Raising an Ancestor, by Kay Mabasa

SUMMER 2024, SHORT STORY, 3500 WORDS

You’ve been angry for three full moons, but you don’t know this, or rather you’ve forgotten this. There’s a lot that you’ve forgotten. Such as who you are, or what it is that has befallen you. But this anger and state of forgottenness is all normal, it’s expected.

You’re in a vast darkness where the blackness of the ground mirrors the blackness of the air around you and the blackness of the sky that hangs above you. This I can safely say is what you do not know. Even if your memory were intact you would not know of this place, for it’s foreign to you.

You walk in this darkness, or should I say you hover? Yes, you have feet, but they do not quite touch the ground, do they? And there have been times you’ve looked down at your feet and wondered at this, but not for too long, for your mind erases itself just as a thought occurs to you, and you forget what it was you were thinking of, or what it was that you were doing. And this is the true reason for your anger, that your mind doesn’t work in the way that it should. But you don’t know this, for you forget this very reason.

You forget that you forget.

Your memory is not as good as it used to be; in truth, your memory is dead. In fact, so many parts of you are dead. You don’t know this, but you mourn for this memory of who and what you were.

It is cold in this black space, and your olive silk dress and gold sandals do nothing to aid this. There is something that you need that will help you keep warm, but you have not yet obtained it. So for now, you shiver as you hover through this night space and as you breathe out or open your mouth, clouds of mist come out.

There are others here with you. You’re not alone. Their skin is ebon just like yours, and they have gray kinky curls like you, but theirs are set into various hairdos. They wear different clothes and shoes from you; some wear clothes with no shoes, while others wear no clothes or shoes. They are tall, short, lean, and some are plump, but one thing common about all of them is that they all smile at you. None of their faces are familiar; they’re all strangers to you and yet they stare and smile at you. Some even wave, and others hug you.

When they talk to you, their words come out in a code that your mind fails to decipher. You try to talk to these strange faces, but what tumbles out are mumbles that even you do not understand, and you’re not even sure what it was that you wanted to say to them.

You’ve forgotten how to speak.

Amused smiles appear on their faces when you try to talk. Their brown eyes watch you as if they were watching a child babbling. And when they see you get worked up, they rub your back in an attempt to soothe you. You feel like a child although you’ve forgotten what a child is, but that is how you feel: You’re unable to crack the grownups’ coded language.

Alone.

You feel alone in this vast night space that is filled with smiling strangers. Unable to speak to them or understand what it is they’re saying, your questions of who you are, what it is that has happened to you, and where it is that you are, remain unanswered. And none can reassure you that soon your situation will change, for none can communicate this to you in a way that you would hear, understand, or remember.

Always, after they’ve rubbed your back, you leave them, and you’re roiling in anger. You wander off into the night’s emptiness until you forget what it was that had made you cross or drove you into the blackness. And so you wander back to the others, who aren’t angry like you, but laugh in a drunken manner and embrace each other like old friends. And always, when you return, they stop for a moment and turn to you with their warm, welcoming smiles before they go back to their loud and strange conversations.

You change; like you had three full moons ago, but of course you’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten the you of three full moons ago, the you that was in an incessant state of shock where everything around you had shocked you, where your forgetful mind shocked you when you tried to think of what it was you were thinking of or what it was that you were doing. And so now, no longer in shock and no longer angry, you’re in a state of trying.

You’re trying to fix things, trying to better yourself. It’s not a conscious change; it’s just your soul evolving, shaping itself to what it will eventually become.

So you try to decode the smiling strangers’ speech, and there are times that you even laugh when they laugh. But it’s a cold laugh; no joy lives in you, you’re an empty husk. Each time you laugh with them, they stop laughing and turn to look at you with their warm smiles pasted on their faces. This of course frustrates you, but just as frustration sets in, your mind washes itself blank again and you’re back to trying to fit in with the smiling strangers. You don’t know this, but your changed soul drives you to keep trying, for maybe if you joined in and connected with them, maybe if you understood them, you wouldn’t feel so alone, so cold.

The smiling strangers know that you’re faking, and you of course do not know that they know this, for again, you are like a child in that way. They know that you’re still healing, which is a thing you wouldn’t understand even if one of the smiling strangers tried to explain this to you.

And again you change, evolve.

No longer trying, you now keep to yourself. You stay away from the smiling strangers who laugh loudly and speak in strange tongues. Lying on the black earth away from them—well, hovering—you keep to yourself, unmoving for a long time. And when you do move, you cry fitfully.

You change once more, and now you move around—not in shock, not in anger, not trying, not avoiding or crying. Now you hover around the black emptiness, pacified. You don’t know to know this because you have forgotten the past yous, but this you, this evolved, changed soul is the better, the stronger and final you.

It’s taken you twelve full moons for you to reach this final version. Twelve full moons you’ve been lost, unsettled and confused. Twelve full moons you’ve been alone and cold. But things are beginning to change in a big way. And you of course do not know this, but if you did, you’d be elated.

