by Haden, Ros;
“I’m not a Nazi, you stupid mampara,” it bursts out of me. “Why you think you deserve a house? You don’t!”
Frenzy rises in the crowd. Beno points a finger at me. “No house for me. But a house and a garden for her.”
My mother has finally struggled to the edge of the crowd. “Child, please,” she whispers.
I walk away.
Beno grabs me back. The crowd edges closer. I begin to shake. I know something bad is going to happen. I feel something hard slam on my cheekbone. Hot blood runs down my cheek. I begin to cry. I am confused. How can this be happening to me? I struggle out of Beno’s grip. I stumble and fall. The crowd is shouting. Beno is shouting, “Bring me a tyre.”
I look up. I see S’bu clutching his telescope. His face is full of fear. “S’bu, please …” I reach out my hand to him. He turns away. My mother starts yelling at anyone who’ll listen.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves. Can’t you see this is only a tsotsi having fun with you?”
Beno laughs. “How did you get your house so soon, old woman? How? You paid good money? You opened your legs?”
The crowd’s anger spills over. They swamp my mother. I can see nothing. Blood, snot and tears smear my eyes.
“No!” I hear my mother screaming.
I fight through the crowd to get to her. Sirens scream in the distance.
Something happens. The crowd begins to move. I hear someone groaning. I know it’s my mother. I fight to get to the sound. When I get there it’s someone I don’t know, who’s been hurt.
The sirens get louder. People scatter.
Sand has been kicked up from the road. It fills the air like smoke. It’s blowing in the autumn wind. I see the Gautrain pull into Marlboro across the Jukskei. Then I see a crumpled body lying in the dirt. I run towards it. My mother is bloody, and still.
The few remaining people avoid my eyes, as my head falls back and everything goes dark.
I don’t remember how we got to Bara. I wake up in a bed and my head throbs. At first I don’t know who I am or where I am. The nurse tells me the ambulance brought me in yesterday, with my mother. My mother! Is she alive? The nurse helps me out of bed and takes me to see her.
I want to cry. Her eyes are swollen shut. There are bruises and cuts on her face, neck and arms. The nurse tells me her collarbone is broken. I sit next to her bed and slide my hand underneath hers. It doesn’t move. “Ma?” The nurse whispers that Mbali has not woken up since they brought her in.
I am frightened. Where will I go if she dies? Who will look after me? My mother is all I have. Her family didn’t like her German boyfriend all those years ago. They thought Mbali was trying to be too good for them. I know I have a Gogo somewhere in KZN. I’ve never met her. I’ve never met my father either. I’ve only seen him smiling down at my baby face in a photo. He used to write to me. Then one day he stopped. I don’t know where he is, or how I would find him.
I clutch my mother’s hand, tight. I watch her sleep and listen to her breathing. I haven’t ever watched her sleep before. She always wakes up before me and goes to sleep after me. If this is what being sucked into a wormhole feels like, then that’s where I am. Sucked into infinite darkness. Space trash. I lean my head against my mother’s thigh. I hear someone move behind me. I jump up.
It’s S’bu. “Get out!” I shout at him.
“Dudu …”
S’bu’s mother appears behind him with a bowl of stew. “Hello, my dear. I heard about your mother. I thought you could do with some food.”
Fury chokes in my throat. I take the bowl and mumble something. She pats me on the shoulder. She looks at my mother and then back at me. “Don’t be too long, S’bu. I have to go back to work.”
She leaves. I turn away from him. “It was my idea, to bring the food. We went to your house first, but Mrs Malinga said you hadn’t come home. We heard about your mother …”
“Get out.”
“Dudu, please … I’m sorry. I should have done something, I know. It’s just … I only got the space-probe like two days ago …”
I turn on him. “Why you friends with me, S’bu? Hey, why? At least Alison’s honest when she trashes me. You pretend to be my friend. Then you protect your telescope more than a human being.”
