Ruby Red

by Linzi Glass

  ‘It’s about the ability to draw your way out of your problems. And create a solution,’ I said quickly.

  Julian, who had been fiddling with a loose thread on his faded denim shirt, looked up at me and nodded slowly. Our eyes locked and I knew that he was pleased with my response. He gave the journalist a few more platitudes and then let Mother handle the rest of the questions. But, when the young man asked Julian what colour he liked best to paint in, a look of disgust crossed his face. He stood up and left the room, indicating that the interview was over, leaving Mother to offer a profuse apology and a glass of fine port that she kept for special occasions.

  ‘There is nothing more desirable than a bad boy,’ Dashel said, after I told him about the interview and had collapsed into a chair in his office.

  ‘He’s not a bad boy, Uncle D,’ I murmured as I lay back on the soft black leather and closed my eyes. ‘Desmond and his nasty group are bad boys and they’re hardly desirable.’

  I was feeling horribly tired and my head ached from trying to keep myself sane and calm at Barnard High until the term was over, which was not for three more weeks. Everyone at school knew that I would be leaving then to go to Parktown Girls’ High. Gossip spread faster than weeds and it wasn’t long after the faculty had been informed by Principal Dandridge that Ruby Winters, ex-prefect and ex-popular girl, would be taking permanent leave of their beloved educational institution that all the students knew of my imminent departure too.

  The rumour circulating was that I was leaving to join Johann at Steunmekaar and many snide remarks were made behind my back, but loud enough for me to hear, to that effect. But, to my surprise, there were a few students who let me know surreptitiously that they were sorry to see me leave. The boys who still cared patted me on the back quickly as I passed them in the school corridors and a few of the braver girls even dropped notes on my desk that said things like, ‘We’ll think of you often,’ or, ‘So sad that you’re leaving but it’s probably for the best. Good luck!’ I was still persona non grata to everyone in our matric class so I started spending lunch break in the library as the weather was bitterly cold. I began reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms since Mother had quoted it in the speech that she had made about Julian. The words ‘grace under pressure’ had resonated inside me when she’d spoken them, and it became a silent incantation that I said to myself to help me get through the day at school. Grace in the face of disgrace, as it were.

  Had it not been for my late-night calls with Loretta, who would call after her pa was asleep, and then Johann, who would take the phone from his sister when we were done having girl-chat, I do not know how I would have endured my last weeks at Barnard High. Loretta and Johann were my only true friends now, despite the fact that we lived miles apart.

  ‘No worries, Ruby. You will be happier at your new school.’ Loretta would try to make me feel better when I told her of the loneliness and isolation I felt.

  ‘I dread every day. I wish I could be at school with you,’ I told her many times.

  ‘Ja, ek ook. But you learn in English and me in Afrikaans. It is language that separates people, isn’t it? Not only religion.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking that Johann and Loretta spoke ‘the language of the government’ and they were judged on that fact by Julian and other blacks, just as Julian and his people were judged by their skin colour. I would be judged differently too by a certain group of people in a few weeks when they saw me in a state-school uniform and not a private one. It all seemed so unfair. We didn’t get a chance to be accepted or rejected by who we were as individuals, rather it was our outside packaging that determined everything. Language, skin colour and even uniform.

  ‘Don’t be sad.’ Loretta must have heard the deflated sound in my voice. ‘Alles moet verby gaan. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘I think so…’ I said.

  ‘It means “everything must pass”.’

  ‘I just wish these last few weeks at Barnard would pass quickly.’ I sighed.

  ‘They will. I will tell them to!’ she said sweetly. And we both laughed.

  Because their father had forbidden them from seeing me, I could no longer go over to visit Loretta in her home, and skipping after-school activities was difficult for her. However, Johann, having a car and far more freedom, was able to escape his father’s scrutiny and managed to meet me as often as he could. He would sometimes ditch rugby practice and sneak away in the late afternoons. Our rendezvous spot was always Zoo Lake in Saxonwold. It was a quick bike ride down Westcliff Ridge and a short distance on Jan Smuts Avenue for me before I was in his arms.

