Wendy ran from her last name. She didn’t know if she was related to that Chimutengwende, Chen, a Mugabe dog who did the messy work of a dictator, but she honestly hoped that she was not and she was happy that among most Americans, Chimutengwende was not a name with any familiarity.
Wendy didn’t know much about her last name, though it was clear that no one she met could pronounce it – or her first name Anesu for that matter – and she had chosen the name Wendy a long time ago. She had lived her entire life in the US, as her parents and grandparents had, but she was vaguely aware of the family history that her grandparents had tried very hard to preserve as second generation immigrants from Zimbabwe with strong ties to their past. She was too busy navigating her sometimes difficult existence as an African American woman and lesbian, an experience that is oftentimes fraught with peril.
That is less important to this first official installment of the tales of the Brave Chimutengwende; her sexuality played no part in the peril that has entangled Wendy in recent months. In fact, Wendy’s involvement in the whole thing was a stroke of luck that literally could have happened to anyone had things aligned as they did behind their destiny. Humanity is one big family tree after all, and the customs that dictated the beliefs and rituals of our forefathers has an indirect link to all modern day men and women, and the magics at their disposal are extremely powerful, if not largely dormant today. The fate of the Brave could be your own if one day two prehistoric beings unknowingly unleash the elemental magics of the Earth that have been present from the start and that sets off a chain of events that stirs your ancestors against the reemergence of an evil that would seek to destroy in the name of purity. Wendy’s ancestors just had a personal stake in the calamity unleashed on the Earth.
So we will start at the beginning, at the moment when Wendy became the Brave, when she sat alone in her house and was visited by two ghosts.
The Appearance of Anesuishe and Isheanesu
Wendy was feeling used. The woman Maria who had lied her way into the Institute for Brain Function, had apparently come to work there a little under a year ago because almost everyday she would come and head straight to the elevator and disappear to the basement laboratory of a top secret doctor. Seeing her reminded Wendy that not so long ago, Maria was using her to gain access to said top-secret doctor when in actuality, Wendy was hoping that she was coming around to the notion that they both had met their soulmates; for Wendy it was practically love at first sight.
The fear of being taken advantage of had only grown in the time since she first met Maria. Wendy took stock of her interactions and she had to wonder, Was everyone just using her? Her cat Sophie, who kept her favorite spot on her couch warm when she worked, used her unapologetically, but at least she was cuddly. The two doctors that she used to enjoy sexual relationships with definitely used her, despite their proclamations of love. The older of the doctors was married and Wendy had vowed to end the interaction shortly after she found out, but she was too comfortable with their physicality by the time she learned of a spouse. That falling out led to her meeting the younger of the doctors; a single woman approaching fifty who was very focused on her career and extremely appreciative of the affections they shared, but Wendy could never resist the advances of the older doctor. The woman had a silver tongue and Wendy especially liked it when the older doctor would lean close to her and whisper sweet things into her ear that slid like silk from her mouth.
Wendy was the perfect mark; lonely enough to let people treat her in ways that were only partly beneficial to her. She wanted a family of her own. She had grown up with a strong sense of family in rural Georgia, in a suburb of Savannah, but she had longed to escape that life because of the limits that her loved ones seemed to put on her aspirations. Wendy had wanted to study medicine for most of her life, and she was determined to be a doctor after her mother suffered an indignity at a doctor’s office when her insurance was declined, but this wasn’t a dream that she was inclined to share with many of her family members who thought Wendy a classic beauty who was made to be the love of a great man, or to grace the covers of magazines. It made Wendy uncomfortable to be admired for her beauty by her relatives because they hardly ever listened to anything she said, but talked about and around her as though her only contribution to a room was her looks. When she graduated high school, she went to college in Louisiana before returning to Georgia for her first professional job, but Wendy was effectively estranged from her family the day she left for college. They had protested her leaving, her parents had hoped she’d marry a local son of a wealthy family, so Wendy walked away excited to be relieved of obligations that made her real goals more difficult to attain. She had done well for herself, effectively alone in the world, but she ached for a family unit to provide support more substantial than casual friendships.
She had been encouraged after landing her first job with the doctor in private practice, the woman that Wendy was sure she would marry. Dr. Teri Nielsen. Their relationship was never easy, but Wendy loved her so much. They had lived together for a long time, they worked together, Teri was Wendy’s whole life, until it became clear that Teri was ashamed of their relationship, not just because they were both women, but because Wendy is black and Dr. Nielsen was white. Wendy never met her potential in-laws in all the time they were together, even though she had managed to drag the doctor to meet her mother for dinner. It was a tense meal, Wendy’s mother loved her daughter and was happy that she loved a doctor, but she wasn’t comfortable with the same sex nature of their relationship. Wendy was happy they had suffered through it because at least her mother had met the woman who she loved more than anyone else; that was important to her. It made the whole relationship real, it meant that Teri was her family and that never changed in Wendy’s mind, even when she knew that their relationship was done. She knew that it was not the same for Teri, Wendy could never be part of her family.
