Back to Villa Park

by Jenny Robson

  Some of them whispered to each other. I overheard the word “madi”. I know what that means. It means “blood” and they were staring down at my raw knuckles, like maybe they thought I had Aids and they would catch it from me.

  And then the driver stopped at the bottom of the hill at Der Hoogte.

  “I must go to the top,” I said. “The house is right at the top.”

  “Five bucks extra,” he said.

  Five bucks? For such a short distance? Is that fair? I climbed out of the taxi and started the long, steep walk up to Bethany’s father’s property. I kept well away from the sharp drop on the cliff side. But I thought about the nice hot shower. And the fridge full of food. And would she have a present for me for my birthday? Surely she would, with all the money she had. A cellphone maybe? A cellphone would be great. The absolute best! I mean, she says to me often, “No cellphone? How can you exist without a cellphone? Karel, sometimes I really despair of you.”

  *

  Aggies calls Bethany my woman.

  He was there smiling and nodding that first day she picked me up. There at the Honeyridge intersection. I thought she just wanted to give me some money because I was presently disadvantaged. But she told me to get into her bright-yellow sports car. Aggies was keen for me to do that. He took my ­placard and said he would keep it for me.

  He always says, “That is how God made the world. Adam and Eve. Man and Woman. It is a good thing, Dirkie. You are a man. You must have a woman for your own.”

  I don’t answer him. It is all so complicated. Bethany has all these other guys around. Her cell, she calls them. They are mostly university students still living off their parents: Phil and Dominic and Kyle. Rudi and Red and sometimes Squeaker. All from rich homes, all driving motorbikes.

  That first time when she picked me up at the intersection, she asked, “So what’s your name?”

  I sat on the soft leather passenger seat and the car engine was throbbing while the robot stayed red. I looked at her, but mostly all I could see was thick brown hair and her nose. Quite a big nose.

  “Dirk,” I answered.

  “Dirk? No, no! That’s no good. My guys will end up calling you Dirk the Dork. They’re quick like that. Don’t you have another name? Like a second name?”

  “Karel?”

  “Yeah. That’ll do. That’s got a good sound to it.”

  Bethany keeps changing the name of her cell too. At first it was Triple Z. Or else ZZZ, because they called the black ­people Double As. But Rudi said it sounded like they were all fast asleep. So she changed it to F4R4W. That meant: Fight for Rights for Whites. But Dominic said that was too long. He kept getting the letters mixed up.

  So for now the name is Valhalla. It’s the home of heroes, Bethany says. When they die.

  “So, Karel. What are you doing begging at robots like some loser? Don’t you have any pride?” The lights had gone green and we went flying across the lanes into Kromhout Avenue. “A good-looking, well-built Zed like you? We whites have to hold our heads up high, you know. Especially you men. We can’t let them think we are, like, beaten.”

  “Them?”

  She had a deep voice. Harsh. Almost like a man’s.

  “The blacks. The Double As. Listen: you are the descendant of proud, powerful men. Men who, like, conquered a whole continent. So stand tall and be a hero, Karel. Do you understand me?”

  Bethany is always on about heroes. But that first time, there in her car, all I could think about was the hot shower she’d promised me. And the Woolworths’ roast chicken in her fridge.

  She said she lived in a cottage on her father’s property way at the top of Der Hoogte. Der Hoogte! Wow! I remember my ma once saying she would love a house in Der Hoogte. And my dad laughing and saying, “In your dreams, Leila!”

  So I said, “Yeah, I understand you, Bethany.” Even though I didn’t really.

  “Call me BT,” she ordered. “That’s what all my other guys call me.”

  “Okay, BT.”

  By now we were powering up a steep, steep hill in her bright-yellow sports car. With just one huge mansion at the top surrounded by so much space and then a massive wall. On the other side, a cliff dropped away, down to the rest of the world.

  5

  Bethany aka BT

  So, today, there I was walking up that steep slope, staying close to the wall on the pavement side. All the way up towards Mr Lawence’s remote-control gates at the top. I was hoping really hard that there wouldn’t be any motorbikes outside Bethany’s cottage. Then maybe today things could go right between her and me. The way they were supposed to.