  I rode, not caring about cars and traffic and possible surveillance, with my legs pumping as fast as my heart in his direction. Johann would usually be waiting in the small cafe that was close to the lake’s edge. There, we would share a sundae or sometimes even rent a rowing boat and go out on the icy water. It was winter and the lake was almost always deserted and I would watch his strong arms row, his eyes never leaving mine as he faced me, with the watery afternoon sun closing like a pale gold halo behind him.

  When we reached the furthest side of the lake, and Johann had pulled the boat into a secluded enclave where the weeping willow trees formed a soft green curtain around us, we would reach for each other, our mouths melting together, our hands tracing rapid paths on each other’s skin as if we were writing rushed, tender words that could be read long after we were apart. There was an urgency in us both to hold on and not let go. Our unspoken thoughts translated in body code that our time together was precious and that the only thing that mattered was now.

  I cannot say how many times Johann and I met, perhaps a dozen or so, I don’t know, but I do remember with aching clarity that the last time we held each other was at Zoo Lake. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Sometimes I can still hear the water lapping softly, as if kissing our rowing boat, somehow knowing that young lovers were entwined above, supported in its liquid arms.

  ‘I miss you before we are even apart.’ Johann stroked my hair and pulled me close before reaching for the oars that would take us back to the shore.

  ‘I miss you always,’ I said, and ran my fingers up and down the inside of his forearm where the skin was smooth. He took my hand and held it to his lips. ‘You are my one and only,’ he said, before releasing it.

  There was a family of ducks that swam beside us as Johann rowed steadily through the water. The sun was setting fast now and the light over the bank made the land look mottled in shades of violet and brown. The sight of the dock ahead filled me with a murky sense of something that I could not define and a cold shiver ran up my spine. I looked at Johann whose strong body encased the softest of hearts and was filled with a sudden wave of panic. I did not want us to dock; I wanted Johann and I to float on the placid water forever, away from dry land where dark things like school principals, detectives and angry Afrikaans fathers lurked in shadowy places, where police watched with accusing eyes and school friends disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  The mother duck suddenly quacked loudly, as if to warn her brood that danger might be lurking, and they all turned and followed her in a direction away from our boat.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be. I’ll always keep you safe.’

  We kissed quickly on the shore and I got on my bike and pedalled home fast before darkness fell. Had I known what lay ahead I would have clung to Johann and made him promise that we would be together forever.

  But, of course, I didn’t.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Wednesday, 16 June 1976. The day that changed my life. The day that changed the lives of thousands of people, forever.

  It began like any other school day. It was the morning after Johann and I had met at Zoo Lake. It began as they all did. Throwing on my school uniform, wolfing down a buttered piece of toast followed by a gulp of coffee, then jumping on to my bike with my book satchel on my back.

  I rode fast in the freezing morning
air down the hill with my woolly scarf blowing behind me and my gloved hands gripping the handlebars, teeth chattering with each icy blast of air that knifed through me. I reached school in record time, wanting to escape the chilly winds as quickly as I could.

  There was the all too familiar hollowness in the pit of my stomach as I parked my bike and made my way to my first class, which was biology. The school bell rang at 7.30 a.m. just as we opened our textbooks to the chapter on the pulmonary system. What I did not know until later that day was that while we sat in our heated classrooms there was another group of young students many miles away from us who were far from warm and safe in their classrooms. They stood on the potholed streets, their shivering fingers wrapped round homemade signs that read, ‘Down With Afrikaans’, ‘Viva Azania!’ and ‘If we must do Afrikaans then Prime Minister Voster must do Zulu.’ Bracing themselves against the cold morning air, these students had begun gathering at the Thomas Motolo Junior Secondary School in a suburb of Soweto. It appeared in the papers the next day that most of them had arrived at school with no knowledge that the Soweto Student’s Representative Council had decided that today would be a day of peaceful demonstration against the impending law that would force all black children to learn their subjects in Afrikaans. The students eagerly joined the march.

