Back to Villa Park

by Jenny Robson

  Mrs Mogwera said, “But where is your tie?”

  I showed her the stains. They were light smears now, just muddy brown.

  She said, “I must wash it. Then it will be ready next time you have interviews.” She wrapped it round her hand, like she was a boxer getting ready for a fight. A bantam-weight boxer.

  Then she told me, “I have a birthday surprise for you. I am cooking you steak and chips. Proper rump steak. Would you like it rare or medium or well done?”

  “Well done, for sure,” I answered her straight away. I realised suddenly how hungry I was. Starving, actually. Last thing I ate was that peach and that Woolworths pie at Bethany’s place.

  “I’ll start cooking,” Mrs Mogwera said. “The potatoes are already peeled. Come to the kitchen when you are finished here. Then we can talk. I set the table just for you. Flowers, even – some of my Barberton Daisies because it’s a special day. Mr Mogwera and Theo, they are away till Sunday. So you can relax and be comfortable inside the house.”

  I watched her walk across the yard, open the kitchen door and disappear inside.

  But how could I ever walk up the two steps and through that kitchen door again? How could I ever cross the threshold? Even if the floor was white-beige tiles now?

  10

  Constable Elizabeth Eksteen

  On Friday nights, Fatter Koos used to eat steak. I don’t know if it was rump steak or what. But definitely it was steak. Me and Fat Sonya had bobotie or macaroni cheese.

  Fatter Koos always said, “Ja, steak, boet! A real man’s supper. One day when you’re a man, Dirk, and earning a living out in the hot sun by the sweat of your brow, then you will come home to your wife cooking you a good, thick steak. And you will know it is what you deserve!”

  He stabbed the meat with his fork. The knife in his other hand looked like it could murder people. He ripped deep into the steak so the metal screamed across his plate. And blood squeezed out into a shiny round lake.

  Fatter Koos always told Sonya, “The rarer, the better, skattie.”

  I couldn’t help it. It was only maybe a few weeks since I’d come to Port Alfred. I ran out of the kitchen and went to lie on the bed Sonya had made for me. I put my face deep in the pillow that smelt musty. Like it had never dried properly because we were too close to the sea. I cried quite a lot.

  Sonya came to sit next to me. She put her heavy hand on my back. She said, “Never mind, Dirkie. Next week you’ll ­go to school. And you’ll start making friends and feel better ­and have lots of fun with them. And maybe tomorrow we’ll ­tell Koos to take us to the beach. If the wind isn’t blowing ­too hard. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That would be ­­fun.”

  But in the end, I only made one friend at the Port Alfred school, that Rex Zwelethu Jili. And then he left to go to his FET college.

  And we never went to the beach.

  Later in the night I heard my sister and Fatter Koos arguing on the veranda.

  “Give it a rest, Sonya, jong! That boy must toughen up. Okay, so he had a rough time. Lots of kids put up with rough times. But it doesn’t help if you baby him. You don’t want him growing into a moffie, do you? These city kids are way too soft. Regtig.”

  But Sonya sounded even angrier. And she can be quite fierce.

  “You leave him alone, do you understand? He’s not even thirteen and he’s just been orphaned. In the worst, worst way possible. I mean, it wasn’t a car accident or something. And he saw! He got there before the police did. What do you think that was like for him?”

  “Ja, but I am only saying …”

  Sonya wouldn’t let Fatter Koos finish saying what he was only saying.

  “And besides, this is your fault, Koos. You and that idiot brother of yours. How many times did I tell him to get those boxes from my folks’ house? Every week! But no, it was just too much effort. And what were you thinking leaving a gun there like that? Just in a cardboard box like it was nothing serious? And loaded! It’s crazy! This wouldn’t have happened if that gun wasn’t there!”

  She started to cry then. Loud and angry and wailing and I could hear Fatter Koos trying to shush her. It was the only time I ever heard her cry for our parents. I went to sleep with the musty-pillow smell thick around me.

