The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena

by Elsa Joubert

  I liked it very much, said Poppie, to hear the children singing in the house.

  The juffrou came for more than a year. After a while many children attended. Every Sunday afternoon after the lesson, she gave the children some little gift, a sweet to suck or a text, or a Bible picture or paper and some drawing chalk. If the children couldn’t understand her, I helped her out and repeated the stories in Xhosa. She taught them English and Afrikaans songs.

  The juffrou and I, we sat on chairs and the children on the floor at our feet. The children were quick at catching the tunes. Even if they couldn’t understand the words, they loved the tunes. They loved to roll their arms as they sang the chorus: Running over. They shouted the words: Asa Lord loves me, asa heppie asa bie, my skaap is fula running ova. We always laughed at skaap, which means sheep instead of cup. The little ones used to jump up from excitement as they sang and stamped their feet, wanting to dance with the song. The juffrou was very fond of Thandi and of Weekend who joined the singing although he was only four years old.

  Stone started complaining. All week long I have to work, Sundays I need my sleep. This screaming in the kitchen gets on my nerves.

  You watch the clock when I go to church, Poppie hit back. I can scarcely talk to anyone on the road back, without you asking: Where have you been? To whom did you talk? Now that I have church meetings in my own house it’s not good either. I will not tell the juffrou she must stop coming.

  But the next Sunday afternoon while the juffrou was praying, Majola stormed into the house, dead drunk, and shouted at his children and took them by force and said: What is the white woman doing here with our children. Then Poppie knew: It is tata-ka-Bonsile who put him up to it.

  Can’t you do your own rotten work, she asked him, must you go behind my back and let another man do it?

  I never told her to stop coming, says Poppie, but after Christmas the juffrou went away on holiday, and then she got a job in another town and in the New Year nobody came to take her place.

  41

  Why are you so jealous of your brothers’ wives? mama asked Poppie.

  Poppie couldn’t take it that Rhoda wore long trousers the first time that buti Mosie brought her home.

  One doesn’t come to your in-law’s place in long trousers, mama.

  It’s the new way, Poppie.

  How would mama like a daughter who sits on my settee reading a book, in long trousers, while I have to do the cooking? She thinks she’s better than us, she looks down on buti Plank and buti Hoedjie. She told buti Mosie he is wasting his money when he helps his drunk brothers. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with them.

  Mosie is different from his brothers, said mama. She suits Mosie.

  Deep down in her heart mama is proudest of Mosie who is doing well at work, who sings in the church choir, and wears his St John’s uniform when he teaches first-aid.

  You have too much to say about your brothers, Poppie, she said. You must let them be.

  Poppie was jealous because Rhoda and her mother had more learning than any of them, more even than Mosie.

  This girl Rhoda doesn’t treat me like she ought to. She thinks she’s better than us. She doesn’t fit in with us, mama.

  But mama had worse troubles than Mosie’s Rhoda.

  Muis is at her tricks again, Poppie. She sells liquor, and she keeps company with other men. It comes of never having your own house but just renting a room. She has been how often to Groote Schuur hospital, but she can’t get heavy. Now she has no child, no house, that’s why she drinks.

  And when Hoedjie was drunk as well, he nearly beat her to death because of the other men she went with.

  And mama says I must let my brothers be, says Poppie. Then who will look after them? It’s always me that’s struggling with them. Now buti Plank is behind with his pass, now he’s run in, now buti Hoedjie is in gaol and it’s to me that they come for help. Right through the night it’s at my door that they knock, two o’clock, three o’clock, in the morning, then the skollies are at them and I must jump up to open the door to them. Mama doesn’t know how much trouble they give me, but I don’t complain. I’m thankful I can do it for them.

  But Muis is still going to get buti Hoedjie killed, said Poppie.

  Muis ran away from buti Hoedjie and went to stay with another man in Guguletu. Don’t go and search her out, buti, Poppie pleaded with him. She has left you for the other man, stay away from her.

