It depends on who you ask, but Shumirai wasn’t always unfortunate. Slightly strange, but rarely out of luck. In fact, Mrs. Bahati’s surname meant luck, and the neighbours in their little street in Sunningdale often remarked that she never walked in the shadows. Others simply said she was born under a lucky star on the twenty-ninth of February, though she was actually born in November. On summer days where the muggy weather started with nothing but ended with everything, hers was the only laundry that would avoid getting drenched. She was a little odd, if you asked the kids on that street, but she always gave out mint chocolates wrapped in green foil and her daughters let others come in to watch the channels on the satellite cable channels. Their vine-choked house was painted aqua too – very different from all the brown homes. Sometimes the neighbours heard rhythmic clapping deep in the night coming from her house on Sundays, but they brushed it off. If you believed everything you heard, you might make assumptions. Like the claim that their family didn’t go to any church, nor hold faith in any clear religion.
So when it was spread around that hail-riddled November that Shumi Bahati would be promoted from Sales assistant at Rainbow Paints in the nearby industrial area of Graniteside, to finance manager without the requisite qualification in finance, well that was more a divine providence than simple good fortune.
Shumi was thirty-six, though time scratched its own map across her features, like the etched lines around her eyes and the sag of jowls, heavy from a life that never truly paused. She was slight, almost weightless in the way she moved. Her skin was the tone of tree bark after rain, neither shiny nor ashy but grounded, as though she wore the earth itself as a second skin. Just above her temple, a vein often pulsed visibly like a ticking clock. Her eyes were small and wide-set, always seeming to search the corners of rooms where light refused to linger. There was a gap between her teeth that she hid when she smiled, though she rarely did. Her three daughters and toddler son all had the same face, just in different iterations of curiosity that distinct high arched eyebrows could hold. Starter locs coiled close to her scalp, thin and tentative like whispered prayers. She twisted them often with restless thin fingers, especially when thinking, or fearing, or both. Shumi was a woman threaded through with old beliefs, some inherited, some borrowed, others conjured from fragments of overheard warnings and dreams that clung to her long after waking. Raised by her grandmother’s words, she tried to piece them together in jumbled instructions she held onto desperately like prayer beads and passed down to her puzzled offspring out of earshot of their disapproving father, who preferred no spiritual beliefs at all.
Kamau was the lone son of Kenyan immigrants and rarely shared any of his own tales and traditions, preferring quiet science to the hot bouquet of diverse Zimbabwean beliefs his wife introduced. He also preferred not to notice any of Shumi’s eccentricities, just as she respected his introverted tendencies. Kamau the chemist was content with his weird wife as long as she left him alone as much as possible.
**
If you gathered bits of the rumour, you’d know that Shumi had started that day abnormally. She woke that morning in a hurried daze, except for moment in her lounge. She paused by the mantel, fingers grazing a cracked porcelain figurine, then turned away as if it had spoken. She had those moments often…
Shumi lined her windowsills with coarse salt and muttered words under her breath when passing mirrors at night. She called them habits, but really, they were rituals – deliberate, desperate, repeated. They ensured that life went well. She would check a locked door four times, never three, never five. She would not cross paths with cats, nor speak to children with fevers. Some said she was just careful. Others whispered that she was marked, carrying something ancestral and uneasy. That day when things went left certainly felt like there was more to her than what the eye could see.
After leaving the ornament on the mantel, she’d forgotten to lock the door behind her or pat her pocket twice to make sure that the cube of ginger wrapped in a piece of cling wrap was there per usual before crossing the threshold of the gate. She’d forgotten to cut a fresh piece, which was meant to sweeten relations in her workplace. Rainbow Paints was the kind of office where people came and went frequently, depending on the whims of the owner – yet another entrepreneur she worked for who thought that everyone else existed to serve his dream. Shumi luckily had longer institutional knowledge than any other staff who survived the most recent purges, and knew that the Accounting and Economics modules of her diploma would count for something. Desperate times, and all that.
