Mulberry Dreams , livre ebook

Pigeon Press - Violette Kee-Tui

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

115 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A day before Emma's 10th birthday, her life changes irrevocably and she finds herself ripped away from everything she holds dear - family, home and homeland. It takes her 30 years to summon the courage to return, finally ready to put together the puzzle pieces of her past. Her quest for answers is backdropped by a country in turmoil and a history which, once so blurry, comes into painful focus as the ghosts of her childhood take shape. Set in the racially and radically different communities of pre- and post-war Bulawayo, Mulberry Dreams explores the different facets of Zimbabwean society through the lens of multiple protagonists over two generations, scarred by history, bound by circumstance, and forced to make choices for love, for family and for themselves. The reactions of a society on the brink, and the elegiac consequences of their interlocking decisions, will drive them to an inevitable and compelling conclusion.

Sujets

World Literature

Southern Africa

Africa

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Pigeon Press
Date de parution	04 novembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781779293596
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0900€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Violette Kee-Tui
Mulberry Dreams
Published by Pigeon Press
12 Fortune’s Gate Road, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
For more information on this and other titles email: info@hubbardstours.com
© Violette Kee-Tui, 2021
Cover: Blessing Chakandinakira Cover Design: Wayne Nel Text Design & Typesetting: Wayne Nel
All rights reserved.
No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means — electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise — without the express written permission of the publisher.
The rights of the authors of the work have been asserted by them.

