Fly Away Home (28 page)

F
rom the kitchen window, Monica watched Mandla pulling funny faces at Lilly in her bouncer. Summer was drawing to a close, but the days were still warm enough to spend long hours in the garden. Two-month-old Lilly's favorite activity was watching the dancing leaves and shadows of the syringa tree. Monica could not have found a more dedicated helper than Mandla if she'd advertised in all the newspapers in the country. Sometimes he even tried to get out of school in order to look after his new sister.

Monica had returned to work, but she spent only half the day at the office. Silas had stepped in to take up the slack. Monica's parents had arrived in Lady Helen at the beginning of summer, announcing that they would not return to Italy when winter began. Although Monica had doubted that her mother's interest in her granddaughter would be sustained when all Lilly did was eat and sleep, she had to admit that she had been wrong. Mirinda was a doting grandmother, who also always made sure that Mandla knew he was just as important as the new arrival.

Sipho, who would turn seventeen soon, was the youngest in his first-year class at medical school in Cape Town, and was coping admirably. Every weekend he came home to Lady Helen, unless he had a test the following week. After his brief association with the popular crowd in Houston, he had settled into his final year at Green Block School and scored the highest marks in the entire country on his matric exams.

Most of his dormitory mates at the university stayed in Cape Town on weekends for rugby and soccer games or social activities, but Sipho preferred to be in Lady Helen with his family. He would observe Lilly from all angles, as though she were a new species he'd discovered while walking on the beach.

Sometimes Monica found herself looking at Lilly with similar awe. After years of desperately wanting this child, Monica had given up on ever having a baby of her own, and yet here was her daughter, all fat rolls and dimples, softness and heavenly smells—alive and real in her home. Monica felt that her life had been blessed beyond comprehension.

She went outside into the garden and sat down next to Lilly's bouncer.

“She likes my surprised clown look best,” said Mandla. “She laughed at that one.”

Monica knew that Lilly was too young to laugh, but she did not tell Mandla this.

Mirinda came out of the Old Garage and took the chair next to Monica. “Your father's having a nap.”

“Babies are tiring,” said Mandla in an earnest voice.

Monica had found that she needed to be extra quiet when feeding and changing Lilly's diaper in the middle of the night because Mandla, who had once been a heavy sleeper, woke at every sound since Lilly's birth.

“I thought I'd find you all out here,” said a voice at the kitchen door. It was Francina.

With Monica not working in the afternoons, Francina had given up her usual shift watching Mandla after school. Instead of throwing herself into taking on more dress orders, as Monica had expected her to, she often wandered over to have tea with Monica and check on Lilly.

“Zukisa's watching the shop,” she explained.

Although Zukisa had finally given in to her parents' requests to go to university, at the last minute she had begged them to allow her to study part-time so that she would be able to remain involved in the running of Jabulani Dressmakers. Francina had to admit that she had been surpassed by her daughter's design talent. All the publicity the shop had recently received in national magazines was due solely to Zukisa's vision. It had been because of Zukisa's skill that a certain film star chose Jabulani Dressmakers to make her gown for the wedding of the year in Johannesburg. It had been Zukisa who the reporter from a television fashion program had come to interview.

From her part-time studies in business administration, Zukisa would learn how to expand the business if she wanted to, but Francina knew that her daughter's first love would always be design. Zukisa was an obedient daughter; she would complete her degree and Francina would hang her certificate in the shop next to her own for completing high school. Nobody would ever be able to say that the women of the Shabalala family were not educated.

“You didn't tell me you'd been cast in another movie,” Francina said to Mandla.

He shrugged. Since the release of the film he'd made in Los Angeles, Mandla had starred in two local productions and had been offered a role in a television soap opera, which he'd turned down because he “wanted to concentrate on serious drama.”

The American movie had earned him several mentions in reviews—often in favorable comparison to Steven, the main child actor.

“I don't want to be like one of those typical child stars,” Mandla was fond of saying, “who are overexposed and end up on game shows.”

Monica knew that one day he would leave South Africa to pursue his dream in Hollywood, but she was grateful that he had agreed to attend university in Cape Town first.

“I almost forgot,” said Francina. “I brought you some pie. It's in the kitchen.”

Mandla jumped up and ran inside before she had even completed her sentence. He came out with his cheeks bulging like a chipmunk's.

Mirinda got up. “I'll make tea and bring us all out a piece of pie before someone I know finishes it.”

