Tjieng Tjang Tjerries and Other Stories

by Jolyn Phillips

  That evening Ouma invites the Father to come to our house to pray for me. The Father reads from the Bible and Sissie and I hum “Give me power my Lord” while Ouma prays.

  She is praying for guidance and for money for my eyes and can God please be with me and Sissie. The white man told the school that I needed glasses and Ouma does not have the money. She never asks me why I didn’t tell her about my eyes.

  Then one afternoon Ouma gets a letter. The white man got money from the government to get me glasses. Ouma and I go with the Father to Caledon to fetch the glasses. They are big thick glasses that looked like a kaleidoscope, too heavy for my face to carry. I look in the mirror. I look funny, but it doesn’t bother me. I can see. On our way home I read everything. The name of the car we are driving: Toyota Corolla. I read the road signs: Caledon R406. I giggle.

  ‘Why does Ouma’s child laugh?’

  ‘I didn’t know that Caledon cost R406, Ouma.’

  Ouma and Father laugh so hard.

  ‘No, my child,’ Father says. ‘The R406 is the name of the road.’

  ‘And look over there Ouma. Volstruise and cows and sheep!’

  The world looks so new and green. I look and look until my eyes start burning. I want everything to stay in my new glasses.

  I read: Dempers Street. That is our street’s name. I couldn’t read it before. I can’t wait to show Oupa and Sissie my new glasses.

  When we get home Oupa is sitting in front of the gallie blik with Sissie. I can’t wait to tell them what I saw. I jump out of the car and run to Sissie to show her my glasses. Sissie is laughing and pointing at my glasses.

  ‘You have Coke glasses!’ she points at me, laughing. ‘Coke glasses!’

  The colour of my glasses is brown and they have a golden chain so that they can hang around my neck. They are the most beautiful thing I have ever owned, but Sissie just laughs and laughs.

  ‘Gat weg hieso, you klein karnallie,’ scolds Oupa as she runs into the street. ‘You can run but if you come back slat ek jou gatvelle, blerrie hooligan!’

  Ouma says goodbye to Father. When she comes into the house she asks Oupa what is going on because by now I am crying.

  ‘That karnallie laughed at the child. Bloody fool!’ he shouts after Sissie. ‘Come here, Oupa’s child. She is just jealous.’ He puts his arms around me.

  When it gets dark Sissie has to come home and Ouma hits her with her church shoes. From our room, I can hear Ouma talk in breaths whilst she is hitting Sissie. ‘Jy moet ophou – ouw ouw ouw – you must stop – clap clap clap - jy moet ophou!’ Until Ouma finally runs out of breath.

  I hear Sisssie cry, ‘Hoeeeeee-hoeeeeee- haaaaaaa-haaaaaa.’

  ‘Stop crying or do you want a hiding again?’

  ‘No-no,’ she sniffs.

  She really does deserve it, but I end up crying from inside the room. I go to the bedroom where Sissie is snikking. Her legs are red and I put my cold hands thinking it will make it better. Crying hoeeeee hoeeeee with her.

  ‘Stop crying, you dommie!’ Sissie says.

  ‘I am sorry, Sissie.’

  ‘I am sorry too, Flooitjie. I think your glasses are really nice. You just looked really different.’

  As Sissie and I lie there, crying together, we hear Ouma and Oupa arguing.

  ‘I am not sending her to school.’

  ‘And why not, Aletta?’

  ‘Did you see that verdomde Sissie laughing at Lelie like that today? No, the children will laugh. I won’t allow it. And the neighbours…’

  ‘Stop fiddling with your fingers. Het jy nie geloof nie and fok die blinking neighbours, man. It’s not their business what goes on in this house. I might be a suipgat, but I still wear the pants in this house.’

  ‘The pants that you left at Marta’s house.’

  ‘Woman. Don’t start with that nonsense. You know she needs me as well.’

  ‘Those bastards. As my sonde my nie ontsien nie. If it wasn’t for my prayers to wash that vuilgoed she planted at our house. Jesus.’

  ‘I am leaving.’

  ‘Yes, go to your meid!’

  Ouma woke us up at seven. She told Sissie and me to hurry up and wash, she wanted to talk to us before breakfast. On Sundays, we have pokkenpo pap or krummeltjie pap for breakfast. But because it is a school day there are thick slices of baked bread with worsvet on it and coffee.

