The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena

by Elsa Joubert

  He opened the parcels, the suitcases, and showed them the clothes he had bought for them. It was only the shoes that didn’t fit. Poppie had sent him the sizes, but these had not been right.

  Bonsile took off his long pants, put on his old clothes and worked with his father in the garden. The other children had been around him during the afternoon, trying to help. But she could see, not long after bending and hoeing he would straighten up, tired. Then he would look at Bonsile, at his muscular legs filling his short khaki pants, the thick arms and the thongs of muscles under his skipper. The boy has become a man, he thought.

  That evening when they had eaten, tata-ka-Bonsile said: Bonsile must come along with me to the land. Poppie lifted her head at table where she was busy stacking the plates.

  Go to the land with you? she asked.

  This is a big thing that I must do, he said. My tata let me know that he is waiting for me; he is old now, he must do it before he dies. We must fetch back my brothers who have passed by, they are waiting for us.

  Poppie could remember that her mama after ouma Hannie’s death in Lamberts Bay had asked the men of the clan-name to come, and they had bought an ox and made a makeshift kraal of planks and thorn-tree branches in the yard at the back of the house. She and her stepsisters had helped mama make beer. They’d baked bread and cooked samp mealies and made the sour magou drink with yeast and cornmeal and water, and the men had slaughtered the ox.

  Meisie had asked her: Why are they doing it? It costs money and you are a church-goer. It is a heathenish thing . that you are doing.

  There are equally heathenish things that you do in your Roman Catholic Church, she’d told Meisie. We do it to bring back somebody in the family who has died. This is our belief and our custom. We have a word that all those present must say: Makabuye. You must come back. Then we feel we have done the work that we should do, and he that has died can come back and live with the people of the house. So if my grandmother feels that she has not said or done something before her death, she can return in our dreams and tell us what she wants done.

  Poppie didn’t argue when tata-ka-Bonsile had to spend money for an ox for his dead brothers. His father received a pension, and he had also put aside money. She knew that it was something that must be done.

  But this matter of Bonsile going along to the land, that was something new. The boy looked at her to see what she had to say about it.

  The old men of the clan will be there, tata-ka-Bonsile said. They will get up and tell the young men of the work they do. There will be lots to do for young men like Bonsile. They must watch that they may learn.

  Poppie was still standing at the table next to the basin and the dishes that she must wash.

  Let him go if he wishes, she said. If he thinks he is so clever that he can do without his schoolwork.

  They could hear from the tone of her voice what she was thinking. She wiped her soapy hands with the dishcloth. From the wiping of her hands, from the movement of her arms, the set of her shoulders they could see what she felt.

  Tata-ka-Bonsile was tired. He wanted to go to bed. We will talk tomorrow, he said.

  The girls slept in the living room, Fezi was with Bonsile. There was a sadness in her that this matter of Bonsile must rear itself between them on their first evening together. But he would be with them another two weeks. Things would be all right again.

  The next morning she told tata-ka-Bonsile: The teachers send letters every other month to the parents of every pupil about a meeting to be held at the school. And when we are there, they tell us why they have let us come. If there are children giving trouble, they will talk to the parents. Then they explain there must be co-operation between the parents and children. For that reason we must do nothing to cause the child being sent away from school for no reason whatsoever. The teachers themselves do the ritual during the weekend or only in the holiday time.

  She explained it nicely to tata-ka-Bonsile. If she talked gently to tata-ka-Bonsile then he listened to reason. But it distressed him that his son wouldn’t be able to do the ritual with him in the land.

  It is well like this, he said, then I will go alone.

  He stayed only two weeks on the land, and then he came back to East London to say goodbye to them. He spent a day at home with them and brought them mealies and two pumpkins from the grandmother.

  How was it there with your pa and your ma? asks Poppie.

  It was good.

  He looked in better health. His eyes were calmer but he was still thin.

  Mama is getting old, he said. It is difficult for her still to be carrying water and making fire.

