She took a deep and noisy inward draw of breath. Cruel fancy played her tricks. She could swear the air was faintly laced with the barest soupçon of the bittersweet smell of coffee. Mmmhh! What she wouldn’t give for just one cup. Just one.
Her stomach growled. Swiftly, she placed one hand on her still girlishly flat tummy. She felt the quick ripples of air bubbles in her bowels. When last had she eaten? And what had she had then?
Mdlangathi, her husband, lying next to her, mumbled something in his sleep and turned over to lie, once more, facing the ceiling, his distinctly discernible paunch hilling the blankets.
Immediately, the snoring resumed, provoking swift and righteous retaliation from his wife, reflex by now, after all the years with him and his snoring.
Mamvulane dug an elbow into his side, grumbling, “Uyarhona, Mdlangathi. Uyarhona!” for habits die hard. In their more than twenty years of marriage, among the constants in their relationship was his snoring whenever he lay “like a rat suffering from acute heartburn,” her talking to him as though he were awake and the answers he never failed to mumble—pearls from an ancient oracle. She always chided herself that she actually listened, paid attention to the barely audible ramblings of a snoring man who’d gone to bed drunk. But she always did. And tonight not only was he drunk when he went to bed, Mamvulane told herself, but she had never seen him so agitated. Would she never learn?
Last night, however, was the worst she’d ever seen him. He’d returned positively excited, ranting and raving about the gross lack of respect of today’s young people.
“Baqalekisiwe, ndifung’ uTat’ ekobandayo. Baqalekisiw’ aba bantwana, Mamvulane.”
“What children are cursed?” his wife wanted to know.
And that is when he told her of the curse the actions of today’s children would surely invite onto their heads.
“Why do you say such a terrible thing?” his wife wanted to know.
“Now, now, just as the sun set, I was on my way here from the single men’s zones, where I’d gone to get a little something to wet my parched throat. What do you think I should come across? Mmhhmh?” He stopped and considered her with his bleary eyes.
His wife conceded ignorance. “I’m sure I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me,” she said. She wanted to scrape together what food there was in the house. And try to prepare a meal.
“Do you know that a group of boys accosted a man? A grown man, who was circumcised? Boys laid their filthy hands on such a man … a man old enough to be their father?”
“Where was this?” asked Mamvulane, not sure how much of Mdlangathi’s ramblings she should take seriously.
“You ask me something I have already told you. Where are your ears, woman? Or else, you think I’m drunk and pay no attention to what I tell you? No wonder your children are as bad as they are, where would they learn to listen and obey since you, our wives, who are their mothers, have stopped doing that? Mmhhh?”
“Are you telling me the story or should I go about my business?” retorted Mamvulane. She was taking a risk, for she did want to hear the story. But she also knew that her husband rather fancied the sound of his own voice.
“If you want to hear the story, then pay attention. I told you I was from the zones. On my way here, I came across a group of boys, you know, these little rascals who are always passing by here, pretending to be visiting your son, Mteteli, when you full know it’s your daughter they want. And they were manhandling one of their fathers.”
“Who was that?”
“Now, you make me laugh. You imagine I stopped and asked them for their dompasses? Am I mad? Or do you think I am a fool? Or is it your hurry to be a widow that is putting those stupid words into your mouth? Mmhh?”
With great deliberateness, Mdlangathi attended to the business of picking his teeth. First, he took out a match. Then he took out his jackknife and started whittling slowly on the tiny match, chiseling it till the back had a sharp point.
“When a woman told me what those dogs were doing, I knew enough to mind my own business, my friend. Today’s children show no respect for their fathers.
“This man, the woman said to me, had had too much to drink. Now, mind you,” quickly, he went to the defense of his fallen comrade, “the man drank from his own pocket, he didn’t ask those silly boys to buy him his liquor. So what is his sin? Tell me, what is this man’s sin when he has drunk liquor he bought with his own money? Why should these mad children make that their business, mmhhmh?”
