Innards by Magogodi oaMphela Makhene

Author:Magogodi oaMphela Makhene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

And then the blaze burned. Twice. We only believed him after, but the prophet had in fact forewarned of hellfire.

Boytjie was supervising some longtime members who came to use her electric stove. Her oven was more reliable than their coal kilns and Ousie knew several bake recipes, where most women only knew one. And they were baking that one recipe—township scones.

Agnes later said it was Seipati who stacked all the Rama margarine covers on the stove’s burner, idiotically forgetting Rama is wrapped in paper. Malefa’s version accused Ntsiki of turning the oven to 450°C when Ousie said 200°C.

—You know Ntsiki likes pretending boklever, Malefa said, tongue tutting.

—Like she can read!

It only took a snap for the fire to flare, flinging Boytjie’s stainless-steel appliances into flames, as well as the old linoleum flooring and wooden front door. Naturally, we collected a small donation for Boytjie. The money must’ve helped a little, but she got a dizzying sum of hard cash from some insurance scheme. That’s what started her remodeling 7678B into Monte Casino.

For some reason, Boytjie got it in her head to build up, to add a second floor instead of extending backwards. But 7678B, being a three room matchbox, had its fourth wall conjoined with the neighbors’. The two houses formed a long six room car train, really, split down the middle by a siamese wall yoking two separate households together. Building a second floor meant worrying that fourth wall. And there was no way such a mission wouldn’t rankle 7678B’s conjoined neighbor, Baba Timoti.

People who know everyone’s business say Baba Timoti was born fathering. He seemingly came to Jo’Burg already preaching, already holding his Apostle shepherd staff in one hand and an indecipherable Bible he couldn’t read in the other. When he wasn’t tending his nomadic flock, Baba Timoti was a security guard who carried a sjambok, even though people claimed they’d seen Baba Timoti with a real gun. Rubbish! Baba was too old for guns. Besides, he was the kind of security whose main deterrent is the shame of robbing an old man.

In addition to night watchman, Baba Timoti ran a very healthy paraffin and peanuts business. The peanuts came with his wife, who traveled frequently to Eshowe. The paraffin was siphoned from Timoti’s mantshingilane job. People loved Baba. His paraffin was cheaper than everyone else’s, and when the going got really rough, Baba sold on credit.

Of course, this didn’t stop anyone from foulmouthing his dirt. He sired half his flock, people said. And even though it was hard believing young girls would splay themselves for fuel, all Timoti’s young female congregants grew heavy about nine months into churching with his crowd.

After that first kitchen fire, 7678B looked nothing like itself. The before and after was made all the more real by 7678A—Baba Timoti’s original matchbox—shadowing 7678B; a shantytown huddle glued to Sandton Sun. 7678B’s graffiti was long gone. But so was the back kitchen door, the single front window, the original three room layout, and even the cement plastered yard.

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