The first thing you notice, which is actually the beginning of the big change, is a mystical metal ding vibrating in the air, which is shortly followed by another ding and then more dings. The dings dance in the air to a rhythm that seems to appease your soul. You follow these sounds and the closer you get to where the dings are coming from, you begin to hear rhythmic banging sounds that are accompanied by rattling sounds. You twirl in the air and sway your hips to the rhythm as you swish toward the delightful sounds.

You then stop, just above the sounds, as you discover that the delightful sounds are coming from a place that is beneath your sandaled feet, where the black ground is. Something tells you to rub your hand on the black ground. You don’t know this, but it’s the dinging sounds talking to you. You reach down to the cold black ground and when your hand reaches to touch it you jerk your hand back with a hiss from the burning-icy feeling, but the dinging sounds make you reach out again and make you rub, ignoring the burning-icy feeling. The ground you rub comes apart like dust, and you sneeze as it lifts into the air. Beneath the black dust you see, from an aerial view, the makers of the delightful sounds. They’re far below, but you can see each face clearly. They’re gathered near a clearing where cylindrical structures with tops that are made of grass, are erected. The makers are dressed in brown skirts that are made of fur, and there are bands of fur wrapped round the chests of the makers that have swollen chests, while those with flat chests leave their chests bare. They also have bands of fur tied around their heads, arms and ankles. Their bare feet are covered right up to their shins in red soil. These makers of the delightful sounds are all smiling and laughing, like the smiling strangers that you’ve been living with.

You place your hand through the opening in the black ground and make your body float down toward the delightful sounds, twirling your body in the clouds, you dance to the sounds. As you approach the makers of the delightful sounds there’s a sweet, salty, and spicy scent mingled in the air that runs up your nose and causes your mouth to water and your stomach to rumble. You find where the saliva-inducing scent is coming from and turn toward it. There are large, black, three-legged pots sitting on fires, and inside these large pots you find things bubbling and sizzling as makers of the mouthwatering scents stir and flip these things around. You try to talk to the makers of the mouthwatering scents, but mumbles come out of your mouth, a thing that normally happens with the smiling strangers. But there’s something different, a thing that doesn’t happen when you try to talk to the smiling strangers and you don’t notice this, for you have of course forgotten it, but the makers of the mouthwatering scents do not stop and turn to look to you like the smiling strangers normally do: They continue with the making of mouthwatering scents. And so you try again, but they continue. The old yous would have been shocked and unsettled, angered and hurt, but this new you doesn’t seem to care and your mind wipes itself clean. You forget about trying to talk to the makers of the mouthwatering scents and your attention shifts to the large, black, three-legged pots on the fires, you lean into one and take a deep sniff and you feel the delicious scent dance up your nose, run through you and hang at the end of your watering tongue.

The makers of delightful sounds open their mouths, and something like speech but much more different and beautiful flows out of their mouths and pairs itself to the delightful sounds. They then begin to move in a dual line away from the gathering place. You notice that there’s a group among them that produce the dinging sound by flicking their thumbs on things that they carry, others slap their palms on things that they cradle under their armpits, while others make an up-and-down movement with their hands as they shake spherical objects that are held up with sticklike handles. And then there are those who have nothing in their hands; they shake their hips and stomp their feet to the rhythm. You copy these hip-shakers, though your feet do not land in the dust. You watch them as they move from the gathering toward something that only they know, and reluctantly you leave the mouthwatering scents and follow them.

They then stop at a place where there is a rising in the earth and a stone with markings on it. You, of course, have no name for the rising in the earth or the stone with the markings, for though you knew them in your past life, you have no memory to remember what they are, and so you stare at it in wonder.

One of the hip-shakers stomps toward this mound, and two others follow. They begin to jump and stomp on the mound, and soil begins to rain from the sky above you. The soil falls on no one else but you. Fear strikes you as you raise your hands above your head in attempt to cover yourself from the raining sand.

You do not like this, but something in you, you can’t say what, has been unlocked inside of you. You feel wakened, from a long sleep—a year long, to be specific. But you’re still in the early stages of waking and sleep is still heavy in your eyes, so things around you are still fuzzy.

And then the soil stops falling from the sky as the feet-stompers jump off the mound. Another approaches the rising in the ground.

Boy, you think to yourself.

A boy approaches the rising in the ground with a four-legged creature that bleats.

Goat, you think to yourself as your memory pieces itself together. That thing the boy has with him is a goat.

The boy then pulls at something that’s tied to the goat’s neck, so the goat’s neck is stretched just above the mound. And then with something sharp, he cuts the neck of the goat and red gushes out on to the mound. You scream in horror.

It is a short scream, cut off by the sudden downpour of the same red liquid from the goat. The red jets down on you, covering you in a warm, red, and thick liquid. This red substance falls on no one else but you, and this of course baffles you.

Why you? Why were they doing this to you?

You cover yourself with your hands, but there is no use, you’re soaked with the red liquid.

