by Linzi Glass
I phoned Loretta and she sounded strange and distant. I asked her what was wrong and she whispered into the phone that her pa had come home early on account of the riots and that he was cross-questioning their servant at the moment. She hung up quickly and I didn’t even have a chance to ask when Johann might be home.
A sudden loud thud on my window made me sit up with a start. I went over and opened it, the scent of lavender and fresh mint that grew below wafting up at me. I squinted into the darkness. There below stood the familiar shape of the person I so longed to see. ‘Julian!’
‘Shhh!’ he whispered back. ‘Come quickly. Say nothing.’ I quickly put on a pair of shoes and a coat and hurried down the stairs, my heart beating fast as I walked past the still-closed study door. When I reached the garden outside my bedroom Julian was no longer there. I looked around furtively with a sinking feeling in my chest, then I heard a rustling in the bushes.
‘Here,’ came Julian’s voice from behind the shrubbery. In the dim shadows I gingerly made my way to him.
‘Give me your hand, Ruby,’ he said softly.
I held it out across the open space between us then felt his fingers warm and yielding in my palm. He pulled me down towards him and crushed me hard against his chest. I could smell the flames of Soweto on his coat.
‘I went in and it is bad. Children have been killed – did you know?’
‘The news isn’t saying much about casualties.’
‘I stood amongst the injured and the dead and do you know what I thought about?’
‘No,’ I whispered back.
‘You.’ He hugged me even tighter as if he were inhaling my very essence before he released me gently.
‘I came back to take in your sweet spirit, your goodness, Ruby. To bottle it inside me so that I can draw on it for strength when I am far from you because there may never be another time.’
‘Don’t leave!’ I pleaded, gripping the lapels of his coat.
‘I must. It was not easy getting in or out, but I have friends on the inside. The police have sealed Soweto. They are cutting off food supplies tomorrow.’
‘Julian, the Special Branch… they’re arresting all known ANC members.’
‘Yes, I know. Tell your mother, the ANC, they are sending me underground to Mozambique for special training.’ Julian pulled me to my trembling feet. ‘Tell your father that I was wrong. My people are ready for change.’ He brusquely turned me to face him. ‘Know that wherever you are, I am with you.’
‘Julian, please!’ I held on to his jacket but he gently unclenched my fingers and held my icy fingers to his lips.
‘Goodbye, Ruby.’
He turned quickly before I had a chance to protest again. Through lavender-and-mint tears, I strained to watch him as he walked away, but the darkness swallowed him up all too quickly.
Chapter Twenty-Six
School the next day was unbearable for me. Our safe world was only interrupted once by the Soweto Riots in the form of the announcement the day before by Principal Dandridge to leave school property with a friend. But, today, everything at Barnard High was business as usual with not a single mention of any killings or massive protests in our very city.
As expected, the students in other townships followed in the wake of the Soweto students and there was bloodshed and fierce rioting in the townships of Alexandra and Daveytown as well as others. The English-speaking white liberal students at the University of the Witwatersrand began marching in show of support in downtown Johannesburg while Soweto burned. We continued to learn while other students died.
‘Hey, Ruby.’ I felt the sickening stroking of Desmond’s fingers on my hair in Miss Radcliffe’s geography class. He had moved seats once again, away from Monica, and was, much to my loathing, in his old seat behind me. I tried to ignore him and shift my focus to Miss Radcliffe’s lesson.
She wrote the word ‘ARGENTINA’ on the blackboard. ‘Argentina is the second-largest country in South America. Anyone care to guess which is the first?’
Desmond wound a finger round and round a lock of my hair until I felt a painful tug at the roots.
‘Ouch. Stop!’ I said.
‘Desmond and Ruby! I will have to move you again, Desmond, if you two start with your old hanky panky,’ she squawked.
‘Never got any hanky from this little panky,’ he said under his breath, but loud enough for nearby classmates to hear. They all laughed.
‘Ruby and Desmond!’ Miss Radcliffe rapped her pointing stick on the table. ‘I want a ten-page essay from each of you on Argentina’s biggest exports.’