  While we were learning that Tyrannosaurus rex and a modern sparrow had something in common – an almost identical pulmonary system – the protesting youth of the township had grown to several thousand as they marched through the streets of Soweto, gathering students from Naledi High School, Malopo Junior and others. They sang the African national anthem, ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’, and hung crudely made signs on their deserted schools that said, ‘No Security Branch Police allowed. Enter at your own risk.’

  While we made our way to the next period, holding our glossy textbooks in our fair-skinned hands, the marching students were joined by thousands more from Meadowlands, Diepkloof and other schools. They all converged on Vilakazi Street outside Orlando West High and Phefeni Junior.

  While I began my English Literature essay, ‘Is untimely death an act of fate or divine intervention?’, that was based on our prescribed book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, the animated crowd of black students, standing shoulder to shoulder, blocked Vilakazi Street. They chanted in harmony, their voices as one, ‘Power! Power!’ as more students kept joining the throng of thousands.

  It was then that the police made their presence felt.

  The white officers, dressed in their blue uniforms, lined up side by side down the centre of the road. They stood less than twenty feet from the children. Then more policemen came and, followed by the riot squad police with snarling dogs and weapons, they descended from their oversized police trucks.

  I wrote my essay rapidly, my hand tearing across the page: ‘This book, which covers the aftermath of an inexplicable tragedy, where a small footbridge in Peru breaks and sends five people to their deaths, lets us examine whether these innocent people were meant to die or if they fell to their deaths randomly. Why those five? Could it have been them or anyone else?’

  It was later reported that a woman, with a baby tied to her back in a soft Sotho blanket, asked one of the policemen as he cocked his rifle, ‘Are you going to kill our children?’ But he told her no. There would be no killing. As his words left his lips, tear gas was hurled by one of his fellow officers into the crowd of young students who tried to retaliate with rocks and stones. Shots, one after the other, were fired into the unarmed youths. Bang! Bang! Bang! Why those two? Why those five? Why those fourteen?

  I was pleased with the essay I had written. I felt that I had given a fair argument and explanation to the second paragraph of the essay question: ‘To the gods are we perhaps like flies that are killed by boys on a summer’s day or has every feather that falls from even the smallest bird been brushed gently away by the hand of God?’

  Screaming children tried to disperse. Chaos, cries for help, more shots fired into the crowd. Seventeen-year-old Antoinette Peterson searched in vain for her little brother, Hector. She saw a group of youths surrounding a small boy who lay bleeding on the ground. Later I learned, with the rest of the world, that Hector was the first child shot down by the police. Twelve and in grade six. He would never see grade seven. An image shown all over the newspapers. It is seared in my mind. Hector, carried by a lanky boy in tattered overalls, his sister, Antoinette, a look of horror on her face, runs beside his lifeless body as they head towards the clinic in vain. More images that came later… Children carrying wounded children out of the tear gas. Smoke, then fire as the angry mob begins to torch cars, houses, stores. ‘Tear Soweto down. It is a symbol of our oppressors!’

  ∗

  An announcement was made on the intercom system right before the end of last period. It was Principal Dandridge.

  ‘Students, it has been reported on the radio that unruly blacks in Soweto have started rioting. There is nothing for you to be alarmed about. It doesn’t affect any of you. The township is miles from here but as a precaution we ask that you all travel home with a friend and not alone. Thank you.’

  I stood, moments later, with the rest of the class as the last bell of the day rang.

  Not affected. Not affected, echoed in my brain. I fear there will be bloodshed. Father’s words rolled slowly towards me as I grabbed my satchel and moved in slow motion into the corridor.

  ‘Buncha natives causing trouble,’ I heard behind me.

  ‘Throw them some bananas. That’ll stop ’em!’ another joked as they all laughed.

