The skeleton man — or woman

Photo: Benjamin Davies

“Alleluia!” screamed the pastor.

“A-a-a-me-een!” the congregation roared back, in firm endorsement of the pastor’s long prayers.

He was extremely relieved the prayers had finally ended. His vision was still blurry, and his head ached from the pastor’s vigorous rotations. At some point, he had feared that the hinges of his neck would give way to the fierce shaking and rotation, but its integrity had been maintained—at least for now.

Was this how exorcism worked—having your brain shuffled around? Or was his own demon just too strong and stubborn? This nameless demon of confusion and spite. Even his father, his ever-loving father, seemed to show little sympathy now. He was sick they had said. But sick people were always treated with care and compassion not treated like vermin. Or was it because his sickness was “shameful,” as his brother Malo had said? Their conversation was still clear in his head. Conversation – confrontation—whatever.

“Look, we tried everything; everything! What’s wrong with you? Why are you like this?” Malo cut an angry and frustrated figure and when he said, “why are you like this?” He drove his point home by using his hand to size him up, his expression a fine blend of pity and disgust.

“But—” He had tried to speak but was cut short by Malo.

Photo: Igor Rodriguez

“There is no ‘but’ here. You will go to the crusade. Pastor Maseko will pray for you. He is good at exorcising demons”. 

He had a demon? How did Malo know it was a demon? And how could it even be a demon? His idea of a demon was of an evil, formless creature that tormented the souls of people it possessed. This demon, whatever it was, did not torment him. If anything, it gave him peace. This demon did not make him hate. It made him love. Or was this demon just different? Was it one that only tormented other people? Make them hate you?

Things always seemed normal until one day. He had been enjoying the gay embrace of the morning winter sun that shone shyly from a quarter section of the horizon when he overheard his father confront his mother about him.

“I mean what is wrong with him,” his father had asked sharply.

“What do you mean wrong; in what way?” His perplexed mother had asked back.

“You mean to tell me all is well with that boy? Why does he not play with other boys, playing football or driving bricks through the mud like boys his age, but instead he wants to play some silly Cinderella games with his sisters? For God’s sake, he’s eight!”

 He could see his father through a crack opening in the door and the look on his face worried him a lot. He had never seen him like that before. His father was not just angry. He was scared. Worried.

“I hope he turns out well, for your sake and the family’s name. We can’t have that nonsense here. Stop hiding him under your petticoats,” his father had continued.

 His mother was quiet. She looked worried too.

“But I don’t like playing in the mud with brick pretend cars,” he thought. Why would his father even be worried about that?

He remembered it all too well. From that day onwards his life changed completely. His sisters no longer wanted to play with him for fear of being scolded by their father. He was also assigned hard “manly” chores that would make boys twice his age wince. It was all to straighten him, they said.

At church people would sneer at him, giving him those stares that interrogated the insides of his shorts. The loud whispers from some of the blabbers in the church were all too clear.

“This boy,” exclaimed Aunt Petty, the Sunday school teacher, her eyes hovering suspiciously on the small Vaseline tub in his hands from which he glossed his parched lips.

“Maybe God will touch him and he will be fine,” replied Aunty Judy, her colleague.

He stopped attending church the day he overheard the youth supervisor saying he was a bad influence on the kids. He was in form one then. But today he had been in church, at the crusade and at eighteen, old enough to plead his case with the pastor, like Malo had told him to. He had tried to profile his demon to the pastor and failed woefully. How could he describe the yearning he felt for hairy manly hands to the pastor in the presence of everyone? Of course, they would laugh and hurl the usual taunts: sissy boy, Eveline. In the end, he just resigned himself to the pastor vigorously shaking his head with those strong hands as if to dislodge the spirits and have them scampering in confusion. And how did he feel after the exorcism? Dizzy. Yes. But still the same. If this was a demon, it was going nowhere just yet.

Oh, Malo! His poor brother had really tried his best to iron him out and bring out the man in him, sometimes going beyond the conventional. Some of those experiments had left scars—like the one above his left eye. When he was nine, Malo had placed him in a boxing bout with some tough kid—tough enough to beat three of him plus Malo.

“You are a man,” Malo would say like some motivational speaker. “That third leg hanging there is not a mistake my boy; you are a man!”