‘Brazil!’ Desmond suddenly blurted out. ‘That’s the biggest country in South America.’ He flashed one of his disarming smiles at her.
‘Very good, Desmond,’ she said slowly.
‘I know, because I’ve been there twice. Do I still have to do the essay?’ he asked playfully.
‘Five pages because you knew the answer. But still ten for you!’ The tip of her stick pointed like a weapon at me. I looked away. ‘I’m talking to you, Miss Winters. And don’t think you can ignore the assignment just because you’re dropping out of our school in a few weeks.’
There was a general murmur in the classroom and I tried not to look up as I nodded my head that, yes, I did understand.
‘Drop out. Traitor,’ Desmond taunted me quietly. ‘But still the best-looking girl in the school.’ He began stroking my hair again and I tried not to flinch.
‘It is located between Chile and Uruguay…’ Miss Radcliffe droned on.
‘Monica and I are over,’ Desmond leaned forward and whispered. ‘She wouldn’t put out.’
I tried to pull myself forward on my seat but he grabbed my hair and held it firmly.
‘Not so fast,’ Desmond chuckled slowly. ‘I figured you must be putting out plenty for your big brute boer.’
I winced.
‘Yeah… you are, aren’t you? That’s okay. Let the Afrikaner ouk break you in, do the dirty work. Get you nice and ready for my smooth entry.’
In a flash I was on my feet, my body, my words, no longer in control of their actions. I turned and faced Desmond. ‘I would rather die before I would ever let you touch me!’
I didn’t care that Miss Radcliffe screamed at the top of her lungs that I would be put in detention for the rest of the term as she hurled her pointed stick at me, nor did I care that everyone in the class sat with open mouths as I lit the final explosion and destroyed what was left of me at Barnard High.
‘I’m glad I’m leaving! You are all so bloody spoiled and self-involved!’ I stormed from the room as I heard Desmond threaten to have his father stop giving millions to the school if I wasn’t expelled immediately.
I did not have a purpose or a direction. I knew I just needed to escape. I walked then ran out of the school building, the cold air filling my lungs as I gained speed. I headed across the manicured lawns, jumping over trimmed garden beds and polished sprinklers. It was as if a shackle had been cut loose from me and I was free to be Ruby Winters, the real me, for the first time at Barnard High.
As I rounded a corner at the furthest end of the school property I almost collided with an overturned wheelbarrow. Its contents lay strewn about, chopped-off heads of dried geraniums, unruly twigs that lay haphazardly about but it was the huddled form of a man on the ground amongst them that stopped me in my tracks. I recognized the wilted flowers on his old hat, the faded blue earth-stained overalls. His whole body shook uncontrollably, his face buried in his lap. I took a small step towards him and touched his heaving shoulder.
‘Sir, are you okay?’
He seemed oblivious to my presence so I crouched down beside him. He smelled like freshly cut lawn and damp, rich earth.
‘Sophia, Sophia, my Sophia,’ he cried.
I patted his shoulder. ‘Sir…’
He raised his anguished, wrinkled face and stared at me, but it was through me that he looked, to a vision of a little girl, I would soon learn, who lay un
moving on the potholed street. Her homemade sign that read, ‘NO AFRIKAANS IN SOWETO!’, written neatly in her girlish handwriting, discarded alongside her petite frame.
‘Sophia?’ I said. ‘Sir?’
‘She is my only granddaughter. They kill her.’ His face contorted in an agonized grimace. Tears ran into the deep lined crevices on his weathered face.
‘I am so sorry,’ I said, but knew that words like ‘sorry’ could not dam up even a single tear in his flood of pain. ‘You should be with your family.’
‘No.’ He wiped his face with the back of his stained sleeve. ‘Cannot. Must work or lose my job…’
‘Surely they will understand?’
The old man looked at me closely for the first time. A look of recognition crossed his face.
‘You are the girl in the window. The one that wave, yes?’ He sniffed.