  The times before they always went wrong. I still get this feeling of embarrassment sliding down under my skin when I think about the first time. She came right into the bathroom while I was busy showering. She opened the shower door so I had to turn to face the wall.

  “Oh, get a life! It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, Karel.” That’s what she said in her deep voice.

  I felt irritated, even though she was being generous. This was the first hot shower I’d had since January. And there were so many shower gels and shampoo bottles in the corner shelf, each one smelling better than the one before. I just wanted to be alone to enjoy it. And here she was spoiling everything.

  “Hey, Karel, when you’re finished, why don’t you, like, come to my bedroom? Oh, and here’s a dry towel.”

  The towel was huge and soft and pure white. So I wrapped it round me and went up the passage to find her bedroom. There she lay, spread across her bed, with some of her clothes off.

  “Come on, then. Take a pew,” she said.

  But everything felt so wrong. The way she was bossing me around like I was a stupid child. The way everything belonged to her and I was just this worthless beggar she had picked up off the street. The way the light shone in my eyes, but she didn’t switch it off.

  I mean, I tried to do the stuff I’d seen on TV. But in the end she said, “Are you gay? Or just too young still?” And after that I had to go back to Northfields Play Park, walking most of the way because it was too late for taxis to be running near Der Hoogte.

  Aggies was awake and waiting for me. “So? It was a good time for you, Dirkie?”

  “Yes,” I told him and tried to smile because I didn’t want him to feel disappointed in me.

  He said, “It is good. It is how God made the world.”

  *

  But now, this time, things would go right. That’s what I told myself as I reached the iron gates. As long as the motorbikes weren’t there.

  Yes, I’m eighteen now. Time to act like a man. I would put my arms around her, bend down and kiss her long and strong so she wouldn’t be able to talk. At least I was much taller than her. And I would nudge her backwards down the passage into her bedroom like I was the one who owned everything. That would be a good way to celebrate my birthday. Before she even had a chance to give me my present. Or ask about Kagiso Holdings.

  The gardener opened the gates for me. He wore smart overalls with Mr Lawrence’s company logo on his chest and his back. And there in the driveway was Bethany’s father. He was shaking hands with a black man in a smart suit, opening the door of a big Mercedes so the black man could get in behind the wheel. A real Double A.

  “Hello, Karel!” Mr Lawrence greeted me and smiled. “Good to see you, my boy.”

  I greeted him back even though he wouldn’t give me a job in his company. Yeah, that’s true. Can you imagine? He has this huge company with about seven different businesses and hundreds of people employed. What difference would one more make? But he refused.

  It’s a funny thing, though. I often feel sorry for him. Bethany is so mean to him. She says, “Well, he’s a bloody traitor. Kow-towing to every black businessman and black government official in sight. Cosying up to them like they are his bosom buddies. It’s disgusting!”

  She screamed at him, there in their rose garden, when he wouldn’t give me a job.

  “Come on, D
addy. Any job at all. Karel doesn’t mind. No one would even notice. What’s the point of being in charge if you can’t do what you want?”

  “But, sweetheart, he doesn’t have any qualifications. Not even matric. Not a single paper to his name. How would that look, me employing him? It just wouldn’t be fair, would it? It wouldn’t be honest.”

  “Well, how about just out of charity, Daddy? Just as a kindness?”

  “I do my bit for charity. You know that, Beth.”

  “Yeah, right! Always for them, though. Isn’t that so? Like, always for their Aids orphanages and their school feeding schemes and their community centres. So when are you going to start doing something for your own people? For your own race?”

  The roses in that garden are amazing. Each flower is like a work of art with perfect petals that fit perfectly together. I stared down at them because I was getting embarrassed by this argument happening on each side of me. Like this was the tennis court and I was the net. Or the tennis ball.

