Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree

by Niq Mhlongo

  “I can’t let you invite witchcraft into your family,” Ousie Maria had warned Mbuso. “If you continue doing this, I’ll have to quit and go home immediately. Then you can tell your parents that you made me go.”

  With those words, Mbuso had to wait until Jaco came back from work to remove Bonaparte from the pool.

  Lulama Phala knew her husband still believed in witchcraft, although they had been living in Forest Town for nine years now. His upbringing in the Free State town of Warden was not shaken off that easily. But, to be honest, Lulama was more concerned that the death of Bonaparte was going to affect her relationship with Sandra. She was also worried that the kids might have been affected by the sight of the dead cat in their swimming pool. Mbuso had described to her how horrific the drowned cat had looked. She could see that Buhle was traumatised, as she vowed not to swim in the pool again. That night, lying in bed with her husband, Lulama tried to convince him to take both the children to the clinical psychologist.

  “Darling, it’s just a dead cat,” said Mohapi, looking at the ceiling. “It’s like seeing a dead rat. There’s no difference at all.”

  “Yes, to us it’s just a dead cat, as you say. But what about the kids, honey? This may be harmful and affect their schoolwork. You should have seen Buhle. She’s even afraid to go to her room. She’s still in the TV room at the moment because she can’t take her mind off that cat.”

  “No, no, no. Come on now. You can’t be serious. It was just a fucking dead cat. Let me go speak to her,” he said as he put his slippers on and left the bed.

  “Where are you going now?”

  “I’m going to talk to Buhle.”

  “You can’t do that. You can’t talk to her about a dead cat at this hour of the night.”

  Lulama tried to hold him by the hand, but he drew away.

  “Mohapi, you’re not going to mention the dead cat to her at this hour, are you?” she repeated. “No, you can’t.”

  Mohapi did not answer. Lulama watched him walk out of the room. She strained her ears to listen to the conversation that would follow. Everything was quiet. It appeared that the TV set was also off. Mohapi came back less than five minutes later.

  “She’s already sleeping in her room, and the lights are off,” he said as he kicked off his slippers, adjusted his pillow and got into bed. “I really don’t understand why these white people exaggerate their emotions of happiness and sadness towards animals like cats and dogs.”

  “But that’s what they believe in,” said Lulama in the darkness of the bedroom. “There’s nothing wrong with that. They believe that cats invite peace and happiness into their homes.”

  “Whites are a very strange bunch of people. I mean, it was only two weeks ago that the Moerdyks invited us over for a braai because the same bloody dead cat had returned from a successful vet operation.”

  “Shame, and all that money they paid for the operation is wasted now.”

  “Exactly! Honestly, I only went to that braai because you insisted we honour their invitation.”

  “But, honey, for white people a cat is more than just a cat. Just like a dog is not just a dog to them. They are their friends. Their dogs are not only for hunting and scaring criminals, nor are their cats only for killing rats and practising witchcraft.”

  “But do you think they would come if we invited them over to slaughter a goat to appease our ancestors?”

  “That’s different. We kill animals for food and to satisfy our ancestors. Most white people want animals to live because they’re emotionally attached to them.”

  “Bullshit. They also eat meat, don’t they?”

  “True, most of them still do. But they’re friendly to animals. Look at white people’s eyes, honey. Don’t their eyes look like cat’s eyes to you? That’s probably why they see another human being in a cat – one of their own.”

  “I guess you’re right. Do you remember when Bonaparte injured Ousie Maria that time, and they blamed her for provoking the cat instead of sending her to the clinic? She had scratches all over her face and hands! And yet, when the cat was sick they sent it to the vet for an operation. I swear to you that if Auntie Nurse gets sick, they’ll simply send her home.”

  “Yes, but the cat had medical aid.”

  “And poor Auntie Nurse doesn’t. You know, the Moerdyks spoke to Bonaparte as if it were a real person. They would apologise, plead and pamper that bloody cat . . . Please Bonaparte, sorry Bonaparte, come on darling, be careful – all that nonsense, talking to an animal. When these Moerdyks speak to Auntie Nurse their friendliness fades. They order her about like a slave.”

