CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Thabo and Patience were seated at a table in the kitchen when I came in from the outside washroom—a lean-to shed swarming with flies.
He stood up and poured me a cup of rooibos tea from the battered aluminum teapot on the stove. He had strong hands—I always noticed a man’s hands—with clean, blunt fingernails. I was looking around for the milk when he scooped up a spoon of sweetened condensed milk from an opened can on the table and stirred it into my tea.
This was a very different drink from the tea I was used to drinking in England. First, it was a rust-orange color and it had a sweet, smoky flavor. But I was an instant convert; a cup of char had never tasted so good.
“So our mission is to find your mother,” Thabo said, pushing back his chair. His words were confident and reassuring, as if our success was a foregone conclusion.
“I’m so grateful to you for your hospitality and assistance.” My words clunked awkwardly. I cringed at my own formality.
“Thabo Rhadebe at your service,” he said, twirling his right wrist three times and bowing. He’d sensed my unease and made light of it.
The old lady couldn’t speak much English, but she gave a hearty chuckle.
I felt so silly.
“As you know, I’m a journalist.” Thabo’s face was serious. “However, with all the recent unrest and the clampdown on media, my work has been severely restricted.”
The old lady topped up my tea.
“The newspaper I work for has been under close scrutiny. The government considers The Star to be part of Die Rooi Gevaar.”
I must have looked puzzled.
“Communism, ‘the Red Threat.’ All liberals are communist, didn’t you know?” He winked at me and then crushed a biscuit in his hands, sprinkling the crumbs on the table. Zaziwe set about attending to the feast with short, sharp jerks of her beak.
“So, for the meantime I have to abide by my editor’s directive and my pen is practically idle. But idle out of prison is definitely preferable to being idle inside.” Thabo then proceeded to tell me how my visit would change things. He’d managed to persuade his boss to let him write an account of my search for my mother.
“I think your editor was instrumental in helping me get a visitor’s permit,” I said.
Thabo nodded. “No politics is what I promised him. Just a simple account of an adopted girl’s quest for her origins. It has all the makings of a good story.”
I shrugged. “I hope so.”
“And who knows what I’ll be able to slip in when no one’s watching,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye. “What I’m trying to say, Miriam, is that I’m looking forward to the challenge and am most happy to be your guide.”
My mind was spinning—the sights, the sounds, the smells, these words . . . Nothing felt real. A telephone started to ring.
It was David calling from England.
“Yes, she is safe and well, Dayyvid,” Thabo shouted into the receiver. “We only got in about a half hour ago. Yes. No, right here at the table having a cup of tea.”
Zaziwe cocked her head to one side as if following the conversation.
“Wait, I’ll pass you to her. Uh . . . Just a moment, here she is.”
I took the phone. It was like putting my ear to a windy tunnel, the line whistling and howling.
“Hi, darling-darling-dar . . .” Dave’s voice echoed down the line. I could almost visualize his words navigating their way through the cable on the sea floor, the weight of water toying with his message.
“Hi.”
“You okay-okay-okay?”
“Just a bit weary. It was a long flight—”
“What is—”
“What?”
“It’s a bad line-ine-ine. What time did you get in-in-in?”
“Nine thirty. It seems ages since I left. Can’t believe it’s only been twenty-odd hours. So much has happened. What?”
“First —pressions?”
“Hot.” I laughed. “And black faces everywhere. I’m not part of a dying breed after all! But listen, don’t waste your money; it’s such a bad line. I’ll try to call next week. What you say? I . . . Look, I can’t hear you, Dave. I’ll write soon, promise.”
“—you.”
“What?”
“Love you-you-you. Miss y—”
“Me too,” I said self-consciously.
“Me too?” He sounded hurt.
“I love you too,” I said, cupping my hand over the receiver.
“Miriam, remember—”
“Sorry, Dave, I can’t hear. Look—”
The line went dead.
I stared at the mouthpiece, then slowly replaced the receiver.
Thabo was sorting through mail at the table. He looked up. “All okay?”
“Just a bad line.”
I felt unsettled. The call had been unsatisfactory. I fiddled with the locket around my neck. Open, shut. Open, shut.
“You have a picture inside?”
“No, not yet.”
—
I had a fitful first night in my bed at the tip of Africa. I couldn’t escape the oppressive heat; the toilet was outside and I was sharing a bed with Patience—not a very comfortable experience; the mattress was lumpy and the frame creaky.
The house had two small bedrooms. Thabo’s brother and sister-in-law slept in one with their two older children. The three younger ones and the old lady slept in the other—the kids on a mattress on the floor. Thabo camped out in the living room. And now me, feeling like a real imposition.
I lay very still, anxious not to disturb anyone, listening to the breathing of my elderly bedfellow. Outside, the township wasn’t sleeping either, and when I did eventually doze off, fractured voices and revving car engines intruded on my already cluttered dreams.
In the middle of the night I was ripped from my slumber by a chilling scream. I leapt out of bed and yanked open the curtains, my heart pounding in my chest. But I couldn’t make out anything in the blackness, except for the luminous face of my wristwatch—1:13 A.M. Amazingly the others had slept through the disturbance. I slipped back into bed, my allotment of space further narrowed where Patience’s limbs had spilled onto my side.
