If You Want to Make God Laugh Read online

  ALSO BY BIANCA MARAIS

  Hum If You Don’t Know the Words

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Bianca Marais

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Marais, Bianca, author.

  Title: If you want to make god laugh / Bianca Marais.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018052506| ISBN 9780735219311 (hardback) | ISBN 9780735219328 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Apartheid—South Africa—Fiction. | South Africa—History—1961–1994—Fiction. | South Africa—History—Soweto Uprising, 1976—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | GSAFD: Christian fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR9199.4.M3414 I3 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052506

  p. cm.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Poodle

  (Please forgive me for what I did to Sodom and Gomorrah. You can’t win ’em all but at least you got “orc” and “Faloolah.”)

  CONTENTS

  Also by Bianca Marais

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Chapter Eighty-four

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  Chapter Eighty-eight

  Chapter Eighty-nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-one

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Chapter Ninety-three

  Chapter Ninety-four

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary of Terms

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Zodwa

  21 November 1993

  Sterkfontein, Transvaal, South Africa

  A thread of smoke snakes up into the cloudless sky and serves as Zodwa’s compass needle. She trails it until the sandy path dips suddenly, revealing a squat hut nestled in the grassland below. A woman sits waiting at the threshold. She’s hunched over like a question mark, her headdress of white beads partially obscuring her face. A leopard skin is draped over her shoulders and the sight of it reassures Zodwa; the gold-and-black-spotted pelt ibhayi signifies the nyanga is a healer of great power.

  The woman chews tobacco, which she spits out when Zodwa reaches her. “What took you so long?” she gripes, rising up on arthritic knees.

  “How did you know I was coming?” Zodwa herself hadn’t known she’d be making the journey until the early hours of that morning.

  “The ancestors told me.” The nyanga holds out her palm.

  Zodwa reaches into her bra and withdraws a few crumpled notes. They are everything she has. “How much will it be?”

  The nyanga’s knobbly hand shoots out and snatches it all away before Zodwa can protest. She disappears into the gloom and beckons for Zodwa to follow. Inside, it looks like a regular hut with its circular walls, thatch roof, and dung floor, but Zodwa knows it’s imbued with the spirits of the clan members who have gone before; the ndumba is a sacred place.

  The healer motions for Zodwa to sit on the floor. “How many years do you have, child?”

  “I’m
seventeen,” Zodwa replies. “Almost eighteen.” She knows she looks younger and blames it on her rounded cheekbones, which lend her face a childish quality.

  The healer’s eyes inspect Zodwa from head to toe and Zodwa flushes, knowing that the old woman disapproves. Her pleated black skirt is hemmed to just below her knees, but still it’s too short for traditional wear. The white blouse is a fraction too tight, but this is because Zodwa has outgrown it, not out of choice.

  The nyanga holds up a gourd. “Undlela zimhlophe,” she explains before swallowing its contents. She limps to her mat and kneels down.

  It’s past midday and the powerful root has to be consumed on an empty stomach so that it can induce the lucid and prophetic dreams that will help her hear the ancestors’ voices. The old woman must be hungry. Zodwa’s hungry too, though not because she’s been fasting. Her hunger isn’t the temporary kind that will soon be satiated; it’s the gnawing kind that takes up residence in a stomach that has been empty for too long. It’s a hunger born of poverty.

  The nyanga begins groaning while rocking back and forth. The smell of impepho burning saturates the air, and the sage fills Zodwa’s lungs with every breath she takes, dulling her senses with its hypnotic scent. The hut, darkened and warm, reminds her of home. At least, the home she’d lived in with her grandmother in KwaZulu before she joined her mother in the sqatter camp earlier in the year.

  Her grandmother had been reluctant, at first, to relinquish Zodwa to Leleti and considering everything that had happened, Zodwa couldn’t blame her. Her gogo had lost her only son, Zodwa’s father, to a mining accident in the City of Gold, and then Zodwa’s eighteen-year-old brother, Dumisa, disappeared less than a year after leaving for Johannesburg when Zodwa was seven.

  “Be very careful, my child,” Zodwa’s gogo had cautioned her before she left the village for the township. “Bad things happen in the city. Its gods are very hungry and must be appeased. Don’t become one of the sacrifices made to it.

  “You must study hard, mzukulu wami,” her grandmother had continued. “You must be brave but do not try to be as brave as your brother was. If your light shines too bright, someone will always seek to extinguish it. And do not give in to temptations. The city makes girls forget their virtue and modesty. It makes them behave in wanton ways. Remember, my child, that a good bride price comes from respect.”

  Zodwa had tried to follow her gogo’s advice, she really had, but the township had awakened something in her. It was as if the city’s electricity had jump-started her body, and no matter how much she tried to keep her thoughts pure, they simply wouldn’t cooperate.

  There will be no good lobolo now. There will be no bride price at all since no offer of marriage has come.

  Zodwa’s thoughts are interrupted by the nyanga rising from her place on the floor. The old woman winces as she stands up on stiff knees and shuffles over to where Zodwa sits.

  Her voice is hoarse. “The amadlozi are angry with you.”

  It is what Zodwa most feared hearing. No one wants to incite the wrath of the ancestors. “Because of the baby?”

  The old woman shoots Zodwa a shrewd look. “It is not the baby the ancestors speak of.”

  Zodwa hangs her head, the familiar shame slithering its way up her spine.

  “What did you dream the last time you slept?” the healer asks.

  It isn’t difficult to answer, as the nightmare has stayed with Zodwa all day. “I dreamt I was being chased.”

  “By what?”

