A PLACE FOR THE LOST

 

I have this sick feeling in my stomach that I am leading her astray. Or am I paranoid, living under the shadow of my own failure?
I was supposed to have it all figured out. My life was supposed to look a certain way, but I failed. What was I to do in this economy? God, I am doing my best. Nobody told me I’d have to fight for every little thing.
My daughter came unexpectedly, and now I feel obligated to give her better. Yet here I am, dropping her off at school, subjecting her to the same process that got me here. I am giving her to the same system that ruined me.
What am I doing?
There are twenty-five children in her class, all writing the same homework, the same presentations, dressed in identical uniforms like little prisoners. The uniform suits my daughter too well, like she was born for it. Such a tragedy. Every day she walks through those doors is another inch deeper the system penetrates her little mind.
Hoooonk.
Oh shoot. Drive.
In my rearview mirror are lines of cars filled with parents delivering their children to the same fate we are all subject to. I am heading to a job I loathe. I work to pay for her education, and she is in there, so I can be out here.
Hoooonk.
Green light. I am too distracted to be driving.
I park in my usual spot, but cannot get myself to climb out yet. I sit here breathing in and out, gathering my strength. I can hear my soul screaming, but I rehearse a smile in the mirror instead.
There is an unrest in my spirit that began with a dream. For eight years, I have had the same dream. By my calculation, it began the same night I conceived my daughter. In the dream, there is an old woman in a ragged black dress. She stands in a large pit surrounded by bodies of seemingly dead people. She leans on a staff and looks up at me, weeping.
“You are too close to the edge, Zama. You aren’t supposed to be here. This is the place for the lost.”
“I don’t know how I got here. Can I help you out?” I ask, looking around for a rope.
“Do better than us,” she pleads.
“Take my hand.”
“You cannot help me. You are not meant to help me. Don’t let your daughter become like them.”
Then she turns away. The back of her head is hollow. I gasp and try to run, but I am met by a formation of children in black-and-white uniforms; black shorts and white short-sleeved shirts. Their heads are boxed inside steel squares, and they stand in perfect formation.

The dream ends there. No sequel. No explanation. It has haunted me since before I knew I was pregnant. It always feels incomplete. I remain haunted by all the things I don’t get to do in it, the questions I fail to ask, the answers I never get. Ever since the dream began, nothing has felt normal. I have not felt normal. I need to leave the city.

Every month, I tell myself, month-end. But then month-end comes, and I return to work on the first.
I sit behind a glass window every day, registering people into a system that collects their data and spits out proof of citizenship on a plastic card. They leave smiling while I sit there wondering whether any of us are actually free.

My perfect life would be living on a farm far from the city, where nature provides as God intended. I would homeschool my daughter and allow her to choose her own path based on whatever gifts God placed inside her. The city has a way of boxing people into lives built entirely around survival. I want better than this for her.
My savings cannot buy a farm. But maybe they can get us out of here.
My phone rings, my office number glows on the screen.
Oh damn it.
Twenty minutes have passed. How do I explain that I have been sitting in my car the entire time?
I jump out and rush inside. My boss is standing directly in my way, fury tightening her face.
“Sorry, I’m late, I—”
“I have no use for your excuses,” she cuts in. “I told you the next time you arrived late would be your last day. You are fired.”

My world goes quiet for one moment. I should throw a tantrum. I should beg, but instead, I walk away.
Suddenly, I feel like I am standing at a fork in the road. Relief and grief fight for dominance like water and oil.
Keep walking, Zama.
Someone calls my name and my phone rings, but I keep walking until I reach my car. I have no plan, but this is a window I cannot afford to miss. I drive straight to my daughter’s school. I barely realize how fast I am driving until I screech into the school parking lot.
What am I doing here?

