Do You, Mr. Jones?
By Fred Owens
Do you know something is happening, Mr. Jones?" I said that to Clifford Jones, Retired Colonel Clifford Jones of the Zimbabwe National Army, currently residing on Plumtree Road one block from our house on Shottery Crescent. Jones I call him. Owens he calls me. His wife Audrey and my bride-to-be Precious are fast friends, apt to get loud and raucous after a few beers, turning up the music loud and trying to get us to join them, but Jones and I retreated to his back yard.
"I don't like all that noise," he said. "Those two are trouble. Why are you getting married anyway? You see my trouble here. Do you want that kind of life? If you marry Precious you will be chained. You will have to feed all of her family. Every single cousin will come and knock on your door. And be very humble. And sit on the couch in your living room. Until you feed them. So you feed them. But that's not enough. They want beer. Then they want a bed for the night unless you give them bus fare to go someplace else. This is what my life is like with my family, all these cousins.
"Go look in my refrigerator. It's empty. We have no food. All my relatives ate the food. None left for us. These days we only go out to eat at a restaurant. So my advice to you is that if you get married to Precious you move far away from her family. Otherwise they will take every penny. Believe me."
Jones stretched out his lanky frame in the lawn chair in his weed-full, unkempt rag-muffin of a back yard. "You're not inclined to smell the roses are you?"as I noticed the squalor of dead flowers and creeping weeds.
"No, I leave that to Audrey. She is my little pumpkin. She can fix the garden if she chooses, but she doesn't choose to dabble in dirt."
"Jones, if she is happy, then what else matters. So, you must know that I came over here to ask you a favor. This is not what you expect. Not about money. What I need is for you to stand with me next Saturday when I get married. I will be making promises and I need somebody strong to stand with me. But don't answer right away. Don't say yes you will do it until we have more time to talk."
Jones yawned and then gave a small cough. He did not seem a soldier, not all stiff and proper, or tough and corrosive in bearing. Jones was easy-going in posture and in principle. He smiled too easily. I didn't trust him. He sent men to their death during the Revolution against Rhodesia..... But I did trust him to stand as Best Man. I was not looking for a paragon of virtue.
Precious was inviting her family to the wedding, the fifty cousins. She had more cousins than friends, but friends were coming too. What about me? I was starting to feel like the loneliest white guy. I had no cousins, no comrades. If I could find just one man to stand with me, then we could face the black horde.
"You see, you're coloured. You're a coloured man, you know, mixed. Your father was Irish"
"No, he was Welsh. And my mother was Kalanga from Plumtree. They never married. The law would not allow it."
"So, do you feel mixed? Are you at odds with yourself or are you blended? Because you look like a mocha."
"A mocha?"
"Yes, light brown. You don't see too many coloured people in Bulawayo. Do you guys all know each other?"
"What!"
"Sorry, bad joke."
"Ugly fucking American! ... I was there in your country years ago. What I could see is that all the American black people are not black. They are coloured, like me. They are not African. The slave masters raped the African women and from that you get Muhamed Ali. He is not black. He is coloured like me."
"Yes, I see it in the bones of your face. But you are a little like me. I am white. You are part white. You can stand with me. Do you agree?"
"I do agree. Audrey and I will come to your house on Saturday for the wedding. I will be your Best Man."
"Good, because you can do it, and no one else can understand this," I said.
The Cake Stand. Meanwhile we were shopping for a wedding cake. In Zimbabwe they follow the British tradition, of a dense fruit cake baked months ago and soaked in brandy. You buy the cake and they put the icing on. I should have taken a photo. The cake was beautiful and Precious and Fred Love Each Other, it said in the letters of pink frosting
"And we need a cake stand," she told me. "What is a cake stand?" I asked. "It holds up the cake for all to admire." "But we don't need such a cake stand. I have never seen one." Precious looked at me as if I knew nothing about weddings, which was true. And she had that quiet way about her, not being the talkative type. "Otherwise we need a cake stand." I quickly agreed to that purchase. "Of course we need a cake stand, " I shouted with joy. "A big beautiful expensive cake stand." That's why you can see that I wanted to get married. Because it was my pleasure to give her things that she wanted. This is why Colonel Jones loved his wife Audrey and called her little pumpkin, even though she was far from little in size.
And a gown for her, rented, elaborate, traditional, that is European-style, white and lacey, very pretty. And I bought a suit, black, too big and baggy, for $100, with a white shirt and a red tie.
And a goat, to cook and serve to the fifty cousins. and two trays of anti-pasta from a downtown deli, which no one ate at the reception, no on but me. Everyone else wanted the goat and the sadza.
A truckload of beer, and a reservation to visit the Justice of the Peace, an Asian man who ran a travel agency and maintained judicial chambers of polished wood on the second floor of his building. This Asian man would preside as we made vows.
And a rented car to carry the wedding party. Precious would bring Mr. Mataka and Tanti, Aunt Janet's daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Jones would come in their own vehicle.
And wedding announcements to mail back to America.
Suddenly we were in a big hurry to get it done. As if someone was chasing us, and we better keep running.
Do You Need Me? People asked me why did you marry her? Did you love her? They should ask her too. It's patronizing to think hitching up with me was the best chance she would ever have, although she did have a smile on her face like she hit the jackpot. Precious, did you marry me because I am a rich white man who can take you to America? "Yes," she answered, "but there was more than that. I married you because we both like that Don Williams' song on the casette. I married you because you showed me how to skip stones on a pond of water." Is that all? Any other reasons to stay with this guy until death do you part. "You're a white man, you won't beat me or have another girl friend, and you're cute, kind a old, but cute."
But you Fred, why did you marry Precious? "I married her because I was lonely. My mother died and there was no one to look after me, My mother used to make me breakfast and iron my shirts, but she died, and there was no one to take her place. So I went to Africa and met Precious. You remember that first day when we were together in the rented room on Airport Road? She fixed my breakfast and ironed my shirts. So I wasn't lonely any more. I fell in love. Plus she had a really great ass.
I'm skipping her faults. She had a full range of bad habits and a history of bad choices, equal to mine. Tales of moral depravity that you can find in any cheap novel. Her drinking habit, her assault conviction, her inability to tell the truth, her tenuous grasp of monogamy. her failure to understand delayed gratification when making financial decisions. It's a rich topic. My own pathetic needs -- ironing shirts? weird -- lack of responsibility closely allied with a lifelong sense of entitlement and privilege, my failure to plan and make long-term goals, my twisted understanding of what women want based on 16 years of Catholic education. I could continue.
Oh, we were a pair of mangy dogs all right and neither one of us as good as we might be, but it was my life, it was her life, and we decided to get married just because we could. Our favorite song was I Believe in Love by Don Williams, the American country singer. When she wanted to make love to me she said, "Do you need me?"
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