The House of Discarded Dreams

Page 8

“No,” the spirit whispered. “ I was sent by the clan spirits, the mhondoro, to tell you a story. Listen, and learn well—ngano is how children learn.”
The house loomed closer now, its windows yellow loving eyes, and under their steady staring Vimbai felt entranced as she parked the car. Her breath escaped in small careful puffs as she unbuckled the seat belt, but the cool and hard hand of the ghost lay on her wrist, transfixing her in her seat. A cold lump formed in her stomach, and Vimbai thought that really, it was shell shock, she simply did not have time to absorb everything that had been happening to her; as she thought that, her breath quickened and beading of sweat started forming on her forehead, until the vadzimu spoke.
There was a time once, a long time ago, when a hare decided to take the moon from the sky and put it in his home so that there would always be light. Hares are clever creatures, and our hare (whom we shall call Hare) realized that the sky and the moon were a high way up, and to get to the moon he would have to work at night, and he would have to come up with a clever plan to get there.
Hare waited for nightfall, and climbed the tallest tree in the forest. When he was halfway there, he came across a baboon who was slumbering in the branches. Everyone knows that baboons are dense and quarrelsome creatures, so Hare tried to avoid disturbing the Baboon and hopped over to another branch. He miscalculated his jump in the darkness, and almost fell. As Hare scrambled back onto the branch, he woke up Baboon.
“Hey,” Baboon said. “What’s all this racket?”
“It’s just me, Old Uncle,” Hare replied.
Baboon opened one bloodshot eye and gave Hare a mistrustful look. “And what would you be doing in the tree in the middle of the night, Old Grandfather?”
“I’m picking figs to feed my children,” Hare lied. “I work in the field all day, and can only go fruit-picking at night.”
Baboon went back to sleep, and Hare climbed up up up, all the way to the top of the tallest tree. By the time he got there, the moon rose, and Hare saw that it was just a thin crescent, hanging upside down. “That’ll be good enough,” Hare said to himself, and reached up. But the moon was still too far—it hung just inches away from Hare’s paws, and smiled and laughed at his efforts to reach it (for that, it had to turn right side up.)
Hare shook his fist at the sky and threatened to give the moon such a beating, but the moon just laughed and remained wisely out of his reach. The noise woke Baboon who had been dozing off in the branches below. “Huh,” Baboon said to himself. “Looks like Old Grandfather Hare is trying to get the moon, not the figs. I bet I could get it myself and then make him pay me a princely sum in figs.”
But the crescent moon remained too far even for Baboon and his long arms, and the next night it did not get any closer. Only when the sickle grew thicker, it started to travel lower in the sky—as everyone knows, the bigger the moon, the heavier it is, and its weight pulls it closer to the ground. Because of that, the full moon is so low in the sky that its round belly can touch the tops of tall trees on a good night.
So on the day the moon was finally full and fat, both Hare and Baboon climbed to the top of the tallest tree. The moon was not laughing anymore, and only looking at them with its white fearful eyes. Baboon’s arms were longer, and he grabbed the moon by its pudgy sides, and immediately yelped in pain.
“What’s the matter, Old Uncle?” Hare asked and snickered.
Baboon sucked on his burned fingers. “It’s hot,” he said. “It burns like fire.”
Hare, who was quite clever, picked a few leaves off the treetop—they were large and leathery like all fig leaves are, and perfect for carrying coals or other hot burning things. He grabbed the moon with its paws wrapped in leaves, but the moon slipped out like a silvery fish—the leaves were too smooth and slick.
“Let me do it,” Baboon said. “You’re doing it wrong, Old Grandfather.”
“No,” Hare argued. “It was my idea, and it is my moon, and my leaves.”
Baboon reached for the moon again, burning his fingers the second time (I told you that baboons are none too bright), and Hare maneuvered the leaves this way and that, and he wove a basket in which to carry the moon. Only by the time the basket was finished, the moon had rolled across the sky, away from the treetop.
“I guess we’ll never get the moon,” Baboon said. “I thought I was quick and strong enough, but I was wrong.”