  I pushed through the throng, willing my leaden feet to go faster and faster as I raced out of the building. There was only one word pounding through my brain, pushing me to fly at lightning speed through the school gates and up the first hill. Faster. Faster. Faster! One force, one thought, one focus.

  Eyes of liquid pools, arms of strength and comfort, hands that created magic.

  Julian!

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I raced up the stairs to Julian’s bedroom and flung the door open, hoping that he was still sleeping and did not yet know about the riots, but all that greeted me was a bundle of lumpy bed sheets. I prayed that I would find him in the studio, but it was Mother who stood in the middle of the empty room. She turned as I threw the door open. A look of disappointment crossed her face when she saw that it was me and not Julian standing in the doorway. Her eyes were filled with sunken distress.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I left the gallery as soon as word reached me that there were killings in Soweto. But too late…’ Her voice wavered.

  I ran to her and we held each other, breathing in the paint fumes and his musky scent, the air thick with the memory of his every bold stroke and charcoaled sketch mark.

  ‘He left a note.’ She released me and held out a shaking hand. I took the crumpled piece of paper from her and opened it.

  My wonderful family, I can no longer remain in the safety of your world. It is time for me to rejoin my people in Soweto and fight for our freedom. I know you will understand.

  Julian

  I felt my heart wrench and tear away from its mooring in my chest. ‘We’ll never see him again, Mother!’ I cried.

  She took my hands in hers as tears streamed down her face. ‘My darling child, he is a warrior. A fighter. A survivor.’

  ‘No! He is an artist.’

  She gripped my fingers even tighter as I angrily tried to release them.

  ‘Ruby, listen to me. We had him on borrowed time. I knew that. He is a soldier whose weapon until now has been a paintbrush. I have always believed in its power but it will take weapons of another kind to bring about change.’ She released my hands. ‘Now we must set him free to do what his soul has yearned for since he was a boy.’

  ‘What is that, Mother?’ My tearstained face looked anxiously into hers for an answer.

  ‘To use his purple crayon. W
hether it takes the form of… a paintbrush or a gun.’

  ‘He’s a member of the ANC, isn’t he, Mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said haltingly. ‘He is an artist and an activist. He has the ability to do what few can.’ Her voice was barely audible. ‘He can open people’s eyes but also close them.’

  ‘I don’t understand…?’

  ‘Kill, Ruby.’ She struggled to get the words out. ‘He will, if he must. For his people’s sake.’

  Mother and I sat glued to the radio for the rest of the day. She got up only to answer the kitchen phone and we would give each other a hopeful look every time it rang. Julian? But each time she returned to the living room, shaking her head. Reports were coming in on SABC radio that police vans had been set on fire as well as administration offices in Soweto. There were rumblings that the rioting would spread the next day throughout other townships. What was not reported, but that we later learned, was that the Special Branch had begun a widespread crackdown on ANC members and supporters and that white sympathizers were being put under house arrest or worse.

  Father came home by nightfall and found Mother and I sitting forlornly in the living room with cups of cold untouched tea on the table in front of us.

  ‘My lovely ladies.’ He opened his arms to us and we went into them like two lost kittens.

  ‘I would have expected nothing less from Julian,’ Father said stoically. ‘Come, Annabel, we have lots to do. The forces are moving fast.’ He gave her a knowing look.

  ‘Will you be all right, darling?’ Mother asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Won’t be long.’ Father kissed me on the top of my head. I watched as Mother followed him dutifully to his office and heard the door smack shut behind them.

  I wandered upstairs and lay on my bed, my eyes pulled into Julian’s painting, the purple crayon in the boy’s hand. Where are you, Julian? I asked the image. Where are you? Outside my bay window I heard the unseasonal cry of a piet-my-vrou bird trill a warning that the rains would be coming. But it was winter and the rains would not fall for many months. I wondered if the little bird was trying to send me a warning of another kind or if it were confused, perhaps, like everyone else today since our world had been turned dangerously upside down.