by Jijana

In the dream I see a pink river slicing its way between two brown hills and above, in the midday skies, is a flaming red hot sun. On the dusty gravel road that comes down from the hills, a donkey cart drags my cold body over a stone bridge and into the village surrounded by women dressed all in black clothing; the coffin is covered with a blanket, no smiling faces. I enter my grandmother’s hut and the door is left half-closed — one woman lights a candle and all the others go sit on a mattress, the whole room alive with thick, moving shadows and more than one sweating, exhausted face. Then a man I don’t know walks in and closes the door. This is usually when I wake up, sometimes actually shouting ‘Pleeeaaase let me out!’

Sometimes it is already the morning of my funeral when the dream starts and in the mud hut the women stand around my dead body restless with singing and prayer. Or my corpse’s been moved into the kraal and long-horned goats munch on grass and give me the cold eye.

Sometimes, it is two or three young boys wearing denim shorts and flip-flops who join me on the road approaching the village. My body is in a wheelchair and one of the boys pushes me into the pink river and I suddenly wake up short of breath and only drowning from stale air…

Sometimes, the dreams find me in the arms of the women I love — I am on top of Lethiwe, already spreading her legs wide apart when I see the wheelchair again and myself struggling to swim, or Lisavela and I are lying on a blanket on the grass and my hardened hands caress and smack her enormous pumpkin bums and I keep a little smile on my face, her palm stroking my chest, and just as I gently slip a finger between her thighs, I hear a grumpy singing female voice inside my head and I toss and turn and jump awake alone in my own bed.

Sometimes I see my stiff ID face on the funeral programme, or my grandmother is kneeling on the ground next to my grave, and I watch her put a hand in her bra and she takes out a crumpled fifty-rand note and throws the money into the open grave where I lie on my back, or some skinny village guy with bored eyes comes to bury me alive with rocks and soil.

Sometimes the dream begins at midnight and I am searching for a lost dog in a forest of purple and yellow trees. Or sometimes:

I am running naked in a mielie field and I can feel warm tears on my round face.

I am walking on a village road wearing blue overalls and dark sunglasses and I smell of soap.

I am in a mud house, with a broken heart, hiding behind an open door.

I am motionless in bed and blood stains my white T-shirt.

I am fast asleep and at the same time I am actually awake, like an unborn child who cries inside his mother’s womb.

Sometimes village men cut me down from a tall tree and undo the tight knot around my neck, or they find me floating in the river and pull my corpse out.

In the last dream I am making a cup of tea and having a slice of bread with jam and …