Little Miracles

"Shamwari mwana wako ava kunetsa uyu."

The voice of my wife rang out, probably saving me a lifetime by cutting out the murderous plans my idle mind was forming in case I met anybody that would claim to work for ZESA. It was the third straight night I had to come home from work to find Madge groping in the candlelight for our Primus Stove.

Not that I was not used to living in the dark - my light had blown out two years ago and has steadfastly resisted persuasive attempts to resuscitate it since; something about the wires that bring the elusive ZESA to the light being awry. I really didn't care a owl's fart; as long as the relevant switches were working fine, then my relationship with ZESA was like, ZESA who?

But there was the problem now - the important switches in my house were not working, and it had nothing to do with my wires not performing the task I had bought them to do - some asshole at some substation somewhere was deliberately choosing to switch me off the power grid on a daily basis. I wonder whether he knew me personally and was doing it just to play mental games with my demons.

Perhaps he knew it was a Monday night, and because it was that rare Monday night during which the in-thing for me was not Monday Night Raw, but Monday Night Ball - precisely The Gunners Night Ball - he; being a anti-Gunner; decided to test my patience some. I took a very deep breath - I was gonna kill the good for nothing little motherfucker who was doing this.

When Madge's voice barged into my absent-minded mind, I almost risked her legendary ire by doing the LOL thing the Facebooked-out kids of today love so much. Geez, why can't any of those guys in parliament do a sensible thing for once and propose that Facebook be listed as one of the most dangerous drugs ever to be prescribed to the human race? I have a very strong feeling in me that the proliferation of this Facebook guy in the resettlement areas is one of the chief causes of our famine today. Not drought. Even the grass-clad comrade was asked on which were his favourite books, and he replied, "Counter book, exercise book and Facebook."

I have not voiced this to any soul, mind you. The excommunication of Facebook, I mean. No. Not since I suggested it to Madge on one of her bad days and she made sure I just managed to save my head from the boxful of ice blocks had had swung in my direction. As it was, she just about shaved a shade of my short hair on the left side. Now I know way better than to suggest anything at all to anyone I call my wife.

In fact that was the only reason why I nearly shoved my tongue down my throat as I desperately tried to stifle the evidence of my amusement below the diaphragm. I know they have said laughter is the best medicine, and they even try to go scientific and point to lines on your face, pontificating how those lines are actually life lines because Mr. Laughter put them there for a reason. Well; don’t listen to them. Listen to me. I got no credits in any medical field, but I can tell you from my little matrimonial experience that laughter is the new killer medicine. Try to smile as you tell your wife that if she steps on that scale she will see her phone number.

"What's wrong?" That was me, trying with little success to stave off bouts drowsy attacking me. The clock on the phone in my hand said 19:05. What can I say; I had'd a gruelling day trying to perfect the Queen's language at the office.

"I think it's happening," she said, smiling sheepishly, as if to suggest that it was stupid for a woman to confide in her husband that the result of their unquenchable libido was now slowly but steadily bearing down her pussy and hurting her in the process. And since it was the good Lord's promise that until she screams her voice away in the birth bed, then a woman knows no pain yet, Madge was of the opinion that letting her husband know she was a little scared of the impending few hours was a great betrayal of the female sex. Madge was not a sissy; she would not be found guilty of betraying the people of her sexual orientation.

It was then that King Morpheus' army, which had dug trenches on the shores of my eyes in its bulldozing bid to shove me in the king of sleep's arms, vanished. My earlier desperate act to save myself from my wife's wrath had almost killed me. I grabbed my drinking bottle and choked away the contents. Madge was bent over at the paraffin stove, her perfect little ass barely covered by the skimpy pair of shorts she was wearing. But when I stifled my mirth, I had not been trying to laugh at her. Instead I wanted to laugh at the follies and holes in my plan to murder the whole ZESA workforce, when I could choose leave the assholes be and enjoy my perfectly penurious, perfectly ZESAless, but perfectly happy life with God's perfect gift to me called perfect Madge and her perfectly unpredictable temper and perfect, uncorrupted constitution.

I get hot just thinking of her. Madge and her perfect little ass. I'm sure there are millions of beautiful asses out there - I have actually seen quite a number of them around town - but every time I get a glimpse of Madge's behind, I stop to pinch myself to make sure that I am really alive and that I am at my house and that woman with the perfect little two-thumps-up ass making dinner at the fire is actually my wife. That her perfect little ass belongs to me.

