This Thing Called the Future by J.L. Powers Page B

She stops sweeping and stares at us until we close the door, leaving just a crack open to let air flow inside.
    â€œGogo, what’s making her so angry?” I ask. It’s true that evil is blind but anger is a path in the forest, guiding evil through the dark, right to your doorstep.
    Gogo’s headscarf flutters in the breeze. “Zi, go watch TV while I talk to your sister,” she says. After Zi leaves, the words bleed from her mouth. “Her children think your mother took some of her husband’s insurance money after he died!”
    â€œWhat?” I’m shocked. “What will happen if the neighbor keeps
talking like this and everybody believes her?” The thought makes me feel lonely deep inside, at the pit of my stomach. We could be shunned by everybody, if they believe this thing.
    â€œHow can she think your mother would cheat somebody who’s been a friend and neighbor for so many years?” Gogo crosses her arms under her breasts, looking vulnerable.
    â€œWhat about the paperwork?” I ask. “It should prove that Mama didn’t cheat her.”
    Gogo clucks her tongue, shakes her head. “She can’t read. What good is showing her the paperwork?”
    â€œMaybe she’ll forget about it,” I say, but we both know you don’t forget something like this.
    Gogo slumps down in the seat and grabs one of my school folders. She begins to fan herself with it. “It’s so hot today, the fish are jumping out of the water.”
    â€œGogo, why don’t you wait for Mama outside?” I ask. “It’s not so hot out there.”
    â€œI don’t know…” Gogo trails off, looking anxious.
    I peek through the back door at the neighbor’s house. “Inkosikazi Dudu has gone inside. She won’t be giving you the evil eye anymore.”
    So Gogo grunts and, slowly, starts to stand up. She struggles so much, I put out my hand to help her, but she waves it away. She likes to be independent.
    I understand that, I do. I like to be independent, too.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    TROUBLE BETWEEN US
    Auntie Phumzi and Mama drive into the yard. I leave the mealie-meal boiling on the stove and run outside just in time to glimpse Zi’s skirt flapping up and showing her pink underwear as she runs to greet Mama. It looks like I need to buy her longer skirts, to protect her from dirty old men.
    Then Mama gets out of the car. She has lost so much weight, her face is wrinkled, the skin sagging off her jowls—like she suddenly became really old, overnight. Her ankle wobbles as it hits the ground, as if her legs are still adjusting to the lost flesh.
    Zi stops. She backs away.
    Gogo is so surprised, she exclaims, “Pho! Who are you? Who took my daughter? Where is Elizabeth?”
    â€œI told her she’s trying to be like the white women who think it is beautiful to be a skeleton,” Auntie Phumzi says, laughing to make light of our fear.
    â€œIt is just that I have been so sick, Mama,” Mama explains. “I was even sick when I came home last visit, but I did not want to worry you.”
    â€œThere is sick but this?” Gogo sweeps her hand towards Mama.
    â€œI didn’t think I could handle the long trip back from Greytown,” she says. She holds her arms out for Zi. “Aren’t you going to say hi to me, Zinhle?”

    That’s when Zi finally goes to her. But as Mama wraps her arms around Zi’s little body, Zi starts weeping and howling. Mama looks over at us, her eyes and body saying “Help” even though she doesn’t say the word. Then she sees me. “Nomkhosi,” she says, her voice gentle. “How are you?”
    â€œMama, come inside and take a seat.” I am confused and ashamed to see Mama like this, so thin like the men and women who die of AIDS.
    Mama wobbles, her movement constricted by Zi’s arms wrapped tight around her.
    â€œElizabeth!” We all turn at the