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Another Woman's Daughter

Page 4

by Fiona Sussman


  “Jirre! Bloody Kaffirs,” cursed the policeman. “Probably has no pass. She all right?”

  “Thank you, yes. She’s fine. Just a bit shaken.”

  They spoke as if they were good friends, as if they knew each other. White people were always friends with one another. They weren’t really white, though, like Mme said, they were more a yellowy-pink color.

  “Beda be going,” said the policeman, straightening his safari suit.

  My whole body was getting itchy in the ivy. Then my nose started to tickle. I scratched it. But the tickle grew . . . “Haichoo!”

  The policemen swung around.

  I heard Mme’s breathing go faster.

  “Hey, you . . . Kaffir. Kom hier! Come here!”

  Mme squeezed my hand. Sticky apricot juice had collected in heavy drops under my wrist. I crept behind her legs and quickly emptied my pockets, letting the apricots fall softly to the ground. Then we were moving toward the big khaki man.

  “Maak gou, ek het nie die heel dag tyd nie. Hurry up, I don’t have all day,” he barked. “Where is your book? Dompas? Give it.”

  Mme looked so small standing beside him. His face was thick and wide, and his head had been stuck straight onto his body without a neck in between. The back of his hat was wedged into bulging folds of scalp and the front was pulled down so low I couldn’t see his eyes. He was wearing the usual police uniform—green safari suit, leather strap over right shoulder, shiny brown belt, gun holster, truncheon. Droplets of sweat trickled down the thick strips of orange hair on his cheeks. He also had a box of brown bristles above his top lip. I ran my tongue over mine, trying to imagine what it would be like to have broom bristles there.

  Mme fumbled with the top button on her dress and reached into her bra, pulling out a small worn book, the brown cover buckling at the corners. She always kept special things in her bra. I couldn’t wait to have a bra so I could hide my treasures.

  She handed the book to the policeman. I wondered what story was inside. I hoped it wasn’t the one about Della and Jim, because the policeman didn’t seem to be the kind of person who would like it.

  His fat fingers flicked through the pages. The dog, now back on its leash, started to growl. Its teeth were all pointy and yellow, and it had ugly black gums.

  “Mme!”

  I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew I was meant to keep quiet. But I’d seen how the dog had taken a big chunk out of the boy’s skinny leg and I didn’t want the same thing happening to me.

  The policeman laughed and tugged on the leash.

  As we were standing there, a white madam—I think it might have been the one who’d screamed—came out of her gate, carrying a tray. On it were two frosted glasses filled with guava juice and a plate of chocolate biscuits.

  “Very kind of you,” the policeman said, taking one glass and passing the other to his friend seated in the van.

  The juice slopped everywhere and the open pages of Mme’s book sucked up the pink liquid, smudging the important black ink.

  After a few gulps, the policeman shoved the book back into Mme’s trembling hands. “Nou voetsek—scat!”

  “Yes, baas,” she said, dipping her head.

  We started walking straight away, and I looked back only once to check that the dog wasn’t following us.

  Celia

  Back at my room in Saxonwold, Miriam sat cross-legged in the deep dip of our bed, the bedclothes steepled high, her small body swallowed up by the mattress. She paged absently through her storybook, but even the charm of her favorite story now seemed to elude her.

  It had been dark by the time we’d turned into the Steiners’ driveway. We had run all the way, Miriam clutching my hand so tightly that pins and needles had blurred the ownership of our interlocking fingers.

  As our feet hurried over familiar ground, I replayed the scene in my head, hoping for something, anything, to relieve me of the burden I now carried. But my load simply grew heavier, and my powerlessness more real. Nothing could change what had happened. I had been helpless to hide the horror. And in just a handful of minutes, my child’s innocence had been stolen.

  The window had misted up and the room felt airless. Even though the door stood ajar, the night was still and offered little relief.

  “Miriam.”

