#NoSignal
NO SIGNAL
By Zakes Mdluli
Zinhle Mnguni has been with one man her whole adult life. Seven years, since first year at varsity, and never anyone else. Not a kiss, not a curiosity, not one night she has to think twice about. She likes it that way. She keeps rules about her body the way other women keep rules about money, and she has never once had to explain them to anybody. Then the old Tazz gives out on a Waterberg gravel road with smoke coming off the engine, both phones show no signal, and the only sign on the whole road points eight kilometres down a farm track to a name nobody has repainted in thirty years. The farm is called Imvelo. The couple who own it will not take a cent for the cabin. Everybody is warm, and easy, and entirely unbothered, and by breakfast on the first morning Zinhle understands exactly what kind of place she has walked into. She could sit it out on the veranda until the part arrives. Nobody here would think less of her. Nobody here pushes. That is the trouble. There is nothing to push against. Only a long weekend, a woman who has always known precisely where her line is, and the slow suspicion that she drew it years ago without ever seeing what was on the other side.
8 chapters · 3 hr 14 min