It has been five years now since I first touched that perfect, firm roundness. Five years since I stripped it of its bashful linen decency and licked it, nibbled at it, touched it, teased it, bit it. Five years since I had watched her translucent figure close its eyes and give a soft moan as it purred beneath my body and let me claim its innocence. And it mine. But I still crave for it like nothing I have ever craved for. I guess I would still crave for it even if it is a thousand years old and looks as aged and wrinkly as Mukuru did when he first realised that he had lost the support of the povo to whom he had fed vain promises of Gutsaruzhinji for thirty years as he and his inner cabal transformed from tightening their belts to letting their bellies tighten the belts for them.

But today, my perfect Madge's angelic African face was Leonard Dembo's lead guitar-wire tout and her bulging naked belly shimmered with so much overstretching that the seed we had planted inside her threatened to explode into my face. There were time recent when I even steered clear of her bulge, scared it would rip open at my clumsy touch. Over the few preceding weeks, I had noticed Madge grow bigger and bigger, her movements gravitating to slow and sluggish as the Zambezi struggling to complete an adventurous and meandering journey to the Indian Ocean that has taken her across six countries. Only for her, it was a nine-month journey that was coming to an excruaciating climax. I had decided to take over the washing duties from her then - but it was Madge who said it aloud. Now, looking her doubled over the stove, I knew was gonna inherit the cooking too.

Starting right now.

"Come and lie down," I ordered.

I knew she wanted to argue; Madge always had one of those sell-out looks which betrayed her threat to enter into one of her now lovely tirades. Or to hurl blocks of ice at me (but there is nothing lovely about having kitchen utensils swung at you, believe me). But this time she had a point; my cooking was one of the two things Madge was passionately mad at, the other one being my adulterous relationship with books. I guess the only thing that stops her from tossing my laptop and my books into the fire is her unconditional love for me. Madge is an angelic human being; she knows that after her, the only thing I can claim to love without inhibitions is books. And Dynamos. And Arsenal.

Oh, The Arsenal. The Arsenal that was scheduled to play those cunts from St James's Park who for the love of money had decided to change the centuries old name of their hateful stadium into Sports Direct Arena. And they were scummers and cunts because that asshole of assholes Joey Fucking Barton played for them. That he was no longer turning for the poor side was neither here nor there - the simple fact that Joseph Assholic Barton was once a New Cunt is reason enough to make them all cunts. And they have a new bore in the form of time-wasting goalie Tim Cruel… Kruger… Kuru… well, you know him - that Dutch guy who stands between the posts and mops his hair at Sports Direct Fucking Arena.
I cursed - it looked as if I wasn't gonna watch the Gunners fucking the cunts from St James' Park tonight. With time, I might learn to forgive the guy who chose to switch my switches off for me. But not tonight; tonight I had my hands full with Madge and her spinning belly

And Madge literally had more pressing demons to deal with than pick an argument with me. Silently she collapsed on the bed and let me ruin her simmering chicken stew for her. Thirty minutes later, Mrs. JJ's husband announced that dinner had been served, and she obediently got up to eat without any alarming incident. And for the first time in a millennium, she did not make any face at the cooking of the man of her house. For any other person, this would have been a sign that finally, the madam was warming up to her hubby's culinary talents. But this was Madge we were talking of - silent simply did not mean consent.

"How long has this been going on?"

"How long has what been going on?"

I looked my silent wonder at her stomach.

"Oh this. I have been having pains since the day you put this baby in me, love."

She grimaced a hideous smile across her usually soft supple lips, but I knew her attempt at humour was a vainglorious attempt to mask her pain from me.

"Madge, I'm serious. When did the pain start?"

"On and off since two days ago. You look flushed."

Two days ago. It was two days ago that Madge had tried to blow my head off with a box with blocks of ice in it. Of course, I had no reason to look so flushed. Now I understood.

"You are having contractions," I said.

"Well, when one is heavy like this and is feeling pain, that would be the general assumption, wouldn't it?"

Yea; it might be the general assumption, but she was not getting my point. The clock was now approaching ten, and if she had been experiencing contracting pains - however irregular - didn't she think it was time to get ready for the midwives a la local clinic?

Ten o'clock. I closed my eyes. The match between Arsenal and the New Cunts would be getting underway right now in London; and the ZESA people were still blocking me out of their power grid. With Madge's stomach threatening to rid itself of the now ripe seed in it, I was now thinking my plan to kill some ZESA flesh was not far off the mark.

