by Jenny Robson
She was just sitting there on our sofa with the cushions all round her, watching SABC 2 on the TV, knowing Ma wouldn’t get out of bed to come check. And the brush end of the machine was just lying there, howling and sucking in fresh air. Wasting our electricity for nothing!
I told my dad, but he didn’t do anything.
He said, “Don’t upset the maid, Dirkie. Ma needs lots of help right now and I can’t take more time off work to find another maid. So just leave things be, okay, Dirkie?”
Like I was the one causing the problem!
But at least Dad wouldn’t let her move into our maid’s quarters outside the back.
She begged and begged.
“Ag, asseblief, masser, what else must I do? My daughter is alone in my house every day with the school holidays. There are bad men there, masser, all around the streets. I must worry all the time. How can I work properly when I am worrying about my child? Those bad men, they will rape her, murder her, leave her body in the bushes … And your back room is empty. Just some old boxes and newspapers. Ag, asseblief!”
In the end my dad said Dorcas could bring her daughter with her to work every day in the school holidays. I think he even gave her extra taxi money.
So this girl used to sit there, this Janie September. There on the steps of the maid’s quarters, beside her mother’s huge brown bag while her mother worked in our house.
Or pretended to work.
Sometimes I looked out of my bedroom window to see what Janie was up to. Mostly nothing, just sitting there, twirling a lock of her long, curly hair round and round her finger. Staring round our backyard with her eyebrows high on her forehead. Or else reading torn pages from old newspapers and magazines she found in the maid’s room around the pile of boxes. My sister, Fat Sonya, left the boxes when she and her husband, Fatter Koos, moved down to that pineapple farm near Port Alfred. Sonya kept promising that Fatter Koos’s brother would come pick them up. But he never did.
*
This morning at Kagiso Holdings I didn’t recognise Janie September at first. Well, she looked familiar, but I didn’t remember where I’d seen her before. Not for a long time.
Well, I was in such shock, I wouldn’t have recognised anyone. I opened that door expecting to find the manager of Kagiso Holdings sitting behind a big desk. Expecting that he would tell me to sit down in a nice soft chair so he could ask me questions. But what did I find instead? A whole room filled with other guys, all wanting to earn while they learned.
For a moment it felt like I was back in the classroom at Port Alfred Secondary.
I just stood there in my clean shirt that Mrs Mogwera had ironed for me, with my new blue tie round my neck.
Some guy in the front said, “There’s empty desks at the back, bra.”
But there was only one empty desk, right in the back corner. And I had to walk past all these guys who were staring at me. At last I slid into the desk. And there was this girl right beside me, a Single A. She looked at me once and then turned away, like I was nothing very interesting. But I knew I’d seen her before. Was she maybe from Villa Park Primary?
I looked sideways at her a few times. She had these eyebrows, thin and curved high on her forehead as if she was surprised. But I didn’t have time to think. Mr Nkum-whatever came swaggering into the room with his fancy suit and his loud, arrogant voice, talking about test papers and joking with all the other Double As in the room.
*
Dorcas mainly cooked frikkadels and mashed potatoes. Ma sent me out after school every second day to buy mince. She said she didn’t want the maid handling her money.
“You go to Nick the Greek, Dirkie. I want fresh-cut mince. Not that packaged stuff from the supermarket. And it must be topside mince, you hear me?”
In the half-dark bedroom with the curtains pulled shut, it was hard to see Ma properly. She had her handbag lying there next to her always. By the time she had found the money, she was exhausted again. And before I was out of the room she was lying back against the pillows with her eyes closed.
But I was happy to go. I walked down Groenewald Road, then along Pine Street almost to Northfields Play Park. Then left towards the robots and the Pick n Pay mall.
Nick the Greek was always nice to me. Like I was an important customer.
“Aah, yes. And Mrs Strydom, your mother, she wants I must cut from the topside? She knows what is the good mince. Always she says to me: you must cut from the topside. Only from the topside. I hope she is getting better now. You tell her I send good wishes!”