I was hungry. Thabo had told me to make myself at home, but I couldn’t just help myself to their food. So I lay there hollow stomached, staring at the ceiling as the minutes and then hours ticked by.
At 4:30 someone stirred in the adjacent room. It was a relief to know someone else couldn’t sleep. Then I realized the shuffling and scratching sound was more purposeful. I would later learn it was Thabo’s brother and sister-in-law washing and dressing by candlelight. She worked at a drycleaner’s in Johannesburg; he, at a shoe factory on the outskirts of the city. Both caught the train to be at their respective jobs by seven.
I heard the soft click of the front door. The eldest boy and his father, buckets in hand, were heading for the communal tap some blocks away, where they would be met by an already long queue and have to wait in the fading darkness for almost an hour before it was their turn to draw water.
By the time they returned, the second eldest would have made sandwiches for the entire household and left for her job at the local spaza shop, where she worked each day before school. Out on the table would be eight neatly wrapped peanut butter sandwiches stacked in a listing tower. Thabo would also rise early to help with the household chores. Only the old lady and the two younger children would be left to wake with the rising sun.
Thabo bowled into my room. “Rise and shine!”
I must have dozed off. Opening my eyes begrudgingly, I struggled to extricate myself from sleep. Sunlight streamed undiluted through a crack in the curtains.
Thabo was standing at the foot of my bed in a creased T-shirt and boxers, a mug of coffee in his hand and Zaziwe o
n his shoulder. The bird took off from its perch and started circling the perimeter of the room, tweeting a deafening wake-up call.
“So your first night was that bad, eh?” he said with a chuckle.
I was not a morning person.
“I’ve left a basin of water at the door for you when you feel like washing, and breakfast is ready when you are. We’ve got a pretty full day ahead.”
I sat up. “I heard this awful scream in the middle of the night. It sounded like someone was being murdered. Didn’t you hear it?”
“Just one? That was a good night, then.”
“But—”
“It’s a war zone after dark. You’ll get used to it.” Then he was gone.
I sat in the already too-hot sunlight, gripped by a sudden loneliness and longing. I missed Dave cuddling up to me in the wee hours; I missed our tiny student flat in the middle of Cambridge; I even missed my troubled patients.
We climbed into Thabo’s car. My seat was baking hot and the perished plastic stung the backs of my legs. The day promised to be a scorcher. I wound down my window a little, but the tepid breath of morning did little to relieve the unremitting heat, even when the car was moving.
The journey out of Soweto felt shorter than the previous day’s trek through the sprawling township, and it wasn’t long before we were drawing into a small town on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
“We need to refuel,” Thabo said, slowing for a red traffic light.
A small pickup truck, or bakkie, as Thabo called it, pulled up alongside us. In the cab sat a white man and his dog. The dog was straining its head out the open window, hungrily swallowing the sluggish breeze. In the back, among farming implements and exposed to the elements, crouched a weathered black man. He saw me staring and his face crumpled into a toothless grin. I gave a self-conscious wave. Then we were moving again.
White men in safari suits strode purposefully down pavements. Women with big hair and high heels tottered about their business. From the heights of a banner strung across the local church, Jesus promised to save those who renounced their sins. A black boy struggled across the road under a load of animal feed. Shining farm equipment stood chained out in front of the local hardware store. Next door, lolly-colored Crimplene dresses hung off dusty, lifeless mannequins, while two shops down, a home-industries cooperative boasted crocheted creations and homemade carrot cake.
A delicious aroma of vanilla and caramelized sugar filled the car.
“Mm—that smells so good,” I said hungrily. It was coming from a bakery advertising impossible-to-pronounce delicacies—koeksisters, vetkoek, and melktert.
“Traditional Afrikaans fare,” Thabo said as we passed. “Koeksisters are plaited ropes of sweet bread soaked in a thick syrup, and vetkoek is a sort of fried dumpling filled with savory mince.”
“What’s the melk thing?”
“Melktert. It means milk tart—a simple but extremely delicious cinnamon custard tart.”
“You’re making me hungry.”
“We’ve just had breakfast! You English have big appetites!”
It was strange to once again be lumped with a group of people, given a label, a presumed identity. I’d never thought of myself as English, yet I had spent most of my life in England.
We cruised on through the wide tree-lined streets until Thabo spotted a car park right outside Jacobus’s Slaghuis. A blackboard at the door distracted the eye from the butcher’s bloody window, guaranteeing the shopper a bargain. Spesiale aanbod op boerewors. Special on boerewors sausage. Beef chuck for servants and boys only 60c.
“Back in a minute,” he said, hopping out of the car and darting into the butchery.
He was in the shop a long time. Through the window I could see him being bumped to the back of the queue each time a white customer walked in.
Across the road a handful of barefoot black urchins—all angled bones and gaping smiles—hovered around an overflowing dustbin promising treasure. Recycled bottles 5c refund.
