An Elegy for Easterly Read Online Free

An Elegy for Easterly
Book: An Elegy for Easterly Read Online Free
Author: Petina Gappah
Pages:
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presided over by the wisest of rulers. The land is one of plenty with happy citizens. The injustices of the past have been redressed to consolidate the gains of the liberation struggle. And in that happy land, I will be a new farmer and senator.

An Elegy for Easterly

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    I t was the children who first noticed that there was something different about the woman they called Martha Mupengo. They followed her, as they often did, past the houses in Easterly Farm, houses of pole and mud, of thick black plastic sheeting for walls and clear plastic for windows, houses that erupted without City permission, unnumbered houses identified only by reference to the names of their occupants. They followed her past Mai James’s house, Mai Toby’s house, past the house occupied by Josephat’s wife, and her husband Josephat when he was on leave from the mine, past the house of the newly arrived couple that no one really knew, all the way past the people waiting with plastic buckets to take water from Easterly’s only tap.
    â€˜Where are you going, Martha Mupengo?’ they sang.
    She turned and showed them her teeth.
    â€˜May I have twenty cents,’ she said, and lifted up her dress.
    Giddy with delight, the children pointed at her nakedness. ‘ Hee, haana bhurugwa ,’ they screeched. ‘ Hee , Martha has no panties on, she has no panties on.’
    However many times Martha Mupengo lifted her dress, they did not tire of it. As the dress fell back, it occurred to the children that there was something a little different, a little slow about her. It took a few seconds for Tobias, the sharp-eyed leader of Easterly’s Under-Eights, to notice that the something different was the protrusion of the stomach above the thatch of dark hair.
    â€˜ Haa , Martha Mupengo is swollen,’ he shouted. ‘What have you eaten, Martha Mupengo?’
    The children took up the chorus. ‘What have you eaten, Martha Mupengo?’ They shouted as they followed her to her house in the far corner of Easterly. Superstition prevented them from entering. Tobias’s chief rival Tawanda, a boy with four missing teeth and eyes as big as Tobias’s ears were wide, threw a stick through the open doorway. Not to be outdone, Tobias picked up an empty baked beans can. He struck a metal rod against it, but even this clanging did not bring Martha out. After a few more failed stratagems, they moved on.
    Their mouths and lungs took in the smoke-soaked smell of Easterly: smoke from outside cooking, smoke wafting in through the trees from the roadside where women roasted maize in the rainy season, smoke from burning grass three fields away, cigarette smoke. They kicked the empty can to each other until hunger and a sudden quarrel propelled Tobias to his family’s house.
    His mother Mai Toby sat at her sewing machine. Around her were the swirls of fabric, sky-blue, magnolia, buttermilk and bolts of white stuffing for the duvets that she made to sell. The small generator powering the sewing machine sent diesel fumes into the room. Tobias raised his voice above the machine.
    â€˜I am hungry.’
    â€˜I have not yet cooked, go and play.’
    He sat in the doorway. He remembered Martha.
    â€˜Martha’s stomach is swollen,’ he said.
    â€˜Mmmm?’
    â€˜Martha, she is ever so swollen.’
    â€˜ Ho nhai? ’
    He indicated with his arms and said again, ‘Her stomach is this big.’
    â€˜ Hoo ,’ his mother said without looking up. One half of her mind was on the work before her, and the other half was on another matter: should she put elaborate candlewick on this duvet, or should shewalk all the way to Mai James’s to make a call to follow up on that ten million she was owed? Mai James operated a phone shop from her house. She walked her customers to a hillock at the end of the Farm and stood next to them as they telephoned. On the hillock, Mai James opened the two mobiles she had, and
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