by Niq Mhlongo
“Who is your mother?” asked Bonolo.
“Phemelo Noga. She is from Senaoane and did her high school at Sekano-Ntoane.”
Bonolo shook her head. “I never heard of her.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Yes, she lives in Protea Glen. She is a nurse at Helen Joseph Hospital.”
“Maybe it would be better if we invited her over to our family house in Diepkloof soon,” said Khutso. “She may shed light on this business. You know how we men are. You may find out that our brother had a daughter that he didn’t tell us about.”
He looked at me. “We’re really sorry, Naledi. Our brother died without introducing you or mentioning your name to the family. We think it would be a great idea if you came with your mother in a few days’ time. Let us know when you two can come.”
“I will. Did you ever live in Tladi?” I asked.
“No. Our family has always lived in Zone Two, Diepkloof. My brother studied at Orlando High School. He was working as a ticket examiner for the South African Railways when he died. He was hit by a car in the morning on his way to work. He died there by the Orlando Stadium in 1993.”
“Oh, I see.” I was silent for a while, then asked: “Do you have family in Lesotho?”
“Not at all. Actually, our dad grew up near Mafikeng in North West, but we only go there if there is a funeral or a wedding. My brother had a wife who has since remarried. We think she is the one who did all these gravestone renovations without telling us. We have not been in touch with her since there was a fight over his money and house when he died. She finally –”
“We’ll talk about that later, when Naledi visits us,” said Bonolo, and she sounded unhappy that her brother was divulging their family secrets to a stranger.
My heart fell into the pit of my stomach. I realised that your version of events didn’t match up with the reality I was trying to unearth. There was an aching sense of discontent in my soul. I felt that things were falling apart and I wanted to leave. I took Khutso’s contact details, and he took mine. I promised to call him soon. My anguish became a physical pain in my head. I had to drive straight to you. How could you, my own mother, point out a random grave as my father’s? I thought you were my only companion, the only one I could trust and talk to when my so-called husband abused me with his words. How could you betray me like that? What must I tell Mokete? Was this the end of my marriage? These were the thoughts that gnawed at me as I opened your door that day.
You finally sat down with me and shared ghastly things about my real father. You were not looking at me when you told me the story. Yet I could see your eyes going red and imagined the pain that suddenly stabbed at your heart.
“Like most girls who have their babies when they are still green, I also dreamt of love and adventure. But my life was ruined and emptied by that trash bastard.”
I listened while the words sank into my consciousness. I was a child of rape, no doubt about it. This sudden realisation sent a pain to my heart, a pain of anguish. That explained your rage when I asked about my father as I was growing up. I watched you wince involuntarily. I was sure our conversation was bringing to the surface your memory of being cruelly held down by a rapist.
“I dream of him all the time. I’m haunted by that brutal force he exerted on me as he tried to force our bodies together. I have these scary nightmares of him tightening his hold even though I strain to get away. The bastard! He even told me that the way I wrinkled my nose, and the way my body resisted, made him like it more. I have lived in perpetual fear of what people know about me. I knew that this would one day come into the open, but I never thought it would be today.”
When you confided in me, I felt the glowing ember of revenge that was burning in my breast. My veins stood out as if from the effects of a violent poison. I had thought that by refusing to tell me the truth you were deliberately defrauding me. But it was clear that talking about and reliving those memories pained you greatly. That is why you had kept them suppressed for as long as possible.
“I’m going to face that piece of shit,” I remember promising you that day.
“Don’t bother, my beautiful daughter. Men are inferior creatures anyway. They are trash. That’s why God has deliberately not given them a womb. It would have been a huge responsibility for God to have given such a beautiful gift to inferior creatures like men. God came through a woman, remember that. Mary was fourteen years old when she gave birth to Jesus, our God. God is the spirit. You must keep on worshipping in spirit and truth. God regrets having made men because they are easily tempted by evil.”
“That’s the reason I want an explanation from him,” I insisted.
