Prudence Couldn't Swim (16 page)

Not long after I'd connected up Sunny Jim with his bride to be, Red Eye arrived for our meeting. He had information and a proposal. The information was that Margolis was a local businessman who died in a water skiing accident somewhere in northern California.

“My partner said something smelled fishy about it all,” Red Eye said, “but he couldn't put his finger on it.”

I had no idea. Maybe Jeffcoat was driving the boat, maybe Margolis was bangin' Mrs. J. Red Eye's friends didn't always paint in all the numbers, but if Prudence told Mandisa this would buy leverage over Jeffcoat, we had to pursue it.

After the tidbit about Margolis came Red Eye's proposal:

“Let me move in,” he said. “I'll be your security. Say for a month or so, until things cool down. I'm sure my parole officer will agree. He's cool as hell. I'll tell him you're paying me a couple grand a month.”

“You mean I have to pay for the privilege?” I asked.

“No, no. Just something to keep Mr. Roosevelt Johnson, my PO,
happy,” he said. “He doesn't trip. A closet Bears fan. Wanted to send me somewhere to get this SS tat taken off my leg. I told him I'd think about it.”

“I think you're a little bit too late with this offer,” I said.

“Whaddya mean?”

“Somebody broke in and stole the tapes.”

“They got to your stash?”

“Not exactly.”

“Shit happens, bro, that's why you need twenty-four security. Red Eye's five-star service.”

It was an offer I couldn't refuse, even though I had my doubts. Red Eye slept at odd hours, liked weird horror movies, and obsessed on sports betting. Though I had no concrete proof, I bet he snored like a fat lady passed out after dollar-pitcher night. In prison you learn the power of a snore. A real snorter can keep dozens of men awake through the night. If you're unlucky enough to share a cell with one of those buzz saws, you're locked in your own private hell. If you don't move away you'll start dreaming of smothering him in midroar. I'm sure my Sunny Jim from Idaho made as much noise as twenty hungry warthogs. But Corazon would just put up with it to send a few dollars back to Manila every month.

Red Eye's offer left me in fits. I needed security but I needed solitude—my own space to plot my next move and completely recover from the death of my so-called wife. I didn't know how to handle such things other than alone.

I decided on a compromise. I moved all my business paraphernalia, desk and computer into my room. Red Eye could take the second bedroom and the living room for his all hours TV watching. He'd probably be betting on some bantamweight title fight in Indonesia at 3:00 a.m. Far be it from me to get in his way. Just so he kept the volume down. By that night he was camped out on the sofa in front of the TV with his
Daily Racing Forms
covering the coffee table. Somewhere in the middle of a special on the great Yankee home-run hitters of all time, I phoned Mandisa. I wasn't sure why.

“I'd like it if you'd just stay out of my life for a while,” she said. “You bring nothing but trouble.”

Before I could get her to rethink, she'd cut off the phone. Mel Allen, the voice of the Yankees sounded like he was jumping out of the press box over some home run that Mickey Mantle had hit fifty years ago. I had a feeling this arrangement with Red Eye might not work out.

Harare, Zimbabwe
April 1994

T
he nurse gave Tarisai a small paper cup.

“Take this with you and fill it up with pee,” she said. “Then we can run the test.”

Tarisai did as she was told. She couldn't remember when she'd been this nervous. She hadn't eaten in two days. This morning when her stomach retched, nothing came out but bile. She could still feel it burning the inside of her nose. She should never have allowed Cephas to do it without a condom. He was a deputy minister, always used to having his way. He'd promised to leave his wife, Eternity, and marry Tarisai as soon as she graduated.

Tarisai had seen the wife on TV, giving a speech at the opening of a grinding mill in some village. Wives of deputy ministers were often called upon to do such things. Eternity looked like she was made for the rural areas. She had one of those workhorse bodies that not even perms and clothes from upmarket boutiques could disguise. Tarisai imagined that this woman called Eternity had those flat rural feet bulging with bunions as big as pumpkins.

