This Will Break My Mother's Heart by Chido Muchemwa
I begin to break my mother’s heart the day I leave Zimbabwe on an unseasonably cold August day, brown leaves raining down from the Msasa trees. At 29, I am a late leaver, a decade behind all my friends who left straight after high school for the US, the UK, Australia, anywhere really where they’d have a better chance of thriving. While they built lives in new lands, I was content to remain at home with my widowed mother. So why leave now? Because of a static paycheck that seems to buy less and less every month. Because my mother is retired and needs more help from me. And because my approaching 30th birthday has me finally ready to find a husband and Harare’s talent pool is so very shallow. So, I get on a plane to Canada and enrol in a Master’s degree at York University. But the plans for a husband don’t start off well. Too quickly, I fall into my normal patterns, an endless shuffling between school and home. Never wandering outside my routine. Never risking meeting anyone new.
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she asks if I’ve met anyone new. If after three months in Toronto, it’s starting to feel like home. She says she worries about me out here in the wilderness alone. Wilderness? I scoff as I look out at the grey streets of Toronto. And before she puts the phone down, she says, “Aren’t you tired of being alone. If you keep this up, who will bury you?”
“Twenty-nine-year-old virgin in search of a man.” I sit in a bar feeling like these words are emblazoned across my forehead as I cower in a booth near the back. Everyone must know “Twenty-nine-year-old virgin in search of a man.” I sit in a bar feeling like these words are emblazoned across my forehead as I cower in a booth near the back. Everyone must know why I’m here, right? I wipe my sweaty hands on my dark jeans, and tug at the neck of the low-cut blouse I regret putting on. I try to calm myself down and stroke the frosty bottle of cider in front of me in what I hope is an alluring manner. But no one seems to notice me. I find myself doing exactly what I have been doing since I moved to Toronto, what I have been doing my entire life, watching. Once again, I am sitting on the periphery, watching others live their lives, not knowing how to join in. And when one man finally sidles into the booth, I clutch my drink closer for safety. I know even before he opens his mouth that he too is Zimbabwean. The first question he asks is my name. The second is whether I am married. The third, what my family’s totem is. And instantly I recognise his type. After years of dating other nationalities, he’s on the hunt for a Zimbabwean wife, a “traditional wife” who knows her place. And when he asks me for my number, I demur. I don’t know why. This is what I want, right? Men to pursue me? Yet the “no” comes tumbling out of my mouth before the thought is even fully formed. I’ll try again next week.
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she tells me she asked the Reverend’s wife to pray for me and my future. All Mum’s stories these days are about the women at church. I guess now retired and widowed for so long, her life is shuttling between home and church. So many free hours to plan her daughter’s future. And before she puts the phone down, she says, “Don’t you think it’s time you started thinking about marriage, Tino? If you wait too long, who will bury you?”
In another booth in another bar, I am sipping another cider when a beautiful woman with skin as brown as mine and the kind of smile that gets extra gravy at the Jamaican restaurant sits down at my table. I know what she is going to say even before she opens her mouth. “You’re Zimbabwean, aren’t you?” Zimbabweans really are everywhere in this city. Her name is Nicole, and when she laughs, it’s a rich mellifluous sound that makes people at other tables look enviously as if they wish they were the ones making her laugh. For two hours, we sit in the booth and talk. She too has a mother whose entire social life is the church and we commiserate over recollections of being disappointing daughters. She leans in to make herself heard and I am enraptured by the scent, jasmine and citrus. And every time she recalls another memory about growing up in Harare, she reaches for my hand and a tingle runs through me. She asks me when I was last in a relationship, and I say five years, the words out of my mouth before I even have a chance to question why I would lie. And at one point, a blonde man in a plaid shirt walks up to our table and asks if he can buy us a drink. Nicole says, “We have everything we need,” and my heart stops at the thought that I just might.
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she tells me about a handsome young man she met at church, an accountant who drives an Audi. She pronounces Audi with the awe it inspires in her. She laments the distance between Harare and Toronto as if distance is the only barrier between me and this month’s eligible bachelor. And before she puts the phone down, she says, “Don’t you think it’s time you started thinking about marriage, Tino? If you wait too long, who will bury you?”
After a week, Nicole sends me a message asking me how I am. I ignore it for hours, but find myself imagining what a date would look like, what our first kiss would taste like, what her head between my legs would feel like. Am I really imagining dating a girl? But then she calls, and we speak until 2 in the morning. And after that, we speak every day. She sends me texts at 3am about things she read on a blog I wrote when I was 21. We exchange dumb soccer memes. And every time I see the notification on my phone, my chest feels tight with excitement. Is this what it means to be a 29-year-old who has never been on a date? To be shaking with fear every time I type out a message? Am I really falling for a girl?
And finally, she asks. “Do you want to have dinner with me on Tuesday?”
I breathe in sharply, but manage to whisper my answer. “Yes.”
“Tino, you understand that I’m asking you on a date, right?”
“I do.”
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she describes another wedding she attended at church. She runs through the list of guests, making note of which of her church friends have celebrated their children’s marriages in the new chapel. And before she puts the phone down, she says, “Don’t you dream of walking down the aisle in a flowing white dress to greet your husband? If you have no husband, who will bury you?”
Nicole takes me to a sushi bar in Liberty Village. I manage to spill water on myself within the first five minutes of sitting down, and Nicole laughs. Again, people turn their heads and stare longingly. When the food comes, Nicole tries to teach me how to use chopsticks. And when I give up and start to use my hands, she does the same, giggling as she drops each roll between her perfect lips. I tingle as I watch her lick the soy sauce off her fingers.