  At the table Ouma speaks to Sissie, ‘You look after Lelie, you hear me.’

  ‘Yes, Ouma.’

  Ouma fetches the Bible from next to her bed.

  ‘Do you promise the Lord?’

  Sissie has to put her hands on the Bible and Ouma looks happy again.

  On our way to school, Sissie says, ‘Look Lelie, I can’t look after you the whole day. I have cricket and rugby with the boys during breaks. But if they mess with you, you call me.’ Sissie makes two fists like a boxer, punching the air. ‘I’ll pot them,’ she says, ‘like Ouma did that Antie Marta.’

  When the bell rings, I push my glasses up a little. I don’t care that children might laugh at me and call me names. I know that I am going to be clever. I can prove Meester wrong and I know that I won’t get stroked with a kweper lat because now I can see. Being able to see after so many years of hiding that I couldn’t is the best part of me and I won’t let anyone ruin it.

  The Funeral Singer

  Ouma loves singing “Like a Bridge over Troubled Water”, but the thing she loves the most is just going to funerals. Ouma always says it is funny how people constantly die here in Blompark, but it is not like the people are getting any less. Because the young girls around here are popping out babies like rabbits.

  ‘God talks about this in the Bible somewhere in the last book. Children will have children. The earth will burn by itself and burn the sins, because water doesn’t seem to be able to wash sins, not even if Father Wiese can bless the water into holy water. Sodom and Gomorra, kintjie Sodom and Gomorra,’ she always says.

  Everyone respects Ouma. Everyone listens to her when she speaks and she is always welcomed at funerals like she is family. She sings and cries and greets people at the funeral. After the funeral, she helps the family in the kitchen, hands out curry and rice, doughnuts and chocolate cake, mos bolletjies and tea to all those that have come from far to attend the funeral. If there’s one thing Ouma hates it is funeral crashers and don’t think you can take a chance. She knows everyone. She needn’t say anything. She has the stink eye as people call it. ‘Daai vrou kan mens vrek kyk met daai oë van haar.’ People say that Ouma’s stink eye would even scare God if he came to the funeral uninvited.

  Of course, Ouma doesn’t know that people are saying these things about her. I have to help with serving tea and handing out cake to the people, and as I am passing by I hear these things. I never tell her. I also will never tell her what they said about me and my sister that day at Oom Road King’s funeral:

  ‘Oe siestog, that child needs new shoes. Where’s the father?’

  ‘Don’t you know? Their father is not Klora like us. You can mos think Kloras don’t have yellow hair like that. Ouma Ragel kan ma veniet sê she has German blood from her mother’s side. All her daughters are sleg, especially that one’s mother.’

  ‘Ja, my mother told me birth is no child’s play. In soes ‘n piesang, uit soos ‘n pynappel.’

  They laughed as if I was not there and I didn’t show that I knew that they were talking about me.

  One day Ouma takes my sister Leticia and me to choir practice. Ouma can play the piano and sometimes Oupa will tokkel on the guitar and Leticia and I will sing old Afrikaanse treffers like “Sproetjies”, “Jantjie kom Huistoe” and my favourite “Die Harlekyn”. I have a low husky voice and Leticia sounds like an angel and when we sing together it sounds like Ouma’s piano. Oupa says we sound like Florence Nightingale. She was a brave nurse that helped the sick and sang to them at night. She would sing so beautifully that those who suffered would die peacefully and those who wanted to live would regain
hope, or so Oupa told us.

  ‘n Riem onder die hart is djulle vir my,’ Oupa says whenever we sing together. And that’s why Ouma has decided we must go to the choir and sing for the Lord. We don’t want to go. Ouma says that we were called by the Lord to sing his message. She knows we are going to help Father Wiese save many souls in the church.

  ‘Well, are you ashamed of God? God says if you’re ashamed of his gifts he bestowed to you, he will deny you. Are you ashamed of God?’

  ‘No Ouma,’ we say together.

  ‘Right. Put on your Sunday school dresses and makes sure you put on your bobby socks. We might be poor, but we are not hooligans.’

  We walk behind Ouma like ducklings down the stofpad to the Saint Joseph’s Anglican Church with our sheet music under our arms.

  ‘Now don’t pay attention to Ousie Maria’s eye and if I catch you laughing at Johêna trek ek julle gatvelle vir julle af, do hear me?’