“Naledi, you’re my beautiful daughter. You must know that a mother bears a child with love, irrespective of how she fell pregnant. My parents kicked me out of their home once my belly started showing. I gave birth to you in pain, loneliness and agony. I remember praying to die every day. But you, my daughter, became a symbol of love in the face of agony.”
Stubborn as I am, I still insisted on meeting that bastard called my father. You agreed, with a trace of disappointment in your voice, as you gave me that Senaoane address. You should have seen how pathetic he looked when I talked to him. His face lacked the shape that hope normally sculpts in a person. I sat close to him. He had a sprinkling of grey hair on his balding head. Maybe this is a token of the accumulated wisdom of years in jail, I thought. When he drew his legs closer together, his knees pointed sharply through his old trousers. There was a sudden gleam in his eyes, as if he remembered something.
“You have my eyes,” he said.
As if regretting what he had just said, his look went cold. He turned away with a funny smile.
“How is your mother?”
I twisted my face into a snarl of pain and fear when he said that. I knew there was not much curiosity in the way he asked. It was just a formality to put us both at ease. But I told him about the extremes of misery that you suffered and still endure. I could sense his burden of guilt and self-disgust. I saw a tear fall, lost in the glass of water that he was holding in his shaky left hand. He was looking down, as if his mind was working slowly. I thought he was trying to sort out the chaotic imagery stacked in his memory and the bare shreds of truth.
“My child, the truth burns like fire,” he said to me. “Especially when you find out that what you have been looking for all along was right in front of your face. I was here all along. I came back from jail about eleven years ago. I fully understand why your mother deliberately avoided introducing us all these years. I was not a pleasant person, because of the terrible things I did in the past, especially to your mother.”
“But why did you do it?”
I’m sure he could feel my contempt.
“I would be lying if I said I know. I’m sorry to you and your mother. You know, sometimes life takes hold of a person, carries the heaviness of the body along for years, and accomplishes one’s history. My child, I regret everything about my past.”
I didn’t like being called “my child”, especially after what he did to you. As he talked, I recalled everything you went through. I remembered how you described the blow that sent you to the ground, and how you thought of killing yourself afterwards. You told me that people who commit suicide simply have no patience with life. You said I must not finish myself if things do not go my way with Mokete, and I respect that.
“In jail, I was confined within four walls for over fifteen years,” he said. “Time doesn’t move in there. The fact that I was once a feared person had wilted and fallen away on the very first day. I have learnt my lessons.”
I didn’t know whether to hate him or give him credit for opening up to me. It was clear that he was unbearably lonely and desperately unhappy. But all that I could think of was what you told me. You said you fought with everything in you, but in the end could not escape his penis forced between your thighs.
When I looked at him again, our eyes met. He car
ried an aura that marked him out as one of those unspeakable breeds.
“They called me Ma-English then, but now I’m back to my real name, Mxolisi Zondi.”
I saw a shadow of despair darkening his face. His eyes became glazed and searching. His Adam’s apple bulged as he forced the water from the glass down his throat. All I could do was shake my head. He had gone to a cruel and degrading place because of his past deeds. I understood that jail had broken his remaining decency and self-respect. His memories of that place were eating at his spirit like rust. I suddenly remembered your words about women being superior beings. You told me that women are given a superior responsibility by God to give birth and love to a child. Men’s stomachs, you said, are designed to carry useless things such as alcohol and shit.
The following day I received a call from Khutso. Mokete had already moved out of our Kibler Park house. He believed you and I were not taking his family request seriously, so he had to leave me. I didn’t have the guts to tell him that Solomon Teboho Tseu was not my father. We were not even related. Anyway, my relationship with Mokete was doomed. Maybe that’s the reason I agreed to meet Khutso at Southgate Nando’s. My fingers had forgotten what it was like to close on a friendship. I needed someone to talk to. I’m glad I met Khutso. My road to happiness was at last open. You were over the moon when I told you about him, but you still didn’t want to hear anything about my father. Or should I call him Mxolisi Zondi?