‘Yes.’
‘No child here ever say hello to me before. Thirty-two years working at this school and you are the first one.’
My eyes prickled. I knew what it was like to be invisible at Barnard High for a few weeks but thirty-two years seemed intolerable.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, wishing there was a word in the English language that conveyed more than its insufficient sentiment.
‘My umlilewane, she is ten. She go to school at Phefeni Junior but she will never go again.’ The old gardener held his head and shook it back and forth in disbelief. ‘My daughter, she call over here to the school and they come and find me in the rose garden to tell me. But I cannot go to Soweto to be with my daughter. It is closed now by the police and I must work…’
A large ball of anger filled me. It barrelled down on me like a giant rock as I knelt on the ground beside the broken old man who displayed not an ounce of blame or malice towards the world. A world that had given him a hard, lonely life and had taken away a child that he loved so much, yet all he displayed was sorrow and acceptance.
‘I want you to know, sir, that what your granddaughter did was brave and noble and important.’ My voice quivered. ‘I also want you to know that for all the years I have attended this school, your beautiful gardens have made me happy, especially when I was having a bad day.’
The old man looked at me through dark filmy eyes. ‘Sir,’ he said slowly. ‘No one has ever called me that. It is usually “boy” that I am called.’ He lowered his head and bowed. ‘Thank you, miss.’
‘Ruby,’ I said, ‘my name is Ruby Winters.’ I held out my hand to him and he took it shyly in his rough, weathered palm.
‘Benjamin Mpatha.’ His mouth turned up slightly at the corners. ‘I thank you, Miss Ruby, for showing an old man much kindness on such a sad day.’
‘I wish I could do more,’ I said.
‘You have done enough.’ He bowed slightly again.
‘I may not be seeing you again, Mr Mpatha,’ I said as I stood. ‘I’m leaving to attend a different school. Today is probably my last day here.’ I looked up at the imposing brick building, the ivy and bougainvillea that climbed the stately walls, the empty, pristine quadrangle and the imposing gates that marked the entrance to our protected, affluent world.
The old man pulled himself up slowly from the ground and dusted off his grimy overalls. ‘I will not forget you, Miss Ruby. Girl that wave from the window.’ He took a step towards me.
‘I will not forget you either.’
I leaned forward and kissed him quickly on his damp cheek.
He patted my arm as fresh tears sprung in his old eyes. I watched as he shuffled back to his wheelbarrow, bending with some difficulty to straighten it right-side up again.
As I turned to walk away, I felt drawn to look at him one last time before I made my way towards the school gates. Benjamin Mpatha stood amongst all that he tended, the majestic trees, the lush green lawn, the rich variety of seasonal flowers. I watched as he secured the elastic band of his straw hat under his chin, an act that he had done a thousand times and one that he would do a thousand times more. I knew that he would continue to nurture these gardens and keep them beautiful until he could no longer stand on his feeble legs.
He must have felt my gaze, for he looked up and raised his hand slowly to wave at me. I waved back. I willed myself to freeze the moment, the very second, so that I could cherish one last snapshot of the only person that had truly mattered to me at Barnard High, surrounded by the spilled broken twigs and flowers that lay waiting to be gathered up in his gentle old hands.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The phone in our house did not stop ringing that evening. Mother and Father would alternate jumping up from the dinner table to answer it. There had been only one call earlier in the evening for me, from Johann, who spoke quickly and said that it was very important that we see each other the next day. I tried to get him to tell me what was so pressing but all he said was, ‘Tomorrow. Stay safe until then, my love.’ I could barely eat the soft mashed potatoes and breaded chicken in front of me. The food stuck in my throat. Blocking its passage was the word ‘expelled’.
‘Well, looks like Julian’s made it out of Johannesburg.’ Father returned to the table after a particularly long phone conversation. Mother nodded. I noticed that she too had barely touched her food.
‘Good. Let’s pray he makes it across the Mozambique border,’ she said quietly as she absently swirled her empty fork on her plate.