But, just as suddenly as the killer blue print was starting to take shape in my mind again, so did the power return to my switches. I already had my hand on the red button of my remote control, but I froze as i watched another wave of contraction attack the dear wife. She rocked while in a foetal position as she tried to moan the pain away. She was now breathing like a person trying to blow a fire into life.

"How far apart are your contractions?"

She looked bamboozledly at me; maybe she was thinking how a soccer-drugged son of a bitch like me who could not cook even if his life lay on the thread of a cup of tea, had come across such sacrilegious information as to the time lag between a woman's contractions. I prayed not.

"Am I supposed to keep tabs with that too?" She lied as she rocked herself on the bed.

"I don’t know," I replied. "But isn't that how you will know when or not to call for the car?"

"No. I know the signs. They told us at the clinic."

"What did they tell you?"

"That each time we come for the monthly checks we should dig our husbands from whichever library or stadium they are buried in and bring their arses to the clinic so they can hear for themselves what to expect when it is time for their babies to be born."

Yes, my Madge was in pain alright; and she was succeeding in transferring it to me. I wanted to ask if she was ok, but I'd have to be on the other side of the door to say that.

"I'll get the car," I said fishing for the keys in the drawer.

"Sit down," Madge commanded, and the way she said it reminded me of how I had escaped the Training Depot with a few permanent scratches on my life. The Depot had taught me well about orders, especially when or not to obey them. My wife's order was one to be obeyed. I sat there like a confused kid, staring at her questioningly.

"Turn the tv on," she continued. "I heard you speaking of the game before the electricity returned."

The game. Good idea love. It was only gone fifteen minutes, but the score-line was already one apiece. The cunts scored first, but Captain Vantastic had scored his mandatory goal per game as our equaliser. The Gunners have never played a Monday game this season, and their first was Godsend for a myriad of reasons. They had had a roller coaster previous week, playing three games in seven days, and although they had dispatched their opponents into kingdom come on all three occasions, the evidence of heavy legs was beginning to take its toll on the young lads. It was imperative that they welcome every second of rest they got. So when they finally met the New Cunts of Sports Direct Fucking Arena, they were noticeably fresh.

But I particularly welcomed the Monday game for a wholly novel reason - I noticed that at ten minute intervals, Madge would stop whatever she was doing to cheer the gunning kids on and tend to her aching back. So when Gervinho missed that sitter on 70 minutes, I expect the baby to throw a fit, and it did - my wife doubled as if made sick by the Ivorian missing the ball from such a point blank range; and in such a paramount match too. The long Flying Dutchman in goals for the cunts tipped the Verminator's header over in the 80th minute, and the  baby kicked my wife's guts in disgust.

By the time the match ended fifteen minutes later, the little creature that was lodging in my wife's belly had gone mad, almost to the point of killing her. The contractions now came at five-minute intervals, such that when the fucking cunts' parked-bus resistance was finally broken, I should have woken the whole location with my screams, but I saw the frightening scowl on Madge's face as she clutched the underside of her belly and I shook my head in sympathy. The timing of the goal would sink into me much later, as would the realisation that this was the fourth time in a row that the young guns had rescued a match from the jaws of defeat, saving the lot of us from a premature heart attack. No other team had ever achieved that feat in the Premiership of the English. That is some history, considering that this Arsenal side was dubbed the worst in the whole history of Professor Arsene Wenger's reign at the Grove.

But in my bedroom, I was starring at another history making chapter in my and Madge's lives combined. The chapter when she became a mother and automatically make me a father. The chapter where there would be another little human being made by us where there was utterly nothing before. I may have had a rough day at work, but by God, I knew I wasn't gonna get a wink of sleep tonight. Sleep could wait. Madge had already declared that she was not going to sleep that night, and I silently joined her in her fasting. Reading at night is to me like a sleeping injection is to the sick elephant. So I flipped the tv channels to the movies, and stared blankly at them, all the time waiting for the cue to from my wife to hurl my arse out and bring the car to the front.

It did not come. When it comes to stubbornness, Madge has a Doctorate Degree from the University of Life. For a few minutes, I dabbled with the idea of risking another ice cold bump against my head by trying to march her to the car, but went only as far as dabbling with the thought. I know were I to actually try it, our fight would most assuredly squeeze the baby out. Madge; my warrior woman, my stubborn goat, my cantankerous girl, my… maybe I should stop of her in adjectives - she might hear what I'm thinking and will soon become Madge, my femme fatale…

It was three sharp when I shot back to consciousness, awoken by a soft tape on my feet. Her warm hands on my cold uncovered feet had shot me back to earth like a handful of ground chilli fragments planted into the pussy of that lazy cow whose plan to force her freedom from the yoke has backfired. Fuck. I must have drifted off an hour ago.