Tarisai was proud of her soft feet—one of the marks of a sophisticated urban woman. Every night she covered them in Vaseline and slipped into some cotton socks before she went to bed. Cephas always commented about the smoothness of the skin on Tarisai's heels. In just a few months they'd be sleeping together every night. Tarisai would be going to diplomatic parties and accompanying her husband on overseas trips. Other girls at the university had been to Botswana or South Africa with their “sugar daddies” but those were just good-time jaunts. Cephas was no sugar daddy. This was for real. He'd already told her the name of the hotel in London where they'd stay during their honeymoon. The Princess's Arms.

Tarisai loved the fact that none of the other girls knew about her relationship with the deputy minister. Nearly every female student lusted after Cephas Kanyere. They all ran to the TV room in the hostel whenever he came on the screen.

“He may be forty-five but he looks ten years younger,” said Tarisai's roommate Doris. “Unlike other cabinet ministers he's only got one chin and the tummy doesn't cover his belt buckle. That touch of gray makes him look distinguished.”

Doris could speak with authority. She'd dated two cabinet ministers. One of them gave her a 67 cm Sony color TV and VCR, but his tummy looked like he'd swallowed three soccer balls.

Doris actually saw Cephas's wife on the news one day. She screamed with laughter.

“She's a country bumpkin,” Doris said to Tarisai and the other girls who were watching. “SRB—strong rural background.”

Tombizodwa, a girl who lived next door to Tarisai suggested that Cephas's wife would be at her best “helping a team of oxen plow the fields.” The girls at university loved to belittle their rivals.

Luckily for Tarisai, the deputy minister was always cautious. He never came to collect his young girlfriend. He always sent a driver. Tarisai told her friends the driver worked for her “rich uncle” who owned a furniture factory in the industrial areas.

“Bought the business from a white man in 1980 for next to nothing,” she told them. “He's rolling in money.”

Tarisai played along with Cephas's game to the letter. She always packed her overnight bag when no one was around to see the scanty pink nightie or the diaphragm. The other girls thought Tarisai had no interest in men. Many male students had tried to approach her, telling her they loved her as Zimbabwean men often did when they first met a woman. She gave them all polite but firm refusals.

“Love can wait,” she always told her girlfriends. “The only important thing in life is education.”

When they teased her more intensely, she reminded them that her family was counting on her.

“I'm the only one from the Mukombachotos to ever finish high school, let alone attend university.”

Now it could all be falling apart. She handed the nurse the urine-filled cup.

“We'll have the results in two days,” the nurse told her.

Tarisai tried to distract herself with her studies. She spent hours in the chemistry lab monitoring the reactions of various lipids. Normally this work fascinated her. Lipids were essential in the formation of cell membranes. Few people recognized this. But while she waited for her pregnancy test results, the world of cell membranes didn't really matter.

Finally the moment of reckoning arrived. She jumped into the bus that drove from campus to town every hour. She got out at Fife Avenue, telling a friend who rode with her that she was going to the dentist for a checkup. It was the sort of lie the girl would believe. Few Zimbabweans went to the dentist—only the most responsible and most grounded in Western medicine. That's how everyone thought of Tarisai.

“I have good news for you,” the nurse told her. “You're pregnant. Eight weeks. Congratulations.”

Tarisai fainted. The nurse had to press smelling salts to her nose to bring her around.

“
Upenyu hwangu hwapera,”
were Tarisai's first words when she woke up. “My life is over. I've let down my family. Everyone.”

The university's policy was to expel pregnant students. After delivering a child, a female student could then reenroll at her own expense. That was fine for girls who came from wealthy families. Tarisai's parents could barely afford to buy her school uniforms when she was in grade five. The university cost thousands.

Some girls managed to hide their pregnancies. They tied belts around their waist and wore loose-fitting clothes. Tarisai couldn't do such a thing. “What a disgusting practice,” she thought, “so demeaning.” She would get Cephas to look after her and accelerate the plans for their marriage.