  Lulama sighed. She suddenly felt very tired. “Oh, why did that cat choose to die in our swimming pool? I thought cats have nine lives.”

  Ousie Maria was in the kitchen the next morning cleaning the stove after flicking a fried egg onto a piece of toast waiting on a plate. Mohapi walked in and Ousie Maria dropped the hissing frying pan into the sink before carrying the plate to the table for his breakfast. After greeting her, he put the kettle on to boil water for a cup of tea. Ousie Maria waited until he was seated at the table with his mug of rooibos next to his plate of food before she spoke what was pressing on her heart.

  “Baba ka Mbuso, sorry for intruding,” she began while looking at the tag and string of the teabag that dangled over the side of Mohapi’s steaming mug. “What are you going to do with the cat situation? It cannot just die here. There’s a meaning to it.”

  Mohapi smiled awkwardly. “Don’t worry, I will get the gardener to clean the pool today.”

  “I’m not just talking about cleaning the pool with the chemicals. I’m talking about traditional cleansing.”

  “What? We are Christians, Ousie. We don’t believe in that.”

  “You must not forget that the traditional healers are older than your Christianity. I didn’t sleep last night. I had a bad dream, and this yard was full of black spiders. One bit a grey cat, and as the cat was trying to run away it became dizzy and fell into the swimming pool. Then several cats appeared out of nowhere and started to whine with their mouths closed.” She paused to catch her breath. “With their heads very straight and ears more pricked up than ever, they came around the swimming pool. All of a sudden it was you, Baba ka Mbuso, floating in the water. All the cats, about nine of them, raised their heads and watched you drown. Their tails were erect and far away from their legs.”

  Mohapi’s eyes where wide with shock. “How . . .” His mouth hung open before he seemed to regain control of his lips. “Ousie, I also had a dream last night,” he admitted. “I dreamt of Bonaparte standing on one hind leg next to the swimming pool. He was going to fall over. I tried to scream, but the cat’s head and neck remained poised in the air, unaffected by the movement of the rest of its body.” He thought for a bit. “But in this dream Bonaparte was not a grey cat. He was black. He was standing at a distance at first, but then edged closer and sat next to you, Ousie. His dark-­yellow eyes kept moving slowly from you to me, and back again.”

  Ousie Maria rubbed her hands over the goose flesh on her arms.

  “Suddenly the cat tried to run away, but he kept running on the same spot,” Mohapi continued. “The dream ended with Bona­parte floating in the swimming pool.”

  Mohapi’s dream, with the pattern so close to her own, terrified Ousie Maria. Was it just a coincidence, she asked herself.

  She looked at Mohapi, but his eyes shot to the mug in his hand. He frowned.

  “Let me speak to Lulama about the cleansing first,” he mumbled.

  Ousie Maria was quiet while he ate his food and drank his tea. “Yhuu,” she said eventually, “I’ve never seen a person cry so much when nobody has hit them.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Mohapi asked, getting up from the table.

  “I’m talking about her, Sandra.” Ousie Maria pointed a thumb next door. “She was crying for a dead cat as if her husband had beaten her up. Auntie Nurse who cleans for her tells me that she star
es at your house without blinking her eyes. Yhuuu, white people.” She clapped her hands together. “They are very strange people indeed.”

  “You know,” Mohapi began thoughtfully, “I remember I once went to buy groceries at the Pick n Pay in Rosebank Mall. This was about a year ago. Anyway, there was an old white woman behind me in the meat section who had also come to buy the meat bones like me. Her trolley was full of dog and cat food, as well as flea powders and a bathtub. While I was trying to compare the prices, the woman tried to strike up a conversation with me. She asked me how old my dog was. I said I didn’t have one. ‘I have a bulldog and a Chihuahua,’ she said. ‘They love these bones.’”

  Mohapi looked at Ousie Maria and there was a cold ferociousness in his eyes.

  “I only realised after I had left the store that the woman had assumed I was buying the bone meat for a dog. I felt offended because I was buying those meat bones for my samp dish, my favourite Sunday meal.”