  Later, when Retief was about two years old, Fatter Koos stop­ped eating steak on Fridays. He had something wrong with his gums, I think. And all his teeth got taken out. So after that, he ate bobotie or macaroni cheese with me and Sonya and Retief.

  *

  Mrs Mogwera was calling from the kitchen door.

  “Dirk! Dirkie! It’s nearly ready. Come inside. Come sit and we can talk while I’m finishing the chips.”

  But how could I? If I walked in there, the whole picture of my parents at the table would come back. Right in front of me. Every terrible detail of it. With no chance to switch it off. My whole mind would surely smash open, once and for all. Cotton wool and bits of brain flying in all directions.

  I called back, “It’s fine, Mrs Mogwera. I’ll eat outside. Here in the yard.”

  But she was insisting. “Dirkie, I told you, Mr Mogwera and Theo are gone. You don’t have to worry about them. Come on. How can a birthday boy sit outside?”

  Mrs Mogwera is quite hard to argue with. I could feel my panic growing.

  Then this thought came to me: Hey, if I can make myself walk into that kitchen, then I can do anything. Like, nothing will ever frighten me or be too hard for me ever again. And how would that feel for me, knowing I had faced this huge thing? Knowing I had been braver than ever, ever before. Well, if I managed it without my legs collapsing under me. Without my brain exploding!

  It was worth a try. It was worth my best shot. Hell yes!

  This would be my birthday present from myself to myself. That was a nice thought. Still, it took me a long time to get moving. But I forced myself to walk across the yard, past the white plastic chairs that Mr Mogwera made me stack up into a tidy pile after the last time Mrs Mogwera’s sisters visited. I got right up the two steps, right to the kitchen door. I had to close my eyes, but still I stepped inside. Ja, onto the tiled floor. There was a smell of crispy frying meat.

  And Mrs Mogwera was saying, “Oh good, Dirkie. I think this is going to be good.”

  I didn’t even try to answer her. I was worried I would throw up.

  I don’t know how long I stood in that one spot with my eyes still closed. I was dizzy too, breathing fast and hard. Like I’d run all the way from one end of Villa Park to the other. But next thing I felt Mrs Mogwera’s mink-soft hand on my arm.

  “Dirk? What is it? Are you feeling sick? You’re shaking. Is it the flu? Come, you must sit before you fall over.”

  She was trying to tug me towards a wooden table. Even with my eyes opening, it was just a big, wooden blur.

  *

  When I lived here with my parents, we had a small, square Formica table in the kitchen with thin silver legs. The top was pale green, much paler than the ferns on the lino.

  In fact it was quite crowded when me and Ma and Dad were all eating together. There was hardly room for the salt and pepper and chutney. My dad liked chutney, especially on his frikkadels.

  Ma hated that table.

  “That is definitely not going with us,” she said. “We’ll sell it. It isn’t worth the container space.”

  Dad was a bit hurt because he’d bought the table specially. He said the pale green matched the dark green lino, even if it was a bit on the small side.

  And the Formica table looked even more crowded that terrible October afternoon. There from where I was standing in the doorway with my blazer damp and thick under my arms and the grey rain drizzling down the window above the sink. There seemed hardly enough space for Ma and Dad to both rest their heads there with the blood and all that other stuff. I tried hard not to think about what that other stuff was.

  But it was weird. There seemed to be a big space on the table around the letter. I could see the letter clearly from the d
oor. I could see the silver fern at the top right-hand corner. And our address. I could read the first few lines of typing.

  Dear Mr and Mrs Strydom

  We regret to inform you that your application for residence has not been …

  It was too stained and wet to see more.

  My dad was wearing his favourite shirt. Ma hated that shirt too. She always said, “Throw it away, Pieter. For goodness sake! You look like a tramp. And it’s such an awful colour. Like mustard that’s gone bad.”

  But Dad had refused. He’d said it was his lucky shirt and he always wore it if South Africa was playing rugby against England or Australia.

  But now the shirt was stained too, all the way down the sleeve of his right arm where it dangled almost to the floor. With the gun still in his hand, closed tight inside his fing­­ers.

