by Jenny Robson
Dad said, “Did you hear what that idiot said? Back in June? Remember?” Dad sounded like he was really enjoying being there at number 12 talking to Mr Cameron.
Mr Cameron nodded that he did remember. He turned down the TV volume so he and Dad could hear each other better. That was okay because Ma was only looking at the scenery and I was finding the story confusing anyway.
“Will you look at those mountains,” Ma said. “And all that snow! And the sky so blue. Oh, but it is beautiful! Beautiful beyond belief!”
I was getting a bit worried about Ma and the way she was carrying on and on. Big-Deal Jimmy and his sister kept looking at each other and pulling faces about her.
Mr Cameron said, “Sure, I remember, Pieter. We whites must stop moaning about crime or else pack our bags. Right? Some choice, hey? Well, I reckon packing our bags is the answer. But some of the family thinks I’m crazy. They say it’s not so bad, that the media just blows it out of proportion.”
Big-Deal Jimmy and his sister went outside to ride their bikes. They didn’t invite me to come with though.
Mr Cameron asked how things were going with our New Zealand application. Dad said we were waiting for the letter to arrive. Any day now. The Invitation to Apply for Residency, he called it. Quite a few times.
“That will be one red-letter day. Then we’ll know it’s all safely in the bag,” Dad said. “I’ll let you know, Justin. I’ll pop over and show it to you. Mind you, you will probably hear us celebrating all the way up Groenewald Road. We’ll be raising the roof!”
“All that green farmland,” Ma said, not really talking to anyone. “Will you just look at it? It goes on and on, all the way down to the sea.”
And then Mrs Cameron burst into tears and rushed out of the room. Bits of tissue fell all over the carpet.
Mr Cameron shook his head. “She isn’t herself at the moment. She’s pregnant again, so you can imagine. She doesn’t want to leave her mother and her sisters. She seems really depressed, crying all the time.”
“That’s rough,” said Dad. He checked that Ma was still concentrating on the TV. “I really feel for you, mate. I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But I am hoping that New Zealand will be the ultimate cure. Hoping like hell that once we get here, we can put all that depression business behind us.”
*
Ma got depressed when I was born. Because I was born, I think. Fat Sonya told me about it when I lived on the pineapple farm. Postnatal depression is what she called it. Except it went on for years, not months like it was supposed to.
“Hey, it was a crap time, I can tell you, Dirk. I was around thirteen. And there you were screaming your head off all hours of the day and night. And Ma sat next to you howling away too. And Dad just got this helpless look on his face and started doing extra overtime.”
Fat Sonya was pregnant herself when she told me about Ma. And getting fatter and fatter. She sat on the couch most of the day, watching soapies. Even when Fatter Koos yelled that he was hungry or that he couldn’t find his socks, she didn’t move.
“Yeah. Then Ma started collecting news cuttings. She made Dad buy all the newspapers. Then she found all the stories about rapes and murders and farm attacks and cut them out. And wanted to read them to Dad and me over and over. She kept talking about the people who were murdered like they were close friends. ‘Poor so-and-so! What a tragedy when he is only twenty-four. What monsters to do such a thing to him.’ It freaked me out, I can tell you. You are lucky you were too young to remember. She kept all those cuttings in her dressing-table drawers.”
My dad stopped buying newspapers. But then my ma just went raiding people’s bins to get their old newspapers, Sonya said.
“Shit, I couldn’t wait to get away. No wonder I married so young! Hope to hell I don’t get postnatal depression!”
*
Mrs Mogwera, now, she’s sad because she can’t have a baby.
“Poor, poor Lebo,” her sisters told me there in the sunshine. Sitting on the plastic chairs doing each other’s hair. “To be barren when she always longed for a baby. Since she was a little girl. That was what she always said: ‘I want to grow up and be a mama with lots and lots of babies to look after.’ But it never happened for her. And you see how her husband treats her, Dirkie. His patience ran out long ago. His first wife who is late had five children, you know. And now he keeps his last born, Theo, always in the house. Just to remind poor Lebo that he can father children. It is hard for her. I weep for her.”