The boy then picks up the dead goat and cradles it like a baby, which is something that you’re starting to remember.

Baby.

The music-makers, along with the dancers and the boy carrying the lifeless goat, head back to the gathering. You follow from a distance, unsure of whether you want to go with them. Frightening things have happened to you for doing so. With your memory awakened, your eyes look to the sky and you see where you floated from, but the red liquid has made you too heavy to rise back into the air. In fact, your feet now drag in the dirt like the others in front of you: You now walk and don’t hover, but you leave no foot markings like those in front of you. As they move on ahead of you something pulls you to follow, yes, the mystical ding sound.

Mbira.

The mbira pulls you, and you follow.

Back at the gathering, the makers of the delightful sounds are in a circle with other faces that you don’t know—or rather, faces that you’ve forgotten—and you puzzle at this. It feels like an itch in the very center of your mind that you cannot quite reach each time you try to remember who each one of them is.

Family, the word comes to you. Although you cannot remember them by name, you know that they’re kin, your clan. And tears begin to well in your eyes.

In the center of the ring of forgotten faces is a woman sitting on the ground with her head hanging low. And then a little girl approaches her with a small bowl cupped in her tiny hands. Inside the bowl is black dust.

Snuff.

The woman in the center of the room pinches at it and snuffs it up her nose; she does this two more times and then sneezes three times. When she raises her eyes to yours, you see her dark brown eyes and immediately know her.

Her eyes draw you into herself, and you find yourself flying toward her. When you land inside her, you open her eyes, eyes that have now become yours.

You pick up her hand, your hand, and stare at it, and then looking up at the ring of people that surround you and have suddenly gone quiet you realize that you know each one of them by name, even those you had never met before. You know every intricacy of their lives, their ugly secrets: Like glass, you see right through them.

Who you are—or rather, were—comes rushing to you like a wave. How you died comes too, but it’s insignificant now. After all, it was your time. Your kin have remembered and honored you, which is custom for all who die, but they have also risen you to ancestry, a mudzimu, a life of watching over them, of guidance. A thing that not all who die are honored with.

Everything becomes clear to you now. This is your Kurova Guva ceremony. That is why the dancers had danced on your grave, the rising in the ground with the headstone and markings that bore your name. The dancing on the grave was to wake you, a thing done for all who die. And the blood from the goat that was spilled on your grave, kucheneswa, was the cleansing of your soul to wash away your sins and socially unacceptable practices from your past life, another thing done for all who die.

You rise to your feet and begin to dance, and the music starts up again. You sing loud and strong as you stomp your bare feet on the soft earth. And the dancers come behind you and begin to dance and sing with you. You recall all the words of every song ever sung.

Ululations erupt all about you as they welcome you home. And the little girl who had come with the bowl of snuff, your great-great-granddaughter, Mudiwa, walks up before you, kneels, and offers up a calabash of African beer.

“Yesi, Mudiwa,” you say in greeting as you rub her smooth cheek with your hand. You take up the calabash of African beer and drink deeply, quenching a year of thirst. You hand her back the empty calabash and say, “More.” She hears you and runs off to fetch you more. And then you’re back to dancing and singing.

When the food comes, you feast. Emptying out bowls of goat meat, sadza, maguru, madora, derere, mutakura, you fill your empty stomach that had forgotten food for twelve full moons. Relatives approach and before they can say who they are, you call them by name and you ask them about things in their lives that only they could know. You instruct them on how to handle their problems, and praise them for the things they did right, like a loving mother would.

When the ceremony is done, you sneeze three times and expel yourself out of the svikiro, spirit medium, who is your great-granddaughter, Tsitsi. This, the allowance of possessing a living being, is a practice that is only given to the dead that a family has seen fit to raise to ancestry.

The trance that held Tsitsi ends, and you give her back full control of her body. While the others do not see your spirit form, your great-granddaughter does, and she smiles at you. You return the smile and say to her, not with words but mere thought, for you two will forever be one, that you will talk to her later, for now she must be tired and she needs to rest. And Tsitsi nods at this.

You float toward the sky, returning to the other ancestors, slipping into the hole you made by wiping the black dust with your hand. When you meet the other ancestors, they shout in welcome, and you finally understand their speech. Not that it’s foreign from what you used to speak on Earth, but now that you remember how to talk, you understand them. You talk back to them and hug them like old friends. You know them all by name, though most are centuries older than you and you had never met them in your past life. You know the lives they lived and the insignificant things, like their past immoral acts and how they died. You laugh along with them and join in conversations with them, no more angry or depressed, or empty and lost. Joy springs out of you. And this joy is what keeps you warm in this cold, dark place. This place has become your second home, and for this you are grateful.

There is a moment, a brief one, where you think of how you died and left your family. But it goes away as you remember the ceremony that they held for you, welcoming you back into the fold.

In this new life that you live in, you watch over your children on Earth and go to them when they call. For that’s what ancestors do, after all.

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