  Poppie knew what would be coming next.

  She asks that one of my two daughters come to live with her.

  Is there going to be trouble between us again, Poppie thought, here at the last, when we must taste peace and happiness? Must she again battle for her children?

  Nomvula? she asked.

  Or Thandi. The grandmother does not mind. She only wants two strong arms and legs.

  If I submit, Poppie thought, it will have to be Nomvula. She felt an anxiety about Thandi, why she did not know.

  As she stood there pouring tea for tata-ka-Bonsile, she felt a weakness coming over her. It was the same weakness that she felt after the birth of her last child. Her hands holding the teapot had no strength, her eyes clouded over. She closed her eyes and bent her head, as if she were praying for strength.

  But I told my mama, she heard tata-ka-Bonsile’s voice coming as from a distance, that my children must first finish with their school. I am not going to have them experience the hardships of the land, not now. One of the girls living near them must help the old people.

  He is not going to have Nomvula or Thandi sent away, Poppie realised. She raised her head. The weakness drained from her. She poured the tea. The clear brown tea filled the cup. She also poured herself a cup. The cloud disappeared from her eyes.

  Her voice was quiet when she spoke. Is your mama having a difficult time with only the girl living next to them to help her carry water and make fire?

  It is my father’s sister’s grandchild. My father’s sister is still strong, she can let my mama have the child.

  Dadebawo Nozazi’s grandchild? she asked.

  Yes.

  And buti Spannerboy’s wife? asked Poppie.

  She thought of the fat Constance she had hidden in the corner of the room under the blankets during the time of the raids. She could help, couldn’t she?

  She lives in the next ilali, in the next village. She can help too, tata-ka-Bonsile said.

  My tata was sorry not to have seen his grandchild, was the only reproach that she heard him making about Bonsile, but he says we must promise that he comes to the land when he is of the age to do the bush ritual.

  That is well, said Poppie. And she was glad she could promise something because the matter of the girls had been cleared up and taken away from her.

  52

  On a Saturday afternoon Poppie put on her Sunday clothes to go to the funeral of a schoolteacher. It was a year since she had seen tata-ka-Bonsile. She knew people by now. She had sat with the corpse the previous night.

  Leaving the house she met two men at the gate who greeted her.

  Molo, Nkosikazi.

  Molweni, Poppie said. Where are you going?

  We came to the number of your house, they said.

  For what have you come here?

  Something has gone wrong at our place and the spoor leads to your house. There’s trouble with our daughter.

  Then she knew what they meant. But she kept her peace.

  I am sorry, she said. I am on my way to the funeral, you must come next week.

  They also knew the teacher, Miss Xiniwe. One of the men said: That auntie was my teacher too, in Sub A, so we’ll come another day.

  After the funeral she went to buti Monday, who was of her clan, to tell him: There’s trouble, brother-in-law. You must be my spokesman. Bring buti
Blaauw with you and come talk to Bonsile and ask him what he knows of this business.

  The Blaauwens from Beaufort West stayed close to buti Monday, they were people who, like them, spoke Afrikaans and those that spoke Afrikaans stood by one another in this new place.

  On Sunday they came and sat in the living room and said: We are here to speak to Bonsile. Poppie went to the kitchen and busied herself there. After talking to Bonsile, the men allowed him to leave and called Poppie.

  He was honest, buti Monday said. He takes responsibility.

  The girl’s kinsmen must come again next Sunday, so we can discuss it with them, me and old Blaauw.

  Poppie wrote to tata-ka-Bonsile. Men came to the house, and I asked my stepfather’s clansmen to speak for me.

  The next week she wrote: They ask damage money, as much as you can send. The girl is an orphan child. She goes to school with Bonsile, she is in Standard Eight in the same class with him. The people asking the money say they reared her and now she’s pregnant.

  Poppie asked Nomvula and Thandi: Do you know the girl?

  Her name is Xoliswe, says Nomvula. I see her at school, but I don’t know her. She’s not of our kind, mama, but she’s clever, she has much learning.