After leaving Dr. Nielsen and the job at her practice, Wendy was sad and she wanted to forget. She wanted to prove to herself that she could make a good existence for herself on her own and she didn’t need a romantic partner to do that. She got her job at the IBF and did her best to satisfy her sexual desires with the two doctors without making distracting emotional connection, but trying seems to make every emotional endeavor in life more difficult. And then Maria happened and she wondered if she was so desperate for a relationship that she had fallen for the guile of a temptress.
One Saturday night Wendy sat alone in her house wondering if she could ever trust another human being, she stared longingly at Sophie, hoping the cat would curl up next to her, but she appeared to be asleep and curled into a tight ball on the rug next to her feet. Wendy’s house was comfortable. She’d bought it after working at the IBF for a while, and even though she loved decorating her own space to look just as she imagined her home would look, and she planted a garden in her backyard that produced beautiful flowers and tomatoes that she sliced in the summertime to make tomato sandwiches, a part of her regretted purchasing the house because sometimes sitting inside made her realize just how alone she was. She’d hoped to share a home with Dr. Nielsen, but she had to put that fantasy out of her mind because it could never happen, not since the doctor’s unexpected death.
Wendy sat looking down at her cat, the TV off, the only sound in her home the soft music that played from speakers in her kitchen, and she tried not to think about news from an old friend who had known them as a couple, a colleague of Dr. Nielsen who had witnessed the shocking death of the doctor when the two vacationed with other friends in Las Vegas. Apparently the doctor was drinking one night and, full of regrets for things she could not make happen in her life, she decided to do something daring. She did a skyjump and most likely because the doctor could be overbearing and mean when given instructions, especially when drunk, she attached her harnesses incorrectly and would not let anyone correct her. She plummeted to her death to the horror of onlookers.
Wendy almost shed a tear, it almost welled in her eyes, but then she heard commotion in the kitchen, like a crash against her cabinets that startled her and Sophie so much that both females jumped to their feet. Sophie looked up at her companion and watched as Wendy grabbed her phone from the nearby coffee table and slowly creep toward the kitchen.
When she peeped in with Sophie at her ankles, Wendy was so startled that she jumped and dropped her phone.
“Mhoro!” a woman standing at her kitchen table said enthusiastically. She wore a blood-red dress, and her hair was wrapped in a black cloth. What horrified Wendy most about the woman, aside from the fact that she had apparently broken into her home, was that she wore a necklace that was adorned with what looked to be tiny severed arms; the ends that attached to the necklace were bloody and the skin was ragged like they had been ripped from bodies and the fingers hung down like stiff and tiny sausages.
“Makadii?” the woman continued and she took steps toward Wendy who backed away in horror. “Zita randu ndi Anesuishe.” She motioned back to a man who looked to be leaning against the kitchen sink behind her. He wore a golden robe and he was not leaning against the sink at all. The man’s head had been completely turned around, and though the front of his torso faced the sink, his head faced the opposite direction and smiled at Wendy who did not have a smile in return.
“Uyu murume ndizvo Isheanesu.”
Wendy tripped and fell into her living room that was connected to the kitchen. She almost called for help, and then she noticed Anesuishe with the arm necklace playing with Sophie, and the cat purred joyfully.
“Why are you speaking to her in Shona?” Isheanesu with the backwards head asked sheepishly as he entered the living room. He had mastered walking backwards and if not for the backwards nature of his body, Wendy would not have noticed that anything was different, he moved so easily.
“I forgot myself, don’t nag,” Anesuishe said and she looked up at the backwards man. “I am just excited to say hello.”
Isheanesu shook his head playfully and then turned his attention to Wendy.
“We need you Anesu. We need each other,” he smiled at Wendy with all the sympathy that he could muster. “There is something coming, something you do not want to face alone.”
Oddly enough, Wendy’s alarm had subsided significantly since she clawed her way into the living room and she was able to look at her strange guests more closely. She could see her own face in their faces.
Anesuishe stood next to Isheanesu and the two could have been her parents or long lost relatives.
“We don’t have much time,” the two said together and they looked at one another with a smile.
PRL Serials 