  Five days have passed since the burial of Bonaparte, and for Lulama they were marked by a growing distance between the Moer­dyks and the Phalas. The Moerdyks made it clear they wanted to be left alone, and Lulama could not help feeling a sense of guilt and shame. The Moerdyk children no longer came over to the Phalas to play, and it was clear Sandra was in some spell of unbreakable loneliness. The swimming pool was now covered with a green net. Lulama was not happy about this because she enjoyed swimming with her children. Ousie Maria gave the swimming pool a wide berth. Lulama saw Ousie Maria, slender in the waist and broad in the shoulders, walk round it to get to her little cottage in the yard. Lulama knew that Mohapi was still superstitious about the cat’s death but he was not talking to his wife about it . . .

  One day, Mbuso and Buhle came home from school complaining that the message “Cat Killers” had been written on their desks. “Nobody wants to talk to us. Even the teachers are being mean,” Buhle cried.

  When Lulama and Mohapi had made the decision to send their children to a nearly all-white school, they had been worried that Buhle and Mbuso might be isolated, but everything had been fine – until now. Lulama had never imagined that the death of a cat would open up a chasm between her children and their white friends. She hoped that the fuss over Bonaparte’s death would blow over soon.

  But then a letter arrived from the headmaster, Mr Steyn himself. He informed Lulama and Mohapi that a few parents had lodged a formal complaint with the school saying that their children were afraid of the “cat killers”. They threatened to withdraw their kids if the alleged “cat killers” did not leave the school with immediate effect. The principal and the school governing body were requested to convene an urgent meeting. At the meeting, which the Phalas had deliberately not attended, the parents were agreed that the “cat killers” must go. Mr Steyn asked Mohapi and Lulama to come see him urgently the next day.

  “You’ll have to go alone,” Mohapi said when he arrived home and Lulama told him about the headmaster’s summons.

  “Why?”

  “Because I will be busy organising workers to come and erase the nasty graffiti on our wall outside. Go see for yourself.”

  Lulama raced out. Someone had used red paint to scrawl on their wall:

  DEVIL WORSHIPPERS, SATANIST CAT KILLERS

  CAT KILLING KAFFIRS

  Inside the school premises, Lulama tried to walk tall between the blocks of classrooms to the headmaster’s office. She could feel five hundred pairs of eyes silently trained on her. Some of the kids put their hands over their eyes to avoid the sight of her.

  Inside the office, the headmaster made Lulama stand for a while before acknowledging her presence. He was scribbling notes on a pad, a cigarette in his mouth. His eyes were screwed up to avoid the smoke as it spiralled past his face. With a wave of a hand he showed her the chair to sit. She interpreted this as a sign to keep her distance. It was clear that the headmaster didn’t want to shake her hand. He had twinkling eyes, a beaked nose and a slightly open mouth. Some little twitches at the corners of his mouth made it difficult for her to determine whether he was smiling or just plain nervous.

  “How could you accuse my children of killing a cat?” Lulama blurted out. “They would never do such a thing.”

  “So who killed the poor cat? Everyone in the school is pointing the finger at Mbuso and Buhle.”

  “How I am I supposed to know who killed the damn cat? Maybe you should do a postmortem. Maybe curiosity killed the cat, who knows? Maybe it’s damn old age. Maybe it was bitten by poisonous insects. How am I supposed to know?” She clicked her tongue. “This school smells of racism.”

  “Look, all we are saying is that your children are causing distress to other children. Your boy even beat up another boy the other day.”

  Lulama frowned and narrowed her eyes. The headmaster peered at her intently through his thick spectacles. He was a red-cheeked, round-faced man with bright green eyes. His short dark-brown hair was silvering at the temples. His moustache was meticulously groomed after the manner of Joseph Stalin. The office smelt of his strong cigarette. A tide of anger rose in Lulama and gave her strength.