When the physical efforts failed, Malo resorted to the spiritual. It was Pastor Maseko at the crusade, the following week they went to another pastor, then another, till he got tired. He felt he could tell Malo he was tired, especially since he was fighting against himself.

“I have always listened to you brother—this pastor thing doesn’t help me at all. I don’t need any help.” Malo was listening intently, quietly, no interjections this time. Perhaps he could see there was nothing he could do anymore.

“It was the same thing with father; we went from one healer to the other seeking healing when I wasn’t sick. When I told him I was alright and didn’t need any help, he went ballistic and disowned me.” The tears were beginning to build up in his eyes. One blink and they would come streaming down.

Malo had a blank stare on his face. It was obvious he had no idea how he felt.

“It is okay; you don’t have to try anymore,” he continued. “I have always been that brother with no name to you because my name has a weight to it that I cannot carry, expectations that I cannot fulfil since I am weak and have a demon. I am gay, Malo; no need to demonize me.” The tears had now found their way to the top of his lips where they congregated for some time before streaming down the edges. Malo just stood there staring at him and then left without a word.

He didn’t know what to make of Malo’s silence. At least his father had bared his mind and let out his thoughts, as barbed as they were. He was a curse, a disgrace. Nothing good could come out of him. His father avoided him. He wouldn’t even speak his name. Would Malo be the same? Would he also refuse to speak to him?

People were beginning to snigger and whisper when he walked past. Sometimes loud enough so he could just make out the words.

“And you expect it to rain, with such people in this village,” whispered Mzolo, his neighbour. The whispers and the hushed non-mention of his name and his “disease” were becoming normal.

“That one, what a shame.” He could feel their eyes boring holes in his back as he passed.

“What a waste! To think he could have become a footballer”.

Malo had got him to enrol into the football team but he had to leave because the other players would not accept him. They didn’t want someone who would grope their behinds when they celebrated or feast his eyes on them in the dressing room. They wouldn’t be comfortable with him on the team.

He had tried talking to the team coach.

“And you expect it to rain with such people in this village.”

“You might have impressed the scout but not the team. The dressing room is not happy. We are about fostering team spirit.”

It was not the response he had expected

“I quit,” he had said, tossing away his shooters. He imagined no one had picked them up. Not even the small boys that loitered around looking for freebies. Not his teammates that scrambled for rare free kits. No one liked his pink shooters. They were for girls, they said. Some would tease him to complete the image by tying his hair back in a bun and wearing lipstick. For some reason, they thought he was faking it all. Like it was all an act.

He felt so alone, his tear wet t-shirt pasted on his chest. He figured that since Malo had turned his back on him, it was best to leave the village, and go to town. But to whom would he go? There was Uncle Moses, but his kids were no different from the village ones? They always made jest of him. Maybe he should just leave and then figure out living arrangements whilst there.

Picking himself up, he went straight home and packed his bag. He meant to just leave without a goodbye. He was sure he wouldn’t be missed. Nobody would notice his absence.

Remembering he had no dime in his pocket, he tiptoed to his parents’ hut, snuck in, and dipped his hand in his father’s trench coat taking out some dollar bills before dashing out. Coming out of the hut, he saw Malo walking across the yard. He muttered “goodbye brother” more to himself than Malo before walking out of the homestead to join the main road. He would flag down transport to town along the way and walk away from everything.

But then as he walked along the way, a thought crossed his mind. Perhaps, he didn’t need any transport after all. How was he even going to cope in town with no friends, no house, no food, no money? Why not just end it all? He walked for some time, his mind engulfed by bleakness and despair. Then he veered off the road into the bushes until he was at the foot of a huge mosasa tree. He caressed the bark of the tree. It would take time to weave a strong noose from it, he thought.

Then he sat down among some shrubs ripping, and pulling, and weaving. He had just finished tying up the last node of the rope when he heard a sound from the nearby bushes. He stiffened. Had someone followed him?

He listened intently. He could hear movements on the dry leaves and the snapping of twigs. And then he heard a familiar voice.

“No, no, no . . . do-n-t! Don’t do it!” yelled the voice, emerging from the undergrowth before its owner could show face. Out of the bushes emerged Malo, running as fast as he could straight towards him and snatching the makeshift rope from his hands.