“What did they do?”
“These little devils,” bellowed Mdlangathi, eyes flashing. “Don’t they force the sad man to drink down a solution of Javel? Javel, Mamvulane! Do you hear me? What do you think Javel does to a man’s throat? To his stomach? I ask you, what do you think it does to those things? Just visit and make jokes with them, heh?”
He glowered at her as though she were one of the “little devils” and he was itching to teach her a lesson.
Bang! went his fist on the table.
“A grown man, no less! The boys make him drink that poison. They tell him, ‘We are helping you, Tata, not killing you!’ Then, when they see that his belly is well extended from all that liquid, they give him a feather from a cock’s tail and force him to insert it into his throat, ‘ … deep down the path the poison traveled,’ they say to him.
“The man does as he is told. Only he is so enfeebled by the heaviness of his stomach and what he’d had before he drank the Javel solution that his attempts do not immediately bring the required results. Whereupon the urchins take matters into their hands.
“‘This poison crushes Africa’s seed!’ they say, one of them taking the feather from his trembling hand and pushing it down the man’s gullet himself.
“Do you hear what I’m telling you, Mamvulane? Even a witchdoctor does not put his own hand into the throat of the man he is helping to bring up poison from his craw.
“But that is what these wretched children did. Put their dirty hands down the throats of their fathers and forced them to regurgitate the liquor they had drunk.”
None too sober himself, Mdlangathi embarked upon a bitter tirade directed at all of today’s children, miserable creatures who had no respect for their elders.
Recalling last night’s events or the account her husband had given her, Mamvulane now looked down at him, asleep still by her side. Poor Mdlangathi. So vulnerable in the soft early-morning light. Poor Mdlangathi. He must have got the fright of his life, she thought, shaking her head in dumb disbelief at the things that were happening these days in their lives.
Her immediate problem, however, was what were they all going to eat once they got out of bed? She had all but scraped the bottom of the barrel last night. Her mind made an inventory of all the food they had in the house: a potato, by no means gigantic; two small onions; a quarter packet of beans but no samp; there was no salt; a cup or a cup and a half of mealie meal … And then there was no paraffin with which to cook whatever she might have, far from adequate as that itself was.
Three weeks now, the consumer boycott had been going on. Three weeks, they had been told not to go to the shops. She was at her wit’s end. Mdlangathi and the children expected to eat—boycott or no boycott. Whether she had gone to the shops or not didn’t much concern them. All they understood, especially the younger children, was that their tummies were growling and they wanted something to eat. And their unreasonableness, conceded Mamvulane, was understandable. Now, her husband’s case was cause for vexation to her. Wasn’t Mdlangathi another thing altogether? A grown man. With all that was happening. But still, he wanted and expected no changes in his life. Didn’t he still go to work every day? That’s what he’d asked her when she told him they were running out of food. What did she do with the money he gave her? As though, in these mad and crazy days, money were the only issue, the sole consideration. And not the very shopping itself—the getting of the food. With the comrades guarding every entry point in Guguletu. And neighbor informing o
n neighbor. People sprouting eyes at the back of their heads so that they could go and curry favor with the comrades, giving them information about others, especially those with whom they did not see eye to eye about things. Yes, it was so. For the very people who denounced others to the comrades were not above turning a blind eye to the same things … when the actors were people they favored. But did her very reasonable, understanding, and loving husband, who always gave her his wages, understand that? No. He thought she should just hop on a bus and go to Claremont and there go to Pick ’n Pay! Mdlangathi was something else, concluded Mamvulane, shaking her head slowly like one deep in thought. How did he arrive at thinking, at a time like this, that food shopping was still a simple matter of whether one had money in one’s pocket?
The very thought of getting up was too much for her to entertain this morning. Hunger has that effect. Her anger mounted with the growing realization that she faced a hard day with no answers to the questions it raised, that she had to feed her family and had nothing at all that she could put together to make a meal.
