ORCHARD PRESS MYSTERIES, SHORT FICTION & POETRY  

January  2007

No Hooting, Chicken's Sleeping
a short story
by Janus Barry

Chicken Moremang lifted the heavy bag of maize-meal and balanced it upon her head. The African dust beneath her feet rippled across the winding path.

The sinking sun dipped to the edge of the kopje, and not a breath of precipitation hung in the air. The shoulder-tall grass curtained her as she swayed in that seductive roll of Africa. Reed-thin and tall, dark as the shadow she cast to her side—like the neck of a giraffe.

She stepped over a tortoise in her path. The evening breeze carried the smell of baked earth and cattle in the coral. Smoke coiled in the air like a question mark from the farmhouse chimney. The guinea fowl and pheasant scuttled in the bush, the dairy farmer’s bullmastiff barked a farewell for Chicken Moremang, nanny to the three boisterous sons sired by the Afrikaner farmer that owned the farmland and the adjacent ravine.

Grass thorns impregnated the thick grey calluses on her aching feet. The first slip of the moon peered over the edge of the horizon. A passing breeze carried the welcome smell of paraffin oil and supper: potatoes and pumpkin. She quickened her pace, anxious to be in her sister Tumedi’s kyaia, to visit with her daughter and feel familiar home comforts.

"Mama," Lebokeng said in greeting, "it’s good to see you. Look, I’ve started the supper and the water’s boiled for your tea."

"Welcome! We’ve missed you this week." Tumedi said. "And Lebokeng says she has news."

Chicken smiled at her fourteen-year-old daughter, and admired her neatly braided hair and dark eyes—wells of beauty in which men would soon long to drown.

"I’ve heated the water so that you can wash, mama," Lebokeng said. She took the bag from her mother’s head and placed it beside the front door to their one-roomed house. With a contented sigh, Chicken sat down in the comfortable red chair that the farmer had given her last Christmas. She eased her sore feet into the lukewarm water in the green enamel basin on the floor, and Lebokeng worked up a froth with the red Lifebouy soap, deftly massaging away the dust, thorns and fatigue.

The moonlight shone on her daughter’s bowed head, her beaded braids fell like thin, knotted ropes from her skull. She finally sat back on her haunches and rubbed her mother’s feet with the dry part of the towel.

Chicken smiled, pleased to have an obedient daughter respectful of her elders. With a daughter like this, Chicken would have an old age where she could sit in the sun and watch over her grandchildren. She knew the other women in the village envied her, especially since the sangoma had predicted a fine future for Lebokeng when the bones of prediction had been thrown last week.

Lebokeng looked up at her mother. "Mama, today after school I followed the river home. It was hot and I wanted to walk alone alongside the cool of the water."

Chicken closed her eyes and allowed Lebokeng’s sweet voice to wash over her.

"I saw the leguaan in the water, the one we’ve seen before—it moved so quickly and stole eggs from the birds nesting on the riverbank."

Chicken Moremang nodded. She could picture the scene.

"So I sat on the large flat rock beside the acacia tree where we wash our clothes and let the cool water run over my feet." She paused. "Then a voice spoke to me."

Chicken opened her eyes as she heard the tone of her daughter’s voice change. Still sitting on her haunches, Lebokeng lifted her face revealing eyes as dark as the rich African soil, and lips as generous as a well-fed milk cow.

Aha! She’d found her first boy. "What did he say?"

Lebokeng smiled in a dreamy manner. "He said that I should cook him a good meal. And he’d wait for me at the river tomorrow."

"Ahh!" Chicken said in disapproval, "What kind of disrespectful boy’s this?"

"He was small." Lebokeng motioned with her hand, palm up in the Setswana way, in order to prevent the stunting of growth, showing the approximate height of the stranger. "And covered in hair. I have never seen a man as hairy—it was as if he were half man, half goat."

A trapdoor of fear opened in Chicken’s stomach. She leant forward in her chair and whispered. "This man, this short, hairy goat-man. Was he naked my daughter?"

Her daughter lowered her eyes in modesty. Chicken gripped the worn velvet armrests of her chair. Her breath came in short gasps.

"You know this man?" Lebokeng asked. "Is he my father?"

Chicken leapt up from her chair. "You foolish child! It was the Tokoloshe that you saw!"

Tumedi covered her face with her hands. Chicken took hold of her daughter’s shoulders. "Now mischief will come to our home. The milk’ll turn sour, the chickens won’t lay and our flour will be spilt in the morning."

Tumedi wrung her hands. "This news will cause trouble in the village. The young girls aren’t safe!"