  “If that boy was teasing my children about something they didn’t do, what do you expect? How many times do they have to tell you that they were here at school when the damn cat drowned in our swimming pool?” Her voice rose until she shouted, “Why are you only concerned about the distress of the other kids, and not my kids who saw a dead cat in our swimming pool? If my kids are discriminated against again by this damn school I will have to refer the matter to the Department of Education and the MEC. I will lodge a complaint about the racism that my children are facing in this bloody school.”

  “Some people say you people poisoned the cat and killed it.”

  “What? Who said that? Why didn’t we do that some years ago when the dreadful cat attacked our domestic worker?” she asked with the accent that made her roll her tongue, like they do in the suburban schools. “How can the status of the fucking cat be on par with that of my kids?”

  Lulama and Mr Steyn parted the way they met, without pleasantries. She drove out of the school grounds, the car jerking forward and stalling as her foot slid off the clutch. A white couple was driving in through the school gate. The man, who was driving, immediately put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and they shook their heads in unison. Their hatred for her was difficult to hide. With a face like that you cannot run away from racism in South Africa, she thought as she passed them.

  A few days later, with the situation still not improved at school, Lulama decided to work from home. She wanted to go over to the Moerdyks’ house to try to talk to Sandra. They had not spoken since the day Bonaparte died.

  Inside the Moerdyks’ big yard was a well-pruned peach tree and several other flowering trees that perfumed the air. Flowers had been laid under the sneezewood tree at the spot where Bonaparte was buried. All Lulama wanted was to know whether Sandra’s children were responsible for spreading the rumour that her own kids were cat killers. That was all. She was tired of seeing white people drive past and spit at her house in hate. Even the joggers, cyclists and schoolchildren spat on her lawn, their faces distorted with disgust.

  The door to the Moerdyks’ kitchen was open, but she knocked anyway, just to be polite. Sandra stared, her eyes nearly popping out. The knife she was using to slice a lemon slipped on the skin of the fruit and cut into her thumb.

  “Damn it!” she yelped and sucked at her thumb. Auntie Nurse was busy putting clothes in the washing machine.

  “Come in,” said Sandra, holding her thumb under running water from the cold tap.

  She looked nauseous.

  “How are you doing?” asked Lulama.

  “I’m fine,” Sandra replied, bowing her head over a steaming cup of tea with lemon.

  “Well, I haven’t seen you since the death of Napoleon.”

  “His name was Bonaparte.”

  “I’m sorry, I meant to say Bonaparte.”

  “Well, I w
as expecting you guys to come to his funeral as good neighbours,” Sandra said, pushing her hair back from her face. “But it’s okay. I guess you were busy with more serious stuff.”

  “I was caught up with some work.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said, unable to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “I also didn’t see you at the school governing body meeting.”

  “I deliberately didn’t go because I knew they were arbitrarily going to decide the future of my children. It’s no longer safe for them around here and at school because of the death of your cat.”

  “So what are you going to do, take them out of the school?”

  Sandra picked up her cup and took another sip. Lulama could feel her neighbour’s eyes resting on her face, watching her over the rim of the cup. Sandra put the cup down gently in its saucer.

  “Hell no, I’m not going to do that. I heard that the headmaster was suggesting that I take my children to a township school. That is the reason I’m here anyway. I also heard that the governing body has unanimously ruled that my kids be expelled and sent to a ‘special’ school because they are allegedly not normal. Did you have anything to do with that, Sandra?”

  Sandra shook her head slowly and closed her lips tightly. Her eyelids fluttered. Lulama was looking at her intently. Sandra was pale. Her face, which used to be so free of cares, was now stamped with conflict and despair. She was indeed distraught over the death of the cat. For a few seconds Lulama remembered how the bubbly Sandra used to love combing, patting, hugging and kissing her Bonaparte. Now she had some spots on the side of her face. She looks profoundly depressed, like me, Lulama thought. Sandra’s eyes glittered with impatience for Lulama to leave her house.

  “That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you,” she said, and left.

  Ousie Maria had become sick. She and Mohapi believed that it was all because of the cat and its omen of bad things to come. Without consulting Lulama, they decided that the house would not be safe unless the traditional healer was called upon for cleansing.