  But she knew she pleaded in vain, because a drunkard listens to no one. I knew this was going to happen from the start, she thought. Saturday night late she heard a knock at her door and opened it. It was buti Hoedjie, covered in blood. He stumbled inside and threw himself on her sofa.

  Have you come from Muis? asked Poppie. She was frightened to see her buti in this state. He was pressing a rag against a deep wound in his head, his cheek was cleft open, his shirt had been torn and blood was streaming from his chest.

  Poppie fetched more cloths and tried to stop the bleeding. His lips were swollen, he could hardly talk, but he nodded his head. Yes, sisi.

  And it’s her man that hurt you so?

  Yes, sisi.

  Stone was working night-shift, ten o’clock at night, till six o’clock in the morning. She was alone at home.

  I’ll get dressed, buti, and fetch old Makhulu to stay with the children. But how will I get you to hospital, buti, I by myself? By now Mamdungwana had moved to their new house in Zwelitsha and nobody else nearby owned a car.

  I dunno, my sisi, said buti Hoedjie.

  Outside in the street it is quiet, bright moonlight, every house in its own pool of shadow and behind the houses, the bush.

  Tonight I’ll be killed, thought Poppie. And then she resigned herself to it: What else is there for me to do? If I have to be killed because I am trying to help buti Hoedjie, then it has to be so.

  She knocked at Makhulu’s door, the old woman threw a blanket around herself and came at once. In Poppie’s house they wound more cloths round buti Hoedjie’s head and pulled on a cap to keep the bandages in place. As he got up he spat out a mouthful of blood. They tried to keep him on his feet.

  Take him to Monk, said Makhulu, Monk is his friend. Then he can take over. If your sister is murdered tonight, it will be on your conscience, Hoedjie.

  The loss of blood had weakened Hoedjie. He had no more strength left. Poppie took his arm and slowly, step by step, led him down the street. She had to hold him so he didn’t fall down. Dogs barked, then it was quiet once more. Nothing moved in the white moonlit streets. As they walked Poppie did not look to left or right, she kept her eyes fixed on Hoedjie’s feet slowly shuffling step by step down the dirt road.

  Monk’s home was made of hessian and tin. When his dog started barking, Monk pushed open the door. Evelina his wife and their three children were sleeping on the mattress in the one-roomed hut. There was no place for Hoedjie inside. Monk held him and made him sit down on the ground, his back resting against the building. His head fell on to his chest. He is dying, Poppie thought.

  Monk went inside to put on his pants. Evelina came out too.

  Poppie undid the knot in her handkerchief and took out twenty cents. You must take him to Philippi, she said to Monk, let the police phone an ambulance.

  Is it the bloody bitch that’s done this? asked Monk. He knew Muis.

  He was looking for trouble, said Poppie. He wouldn’t listen to me. Monk supported buti Hoedjie and they started walking to Philippi.

  Have you now finished with Muis? she asked Hoedjie when he was well again.

  Yes, my little sister, you were right, said Hoedjie. That whore is poison to me.

  I hear she has gone to Umtata, said Poppie, with the man from Guguletu.

  It is better so, said Hoedjie. If she’d stayed here, I would try again to get her back from him.

  42

  It was all in my file, says Poppie, that I came to the Cape with my husband, that I had a work permit before ‘sixty. But he had not bee
n here for the required fifteen years, and that’s what caused the trouble. We had to keep going to the office. If he was working nights he came directly from Goodwood, and I came in from Nyanga and we met at the Native Affairs office at Observatory. Then we sat there till late in the afternoon, till he had to go back to work. Nothing was settled. We brought food, a loaf of bread, or a bottle of cold drink or a few bananas. Some days the big boss was not at work and so it was no use waiting, other days we saw him but he said: Now look, I’m not giving you a paper to have your pass extended, you must leave the Cape. One madam for whom I worked came herself to Observatory. I think she saw a Mr Stevens. I don’t know what they told her, but she said to me: It’s no use, Rachel, you’ll have to go, you’ll be given a nice new house with inside taps.