Father sat down in his seat and, unlike Mother and me, ate with gusto. It was as if the riots and its ripple effect had charged him with new hope and enthusiasm. Gone was the hard, set line of his mouth. He spoke between forkfuls of mashed potato about how the ANC was ready to ‘push the envelope’ and that change might come about sooner than we had all thought.
‘Peace in our time!’ He wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. ‘Neville Chamberlain, 1938. Do they teach you things like that in school, Ruby?’
I practically jumped at the word ‘school’. I shook my head.
‘Oh, about school, I almost forgot,’ Mother said matter-of-factly with a look that meant she most certainly hadn’t. ‘Principal Dandridge called the gallery this afternoon looking for me. Apparently a boy named Desmond and his father are demanding that Ruby be expelled.’
Father almost choked on the chicken he was wolfing down. I felt the blood drain from my face and leave my body.
‘Relax, David.’ Mother put her hand up to calm him while I remained ashen and speechless. ‘That pompous boy called our daughter terrible names, turned an entire grade of students against her, had Johann beaten up at the dance and, worse yet, has made it impossible for Ruby to stay at the school. I mentioned all these charming facts to Principal Dandridge but not one word penetrated his fat hide.’
A small defiant smile appeared on Mother’s face. ‘So I told Principal Dandridge that if he yields to the demands of another parent, who just happens to be the school’s biggest financial donor, we would be sure to press charges against that certain illbred, ill-mannered boy for trespassing on our property and attempting to accost our daughter some weeks ago.’ Mother wiped the corners of her mouth delicately with a napkin and held my gaze. ‘I thought that would be okay with you, Ruby,’ she said, without altering her tone. ‘Snobs hate scandals.’
I reached for her small hand across the table and squeezed it, since words of gratitude could not get past the humiliation and hurt in my throat.
‘Should have been a lawyer instead of a gallery owner, Annabel,’ Father chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, Ruby. You’ll finish up the term at Barnard – only two more weeks.’ Father wiped an errant tear that had escaped from my eye. ‘A new beginning for you and perhaps a new beginning for our country,’ Father said lightly.
‘Let’s hope.’ Mother sighed. ‘Ruby will be fine but I’m afraid there’s a long road between here and harmony.’ She looked over to the empty chair where Julian used to sit and shook her head. ‘I pray he’s all right…’
But Julian was not all right.
It was Mother’s deep, ang
uished moans that rolled in long, desperate notes that woke me just as the delicate sun began warming the world outside in its frail light. It was a sound that I had never heard from her in all my seventeen years.
‘Why? Why? WHY?’ she cried. I could hear her fists pounding something hard.
I lay still and looked at the painting, the seagull flying high over the smokestacks of Soweto, the hopeful boy on the ground gazing upwards, and knew that it was about Julian. I could not get up to find out what had happened. I was not ready for the dreaded truth so I lay there until Father came to give me the news.
‘They’ve got him. Bloody Detective Groenewald and his bastard men!’
At daybreak Father had received a call from a long-trusted underground informer that Julian and sixteen other ANC members had been picked up close to the Mozambique border and were all being held without bail as political prisoners. They were being brought back to Johannesburg to be incarcerated at Diepkloof Prison. They had all been well disguised as migrant workers and were hidden, amongst the livestock, in a closed cattle truck, a means of transport that was rarely searched. But they never stood a chance. The seventeen men and women had been tailed all the way from Johannesburg by an elite team from the Special Branch. The victory, as it was reported in the papers a week later, was all owed to the unwavering perseverance of one determined man on the force. Detective Henrick Groenewald.
Father sat dejectedly on my bed and told me of the cattle truck and the migrant-worker disguises, and I imagined the smirk on Detective Groenewald’s face as he pulled Julian from the mooing, manure-filled truck, his icy grey eyes taking in Julian’s migrant garb.
‘Not quite the reception you’re used to, is it, fancy pants artist boy?’ I could imagine him saying as he wiped the cow dung from under his boots on to Julian’s trousers.