Call and Response


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 VIKING
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
 penguinrandomhouse.com
 Copyright © 2023 by Gothataone Moeng
 Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
 These stories were previously published in slightly different form in the following: “Botalaote” as “Botalaote Hill” (Oxford American, 2017); “A Good Girl” (American Short Fiction, 2021); “Small Wonders” (One Story, 2020); “Bodies” (A Public Space, 2017); “Homing” (Virginia Quarterly Review, 2022); “When Mrs. Kennekae Dreamt of Snakes” (Ploughshares, 2022).
 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
 Names: Moeng, Gothataone, author.
 Title: Call and response: stories / Gothataone Moeng.
 Description: [New York]: Viking, [2023]
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022016236 (print) | LCCN 2022016237 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593490983 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593490990 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.
 Classification: LCC PR9408.B683 M63 2023 (print) | LCC PR9408.B683 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23/eng/20220520
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016236
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016237
 Cover design and watercolor art: Lynn Buckley
 Cover images: Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images
 Designed by Amanda Dewey, adapted for ebook by Molly Jeszke
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_142435014_c0_r0
 
 
 
 This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother Ntlale Refakae, and to my mother, Teko Botshameko Moeng
 
 
 
 
 In my world people plan for themselves and dictate their requirements to me. It is a world full of love, tenderness, happiness and laughter. From it I have developed a love and reverence for people. I foresee a day when I will steal the title of God, the unseen Being in the sky, and offer it to mankind. From then onwards, people, as they pass each other in the street each day, will turn to each other and say: “Good morning, God.”
 —Bessie Head, “Why Do I Write?”
 We complained to our parents, “We never go anywhere!” and they replied, astonished, “Where do you want to go, you’ve got all you need right here!”
 —Annie Ernaux, The Years, translated by Alison L. Strayer
 
 
 
 CONTENTS
 
 BOTALAOTE
 A GOOD GIRL
 SMALL WONDERS
 DARK MATTER
 BODIES
 HOMING
 WHEN MRS. KENNEKAE DREAMT OF SNAKES
 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
 THE FIRST VIRGINITY OF GIGI KAISARA
 Acknowledgments
 
 _142435014_
 
 Botalaote
 
 In the morning, woken by the two gunshots, I heard the rising flurry of ululations that followed and knew immediately that I would go to the wedding, no matter what my mother said or did. I understood that the two cows to be slaughtered for the feast had collapsed upon the swirling red dust, that an old man would be stalking toward them to plunge a knife into the quivering warmth of their necks, that soon the whole yard, only five compounds away, would be swarming with joyous people. My friends would be there, and I wanted to be there too.
 In my cousin Tebogo’s room, which I shared, I lay in my bed, listening to my mother’s feet thumping up and down the passage, forcing the whole household awake. Doors slammed in her wake. In the kitchen, dishes clattered, hot cooking oil splattered, and the aroma of frying potatoes rose. In the bathroom, where my parents conversed, water streamed into the plastic tub my mother used for the patient’s bath, her voice weary and my father’s distorted by the toothpaste foaming his mouth. Water slapped at the sides of the tub as Mama lugged it into the patient’s room—formerly mine—on the other side of the wall I was tapping my foot against. As I did every morning, I imagined I could smell the Dettol disinfectant Mama eddied into the water with her fingers; I imagined the steam fogging up the mirror I had bought for myself and stuck up on the wall, warping my books and posters, my photos and my magazines.
 I did not want to think about my mother’s hands bathing the patient—her sister, my aunt—so I thought about the wedding. I knew that the men would be draining the cows of their gushing blood, peeling off the skins to reveal the fatty meat underneath, slicing the bellies open and offering up enamel bowls to receive the tumble of glistening intestines. I knew that the men would be kicking away the intrepid dogs slinking toward the meat and at the same time playfully jostling with the women about which cuts would go to the men for the seswaa and which to the women for the beef stew. I knew that a congregation of aproned women would already be working at the fire at the back of the yard, boiling beetroots and potatoes, peeling and slicing and cubing cabbages and carrots for the salads for the coming crowds. I knew that the women would soon break into their songs, celebratory and caustic—The cakes are delicious, but marriage is difficult; we are leaving, you stay and see for yourself—and that they would dance and ululate and whirl around the bride—Come out, come out, come and see, this child is as beautiful as a Coloured—as she walked on the carpet, which had been laid out so her white dress would not touch the red dust of the yard. I knew that almost all the people in our ward, Botalaote, would be at the wedding, everybody except the very old, the new mothers, the newly grieving, and the sick.
 It was three weeks since Tebogo and I had finished our form two exams and a month since the patient had been brought