“Have a piece of biltong.” Thabo was at my window, his joviality undampened by the humiliating wait in the butchery. “It’s a South African delicacy.”
Gingerly I took the unappealing stick of dry, shriveled meat.
“Chew on it,” he said, climbing back in the car. “It’ll keep you going for hours. A great distraction on a long road trip.”
I was reluctant at first, but had to concede it did actually taste good. The salty meat had a strong, spicy flavor.
Two blocks farther down, we pulled in to a petrol station beside a vacant pump. As soon as Thabo turned off the engine, a black attendant appeared, dressed in navy trousers, an emerald-green shirt, and a peaked hat with the BP logo on the front. He stood to attention at Thabo’s window, his white teeth gleaming. He had the blackest face I’d ever seen, his features completely swallowed up by the darkness of his skin. Just the light bouncing off protuberances hinted at a nose, a chin, a forehead.
“Regula or supa?”
“No worries, brother, I’ll fill her up. But the windscreen, she needs a clean.”
In a few slick movements the eager attendant had sloshed soapy water over the glass then skimmed it off. Thabo thanked him, tipping him a coin for his efforts.
Another car was pulling up and the attendant once again sprang into action, volunteering his infectious smile in greeting.
“Fill her up.”
As the pump ran and the driver went inside to pay, the attendant started uninvited to clean the car’s windscreen. The female passenger in the front seat shifted uncomfortably as the BP man beamed at her through the glass. She looked away.
Once he’d completed the job, he lingered. The woman fiddled at her feet, then finally tossed something out of her window. It was a mangled toffee in a gold wrapper. The attendant leapt into the air to catch it, his smile never once leaving his face.
Petrol paid for, Thabo reappeared. “There’ll be time enough to pay for things,” he said, blocking my contribution.
Once back in the car, he pulled out a stained, bird-pecked map from under his seat and spread it across our laps. Zaziwe hopped about, chasing Thabo’s finger as he traced our planned route to the Johannesburg suburb of Parkhurst.
“Out of the way, Zaziwe!” he cried. “I can’t see a darned thing.”
The bird hopped onto the steering wheel and then back onto the map.
“She’s been really obnoxious lately. I think she’s jealous of you.” He grinned. “It’s the first time she’s had to compete with another woman.”
I felt my face growing hot.
Then we were driving again, this time bound for the north of the city, to my mother’s last-confirmed address. Even though my call to Directory Assistance had come up a blank, Thabo had resolved to pay the house a visit in the hope it might shed some light on my mother’s whereabouts.
The city landscape started to change. There was more greenery—big trees, stretches of lawn, dense creepers, and shiny-leafed shrubs. I caught glimpses of magnificent homes on a scale I’d never seen before—stunning architectural creations hidden behind solid brick walls, intercoms and security cameras discreetly positioned on perfectly plastered pillars.
Less discreet were the signs. Immediate Armed Response. Vicious dog—Beware. Enter at your own risk. The signage and inconceivably high walls transformed these stately residences into fortresses. There were even sentries. I spotted a black man in official-looking gear standing guard outside one of the homes, a baton hanging idly from his waist.
“We must leave no stone unturned,” Thabo said out of the blue. “You’ll be surprised what you can find under a rock.”
I decided I liked Thabo—his quirky, homegrown take on idioms, his passion and care, his easy laughter. It was just his driving that left a lot to be desired. Speaking of which, without any warning or use of indicators, he swung out of
the traffic into a driveway, nearly leveling two black women chatting on the pavement. Then, still in gear, he released the clutch and we lurched forward, before coming to an abrupt halt.
“Nearly drove right past it,” he said casually.
I released my grip on the armrest.
The two women on the pavement were shaking their heads and gesturing angrily. Thabo climbed out and strolled over to them.
“Uxolo! Sorry for the fright, mamas,” he said, affectionately placing an arm around the chubbier one. She was the more irate of the two, the other expressing her anger in more muted mutterings.
Thabo tilted his head to one side and peered at the aggrieved women from under his thick black lashes. His enormous eyes were both apologetic and mesmerizing. Not surprisingly, the situation was quickly defused and when I ventured from the car, I stepped into a scene loud with laughter.
Twenty minutes on, the trio were still talking. I’d only been able to gather fragments of their lively discussion, gleaned from the few English words peppering their dialogue.
“It’s the journalist in you,” I said to Thabo later, when I discovered how much information he’d gathered. “You’ve got a knack for foraging, haven’t you?”
After about a half hour, we were finally climbing back into the little red car. Images of Toad of Toad Hall’s erratic driving flashed before me and I braced for the next leg of our intrepid journey, as Thabo wrote something down on a scrap of paper.
“So we’re not going to call in at the house after all?”
“No point. The Rodrigues family, for whom your mother worked, has long since moved.”
The reality of his words hit hard. So what had all the merriment been about? Only with time would I come to understand laughter was as necessary as breathing for black Africans.
“But,” Thabo added slowly, the word fat with promise, “the chubby one, she has worked as a maid next door for almost thirty years. She . . .” He scratched his cheek.
“She what?” I was impatient, especially since I’d already tolerated a half hour of indecipherable chatter.
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