Lebokeng stared saucer-eyed at her mother and aunt. "But mama, he was so friendly; he spoke with a lisp and smiled so wide! I didn’t know mama. I didn’t know. What’ll we do?"

Chicken paced the dry ground, the skin on her arms blossoming with goose bumps. Her daughter’s recent puberty had lured the evil sprite from the water.

Lebokeng continued: "He said I should leave him milk and food at the door."

Tumedi paced the small veranda. "Aiiee! We can’t afford to anger this Tokoloshe. Do you know why he likes young girls? And why his organ is so large?" She turned to her sister. "Tomorrow I’ll go to the sangoma for help. She’ll give me cold cream with herbs to smear on our arms to keep him away."

Chicken hugged her daughter. "Now we’ll have to put our bed on bricks so he can’t reach you at night. Once you’ve been touched by the Tokoloshe no man will ever look at you. Not even a tsotsi!"

Lebokeng’s eyes became two full moons of fear.

Her aunt pointed to the outhouse. "Come, we’ll fetch bricks and we’ll do what we must. Stay close to me."

An owl hooted. Lebokeng jumped like a springbok that had seen a leopard. Chicken shook her head. Just last week Violet had warned her about some young girls that had seen the Tokoloshe in a neighboring village and as a result, the cows had no milk and the girls were in hiding. To think the Tokoloshe was here. On their very doorstep! What would the Afrikaner farmer say when his dairy cows produced no milk? And the chickens went off the lay? She’d have to warn her employer.

Lebokeng and Tumedi soon returned, arms laden with bricks. The women walked into their hut. The small dark room lit by a single candle smelled of the paraffin oil that had impregnated the rudimentary walls. A picture of a youthful Nelson Mandela hung above the bed. A simple wooden frame surrounded it; the glass had an unfortunate crack across the top right hand corner.

The three women worked as one, hasty to raise the bed upon its safety bricks.

"Quick, while we lift, you slide the bricks under each corner," Tumedi said. Lebokeng slid the bricks under the metal feet curved like horseshoes. Chicken ran an appraising eye along the height of the bed. "Yes. That’s good." She pulled her daughter closer. "That’s too high for the Tokoloshe to reach; now you’ll be safe."

Tumedi stood against the bed and measured the height with her hand making sure to keep her palm down in order to stunt any potential growth of the Tokoloshe. "Yes, it’s higher than my waist. He can’t jump that high, we can all rest easy tonight."

"I must tell my madam," Chicken said. "It’s only fair to warn her that the Tokoloshe’s on the loose. She doesn’t have any daughters, but she has plenty of cows, chickens and flour."

Tumedi pursed her lips in disapproval. "Ah. You’re wasting your time. Some people have ears but don’t know how to listen. Many laugh at our ways and think we’re foolish. Let me tell you what happened the time I worked as a live-in nanny and maid in Rustenburg."

The three women stepped out onto the veranda.

"Was it the time you lived in the servant’s quarters at the house on Union Street?" Chicken poured some tea from the little porcelain teapot that had a chip on the spout, and indicated to Lebokeng to add the milk and sugar.

Chicken held her tin mug of hot tea cupped in both hands, and inhaled the honey-sweet aroma.

Tumedi nodded and took a long, slow sip of her tea. "It was late at night," she began, looking across at her sister and niece, "I slept well as I’d worked hard that day. The madam’s washing machine broke so I had to do everything by hand." She paused in her tale and held out her worn calloused hands as evidence of years of domestic labor. "Then I heard the noise again. And I knew that the Tokoloshe’d come to pay me a visit."

"Mma!" Lebokeng covered her mouth with her hands in alarm. "The Tokoloshe came to your house?"

"Ahe, and that’s not all. He began to scratch at my window and whisper in a dark voice of evil: ‘the Tokoloshe is here, the Tokoloshe is here.’"

"Aiiee!" Lebokeng wailed and rocked back and forth on her haunches.

The paraffin lamp cast its pool of light across the warm evening. Chicken opened the wooden lid of her snuffbox and took a good size pinch lifting the brown powder to her nostrils. She sneezed loudly. "The Tokoloshe said he was the Tokoloshe? That’s unusual."

Tumedi nodded. "That’s when I smelt a rat." She tapped the side of her nose with her finger. "I got up from my bed and crept like a small mouse to the window and carefully moved the curtain aside so that I could see. Being very careful," she continued, "so as not to be seen. If it was the Tokoloshe, I didn’t want him to know that I was a woman alone as I had no bricks to raise my bed. And if it wasn’t the Tokoloshe, but a bad tsotsi, I didn’t want him to know I was looking at him."

"And what did you see?"