  Poppie never spoke to Bonsile about the girl, or the baby she was carrying; it was not their custom.

  Tata-ka-Bonsile sent forty rand and she gave it to buti Monday who took it to the girl’s people.

  53

  At this time a great loneliness and longing again entered Poppie’s heart. She felt: I am far from my kinsfolk. I must care for my children, but I am a woman alone. What will become of us?

  If some time passed without bringing a letter from the Cape, she felt heartsore and filled with resentment. If the letters came from her stepsisters or from Jakkie or from mama or Mosie, the heartsore deepened. They have made a life without me.

  Some days the homesickness was like a pain in the pit of her stomach. She would come out of the shop and see the silhouette of a man, see a certain movement of his body and think it’s buti Plank. Another time she mistook someone else for buti Hoedjie. Hearing the men’s voices in church, it seemed to be buti Hoedjie singing. She closed her eyes and said to herself: It’s buti Hoedjie I hear, then for a few moments the longing was stilled. Till she opened her eyes again.

  The church was her comfort.

  Nomvula was grown up, she was sixteen a ripe body. She loved to put on her best frock and go to church with her ma. The little ones also liked to go. It was only Thandi who always put forth excuses, her shoes were wrong, the dress was not good enough. She had to beat Thandi to get her to church.

  This was the age people came under the influence of the amafufunyana spirits, says Poppie. They entered your body and dwelt in your belly. At parties they took hold of you, especially if you were a young married woman or young girl, and made you leave your body so that they could speak from your belly. It was an evil thing if it took hold of your child, it forced her to leave school, and put an end to her learning. It was quite different to the work of the witchdoctors.

  That was why I beat Thandi to get her to church. If I see you at one of those parties, I’ll kill you, I told Thandi. It is the spirit of the devil that goes into the people, the seven demons the Bible tells us about.

  One day, I touched at sisi Bettie’s house on the way back from church. Thandi and Nomvula were with me. A girl was sitting on a chair, and she started passing wind and jerking her head this way and that.

  What’s the matter with the child, I wondered.

  Sisi Bettie got up and threw a piece of white material – it looked like a lace curtain – over the child’s head and drew the curtains of the room. Ja, I thought, this surely is amafufunyana. I was glad for Thandi to see it, because I knew it was all put on, it was the girl herself speaking in the hoarse voice.

  Sisi Bettie stood by saying: Yebo, which is the Zulu word for that’s right. And then the girl called the other girl, Mbuiswa, who had joined us, and told her her fortune.

  Ja, but wait till she tries to tell our fortunes, I thought, because us she doesn’t know. That will prove if amafufunyana means something. But she sat jerking around in the chair, farting all the time, the lace curtain covering her face, and never a word she said concerning me or my children.

  I told Thandi: Now, can you see it’s all nonsense? She wanted to impress us, but she only tells fortunes of people she knows. There she sits lolling around, rolling a zol (which is a dagga cigarette) and she’s half drunk and the amafufunyana is all rubbish. You stay away from those parties, do you hear? You come to church with me like a Christian person. Even the witchdoctor parties are preferable, because the doctor people sing and dance and clap their hands and it’s something quite different.

  Since Poppie had had to pay the big sum of damage money for Bonsile, she could force him to come to church with her as well.

  I’ll lock the house, she’d say. If you go your own way, you can sleep outside tonight. And tomorrow as well.

  He was keen on his school, and scared his mother would lock away his books and school clothes as well, so he went to church with her. But the heaviness of spirit did not leave her. It overshadowed every day. She knew it had to do with Bonsile, not the girl whom she had never seen, but Bonsile himself. Dreams plagued her. As a child she had dreamed a lot. Poppie was born with a caul, mama had told ouma Hannie, we must attend to her dreams. But since the birth of her children, she had stopped dreaming.