Nick the Greek spoke on and on while he weighed the meat and then put it through his machine. And wrapped it up in soft white paper. And then the best part came. He took out his special polony and machined off a thin slice for me. So thin you had to hold it carefully so it wouldn’t tear.
“Your bonsela, yes? You come to me again, yes?”
It was the best polony I ever tasted. A soft pink colour, not that ugly bright pink you get at other shops.
I carried the polony in the palm of my hand. I ate it slowly, only one small bite every twenty steps. That way it lasted all the way back to number 5 Groenewald Road.
But even if the mince was cut from the topside, Dorcas’s frikkadels always tasted horrible. Even Dad thought so.
We sat together at the kitchen table in the middle of this lake of green lino. It was the new lino Dad got for the floor while Ma was in the clinic: curling green ferns. He said green was a calming colour.
Sometimes he spoke to me.
“I’m worried, Dirkie. I can’t deny it. They’re talking about redundancies at work. I mean, I’ve been with the firm twenty years now. How can they think about chucking me out? Like I’m a dog! Is that fair? Hell no!”
The frikkadels tasted more like bread than meat. They clogged up on the roof of my mouth like paste.
“But don’t say anything to your ma, okay, Dirkie? We mustn’t upset her, not when she’s doing so well. I’ll have to start looking for another job. It won’t be a problem. I’m only forty-one. Definitely not over the hill yet. Right, son?”
I went to the sink for a glass of water to try wash down Dorcas’s frikkadels. Dad didn’t finish the three on his plate, even though he put on so much chutney. Even though Nick the Greek had cut the mince from the topside.
“Cut from the topside!” Dad said. “Hah! That’s a joke! It’s not just the mince that got cut from the topside, my boy. It’s us as well.”
*
So. Okay. I slipped my bloody tie into my pocket and got into the taxi for a ride to Villa Park Mall so I could sit with Aggies for a while.
It was a good taxi ride, at least. Under Pressure: that was the taxi’s name. But I didn’t feel under pressure. In fact the ride helped me recover a bit from the stuff that happened at Kagiso Holdings.
Sometimes being in a taxi is horrible. The other passengers stare at me like I don’t belong there. Like, what is this lekgoa, this white boy, doing in our transport? They hold themselves stiff so they don’t have to touch me. As if I have a disease or something.
I get angry. This is public transport, right? And I am public just as much as they are. What do they expect? That I must walk everywhere just because I am a Zed? Hell no!
But Under Pressure wasn’t like that. The driver even called me “brother”. That made me feel good. Calmer.
The lady next to me gave me a tissue for my knuckles. I told her it was my birthday. She smiled and made her earrings swing and said, “Happy birthday, then. How old?”
“Eighteen.”
“Only eighteen? You look much older. Like maybe even twenty-two.”
Bethany also thought I was older when I first met her.
“Only seventeen?” she said back in March. We were in her bathroom and she was giving me a clean towel so I could get dry after my hot shower. “Okay, but listen. You tell the other guys that you are, like, twenty-one. I don’t want them thinking I am, like, some cradle snatcher!”
; But she still wanted me in her bedroom after the shower. She still expected me to act like a 21-year-old. And when I didn’t, she got quite mean and sarcastic. And asked me if I was gay.
So. Okay. I got out of the taxi at the mall robots. The woman with the earrings called after me. Said I must have a special day.
And there was my friend Aggies. Where he always sits, leaning his back against the third concrete pillar. Exactly opposite the shop that used to be Nick the Greek’s butchery. Exactly where he was the first time I met him back in January.
Aggies smiled up at me so his four teeth showed: two at the bottom right, two at the top left. Those are the only teeth he has. They always make me think of Afrikaans quotation marks, you know for direct speech? We had a teacher in grade six who was always going on about that, like it was the most important fact of the year. It’s the only thing I still remember from grade six. And grade seven for that matter. I wasn’t very good at school. Not like James Big-Deal Cameron, who ended up getting prizes for everything at prize-giving.