“He has no right to call you his daughter,” you said, tears rolling down your cheeks. Your nostrils dilated and contracted spasmodically as you spoke. “That trash Mxolisi Zondi’s function in your being was nothing more than ejaculation during rape.”
“Looking forward is the only thing you can control, Mama,” I said. “And sometimes things have to be talked over and over until it hardly makes any difference.”
You looked at me, your eyes half-closed and shining. You were not crying. You had pushed that shit deep down. Like fertiliser, you had grown strong from it. I knew you could switch on that memory anytime and run it in front of your eyes exactly as though it were a horror movie. But you once said to me that only those who forget survive, because if you try to forget the past you will remember the future and make the best out of it. Those were your words of wisdom. They helped me come to terms with this identity that no parent would wish on a child.
As I speak to you I’m at this Avalon address, 2016/877. It’s your permanent address. I came to tell you that Khutso and I got married about five months ago. We have a son called Itu, Itumeleng. With Khutso, my mind flies freely, like a bird in the sky.
I was thinking a lot about you lately. Because it is Mother’s Day, I came here to share a joke with you. Just yesterday, Khutso made me think of you when he said that Itu has his father’s eyes. I really don’t think our son has his father’s or mother’s eyes. I think he has his grandmother’s eyes – your eyes. As I’m talking to you now, they are singing along to Eric Clapton’s “My Father’s Eyes” in the car. Fufu is also singing along in her own way in the back seat. She calls Khutso her father.
You’ve told me that the human heart is the heaviest part of the body when broken, but the lightest when happy. Like you, I have not let the tragic circumstances of my birth define my life. I am at last happy.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT
Through the kitchen window, Ousie Maria eyed Bonaparte, the neighbours’ cat, with suspicion. The cat was sleeping quietly under the sneezewood tree, his head between his paws. Still, it reassured her to check on the evil thing every now and again while she was cleaning the sink. She was alone in the Phalas’ house – her employers were at work and the children were still at school – so she kept the window closed. It was best to be on her guard against that animal.
When she looked up again, the cat was awake and walking slowly towards the swimming pool.
Ousie Maria clenched the rag in her hands more tightly. The cat stood at the edge of the pool and looked at its reflection in the water. Its ears shot up, and its eyes were wide open. It sat down on the concrete edge, licked its paws and then its tail. As if feeling hot, it jumped up and stood on its hind legs. Then it lay flat on its fat belly on the concrete, its whiskers jerking now and then. The tail started to move about as it stared into the water. Ousie Maria backed away from the window, tiptoed to the kitchen door and locked it before returning to the sink. It was as if she could still feel the beast’s claws scratching her wrists and face when it had attacked her a few years ago. That day, she had been busy cleaning when Bonaparte entered the kids’ room and sprawled in a chair, as if it was his home. Ousie Maria had tried to use a broom to get him out. She had been standing at the door as she poked the resisting Bonaparte in the ribs. The cat had jumped up and scratched her. She had to retreat. It seemed like forever before she finally managed to get him out of the house. She took the kids’ squeegee spray bottle, filled it with water and added vinegar. Then she squirted the cat from a distance. When her employers came home, they insisted on sending her to the clinic to have her wounds cleaned and disinfected.
As the cat sat bolt upright on the edge of the swimming pool, Ousie Maria was jerked back to the present. She watched the cat as it looked into the water, as if calculating its chances of swimming. It appeared tense and kept looking around. Then it started turning round and round as if possessed. It jumped high up and sideways. Once again it leaned over the water. In the kitchen, Ousie Maria was trembling. The third time the cat peered into the pool, it seemed to lose its balance and fell into the water. Instantly, it started to yowl and thrash around.
Ousie Maria gasped. What now? She was frozen to the spot.
High in the sky, a migrating bird began to sing cheerfully as if encouraging Bonaparte to climb out of the pool. Ousie Maria remained in the house, waiting for her employers or the kids to come back. A short while later, the cat’s struggles ended and all became still.