  “That’s a true hero, Dad: a man who fights for his own ­people. Like Ghandi and Martin Luther King and Yasser Arafat. Even Moses. Did Moses rescue the Egyptians? No, he bloody didn’t. He rescued the Israelites, his own people. He left the Egyptians to drown under the Red Sea. Do you hear what I’m saying? Heroes protect their own. Meanwhile you sell your own people down the river just for the sake of your business. Just so you can look good to the oppressor! You’re a traitor! A verraaier!”

  Then she stormed into her cottage and slammed the door. She lives there in that cottage right on the far side of the property because she says she won’t live under the same roof as her dad.

  So there I was, left outside. In the rose garden with Mr Lawrence.

  He had tears in his eyes. He said, “I wish I could make her understand. You know, Karel, my boy, I grew up in the old apartheid era. I grew up being taught beliefs that were wrong and evil. I heard them each and every day: at home, at school, at church. From my earliest years. And it’s a daily battle for me now, to consciously remind myself that those beliefs are wrong. There is so much to atone for …”

  I kept staring at him, waiting for him to stop so I could say excuse me and get into the cottage.

  But he went on and on. About being born before 1994.

  “You don’t know how blessed you are, my boy,” he said. And then he grabbed at a nearby rose and held it in front of him. A yellow rose.

  “See, it’s as though my whole childhood I was taught that yellow was blue. And now it’s still there, stuck in the back of my mind. Every morning I have to look in the mirror and tell myself sternly that yellow is yellow. Do you understand what I mean, my boy?”

  I didn’t actually. But I could see in his face how badly he wanted me to. So I nodded and said, “Yes, sir.” Even though he wouldn’t give me a job because I didn’t have any proper papers.

  *

  Papers!

  That’s what I remember most about the time when I was eleven-going-on-twelve. Dad and Ma collecting papers and keeping them in a fancy mock-leather holder. Then going through them over and over.

  “We need to get to Home Affairs again, Leila,” Dad said. “It says here we have to submit unabridged birth certificates. That’s the only ones they’ll accept. And I must find my trade certificate. Are you sure it isn’t in the filing drawer? And Lord, there’s the police clearance too. How much is that going to cost?”

  On the fridge, stuck up with three fridge magnets, there was this long list. With the silver fern NZ logo at the top. Sometimes Ma and Dad got stressed out about it all. Sometimes they argued and Ma ended up saying, “Maybe we should just give up the whole idea, Pieter?” But sometimes we all sat round the kitchen table and looked through the library books, full of photos that showed New Zealand.

  “Isn’t this beautiful, Dirkie?” said Ma. “See, that’s why they call it the Land of the Long Cloud … Oh and look at these Maoris! This is their war dance. The haka. It’s the same thing they do before the rugby. Maybe we must start learning the words.”

  I remember being a bit worried, looking at the picture of these tattooed warriors. They looked like black people to me. What if Ma got frightened of them too? Did they have clinics in New Zealand?

  But Dad kept hugging me every time I walked past him. In the passage. Or in the yard. He said over and over, “Oh, Dirkie, I really think this is the answer. Your ma … I just know she’ll get properly well there. She’ll get back to the way she was before you were born. You don’t know what she was like back then. She was lovely, just lovely. Always smiling and making everyone else smile. I have such hope, Dirkie. Such hope deep inside my chest that I can almost taste it sometimes.”

  Then Jimmy Cameron and his family came to visit us. It was a nice time. He wasn’t acting Big-Deal at all.

  Mr and Mrs Cameron were asking Dad all about applying for immigration. Mr Cameron kept writing down stuff that Dad said and then asking more questions. Together they read through the long fridge list. And Jimmy came to my bedroom to have a look at the cardboard box I was packing.

  “See, I can’t take all my things. I have to choose otherwise it won’t all fit in the container. Oh, and see this?” I pulled out the thick padded jacket Dad had bought me from a special wholesaler. “Yeah, I have to have this ’cause it snows in the winter on the mountains. We’re going to go skiing and snowboarding.”

  Jimmy said, “Wow!” He said it a lot of times, like he was wishing it was him packing to go.

  “Hey, maybe your dad will sort it out so your family can come too,” I said, holding my jacket against my chest. It felt warm and strong, padded up with all the good feelings going round our house.