“Why? What are you trying to do, brother?” asked Malo with a sharp quivering voice. His palms were sweaty, and he was panting, his chest heaving up and down. It was one of those questions people asked just for the sake of it even when the facts stared them in the face. Malo’s face was laced with shock and horror, his eyes inquiring.

“I want to end it all. I want it all to end. I don’t want this rejection anymore; let me not be the shame,” he replied sobbing.  

“Has it come to this? Is this how you face your demons, by dying in such a shameful way?” asked Malo, the passion he had for his brother creeping back in to replace the horror that had engulfed him. If any of the shocks that he had was still there, it was on his nape, still wet with sweat, though in some parts it had foamed and cooled to leave whitish residues like the salt on a marathon runner.

Malo leaned in and hugged him in a long and tight embrace, more like a clasp. He began to talk when he had fallen back and sat down on a rock and motioned him to sit down.

“There is something I need to tell you, something that maybe I should have told you before. I feel that I have let you down,” he said in a sombre tone. Malo was never the kind to wear a grave expression, but today he wore it perfectly like a keen seminarian at Mass. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jumping up and down his throat.

“You see, the thing is, you are not alone in this. Maybe I should have been there for you but I chose to step back. Instead of standing beside you, I tried to supplant in you what I couldn’t in me. I lived my life through you, brother.  Having seen the way people like me are treated in this community I tried to correct myself through you,” Malo said, his words almost failing. It was all confusion.

“You mean to tell me that—” he had tried to speak, but Malo had continued his talk as if oblivious to his burning curiosity.

“Father saw it; he knows it. He saw it way early that I was different, so I had to quickly adjust. I have been living his life while living my own partly through you. I have tried to run away from my own shadow, brother. I have hated myself. I am proud of you, at least you stood tall and didn’t waver. At least you know yourself. You have no skeletons in your closet. I am the skeleton in my closet and I can’t figure out exactly what I want or am. Sometimes I feel like I am a man, and at other times, I want to be a woman.” Malo’s voice was steady and calm. He spoke like an aunt giving out marriage advice, all the while looking at him.

“So, this whole time you were . . . ah what the heck,” he muttered, the surprise clear in his voice.

Photo: Lukasz Zsmigiel

Malo nodded. “It has been a rough ride for me. I felt what you felt, I felt your pain. I hated my being and wished that I could be different. At least you embraced yourself and sacrificed a lot.”

He was still confused. Malo had a girlfriend. How could he have one if he was unsure of what he was? Having a girlfriend seemed like picking a side. The questions were swelling in him and could no longer hold them back.

“What about your girlfriend, brother? What’s up with her?” he blurted out, his face a mask of curiosity.

Malo smiled shyly and looked away. When he spoke, he dropped a bomb.

“I dabble,” he said.

“Dabble? What do you mean? Is there someone aside Samantha? From this village? Who?” The questions fell out in quick succession.

“Of course, there’s Samantha.” Malo paused. “And then, there’s Mzolo.”

Mzolo! Impossible. It couldn’t be.

“Mzolo? You mean Mzolo, our neighbour?” He still remembered the sneers and disgusted looks Mzolo gave him like he was some filth.

“Yes, he is an after nine, still in the sack like me,” Malo said without flinching.

It was just too much for him. The sadness that he had felt, that had nearly driven him off the edge, was long evaporated. He felt pity for Malo and patted his back. It must be hard, he thought. His mind began to race. He began to quiz himself. How many men in the village were like Malo, the kind that never openly came out? It clearly wasn’t just him. There must be a few more. A community masked by tradition, expectations and fearing judgement. Men hiding under the cloak of marriage with women they felt nothing for. At least he was no lie, he thought. He looked at the rope he had woven and felt stupid for even harbouring the thought. He kicked it away and rose to his feet.

“I am Dalibhunga, the male child-bearer, and I am gay”. He looked at Malo as he spoke and they both laughed.

“Now that’s complicated,” said Malo as he rose to his feet and together they walked, finding their way through the thick bush.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Willard Tendai Masara is a Psychology graduate who, like many Zimbabweans, migrated to South Africa in the hope of a better life. He was a member of the Writers Club at university where he would write and sell short stories to other students. He is an independent researcher with particular interest in migration. He is currently working on a novel.