  ‘Yes Ouma,’ we say together.

  The other week Johênna asked if she could sing in front of the choir. She said that she felt the Lord. She grabbed Father Allies’ hand and placed it on her bosom. ‘Do you also feel it, Father? I want to sing for the Lord, praise his glory. Can I?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sounding like a frog. ‘You may sing.’

  He took his hand from her bosom and run-walked to the altar where the church choir was practicing funeral songs for future funerals, because you never know, as Ouma says.

  So after the welcoming, Father announced that Johêna wanted to sing something for the congregayson. Father speaks funny, but everyone thinks it is very fancy. After Johêna sang there was an uncomfortable silence, a few people clearing their throats, others making the church benches screech. By this time Father Allies had left. There was silence and then I couldn’t help keeping in my laugh, so I giggled, then a few of the other Sunday school children laughed and then everyone laughed, till they were crying from laughter.

  All this time Johêna was standing in front by the altar, her eyes big like gutties in her head, her face red. I didn’t mean to laugh, it was just so funny. She was supposed to sing “Die Liefde van Jesus is Wonderbaar”, but she sang the way her brother had taught her: “Die lieste van Jesus is bond gebrand…bond gebrand vir my.”

  Poor Johêna didn’t know that she was singing that the loins of Jesus are burned black and blue for her. ‘That is what that verduiwelde Tallies taught her to sing,’ Ouma explained when she spoke to Ousie Maria.

  ‘You should discipline that half-naaitjie of yours,’ Ousie Maria told Ouma about me.

  My grandmother told Maria, ‘Loop bars, loop skuit op die ys. Go in your glory.’

  Ouma says she can put up with a lot of things, but she can’t stand foolish people. They are from the devil. Ouma especially doesn’t like Maria because she is friends with Grandpa’s second wife, and to make things worse, Ouma and the second wife both live in the same street. He has one child with Ouma – our mother who we have never met – and three others with Antie Marta.

  There was a time when Oupa couldn’t stay away from Antie Marta and Ouma prayed and prayed and prayed until she decided to go to the Slim Mense in Bredasdorp. Sissie tells the story much better than me because I was too small at the time.

  ‘One day there goes Ouma with Father to Bredasdorp. When she comes back, she has a cross face,’ tells Sissie. ‘She started throwing salt in the house and she slept with the Bible open next to her. She also got herbs to drink to cleanse her.’

  Sissie says one morning Ouma gets up and cleans the house and throws salt around the house as always. She puts on her funeral clothes and grabs Sissie by the hand and up the street they go to Antie Marta’s house. Glup glup glup with her church shoes, black ones that shine. When they get to Antie Marta’s house, Ouma calls one of the bastards to come to the gate. She won’t set foot inside Antie Marta’s house or even her yard. ‘Where is your mother?’

  ‘Inside with Pappa.’

  Ouma’s face goes sour. ‘Ask your mother if it is possible for her to come and see me this afternoon at three.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. Ouma actually invited her enemy,’ Sissie tells me.

  Then they go down the street glup glup glup. At home, they make the living room nice and put out Ouma’s best china with the windmills. It is like the Mother’s Union is coming over for afternoon prayer.

  ‘So we wait for three o’clock,’ Sissie says. ‘Then from outside Antie Marta is calling, “Aletta!” Ouma sends me to the kitchen door to let her in.’

  Then Sissie is sent to look after me in our room, but she sings me to sleep and then stands behind the living room’s wall. She hears Ouma say, after a long time of silence, ‘Tell Danie to come home.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to come here,’ Antie Marta replies. Marta is much younger than Ouma. And Sissie says she sounded scared when she went on, ‘Look, I’ll leave. I don’t want trouble.’

  Sissie peers around the corner. Next thing Ouma grabs Antie Marta and starts praying the Our Father. Antie Marta screams like a whistle. Ouma reaches for Marta’s private parts. That’s what Sissie says. ‘Ouma pulled out all of her skaam hairs. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know Ouma was so strong.’

  ‘You crazy bitch! I’ll go to the police!’ Antie Marta screams.

  The Slim Mense had told Ouma that Marta’s power is in her skaam hairs and that is why Oupa Danie can’t come home because it makes him crazy.