  Koos’s gun. That his brother, Gerrit, had never come to get from us.

  *

  Constable Elizabeth Eksteen was kind to me.

  In the police car, I rested my head beside her gold name badge on her white blouse. She stroked my hair and my temple and her fingers were soft and sweet smelling, like baby powder. Her voice was soft too.

  “Dirk, I know this is hard for you to understand. But sometimes grown-ups just can’t bear it any more. They try and they try to make things right, but still things go wrong. Then they feel hopeless and helpless. Like there is no way out. Like things will never, never be good and happy again. Like they can’t take the stress and the pain a minute longer and it is better if they just give up trying.”

  I felt her blouse getting wetter and wetter because I was crying so much. I had to struggle to get some breath so I could speak.

  “Why didn’t they ask me first? Why didn’t they wait till I got home? I could have told them that I don’t care if we don’t go to stupid New Zealand. I like it here in Villa Park. I don’t care about stupid Auckland and stupid Maori tattoos and hakas and skiing. They should have asked me first!”

  A big policeman got in the front of the car and switched on the engine. We drove down Groenewald Road while the blurry faces of the neighbours outside the window became fewer and fewer.

  “Poor little soul,” Constable Eksteen said. She was talking to the driver, I think. “Arme, arme kind. Hoe kon hulle so maak?” And I could hear in her voice that she was crying a little too.

  To this day, I can’t remember where we drove to that night. Or where I slept. Maybe it was Constable Eksteen’s own house. I think she put some pyjamas on me that were much too big. I think she brought me a cup of Milo with some pills.

  But I’m not sure.

  Later I had to go to the children’s home. There were some horrible guys there, real bullies. Like Jamal Pieterse. He threw my toothbrush in the toilet. Sometimes I got crazy angry there, wanting to smash people’s faces in.

  Actually, I smashed Jamal’s face in once.

  He was already sleeping and I started hitting him with my cocoa mug so blood squirted out. I was screaming mad stuff: “I hate you! I hate you, Dad!” Like I thought Jamal was my father or something. It was a bit weird. And swearing. Every swear word I’d ever heard from the grade seven boys at school.

  A bit like the way I was swearing at poor Magdalene Esther van Tonder in her grave, now that I think about it.

  The doctor with the fat face and the pointy beard made me sit in his office. He kept saying IEA, IEA to me. Like he knew everything and I was stupid.

  I just stared at him. I think I hated him even more than Jamal.

  “Intermittent Explosive Anger, Dirk. We need to work on this. We need to resolve this before it gets you into difficulties …”

  But instead Fat Sonya told them that I must come and live with her.

  *

  “Dirkie, please! Speak to me! Say something!” Mrs Mogwera’s voice seemed like it was coming from far away. Even though she was right next to me there in the kitchen. I could feel her one hand under my elbow and her other arm around my back. Like any minute she would try and pick me up and carry me if she could.

  But I didn’t have any breath to speak.

  “Must I call a doctor for you? Please, come sit down at least. There, lean on my shoulders.” Her voice got louder and then softer, like the sound of music through a car window as it drives past.

  11

  Mrs Mogwera

  Over and over in my mind, I kept telling myself: Come on! This is your present, Dirk Karel Strydom, from yourself to yourself! If you can do this, you can do anything. Be a man. Be brave for once in your life!

  But all I wanted was to run back into my room and pull Aggies’ mink blanket right over my head.

  It was Mrs Mogwera who led me to the kitchen table. She was like this gentle force around me, keeping me moving. I managed to sit down, to rest my head on the table top for a while. And that helped a bit. Except the Barberton Daisies in the vase seemed to be doing some weird buttery-gold dance, swaying backwards and forwards.

  Mrs Mogwera gave me a glass of warm sugar water and then she rushed to the stove to save the steak from burning.

  “Are you better now, Dirk? Are you ready for your food? You frightened me there.” She lifted the steak onto a big rectangle plate. And then the chips, making a nice crunching sound.

  “Fine! Yes, very fine,” I told her.