  If you had a baby, you put the child on your back. My babies were all breast fed. Some days you got helped fairly soon, other days you sat from early morning till two o’clock when the white people went to lunch. Those years there was a man called Mr Bayi who showed us bioscope pictures of the Transkei, to interest the people in going there.

  We didn’t talk much to one another, we were too worried, everybody was uncertain. Was he going to hear: No, I’m giving you no more extensions? You are very uneasy as you sit waiting there. Some days you are given a letter with a week, two weeks, sometimes an extension for a month, but you know very well it’s nothing permanent. Then you take the letter to the office in Nyanga and they stamp the month.

  For close on ten years I struggled to get my extensions to stay in the Cape, says Poppie.

  The same thing they said in Lamberts Bay, Mosie adds, the same thing they said here. The wife and children must go.

  When they told my sister to go to the tribal land, she said: But my husband, he’s working here, his children were born here, there is nothing for him on the land. So they said: He has his father on the land. But my sister said to them: That very same father is dependant on us, we send him money, how can we go and sit on his back? Now the Native Affairs sent a letter to the old man saying: Your child hasn’t permission to stay in the Cape, he has nowhere to go. As any parent would, he said: Let him come back to the land, there’s room enough here. When my sister got back to the office they told her: You have got a place to go to, you can go back to the land. By now she was very tired, tired of the going every day, from one office to the other.

  One day Mr Stevens threw my pass at me and said: What are you still doing here? You must leave the Cape, you don’t belong here.

  One day they sent for me and my husband, and then Mr Stevens took my house card on to which my rent was entered and he tore it into small pieces and threw the receipts at us and told my husband: Your wife should have left long ago. Then we turned back without saying a word.

  Old Jaarsveld looked out through the window and said to me: You’re going to Kaffirland, you’re going to eat gubu mealies. We just looked at him and walked away. I went to ask the social worker, Mrs Retief: What must we do now, our house card has been torn up? Then she went to speak to the office again and we were given a new card.

  Mrs Robson for whom Poppie charred, was dissatisfied. You stayed away the whole week, Rachel, she said.

  Every day for a whole week they had to go back to Standard House in Observatory. Mr Steyn, the man of much faith, told her: I’ll help you with the bus fare, Rachel.

  Her mama knew people who rented a room in the house across the way. The woman’s papers had been torn up in front of her and she had to return to the Ciskei.

  She wept bitterly, said mama. She wept for days to leave her husband.

  But Poppie said: If I have to leave, I’ll not weep like that. Does mama think this is Heaven that I’m being sent away from.

  43

  Rhoda was pregnant or unzima, as the Cape people say, and Mosie eloped with her in the Xhosa way. He met her in Rondebosch when she came from work, and took her home to mama’s house.

  The next morning he sent kinsmen to the girl’s parents to tell them: There is no need to look for the child, look our way. The child is with us. In two weeks’ time we will come back to you.

  The old men of the clan name collected lobola money to be able to give something in advance, and then returned to the girl’s people and said: How much money do you want for her? Damage money for the pregnancy and lobola combined.

  After they had paid up, she was makoti and had to wear a black doek and long dresses made of German print. Poppie sewed the dresses on her mama’s sewing machine.

  Even though she has no heart for it, if she wants her man, she has to do it, Poppie thought. She may be modern in her ways, but now she has to conform, because it is our belief. And how can she feel otherwise, because she’s a Xhosa, she’s not of mixed blood, she has been taught since childhood how to treat her in-laws.

  Mama and Poppie and Katie got together to choose an in-law name for Rhoda; they named her Nokhaya which means: Woman of our house. When she had borne the child, they were married in the vestry of the Methodist minister in Langa. According to custom they had to live in mama’s house, because Mosie had brought his ma a new daughter.

  Poppie was pregnant too.

  Mama, it’s my last child, she said. I have a foreboding.

  All her children were at school and learning well. Bonsile was in Standard Four, Nomvula Standard Two and Thandi in Standard One. Weekend had just started school. He was her cleverest child. Before he was three years old he said to her, look, mama, and he wiped the sand smooth and wrote a capital R with his finger.

