We Kiss Them With Rain by Futhi Ntshingila

Author:Futhi Ntshingila
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946395061
Publisher: Catalyst Press
Published: 2018-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Things turned when Sipho joined Nonceba in the States. He always knew that she was a contained fire that would consume flesh and lick bones clean if she was given the chance. When she met him at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, the cold February air hit him in the face like a strong fist of that beautiful legend, Muhammad Ali. He wanted to turn around and take the next plane back to sunny Africa, but Nonceba was there, bright with joy at meeting up with him again.

He only had to look into Nonceba’s eyes to know that whatever it was that he would face in America, he would stay, because she had his heart. She told him about her grandmother’s funeral. To distract herself from the pain of losing Mae, she had started working in her old law firm again. She said it was just while she was figuring things out about coming back to Africa.

Her apartment was large, with windows that overlooked Lake Michigan. Sipho was amazed that she had left behind such a good life to be with him in Mkhumbane. He laughed long and hard about that.

When he arrived, she made a barbeque at a friend’s house in Oak Park. To get there, they took the L train, crisscrossing above the city through the maze of tall buildings and passing the magnificent home of the Chicago Tribune.

Sipho loved Oak Park. He told the gathering of friends stories of Mkhumbane and Skwiza’s shebeen, and about the first time he had taken Nonceba there. As he spoke, a realization dawned on him, that he belonged in Mkhumbane. He carried on talking, but he knew then that he would not last in Chicago if Nonceba decided to stay in America permanently.

The cold was freezing hairs inside his nostrils and something inside of him was losing balance. He was not used to walking on ice and he kept falling and hitting his ass hard against the cold ground. Then his tailbone started giving him pain.

He laughed and kept drawing strangers towards him. Unlike the tsotsis in Mkhumbane, these people were different. They didn’t want anything from him. They didn’t need his money, and they didn’t bask in the light of him being a lawyer. They were lawyers themselves. They had PhDs at the end of their names and they engaged with each other at an intellectual level.

Sipho held his own comfortably among these intelligent people. It fascinated them, because they could never have imagined this from a real “Aaafrican.” But he became exhausted with the mask he had to wear. He missed Skwiza’s and indulging in mundane small talk about the Soweto soccer derby, his brain soaked in whiskey.

He loved the view of Lake Michigan. It was shiny at night. But the neon lights frustrated him because they added an unnatural golden light onto the water’s surface. He wanted the silver lights of the moon that he was used to where he grew up in eMpendle. Moonlight made everything beautiful to him.

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