“If only I had refused that night,” she thought. But Cephas was very drunk, claimed he wanted to feel the “real Tarisai” just once. Being a scientist Tarisai calculated the odds. They were in her favor. She could sense when she was ovulating. She was sure she was safe that night. She'd bet and now she'd lost.

She waited five days before meeting him. They rented a cottage at
Lake Chibero on a Saturday night. The lake was just a few miles out of town, a well-known getaway for illicit lovers.

Cephas told his wife he'd gone to Kadoma for a meeting. Fortunately, the phones in Zimbabwe were so irregular, his wife wouldn't think of phoning her husband when he was away. Besides, a deputy minister was always traveling. His wife had learned to live without knowing where her husband was or who he was with. Like every politician's wife, she knew important men had girlfriends. A wife ignored such things as long as the husband kept the money flowing into the household and didn't flaunt his affairs. The comfort of high society life outweighed the disadvantages of sharing a husband.

Tarisai decided to tell him before he started drinking. He was more reasonable when he was sober, more likely to understand. He took the news without flinching.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“What do you want me to do?”

“If you want to get rid of it, I can make arrangements.”

“What about us?” she asked. “I'm about to graduate. Maybe we need to marry sooner.”

“You must still graduate,” he said, “then we'll go ahead with those plans.”

Tarisai wanted to believe him but there was no emotion. He talked like he was discussing some office procedure with a secretary. Tarisai expected him to be happy. Proud. A man in Zimbabwe always took pride in fathering a child, even one that came at an awkward moment. Cephas left the cottage in the middle of the discussion, said he was going to the office to get wood for the fireplace.

He came back three hours later without the firewood. Instead he carried two quarts of Castle Lager and reeked of beer. By then Tarisai had fallen asleep in her clothes with a blanket pulled over her.

Cephas pulled off the blanket and tried to rub her belly.

“It will be all right, my dear,” he said.

He tried to kiss her but she turned away.

“I'm tired,” she said. “I don't feel well.”

“I can make you feel better,” he said, lying on top of her. She turned onto her side and he pulled her arm, pinning it to the bed.

“Stop,” she said, “I don't want this.”

He slapped her across the face, then got up and sat in the cane chair next to the fireplace.

Tarisai wept quietly on the bed. When she woke up, he was gone. She had to hitchhike the thirty-five kilometers back to town in her wrinkled dress and high-heeled shoes. A man in a Peugeot picked her up and drove her to the door of the university hostel. She offered him ten dollars for petrol but he refused the money.

“You look like you've had a hard night,” he said. “A beautiful girl like you shouldn't have to be abused.”

She thanked him and held a scarf to her cheek as if she had a toothache. Luckily it was Sunday afternoon and most of the girls in the hostel had gone out. She lay in her bed with the blanket pulled over her head. She'd never felt so low.

A month later Cephas sent his driver to fetch Tarisai from the hostel. She told him to go away. Tarisai had decided to face this on her own. She wrapped two belts around her waist to keep the baby from showing and was carrying on with her studies as if nothing had happened.

R
ed Eye claimed he could only hear the television at volume 42. At that level the commentary on ESPN rocked the walls of my bedroom. Now that I lived in Carltonville, on those nights I did manage to sleep the only background noise was a few distant dog barks. I'd gotten used to the quiet. When Red Eye cranked up ESPN, I wouldn't have heard a pit bull growling in my ear.

While I lay on my bed trying to figure out how to track down this Margolis, Don Dunphy's stirring commentary on the Rumble in the Jungle filled the house.

“Foreman is down. His eyes are glazed. He doesn't know if he is on the streets of Houston or in the middle of Africa. Ali has pulled off another miracle.”

While Dunphy got more and more excited, I pondered the nearest place to buy a set of earplugs. Then the phone rang. Red Eye'd already had about eight calls from punters that night, so I didn't think of picking it up. I got calls about as often as we had snow in the hills of Oakland. I liked it that way. Suddenly Dunphy receded. “That broad's on the line,” Red Eye shouted. That didn't really narrow it down.

It was Mandisa. Newman had paid her a visit at work. Wanted to know if she knew some white guy who was going around talking about Prudence's will.