  She looked up, her beetle-brown eyes meeting mine.

  I paused, wrestling with what was waiting to be spoken, then I broke into Tshivenda, my native tongue, and the difficult words slipped more easily into the space between us.

  “Miriam, would you like to go on a holiday?”

  She tilted her head.

  I focused on her shiny, rounded forehead, avoiding her questioning eyes. “To a special place over the sea.”

  I had never seen the sea, though I knew its taste; I knew its smell. On my request, the Steiners often brought me back a bottle of seawater from their travels. Just uncorking it would release the magic of nature’s muti—the wind and salt and healing secrets.

  Miriam picked up Tendani, the rag doll I’d made from old orange bags stuffed with newspaper. She pulled at a loose thread and the doll’s face began to unravel.

  “Why?”

  I tried to silence the screaming inside my head. I had one chance to convince her. She was a willful child—more so than her brothers. Once she had made up her mind, there was no persuading Miriam otherwise.

  I sucked in a deep breath. “The Master and Madam want to take you to England.”

  Her eyes grew wide. She knew about England from the Master’s dinnertime stories.

  “Where the queen lives?”

  I nodded.

  “The one with jewels?”

  “The one with jewels,” I said too loudly.

  Miriam’s face was still painted with the darkness of that afternoon.

  “You’ll have your own bedroom,” I said quickly.

  “I don’t want my own—”

  “And you’ll be able to go to school with other children.” I knew how much she longed for this. “One day, if you work hard, you might even become a teacher like Mudedekadzi Mafela.”

  She stood up. “I want to be a doctor like the Madam.”

  Little mountains crumbled inside me. “Or a doctor,” I said quietly, taking her hand as she balanced on the edge of the bed. The light was seeping back into her eyes.

  “Okay, Mme,” she said and, without any warning, leapt into my arms.

  I staggered backward, and we both tumbled onto the floor, laughing. As I lay there, her tiny body a wisp of cloud on top of me, I should have felt some relief. I had managed to persuade her to go. But I felt no such satisfaction.

  She pushed my nose flat with her fingers.

  “Will we still sleep in the same bed?”

  My throat tightened.

  “Mbila,” I said, my voice faltering, “I must stay here. Who will look after my mother, your makhulu? Who will keep an eye on your brothers?”

  “Oh,” she said, pulling back to scrutinize me.

  “But you will come back soon,” I said, allowing the truth to lose its way. “Then we will stay up long after even the owls have gone to bed, and you will tell me all about your adventures.”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she cried, bounding off my lap onto the bed again, the weary bedsprings creaking and groaning under her excitement. “Mme, does the queen have only one crown, or does she have lots?”

  It was then, with that simple question, that I first glimpsed the enormous toll Africa was about to exact from me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  December 1960

  Celia

  The Steiners had decided. The day before they were due to leave Africa, I would leave Saxonwold, telling Miriam I was going to visit her granny and brothers in the Northern Transvaal. I would return to Johannesburg, and my new job, after they had
left for England.

  As soon as this decision had been made, time hurried forward like a shepherd returning from the hills, and it wasn’t long before the last Sunday was upon us.

  For one final time Miriam and I made our way through the suburbs on our well-worn path to salvation. I shunned the company of others as we walked, Miriam’s small hand in mine, her warmth pulsing against my fingers.

  She did not run ahead to explore, nor chatter much at my side. And even before I had chided her for dragging her Sunday shoes in the dust, her bubbly exuberance seemed to have disappeared.

  In church I did not take my eyes off her, chiseling her face into my memory and trying to imagine how it would grow and change. I breathed in the sweet smell of her young skin, bottling it like seawater in my mind, and only mouthed the hymns so I could hear her pure and cloudless voice more clearly in my head.

  That night I could not eat, but I was hungry for every detail of my daughter—her every movement, her every breath. As she chewed and swallowed and prattled, I tried to hold on to it all.