I felt sad for Mrs Mogwera too. She would be a lovely mother: kind and gentle and always speaking softly. The way she held the new seedlings, that’s the way she would hold her children.
And always put them first. And never let them down. Or treat them unfairly.
*
Fat Sonya didn’t get postnatal depression. Not that I could see. She and Koos seemed very happy when the baby was born: a little boy they called Retief de la Rey Kruger. Fatter Koos said he was the strongest, biggest baby in the whole hospital. The baby screamed through the night often. So no wonder I couldn’t concentrate at school. No wonder I kept failing tests.
And I was missing my friend, Rex Zwelethu Jili. That’s what I always had to call him. His full name. If I just called him “Rex”, he wouldn’t answer me. He’d gone to an FET college. He said it was much better than school. At least you could study there for a proper job, not rubbish stuff like history. What boss is going to ask you when the Anglo-Boer War started? And they gave him a bursary too because his mother was a single parent and disabled.
When Sonya’s baby Retief got a bit bigger, Fatter Koos built this cot and painted all the walls in my room for him. So I had to go and sleep in the store room. It had one tiny window so in the summer it got like an oven. So how was I supposed to study properly? It would have been hard even if my brain wasn’t clogged full with cotton wool.
But I never got angry or started ranting. Not the whole time when I was there. Maybe because Fatter Koos was always going into rages. Especially outside the back door when he talked to the labourers. With his face going redder and redder while he called them stupid and useless. While they laughed at him behind their hands.
I always kept myself very quiet while I was there. Because I didn’t want to be anything like him.
*
Never mind. It’s all the past now. Water under the bridge, like my grade eight teacher used to say.
Okay. So what happened this afternoon: I got down to the bottom of Bethany’s hill at Der Hoogte at last. But I had to wait a long time for a taxi, there beside the big Shell garage. And I was still feeling churned up inside: angry and wanting to smash things.
But then this amazing thunderstorm started, with lightning shooting from the clouds and thunder crashing through the air like it could rip the sky apart. I stood beside the pumps under the garage roofing with the petrol attendants. They joked a bit with me. And we all yelled out “Yoh!” together each time the thunder sounded.
Strange, that. The thunderstorm made me feel completely different. Like it was a special present just for me. When the sun came out again, there was this huge rainbow right across the sky, stretching all the way towards Villa Park.
And I started to think about Bethany in a different way.
I actually started feeling glad that the motorbike guys were there, that I hadn’t ended up kissing her down the passage and to her bedroom. Yes! Because she isn’t really what I want for a girlfriend. No! I want someone soft and gentle and quiet. Someone who calls me by my proper name. And will wait until I am ready to go into bedrooms.
That’s what I was thinking when at last a taxi stopped for me. Some of the petrol attendants who weren’t busy even shouted goodbye.
And it was a nice taxi ride. The passengers were all still smiling from the thunderstorm. There was a warm, damp smell coming off our clothes. And the driver didn’t charge me extra to drop me off right there at the Honeyridge intersection. Right there at the island next t
o Aggies.
“Hawu wena, Dirkie! Your birthday, it is going nice?” Aggies was asking me. “And look, twenty rand from a silver Camry. For your KFC. You must get first today.”
Aggies gave me my placard: Prezintly Disavontijed. I held it up, facing the oncoming traffic. But the lights were green so the cars just whizzed past us. All those employed drivers with salaries and houses to go home to.
But I was still feeling fine.
“Hey, Aggies! No hawkers today! That’s good news, right?”
“Right!” Aggies agreed with me. He smiled and showed his four teeth and his rock-hard gums above his placard: Ag Pleeze.
And it was good news for sure. Sometimes the hawkers give us a really hard time: TP-the-black-bin-bag-dude and Hangman-the-hanger-seller and, once in a while, Onassis with his fake Rolex watches and diamond necklaces that are really just cut glass. They try to intimidate us and chase us off the island. They say we are bad for business and interfere with their trade.
But today we had the island all to ourselves.
