0/28 Here for you is a Sunday story from ROTTEN ROW called ‘Anna, Boniface, Cecelia Dickson’. It’s directly inspired by the children’s rhyme from my era and by Robert Altman’s take on Raymond Carver’s stories in SHORT CUTS. Enjoy. 
1/28 If you come with me this way, straight past Town House on Speke Avenue, cross the flyover into Julius Nyerere, walk past Robert Mugabe and stop before we get to Kenneth Kaunda, we will find ourselves outside the downtown supermarket that used to be called Amato.
2/28 ‘Ndikati nzvee, kwaAmato, wandiona!’ They are long gone, the Brothers Amato, as are many of their brethren and indeed, there has not been a Bar Mitzvah here for more than ten years but that is all by the way.
3/28 Nor does it matter what the supermarket is called now because we won’t stay here long. Inside, we'll see a young woman walking down the third aisle from the cashiers’ bank, between the jars of baby food on the right and the plastic hair weaves on the left. Her name’s Anna.
4/28 No, she’s not the tall woman pushing a shopping trolley. Nor is she the scowling beauty in the skinny jeans who is examining the hair weaves. That one’s not Anna, her name’s Deliwe, and we may return to her later. Look behind her.
5/28 Yes. That’s her, the small slight woman, not a full woman really, a newly-made woman, just out of girlhood, with a brown cardboard box in her hands and a shifty look on her face.
6/28 Well, shifty in the eyes of the security guard, whose name's Boniface, and he should know. To his wife in Chatsworth, Boniface is the Manager of a Shop in Town, but to the Manager of the Shop in Town, Boniface is just the Shop in Town’s security guard.
7/28 If Boniface is to tell the truth, he will admit that there is not much training to being a security guard. There was a lot of marching though. As a trainee, he marched and marched between Livingstone and Selous. He marched and shouted war chants and marched some more.
8/28 ‘Chengeta chikwama chababa chine madhora’, he sang as he marched. Boniface could march for Zimbabwe if he had to, yes he could. ‘Sabhuku marasika man’a haasonwiba!’ Marching and marching with his head shaved bald. ‘Chenjera kunyengwa nerovha murima!’
9/28 There was no correlation that he could see between his shaven head and his training, no reason why one was a precondition for the other, no reason why one could not exist without the other, but it was not his to reason why. ‘Marovha tawanda mbeva dzichapera!’
10/28 Before Anna entered the shop, Boniface’s phone had pinged to his WhatsApp Church Group the Bible verse of the day. It was Romans 1, verse 28: ‘And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind.
11/28 ‘... to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents.’
12/28 He has yet to encounter this catalogue of sin in any one person, Boniface, but what he knows without a doubt and this he knows without question, what he knows and knows full well is that he knows a shifty look when he sees one.
13/28 As far as Boniface can see, Anna has just about the shiftiest look he has seen in his seven-year career as a post-marching security guard.
14/28 Poor Anna does indeed look shifty as you see but that does not have anything to do with being in this shop over which Boniface has absolute dominion. She is only in this supermarket because she saw her greatest enemy walking towards her from the Mbare end of Julius Nyerere.
15/28 Anna sells traditional herbs and Cecelia DVDs. The crisis had come when Cecelia sold a DVD that contained all the Hunger Games and Fifty Shades films including 2, The Hunger Games: Doing Snow and Fifty Shades Raw, whose existence would have come as a surprise to Hollywood
16/28 The DVD had cost 4 dollars and, the customer had given Cecelia a 10 yakabatana. She had then asked Anna to split the 10-dollar note into smaller denominations so that she could give the customer his change. Cecelia had given back what she thought was a 1-dollar note.
17/28 By the time the customer had left and she had recounted her own money, Cecelia found that she was a dollar short. ‘It is an easy mistake to make,’ Anna said. ‘The notes are so dirty that you gave away the two dollars in error.‘
18/28 ‘The mistake is yours if you think I am a fool,’ said Cecelia ‘You think you are so superior, sitting there counting out your money then short-changing people when they ask for change.’
19/28 The ensuing quarrel had drawn a crowd. ‘It was a mistake,’ Anna said. ‘Look, here is a 2-dollar note. Look, you can see on the front the president is different, and at the back there is a group of Presidents. But if the note is very dirty you can hardly see them.’
20/28 A Form Two boy dressed in a George Stark High School uniform piped up to say, ‘They are not Presidents, actually, they are the men who signed the independence document in America. They are called the Founding Fathers.’’
21/28 Cecelia had waved away the Founding Fathers as she insisted that whoever they were, they were not on this note that Anna had given to her. The povo around her had various opinions. Some said yes, the money was so dirty that you can’t see which one is which.
22/28 Others, led by a vendor called Mai Nelly said, yes, that may well be but 2 dollars is 2 dollars and it is one more than one and if you have 2 dollars you will just know you have 2 dollars and you will not have the stupidity to confuse a 1-dollar note for a 2-dollar one.
23/28 The general mood was summed up by a man who said, impatiently, ‘Why do they even have the two-dollar note mhani, it causes nothing but confusion.’
4/28 Jah Teurai, who, in another life and another country, might have been a fiscal economist and not a vendor said, ‘Y’see, the problem is with the small denominations that circulate the most. And of course, we can’t recall the notes because it is not our money, y’see.’
25/28 Cecelia, mishearing, had flared up and said, ‘What do you mean, it is not my money? Were you there when she gave it to me? What makes you so certain? Who are you, the school monitor wepamusika. Are you the market monitor?’
26/28 Anna had attempted a pacific settlement to the dispute. ‘Sorry horaiti,’ she said in a conciliatory tone. ‘If it was me, I am sorry. Here is your dollar.’ But sensing the crowd was really on Anna’s side had enraged Cecelia further.
27/28 ‘First you try to hoodwink me and rob me thinking I am a fool, then you show off and wave money in my face.’ she said. ‘Musatanyoko. Kutopfuma nemaziweti egudo. Handibati zvemushonga. I am a Child of Christ. I was bathed in His blood. I am perfumed by his Grace.’
28/28 The Child of Christ had lunged at Anna.
