He would take me to Harare Gardens
Pick me flaming lilies
From the edge of the pond.
We would sit on the grass
Watching newly married couples
Offer their souls to cameras
Through their newly married smiles.
Wedding parties flirting with each other,
The spirit of marriage in the air.
Eating our colonial Lyons Maid
Ice cream cones, with my face
Covered in sticky melted milk
I would smile up at him and say
“Daddy, when I grow up,
I want to marry you.”
He would laugh that laugh of his
That conga drum laugh
Of a man pregnant with music
And tell me, “I am already taken.
My wife would kill me for that.”
I would pretend to be disappointed
Then he would pick me up
Like I was a sack of feathers
Place me on his shoulders
And I would take my rightful seat
On that big shoulder throne,
Bury my milky, sticky fingers
And chin in his immaculate afro.
I would look down at the newly married
Couples, smug because they couldn’t sit
On each other’s shoulders.
He loved to braid my hair
And would let me sit
On a cushion
With my chubby shoulders
Wedged between his knees.
We would listen to his reggae records
On my grandfather’s gramophone,
Whilst he told me about his Rasta days.
We always had company
In our blue white-wash walled house
And for a while I was the source of entertainment.
My parents had dreams of me being
A doctor. But not any doctor. No.
Zimbabwe’s youngest doctor
So I could thank them in my Nobel Prize
Acceptance speech.
For that reason they taught me to read
By the time I was 3.
I would read anything for our visitors
And they would be polite enough,
Telling my ma and pa
How smart I was.
I was allowed to listen to
Their big people talk about
All the Indians starting businesses
Called Patel & Sons
And all the white farmers packing
Back to England.
They loved to talk about
White people going back
Where they came from
And I would laugh along and
Say intellectual things like
Do they eat sadza in England?
My father would laugh
And say
She’s going to be a doctor this one
Or maybe an accountant like
Her father. After all they often called me
My father’s son because I looked like
He spat me out.
Me and my best friend on the same team.
The year I started school
Is the one I was no longer
Allowed to read for our visitors.
It’s the year my ma said
I was to be locked in my
Room with my books
Whenever we had company.
The year my best friend
Did not veto mother’s new law.
The year I said something intellectual
In response to a comment about
A Patel and Sons store where
They beat their African workers.
Something intellectual like
“Sometime dad beats mum you know”
That was the year I started learning
How my father loved my mother.
