Fee Fee’s Curse

by Liz Rosen

When the hose in the garden was found chewed through, I knew for sure that Fee Fee’s curse had come true. Fee Fee had shaken her fist and said she would call the tokoloshe on us, but my father had dismissed her with the same contempt as when he’d fired her. I wanted to step forward and grab his hand to warn him; I’d seen Fee Fee blowing pipe smoke over the palm-sized satchels she made for the hired help in the neighborhood and I’d peeked into the servant’s quarters when she wasn’t there and seen her single bed propped up on paint cans so the tokoloshe couldn’t climb up to get her in the night.

When my sister cried with terrible cramps, I knew it was the tokoloshe who gave her the pain. When the band saw slipped and cut the tip of my father’s finger off, there was only one possible explanation. My sister and I exchanged frightened glances as my father picked up his finger to bring with him to the hospital, but neither of us was brave enough to tell him that of course it was Fee Fee’s tokoloshe. 

Whenever I whined about being called inside for dinner before my friends, Fee Fee would say, “Stop your crying or I will set a tokoloshe on you.” The way she said it was not like she threatened my father. When she said it to me, she was saying, “You are a troublesome white child who deserves a little fright to show you your place.” When she told my father she would call a tokoloshe on us, there was anger in the crevices of her old black face. There was cunning in her eyes. My father didn’t believe in malevolent goblins who chewed your toes off, but he did believe that Fee Fee was stealing from us, so she had to go. I was sorry to see her leave; I had fallen a little in love with Fee Fee’s delicious Malva pudding.

With my father standing watch nearby to guarantee that nothing else disappeared along with her, Fee Fee gathered her small bag of belongings. I leaned against the garden wall, plucking flowers from the sugarbush that grew there, waiting to tell her goodbye, but she marched past me and out the gate without looking back. I wished that she had stopped to tell me that she would miss me, even though I had been a troublesome child, but she disappeared down the street to the bus stop that would take her back to Alexandra Township and her family there.

Not long after, as I was getting a snack in the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye down the hallway, I was sure that I saw the long ears of the tokoloshe disappearing around the corner. Another night, as I waited for my sister to finish in the toilet, I was sure that I could smell its evil scent. I found scratches on the underside of the dining room table and two long hairs, foul and animal-like, on the floor outside the laundry room.

I told my mother, but she said it was all nonsense. That my sister had cramps because she had her monthlies, and that my father had been careless with his tools. My father was grim and sour-looking in the weeks after Fee Fee left, but you would be, wouldn’t you, if you needed stitches to hold your finger on?

Every day it seemed some new suffering was thrust upon the family. April came and the pipe in the laundry room burst. In May, the new kitten was found torn to bits on the front lawn. My parents fought over nothing and after couldn’t remember why they were angry. I was so worried about what the tokoloshe would do next that I failed my history exam, and, sure enough, I got cut from the rugby team later that week. The only day free of mischief was Mandala’s birthday, but the tokoloshe was back at it the following day when the stew my mother defrosted gave us both food poisoning. Even though she was green with puking, my mother would not concede that Fee Fee had cooked the stew and frozen it for a later date.

I woke every morning and counted my toes to be certain they were all there and that the tokoloshe had not bitten them off as I slept. Losing one would not be as terrible for me as my sister with her ballet aspirations, but I like having ten toes nonetheless and would not like to lose one down the tokoloshe’s toothy throat.

It was the October storm that was the last straw. It tore huge swaths of tiles from our roof, but not the neighbors’. The numerous leaks destroyed my parent’s wedding album, my father’s collection of vintage pornographic magazines, and a signed photo of the South African President F.W. de Klerk.  My father sat down at the desk after making his phone call, and with his sewn-on pinkie held stiffly away from the rest of his hand as if he were drinking from a tea cup, counted out rand notes, sheepishly slipping them into an envelope that he handed to me. 

I ran as fast as I could to the bus stop and when Fee Fee stepped down from the bus, a look of triumph on her face, I held it out for her to take.

Liz Rosen isn't punk; she's glam rock, because nothing can stand in the way of a well-placed Mary Quant eyeliner and bulging shoulder pads. She is a former Nickelodeon TV writer and a current short story writer with a love of YouTube ghost-hunting shows. Color-wise, she’s an Autumn. Music-wise, she’s an MTV-baby. She is a native New Orleanian, and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses her Gulf oysters and etouffee, but has learned to love snow and colorful scarves. Her stories have appeared in or are forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, JMWW, Atticus Review, Pithead Chapel, New Flash Fiction Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and numerous others. Learn more at www.thewritelifeliz.com.