  She devoured the piece of steak I’d bought from the white man’s butchery in Parkwood, then she took a chunk of bread, mopped up the gravy pooled in the corner of her dish, and stuffed the entire piece into her mouth in one go.

  Seeing her little cheeks bulge around it reminded me of a picture I had once seen in her book The Little Prince. It was the drawing of a snake after it had eaten an elephant whole. I couldn’t help smiling. Miriam had that way about her; she could bring light into the darkest of places.

  Then our last night together had passed and I was standing on the steps outside my room watching the sun climb up over a charcoal dawn. Soon the sky was clothed in a pale, cloudless blue—a blue that would deepen over the day to match the kingfisher’s bold coat. The dew would dry; the cool breath of morning would be stilled; an orchestra of insects would build to a parched crescendo. Bright blooms would open. A cricket would struggle on its back somewhere in the dirt, unable to right itself, and by evening would be dead. These things I knew as surely as I knew my name. There was nothing extraordinary about the day that lay ahead. It was just another day in Africa.

  —

  My taxi arrived early, the wide, turquoise Valiant sagging over an already shimmering road. I wondered where my luggage would fit, so laden was the car with cargo—cardboard cartons and enormous plastic holdalls secured to the roof with reams of fraying rope, and four laughing ladies packed into the backseat as tightly as mangoes in a crate.

  The driver was a cheerful fellow, with Malawi-black skin and an orange-segment grin boasting the occasional tooth. When he clambered out of the driver’s seat, the car rose several feet.

  With the help of the other passengers, I squeezed my bags into the already crammed boot—two rotund ladies using their combined weight to squash the past nine years of my life into the small space remaining.

  With my belongings attended to, I turned toward my child. She was standing in front of the house, framed on either side by a Steiner.

  I wanted to be alone with her. I wanted to push the two white people out of the picture, grab my daughter’s small black hand, and run. I closed my arms around her, pressing her warm, wriggling body to mine.

  “Mme, I can’t breathe.”

  “Ni sale zwavhudi,” I whispered. “Go well, my child. God bless you, my last born, my shining star. May God watch over you on your big adventure.” Then I let go.

  “Now don’t you go worrying about her,” the Madam said, her face loosening. “She will be absolutely fine.”

  As I turned, the Master lunged forward and clumsily grabbed my hand.

  “We will look after her, Celia. I promise.”

  I nodded and, as if under a nganga’s spell, moved toward the gate.

  “Bye, Mme! Bye!”

  Climbing into the front seat of the Valiant, I heaved the door closed. The car started with a growl and then we were moving.

  I did not allow the tears to come until we had turned the corner and I could no longer see Miriam’s small pink and black hand waving, waving, waving.

  —

  It was a long journey back to my homeland—ten hours squashed inside the hot, loud taxi. Yet I was glad for the discomfort and distraction; it kept my mind moving and stopped my thoughts from separating out and settling.

  It should have been a six-hour ride, but the car was so overloaded we struggled to pick up speed. Then, just outside Potgietersrus, we got a flat tire.

  Everyone had to pile out of the car and unpack the boot in order for the driver to get at the spare tire. While he struggled to jack up the car, I pulled out my Primus stove and boiled up a pot of tea with some of the water he kept for cooling the radiator. The hot, sweet drink helped smooth some of the creases in that awful day and helped our driver find his sense of humor again.

  One of the other passengers, a boisterous woman called Grace, had brought a tin of bully beef and tub of cold mielie pap with her; I had two oranges and an opened can of condensed milk, which luckily the ants had not yet discovered; and the driver found a packet of Tennis biscuits stashed in his glove box. We pooled our provisions and had a picnic right there in the dry yellow grass on the edge of the highway north.

  “Why are you traveling to Louis Trichardt, sister?” Grace asked as we drank our tea.

  “I’m going to visit my chil—” I stopped. Children—the meaning of that word had changed. I could no longer pronounce it. It felt small and incomplete in my mouth.