"At first, nothing but the still, dark backyard and the moonlight shining on the maize I’d planted before the rains. Then I saw a shadow—a small one! Ahh, it frightened me so much that my heart—weak after my many years on this earth—pounded like a drum, and for a minute I wanted to run back to my bed and hide under the blanket."

Lebokeng’s frown made furrows on her smooth coffee skin. "But your bed had no bricks."

"Ahe, that’s why I waited at the window, to see."

Chicken raised her eyebrows at her sister. "How big was this shadow?"

"So high." Tumedi indicted with her hand.

"That’s a big Tokoloshe." Chicken closed her snuffbox; it snapped shut like the lid of a coffin.

"Ahe, then I saw." She shook her head. "I felt betrayal that cut like a knife. It was the boys. My madam’s sons."

Chicken stared at her in shock. She heard Lebokeng’s sharp intake of breath.

"The boys, the ones whose nappies you’d changed; the ones you’d bathed and dressed?"

"Those very ones. Now they were older and had lost all respect, choosing instead to make fun of me. Me. With my many years of age."

"That’s perhaps worse than the Tokoloshe." Lebokeng said.

For a brief second the older women considered this comment, tasting it.

"No." Tumedi shook her head. "It’s almost as bad, but the Tokoloshe is worse. Especially for a young woman who has no bricks with which to raise her bed." She raised her eyebrows pointedly at Lebokeng.

"So what did you do?"

"Well, I went to my madam in the morning and while I made porridge for those disrespectful boys, I told her what they’d done."

Lebokeng covered her smile with her hand, "she must’ve been so angry! How did she punish them?"

Tumedi lowered her head. "She didn’t."

"She didn’t punish them? That’s bad; she must’ve been a careless mother."

"No. She smiled when I explained what her sons had done, and when I told her what they’d said, she even turned her face away to hide her laughter."

Chicken sat bolt upright in her chair. "What are you telling me, sister? The woman found the Tokoloshe funny? Did she really know so little?"

Tumedi raised her hand, "Wait, I haven’t finished yet. When I’d completed my story that madam gave me advice."

"And what was that?"

"She told me there was no such thing as the Tokoloshe."

Chicken sat in stunned silence. Obviously, she could no longer consider warning her madam about the Tokoloshe. "What shall I tell my madam then? Concerning the raising of my bed on bricks? She’s sure to ask me."

Tumedi inclined her head. "Perhaps it would be better to give her a false reason for the elevation of your bed, something an Afrikaner would understand. Like storage space."

"And what would I store there?"

"Your suitcase."

***

Chicken Moremang walked briskly up the well-worn path towards the farmhouse that lay nestled in the valley beneath, her suitcase balanced on her head. The cool morning breeze urged her along, nipping at her heels and tugging at her blue housecoat.

Normally she carried her clean clothes in a plastic Pick ‘n Pay packet. Today however, she carried bricks carefully wrapped in newspaper so as not to damage her suitcase. Together she and her sister had reached the decision not to tell the Afrikaner madam the awful news. No matter how good an employer she had, the cultural difference prevented the truth from being told.

Chicken valued her sister’s advice. The madam need never know. Chicken would be free from the torment of taunting. Tumedi would consult with the sangoma and organize an exorcism of the Tokoloshe from the area.

She stepped into the servant’s quarters near the kitchen door and lowered her suitcase carefully to the floor. She glanced up at the wall clock. The hand stood upon the foot—time to make the morning coffee for her master and madam. She needed to move quickly. She unzipped her bag and lifted out the heavy grey bricks. Her neck ached but it was worth the effort.

Raising the bed single-handedly proved to be tricky, but she discovered that if she did it one brick to a leg at a time, it was easier than putting three bricks at one leg because that caused the bed to slide too much. Done at last, she stood back and wiped the dust from her hands. Then she slid her big suitcase under the bed as planned. Her bed stood tall and high and she made sure she could still climb onto it. Her legs dangled over the edge, and she could swing them back and forth.

Just then, she heard her madam’s voice at the door. "Chicken! I’m so glad you’ve returned early. We’ve had some trouble with the cattle. My husband has to go to the veterinarian this morning. Please could you mix up some powdered milk for the morning tea and the boys’ porridge?"

Alarmed, Chicken looked up to see her madam enter the room. She nodded politely, and watched her madam’s eyes widen as she stared at the elevated bed.

"Why is your bed up on bricks, Chicken?"

"Because of my suitcase, madam. See how nicely it fits."

Her madam’s eyes took on a look of total disbelief. She turned on her heel and ran back to the house. "Kobus, Kobus! I know what’s wrong with the cows now! Stop, stop! There’s no need to go to the vet—we must visit the sangoma. Warn your nieces, it’s the Tokoloshe again!"

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