The House Of The Ancestors

Mokopane Jeffrey Mothiba

Sunday the 13th, my father came back home distraught. His punter friend was found dead in his bed this morning. On Saturday the 12th, his friend won big in horse racing. I mean thousands and thousands of rands. It was a lot of money. The cost of a loaf of bread was thirty cents. So, he had money to buy lots and lots of loaves of bread. The money he had won that day was a lot, it was in the thousands even million because my father said that his won a jackpot and then a pick six. By the time he left the betting station, he had two bags full of paper money. He was filthy rich. But on Sunday the 13th, they found him dead in his bed in his money. My father said that his last action was that of smiling. The police said that there was no sign of forced entry. My father said that it did not make sense that a person who had just won big would succumb death, just die, just die smiling. He said maybe he got too excited and got a heart attack. My father said maybe his ancestors had come to take him home. He said that would be the only plausible explanation. He said that when a person dies, his ancestor come to take him somewhere, now that his friend died sleeping in the money, his ancestors must have come and taken it with him when you are. But the money was there with his dead body. The ancestors took him and the money, but the money was there with his dead body smiling. My father said that a person cannot just die smiling unless they knew. You do not just die when you are in the money. He said his friend grew up poor and whenever they were busy betting on horses, he would say that his ancestors will give him one big break and that one big break happened on the Saturday the 12th and on Sunday the 13th he woke up dead. My father said that they must have fought (his friend and his ancestors) on how the money was going to be spent going forward. Maybe his ancestors wanted him to be poor for the rest of his life and when they saw that his life was going to change for the better, they got angry and killed him in his sleep.

My mother said that maybe his ancestors had had a debt to pay on the other side, maybe they needed the money to bribe the angels or the demons to open the gates of heaven or hell respectively. She told my my father to stop horse betting because sooner or later, he was going to strike it rich like his friend Biza and his ancestors would come to take him home, to the other side.

My father said that he would resist any attempt from his ancestors to take him because he wanted to spend lots of time with his beautiful wife and kids.

My mother said Biza must have fought and maybe his ancestors were just too powerful, and they overpowered him and when he realized that he was powerless, he smiled to spite them. He was rich in his final few hours of life. He defeated his ancestors who wanted him to be poor all the time. He took his money with him to the other side to brag to them and say, “I am rich despite you”. ‘Talk about showing the ancestors the middle finger’

My father would buy those booklets with the names and statistics of all the horses which were going to be competing on Saturday in different races. You would have race one to race nine. So, he would study their stats so that he would make an informed decisions as to which horses he would put his hard-earned cash on. He would teach me every now and then up until I mastered the art. So, whenever he was working on Saturday, he would send me to bet for him.

Two months after the burial of his friend, my father started to have visions. The people in his dreams were telling him to take all his money and bet on horse eleven, race seven. The dream started on morning. Tuesday the same dream. Wednesday the same dream and on Saturday when he woke up, he told me about the dream ‘horse number eleven race seven’. He went to the bank, took all his life savings and went to the betting station.

My father took his life savings and put it on horse number eleven race seven. I mean all his money. In race seven, they were contesting five rounds, that is 2000 mitres. The horse that he betted on, had no chance in hell of winning the race, but my father listened to the voices in his sleep. So, the race started, horse number eleven led the race, round number two it continued to lead the race. It even led the race in the last round up until the last ten mitres when the horse suddenly stopped running. The horse started to move backwards grinning uncontrollably. The jockey was beating the horse so that it would move forward but he failed. The other horses moved past it. My father lost his battings.

My father came back home distraught, he said his ancestors wanted him to lose his life savings. He said that his ancestors conspired with the horse, that was the reason the horse did strange things.

My mother said that the horse did not want to make my father rich.

I told my father that the horse did not want to get him killed.

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