  Then Mr Cameron said he was going to get hold of The Lord of the Rings DVD. And we could all come to their house to watch it.

  “Because it was all shot on location in New Zealand, you know,” he said. “It’ll be a great way to see the landscapes there: the Southern Alps, Lake Wanaka, the Volcanic Plateau.”

  Yes, it was a really nice time, all the way through my twelfth birthday. Even though I didn’t get a proper present. Dad said we needed all our money for this immigration business.

  “It’s costing a bomb, Dirkie, my boy. But it will be worth it. You’ll see! We’ll get the old Ma back, the way she used to be. And you’re a big boy now. Not long and you’ll be a man! Imagine that! And being a man is about understanding things. Like why we can’t give you a birthday present.”

  *

  So, okay. I left Mr Lawrence in the driveway still chatting with his bosom buddy sitting there in the silver Merc. I walked between the trees in his long orchard. The blossoms were out so there was this lovely smell. And I was still imaging how it would be, there in Bethany’s bedroom this time. But then I turned the corner into the rose garden just past the huge oak tree. And there were all the motorbikes!

  My heart sank. Everything felt pointless again.

  Bethany sat in her lounge with the ZZZ-F4R4W-Valhalla guys all around her. They were in the middle of some huge argument, like they often were. There was a new guy too: very blonde and muscled and dressed in camouflage. Like he’d just walked out of a war movie.

  “Hi, Karel, this is André,” Bethany said when she noticed me at last. “He’s joining us. He’s got some, like, really potent ideas.”

  Rudi butted in. “Yeah, if you want to, like, go to jail! Come on, BT, get real.”

  I could see that she didn’t remember it was my birthday. Or that I’d been to Kagiso Holdings that morning. In the end it was Phil who asked me about the interview.

  “Well, it wasn’t an interview. It was a test. And they threw me out,” I told him. “They didn’t even let me finish.”

  Bethany snorted. “I warned you, Karel. What else did you expect? You’re a pale male, face it. You don’t have an ice cube’s hope in hell.”

  I said, “I’m going for a shower.”

  And she was back to their argument before I’d even left the room.


  Sometimes it feels like Bethany just wants to have guys around her. Any guys. She doesn’t much bother who they are: me or Rudi or Phil or this new André. It’s all the same to her. There are never any girls in her cell except for her.

  The shower was good though. Hot. Powerful. Crashing down onto my head. It was the first time I felt really good on my birthday. Well, apart from Mrs Mogwera’s tie and Aggies wishing me. Oh, and the lady in the taxi with the earrings. I tried out some of Bethany’s new shower gels. Designer stuff, of course. Not Pick n Pay extra large.

  It’s always a mystery to me. Her bottles are always full. I mean, like right to the top. Like they’ve just been bought. Bethany’s dad gets special orders delivered to her cottage every Friday. Food and toiletries. You’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe she throws bottles away after she’s used them once?

  Back when I was a kid, back when we lived at 5 Groenewald Road, the bottles in the bathroom always seemed to be nearly empty. Then Dad would mix a bit of water in them to make them last a little longer. In fact, when I think of it, at Fat Sonya’s house in Port Alfred, the bottles were always nearly empty there too. I wasn’t allowed to use their shower gel though, only the soap.

  *

  Yeah, almost empty Pick n Pay extra-large bottles. And still Dorcas stole from us!

  I came home from Nick the Greek with the mince one morning in the school holidays. And I went to the bathroom and there was her daughter’s ribbon, wet and hanging over the edge of the bath. Like this was their bathroom! I could still smell the bubble bath. I could still feel the leftover heat. And the blue towel over the rail – my blue bath towel – was damp and slimy.

  I went to my bedroom and checked through my window. Yes. There sat Janie September next to her mother’s huge bag. She was twirling her hair round her fingers and it was definitely, definitely wet and dripping on to her T-shirt.

  So I carried the damp ribbon between the tips of my fingers into my ma’s room. I held it up in the half dark so she could see it when she opened her eyes.