He looks like he’s about to cry. Well, he doesn’t deserve to. So I grab his mother’s bowl of food and I throw it at him. It hits the side of a trolley and stew flies everywhere. Some falls on his cheek. It makes me happy.
S’bu is stunned.
“You’re no better than Beno, or any of them.”
“I’m not a tsotsi.”
“No, you’re a coward. That’s even worse.”
S’bu wipes the meat off his face. “My mother cooked this for you, out of kindness.”
“I don’t need a coward’s kindness.”
S’bu turns and leaves.
I want to cry.
“Dudu?”
I turn. My mother is reaching out her hand to me.
~•~
After a few days I help my mother get into a taxi outside Bara. She’s still sore. We drive to Alex and she is very scared. I am too.
We get out of the taxi. We walk all the way down Fourth Street. People come out of their houses to stare at us and whisper. We walk through Stjwetla. People come out of those shacks and watch us too. They are the foreigners who can’t find anywhere else to live. Now they run for their lives when the Jukskei swells and bursts its banks some summers. They are the people who the bona fides in Alex look down on, forgetting that they once lived there too, as shack dwellers.
My mother is weak. She sleeps a lot. Her boss gives her a week off but there is not much money for food. I walk to the shops and once I see Beno. He avoids me. I feel like a dying star. The flames on the surface of my sun burn softer and softer until all the light goes out. A dead star collapses from the inside. I stir the soup for my mother and I feel like I’ve collapsed inside.
I go to school, but I wait until S’bu gets on to the taxi. Then I catch the next one. Alison laughs at my bruises at first. I tell her I was in a fight. She may not say so, but I reckon that impresses her.
When I arrive home one day, I walk through my mother’s spinach and her weird red lettuce and I see her green beans are growing. My mother is so excited that they’re growing. I have to help her outside so she can look at them. She makes me take the hose and I have to water them. Mrs Malinga stares at us from her toilet window. I wait for her to say something. Then I’ll have an excuse to turn the hose on her. But she doesn’t say a word.
Now I go to school, do the shopping and water the garden. I pick the spinach and the red lettuce and the beans and we eat a good meal. I tell my mother she’s the only person in Alex that grows red lettuce. She tells me my father used to eat it.
There’s a knock on the door. It’s S’bu with some meat from his mother. Mbali asks me if I want to speak to him, but I say no. S’bu gives my mother a pamphlet and leaves.
“Dudu, you can’t be angry with that boy forever.”
“Why not?”
“He made a mistake.”
“He made a choice, Ma. And it was the wrong one.”
She hands me the pamphlet. “Get ready, we’re going.”
I read it. I begin to feel cold inside. “No, Ma. No!”
“Yes, Dudu. That calls for all residents of Alex to gather together. We are bona fides. We belong in Alex. We have every right to be here.”
I refuse. We fight. I begin to cry. My mother grabs me and takes me to the veg garden. “Look at that red lettuce. Why’s it different?”
“It’s red.”
“It’s a plant. It tastes like spinach. It grows in soil. It needs water. Just because it’s red doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a right to be in the soil. Now put on your jacket.”
“Tonight we die, Ma. Serious. If we go there we die.”
My mother smiles like a warrior.
The meeting is in the library. We arrive late. Everyone stares at us when we walk in and look for seats. My quiet, domestic worker mother, tells a taxi owner to move his feet so we can get past him.
We sit down. The pastor starts speaking. “Brothers and Sisters. When we marched for better housing we did not think that people would die. But they did.”
I turn to my mother. Her bruises have faded, but her arm is still in a sling. It will be until her collarbone heals. She stares at the pastor.
“The only people who died were amakwerekwere,” someone shouts.
“Is this right? Are they not people too?”
A man stands up. “Pastor, of course amakwerekwere are people too. But they come here with all their money and pay people and get houses. While us, I have been waiting five years. Baba, where is my house? My mother will die and she has never had a house to live in.”
