The curse, a poem by Rethabile Masilo - earndie
She decided to hoe the garden, though tired and only able to shuffle when she walks; that place, in front near her gate, is a shrine to beauty�a woman�s monument. A few minutes afterward she found a cat, buried between two flower gushes, its open mouth snarled with the tines of its teeth, eyes dangling outside near its face like grape nuts. In Lesotho we inter cats in yards of people we hate; it is said the owner of that garden dies when the cat rots, and its fur comes off in the hand, like the hair of a cancer patient. She called Ntate Mosia, her gardener. A man of The Word, he poured prayer and incantation on the beast, before lifting it out of its grave and holding it up by the tail. They filled its grave with mulch and sand then went inside to wash and scrub their hands with caustic soda, and more prayer, never wondering how that cat might have died, but heartened by the knowledge that there would be no new deaths. Its killer had loved it enough to believ...