  The neighbours all know what happened with Ouma and Marta. Because afterwards, Marta told and showed everyone who was brave enough to look. People were very shocked and started gossiping that there was something wrong with Ouma in the brain. I guess that is why no one except Father ever comes to our house. When Ouma gets sad she sits in front of the piano and plays the soft keys that feel like the music could go on forever. I know she plays for a lot of things, her hartseer.

  Today I decided to go and stand next to her. I don’t know how to say sorry, so I just ask, ‘Ouma will you teach me how to play like you?’

  Ouma’s smile is so forever-and-ever. I think that everything will turn out for the best soon enough.

  Hanna

  I remember the day Hanna got sick. She cried all day, ever since that morning when Ma had to go and fetch Hanna at the shop because she wanted a tjoklit and tjips.

  ‘No,’ Mamma had said, ‘there’s no more.’

  But Hanna didn’t believe her. While Ma and I were at the washing line she walked off to the shop and sat there crying like an owl for ‘tjokoloks’.

  ‘I want Gom!’ she screamed like a pig being slaughtered. ‘Gom buy sakkewa. Gom buy suckers now!’ Gom was what Hanna called my Uncle Jerome. She never said his name properly. He’s dead too, like Antie Lena, but I don’t think Hanna knew.

  I was the only one that understood Hanna’s special language. Sometimes she would tell me how people laughed at her. ‘Hulle lag in my in.’ They laugh into me.

  You couldn’t really cheer her up when she was sad. So when she cried we just let her. But she could be happy too. Sometimes she grabbed a broom and started singing. Then Ma would sing in soprano, I would chirp in with them and we would miela-miela-miela like a real choir. Then Hanna would laugh.

  Hanna had been staying with us since Antie Lena’s funeral. Before Hanna got sick, Ma had been struggling to keep Hanna happy so that she wouldn’t notice Antie Lena passed away. Antie Lena was the closest thing to Hanna. Oorle Antie Lena reckoned that Hanna thought that Antie Lena was her mother. Antie Lena was the spitting image of Ouma. But our money was drying up and Ma told Antie Nettie, our next door neighbour, she couldn’t afford all the luxuries for Hanna anymore.

  ‘Why don’t you call Charmaine, Daleen. Forget about your pride. I mean she has Hanna’s money.’

  ‘No, I can’t, Nettie. The Lord will provide.’

  ‘Ai, it’s so tragic, kuintjie. I wish you well.’

  Ma and Antie Charmaine had a fight at Antie Lena’s funeral. They did it in fro
nt of the grave, the flowers and all the people, even the Pastor. At first, they argued with their hands and tjie-tjie-tjied. Then Antie Charmaine said, ‘You owe me.’

  ‘Excuse me. Owe you?’ said Ma, her hands on her hips.

  ‘Yes. All those years my mother had to look after you. Or did you forget how your mother left you on our doorstep? If it wasn’t for my mother where would you be, huh?’

  ‘I would be here nonetheless, Charmaine. I am here by God’s grace and no one else’s. We are not kids anymore. You remember all those times I had to do your chores and those times you made me feel like a nothing. Well, those days are over!’

  ‘Well, Hanna is staying with you. It’s the least you can do for the family.’

  ‘For the family? For the family? Why don’t you tell the family how you sold your mother’s house from under her and how you gambled the money at the casino? Do you know how you broke your mother’s heart? She didn’t die of a heart attack. You killed her. Every day she prayed that you would become better. You don’t deserve her forgiveness. I will take Hanna, ma God slaap nie. The wheel will turn cousin. It will.’

  Ma was so calm when she spoke to Antie Charmaine. Antie Charmaine looked like someone threw flour in her face. She couldn’t say a word and her eyes were big in her head. Everyone was whispering and then Antie Charmaine walked with her black upstairs-shoes to her golden car and drove off. We hadn’t heard from her since and Ma refused to ask her for money.

  That morning, the morning Hanna got sick, there was nothing Ma could do to make Hanna leave that shop. In the end, she had to lie and say that Gom was looking for Hanna and if she didn’t come home Gom would take her to the Needle. That’s what Hanna thought was the name for the doctor. ‘Get up this instant, Hanna!’ I remember Ma shouting at Hanna.

  ‘A person would never think that Hanna was 56 years old already. She looks like a chubby child. Oh, and look, she is even talking her own little language,’ Nettie said, the day after the shop thing.

  ‘Yes,’ Ma replied, ‘she has been saying she wants a doll for a Christmas. Just ask her…’