  She suffered from high blood pressure. The doctor at the clinic said: Don’t skip a visit, come regularly. We want to keep an eye on you. Along with the high blood, she got headaches. She went every week to the clinic till they said: Now you must no longer come to the Peninsula clinic, you must go to Groote Schuur hospital.

  The office wanted to send her to the Ciskei to her parents-in-law. But she said to the man: I can’t go to my in-laws with five children. They were taken away from the first place where I visited them, to a trust village, now they don’t have big huts but small huts, and they live together with other people, how can I go there with five children?

  I will not go and stay with my parents-in-law, said Poppie. I’ll go away if you give me a house. From one house, to another house.

  We’ll let you know when we have a house for you, said Mr Stevens.

  He stamped her pass for another two weeks, then he looked down at her body, at the uncomfortable arms, the swollen face.

  When is the child due, he asked.

  I am past my time.

  He overwrites the two weeks’ extension: Changed to two months.

  It was the longest extension she had been given in the last five years.

  Then my husband was very dissatisfied. I told him I had now just had enough, I couldn’t take any more with this last child. The nine months I was pregnant, I spent all my time walking to the office and back from the office. So I told him, I couldn’t stand it any more. I must go away.

  It’s no use arguing with me, I said to my husband. I can’t go on like this, I can’t talk any more. I felt that if there was a life for me somewhere else, I would go and live there.

  The last Thursday at the clinic the white doctor examined me and said: You are past your time, you should have had the baby. Today I am not sending you home. Today we will induce the birth.

  I was content, because I was by this time very tired of trudging up and down the hill at the Groote Schuur hospital. They put me to bed and started working with me. The pains began. The doctors stayed with me and examined me off and on, and later that night they said: Now we cannot wait any longer, otherwise things will go badly with you. We are going to operate. My husband had for a long time asked for me to be sterilised so they said, now we will sterilise you at the same time. You should not have another baby. He brought forms for me to sign, and the doctor spoke to the nurse and they pushed me into the room where they operate. And from then on I knew nothing.


  It was a Caesarean baby, a girl.

  Sunday afternoon mama came to visit her.

  Muis is back, said mama. She had too hard a time in Umtata so she got on the train to come back. But she didn’t have a ticket, so the guard handed her over to the railway police at Bellville and the police brought her in the van to my house.

  And I suppose mama took her in, said Poppie bitterly.

  What else could I do?

  But she doesn’t belong to us any more, mama.

  If I didn’t pay for the ticket they would have taken her to gaol.

  And you forget that she nearly got buti Hoedjie killed. Mama knew the hard time I had with buti Hoedjie.

  Poppie felt ill, this way of having a baby was hard.

  I don’t want to see Muis, mama, she said. She’d better not come here.

  Poppie called the little girl Thembisa and her baptismal name was Beauty, but she called her by the pet name of Kindjie, which means little one.

  44

  With the new baby on her back, Poppie went to Native Affairs in Observatory.

  As she walked from the station, keeping to the pavement of the narrow street winding through the white suburb, it started to rain gently.

  Ahead of her she saw the big red building and the queues of people waiting. As they felt the rain, the queues started moving, people pushing to get under cover. The white window frames in the red brick building blurred in the rain, seeming to lose their outline. A nausea rose in her, she had difficulty in lifting her feet, in pushing on, she couldn’t force herself to go towards the red brick building, to the corridors where the people stood and waited, to the smell of wet human beings, the heavy stench of a child’s dirty nappy.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the small empty office with the big desk and the window raised, and the skinny white man sitting behind the desk, swallowing, gulping down his spittle as he looked at the paper put down in front of him, his white fingers with the short yellow hair on the backs twitching at the pencil while he read, already groping for the stamp lying ready at his side. The dates, carved on the ridges of the stamp, can be turned by a twist of his fingers without his having to give it a glance, he knows the feel of the dates, extension for one month, two months, three months, a year. Or nothing.