“And I thought I was clever enough,” Hare said.
They came down from the tree. In the clearing nearby, they saw a puddle of dark water and a tortoise who came to take a drink of water. Tortoise did not want the moon, he just wanted a drink; but as he drank, the moon reflected in the puddle, and its reflection, cool now, filled Tortoise’s mouth and his belly with its milky light. Tortoise smiled and went home, shining like the moon among the trees.
Vimbai led the ghost into the house by the hand. Maya was at work and Felix, judging by the lights in his windows, remained cloistered in his room, doing whatever it was that he did—Vimbai imagined that he played with the phantom limbs as one would with dolls, or with whatever unpleasant things he pulled out of the black hole of his hair.
“There you go, grandma,” Vimbai said. “You’re welcome to stay here.”
The ghost shuffled into the kitchen, looking disapprovingly at the empty coffee cups and saucers stained with syrup piled in the sink.
“It’s Felix’s turn to do the dishes,” Vimbai said, apologetic. “Only he procrastinates.”
The vadzimu heaved a tremulous sigh and glided up to the sink. Vimbai was about to argue but then realized it was silly to get into a tug of war about dirty dishes with her grandmother’s ghost. The dishes clattered and the water poured, and the ghost stopped paying any mind to Vimbai. She hung around the kitchen for a while, unsure whether she should offer help. Then she decided to check on the Psychic Energy Baby, and snuck upstairs cringing at the creaking of the stairs under her socked feet.
Peb was in Felix’s room, attaching a pair of phantom hands to itself.
“Should he be doing this?” Vimbai asked Felix.
He rolled his left eye up, and his right one leftward, giving Vimbai an impression of uncertainty. “Let it do what it wants—it stopped crying just now.”
“I brought a ghost with me,” Vimbai said. “It’s my grandmother, so be nice to her.”
“Okay,” Felix said. “Ghosts sure do like you.”
“Me? I thought it was the house.”
“The house likes you too,” Felix said. “But we sure never had so many ghosts before you moved in.”
Vimbai perched on the windowsill, her back against the glass. “Do you mean I’m bringing them in?”
“You just told me you brought one with you.” Felix pointed at Peb. “And you found this one in the phone.”
Vimbai considered. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just moved here to be close to the ocean and to the horseshoe crabs.”
Felix nodded. “I remember. Maya said you’re a student. How’s that working out for you?”
“Okay,” Vimbai said. “I’ve been cutting classes a lot lately . . . I don’t know what it is about this place, but I keep dreaming that I’m someone else, somewhere else, and nothing seems as important anymore. Is it weird that I’m saying that?”
“Not weird,” Felix said. “I found it, you know. And when Maya showed up, things under the porch started shifting.”
“What things under the porch?” Vimbai asked, alarmed. “I’ve been here for a month and never saw any things under the porch.”
“Neither have I,” Felix said. “But I hear them, and I know they’re there and that they’re Maya’s.”
“What are they?”
“Dunno. The point is, the house chooses.”
“What for?” Vimbai asked. The house creaked and whispered in her ears, lulling her, convincing her that everything was as it should be, everything was perfectly normal. “Why does it choose and why us?”
“Dunno,” Felix repeated, and shot her an irritated look. “Go play with the baby or something, okay? My head hurts.”
Of course, Vimbai reasoned, it was easy to believe that they were special somehow, chosen, different, lost and adopted princes and princesses and their true parents would soon reclaim them and reveal their hidden destinies—isn’t it what every book we read as children taught us to expect from life? Of course Felix decided that the house chose them for some unknown purpose, but in reality everything was much more banal. It appealed to them for whatever reasons, and they all came with baggage: Felix had his hair and Vimbai her ghosts, and Maya . . . Maya had whatever lived under the porch.
Peb had festooned itself with several hands and feet, and they remained attached to its transparent body through some otherworldly adhesion. Peb resembled an exotic fish decorated with grotesque appendages and outgrowths. Its skin stretched and shimmered with reflected light like a soap bubble, and Vimbai could not help but pick up the unsightly thing. “Come along,” she said. “I’ll introduce you to my grandma.”