Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 15
Goodnight, Freesia. Goodnight, wild geese and frogs.
Mama Thandeka and Mabel.
Goodnight, Braham.
◊◊◊
It’s night time. But the sleep has fled from my old woman’s body. I ask Nkosi: Banjani abantwana? How are the children?
My half-blind eyes find a crack in the curtains so I can search for a star in the dark sky. A star that says his name is Abel. When I close my eyes, I see thousands of stars, like on the nights when Samuel and I used to cook our evening meal in the three-legged pot at the outside fire. Then we would talk about my people and about his people. About how we ended up on Umbrella Tree Farm, so far away from our people. And how it happened that we never went back to see how our people were getting on.
‘It’s probably because we live here in peace. And you know you could never leave little Abel; he’s your adopted child, Thandeka.’
We sang to each other while the yellow moon came up over the mountain. I sang the big song of my people. Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika; Maluphakanyisw’ uphondo lwayo; Yizwa imithandazo yethu; Nkosi sikelela … Then he’d say it was beautiful but he couldn’t understand what I was singing. I’d tell him that our big song asked the Lord to hear our prayer and bless our land, and to help end the war and the struggle.
Samuel sang the big song of his people and the white people. Ringing out from our blue heavens, From our deep seas breaking round … From our plains where creaking wagons cut their trail into the earth. Then I’d say although we didn’t have a creaking wagon we had two donkeys and a good strong donkey cart. We’d laugh and suck the juice out of the chicken’s wing bones. Samuel ate his rice with a spoon. I shaped the rice into balls and ate with my fingers. It didn’t matter that we came from different people. In our hearts we were the same. Then, when our stomachs were full and our eyelids grew heavy, Samuel put out the fire and we went to bed.
Although my heart is sore, it comforts me to know that Abel and Samuel are resting among the stars. And to know that Nkosi watches over them like a tata who watches over his star children. There are many star children I think about at night. I ask Nkosi: have their souls changed into dull stars or bright ones? Then I lie awake and wonder.
First of all about myself. Will my good side shine in heaven, or will my other side dim my light? When it’s that time of the month and Mabel is cranky, she tells me my star will be a dim one.
‘Because Mama lay with Abel.’
‘A long time ago, Mabel …’
‘But he still comes to our house anytime he likes and, Mama, you’re always giving him bush tea or hot crackling.’
‘It’s not for a woman he comes here, Mabel. He comes to sit and talk to me on days when he feels alone in the world.’
‘Let me go fetch kindling before I get cross because Mama has always got an excuse for him.’
Mabel has a clever tongue in her head. It’s true what they say, when a child goes to school, he’ll get somewhere. Samuel always said most of his Bonsmara money must be kept aside for Mabel’s education. Until she was in grade seven Abel or Johnnie drove her to Missus Margie’s school and back every day. But when she passed grade seven, I didn’t want her to go board in the township where she could get mixed up with Satan.
It was just around that time a vein burst in Missus Margie’s husband’s head. With her husband dead, Missus Margie had her hands full. Then she came to our house and said she needed a hand with the little children at the school and could Mabel come and help out. She would be an assistant, Missus Margie said, and she would be allowed to wear make-up on her face. Cutex too. And Missus Margie would buy five navy-blue outfits that all looked the same, and flat shoes for everyday wear so she would be stylish. Then the schoolchildren wouldn’t mess with her.
Two years later, in 1992, the white school in town said now they were taking in coloured children and they could even stay in the hostel. I knew there would be trouble. But Abel said he would pay for everything, Mabel had to go to school in town. And if after her final grade she wanted to study for a lawyer or a doctor, he would pay for that too. I was almost sixty, then, and my legs were getting weak. So Mabel said she would go to school up to grade eleven, then she would come back to Umbrella Tree Farm and take over the housework and look after me.
