Under Water - Hardcover

Powers, JL

 
9781947627031: Under Water
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1947627031 ISBN 13: 9781947627031
Verlag: Cinco Puntos Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

When her beloved grandmother dies, 17-year-old Khosi must learn to survive on her own. She has to take care of her little sister Zi, make a living as a traditional healer, and somehow try, despite everything, to finish school. When her beloved Imbali―an urban township in South Africa―flares up in violence, Khosi finds herself at the center of the storm. A taxi war threatens the safety of every person in Imbali, including Khosi’s best friend and boyfriend Little Man. A murdered man is dumped on her doorstep. And accusations of witchcraft swirl around her, despite her every effort to keep her healing practice aboveboard. When Little Man chooses the wrong path, Khosi finds herself caught up in a new romance. But her past just might catch up to her.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

J.L. Powers is the award-winning author of three young adult novels, The Confessional, This Thing Called the Future, and Amina. She is also the editor of two collections of essays and author of a picture book, Colors of the Wind. She works as an editor/publicist for Cinco Puntos Press, and is founder and editor of the online blog, The Pirate Tree: Social Justice and Children's Literature. She teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at Skyline College in California's Bay Area and served as a jurist for the 2014 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. She launched Catalyst Press in 2017 to publish African writers. She can be found at www.jlpowers.net, www.powerssquared.com, and www.catalystpress.org.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One My grandmother Gogo’s voice is in my head even before Zi throws the first handful of dirt on her grave. Don’t forget your promise, Khosi. Don’t forget. The dust chokes my throat as I turn away. A speck of dirt flies into my eye and I rub raw. Water drips down my cheeks. Even the woman ululating and the call and response of the others in the crowd, mourning the loss of my grandmother, can’t drown out her voice. You promised, Khosi. You promised. Don’t forget. It’s true, before she died, I promised Gogo exactly two things. They seemed small at the time. If I’d known what it meant to make those promises, I would have kept my mouth shut. But I said yes. And now I can’t back out. The dead have access to me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They hound me with their commands. Do this. Do that. Go there. Fetch that. And Gogo’s dead now. So I have no escape. She will harass me until I do what I said I would do, even if it’s impossible. I take my sister Zi’s hand. She looks up at me, total trust reflected back in her eyes. She’s nine. I’m only seventeen but I’m all she has left, Mama dead for three years, and Gogo three days now. Baba has never been involved in our lives, even less so after Mama passed. OK, Gogo. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll keep it, even if it kills me. 3 Chapter Two We make a procession from the cemetery to the house, walking up and down Imbali’s dirt roads. Winter is dry, the roads covered with a thick centimeter of reddish-brown earth. Most of the neighborhood and all of my grandmother’s family are here, dressed in their funeral best. Mama’s sister’s family walks in front of us, Auntie Phumzile dressed in her Zionist church service finery―a white turban wound around her head, white blouse and green skirt, a maroon cape wrapped around her shoulders. My cousin Beauty, too, is dressed in an expensive new dress, and she walks with her head held high. She barely acknowledged me when she arrived. My mother’s brother is dressed in his finest suit and he carries Khulu’s walking stick, my grandfather’s staff that was passed down to the new patriarch of the Zulu clan when he died. Zi and I are wearing white, like Gogo requested―simple, everyday clothes. My neighbor maDudu walks alongside us and clucks her tongue. “Didn’t you and Zi buy new clothes for your grandmother’s funeral?” “We didn’t have the money,” I explain. “Anyway, Gogo chose these dresses for us to wear to her funeral. They were her favorites. She said she lived an ordinary life and she wanted her real life honored in that way. I remember her smile as she told me, “You arrive Mr. Big Shot but leave Mr. Nobody. I don’t need an expensive funeral, eh, Khosi?’” “Shame,” maDudu says, agreeing with my decision, and nods her chin at Auntie Phumzile. “But that one, she will say you aren’t showing proper respect.” I bow my head and look at the ground. Of course maDudu is right, but Auntie will be wrong if she says these things. This is how I offer respect to Gogo―by following her wishes. And by keeping my promises to her, even though, only 72 hours after her death, they already seem impossible. We turn the corner to our street and I stop for a moment, just to look at the people responding to Gogo’s death. 