The Sting in the Twisted Tale

By Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu

The Sting in the Twisted Tale is a collection of short stories. A number of the short stories are adapted from several of the authors published books, while a few others are extracts from the many works the author is working on and are yet to be published. In the short stories, the author creates scenes that visually jump to life and keep the reader in tension. The stories are a combination of rousing, dramatic, and at times comical look at the web of complications that arise from day to day life while others depict the brutal realities of war, crime, promiscuity, adultery and lies. As the events of each story begin to intermingle, the episodic discoveries and conflicts only become more interesting and compelling. The twists and turns in the stories keep building on top of complex and driven characters, and the stories crescendo extraordinarily to an unexpected and dramatic end. The characters in some of the stories exhibit unique and memorable qualities of both courage and determination while those in others, after all of their poor choices and moral challenges, the readers still empathizes with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481735674

Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu

Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu, the author of: The Intricate Mediators of the Land Reform in Zimbabwe, The Audacity of Breaking Free, Thou shall not be caught, The Farm on Their Land, The trail of a promiscuous spouse and Evil on the prowl: was born in the then Southern Rhodesia, and the present day Republic of Zimbabwe. He went to a number of primary schools in rural Rhodesia before enrolling for secondary education which he eventually completed in independent Zimbabwe. He later obtained college degrees in Agronomic Engineering, Agronomy, and Environment Management. In between college he lectured at the Harare Polytechnic, before joining the Department of Natural Resources. During his tenure in the Department of Natural Resources he participated in the negotiation process of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on behalf of the government of Zimbabwe. He later joined the UNCCD Secretariat. While with the United Nations, he practiced sustainable environmental management and rural development with a close linkage to poverty alleviation. Given his exposure to the work of the UNCCD, he worked with diverse stakeholder groupings, facilitating conferences of multilateral negotiations between country Parties, institutions and organizations. In the later years, his work with the UNCCD, also involved policy advocacy and partnership building between countries and development partners (donors). During his young and more adventurous years, Emmanuel participated in the Second Chimurenga that brought about the independence of Zimbabwe. It was his experiences in that war that inspired his book, The Audacity of Breaking Free.

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2013 by Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu. All rights reserved.

Editor: Priscilla Sakupwanya

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/11/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3568-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3567-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013905620

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

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The death of the mother-in-law

The maid

Samantha hired

The day of the village

court hearing

The night of the fire

The Magical Saliva

The preacher’s daughters

Arrived on time to witness

his own burial

The family secrets

The funeral of Joseph

Married to keep up appearances

Death of a witness

Madhuve’s ruthless

love portion

About the Author

Also by Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu

The Intricate Mediators of the Land Reform

in Zimbabwe

The Audacity of Breaking Free

Thou Shall Not Be Caught

The Farm on Their Land

The Trail of a Promiscuous Spouse

Evil on the Prowl

To

Moilla

The death of the mother-in-law

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Wellington was still in a state of shock as he dialed the number of his wife. I am sorry sweetheart, I have just received some bad news said the husband on the phone to his wife.

No news is good news sweetheart, responded the wife. What is it? Spit it out

I have just been informed that mother is dead. I suggest you finish whatever you are doing and come home as soon as possible. We have to go for the funeral, informed the husband.

I am having my hair done. It will take a couple of hours more before I am finished, responded the wife. Did they say when the burial will be? inquired the wife with a carefree voice.

They did not say. They were not sure. However they made me understand that the burial arrangements will be made as soon as we arrive. So basically they are waiting for us, informed the husband.

Some people, honestly I don’t understand how they think. Why should they wait for us to make the burial arrangements? Do they think that if we get there we will bring her to life? She is dead and that is it, said the wife with some scorn in her voice. Ok I will see how quickly I will get home. In the event that I am late, we will have to go tomorrow.

We have to make it today Irene. We cannot afford to stay away from our mother’s funeral when we have received the information early enough. When you are done with your hair, just call me and I will come for you, stressed the husband. The earlier we leave the better for us all. Besides we need to do some shopping for the funeral here in town as you know groceries are quite expensive in the village. Who knows, we may have to buy a coffin as well and take it with us.

"But Baba Tendai, you know we do not have money to squander buying groceries and coffins," retorted Irene.

"I know we are broke Mai Tendai and you are right because we have been a little out of control lately, agreed Wellington. He then added, But this has to do with the death of a parent and a grandmother of our children. However broke we are, we have to go out of our way and do the best we can under the circumstances. All eyes will be on us and you do not want us to be the laughing stock of the village simply because we failed to provide for our parent on her last journey," insisted Wellington.

Do what you want Wellington. I am out of it. When I am done I will call you. But I still have to go home and prepare myself. I have to look my best and respectable regardless that it is a funeral. I cannot afford to go to the village looking like a vagabond, stressed Irene and switched off her phone.

