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using sonar. Every time she called out, I froze. There would be complete silence. “Who’s
there?! Hallo?!” I’d pause, wait for her to settle back in her chair, and then I’d start up again.
Finally, after what felt like forever, I finished. I stood up, took the newspaper—which is
not the quietest thing—and I slowwwwwly folded it over. It crinkled. “Who’s there?” Again I
paused, waited. Then I folded it over some more, walked over to the rubbish bin, placed my
sin at the bottom, and gingerly covered it with the rest of the trash. Then I tiptoed back to the
other room, curled up on the mattress on the floor, and pretended to be asleep. The shit was
done, no outhouse involved, and Koko was none the wiser.
Mission accomplished.
—
An hour later the rain had stopped. My grandmother came home. The second she walked in,
Koko called out to her.
“Frances! Thank God you’re here. There’s something in the house.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know, but I could hear it, and there was a smell.”
My gran started sniffing the air. “Dear Lord! Yes, I can smell it, too. Is it a rat? Did
something die? It’s definitely in the house.”
They went back and forth about it, quite concerned, and then, as it was getting dark, my
mother came home from work. The second she walked in, my gran called out to her.
“Oh, Nombuyiselo! Nombuyiselo! There’s something in the house!”
“What?! What do you mean?”
Koko told her the story, the sounds, the smells.
Then my mom, who has a keen sense of smell, started going around the kitchen, sniffing.
“Yes, I can smell it. I can find it…I can find it…” She went to the rubbish bin. “It’s in here.”
She lifted out the rubbish, pulled out the folded newspaper underneath, and opened it up, and
there was my little turd. She showed it to gran.
“Look!”
“What?! How did it get there?!”
Koko, still blind, still stuck in her chair, was dying to know what was happening.
“What’s going on?!” she cried. “What’s going on?! Did you find it?!”
“It’s shit,” Mom said. “There’s shit in the bottom of the dustbin.”
“But how?!” Koko said. “There was no one here!”
“Are you sure there was no one here?”
“Yes. I called out to everyone. Nobody came.”
My mother gasped. “We’ve been bewitched! It’s a demon!”
For my mother, this was the logical conclusion. Because that’s how witchcraft works. If
someone has put a curse on you or your home, there is always the talisman or totem, a tuft of
hair or the head of a cat, the physical manifestation of the spiritual thing, proof of the
demon’s presence.
Once my mom found the turd, all hell broke loose. This was serious. They had evidence.