  Zodwa shivers inwardly. “Two white owls. Their wingspan stretched across the sky, blocking out the sun.”

  The healer’s frown deepens. “And then what happened?”

  “I thought they were going to kill me, but it wasn’t me they wanted.”

  “What then?”

  “The baby. They snatched it from me and flew away.”

  The nyanga nods and sighs. “It is as the ancestors have said. You wage a war with yourself by following the wrong path. You have only yourself to blame that you are now expecting this child who will bring you even greater misery.”

  “What can I do?”

  “About the baby . . . only you can decide.” The nyanga shrugs. “I can give you herbs to try to take care of it. About the other matter . . . the ancestors say that you must walk the path that is intended for you. Only then will you find peace.”

  Zodwa can’t think of that now. Any peace she could wish for in that regard would only follow a termination of her pregnancy, which is the more urgent of her problems. “I will take the herbs.”

  “It may already be too late.” The nyanga’s face is inscrutable as she turns and hobbles to the table laid out with dozens of pots and baskets.

  She moves assuredly between them, picking sprigs from some and roots from others, as she sets about making her infusion, adding water to a three-legged cast-iron pot and emptying the ingredients into it, before setting it over the coals in the middle of the room. Stirring it occasionally, she brings the mixture to a boil and then removes it, straining the liquid through a cloth.

  “Drink,” she says, handing Zodwa a gourd filled with an acrid-smelling brew.

  Everything makes Zodwa nauseous these days but the concoction is especially vile. She struggles to drink it, gagging a few times and almost bringing it up.

  When she’s swallowed the last drop and wiped her mouth, the nyanga takes the gourd back. “Now we wait.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Delilah

  22 April 1994

  Goma, Zaire

  The letter that changed everything arrived as Xavier and I were coaxing the generator back to life after the power had gone out again. Considering that the orphanage housed more than two hundred children, the lack of electricity for lighting and heating was bad enough, but not being able to pump water out of the borehole was a potential crisis.

  Everyone’s nerves were already on edge after the plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents was shot down two weeks before. Thousands of Rwandans were fleeing for their lives, the Tutsis streaming across the border into Zaire. We were all on full alert and had to be ready to make a run for it if the Rwandan military sent incursions across the border. It seemed more and more likely that it would.

  As it was, the generator was useless without fuel, every last drop of which had been poured into the Land Rovers’ tanks in case we needed to evacuate. I’d had to siphon off some of it for the machine but the cantankerous beast was still refusing to accept the offering and start.

  I looked to the horizon at the sun that would soon be setting. Xavier couldn’t work in the dark, so there wasn’t much time left. I was about to start sieving leftover sunflower oil through a sock, to serve as lubricant in case Xavier needed it, when I heard my name being called.

  I turned to see Doctor grinning wildly and running at me while waving something in his hand. Everyone stepped back as he made his way through the playground. He was like Moses parting the Red Sea. “Granny! Granny!” he shouted.

  That’s how all the children naturally addressed anyone over forty and, being closer to sixty, I more than qualified. When I was much younger and starting out as an aid worker across the border, I’d been called “Mother.” It had felt like a slap in the face to be named that, as if they were mocking me for my childless state, which of course they weren’t. All those countries and missions later, after all the thousands of children I’d tended, I’d finally grown used to it.

  As Doctor ran at me, I should have chided him for his recklessness around the machinery but I didn’t. His joy at being alive was so pure that I found myself favoring him, even granting him amnesty from the rules all the others were expected to live by. My partiality for the boy wasn’t solely based on his positive outlook on life; I’d delivered him five years before.

  Despite having had no child-birthing training, I’d stepped in when all the
other midwives had refused to help his HIV-positive mother, back when HIV was so rare that it was considered more black magic than a disease. His mother had gone into labor a few weeks premature after almost being stoned to death as she was chased from her village. I’d refused to allow her to go through another ordeal alone.

  Coached over satellite telephone by a Doctors Without Borders obstetrician, I’d kitted up in a makeshift kind of hazmat suit before helping bring Doctor into the world. We were lucky. Despite his mother’s health issues, it had been a textbook birth.

  She’d cradled him to her chest for an hour afterward, too weak to sit up but too fierce to allow me to take him from her. She held him while I held her, my gloved hand over her bare one, which was resting on his scrawny buttocks.

  “He will be a great man, this one,” she said, smiling weakly. “I name him Doctor.” It was the highest honor she could think to bestow on him. It depressed me, given that the medical profession had been able to do nothing for her.

  I’d often wondered since then if a child could be inoculated in the womb against the horror of the world through the power of its mother’s love; if that love could infuse joy into a child even when her presence couldn’t. God knows, if ever there was a woman who wanted to live to raise her child, who’d fought like a hellion just so that he could be born, it was she. She told me it was because he was the only thing in her life that was truly hers.

  “I have a letter for you, Granny,” Doctor now said, smiling proudly as he handed the envelope across.

  He was painfully thin and out of breath from the short sprint. Breathing should never sound that way. As though lungs are blades and air is something solid to be chopped up. Still, Doctor had lived three years longer than any of us had expected and he accepted his condition stoically.

  “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve done a good job getting it to me,” I said solemnly as I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. He beamed at the contact. “Could you put it in my pocket?” I asked, indicating my dirty hands and turning so he could tuck the envelope into the back of my trousers.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was after midnight when Xavier and I finally parted ways, exhausted yet triumphant. The generator was running again. Disaster had been staved off for another day. Seeking refuge in my room, I made my way to the narrow bed and lifted the mosquito net to sit on the cotton sheet I’d paid such an exorbitant price for.