"Now?" I asked getting up.

She nodded; she could barely speak now; all her energy was expended on getting her breath. We exchanged very few words between us on the way to the clinic. The Clinic. I had last been to that place nine years ago, after an encounter with some muggers in the dark had gone wrong, at least on my part. I was still a school kid then and the dire transport crunch that year had forced me to walk the long march from a bus stop ten kilometres away from home. I had just crossed a stream when they caught with me and almost crushed the left hemisphere of my head with an axe as a way of greeting. In my wallet were some school receipts, shool ID, a library ID, $2,000 - a week's worth of bus fare those days -  and a lot of books in my bag.

They whacked me black and blue, but I remember pleading with them to please take everything but my books because it was the end of September and I was due for my final examinations just next week. And they did clean me out - they took my wallet, my shoes, my trousers and left me with only my shirt. And my books. And just about enough strength to drag myself home and pass out at the doorstep. When I came to, there was a lot of fresh, disinfected smell and some people fussing over my head with breathing machines, stethoscopes, drips; and one of them was holding two large rectangular coned things that looked like irons. He looked really pleased with himself and his two ugly things. But they told me those amorphous landforms brought me back a stay of execution. Electromagnetic miraculous baggies, or whatever they were called. I asked if they could give them to me for the keeps - in case I met some other murderous motherfuckers on my way fron school - but they said no. They had better uses for it here, thank you.

I have never told Madge the real reasons why I hate keeping myself in the sanctimonious vicinity of a clinic or its big brother, the Gomo Hospital where they ended up taking her. I cursed silently. Fuck, fuck, fuck. For all the anguish and sleepless mosquito infested hell of a night he had just got us through, the clinic people said the guy had not pushed enough of the cervix to make an interesting impression that he wished to see the sun any time soon. They said he had ten centimetres of cervix and pussy to push, and at the moment he had pushed only… zero cm.

Zero!

Yea; zero.

As a precaution, it was their best medicinally decided decision that they whiskey Mrs. JJ to the Hospital where real doctors would closely monitor and manage the situation developing in her stomach better. Grrrr; this asshole. Not only had he dragged the wife and me through the longest night during which no good word was exchanged between us; now he demanded to see every place where I had previously been a guest as they wrestled me from knocking on hell's gates before I conceived him too. Either that or Madge was dead. I can't say I had much ground for bargaining; the little fucker held all the aces.

The sekuru who was telling me all this nodded assuredly and patted my shoulder as he said what a good listener I was. But in my mind I was like, FuuuuuuuuuuuuucK!!!. Why couldn't I just try to pull the bloody child out of his nine month haven of my wife's womb on my own in the comfort of my own home? She would be feeling fine right now; and there will not be talk about any a, b, c or d section plans to use scalp blades and special pairs of scissors to dissect any member of my family's belly. On the other hand, why should I even think of doing it; having some midwifery expertise would mean I have to know something about the gynaecological shit - and at the moment I can't think of any profession worse than gynaecology. Why would I want to watch tons of livid pussies with labia flapping at each other as the sheath struggles to ready itself for the passage of a child? I found I was shaking pretty hard.

Relax, I told myself. You are gonna have a baby.

But I didn’t like the way I had told myself to relax; just like a doctor who tells a husband to relax since his dying wife will die while in good hands. From the first time my wife told me her body was ready to overstretch itself for the last time in nine months, I had never told myself to relax. I was just like, this is what we were all waiting for the whole of the past year. Let's get it over and done with.

But as soon as I got from that ambulance at the hospital the alarm bells in me got wild. Now and then I would milk cupfuls of sweat from my brow. But the sun was setting and it was cool outside. The hospital people could not help either; there was this pregnant lady who persistently harassed everybody as if everybody were responsible for her bulging belly. So much for reassurance. If I wanted any comforting information, I was not going to get it from this woman. It looked to me she had been in labour the day her unborn baby was conceived.