And then the robots turned red. This massive, massive blue 4x4 SUV stopped in the lane beside the island, just five cars from the front.
I admit: there was something about that SUV that gave me lots of hope. Right from the beginning. Blue for hope, right? Like Mrs Mogwera said. Plus some raindrops from the thunderstorm were shining on the windscreen making tiny rainbows in the sunlight. Rainbows with pots of gold at the end, right? That’s what my grade four teacher told us back at Villa Park Primary.
The windows of the SUV were all like dark mirrors, almost black. So you couldn’t see who was inside, only the reflection of the cars in the opposite lanes, the green-light lanes, whizzing past.
And then the one back window rolled down. It was a black guy there. Maybe my age.
“Hey, white boy,” he shouted to me. “Hey, presently disadvantaged dude. Come and get it!” He was smiling at me. Holding out a banknote.
I walked towards the car quite quickly in case the lights changed. But I walked with dignity like Aggies always taught me.
“They must see you are a good and decent man,” Aggies always said. “You go to them with dignity. So they know you don’t use the money for drink.”
As I got closer, I saw exactly how much the note was: two-hundred rand. Two-hundred rand! How’s that for my birthday! Nobody I knew had ever got two-hundred rand from a car before. Not even beautiful, blonde Karrie-Anne from under Victoria Bridge! Well, not when she was just begging anyway.
Oh man, we could have such a feast tonight, me and Aggies and Rosie. A proper birthday feast. Even proper steak from the Spur maybe?
And I could buy something special for Mrs Mogwera too. Maybe a potted plant like they sold at Pick n Pay? Did they have freesias there? My ma was always trying to grow freesias because she said they smelled like heaven. Yes, a freesia plant would be good and would make Mrs Mogwera smile.
I was right next to the open back window now. I could see that there were four black guys inside, all looking at me. They were real Double As. Hell, they were Quadruple As or more! Mega-mega-Double As. Bethany would have gone mad, seeing them.
There was this smell of fresh white leather all around us. And the SUV was pumping with great music, the kind of music that makes you want to dance even if you’re no good at dancing, even if other people are watching. All four of them were smiling at me. Kind-hearted smiles, like they felt sympathy for me being a beggar at an intersection with no proper home and no parents that could buy me stuff like a massive SUV. Like they understood how lucky and blessed they were for all they had and I didn’t have.
“God bless you, sir. God bless you all, sirs,” I said. Aggies taught me to say that too. “God is looking down upon your kindness and he will reward you. Yes, blessed are the merciful!”
I reached out to take the two-hundred-rand note, wondering how it would feel in my fingers. For some reason, I was thinking about Nick the Greek and his special polony.
8
Janie September
So maybe I must explain about Dorcas and the frikkadels. See, I caught her once. I saw exactly what she was up to. And I bet she was doing it a lot. Like every second day probably.
It was holiday time and I was looking through my net curtains at Janie September, sitting there on the maid’s steps. She was reading part of a women’s magazine. She must have found it in one of the boxes out there.
Then across the yard, there comes Dorcas. She had something dangling from her hand: a see-through plastic kitchen packet. One of our plastic packets. And it was full of mince! That’s right! The mince that Nick the Greek had cut from the topside specially for Ma. I remember it looking red and shiny in the sunlight.
Dorcas smiled and said something to her daughter. Janie said something back, not smiling. I don’t think I ever saw Janie smile, not in the whole time she came to our house. Nor the whole time I sat next to her at Kagiso Holdings.
Next thing, that packet of mince disappeared, right inside Dorcas’s big brown bag.
I felt so angry. No wonder our frikkadels tasted so horrible! Dorcas was shoving in extra breadcrumbs to hide what she was doing. And it wasn’t right, was it? It wasn’t fair. Not when I had to walk all the way to the shops to buy it. With my dad’s money that he earned when he was working!
So when Dorcas was busy pretending to vacuum the lounge, I walked straight outside to that bag. I unzipped it right there in front of her daughter and grabbed that packet. In the kitchen I checked how much mince was left for us in the bowl. I’m telling you, Dorcas had taken half. At least half.
