Every time it rains

 It's hard to believe that this time last week I was huddled in blankets with the heater blazing and viscerally shook by the raging storm outside. When people called or texted to check on me I told them kuyagwetywa, ngunogumbhe! Everywhere I went last week people were complaining about the prolonged winter. I have now mastered the art of hibernating and using all the paraphernalia to protect myself from the rain and the cold.

My sister and mother are the only two people who have an intimate knowledge of the trigger which comes with rain that remains for too long. We share a memory. A trigger. I sent my sister a picture of the weather forecast with the message "It's been a horrible day". 

Not only because of the weather and the havoc it was causing. I had finally decided to face a reoccurring memory which returns every time it rains. Unabatedly. When I shared this with my sister she responded "Rainy days are always the hardest for me". This is the code we share from surviving our childhood. Unlike MamGcina Mhlophe's poem "Sometimes when it rains" which begins "Sometimes when it rains/I smile to myself...", my memories of the rain leave me hollow and grateful all at once. 

The memory comes and goes and each time it returns it takes on a different meaning. I am sleeping on water. I can still hear the sound of the rain when we went to bed that night. We made umondlalo wethu as usual: blankets on the floor for extra padding, mama on the couch. We had no furniture that was ours by this point. Just our clothes, a few dishes and pots we had salvaged from the numerous evictions we had already had. Loss was another member of the dwindling family. When we woke up the next day, we woke up to the sound of the rain and the shiver from water seeping through the blankets. By the time we opened the door to let in the light and figure out what was happening amanzi ayesemaqatheni.

We lived in a backroom in Southernwood. It was behind a house that had been converted into offices. We were there after an eviction. There had been a night outside followed by the kindness of a stranger who offered a room in an abandoned building eSkyways where we stayed for a week with strangers. It was the beginning of a school year. By now we had mastered the art of hiding our reality at school. When we needed help getting our meagre belongings to eSkyways we had to blow our cover and ask a friend's dad for help because we needed a bakkie. They were so bewildered and we convinced them everything was under control. Nothing was. There was a caucus on our behalf and a friend's aunt organised a room: the main house were the offices of an NGO, there was a garage and the storeroom. 

We didn't have a bed. They provided a couch, a trapezium-shaped table, a blue plastic chair and another wooden table and the floor. Mama slept on the couch, my sister and I on the floor. We hung our clothes on the walls and behind the door. Hangers on a nail. The rest of our belongings went into the garage. Mama kept some clothes under the cushions of the couch, a tactic to keep them neat in lieu of ironing. We had become so familiar with letting go with each eviction. The flooding was yet another invitation to let go. We had no choice. Like fire, water is unstoppable. It bleeds through everything. 

"I'm sleeping on water" my sister said. I thought she was sleep talking. I'd like to remember I was awake or half awake and cold (I think I was cold for most of my childhood and thought that was normal; I once spent an entire day in wet uniform and school shoes after being rained on while walking to school. My feet were prunes when I eventually took off my school shoes which probably had holes in them; story for another day). 

Mama got up from the couch and her feet landed on the wet floor. My sister and I slept head to toe: my head against the couch, hers towards the door. The room was the length of our teenage bodies and the width of a couch. By the time we opened the door the water had begun its destruction. Maybe it was hours or minutes but the water soon reached our knees and everything was at risk. What we managed to salvage was on the table. There was little time to think. We had to carry the water out in buckets. The helplessness. The confusion; avela phi la manzi? Kutheni engapheli? It was while fighting with the water that we remembered we had boxes in the garage and they were not safe from the rising water. I don't remember when we asked for the keys to get them out but I remember assessing the damage and laying out things to dry in the sun when it eventually returned. 

Throughout the flooding mama convinced us she had everything under control. She was the captain of a sinking ship. We were in full blown survival mode. A muscle we had learned to develop since the first eviction almost ten years prior. Mama was in manic episode mode which meant the water was also a sign from God. Okanye sithakathiwe? Again? Why didn't God send a miracle like he did for Noah?

The day was spent making attempts at controlling the water. A futile attempt. We later discovered there was a spring-like outpouring of water at the crevice where the floor meets the wall, behind the couch. A steady flow of nature that we could have never controlled. We had to wait for the rain to pass. 

We were in recovery mode for days after the rain stopped. This must have happened during the holidays because I don't remember going to school during the ordeal. That was where we could escape to and enter a world where there was routine, safety and predictability.

Maybe people offered us a place to stay that night. I don't remember. I remember the three of us trying to figure it out together. We slept in the same room that night. We had removed everything. The floor was bare. We made makeshift beds negotiating some kind of care with each other and a readiness should the rain return and the spring to well up again.It never did. But sleeping with the sound of the rain was never the same.

It has taken me years to appreciate the rain. To love it even. But I have too many umbrellas. I never want to be caught off guard. This fragmented memory means the memory is not yet ready to return fully. Or perhaps my brain is still protecting me from the trauma of dispossession. If I remember everything I may weep and never stop. I might have to remember ematyotyombeni Eziphunzane which I've tried to unpeal in a poem in Ilifa. 

But today I am safe enough. The sun has been good. I can face my sadness when it returns because I know how to live after a night of fighting the rain and the water. These days I can worry about the plants in the garden and how much they need the rain. My 15-year old self would never have believed it. And yet here she is, ugcakamela ilanga.