Well, fuck her. And fuck her temper. Fuck anything that was causing her to be such an uptight little bitch. She yelled at me to come back to my seat, but I took purposeful steps forward and soon broke into a sprint that would pose a few problems for Usain the Lightning Bolt. I was making a beeline for the labour ward. There I met an elderly orderly who took her time to explain that my wife was still in labour and there was nothing serious with her. You have to be patient my child, the process of labour is one that takes its own course. Right now she is at a stage where she could start delivering any time. No, you cannot see her, I already told you she is in labour.

She really took her time to patiently explain the labour stages, about which I forgot as soon as she stopped talking. I wanted to know when I could see my wife again. She looked at her watch; the visiting hours for that day were over and I would have to come back tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon! Afternoon! But I am the fucking father of her child and husband of my wife for fuck's sake! Why on God's good earth should I not have unlimited access to my wife in this goddamn hospital?

It was no use arguing with her. The nursing and doctoring staff had the final say here and husbands were just that - husbands - and they had to be told what to do. After all, they were just fathers to their children and husbands to their wives. So I was told to come back tomorrow. In the afternoon; not any time sooner. I was 6PM, almost twenty-four hours since my wife started pacing about under the labour cosh. The electricity had been back that afternoon. I got on my knees and prayed for her safe return. The first gift that God had blessed us with as we started our home was Madge's retching as she confirmed that our love for Naked Sundays had born its first fruit. Wasn't it logical that the result of the mind blowing act of that physical fusion between man and wife should be an addition of joy as their brood enlarged?

The man up there must have seen some reason in my arguments. Or he was just sympathetic to my plight; Madge called me around 2100hours that night and was the first to congratulate the father of a healthy baby boy who was keen to flaunt his robust pair of lungs by howling all over the ward.

Madge told me on the phone she screamed the whole hospital to a standstill as her boy showed his head.

"We made a perfect kid, JJ. They almost had to cut up my belly, but our boy sensed the danger and decided to announce his arrival right then. At 19:05."

Perfect boy. Now my knees could not carry me anymore, and they buckled under the weight of my tears as I broke to the floor. I had cried silently as the Verminator rammed the winning goal past the cuntiest New Cunts' goalie at the last minute, the very last minute, of the match at the Grove the night before. But it was only now that I felt the weight and importance of that goal, and the fact that the gunners had pulled themselves from the abyss right into the throes of history; good history this time around. The gunners and their last minute match winners. Madge and her last minute solo triumph at the hospital. I knew then that my decision - made three months ago while I gulped down the waters of life with Frankenstein at the local well - was the perfect one.

The boy would be called Henry.

I did not shed any more tears when I finally met my son for the first time; that business had been taken care of the night before. He was an unbelievably tiny little fella, but not as tiny as most of the new babies I have seen in my life. Three comma one kilograms; no wonder why he was so heavy on Madge's belly. He was very light in the face now, but his ears told his parents he was going to be just as dark as they were. The apple always falls under the apple tree, doesn’t it. He had inherited his mother's eyes and his father's nose. Silently, I wondered whether Madge would agree to her son being a bibliophile and also succumb to the soccer virus like her husband. Then - until she made another child who disliked people who read novels at the dinner table - she would have two rebellious human beings to occupy her time. She loved the challenge. I also wondered whether we were going to fight over Henry' father taking his son to see their second home at Rufaro Stadium as soon as he learned to say Dynamos.

But all that would be sorted in good time. That same morning, I would rescue my family out of that horrible place called the hospital, with its doctors who casually talked of uprooting people's hearts and sewing them back again, cutting up throats and eviscerating bellies as if they were discussing feature stories, hard news and bulletins in the newsroom. Like I said before, the hospital might save my life a thousand times more than the nine of a cat - but I will never find one reason good enough to let me like it.

At the entrance, there was an inconsolable woman who was being dragged out of one of the wards by probably her equally distressed relatives. She was lamenting on why whoever had died and left her alone had died and left her to face the world alone. I prayed it was not one of her children. For one obvious reason. But Madge showed me the woman whose child had failed to make it through the night. Something about the woman not giving enough push during childbirth such that when the baby finally arrived, he was too tired to even breathe. She looked as if the life had been drained out of her. I breathed hard, like Madge had been doing through the last night. Surrounded by so much death and despair as I made a triumphant beeline for the exit, I completely did not know how I was supposed to feel.

Hospitals. If ever I get to visit one when I am in my casket, it would really be too soon. But Henry Tavonga JJ was brought to life in this place.

I think I can afford to be grateful for once in my chosen career as a Hospital Hater.