Irene was not interested in having a discussion on the family financial situation with her husband on the phone. She was very aware that their money conversations usually fell somewhere on the spectrum between difficult and bitter, the reasons why they discussed their finances more often than not. Though she felt that today her husband was not in the mood to quarrel, she knew she was not going to attempt to reach an amicable accord and she found it best not to continue the discussion.

They were both struggling with their regular January disease syndrome following the Christmas indulgence hangover. The problem this time around was that the feeling was more acute. Although Wellington and his wife Irene were both employed it was a leaner-than-normal year and they were living from one paycheck to the next. A couple of their kids, the twins, were now in high school and the eldest was in college. Thus they still had years to pay for college. Irene was of the conviction that they needed years of budget and stringent spending cuts to be able to add to their meager supplementary retirement accounts. Already they were both in debt.

Conscious of the mounting debts and the need for drastic cuts in the family budget, Irene told herself that she was not about to join the bandwagon and match the challenge just to impress a bunch of villagers at a funeral of some dead old woman. She was not the type who would run with an agenda that was not hers in the first place then in the end get discouraged because of her lacking deep rooted conviction and leave many asking how could she run out of steam so unceremoniously?

As Irene set there with her hair being done, she was happy that she and her husband had always kept their money completely separate, on the understanding that their random and impulsive spending habits would doom any attempt at joint banking. Besides, she had never wanted her husband to know what she did with her money. Irene would not stand Wellington scrutinizing her spontaneous spending habits. As the agreed family arrangement was, Irene was happy to have taken charge of bills for most groceries while her husband, Wellington paid the mortgage, the water and energy bills and the Harare city council taxes. Of course they always bailed each other out if one of them ran dry on cash.

Besides Irene did not want to do like some wives who were always watching what their spouses were doing with their money and try to do the same. She was not going to compete with her husband. Neither was she going to do anything out of envy as that would not take here anywhere. Irene believed that things that were of value came from and were done from the heart and out of one’s moral conviction and persuasion.

As far as she was concerned, her arrangement with her husband had helped them to avoid big money battles that otherwise would have generated from their frequent and heated financial debates. Irene however admitted in her heart that without Wellington’s oversight on her finances, she was guilty of spending too much and saving too little for the rain days to come. That being the case, she was not going to withdraw her small savings for a funeral in the village, especially for the mother-in-law she had never seen eye to eye with since she married that ungrateful old lady’s son.

Irene had heard so much being said about love for one’s parents. Being a religious person that she was, Irene had listened to countless sermons preached on giving out of one’s good will. But by design or by default, Irene had always found that this was an area where she failed to respond to when it came to her mother-in-law. Irene had never made it a secret that she was never in good books with her husband’s mother.

She persuaded herself that now that her mother in law was dead, she was not going to try to be good to her in her death when she had failed to do so all those years she had been married to Wellington. For Irene it was good riddance of bad rubbish now that she was dead. She would now stop seeking to grow roots that are deep set to enable her to survive the pressures and stresses of life with her mother-in-law.

Maybe we should each make a budget and try to control our expenditures. I cannot believe that in the last few months I have accumulated a debt of nearly ten thousand dollars, Irene had suggested tentatively to her husband a few months earlier, a part of her secretly hoping Wellington would not agree. Then she had added, That stunning amount of debt just grew stealthily, like a tumorous cancer while I was busy with the kids’ homework and keeping up with the domestic chores. I still have no idea where I spent it all. It’s impossible to identify one culprit.

That is a brilliant idea, Irene. Do you think we can do that? asked Wellington pensively.

Yes why not, I think we can make it. We may not save as much as we would have liked to, but we surely will be trudging in the right direction, contented Irene. We can start off by setting a periodic expenditure target like a week or a fortnight. That would help to establish how much cash we actually have available to spend every week. The next thing is to keep an eye on the daily expenditures so that we do not overrun our weekly budget limit.

That is easier said than done, but I am willing to try, Wellington had said in agreement with his wife’s suggestions.

Following some delays blamed on exorbitant college fees that left them with very little to consider drawing any meaningful weekly budget on, Irene and Wellington eventually found time and sat down to do their budgets. They resolved to put the family on a financial diet. When the news was broken to their kids, the children were not quite amused by the whole development. However, the young fellows had no choice but to dance to their parents’ tune if they wanted to go to college like their elder sister.

A couple of months after going on the family financial diet there was an improvement in the regular expenditure pattern of Irene. She saw herself differentiating between wants and needs on behalf of the family. At the end of the second month she was happy to have a few dollars in her purse having managed to spend below her budget. The development excited her so much that she recruited her friend to try and do the same. To Irene’s amazement, she later discovered that behavior change was easier with her friend offering support and encouragement.

