I was startled by a black face that suddenly loomed at my side window. Knuckles rapped against the glass and I flinched. The light had turned green and I accelerated, looking into my rearview mirror to ensure that I was putting distance between myself and the man who’d approached me. That’s why I didn’t see the pothole in time to swerve. There was a loud bang followed by a jolt. I felt what had happened by the sluggishness of the steering: I’d damaged one of the tires. There was nothing to be done for it but to pull over onto the shoulder of the road.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Zodwa

28 April 1994

Big Hope Informal Settlement, Magaliesburg, South Africa

Zodwa locks the shack, tucking the key into her bra. On her way out, she passes the meager vegetable garden she’s been trying to grow, as well as the shrine her mother built to Dumisa. Three thousand, five hundred, and eleven. That’s how many stones now lie heaped in a pile; one for every day since Dumisa has been gone. Zodwa touches it briefly, the mass as solid as Dumisa’s absence, and thinks about all the time she and Leleti have spent searching for him.

Their first outing together after Zodwa arrived in the township was meant to be for buying school supplies. They could have just gone to the shopping center around the corner, which is why Zodwa was confused when Leleti made them catch a minivan taxi into Johannesburg.

“Don’t you want to see the city?” Leleti asked when Zodwa inquired about their destination.

Zodwa did but also knew that the taxi fare there was more than they could afford. It was only once Leleti consulted instructions written on the back of a pamphlet to get them to a block of flats in Hillbrow that Zodwa realized her mother’s true agenda: she wanted to interrogate an ex–Inkatha Freedom Party Youth Brigade member for any information he might have about her son and his role in the Zulu youth movement’s anti-apartheid struggle. The trip had been fruitless—they hadn’t even gotten the schoolbag she needed—and it marked the first of many such trips mother and daughter would take, some by themselves and others with people like Mama Beauty, fellow seekers whose hearts had similarly been broken.

As Zodwa now makes her way down the lane between shacks toward the main road, she’s assaulted from all sides by music blasting from boom boxes, radios, and car speakers. Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson compete with Miriam Makeba, Rebecca Malope, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and Brenda Fassie to be heard. Eddy Grant’s anti-apartheid song, “Gimme Hope Jo’anna,” throbs from the shack closest to the tap as marijuana smoke drifts out, mingling with the woodsmoke from cooking fires.