She left home, albeit late, with that hope burning bright. However, she tripped on her own feet at the corner as she rushed to catch the public transport, and the kombi driver, who’d clearly seen her, kept going.
If you asked around, you might have heard that she got to her desk flustered at 9:30 in the morning, instead of 7:30. She expected to find the newspapers on her desk (a daily necessity as a sales officer) but was met with the grubby desk calendar, unadorned. She went back to the premise gate to ask the guard if the deliveries had come in, but he didn’t have the usual kind words for her.
“Morning Mkoma Anthony!”
“Mmm,” he grunted with his back turned.
“The papers are late again?
A loud silence followed. She returned to the building, sullen. She failed to notice the slightly open door in the office three doors from her own.
The general manager, Mr. Chipoko (who never came in on Mondays) was present, although tucked away in his office. She hadn’t recognized his other vehicle, a black Honda, not the white twin cab she was accustomed to.
She trudged to the kitchen and switched on the kettle to make herself her usual cup of sugarless tea. Thoughts thrashed in her head as she brewed the dark tonic, picked up the previous day’s The Herald newspaper, and glanced over the headlines without actually reading any. She worried her eldest daughter at sixteen might struggle with the toddler but promised herself she would phone home at lunchtime. She muttered mantras seeking light in her day under her breath, and was startled when Mr. Chipoko called out her name from behind her.
“Shumirai! Is everything all right?”
She bit her tongue, spilt the hot tea, and jumped back in time to avoid a real burn.
“Sir!”
Tea on blouse, hand on heart, she faced him. The reaction was far too big: he was taken aback when she tried and failed to hold back the cascade of tears before he said more.
**
If you asked those who knew, her usual routine started like this: She woke to the sound of a rooster – her chosen ringtone. Five minutes early, always, just in time to catch it at the first call. Then, feet together she slid out of bed. A glance behind, where Kamau usually would be tangled in the bedsheet, which made his breathing problems even worse. She would check the bricks beneath the bed to make sure they hadn’t shifted in a way that might endanger him when he got up. The bricks had a habit of moving, even though both sleepers were slight in build. At the window, she felt for the latch and let the air in without pulling apart the curtain. Then she would make her way in the dark to the door, turning the handle quietly to avoid the creek that would wake His Highness.
Feeling her way through the dark, she reached the tiny kitchen. Her fingers found the matchbox on top of the counter. She lifted the gas canister and set it down in the middle of the room where the kitchen island used to be, before termites claimed one corner and forced its removal. One of the many joys of living in an old house, inherited cheaply after her mother-in-law’s passing.
A large black enamel-lined pot went onto the stove. She struck a match, flame catching with a hiss, and left the bath water to boil. Electricity was a stranger between dawn and dusk in their neighbourhood. Gas stove it was.
On her way back from the kitchen, she passed the lounge just off to the side and gently shook the maid, just enough to rouse her from sleep. Then she returned to the bedroom, easing the door open with the same quiet care. But instead of slipping back under the warm, inviting blankets, Shumi stepped into the adjoining bathroom of the room she had shared with Kamau for sixteen years.
At the entrance of the bathroom, she opened the cupboard where T-shirts were piled high across three shelves. Reaching to the back of her own shelf, she retrieved a small candle and lighter tucked into a hidden nook. She lit the candle and whispered her morning words, calling for light to guide her day.
The flame flickered briefly before she blew it out and returned the candle to its place behind the clothes. Then came the sachet of snuff tobacco. A pinch to the forehead, another to the chest, and a final one just above her womb.
Kamau hadn’t bathed with her since their second year of marriage, so there was no concern about interruptions. This space, this moment, was hers alone.