She walks me home. We meander through the park and we talk about the Anne McCaffrey books we both obsessed over as kids, the Britney concerts in our living rooms, the awkward approaches by boys in high school. I stop breathing when she reaches for my hand.
“Is this too much?” she says, feeling me tense. “You want me to let go?” I say I don’t mind.
At my door, she leans in for a kiss. As she moves in, I want to tell her that I lied. That when I said I hadn’t been in a serious relationship in five years, what I really meant was I had never been in one. That I don’t know how to kiss. That I have been wondering what her mouth would taste like since that first night in the bar. But then her lips touch mine and I forget it all, my mind racing trying to take in all the sensations at once. I clutch her coat to bring her closer, and eventually we part. I stare deep into her inquiring eyes. I don’t want this to end.
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she spends the first half hour speaking about my father. It is nineteen years today since he passed, nineteen years since she had to learn how to survive on her own. She reminds me about the days when she used to travel often for work, about how what kept her going was the thought of me and my Baba waiting for her at the airport. And before she puts the phone down, she says, “Maybe life wouldn’t be so hard, if you didn’t have to do it alone. If you don’t find someone, who will bury you?”
A week after that first date, Nicole takes me back to her apartment, a tiny bachelor in the Danforth. Hanging over her desk is a sun-bleached Zimbabwe flag with a slightly bewildered bird. She pours me a glass of red wine and we sit on her bed in silence. I cling to my glass like I’m scared it might slip, slowly sipping the bitter fluid, both terrified and excited to find out what will happen once I get to the bottom. Five minutes later, I realise that I am still wearing my coat and finally take it off. She grabs it as if happy to have something to do and walks into the corner to hang it on a rack. I watch her as she walks, watch how the fabric of her dress clings to her curves, the hems of her dress dancing above her hips. And how she stands on the tips of her tights-ensconced toes. Then she turns and looks at me.
She says, “It’s your first time with a girl?”
“It’s my first time.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s with me.” She comes and kneels before me, then she kisses me.
After, I lie beside her while she sleeps, slightly disbelieving of what has just happened. I stare at the ceiling and listen to her breathe. What if she wakes up tomorrow and decides she was wrong, and that she didn’t want me after all? What if she wakes up and still wants me? I don’t know which one worries me more. So, I nudge her awake to make love to her again and be lost in that desire that made me forget to worry about tomorrow.
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she tells me how at the Women’s League prayer meeting, she was the only one without a grandchild. She says she’s starting to lose hope that one day she will be the one announcing engagements, wedding, grandchildren, showing off photos on the new phone her son-in-law will have purchased for her. And before she puts the phone down, she says, “All your age-mates have families now. If you don’t have children, who will bury you?” She has my life sounding like a Chibadura song. “The day you die, who will cry for you?”
Sometimes, I stand in front of my mirror practicing the words “I’m a lesbian.” They scare me so much I have to whisper them. And a terrified Tino stares back at me. Every time I say the words, she winces. And sometimes she talks back. “You can’t be a lesbian. Your mother would never speak to you.” So, I change the words. I tell my reflection that I am a woman who loves other women and somehow that fits better. The words feel more comfortable in my mouth. I do not whisper them. I state them. I say them over and over again until I am able to say that I don’t just love women. But I am in love with a woman.
And four months after we met, Nicole and I go down to the Toronto Harbour Front. We come here often to sit and watch the planes coming in to land at Bishop Airport. I tell her a story about the old Harare International Airport. It had a viewing deck where you could watch the planes taking off and landing. Baba would take me there when we accompanied mum to the airport as she headed out on another business trip. And I would sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the moment when Mum would come out. Then Baba would say, “There they come.” I would frantically try to pick out mum from the steady line of people marching across the tarmac. And there would always be that moment, just a few steps before she went up the boarding stairs, when she would turn around. Somehow, she would always pick me out and wave. Then she would get on the plane, they would shut the doors and the plane would take off.
“Did you enjoy it?” Nicole asks.
“I did. But there was always a moment of blind panic when I would worry that this time she wouldn’t turn around. ‘Cause I was convinced if she didn’t turn around, if she didn’t wave, then she would get on that plane and never come back. And you know what?”
“What?” She threads her arm over my shoulder.
“When I left, I didn’t turn around.”
And when I call my mother on Sunday, she says, “Your age-mate got married yesterday.” And as she tells me the story of the wedding of the daughter of one of her age-mates, my eyes wander to the photograph on my bedside table. A classic Toronto photograph. Two young lovers in the Distillery District standing in front of the big red heart sculpture. A stranger had offered to take the photograph of us, so we posed, each standing at either side of the heart, peering around walls at each other the way newlyweds do around a tree when they take their wedding photographs at Harare Gardens. And in that photograph, a moment is frozen, a moment when looking in her eyes, with the city humming around us, oblivious to two young hearts falling in love, it felt like this relationship was possible. That I could be in love with a girl and the world would keep turning. And that the next time my mother would ask me, “Who will bury you?” I would say, “Mum, I’m a lesbian,” and it wouldn’t break her heart.
This short story was featured in Issue 08 of Canthius.
Chido Muchemwa is a Zimbabwean writer currently living in Canada. Her work has previously appeared in The Baltimore Review, Canthius, Catapult, Humber Literary Review, and Prism International. She has been shortlisted twice for the Short Story Day Africa Prize and placed 2nd in the Humber Literary Review’s 2020 Emerging Writers Fiction Contest. She is a 2023 Miles Morland Scholar and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wyoming. Find links to her published stories on her website.