But even if Aggies has quotation marks in his mouth, he doesn’t speak very often. Mostly he listens. Well, except for the time when he told me about his three children and the terrible thing that happened to them. But that took him nearly a whole night. And Rosie had to keep explaining the stuff he left out.
I slid down the pillar to sit next to him with the morning sun shining right in my eyes. There were just a few coins in his safari-guide hat.
I said, “I didn’t get a job with Kagiso Holdings. How’s that? It’s my birthday and they still didn’t give me a place.”
Aggies made soft sympathetic noises while I told the whole story.
A passing Pick n Pay customer with her trolley overflowing dropped two five-rand coins into his hat. That’s when Aggies spoke.
“God bless you, missus. God shine his face on you and be gracious unto you.”
I said, “Maybe later I’ll go see Bethany.”
“It is good,” he said. “A man must have a woman.” He always says that. Even though Rosie is drunk most of the time. Even though she calls him the C word and the P word. And the K word.
“Yes, a man needs a woman. That is the way the world is,” he said, and he gave me the two five-rand coins for my taxi fare.
3
Aggies
This is how I first met Aggies.
See, I came back up to Johannesburg on the bus from Port Alfred. It was a long trip. It was already late in the night when we reached the bus terminal. Then I walked all the way to Villa Park. I didn’t know how to catch taxis back then. I didn’t know about signs and the proper places to stand. So I walked through the rest of the night, mostly along the side of highways with those orange lights shining down making my shadow look deformed.
Don’t ask me why I wanted to go back to Villa Park. I mean, I knew our house had been sold long ago. My sister, Fat Sonya, got all the money for it.
“It’s only fair, Dirkie,” she had said. Sitting there while her fatter husband cleaned one of his guns, smelling of rotten pineapples. “We need the money so we can take care of you properly. How much do you think it costs to feed you? And pay your school fees and uniform?”
But anyway, by the time it was dawn, there I was: standing on Groenewald Road, across the street from number 5.
A big fat 4x4 stood in our old driveway. It was red and shiny and new looking. Dad used to have a clapped-out old Nissan Sentra. But he sold it when he got made redundant. And then we had nothing.
We didn’t tell Ma though. She thought the Sentra was at the garage getting fixed.
So, anyway. I stood there looking at my old house, at how nice the garden was now. Full of flowers. Along the road the street lights went off. And I went on looking, with my bag on the pavement beside me. And my Nike cap on. Just do it! That’s what my cap said. I always liked the sound of that.
Much later a black man opened the front door, dressed in a suit and tie and with car keys in his hand. He stared across at me like I was maybe a criminal or a burglar.
He shouted, “What do you want? Go. Voetsek! Go away!”
So I picked up my bag and headed for the mall and Nick the Greek’s butchery. I don’t know why either. Maybe I was hoping for a piece of polony. I was quite hungry by then – it wasn’t early morning any more. But the butchery was just an empty shop, with whitewash smeared over the windows.
That’s when I saw Aggies for the first time. Well, I saw this black homeless beggar sitting on the ground with his holey jacket and his bare feet. And string tied round his pants for a belt. He was sitting exactly opposite me, with his back against the third pillar. In front of him, he had an upside-down hat with some coins lying inside. I read the hatband. Safari Guide, it said in upside-down letters.
A woman walked past with her Pick n Pay trolley rattling and full of packets. She stopped next to him and looked at his placard that said, Ag pleeze.
Loudly, like she wanted to start an argument, she said, “Why don’t you go ask your government for money? They get all our taxes. Or are they spending it on their top-of-the-range cars? And five-star hotels? And trips to China? And luxury houses in Sandton?” She clattered towards the car park.
The beggar called across to me. “You, are you alright? You look too tired.”
“Where’s the butchery gone?” I asked.
“Closed,” he said. “Long time now.”