“Don't tell Mama Dlamini,” said Mandla. “But Lucy's pies are better than hers.”

Lucy was running the café as though she had been there for years. In fact, she was so good at it that Mama Dlamini only came in once a week, to approve the menu. Although Mama Dlamini had never admitted that she'd taken some of what Monica had said in her outburst in the café to heart, Mr. Yang had started encouraging the resort guests to frequent businesses in town, and both Monica and Francina suspected that this development had been upon Mama Dlamini's urging.

In her personal life, Lucy had suffered two major heartbreaks. Her mother had passed away three months after the family's move to Lady Helen, and her eldest son, Xoli, had been arrested by Lady Helen police for possession of
tik-tik
—the local term for crystal methamphetamine. He was now in a juvenile detention facility in Cape Town. Freed from the influence of his brother, Bulelani was flourishing, both at school and on the sports field, where he was proving himself to be a star player for the Green Block soccer team. Little Fundiswa was devastated when her grandmother passed away, but she had quickly grown close to the mother she had known only briefly in the first year of her life. Lucy often told Francina it was the healing love of her daughter that kept her humble and on her knees in prayer.

Mirinda came out with the tea and poured a cup for each of them.

Lilly started to cry, and Mandla picked her up and swayed back and forth, as he had seen his grandmother do countless times.

“What a good big brother,” remarked Francina.

“Sipho and Mandla are both good with her,” said Monica.

“It's a shame Yolanda's missing out on Lilly's first year,” said Mirinda.

Yolanda had decided to split her years at university between her mother's and father's countries of residence. This year, she was taking classes in Sydney. It had upset Zak that his daughter chose to go back to the mother who had deceived her into leaving South Africa. But with all her faults, Jacqueline was still Yolanda's mother—and Yolanda's new little brother, Marcus, was an added attraction.

Mandla missed Yolanda, but, with her gone and Sipho at university in Cape Town, he made the most of his monopoly over Lilly.

Monica looked at her mother, at Francina and then at her baby asleep in Mandla's arms.

“We've come a long way together. Haven't we?” she said.

Her mother nodded. “Through some bad times, too.”

The three women sat in silence, thinking about the death of Monica's brother, Monica's near-death experience in a carjacking and the death of Mandla's birth mother, Ella.

“Who would have thought that we'd still be together after all these years?” said Francina.

Mandla handed his sleeping sister to Monica, and they all watched as she snuggled into the crook of her mother's arm. The baby girl was the first of Monica's family to be born in Lady Helen. Though it was common in this country to move around in search of work, Monica hoped that, years into the future, newcomers would come across Lilly, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in this little town that had given each of them a fresh start in life.

1. Discuss the relationship between Monica and Zak in the light of the following excerpt: “Positive, negative. Two mundane little words, so undeserving of the impact they might have on the lives of a yearning couple.”
   
2. Discuss Francina's relationship with her adopted daughter and how the traditional values of the Zulu nation threaten to tear them apart.
   
3. Discuss the following excerpt in the light of the title of the novel: “Monica the individual wanted to say (to Sipho), ‘Don't go, stay here with me.' But Monica the parent had to weigh her words. She didn't want Sipho to one day regret the opportunity he had passed up.”
   
4. Francina and Hercules have markedly different ways of looking at people and at the world. How is this demonstrated during their quest to find Lucy?
   
5. Discuss the trajectory of Monica's emotions throughout the book with regard to her own infertility.
   
6. Why does Francina not approve of Mama Dlamini's intent to become chef at the golf resort?
   
7. Referring to the AIDS pandemic, the following is noted in the book: Hercules said that one day this would all be “a chapter in a history textbook, the kind that he used to teach his pupils. People didn't realize, he said, that they were a part of history in the making, and that the course of history could be changed.” Why do you think that some countries manage to make a great impact in the fight against AIDS, whereas in others the number of infected people continues to rise?
   
8. Why does Francina drop out of the race for mayor?
   
9. Sipho and Mandla are attracted to life in the United States for different reasons. Discuss the divergent ways in which each boy adjusts to his new environment.
   
10. We are told that “Francina had worked for the Brunetti household since Monica was nine. She'd scrubbed the ring from their baths, peeled their vegetables, washed their clothes, cleaned Monica's and her brother's cuts and scrapes, and not once had they asked about her family, about her home.” With this in mind, do you find the present-day relationship between Monica and Francina realistic? Can you think of any instances in your own life in which the relationship you have with a person now is not as it always was?