Irene was determined to steer the course. She wanted to clear all her debts, and make sure the family did not have any large debts aside from their mortgage. She was already planning to wisely set aside several years’ worth of living expenses that would enable her family to stay afloat and not to raid their retirement accounts in the event of the unknown.

In her mind, Irene wanted to see the sunset years of their lives living in relative comfort being able to provide for their grandchildren and without having to take drastic measures like selling their home. She wished she had started the saving plan many years earlier before the children were in school. She was however happy that, after many years of sporadic and carefree spending, she was able to really trim her budget and get her finances under control.

Irene was convinced that she could do it. Already she was counting her blessings. She felt lucky that her monthly fixed expenses did not exceed her income, a situation that would have meant finding ways to minimize her expenses not just difficult, but almost impossible. Therefore when her husband suggested buying groceries and a coffin to take home for the funeral, she was not impressed at all. She was not prepared to dig into her savings ‘unceremoniously’ just like that.

Although something told Irene that she was going against one of the key lessons she had learnt from an early age that she should think of others before herself she was not going to part with her savings because of a funeral of her children’s grandmother. Though it was a kind of a lesson that as a woman she was socialised into from a very early age with the lesson from home further reinforced at school, Irene was not going to have none of that. As a mother she was convinced that she was already sacrificing a lot for her family and that was adequate of what was expected from her if not more than enough.

However, somehow Irene kept remembering vividly her own late grandmother saying Love is the basis for the desire to do good things in life and to give to others. If you have love, you always have that will to overlook everything bad done to you and you are filled with the desire to share the little that you have with even the very person who has wronged you. However, small in quantity can be that you share with others, the fact that you have given from the abundance of the love in your heart, the effect of that gift is multiplied tenfold. Natural forces can dictate otherwise but this is possible if there is deep set love for others and the will to forgive in your heart, the wise old lady had counselled her.

That was great wisdom grandma. It worked during your old good days. But in the world that I live today, people are ungrateful to others doing good for them. In today’s world nothing goes for free and that is the problem. You cannot afford to be a Good Samaritan all the time. One should get the fruits of one’s labour. If there is nothing for you in a deal, why go for it grandma. In this world we do things not from the depth of our hearts but to appease and get what we want, grandma, said Irene in her thoughts as if talking to her grandmother yet she was thinking to herself.

As a matter of fact, grandma, continued Irene in her thoughts, I am not going to try to give what I do not have. I have never had the love that I deserved from those I have given my all. For that reason I am hurting and broken hearted because I have been betrayed by those I thought I could trust. If it were not for the love of my husband and my three beautiful kids, I was not even going to the funeral. That dead woman only came to my house because of her son and my little kids. She was there because I had something to offer but she was never seen when I needed her the most. She took all my love for her out of me. Now I just feel that there is no way I can give what I do not have for her.

Yes I recall very well just like you said it yesterday grandma. You repeatedly urged me to work on my heart in order to have a sincere conviction from my heart to be able to touch lives around me. You always told me that I should do good things but with the right motive and not to do things for the sake of seeking appreciation. You taught me to do things from a deep and genuine conviction that brings peace of mind and satisfaction with or without glory. That is what I have done all my days grandma. I have done good things because I felt I received a calling to do so. It is for that reason that I have had commitment to everything that I have done, Irene told herself.

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Many years ago, unaware that her son had found himself in love and was staying with Irene, Wellington’s mother had arrived late one evening unannounced. Irene had just moved in a few days earlier. Irene’s would be mother-in-law had intended to spend a few days at her son’s lodgings. However, when she realized that her son was staying with his fiancée, Wellington’s mother decided to leave the two love birds alone the first thing the following morning. This did not go down well with Wellington’s sisters who believed that their mother had not been given the welcome treatment she deserved by Irene and therefore she was not able to stay and see her son as she would have wanted.

Two days later, two of Wellington’s sisters arrived in his absence at his lodgings in Mbare along Canaan Chipunza Street. The two sisters ganged against Irene and thrashed the hell out of her before sending her packing after the assault. The sisters accused her of being a prostitute out to destroy their brother and not taking good care of their mother. They further told Irene that she was not the proper candidate to be their brother’s wife.

Being called a prostitute was something Irene was not about to accept. As far as she was concerned she had moved in with Wellington because of love and nothing else. She felt it unfair for Wellington’s sisters to consider her to be there to ruin their brother. The fact that she was not employed at the time was not any justification for the two sisters to call her a parasite. It was a matter of time before she would be employed and be earning for her own living and that of her family she expected to establish with her husband.