People agree. People get angry and some people start shouting. I begin to get scared. My mother still stares at the pastor, saying nothing. S’bu enters with his mother. He stares at me and I turn away.
“We want no amakwerekwere here.”
My mother stands up. The library falls silent. “Me, I am a bona fide resident. How many of you know this? How many?”
Some people mumble.
“So I had a German boyfriend, in 1996. Hey, I was celebrating democracy.”
I close my eyes, it’s an old joke. “So the German boyfriend goes back to Germany. Now I have a daughter, stand up.”
“What?”
“Now! Get up.”
I stand up. My mother pokes me in the face.
“Cappuccino, coffee brown, coloured, mixed race. Call her what you like. She’s the new generation.”
“Now she’s just red,” someone shouts. My mother ignores the laughter.
“Must my child go back to Germany because she’s half Zulu, half German? Why must the Setswana stay here then? They must go back to Botswana? Why must the Northern Sotho stay here? They too must go home.”
People are beginning to get angry. The pastor smiles at my mother. “Mbali, my sister, you have gone through a lot of pain …”
“I almost died. Beaten and left for dead by my own people because my daughter is only half Zulu. I have a right to live here, so does Dudu. She can go to school where she likes and I will grow red, pink and orange lettuce if I want to.”
People begin to laugh. My ears burn.
Mrs Malinga stands up. “That red lettuce attracts the rats.”
My mother laughs. No one else does. Mrs Malinga stands there looking like she’s going to burst. My mother laughs very loudly until the pastor tells my mother she needs to calm down.
Eish! Mothers!
My mother turns to Mrs Malinga. “Rats can’t see red.” She’s right. How did she know that? Maybe she learnt a thing or two about surfing the net on her phone after all. Mrs Malinga sits down.
S’bu’s mother stands up. “Let’s apologise to Mbali and Dudu. They did not deserve this. Come on.”
My mother drags me up to stand next to her, as people mumble that they’re sorry. The meeting continues. I don’t hear a thing. I never thought I’d feel this much pride in my mother.
S’bu sends me a text.
Eclipse 2nit. Shld I cum rnd?
I ignore him. I look across the room and I see Beno, who’s slipped into the back of the library, staring at me.
~•~
At dawn my mother waters her garden. Mrs Malinga stops complaining about the crop growth. My mother has planted red cabbage as well now. It runs the length of Mrs Malinga’s fence. It’s going to be bright in the winter.
Beno follows me to the taxi rank. The first time it happened I freaked. When I got into the taxi, the driver told him to voetsak. Beno did. He says nothing, he just watches me walk to the rank.
One day I get into the taxi and S’bu gets in next to me. We sit together. We say nothing. When we arrive at school I hear Alison coming down the corridor. She’s laughing. “Hey, it’s Coffee Anon, get it? Coffee An–”
“Shuttap,” interrupts S’bu. I didn’t see him behind me.
“Whoa, the stick insect speaks,” laughs Alison.
And stick insect says, “You start with Dudu again and I’ll take action.” Alison smirks.
S’bu smiles. “I know you cheat. I saw you cheating in your Science exam in April.”
Alison pales, “Rubbish.”
S’bu smiles widely. “You wrote stuff on the hem of your skirt.” S’bu reaches to grab her skirt. She steps backwards.
“You, you … gangster.” Splitting on cheats is more like a hero thing to do than a gangsta thing. But, hey, what’s in a title? Alison hurries off.
I can’t help it. I begin to laugh. S’bu turns to me. He isn’t laughing at all. “Dudu, from now on, I’ve got your back.” I want to cry. I frown instead. S’bu hugs me. It feels good.
S’bu walks home with me and I tell him about Beno. S’bu tells me he’ll walk with me to school and back. If things get bad, we’ll make a plan. After what he did today, I know that somehow we will. My mother is pleased S’bu and me are hanging out together again.
At supper I ask my mother if my father will ever write to me again. Mbali is sad. She hopes so. He is a nice man, funny too. Michael Bosch, the aid worker from Frankfurt. I want to go to Germany one day. I want to do so many things.
