Gogo cooked in colours. Sunday lunch was a law: rice yellow with turmeric, beetroot bleeding into everything, orange butternut, green beans, a red tomato smoor, brown meat falling off the bone, and the white of pap set apart like a full moon. Seven colours, she said, so that even a poor plate is rich to look at. We were never poor on Sundays.
I was the one who stirred while she talked. She told the same stories until they wore smooth — the train to Park Station, the pass she once burned, the man who became my grandfather because he could whistle. Her hands moved without her watching them. Mine watched everything, and still I did not learn.
When she died in the winter, the aunties came with foil trays and grief that smelled of Sunlight soap. They cooked. It was correct food, seven colours, and it tasted of nothing I knew.
Last Sunday I tried alone. I laid the pots out, I remembered the turmeric, I let the beetroot stain my fingers the way hers were always stained. I counted the colours onto the plate. Yellow, red, orange, green, brown, white. I stood in the steam and counted again. Six.
I could not find the seventh. I checked the fridge, the cupboard, the list in my head. Everything was there. I sat down at the table where four generations had eaten and understood that the seventh colour had never been on the plate. It was her, moving behind me, saying pass me that spoon, wena, before the food gets cold.
I ate my six colours slowly. Outside, a neighbour's radio played the hymns. I left the last forkful, the way you leave a little for the one who fed you, and I told the empty chair the story of the man who could whistle. My hands, stirring the cooling rice, moved without me watching them.