After all, a few years earlier Irene had enrolled and studied at one of the state universities in the country. At the time she had had every reason to celebrate because she was going to fulfill her dream of acquiring a university education and she did. She was even more excited upon completing her studies and had looked forward to putting her newly-acquired knowledge and skills to practical use at the workplace, but until then that had all remained just a pipedream. Her hopes and ambitions had bitterly evaporated and had been replaced by choking frustration and despair.

At the same time Irene was getting ready to settle down and have children soon. In her scheme of things, Irene like any other woman, it was her dream to get married and have lots of children. She was preparing herself for marriage and she wanted to have many children. Unlike most ladies of her time who when they found their man, they got excited and moved in quickly without formalizing marriage. Irene had committed herself to take things one step at a time. For her the one outstanding and most important issue that needed to be sorted out before getting married was getting a job and earning herself a respectable income.

Unfortunately for Irene at the time, several years after college, she was still unemployed and languishing in poverty. She could not continue living with her parents any longer. After the initial job hunting and subsequent failure to get employed in her field of study, she decided to settle for work anywhere on the job market just to keep herself going with the hope of eventually finding a breakthrough, somehow. But that too was proving difficulty.

It was at the time when Irene believed that her dreams had all been shattered and had lost all hope of ever finding a job in her chosen profession that she was compelled by circumstances to move in with her longtime boyfriend Wellington. Now his sisters were driving her away.

Fearing for her life, Irene ran to the safety of her aunt’s home in the same area, who gave her refugee. Later that day, Irene’s aunt accompanied her to Wellington’s place to inquire of what had happened. The two sisters denied Irene and her aunt entry and set dogs on them, but they stood their ground and refused to go away. Once more a scuffle ensued with the two sisters punching and slapping Irene and her aunt. When the two visitors realized that they could not stand the fight they ran away and reported the matter to the police. The two sisters later spent six months behind bars after being found guilty of violence.

Then came a time when Irene thought everything was going her way in her marriage, that she gradually found herself suffering the invisible ‘pain of infertility’. For months and years that followed she tried and did everything she knew to conceive, but without success. She endured years of ‘shame and secrecy of infertility’ as her husband’s family openly demanded that she either gave them children or she left Wellington alone so that he could marry a fertile woman capable of giving children.

The possibility of her being infertile was devastating to Irene as she walked around with the feeling of a missing piece. She was struggling in a lonely battle, to get pregnant. As she struggled alone, she prayed for that day when the heavens would hear her prayers and she would wake up to find that she was pregnant. She was now convinced that there was nothing in this world she would love more than revealing to her husband that she was finally pregnant.

She could not help admiring other women of her age cradling adorable babies. Irene imagined of a designer nursery, some mini couture outfits, and how she would choose an exotic name for her children if only she could conceive. With each passing month, Irene knew that her chances of conceiving during each cycle were declining. Her doctor had frankly advised her, Regardless of how well you take care of yourself, ovaries age at a constant rate, and there is nothing you can do to halt it. That clock keeps ticking on and never backwards, informed the doctor. Unfortunately with age, the chances of having children from your own eggs continue to decline.

For five long years, Irene had kept her baby-making challenges under wraps and that secrecy left her to cope alone, in pain, and uninformed. Unfortunately for Irene, the society she was born to and lived in was not open about infertility and yet it persistently demanded that she should give her family children. She had no one to communicate with to get through it in a much better state of mind and also share needed information about her options. Irene had almost given up having children when it eventually happened and she was now a mother of three.

It was these unfortunate incidents that had strained the relationship between Irene and her mother-in-law. Irene was convinced that her mother-in-law had set loose her daughters upon her in a bid to drive her from Wellington. She never believed that the two sisters had acted on their own accord. On the other hand Wellington’s mother was not happy with her daughters serving time in prison for thumbing Irene. She held the conviction that, Irene had deliberately instigated the fight to have her daughters put in prison. What made matters worse for Irene, was the fact that she was considered infertile to bear any children after five long years of marriage and that further made her unwelcome in her husband’s family.

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Irene was so engrossed in her personal thoughts that she did not realize how long she had stayed in the beauty salon to have her hair done. When she finally left the hair salon, it was nearly half past eleven on a Saturday morning. Half the day was almost gone. As she walked along the First Street Mall, she impulsively strolled into her favourite boutique. Soon she was standing by racks of trendy summer clothing. Irene already owned enough dresses to clothe an entire village, but she pulled out a few and tried them on anyway. They all fitted her perfectly.

She was about to return the dresses back onto the racks after realizing that buying them would have her exceeding her weekly expenditure budget when the saleslady came to her and said, By the way, did I mention that today only, all dresses have a fifteen percent discount. If you have an account with us, you get an additional five percent discount. In total that is a whooping twenty percent reduction. What a lifetime great deal? the saleslady enticed her.

Without thinking, Irene had four dresses off the rack and with her credit card out of her