It’s all very well for the comrades to stop people from going to the shops, she fumed. They were fighting the businessmen, they said. But as far as she could see, it was only people like herself, poor people in the township, who were starving. The businessmen were eating. So were their families. They were getting fatter and fatter by the day. They had meat and bread and fruit and vegetables and milk for their babies. They put heavily laden plates on their tables … not just once a day, as most people like herself did in good times, no, but each time they had a meal—several times a day. Oh, no, the businessmen the comrades were fighting were in no danger of dying from starvation. It was not their bowels that had nothing but the howling air in them. And not their children whose ribs one could count.
Midafternoon that same day, Mamvulane said, “I have to do something today!” As there was no one else in the house, she was talking to herself. Thereafter, without a word even to her very good neighbor and friend, Nolitha, she made her way out of her yard. Looking neither left nor right, away she hurried.
She had her day clothes on, complete with apron and back-flattened slippers. The pale of her rather large heels showing, she flip-flopped down the road. Anyone seeing her thus attired would have assumed she wasn’t going any farther than perhaps fifty or so meters from her very own doorstep.
It was a little after three—time to start the evening meal. For those who could do that. Not me, thought Mamvulane bitterly. Not poor me, she said under her breath, walking away as nonchalantly as you please.
NY 74 is a crescent street with three exit points: north, west, and south. Mamvulane’s family lived directly opposite the western exit, separated from it by two large buildings, the Community Center in front of her house and plumb in the center of the circle, and the Old Apostolic Church behind it. In reality, therefore, from her house she could not see anyone coming or leaving from that exit which lay on NY 65. The other two exits were clearly visible from her house. And usually those were the ones she favored because, until she disappeared altogether, she could always turn back and yell for one of the children to bring her anything she might have forgotten.
But this day she slowly made her way toward NY 65, soon losing sight of her house. “Andizi kubukel’ abantwana bam besifa yindlala.” And thus emboldened by her own thoughts, she went on her way. No, she was not going to watch her children starve to death.
Her plan was simple. And daring. Straight through NY 65 she walked. Into the zones, she went, her gait slow and steady, not once hesitating. Past the zones and into the Coloured township of Mannenberg. She’d gained enough anonymity, she deemed. Along Hanover Road she made her way until she found a bus stop. With a sigh, she stopped and leaned against the electric pole marking the stop.
Into her breast her hand fished for the little bundle, the handkerchief wherein lay her stash. Money. Bus fare and much more.
Carefully, she extricated enough for the fare and put the rest back where it had been, securely tied it into a knot at one corner of the handkerchief. And then back went the purse, safe and secure.
Her wait wasn’t long. A bus came. She clambered on—one of only a few still making their way to the shopping suburb at that time of day, and definitely the only woman from Guguletu (or any of the other African townships, for that matter) on that bus. The buses coming back from Claremont were full with workers and shoppers returning home.
Mamvulane found a seat easily. Her heart was quite calm. Her chin quite firm. Her head held high. She was amazed at how unbelievably easily she had accomplished her mission thus far. But she knew that the real difficulty lay ahead … in Claremont? Or would it be harder for her back in Guguletu ? Ndakubona ngoko. That stubborn thought planted itself in her mind. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
At Pick ’n Pay the aisles were full. She began to wonder whether the boycott had been lifted and she and her neighbors were maintaining a boycott long past because they had not heard the good news. But a closer look told her the people milling about there were not from the African townships. They were from everywhere else. And what they were doing there, they were doing quite openly—freely and without one little qualm.
Soon, her own timidity left her. She forgot that what she was doing was forbidden. Once more, it had become, to her too, a normal and very ordinary activity. Only the unusual exhilaration she felt, silent laughter of parched gardens drinking in rain after a drought, gave any indication of her deprivation. That, and the serious weighing of choices, which items to select, which to discard, and which to ignore completely. Deep drown, on another level of knowing, she knew that she had to travel very light.