I take my mother outside and show her the Southern Cross. I tell her the Southern Cross is called the Crux. The brightest star in Crux is the Acrux. It’s two stars going around each other, but they are so far away that they look like one star. Maybe, if you look at South Africa from space, Sandton and Alex look like one place.
My mother stares at me. “What?” She smiles. “All this talk of stars and space. It’s not only because you’ve got a white father and a Zulu mother. You’re different in here.” She puts her hand across my heart.
“It’s tough, Ma.”
She laughs. “Being different when you’re young is hard, I know. But being different when you’re an adult is going to make you succeed in life because there are not as many of you as there are of others. I know that too.”
My mother and I go inside. I position my bed so that when I lie on it the last thing I see before I go to sleep is the moon and the stars.
Discussion questions
•Would you like to have Dudu as a friend? Why/why not?
•Why do you think some people are so threatened by people different from them?
About the author
Julie Barker lives in Jo’burg and has written for television series such as Tsha Tsha, Isidingo and The Wild. She was head writer for Izozo Connexion and Scandal. Julie is at present writing a novel as part of her MA in Creative Writing at Wits.
Advice for young writers
The thing that separates a writer from anyone else is that they have their own unique way of seeing the world. Develop that in yourself: ask yourself what you really think about … everything. Answer those questions for yourself. You don’t have to know all the answers to life, as long as you’re asking questions, then you’re on your way to becoming a writer.
8
THINGS TO DO IN DURBAN WHEN YOU’RE DEAD
Sarah Lotz
I had my earphones in, Rihanna’s You da One cranked up to full volume, but I could still hear Mama’s voice floating through from outside.
“Eish, Levi!” she was yelling at my brother. “What do you think you are doing?”
Uh-oh, I thought. If she’s shouting at Levi he must have done something really naughty – like letting another stray dog into the yard. Six weeks ago he’d shuffled home, a half-starved mongrel trailing at his heels. Levi begged Mama to let him keep
the dog, which he’d already named Zizu (my brother has weird taste in names), promising that he’d take responsibility for it.
Mama stayed angry with him for a while, but she always lets Levi have his way in the end. My mother is a tough woman – her sharp tongue can be more painful than a hornet’s sting – but where my little brother is concerned she’s as soft as butter.
I trudged outside, expecting to find another mangy animal sniffing round the yard. I seriously wasn’t prepared for what I saw cowering next to the gate.
“Holy crap!” I yelled.
Mama smacked me around the ear. “Nyameka! Do not use that language! And why weren’t you watching your brother? Look what he has done!”
So unfair! Why did I always get the blame? “But, Mama–”
“Enough!” She turned her furious attention back to Levi. “Levi. First you are late, making me worry, and then you come home with this!”
~•~
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Ugh! It was gross. Its hair was entirely gone, its skin so dried onto its bones I couldn’t tell if it was once black or white. Its withered eyes glinted from deep in their sockets. It was still wearing a pair of battered Converse takkies, a pair of mouldy skinny jeans and a ripped T-shirt. Judging by its size and shape it looked like it might once have been a teenage boy, probably not much older than me.
Mama gathered Zizu into her arms to keep her from snapping at the thing’s legs, and passed her to me.
“Where could it have come from?” I asked, stroking Zizu’s head to calm the dog down. As far as I knew, the nearest camp was in Durban, at least an hour’s drive from here. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one wandering free.
“Yes, where did you find it, Levi?’ Mama asked.
“I was at the soccer field. It came out of the bushes there.”
My mother clucked her tongue. “You should have left it where you found it.”
Levi scuffed his foot in the dirt, refusing to meet Mama’s eyes. That wasn’t unusual. Levi never looked anyone full in the face, not even Mama. Mama says he’s special, but I’m not so sure. He rarely smiles, never laughs and is always staring off into space. Maybe he’s just weird.