All characters in this novel are fictional. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-77906-145-4
To Emil and Katya, who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
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
Glossary of slang
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’VE IMAGINED WRITING an acknowledgements page ever since it started to become a very real possibility that Mulberry Dreams would be published. And it’s really only happening now not due to my own efforts, but to so many along the way who have helped, advised, supported and gently (and not so gently) prodded me. Chief among the “prodders” is Paul Hubbard who probably asked me at least three times a week, over a period of three months and usually out of context when we were talking about something completely different, where my book was. It proves the theory that it is possible to frustrate someone into action! I’m extremely grateful to him not only for his support for Mulberry Dreams and his offer to publish it, but for being a partner in every sense of the word. Thank you, also, to admired writer and my dear friend, John Eppel, who took the time to edit it and offer advice on various changes. Encouragement from a writer of his calibre was an honour I will never take lightly. Thank you so much to my friend and colleague over the years, Wayne Nel, who, during a discussion on another design job, learnt about my book and insisted I get it done. He offered to typeset it as a favour, to get me going – and it worked! When I first saw Mulberry Dreams typeset as a book, I was over the moon! My friend, Blessing Chakandinakira, then painted the beautiful cover for me and the book, in my head anyway, was complete. Apart from another 100 or so edits! Thank you to my family who have been unbelievably supportive of my writing, from the time, as a shy, mousey 15 year old I declared I wanted to be a journalist, through my transition into fiction writing and now the publication of Mulberry Dreams. I apologise in advance, Mom and Dad, for the, at times, salty language – when the strongest word we ever used in our childhood home was “dammit"! Thank you to Thom Vernon, my brother-in-law and a highly-acclaimed published author and lecturer, who gave me my first ever opportunity to read my work out loud alongside his during a family reunion in Sarasota – and to all my family who offered their support and encouragement of it. I reserve the best for last: my darling children, Emil and Katya, to whom I’ve dedicated this book. In the throes of writing the first draft, I may have for a time become an absentee parent, so caught up was I in this other imaginary world I was creating. Thank you for giving me the freedom to explore that part of me, for understanding I am your mother but many other things as well. And thank you, Katya, for being one of my first reviewers, aged 14. Unbeknown to you, I had sent you a censored version, minus the bad language and sexual innuendo (“darn” and “bloody” featured a lot in the heated dialogue!) and you loved it. I hope you still love it in its finished form!
CHAPTER ONE
Emma 1978
THE LAST TIME Daddy went back to the army I made him mad, but I didn’t mean to. He was wearing his army uniform and I thought he looked very smart but very serious, and he was sitting really, really straight in the driver’s seat of the green van from the army. I could see his chin just over the top of the steering wheel and, without moving his head, just his eyes, he was checking this way and that, and then this way and that again, in his side mirrors as he reversed up our driveway. It was a pretty long driveway and Mommy used to turn her head all the way around to check and then Daddy would shout.
You don’t need to turn your whole head around, Daddy would say in his bossy voice. Use your side mirrors. That’s what they’re there for! Mommy would just smile, but only with her mouth, and keep turning her head round.
That day, the last day, we were all outside saying good-bye to him: Mommy, Peter and I. When he started up the engine, Peter and Mommy walked back into the house but I didn’t. I remembered about my birthday. So I ran down the driveway after him, waving my arms over my head to make him stop.
He stopped but he looked grumpy when I ran to his open window. It was hot and I don’t run so well, not fast like Peter. So I was kinda out of breath when I got to him.
What is it Emma? he asked, and I was already thinking, from the look on his face and his voice, that I shouldn’t have come.
Daddy, it’s my birthday next week, I said, trying to catch my breath while I said it.
Yes, Emma, he said, I know that it’s your birthday, and he sighed so I knew he was getting impatient, and I tried to be quick, spilling all my words out in a big hurry.
Are you gonna be home for it, Daddy? I asked him. I’m gonna be 10. Tell the army to let you have time off so you can come.
Daddy rolled his eyes and said, Emma, if the army gave time off for every birthday, anniversary and tea party, how do you imagine this war would get won?
I wasn’t really thinking about war right then, just my birthday.
Oh. I said. I wasn’t sure what to say next so I asked him again to try, to please, please try to be back.
He didn’t say anything, he just held onto the steering wheel and started moving his eyes this way and that, and I knew he was getting ready to reverse.
He looked oh so serious. I didn’t want him to look like that, really serious and worried and kind of sad. So I put my hand on his arm and he looked around at me and that’s when I said what I said about Harry.
I didn’t know he was mad at first, coz he didn’t say anything for a little while. But when he spoke his voice was low, like it was coming from deep inside his chest, and tight like the strings on Peter’s guitar. Step away from the car, Emma, he said. I’m late. He was holding so tightly onto the steering wheel, I saw his knuckles were white. Then he started to reverse again.
I stepped back so quickly I almost fell. I wasn’t feeling happy and excited about my birthday anymore.
I turned to walk back down the driveway to the house and to Peter and Mommy when I heard the screeching sound. I felt it deep in my tummy. I swung around and saw that the side of the van, just by the part with the lights that always reminded Peter and me of a frowning face, was pushed up hard against the gate. Daddy had crashed.
But he didn’t get out of the car to check. He didn’t even stop. I saw him turn the steering wheel really hard and then he sped fast out on to the street. I could hear the engine whirring for a really long time while he drove away.
CHAPTER TWO
IN A SECOND everything can change. For Emma that second came two weeks after her father smashed into the gate, the day before her 10th birthday. The second she heard the gun shot.
She didn’t know what it was, the loud explosion that tore through the still afternoon and made both children jump in the back seat of the car. But Peter, who went hunting on his friend Jim’s farm all the time, did. He’d told Emma all about it as they sat side-by-side in the mulberry tree in the back yard.
“It’s loud! It makes a big crack and your ears ring,” he said, whittling away at a branch with a pen knife.
“Were you scared?” she asked.
“Nah,” he said, not taking his eyes off the branch. He was lying, and she knew it, but secrets and lies and fears were all somehow safe in the mulberry tree.
It was a massive tree, so tall and wide they could climb right up into its leafy branches and perch on its wide limbs. Under its green shelter, they’d once hidden away in their own private world, eating mulberries until their hands and faces were tattooed a deep mauve, their stomachs aching. It was the setting of all their childhood games, the backdrop of their magical fantasy land.
Then everything had changed. Everything, it seemed, except the tree. Standing looking at it today, Emma felt the ache of memory press on her chest. It had been, unbelievably, almost 30 years since she’d last stood at the foot of the tree and climbed its branches, confident in the belief that up there nothing could harm her.
But it didn’t take her long to realise there were no safe places, to realise that even as they sat in their innocent little bubble in the mulberry tree throughout that last, gloriously blue summer, a war had been ra