I could see his few teeth, two up and two down. On either side so they would never meet if he tried to chew.
I went to sit next to him. The third pillar was nice and wide. It felt good not to be walking any more. He smelt of smoke, like he had been standing at a braai all night. I kept looking at his bare feet: like two flat, scaly grey animals. Like they had their own lives.
He told me his name, some long Zulu name. With some of its sounds disappearing into his throat. “But you must just call me Aggies. My Rosie, she can’t say my name. She just calls me Aggies. You know, from my sign. Put your cap down. You will get money. They will feel too sad to see a nice-looking white boy in trouble.”
*
Aggies was right.
By the time the sun had risen over the top of the building, shining right in our eyes, my cap was quite full. There was even one ten-rand note. Aggies told me to put all our money into my pocket and then he put his hat back on. Funny, with the hat on, he looked so different. Like he really could lead foreigners through the bush. Past rhinos and lions sleeping in the shade. But he had never been a guide, he told me. He got the hat from some supervisor at the factory where he used to work. Long ago.
We went to buy some KFC.
“My Rosie. She only likes Kentucky Fried Chicken. Nothing else.”
“Why don’t you buy some shoes?” I asked. “Those cheap tackies. There’s enough here for cheap tackies.”
He shook his head. Much, much later he told me why he could never wear shoes. Not ever again.
We took the steaming hot boxes of chicken and chips to Northfields Play Park, where his Rosie was waiting. Down near the fountain and the thick trees and a toilet block. Funny, I used to play in that park when I was kid. On the slides and the swings. But I never went near the thick trees. There were scary stories at school about that toilet block.
Rosie was staggering around the fountain, half drunk already. She was a tiny, wrinkled coloured woman with layers and layers of clothes on that made her look even tinier. Her Shoprite trolley was piled full of bin bags, parked next to an extra-big tree.
She swore at Aggies and called him the K word, until he held up the KFC boxes. Then she got friendlier.
“A man, he must have a woman,” Aggies explained to me. “It is the way the world is.”
That night we sat round a small fire that Aggies built mostly from cardboard and twigs.
Rosie said, “See, we are mos like a rainbow family. Like Mr Mandela says. Black father, coloured mother, white son. That’s nice, nè? The rainbow family!” Then she fell over from
all the wine she’d been drinking. Almost into the flames. So Aggies and I lifted her up onto the bench. She was as light as a little girl, but stiff like a corpse.
Aggies told me to sleep on the other bench. He lay on some cardboard on the ground. It was a warm night and I was so tired. I passed out with the sound of the fountain and the playground-swing chains creaking in the dark.
*
It was Rosie who had the best idea for my placard.
Aggies said, “We will go to the double robots, there by Honeyridge intersection. It is a good place for rush hour.”
He found a cardboard beer tray that wasn’t broken. Rosie dug through her black bin liners inside her Shoprite trolley till she found a red koki.
Aggies said, “So what must go on his sign? Homeless? Orphan? Unemployed? Please give me work – I will do anything?”
“Ag, nee, nee! I saw this white man begging in Pretoria and getting mos lots of money,” said Rosie. “And you know what his sign said? It said: Presently disadvantaged. Ja. That’s a good one for Dirk.”
It was a struggle to write it though. We practised with a stick on the sand first, but the spelling was a problem.
Rosie smacked her gums at me. She had no teeth at all. “How come you can’t spell, white boy? Your people go to good schools with the best teachers. You all get mos properly educated.”
I shrugged. “I was useless at school.”
In the end we decided on: Prezintly Disavontijed. It didn’t look right, but what do I know? And anyway, it worked well. Just like Rosie said.
There at the double robots of the Honeyridge intersection with the never-ending lines of cars growling at red lights, I collected a lot of cash in my cap. Enough for three chicken pieces each. Plus chips and coleslaw. Plus a box of wine for Rosie so that she fell over next to the fire even before the night lights got switched on there at Northfields Play Park.