Missus Margie was a good teacher, so when Mabel went to the white school she wasn’t behind with anything. Needlework, school concerts, athletics, recitations … the only thing Missus Margie did wrong was to make the children talk the way she did. They weren’t allowed to say ‘zey’ or ‘tisha’ or ‘bleck’. They had to put their tongue between their teeth for ‘they’, talk in the front of their mouth for ‘teacher’ and open the back of their throat for ‘black’. In the afternoons Mabel stood under the pepper tree and she looked too comical where she was practising not to say ‘zey’ or ‘tisha’ or ‘bleck’.
It worried me, this different way of talking. A chicken doesn’t bray like a donkey; a donkey doesn’t cackle like a chicken. And if you are forced to bray when you are supposed to cackle, then after a while your sounds get all mixed up. So you no longer know if you’re a duck that hisses or a snake that quacks.
That sort of thing is bad for your thoughts, I should know, with a name like Thandeka Malgas. There are times when I’m not sure of what I think or what I know. I hear the sounds of my mama and tata. Of Samuel. Of Umbrella Tree Farm. Three different houses, all with different ways of talking and doing. And in my own house they are all mixed up together. Like the blood in Mabel’s veins, like two colours of paint someone has stirred together in one pot. I am scared that one day she won’t know what is her right way to talk or not. She must know who is white and who is black and who is coloured. It’s not that the one is better than the other, but they are not the same. And she must learn to have respect for people’s differences.
Anyway. So Missus Margie taught them to say ‘they’ and ‘teacher’ and ‘black’.
One Saturday, when Mabel was in grade three, I walked to the shop on Sweetwater to buy groceries. It was soon after Samuel’s passing and all the way there I felt a sadness about him. I thought about the Saturdays when I used to walk to the trading post for my mama’s food, walking fast so there would be more time for watching Samuel work the scales and make sums. I could hear him say: Thandeka, you’re the prettiest girl this side of the mountain.
At the shop I told Missus Margie there was something I wanted to talk about. I said I would wait until closing time, because I could see the shop was busy. I waited on the wooden bench outside the shop until she locked up. Then she came to sit down next to me. I told her what I wanted to say about the different way of talking.
‘Thandeka,’ she said, ‘it’s a question of a proper education.’
‘Lord, Missus Margie!’ I couldn’t help it, I took Nkosi’s name in vain. ‘Who are we to say which education is proper and which one is not?’
‘Thandeka, the world is changing and it’s my duty …’
‘And is the world changing to get better, Missus Margie?’
The two of us sat on that wooden bench until it was dark. We sat close together, because the evening breeze was chilly. We talked about the confusion inside people’s heads. Not only in our time, but in all the years since the earth was made. About Adam and Eve who lived in the Garden of Paradise but became sinners because that snake sold them a lie. Gone was the garden, and the peace with it. Godlessness was everywhere.
Missus Margie and I couldn’t find any of the answers.
In the end I took a packet of white sugar from my shopping and gave it to her, so there would be something sweet in her tea. Then she unlocked the shop and brought me a packet of brown sugar for my oats porridge.
‘Thank you, Thandeka,’ she said, ‘for teaching me something today.’
‘Thank you, Missus Margie,’ I said, ‘for giving Mabel the chance to get an education here on Sweetwater.’
She took me home in her truck. When we were halfway there I saw Miss Sarah driving towards us, coming to check what was keeping me so late.
At night when I ask Nkosi after the spirits of my people, from the place where I was an ntombi, I wonder why Mabel hates Abel so. He was good to her, like he was good to Gertruidah in many ways. Then I wonder if deep in her heart Mabel is angry because Abel never talked about her being his child. It is almost the same as being pushed away.
She always said when she comes of age she will change her name in the government’s books. Give herself a new name like Charlene or Cindy-Ann. Even Missy would be better than Mabel. Mabel was just Abel with an M in front of it. But she has kept her name to this day.
I could see Mabel was relieved to be back on Umbrella Tree Farm. She had a hard time under the white children, those four years at the school in town. Because there weren’t many coloured children at the school. I don’t feel any bitterness about it because I knew that was how it would be. You can’t graze in separate camps for years and suddenly one day walk peacefully in the same camp. A herd is a herd, and each one fights for its own. Why should the white children not fight for their herd?
