“Zethu, you must always measure the milk carefully before you give them to the customers,” Lubabalo told me on the morning misfortune scratched at the door flap of our mud house. I was his baby sister, but to me he was my universe. We had lost our parents in the mudslide; since then, Luba had protected me like the fiercest tiger, which was how the trouble came about.
I smiled at my brother’s sense of honesty and said, “Don’t I always? You’re the one who’s often out by a milliliter or two,” I teased him. The next customer in line made my skin crawl and my insides attempt to escape my body. Lecherous, hoary Mbulelo leered openly at me, his lascivious gaze stripping my ten-year-old body of its clothes. My face burned in rage and shame, but before I could spit out anything at the despicable witch doctor, Luba intervened.
“The usual cream and pint of milk, Thokoza Gogo?” Luba asked, using the term of respect for the healer. In my eyes though, he deserved none. I kept my gaze carefully lowered while my nails dug painfully into the palms of my hands. “Yebo,” he said, then added to my utter shock, “and today you can include Zethu in the purchase as well.”
Lubabalo froze in the act of pouring the milk into Mbulelo’s container. I could see the veins in his temples throb and balloon as his fury increased. Mbulelo had seriously misjudged my brother, for he had assumed that because Luba had always displayed absolute respect towards him, he could demand me as if I were an item on sale. My brother’s fist thundered so quickly towards Mbulelo’s chin that the man never even saw it coming. With a sickening thud, his head met the corner of one of the blocks of ice we stored just inside the entrance of our home, as it was the coolest spot. The stark redness of Mbulelo’s blood rapidly soaked into the hard, bluish-tinted ice block.
Three days later the village council assembled with quiet dignity under the Umbrella Tree, so named for its canopy of branches that fanned out expansively above a shady, grassy knoll. I sat near to the front, the better to hear the proceedings, but also to get a clear view of Lubabalo, who stared off into space above the heads of the villagers gathered to hear the verdict. My brother’s back was ramrod straight, his firm chin jutting out slightly in defiance. He bunched his jaw muscles occasionally, making him appear stronger than any rock in my eyes. Then the village head announced the verdict.
“Although Lubabalo’s fist knocked Mbulelo down, we find that his death was caused by the block of ice. Therefore, Lubabalo is not guilty.” The assembly cheered while I sat as if flummoxed.
It turned out that Mbulelo had never been liked by any of the villagers. Also, he had once tried to buy the daughter of the village chief, too.
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