The first to come home were the children, Buhle and Mbuso, from St John’s College in Houghton. With the children by her side, Ousie Maria finally felt brave enough to go out to the pool to show them the dead cat. Bonaparte was floating with his mouth open. Fourteen-year-old Mbuso stood at the edge of the pool and stared. His sister, twelve-year-old Buhle, stood further away. She kept on closing her eyes with her fingers.
“What happened?” asked Mbuso, prodding the dead cat’s ribs with a stick.
“I have no idea,” said Ousie Maria, who stood next to Buhle. “The cat was fine and walking about along the pool. All of sudden it fell in and drowned, all by itself. It was acting strangely . . . Perhaps it was stung by a bee.”
“I must go tell Karen and Jan,” said Buhle. The kids from the neighbouring family went to the same school as Buhle and Mbuso and were probably also home by now.
Ousie Maria agreed that it was best that Karen and Jan Moerdyk hear the news from their playmates, but when they came over to the Phalas’ swimming pool, they looked devastated.
“Oh my God,” said Karen. “He just came from the vet two weeks ago.”
The Moerdyks gave Bonaparte a proper burial the following day. Auntie Nurse, their domestic worker, told Ousie Maria afterwards that Bonaparte was buried at about ten in the morning, and the children did not go to school. Some friends of Sandra, their mother, had arrived the previous day for a night vigil and more had come for the funeral. During the proceedings Sandra did most of the talking, and it was as if she had lost a human being.
“My friend Bonaparte, your death has carved deep furrows into my soul,” Sandra had said, closing her eyes. “Time and tears may repair the gap a little, but it will never completely heal. We mourn you, and will do so until our last breath.”
Bonaparte was put inside a small casket and buried at the corner of the garden near the sneezewood tree. The family, all dressed in black, stood silently next to the cat’s grave.
What madness, Ousie Maria thought, hearing Auntie Nurse recount the events of the funeral. So Jaco and Sandra Moerdyk d
idn’t go to work because they had to bury an animal? And why were the kids brought into this madness and kept out of school?
“Bonaparte, we have many happy memories of life with you, my friend. It’ll take time to be comforted in our loss,” said Jaco, as he spread soil over the grave. “I still remember when I first got the job at Sasol in Rosebank and drove from Cape Town to Johannesburg with you on Sandra’s lap next to me.”
Sandra chimed in: “Oh, my beloved friend! Remember that? You were still a baby; it was before Karen and Jan were even born. Every time we played Bob Dylan’s ‘Forever Young’ you nodded your little head as if you knew the song. I bought you a bottle of milk at Laingsburg. Oh, how you loved that! Rest in peace, my dear friend.” She wiped a tear from her face.
Bonaparte had been part of the Moerdyk family for almost sixteen years. Sandra seemed the most affected by the loss. According to Auntie Nurse, who hurriedly shared the gossip on her way back to her township home that evening, Sandra had sat on the edge of the bed for hours after the funeral without talking to anyone. Then she stood up and looked through the window at the Phalas’ house for a long time.
Apparently, Auntie Nurse was left to answer the door for flower deliveries and condolence cards sent from the children’s school, in between clearing the plates and cutlery left by the funeral guests:
I’m thinking of you in this difficult, sad time – from the headmaster.
We know it’s hard, but try to stay strong. Thinking of you. Many hugs – Love from your Grade 10 class.
Sad you’re grieving but glad you’re coping; that’s NB – from your friend Claire.
May love, warmth and gentle hugs embrace you and try to soothe you.
None of the cards came from the Phalas. They could not mourn. For them, as for Ousie Maria, a cat was just another animal. It could not be equated to a human being. In fact, to most Africans a cat is a symbol of witchcraft and bad luck.
Yesterday, when young Mbuso tried to remove the cat from the swimming pool, Ousie Maria had harshly warned him against doing so. She convinced him that bad luck would follow him if he touched the animal. When he still insisted on removing it, Ousie Maria warned him that she would tell his father. Mbuso had a deep reverence for Mohapi Phala.