Summary
In this short chapter, Mandisa addresses Amy's mother directly as she looks ahead to her future. She wonders about what her path should be now that Mxolisi has murdered Amy. She asks Amy's mother: "do I help him hide? Deliver him to the police? Get him a lawyer?" (138). She is conflicted: "Will that mean I do not feel your sorrow for your slain daughter?" (138). Mandisa's language is notable here: instead of feeling her regret for Amy's death, she writes that she feels the other mother's grief. Mandisa has hoped to convince Amy's mother that they are in similar positions, and have felt similar pains. This terrible connection between the two of them does not naturally make them enemies, although it may seem to: "What wrong have I done you... or you me?" (138). Mandisa grieves all that Amy lived for, writing that the woman "had a tomorrow," and "much to look forward to" (138).
Mandisa laments the circumstances of Amy's death, but again points to Amy's culpability: "Oh, that she had harboured but an ounce of fear!" (138) Mandisa wonders if there wasn't good to be done in Amy's own country, if she couldn't have stayed home and "helped the powerless, and righted what was wrong" (138). Mandisa knows that Amy had much to live for. She rails against the injustice of death. But Amy's position in life leads her to once again consider her son, asking "What had he to live for?" (138). What of the society that praised Mxolisi long before condemning him?
Mxolisi was a product of his environment. Before he was a pariah, Mxolisi was an integral part of his community. In many ways, he was just following the teachings that he had been given since birth: "Did he not do as they shouted for all to hear? ONE SETTLER, ONE BULLET!" (138). Mandisa compares her son to a dog that had been trained to fight for its family. The society that has created this vicious animal takes no risk, "It is the dog that takes the risk, that could get hurt. Or killed. Or jailed" (138). When Mxolisi heard the common cry, "WITH OUR MATCH BOXES, WE SHALL FREE OURSELVES", was he not supposed to obey, to "go after the target and grab it by the throat" (138)?
And then there's Mandisa, left to cope with what her son has done. She is full of shame and anger: "Shame at what my son has done. Anger at what has been done to him" (138). She is angry at all of the adults who taught Mxolisi to be the way he was. They created the situation and then stepped back to watch the consequences safely from their homes. Everyone who made Mxolisi "believe he would be a hero, fighting for the nation" has as much culpability in Amy's death as Mxolisi himself has (138). In many ways, they are guiltier—they were grown and should have known better. Once again, Mandisa addresses Amy's mother, "Mother of the Slain." She wants the woman to know that her existence is painful: "All joy has fled my house and my heart bleeds, it sorrows for you, for the pain into which you have been plunged" (138). She is a condemned woman, she has become "a leper in [her] community" (138).
But this does not end with Amy's death. The hatred that motivated Mxolisi and his contemporaries have not disappeared, "the same winds that gouged dongas in my son's soul are still blowing... blowing ever strong" (139). There are still children out of school, roaming the streets, soaking up the despair of his community. They walk the same path Mxolisi walked. Mandisa wonders if she is the only one who sees this. The police continue to terrorize the community. The police who have decided that Mxolisi is the only one to blame for the murder, although many knives stabbed Amy. Why single Mxolisi out? Why her son? Why him? "My son!" she writes, "What have you done? Oh, what is this terrible thing that you have done?" (139). She calls to God, asking for help in her grief.
At the end of the chapter, Mandisa's neighbors come to grieve with Mandisa. Although she doesn't know whether she should grieve, whether her culpability, whatever it might be, might take away any pity she might have or attract, her neighbors come anyway. "We are people who come to each other's home when there is a reason," they tell her (139). They have no trouble looking Mandisa in the eyes, and they tell her that they have come to cry with her, "as is our custom, to grieve with those who grieve" (140). They help Mandisa manage her shame and show her that she doesn't have to be alone in her grief. Those who haven't shunned her give her strength and hope.
Analysis
In this chapter, Mandisa describes her grief and shame. The two are inseparable. Although she is given space to grieve by her friends and neighbors, and it is acknowledged that she has endured great pain, she cannot escape the shame that has caused her to become a pariah in her community. She wants Amy's mother to know that she, along with her son, is being punished. She also wants Amy's mother to know that she understands the other woman's pain. The two women are "bound in this sorrow," both having to endure a pain that they have not chosen, one that is "heavy on our shoulders" (140). They were chosen by circumstance, by chance, by the nature of their positions in life. They don't know each other, will never know each other, but they are forever bound by this tragedy.
This does not mean that they are the same. "Let it console you some," Mandisa writes, that she will never have to ask herself what more she could have done for her daughter (140). Amy's mother can "carry [her] head sky high," as she does not have to face shame. Loss without shame, this is what sets the mothers apart. Amy's mother faces only "irretrievable loss," no "deep sense of personal failure" (140). Through this loss, absent of shame, Amy's mother finds "glory" (140). Although the glory is "unwanted and unasked for," it is inescapable, and so through it, Amy's mother might find some relief. Let this glory be your "source of strength, your fountain of hope, the light that illumines the depth of your despair," writes Mandisa.
"My son! What have you done?" Mandisa writes. "Your daughter. The imperfect atonement of her race. My son. The perfect host of the demons of his" (140). In a structure she returns to often in the novel, Mandisa compares the two people. Amy, white but caring, in South Africa to lend support to democracy, could not not offer enough "atonement" for white settlers to save her own life. One person cannot end the relentless tide of hatred. Mxolisi, a celebrated youth with potential, is plagued by "demons" much larger than him. He is unable to understand Amy except for as a black man, as a person oppressed by whites for generations. Even though they have similar aims, the history of hatred that separates the two is insurmountable.
This chapter examines the theme of culpability. Although Mandisa doesn't deny that Mxolisi carries the brunt of the blame for the murder, others are not saved from their share of it. Once again Mandisa writes that Amy should have known better, could have saved herself from this fate if she had just a bit more fear. A chief amount of the blame goes to the township elders who radicalized Mxolisi: "If anyone killed your daughter, some of the leaders who today speak words of consolation to you... mark my words... they, as surely as my son, are your daughter's murderers" (139). Mandisa argues that they are guiltier than him in many ways, as they were educated adults, and knew better than senseless murder. Finally, Mandisa faces what blame she has. "Am I your enemy?" she asks Amy's mother. Although she has not killed Amy, she will forever face the consequences of her death, and will forever carry the shame of being the murderer's mother. She will forever ask herself: was there something I could have done to prevent this?
But hatred is not the only force at play in Guguletu. Mandisa's neighbors show her that she can still find hope. Her community has not completely forsaken her. In confiding in and grieving with her neighbors, Mandisa experiences a sensation "like the opening of a boil" (139). Some of the infection might be released so that she can heal. In a larger sense, there is also hope for the township. Mandisa tells Amy's mother that her death has not been in vain. She writes of churches and community groups dedicated to stopping the violence. The children in Guguletu need to be helped, "otherwise they grow up and be a problem" (140). Efforts to help them might help young people, even those like Mxolisi, so that "they may chance and come back better people" (140).