She followed that with an icy cold water straight from a twenty-litre container that stood next to the bathtub. She didn’t use any water from the water tank because she had to preserve it for her children, and she didn’t use the heated water because grandmother raised her to believe that grown women did not use hot water. She would take the last pinch of snuff and drop it into the bucket, then pour the water over herself in one slow, deliberate motion, whispering her invocations—asking for light, asking for guidance, asking not to be abandoned by the ancestors whose blood ran in her veins. Thereafter she would refill the bucket, lather herself and proceed as normal. Shumi kept a sachet of that same tobacco in the corner of the top drawer of her desk at work. If you spoke to somebody who was a bit nosy, they would have told you that she also pinched snuff in the crooks behind her desk where the office custodian’s vacuum cleaner couldn’t get to. This was something that Shumi wouldn’t have told anyone, but that you would’ve had to see for yourself to know that this was a person who sought protection every day without fail in a toxic workplace that required one to have such protections. This being despite being the daughter of Pastor.
That was how it was every single day.
Except the day when she expected to hear of her promotion after Mr. Chipoko fired the finance team at Rainbow Paints.
**
On that morning, Lola, the new maid, had not come from her weekend off and made everything go off centre. Lola, you see, replaced the reliable and positively wonderful Mai Bev. If you knew the story, you’d know that Mai Bev had lived with the Bahatis since before Kamau had married Shumi. Mai Bev was a stabilizing force who made everything alright. If you listened to the ladies in the neighbourhood, you might surmise that it was she—Mai Bev—who was actually the bringer of good fortune as an overworked but good-natured and prayerful woman who put up with the unreasonable demands of her employer’s family. There was a quiet shame in the low-income neighbourhood about being a woman who relied on a domestic helper, but Shumi’s mother-in-law had justified it by noting that even in the Bible, men had wives and women had helpers. The only shame was that without hers, it seemed like Shumi’s world fell apart.
Shumi didn’t like the new girl. Amongst other irritations, Shumi’s son became attached to Lola too quickly. As for those other things, they were more feelings and suggestions than obvious actions.
Shumi could tell that the girl would secretly judge her for the way that she did went about her house. Like when His Highness would go outside, bundling his underwear and bath towel showing that he’d washed it himself, she often caught the young girl looking at her sideways in accusation. She caught Lola staring when she muttered to herself at the stove. Or when she let her daughters leave the dishes on the drying rack, instead of immediately wiping them and putting them away.
The two didn’t gel. Maybe it was the way Shumi said things, but the young girl took everything badly. Shumi couldn’t tell which of the instructions—cleaning the grease off the gas canister or pruning the vines—that had set the girl off before she went out that Saturday. Lola did not return on Sunday evening, making Shumi’s anxiety much worse. With all these facts in hand, you may have overlooked the fact that it meant the everyday morning rituals had gone out the window, and that Shumi’s special Monday was going to be awful indeed.
**
Shumi forgot to set her alarm while she dealt with her second child’s nosebleed, while attempting to sew a hem for the third. She overslept. His Highness had woken up after her, and Shumi could not overcome the shame of him seeing her face with its crust from the night. She had to make a mad rush to the kitchen to make sure that the children’s water was heated and thankfully found her daughter being responsible enough to do it. There was one egg and no bread in the breadbin. The greasy cooking oil bottle contained only a teaspoon. There were only two cups of maize meal in the container to make porridge, but there wasn’t enough time to make it. There was no polony in the fridge for the children’s sandwiches. The baby who usually woke up at eight woke much earlier and needed all her attention.
Now, if you did some digging, you’d also know that it was Shumi’s birthday and that her spouse had said nothing to that end when he left the house. Except that he reminded her to pick up two loaves of bread and to make sure that one was brown. You’d also find out that her teenage daughters had a screaming match over a ‘borrowed’ blouse and yet again ignored the dishes in the drying rack that needed to be put away. Shumi reluctantly left the one daughter who had no school that day with the toddler. She rushed out, anxious to get to work and make the remedy tea recipe to fix things in the way her grandmother had taught.
If you knew the story of what happened before Shumi was startled by her general manager in the office kitchen, you’d know that grandmother’s tea recipe made things worse…
**
After walking away from Anthony the security guard, Shumi took matters into her own hands. She passed the sandy car park near the Rainbow Paints kitchen door. Under the hot sun, Shumi scanned for her shadow. She glanced around quickly as she crouched, and scooped out a handful of sand from where her head landed on her shadow. She stood and scurried into the kitchen with the sand squeezed in her little fist.