So I marched straight down to Ma’s bedroom because I had evidence, right?
“Ma? Ma, look! I’ve got proof. Right here. She’s stealing again. Now she’s stealing our food!”
I thought maybe Ma would be happy that I was protecting our property. But I was wrong. Again.
There in the dark bedroom, she opened her eyes slowly. She sighed. She said, “Dirkie, asseblief tog, kind! I can’t cope with this right now.”
And there was Dorcas, standing in the bedroom doorway. She took the packet out of my hand. She gave me this horrible smirk like I was nothing. Like inside she was having a good laugh at me.
I wished so hard that I was grown up and strong. That I could smash that smirk right through the back of her neck. But she just walked away, down the passage carpet and back to her brown bag. With the packet dangling from her fingers.
And that is why, there at Kagiso Holdings, I knew it was fine to copy Janie’s answers. Completely fair. I was putting some justice back into the world. Because meat is protein, right? And protein builds up our brain cells, right? Meanwhile the meat that was supposed to build up my brain had been going into Janie’s brain instead. Building up her brain. So I was just taking back what really belonged to me to start with. Right?
Later this afternoon, when I got home at last, I tried to explain this to Mrs Mogwera.
Mrs Mogwera came to my door with an envelope: a card from my sister, Fat Sonya. She said, “It came this morning, Dirkie, just after you left. There you go. And how was it at Kagiso Holdings?”
So I was explaining to her about why I had copied. And why I had got chucked out.
Mrs Mogwera was frowning like she wasn’t quite sure.
*
It was good of Sonya to send a card. Even better, she sent a postal order too. For exactly two hundred rand! And how weird was that? Because in the end, I didn’t get that two hundred bucks from that mega-Double-A guy in the blue 4x4 SUV. But at least I got it from my sister. So at least that was a bit fair.
And if I’m being fair, I should say that Fat Sonya was quite good to me quite often. I mean, she took me in after my parents died. Even though she had a husband. And she and Fatter Koos had moved down to the pineapple farm. Plus she’d just found out she was pregnant.
But she told the people at the children’s home straight away, “No, Dirkie must come and live with us. No question. I’m his
only family now.”
And she put a fan in my room when she saw how hot it was. And she sometimes said to her little boy Retief, “You eat up all your porridge. Then you will grow up to be tall and handsome like your Uncle Dirkie.”
When I moved back to 5 Groenewald Road, to the maid’s room, I phoned from a Vodacom spaza to tell Sonya. She said, “What a relief! I have been so worried about you, Dirkie, with winter coming. And they say it’s going to be a bitter one. Especially up there in Gauteng. But now listen: there is always a place for you here with us. You understand? Retief misses you. He asks sometimes where you are. And Koos has stopped yelling about the money you took from my purse.”
And now, here was a card and some money from her! Inside the card she wrote: I hope you have a wonderful, special day filled with good times.
Yeah, well. Not much hope of that. The day was almost gone. And no good times had happened. Especially not at the intersection. I could hardly bear to think about all that. I wanted to wipe it out of my memory forever. Like, pour acid over it.
*
There I stood beside that blue SUV with its rainbow drops, saying, “God bless you,” and, “Blessed are the merciful,” feeling so grateful. There I was, reaching for the money. But the Double A in his fancy designer cap snatched it away, back inside. Then he hawked up some snot from deep in his throat and spat it at me. Right in my face.
All four of them started laughing. I could hear the sound of the laughter and mocking above the music, even with the window rolling back up. I could see my reflection, there in the dark glass. With the thick gob sliding down my cheek. Yellow-white and slimy.
I went a bit mad then. I screamed the K word at their big fancy car, over and over. An empty bottle was lying there in the gutter. Southern Comfort. Some joke! Yes, we’re in the south of Africa, even I know that! But there’s no comfort, not for me, I’m thinking.
I bent and grabbed the bottle. I was going to smash it right through their window. I was going to stab the spikes of glass right into his face. Then maybe he would think twice before he spat. Well, if he had a mouth left to spit with!