4 In the past week, our yard was transformed so that we could host the neighborhood―a neighborhood Gogo has lived in for some forty years. We erected a large tent where neighbor women have been preparing the funeral meal. Already, the neighborhood is queuing, a line of people stretching from the gate to the spaza shop two doors down. The scent of fried chicken, rice, phutu, and cooked kale hits my nose long before I reach the yard. It feels like a betrayal to Gogo to be hungry but it’s true, my stomach is growling. I need to eat now now. I have had just one or two slabs of phutu with a little bit of sour amasi since she died, three days ago, a fact that Little Man has pointed out, worried that I’m going to collapse. “You need to eat, Khosi,” he urged me. “To keep your strength up for all you must face.” But how could I eat , hearing all the rumors? I grip Zi’s hand even tighter. I can’t forget Auntie’s face, her lips curling in anger as she demanded the right to go through Gogo’s things and take what she wanted. “I am her daughter, I should have her clothes,” she claimed. “It is tradition.” I may be a sangoma and that means I am supposedly “traditional” and think that is the answer to everything. But I must tell you, sometimes tradition cloaks thievery. Not that I cared about Gogo’s clothes, but I would have liked to keep the simple beaded jewelry and headdress, just to remember her. Instead, I have the house to remember her by, which presents a different problem. For now, all I must think about is making it through the funeral. Zi and I bypass the queue and head into the house, where family members are already feasting. I scan the queuefor Little Man and his parents. To me, and to Gogo, Little Man is family but I understand that nobody else recognizes that―yet― so he must stay outside with the others. Maybe someday, the rest of my family will understand that even if we are only 17, we have been together for three years, ever since Mama’s death. He is much more than a boyfriend. Inside, there are no places for us to sit except the floor, so we take a corner and wait for one of the ladies to bring us plates of food. I suppose we better get used 5 to sitting on the floor. My aunt also claimed the sofa in the living room and the table in the kitchen. I’m hoping my uncle will step in and tell her no. I should be thinking about Gogo, about the loss, but my stomach is twisted with fear. What’s going to happen after all the food is eaten and the neighbors go home? What is my aunt going to say then? Or will she even wait until after the funeral? She is sitting on the floral sofa she wants, glancing at me from time to time as she chews the meat off a bone. “Mm mm, I’m just saying, why did my mama die so suddenly after she made a will and left the house to Khosi?” I overhear her say to Gogo’s niece from the Free State, who drove all night to get here for the funeral. “Sho, is it?” The niece bites into a hunk of meat. I put my plate of food down on the floor, appetite gone. “I’m sure Elizabeth’s daughter would never harm a soul,” the niece says. “I know she is a sangoma but she doesn’t practice this thing of witchcraft, does she?” “I never thought so, not while Mama was alive.” Juice drips down Auntie’s wrists as she mixes gravy with phutu and scoops it into her mouth. “But you never know with these sangomas, not these days. It is very suspicious that my mother died so soon after she wrote that will.” “What what what, you really believe she is umthakathi?” I’ve had enough. “Come, Zi,” I say, and we stand and walk out of the house. As we pass, I hear my aunt cackle under her breath, knowing she’s scored a point against me. I slink outside, feeling like an unwanted dog in my own house. The crowd of people waiting to eat is as long as ever and the yard is already festering with trash and flies. This is going to be some clean up job….I only hope my family members, the vultures who have descended for food and a chance to take all of Gogo’s things, will stay long enough to help me clean up. After everyone leaves, Auntie sends her husband to borrow a friend’s bakkie so they can take Gogo’s sofa with them now-now. 6 “It’s OK, Auntie Phumzi,” I say. “It is late. Come back tomorrow. The sofa will still be here.” She laughs. “Oh, no, by then you will bewitch it. I must take it now, before you do something evil like you did to my Mama.” “I would never...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Cinco Puntos Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1947627031
ISBN 13 
9781947627031
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9781947627048: Under Water

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  194762704X ISBN 13:  9781947627048
Verlag: Cinco Puntos Press, 2019
Softcover