Now, Anthony at the gate, while generally oblivious to more serious matters of company, had an eye for more trivial matters. As such, Anthony had seen Shumi grab a fistful of company soil and possibly stuff it in her pocket.
If you knew this company where Shumi and Anthony worked, you would know that many people had planted objects for favourable outcomes around the factory grounds—twig bundles tied with red string, shards of mirror wrapped in black rags, pieces of clay pots with colorful markings and pieces of what looked like bones tied in red cloth tied were discovered at different times in obscure places around the premises. Many lowly employees seeking prosperity had tried to get rich off the family because in addition to the paint factory and a trucking business, the Chipoko family owned a gold mine. It appeared then that the quiet mousy Shumi was taking sand to conjure her own guarantee of wealth, which was not the case. But if you were Anthony, it certainly looked like it.
Mind you, if you knew Anthony the security guard, you would also know that he was a relative of Mr. Chipoko. Through marriage, but still. That connection meant he had to defend the family and, unbeknownst to Shumi on that fateful and frustrating Monday, she would be dismissed for trying to take back her power in the quiet, traditional way that she knew how.
You see, Shumi’s grandma’s recipe for brain fog was a little odd: she simply said if you were feeling shaky, either someone was saying your name while stirring a cup of tea three times anticlockwise to ensure you were confused for the rest of the day or, a more sinister person would have scooped your shadow as you passed by to follow you and cause you to be dark in your brain during the day. To take back your power, you’d have to scoop up your own shadow and then throw it in your own cup of tea to bring yourself back to centre. At least, that’s what Shumi remembered, and she was certain that Lola had cast her an evil eye that rattled her nerves and unsettled her day…
In her determination, while brewing tea and reading the old newspaper, Shumi had not seen Anthony bound to Mr Chipoko’s office to tell him what he’d spied the odd Saleslady do, in addition to her arriving for work two hours late.
**
From what everyone heard, Shumi Bahati did not receive any promotion on her birthday. She was dismissed. And she walked home with leaden steps, covered in tea and soil stains. Someone said she was twirling her locs so hard that she pulled a handful out, which was untrue. Someone else saw her laughing alone, which was true.
Just a little way off from Rainbow Paints, Shumi returned a greeting and waved at the old woman who sold peanuts and sweets by the roadside. She had once bought a giant ginger root and a handful of chillies from her, though she could no longer remember which superstition she’d been trying to ward off with those seeds. The woman, she recalled, was somehow related to Mai Bev. Shumi made a mental note to ask for Mai Bev’s rural home address on a day when fortune felt more generous.
Shumi’s left palm itched for a fleeting moment. She glanced at the peanut seller, hoping she hadn’t noticed, then kissed the palm and tapped it against her forehead three times. Shumi stopped. She paused, chuckled to herself, remembering the time Kamau had caught her doing the same thing. That was years ago, back when he still found her rituals charming—before the mint and blackjack leaves floating in their foamy bathwater turned his amusement into disdain.
He had declared then that he didn’t want “nonsense” in his house. Truth be told, if you asked him, instead of bringing them good fortune, her patchwork of weird beliefs was the reason why they’d never moved out of his parents’ crumbling home. He who finds a wife finds a scared thing wrapped in old wives’ tales.
Shumi sighed, unsure what she’d say when she got home. The first raindrops fell thick and slow. Uncertain which of the spirits in her life were vengeful and which simply didn’t want to be forgotten on her birthday, Shumi trudged home under the dark clouds over Sunningdale.
About the Author:
Emelda Gwitimah is a multi genre alum of VCFA’s Writing and Publishing program, originally from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Her work has appeared in Lolwe, Olongo Africa, the Ake Review, the Willowherb Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review and twice in the Intwasa Anthologies. She lives in Canada. You can find her @bellaemelda on X.
Isele Magazine 