A Chess Mom Loose in Durban -- Part one

Sunrise over Indian Ocean from our hotel room window

6 a.m.
The wind blows a shrill alarm, parting our room's curtains to reveal a sunrise veiled in mist. I rise, my body light with no sense of waking. Slowly a mosaic forms in the sky, it appears magically as if from nowhere --  Sun, himself remains hidden. The sharp beaked birds who startled us yesterday with their newness spread batik patterned wings and dive into pools of spray to disappear. A lone man walks along the beach, nothing more than a couple of sticks. A seabird hawks my birth name, for a moment reminding me of my mother's voice -- and then she is carried away. The sea reaches out to me and then recedes. Yemejah -- why have we forsaken you?
***
"I sell dis necklish for 20 rand, but I give to you for 10 because I am hoongree," the squat fierce mama says as she holds up a pile of strung beads with patterns like the wings of the sharp beaked birds whose name we do not know. She punctuates the "hoongree" stretching the syllables so the word grows like a deep pain in the stomach that is impossible to ignore or forget. The woman's name is Zonke and the necklace looks like all the other cha-chas that the women sell in stalls along the beach. As Zonke draws it around Jochi's neck I know he will not wear it and I almost think we are saved from buying it when she cannot release the clasp. But then she and the mama in the next stall pull out more and more of the identical jewelry and every one of the clasps are stuck. Zonke's friend uses her teeth in desperation, but no matter how hard they try they cannot unclasp a single one. I say to Zonke: "she cannot even open it with her teeth," and Zonke answers: "Yes, I have no teet," as she smiles to reveal a neat row of squat brown teeth so I do not know what she means unless they are false?