can get!”
“Bontle, please, I don’t want to fight with her.” Mmadjadji said. Then she looked at her mother and asked again, “Where is he buried?”
All she sees is dirt. Mmadjadji had somehow expected her father to be just sitting there on his grave, grinning and mocking her. Since he was a god, why can’t he rise from the dead and face her? But he is really dead, she thinks to herself.
She feels ridiculous standing there alone. It amazes her how empty she feels. Not a single tear in her eyes. No rage inside her. Nothing. She stares at her father’s grave as if waiting to feel something. Then, she steps onto it, undoes her jeans and squats on the dirt. She takes a piss. The warm fluid flows from her, forming small bubbles on the soil. She looks around the graveyard. Two white-necked ravens fly over her head. She laughs and laughs.
*
Shortly, after the couple return to their house in Randburg, the strange illness begins. First, Bontle finds Mmadjadji lying on their bedroom floor, unmoving, not talking or looking at her – just staring at the wall. Bontle carries her to their bed and covers her with a blanket. Later, Bontle forces food into her mouth because Mmadjadji is not eating her food. That night, she discovers a pile of vomit in a paper bag under their bed.
The following morning, while they are asleep, Mmadjadji howls, “My legs! Bontle, my legs!”
Bontle jumps out of the bed, surprised to hear the sound of Mmadjadji’s voice again, “What? What about them?”
“I can’t move. I can’t feel my legs…”
Bontle calls their doctor first. Next she calls her mother,
“I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it to you, Mama. She wasn’t eating or talking to me yesterday, and today she wakes up with big, swollen legs. I thought she was just overwhelmed after going back home. But now this happens. I swear, Mama, I think her evil mother has done this to her. The doctor gave her some medications, but I don’t think they’re helping.”
“Thank you. I would really appreciate that.”
Bontle’s mother arrives the following day. She finds her daughter sitting on the kitchen floor, weeping.
“I can’t recognise her. Mama, my wife is gone.”
“Where is she?” her mother asks. With trembling fingers, Bontle points at their bedroom door.
When Bontle’s mother opens the door, she finds a creature with whittling skin, inflated legs, and pimples all over its face. Its head is so big, it’s as if it had stuffed dumplings into its cheeks.
Bontle’s mother doesn’t scream or run. She looks at the creature and calls, “Mmadjadji…” Mmadjadji moves on the bed, not saying a word. “I think we should take you to church. You have been bewitched.”
*
Bontle does what her mother’s priest tells her to do. This is how Bontle was raised. As a child she had gone to church three times a week, and she prayed with her mother every night. As Bontle grew older, however, she stopped attending church. She found that her mother’s church loved her and forgave her sins, but not all of her and not all of her sins.
But now, she and her wife will no longer drink tap water; she will find a stream where two rivers meet, collect the water, mix it with salt and vinegar, and then drink. She will wear a doek on her head every single day. She will not wear any jewellery or makeup. Bontle will sprinkle salt around their house to chase evil spirits away. She will burn stones and then make Mmadjadji inhale the steam from the flames. At midnight, she will gather the burnt stones together on a public road, so that someone else might cross over them and possess the ugly illness instead. Bontle will also fast, she will starve herself to death for Mmadjadji, if need be.
When Mmadjadji doesn’t get better, Bontle begins loudly singing hymns, holding the Holy Bible in her hands and stomping her feet in their house. Maybe this God her mother’s church preaches about every Sunday is somehow hard of hearing, He may hear her if her voice is more audible. Still nothing changes in her wife. It is as if all this time she’s been praying, she was just pouring water over a pile of rocks.
After two months without Mmadjadji getting any better but worse, Bontle decides she must take her back to Bolobedu. Perhaps her mother will undo the curse she laid on her daughter. Otherwise, Bontle might just strangle Mmadjadji’s mother until she confesses.
When they get there, however, she is shocked by what she discovers: Mmadjadji’s mother is lying on a blanket in her living room surrounded by family. She is so thin that a passing wind could cause her to roll on the ground. Her skin is ashy from the waist down and her hair strands can be counted on one hand. Everyone looks up at them and begins to sob.
Mmadjadji’s aunt, a light-skinned woman with big front teeth and dark gums, says to the two of them, “We have been waiting for you. Why did you take so long, my children?”
“La’reng?” Bontle utters.
“The gods… they can’t take this bad blood between Mmadjadji and her mother. They need them to reconcile, else her mother dies.”
“So you people are not the ones bewitching my wife?”
The woman shakes her head in disgust and spits on the floor, “Do you see a witch in this room? Please, don’t insult us. We are not witches here. Your wife has been named by her grandfather, that’s what’s making her sick.” she then looks up at Bontle with sharp eyes and announces, “Mmadjadji has been chosen as the next god!”
Mmadjadji drops to her knees. She can feel her chapped lips stretching when she speaks. “I will not. Not after everything this family has put me through!”
“Please my child,” her uncle says. “You have to. My father… the Storm God will punish us.”
“Is this the same god who you said told you to kill my baby? The same god who says I can’t love another woman?”
When she says this, they all look down. Her uncle murmurs, looking at his wrinkled hands. “Clearly, we were wrong. The Storm God would never choose someone who is evil.”
When Mmadjadji says, “But my father was an evil man…”
Her aunt interrupts, “Your father was not chosen by the gods. We only named him a god after your grandfather died, because he was his firstborn son,”
“We are ashamed about the things your father did to you. All of us here are terribly sorry about the things he did,” another aunt says. “Please, my daughter, heal yourself so that you can heal your mother. Become the god you were destined to be.”
As they sit there begging her, Mmadjadji’s chapped skin starts to heal. Her bulging body slowly returns to its original size. Her pimples ooze pus, and shortly after, her face becomes clear. Everyone in the room, including Bontle, watches in astonishment.
When Mmadjadji has fully healed, she looks at her mother lying there on the floor, dying. She knows she is expected to heal her. She then looks at Bontle, who is beaming with joy, and a hint of pride.
Mmadjadji looks down at her mother again. She slowly kneels beside her and holds her thin hands. Her mother grasps her sturdily, then screams as if giving birth. To everyone’s wonder, bit by bit, Mmadjadji’s mother’s body returns.
Later in the evening, the sky unleashes lightning bolts like bombs, windows screech, threatening to come off from their hinges, trees and mud houses fall to the ground like splintering glass, dogs huddle into corners and howl in the dark, heavy rain pours to the ground as if cleansing the village, and Mmadjadji is now the first woman in her family to become a god.
They will call her The Storm Queen.
The End