  “I am going to visit my mother.”

  I dozed for the rest of the journey, always glad to wake to the noisy chatter and unending stretch of road. We drove into Louis Trichardt just before midnight. An hour later I was making my way down the familiar dirt track to my mother’s hut, buried deep in the dark blue night.

  I pushed on the front door and it creaked open. The hut was in darkness.

  A chirruping cricket and my mother’s rumbling snores interrupted the blackness. I breathed in the smell of cow dung, bushveld, and family. Strangely, though, it did not satisfy. The peace that would always swathe me on my return to the tiny rondavel in the hills now eluded me. I had been returning home every year since the age of fifteen, yet this time it felt different.

  Leaving my bags at the door, I crept through the room, past the shadows of my three boys—Christian, Nelson, and Alfred—their dark bodies longer and leaner than I remembered. Three pairs of feet poked out from under sheets that had once covered smaller boys’ bodies. I ran my fingers lightly over their toes, but the reply of their skin was like nails driven into my hand.

  I almost resented my sons for being there, their presence making Miriam’s absence more real. At that moment nothing but Miriam mattered. God had given me a daughter and I had given her away. I had made the decision. Words had been easy to manipulate in my mind, but in real life . . .

  I slipped onto the mattress I would share with my mother and lay there, looking out of the window at the navy sky clothed in stars. The ground was still swaying beneath me like the taxi chassis. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a moth snag its wing in the sweep of a spider’s web. Dazed, the moth swung loosely in the moonlight, then began to flap its free wing, frantically trying to escape the spider’s sticky silver trap, each jerk and shudder only entangling it further. I scanned the ceiling for the spider.

  There it was, its swollen black body tucked into a corner.

  Fear climbed up my throat and my heart began to flap about inside my chest like the trapped moth. I sat up, hungry for air, and whispered out loud the Steiners’ last words to me.

  We will write often. I had already asked Philemon if he would read to me the letters that would come. We will send photographs. In about a year we’ll bring Miriam home for a visit. She’ll be fine, I promise.

  Like a punctured balloon, the certainty of these words shriveled and shrank. Could I
wait for that first letter? Could I live through an entire summer and winter before seeing my child again? How would I fill the emptiness?

  My mother stirred on the mattress beside me. I looked over at her aging body—her strong arms, her ridged fingernails, her collapsed breasts. For as long as I could remember she had lived in this valley, under this sky, never too far from my reach. Now Miriam lay somewhere under the same canopy of stars, but beyond my grasp.

  Then, like a donkey’s tail, my mind swung to the other side, and I was chiding myself for being weak. I had to be strong. I had done this for my daughter. My gift to her. The promise of a new and better life. There could be no room for selfishness.

  Alfred cried out in his sleep and in an instant I was standing at his bedside ready to comfort him. He was my youngest son, yet I knew so little about him. What games did he like to play? Which songs made him giggle? Who was his best friend?

  He’d been a colicky, clingy baby, and I’d had to send him home to my mother earlier than I had done with the others. He called me Mme, but I knew it was his makhulu he truly loved. She had been the one to cradle and caress him, to rub his small back when mischievous spirits toyed with his dreams.

  I hurried from the room into the brisk black night and was sick, spewing my pain over the cracked red earth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  December 1960

  Miriam

  The sheets on my new bed were as soft as tissues, and I slipped in and out of them a few times just to feel their coolness against my skin. But soon they became all warm and wrinkly. It was a very big bed and I had to hold on to the pillow to stop myself from disappearing down it, like Alice down that hole. I pulled the top sheet up under my nose. It smelled funny—different from the smoky blanket Mme and I lay under at night.

  Mme had made the bed up for me in the spare room before she left. It hadn’t been an easy job; there wasn’t much space to spare with all the boxes of furniture for the holiday stored in it. I wondered why there was no furniture where the queen lived.

 

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