Look at the way Samuel’s people and mine fought for our herds. How can we say that the right to fight belongs to us and no one else? On the radio and the television I hear people talk about the Rainbow Nation. As if you can grab colours out of the sky and push them together and say you have made a rainbow. A rainbow makes itself.
The real reason why the white children didn’t like Mabel was because she was always standing up for Gertruidah. Because Gertruidah was the one who was always pushed aside by her classmates. It just goes to show: Abel was a wealthy man and important people came here to play tennis, but the way she was pushed aside Gertruidah might as well have had a coloured skin. Then Mabel would slap them and call them names. Almost every day she got into trouble at the school or the hostel. Mabel could have been as white as the lily of the valley, it wouldn’t have made any difference.
But she takes good care of me.
Now every day when I sit and watch the sun rise and set over our house, I think: It is time for Mabel to take a husband, and for children to be born who will look after her when she is old.
I wanted her to become a nurse who goes out to farms with the clinic van. But the clinic van almost never comes round any more. There isn’t enough petrol or the medicine has run out. And there are so few of our people left in the valley. It’s just us old people who have stayed behind and we will die here. Even Missus Margie’s school had to close because the government said it couldn’t stay open with so few children in the valley. And on top of that Mabel doesn’t have a driver’s licence. Won’t get one either.
Gertruidah did try to teach her, in the little white car back when Missus Sarah and Abel went overseas together for a whole month. Mabel was already driving up and down between the yard gate and the causeway, but one day when they got to the gate instead of slowing down Mabel went faster. The little white car ploughed into Missus Sarah’s clivias, ran over the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow and stopped right inside the big-leaved dragon trees that grew beneath the cedar tree. Gertruidah nearly died laughing, but from that day onwards Mabel refused to get behind the wheel.
These days I keep wondering: what is going on inside the heart of my blue-eyed daughter?
Abel is my other child. Even though we have a child together, he has never been my husband. It is difficult to talk about that time, my tongue no longer wants to. But I can still see him and the way he looked when he was small: pretty as a girl. I carried him on my back and left his mattress against the wall at the pit lavatory to dry. For years I watched the old man smash every bone in his son’s body. Once someone has smashed your bones, you will always stay a cripple. I wonder if Nkosi puts your bones back together when you become a star person.
I wonder why Abel’s brothers didn’t come to bid his spirit farewell when he died. Maybe they were still choking on their anger over Abel becoming the owner of Umbrella Tree Farm. Abel always said his father paid to educate his brothers and bought them houses and cars out of his back pocket. He got the farm and nothing else. Then he worked like a dog on Umbrella Tree Farm until it made him a rich man.
Abel getting rich was what turned white brother against white brother.
Maybe they would have looked at their rich brother with different eyes if they had known how much of Missus Sarah’s money went into the farm. But she always said it was no one’s business besides mine that it was her money that was making Umbrella Tree Farm a beautiful place.
I must lie still tonight so the bed doesn’t squeak. Mabel is tired. From running all day long between the umbrella tree and our house and the honeysuckle hedge. Scared to leave Gertruidah alone.
She had no sooner chopped the head off the chicken when, before even plucking its feathers, she was gone to spy on the yard. When she came back her knees were shaking, because of what she had seen from behind the honeysuckle. Gertruidah tossing all the eggs in the basket against the dressing table that was lying at the bottom of the stairs. She thought Gertruidah had lost her mind. That was when she phoned Missus Margie on the cellphone and said there was an emergency on Umbrella Tree Farm.
It wasn’t long before the truck came racing up to the farm. Mabel, who was hiding behind the honeysuckle, said Gertruidah didn’t even unlock the chain for Missus Margie; she talked to her over the gate. But when I heard Missus Margie drive away, I felt easier. Because she wouldn’t have left if she had thought Gertruidah was losing her mind.