My heart races. I can’t do this. I sit here staring at the school building while my window of escape closes right before my eyes. Where would I take her anyway? Maybe I need another month. Maybe I should go and beg for my job back before they replace me. A tear slips down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly and gather myself to drive.
As I reach for the ignition, a train of younger children marches toward a waiting bus.
The girls wear similar hairstyles. The boys look like they’ve come from the same barber.
All of them move in rhythm like disciplined little inmates. For the first time, it clicks. I finally understand the dream. Don’t let her become like them.
I drive away and somehow end up at a church. The building is open but empty. I sit at the back staring at the cross in silence. Two hours pass. Maybe three. For the first time in a long while, even my mind becomes quiet. Peace. In this silence, one thing becomes clear:
I need to keep the band-aid off this wound.
Over the next twenty-three days, I slowly demolish my life brick by brick.
I submit notice on the apartment and search for long-distance moving trucks to my childhood home. Half the time, I panic. What if I am wrong? What if I ruin my daughter’s life? At night, I tell Genesis bedtime stories about a mother and daughter leaving the city to live on a farm. I paint such a beautiful life that it almost feels real. Slowly, she begins to dream with me. At her school, when I give notice of her leaving, they tell me that moving her will disturb her learning pattern, which ironically, is exactly what I believe to be the solution to my unrest.

Every day after dropping Genesis at school, I go to the church and sit in silence, then return to making plans for a future I hold no itinerary for.

Two days to moving day, Genesis sits at the kitchen table doing homework as I begin to pack. Her pitch-black afro is standing wildly in every direction.
“What are you doing, bug? Don’t you want to help me pack?”
“Are we moving today, Mama? I’m writing my homework.”
Her voice sounds older lately.
“What subject?”
“Math.”
“How would you like to paint again, like you used to, my little Picasso? I’ll buy you paints and pencils and even an easel.”
“What’s an easel?”
I smile.
“It holds the canvas while you paint.”
“I don’t like painting anymore, Mama. Teacher says I must excel at math so I can become a doctor.”
The words hit me like a punch to the chest.
“Do you want to become a doctor?”
“Doctors help people. And they’re rich. Mama, are we still going to live with Grandma?”

“For a little while.”
I lean on the table across from her. Her brown eyes search mine so openly it almost breaks me. Is she ready for this?
“Remember our story?”
She nods.
“We are going to live like that?”
“Do I get to plant a garden with you?”
“Yes.”
“Will I still go to school?”
“If you want to. But I would love to be your teacher at home... while we build our farm. Just you and me.”

She does not say anything for a moment too long, but she continues writing in her book. I realize she is counting in her head, and that gives me relief.
“Mama, you are bad at math,” she says finally. “How will you teach me?”

“No, I am not!”

“Can we plant olives on the farm?”

“We most definitely can.”
As she closes her books, anxiety crashes over me.
What if I am no different from other parents trying to force their dreams onto their children?
When last did I even pick up a paintbrush? What if I ruin her life? I retreat to my bedroom and lean against the door, struggling to breathe. I think about all the people I have met. Poor people dream of freedom. Rich people dream of freedom. What then are we fighting for out here? Slowly, I pull myself out from beneath the avalanche in my mind. Then I look at my own life. Everything I own can fit inside an eight-ton truck. An entire life measured by movers. I wonder if I would, if I stayed, ever own land in this city. Whether I would ever own a home. Maybe this is the worst mistake of my life, but if there is even a small chance that I can give Genesis a life untouched by endless competition and social pressure, I am willing to face the consequences.
I still don’t have a solid plan, but all I know is that I am leaving the city behind and going back to my motherland, where roosters crow at three in the morning. This decision has lifted a weight off my chest. Even the dream has changed. For the first time in eight years, the old woman is no longer standing in the pit. Now she stands at a farm gate. There is a pond behind her and a small two-room house. She is dressed in white and smiling. Genesis and I walk toward her. Then I wake.

I called home the first time I had this dream and learned that my great-grandmother once owned a farm in a remote part of the Eastern Cape that has been abandoned for decades.
“Family property causes trouble, Zama,” my mother warned.
“What if I buy it from them?”
“Or you and Genesis could stay here with me. We have a big yard for a garden.”
“I don’t want a garden, Mama. I want a farm. I want my own home.”
There is a pause. Then she sighs.
“Bear in mind, Zama, farm lands are abandoned for a reason, and the old house may be falling apart. But I’ll speak to your uncles.”
“Thank you.”
Two days before the month ends, we clear out. Genesis shows none of my anxiety. She bounces around the empty apartment talking endlessly about chickens and gardens and naming future goats. Meanwhile, I panic, quietly terrified that I may have painted a lie in her head.
“Genesis in the story gets a sister,” she says as I strap her in the back seat. Do I get a sister at the farm, Mama?”
“You know what? We will see.”
“I will need a sister, Mama.”

“You will get a sister.”
Slowly, her excitement begins to quiet my fear, and for the first time, I allow myself to dream with her.