The Ringing sound of laughter.

I’m unsure at which point I became a pessimist, a cynic, a realist, a glass half empty kind of person. It betrays the hopeless romantic I once was, now I hurt people before they can hurt me, and build walls that sometimes even I cannot scale.

Some days I wake up and I am a hopeful person, I long for a joyful existence. The melodious, oh so beautiful sound of laughter. I have never been a giggly type; I WISH I were. To be the girl who laughs in measured chuckles, tilting her head ever so slightly to the side and flicking her hair aside with perfectly manicured nails. ”White people laughter,” at least that’s what we call it at home, the laugh you use when you are at work in a pool office and you pronounce your name in a high pitched accent that erases any trace of its Ndebele origin. Deliberate laughter, calculated in its nature, to deliver just the right amount of appropriateness, the perfect amount of amusement with a dollop of hysteria, a tiny smear, never going out of the bounds of what is considered to be proper etiquette.

Hysterical, that is the word, the word that best describes MY laughter, I bend over, more often than I want to, wiping away evidence of my merriment as I go along. Loud, raucous laughter, my smile threatening to split my face into two. Doubled over and holding my tummy, all white teeth and pink gums. I regularly tell the story of how I only found out when I was in high school, that it is not normal to eat 5 slices of bread. Having grown up with boys, my 5 slices seemed paltry in comparison to the loaves they devoured. Now imagine to my complete and utter surprise, getting to boarding school and realizing 2 slices is the norm. I was perplexed for days. And so it was the same with my laughter, I genuinely thought it was normal. Until I heard most of the people around me remark, “Ende Thuli unoseka!!!“In all the times I have heard that, it has never come across as particularly kind or conveyed with any trace of fondness. Except, that is the laugh that I have.

When I was in primary school, every beginning of term, I would walk up to the group I had been given. We had five you know, named after places in Zimbabwe. Harare, Bulawayo, Masvingo, Binga and lastly Matanitani Purazi (you do not want to know the pain and humiliation that came with Matanitani Purazi). Ranked according to who had excelled in a certain test every week, our then teacher Mrs Ngwenyama would make us congregate at the back of the class every Friday afternoon and painstakingly sit us down, one by one according to our marks. I adored her, she wore trousers when it was still taboo to do so and inspired the rebel in me, she genuinely seemed like she did not care what others thought, and the endless questioning of society in me, reveled in her spirit. And so I would walk up to the group I had been seated and announce, “This term ndinenge ndakanyarara, handidi zvekunetsana nevanhu.” This would last for all of three days where I would be in utter hell, miserable and enduring the great distress of trying to keep my mouth shut.

I do not know why I tortured myself, much like my laughter, it was and is who I am. Now? I look for the laughter, boisterous and robust, announcing itself before anyone can actually see the accompanying wide smile. I pray every day that it overshadows the dents and bruises. That it caresses the weary elements of my soul and my spirit and it brings me back to life. I wish I could meet 9-year-old me, I would tell her to talk, a LOT, to never suffocate her true self. I would tell her that she would find someone who loved her laughter, as much as she should have, albeit for the briefest of moments, most of all I would tell her to laugh, because there would come a time when laughter would become a currency she would actively have to look for.