I wonder where Gertruidah is sleeping tonight. Mabel says she hasn’t gone to the stone house but her bed is lying upside down in the rosemary bush. Mabel says if Missus Sarah knew what her front garden looked like she would sit up in her grave and start digging her way out. Mabel helped plant that rosemary bush herself. That was when Missus Sarah taught her that rosemary meant remembrance and grace.
Maybe Missus Sarah was making up stories but from what she told Mabel the goodness of the rosemary bush goes back to biblical times. Because when the family of our dear Lord Jesus fled from Egypt, all the bushes along the way made a noise when the family brushed against them so their enemies could hear where they went. Only the rosemary bush was silent, so the Lord’s people could pass in safety.
Mabel says the garden on Umbrella Tree Farm isn’t just a garden for looking at. Missus Sarah planted everything with a message in her fingers. The Carolina rose says that love is dangerous. When it flowers, you must count your words. And if you plant sweet peas, it is because you know someone is leaving, perhaps even yourself.
The first sweet peas are flowering now, in this time of death. There are two white ones, Mabel says. Perhaps Missus Sarah had a feeling she would be leaving and taking Abel with her.
There were always sunflowers outside Abel’s office window, because they meant you pretended to be rich. And around the sunflowers, a border of African marigolds, to ward off dirty thoughts. I felt sad the day they planted the Virginia creeper and Mabel told me what it meant. ‘I cling to two people at once, throughout sunshine, throughout shade,’ Missus Sarah had said. Twice that night I struggled outside with my walking stick to pray for Missus Sarah. Because I felt deeply sorry for her.
Two people.
Abel. Gertruidah.
And somewhere there, Missus Sarah, with tears dripping into her hands. Quietly, like the evening breeze through the river reeds. Because how do you choose?
In the end you don’t choose.
Because you will end up on the wrong side, whichever one you choose.
I turn slowly onto my other side, so the bed doesn’t squeak. Pull the blanket over my head or I will be searching for stars all night. Then I will lie awake till morning and my joints will creak like dry kindling. And I won’t have the strength to pray for Gertruidah properly.
Friday, 29 August 2008
◊◊◊
Still wrapped in the blanket she slept under, she kneels at the sand cross. The river lies wrapped in its own blanket of fog. She has lost the words to pray, but gazing at the cross and the goose feathers is the same as praying. What must she pray for, when everything she’s asked for is finally hers?
Everything except Braham.
But though her hell has ended, she keeps searching for the way things might have been if she hadn’t looked over her shoulder at where she imagined Hermanus was when she was small. Or if, like Andrea, she had gone to the police and exposed the scandal. Refused to feel powerless any more. If she had simply left with nothing, to create a semblance of a life elsewhere. Or if she’d shot him in the veld and pretended it was an accident.
Why hadn’t she? What would have happened if she had? Perhaps. Imagine. What if …
If things hadn’t turned out the way they did for Andrea, her own path might have been different. But sometimes what happens to other people determines your own course.
Andrea. Fat, clumsy Andrea who tried to climb out of the well but kept sinking deeper. Andrea with three children whose fathers she couldn’t name. Andrea with the raw, bitten fingernails behind the cash register at the farmers’ co-op.
The squeaking ceiling fan in The Copper Kettle was helpless against the heat. A bothersome fly kept buzzing around her right hand. Why was it her hand the fly chose to stick to? Her right hand at that?
‘I was at the co-op earlier.’ She pushed the sugar bowl towards Braham. ‘Andrea’s looking terrible. I think she must be pregnant again. Imagine, just twenty-three with three children to care for. No wonder she looks worn out. I actually feel so sorry for her …’
‘So do I. But if I flip the coin, I don’t pity her at all.’
‘Braham!’ She was shocked. ‘How can anyone not feel pity for her?’
‘Andrea is a jellyfish, Gertruidah. She’s spineless and …’
‘How can you say that? She’d been to hell and back barefoot and she still found the courage to stand up for herself and expose the whole mess.’