Her purchases made and paid for, Mamvulane went to the train station. There was a toilet there that she could use. She had put back a lot of the articles that, at first impulse, she’d grabbed and thrown into her trolley. Not unaware of the dangers that lay in her homeward-bound journey, she saw the virtue of ridding herself of most of what she wished for. It would be stupid to make her venture that obvious that she ended up losing all she had risked her neck for. The problem of packaging was of prime importance.
With her two Pick ’n Pay plastic bags, Mamvulane entered the toilet at the railway station. Fortunately, there was no one there. In her mind, all the way from her house, on the bus, and in the store itself, she had turned and turned the problem of what to do with her purchases and now that the time had come it was as though she had actually rehearsed the whole thing. Several times over.
In less than ten minutes, Mamvulane left the toilet. She now carried only one plastic bag. And it was not from Pick ’n Pay. To any eyes happening on her, she was just a rather shabby African woman who might have gone to buy some clothing, not much, from Sales House. For that is what the bag she was carrying said now: SALES HOUSE. And everyone knew Sales House was a clothing and drapery store. Indeed, since the bag had long lost its crispness it could be taken that she was a domestic worker carrying home goodies her madam had given her.
Deliberately avoiding the Guguletu bus line, Mamvulane made a beeline for the Nyanga bus. The line was not that long. Soon she would be home. Soon. Soon.
When the bus came she was one of the last to board it. But still found a seat, for most workers were already back in their houses, the time being half past six.
Ordinarily, she would have been concerned that her husband might get home before her. That was something he didn’t particularly care for. Mdlangathi liked to get home and find his wife waiting supper for him, so that, should he feel in the mood for it, he could go back out again to get a drink from one of the shebeens nearby. To make matters worse, Mamvulane reminded herself, in her haste and caution, she had not told even one of her children where she was going. Ahh, silently she told herself, I’m sure when he sees where I’ve been he will not only understand; he will be mighty pleased.
The Nyanga bus passes Guguletu on its way to Nyanga, for the two townships are neighbors, with Nyanga
lying east of Guguletu. Somewhere in the indistinct border between the two, there is an area neither in the one nor in the other, a kind of administratively forgotten no-man’s-land. And there one finds all sorts of people, including some not classified as Africans or as Coloured—those who somehow escaped government classification. Some of them work, others don’t. No one really knows what does happen in that place, which has come to be called kwaBraweni. How it got to be Brown’s Place is a mystery, or perhaps a myth awaiting excavation.
Mamvulane let the bus ride past Guguletu with her, making no sign at all that that was where she was headed. Only when the bus came to kwaBraweni did she ring the bell, indicating to the driver that her stop approached.
From the bus stop where she got off, it was less than a kilometer or so to her house. But Mamvulane was well aware that that was where the greatest challenge lay. In covering that distance that seemed insignificant and easy.
There was a shortcut through a thicket. Avoiding the road, where she risked running into people, she chose the shortcut. Here and there she had to use her hands to separate entangled branches of trees so she could pass. Dry twigs scratched her bare legs and she kept her eyes peeled for dog and human shit. Her slippers were old and torn and anything on which she trod would certainly get intimate with her feet.
In the middle of the woods, when she was halfway home, she heard voices, loud enough but still a distance away. Quickly, she stepped away from the path and went deeper into the woods. When she was a good few meters away from the path, she chose a well-leafed shrub and squatted in its shadow. In the case of prying eyes, she would look like someone relieving herself or digging up some root to use for an ailment. Either way, she should be left alone—unless the passersby happened to be people with more on their minds than she bargained for.
The foursome, two young men escorting their girlfriends somewhere, from the look of things, passed along. They were so engrossed in their discussion that they hardly paid her any heed. If, indeed, they saw her at all.
Under African Skies Page 32