  Now she had a dream which stayed with her for weeks. She dreamed she was alone in a room and a thin, darkskinned woman entered. She knew the woman, but could not place her. She was laughing at Poppie, mocking her and said: Your son Bonsile will never be an heir. And when Poppie wished to ask: Who are you? she faded away and disappeared. When she woke, she tried to place the woman, because it was not a stranger to her, but she could not. She only knew: Bonsile was mentioned by name, and the woman mocked me.

  For weeks Poppie watched Bonsile leaving the house and returning. She lay awake at night waiting for him to come in. Christmas and New Year passed, having no meaning for her. Only in the church did she find comfort. She spent nights singing, she would come home from church in the early morning, with hoarse voice and inflamed eyes, to throw herself on the bed and sleep, leaving the cooking and housework to the girls.

  Bonsile will never be an heir. Was it a warning? Was it a punishment because she refused to send her daughters to the parents-in-law on the land, because she rent asunder the family who received her as a daughter? Or did it go back further? If she had let Bonsile stay in Cape Town, would all this have happened?

  Once more tata-ka-Bonsile sent damage money. Because of the second lot of damage money tata-ka-Bonsile could send less for themselves, and nothing extra for Christmas.

  She told the girls: There is none left for Christmas clothes.

  At night she went to bed with fear in her heart, in the mornings she searched the night for the face of the woman, but never again did she appear to her.

  Then I got sick, says Poppie, and went to the Frere hospital in East London. The doctor examined me but said: Nothing is the matter with you. Every day I felt my strength growing less. I could not swallow my food. I went back again and the woman doctor told me: Stand in front of the mirror and see if it’s a sick person looking back at you.

  She gave me pills for my nerves and said I mustn’t worry so much.

  Emily advised her: Get a job, Poppie. It will take your mind off the children, and you’ll worry less about money because you will be earning.

  School fees took much money, the children at high school paid more than thirty rand each, and at the lower primary and higher primary schools they paid from five up to fifteen rand.

  Bring Kindjie to me, said Emily.

  Poppie was more used to the place by now, and thought: With the white people of East London I’ll get on too.

  You won’t get on with them, someone else told her. The Cape people don’t
get used to the jobs here. The money is less, eighteen rand for a sleep-in job, less if you sleep out. If you want to earn more than twenty rand, you must work in the garden, and wash the motor car, like a man. And the white people treat black people differently here. The Cape people can’t stand it.

  I’ll give it a try, said Poppie.

  Have you got papers? asked Emily. She showed her Cape Town pass book to Emily. It was dirty and torn.

  You must get snapped for a new book, said Emily.

  I’ll get snapped on Monday, when the Lower Primary school starts, I’ll wait till the younger children are at school, then I’ll get my papers fixed.

  Sunday morning after church, a child from NU 3 brought Poppie a note.

  Poppie opened it and read: Dear Friend, it goes well with me, I hope it goes well with you. I want to let you know that Xoliswe’s pains have started and we took her to Frere hospital, from Mrs Mabi.

  Poppie showed the letter to Bonsile when he came in late that night. He was embarrassed and said nothing. Did you know about it? she asked. No, said Bonsile. Well, she’s gone to hospital. Now we have to wait and see.

  In a week’s time Bonsile would be going back to school to study for Standard Nine. In a week’s time Xoliswe would also have gone back to school.

  That’s why the damage money was so high, Poppie thought, and she, too, regretted that the child would not be able to go. The people who reared her, said: It’s a child with learning that was spoiled. Poppie found it hard that her son was the cause.

  54

  Monday morning I went to the small office at the gate they call Igati, says Poppie, and they asked where I had worked before and wrote it down and gave me a stamp to take to the big office in East London.

  When I got back my feet were tired and I felt like a cup of tea, I took bread from the sideboard to cut myself a slice. I sat at the table eating, when I saw the postman coming through the garden gate. It gave me a fright because my husband had written the former Friday and sent money by telegram and I fetched the money on Saturday. He can’t be sending money again, I thought. What on earth is this telegram about?