  And that was true. The dizziness was going. Even though I was sitting almost in the exact place where my dad used to sit. Even though the kitchen door was closed so there was no escape.

  Something else was happening inside me. It was the maddest thing, but I could feel it almost as real as the table: the cotton wool in my brain getting lifted away by some invisible hand.

  Truly!

  Once when I was little, maybe six or seven, I came home from school and my ma showed me a shoebox. Inside, two ­little eggs lay on some soft material. My ma covered them over with lots of thick cotton wool.

  “Maybe they’ll hatch, Dirkie,” she said. It must have been a time when she was well.

  So, every day after school I used to check. Just quickly, so the eggs wouldn’t cool down. Those were the days when I still liked going to school.

  Then one morning extra early, I peeped under the cotton wool and two tiny birds were there. Imagine! They were stretching their wings wildly and climbing all over each other. Didn’t stay still a moment! And cheeping on and on with their beaks wide open – so wide that you couldn’t even see their eyes.

  So I lifted the cotton wool right off and put it in the bin. Because they didn’t need it any more.

  I shouted, “Ma, come quick. Come see.”

  And Ma came running from her bedroom and we watched the birds together. Then she put her hands on my cheeks and kissed me and showed me how to feed the chicks.

  Well, anyway, that’s sort of how my brain felt.

  *

  Mrs Mogwera put the plate in front of me. It smelled so good and the steak was so massive it was nearly falling off the sides. But I thought I would start with the chips. They were perfect, better than KFC. Better even than Spur that time Aggies had to buy there because KFC got flooded. Crispy-crunchy outside, soft inside.

  Mrs Mogwera sat down opposite me. Smiling between the daisies. They were keeping nice and still now.

  She said, “Dirkie, what you were saying about fairness? I must warn you – now that you are an adult, you are ready to hear. This world is not a fair place. Mostly it is very unfair. If you keep hoping for fairness, it will make you upset and disappointed. It will drive you crazy.”

  I nodded while I ate because I understood. Straight away! Without even having to wonder about it. She was speaking about herself, right? About not having children. About carrying tiny plants around so gently because she had no baby to hold.

  And it wasn’t fair.

  “But you know what else, Dirkie? It isn’t all hopeless, because you know what else?”

  She was speaking gently, like even her voice was made of mink. So I stopped eating with my next chi
p still there in my hand, halfway up from the plate. I wasn’t using the knife and fork, even though she’d put them there beside me.

  “No, what?” I looked at her between the Barberton petals in the early evening light. She had a red dress on. A pretty one, the same kind of colour as sunset.

  She said, “Well, we have the power to treat others fairly. That’s what I think. We have to create our own fairness and justice in the world. Do you understand?”

  Oh man! How can I explain this to you? Connections were lighting up all around inside my brain. A bit like those pinball machines. We have the power to treat others fairly! The power to treat others fairly! It sounded like the clearest, most important, most powerful idea I’d ever heard! And so true and so right! I forgot all about my next chip that was getting cold there halfway to my mouth.

  And straight away then, I thought about Aggies. That’s why I felt so bad, right? Because I hadn’t treated him fairly. I didn’t use my power. He was trying to protect me and I paid him back by attacking him like he was my enemy. And what was fair about that?

  I told myself: Tomorrow I will go and see him. And I will buy him something special with my sister’s postal order so that he knows how sorry I am. Maybe a new hat. Yes, a cowboy hat even smarter than his safari-guide one.

  I thought too: I must fix up this IEA problem that I have, this Intermittent Explosive Anger. I don’t want to act like that again. Maybe that fat doctor in the Children’s Home was right.

  So, what if …

  Hey, what if I could keep all that anger up on a hill behind a high wall? With a remote-control gate to stop it reaching my fists? Yes, a security gate with a security guard always on duty. Dressed in a smart red uniform with my logo on his back.

  I still needed to decide what my logo would look like. That would take time and lots of thought. But already I could hear my security guard saying very sternly, “Careful, Mr Dirk Strydom, sir. Let’s take a moment. How will it help if you start smashing faces? Is it fair, this thing you are wanting to do?”