Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  'There is too much police brutality these days. Mama Tequila, if you want to press charges I'll testify that, in my opinion, these lacerations were as a direct result of the overzealous use of a pair of police handcuffs.'

  Mama Tequila brought her hand up to her breast, trying hard to conceal her shock at the suggestion. 'No charges, doctor! You must understand, we want no trouble with the police in this place. Juicey Fruit Mambo will take good care of her wrists.'

  'Oh yes, of course, it was the police who told you where to find her,' Or Louis said.

  He turned to Juicey Fruit Mambo. 'You've done a good job, the wounds are nice and clean.' He liked to explain things. 'She has good skin, I don't think she will scar too badly.' He brought out his bag and producing a small pad started to write. He wrote for some time, filling several pages.

  The coloured woman and the black man waited silently until Mama Tequila could no longer contain herself. 'That is a very long prescription, doctor?'

  Doctor Louis, 'Ag, man, just notes, you never know when such notes can come in handy.' He resumed writing but shortly afterwards came to an end. He flipped back to the first page. 'Mama Tequila, do you know who this young girl is?'

  Mama Tequila shook her head, 'Only her name, doctor. Her name is Tandia Patel.' She was annoyed that Or Louis had chosen to make notes but she could think of no way of preventing him.

  Or Louis wrote Tandia's name and surname on the top of the pad. 'Ja, I thought so. Her father was a patient of mine. He dropped dead three days ago of a sudden heart attack in the middle of refereeing a boxing match.' He smiled, 'She is his love child, you know.'

  Mama Tequila sniffed. Was there no end to this man's naivety? She was still annoyed that he'd made the notes and she answered testily, 'I too am such a love child, doctor. South Africa is full of these love children. A white man grabs a black woman and for a few shillings they do it in the bushes because she is too afraid to say "no baas" or she needs the money so her children can eat. You call this a love child? What must I say, doctor?'

  'Ja, I know, it's easy for me to talk, but Patel was different. He didn't throw her away, he brought her up and gave her a proper education. Only the other day he was telling me she's got one more year to matric. I'm telling you, Mama Tequila, this is a very bright girl.' He paused and rubbed his chin, 'I'm damn sure she doesn't belong in a place like this.' Behind the doctor Mama Tequila could see Juicey Fruit Mambo shaking his head sadly. 'You mean just the stupid ones belong in a whorehouse, doctor?' she said.

  Dr Louis Rabin kept his head lowered and looked into his cupped hands. 'If I sounded patronising you must forgive me. But please, listen to me for just a moment. How many bastard children created between black and white manage to get a proper education? Tell me, Mama Tequila, when did you leave school? Standard five perhaps? Just before high school?'

  'Standard two,' Mama Tequila said defiantly. 'I learned to read and write and do some sums.' It was enough. The doctor turned to Juicey Fruit Mambo, 'And you, boy?'

  Juicey Fruit Mambo's head shot up. 'I am not boy, doctor, I am a man, same like you!' Then, just as quickly, he looked down contritely, adopting the practised mendacity that the African learns to use before authority. The defiance was absent from his voice. 'I am not go to the school, doctor.'

  Dr Louis flushed deeply but chose to ignore Juicey Fruit Mambo's admonishment. 'There you are! You see now what I mean?' He turned to look at the large woman. 'Standard two only and you are even more lucky than some. Here you've got one of your own kind, a young coloured girl who has not even a year to go for her matric. Someone who, I'm telling you, could go far. How can you put her on her back to work for you? I'm asking you truly now, explain to me how could you do a thing like that?'

  Mama Tequila started to giggle, then stopped abruptly when she realised, following Juicey Fruit Mambo's outburst, that her laughter would be seen by Or Louis as a further put-down. 'Doctor, you a good man and I respec' you, you know that. All the coloured people respec' you. But now you got to lissen to me, you hear? You sit in your consulting rooms and the black people come and the coloured people come and even some white people, they come also. And the black man and the coloured look at the whites and think, "See, we also, we can have the best doctor, just like the white man!" When you give them medicine they pay just like the white man. But you know something, doctor? In the township hospital there are two black doctors and three coloured, also some Indian doctors. For much less money, sometimes even for nothing, they can see these doctors. Why do they come to you?'

  Or Louis Rabin opened his mouth to attempt to answer but Mama Tequila held up her hand. 'No, please, doctor, I'm telling you, you don't know the answer. I will tell you. You see, you a white man, no matter how clever the coloured doctor or the black doctor, even if they just as clever as you, they not.' She dug her finger in under her left breast to indicate her heart and made a twisting motion. 'They know in here, in their hearts, the white doctor is better. When my girls get sick and I call you, they know Mama Tequila loves them.'

  'That's not true, Mama Tequila, a medical degree is the same for everyone!'

  'Ja, but it doesn't work like that. The coloured doctor can take out your appendix just the same as you, but he can't take out a building licence to live in a big house in the Berea just like you. No, man! Who does he think he is? All of a sudden the cheeky kaffir thinks just because he a doctor, he also a white man!' She paused. 'And us too! The coloured and the black people, we also believe he is just a bladdy kaffir in a white coat, or just a dirty coloured or bladdy coolie who is trying to be something he can't ever be. Tell me, doctor. Except now he gets maybe more money, how does all that white education help a coloured doctor or lawyer or teacher?'

  Or Louis sighed. 'Look, Mama Tequila, I'm a Jew. The Jews have been persecuted for hundreds of years. My family fled from Poland; my father, even today, hardly speaks English. Believe me, when we came here we had nothing, we were poor, poor as black people.' Or Louis lowered his voice for emphasis and wagged a finger. 'But always! Always the Jews have understood one thing,' he smacked his fist into the open palm of his left hand. 'Education! Education is everything! But it takes money to be educated.'

  He smiled, pleased with himself. 'So to answer your question, to make money is very important.'

  Mama Tequila threw back her head and laughed uproariously. 'You dead right about that, doctor.' She cleared her throat suddenly. 'Only one thing is different. If you had left Poland and you come here and you had a black face, what would have happened then?'

  Or Louis winced. 'I think I'm beginning to understand, Mama Tequila,' he said quietly.

  The big woman laughed. Then she changed the subject abruptly. 'So tell me, to become a doctor takes how long, please?'

  Or Louis was still smarting from her rebuke. 'Six years, then two years' internship. Why do you ask?'

  Mama Tequila looked down at Tandia, who from time to time still tossed feverishly, though she appeared to be asleep again. Juicey Fruit Mambo was holding a cold towel to her head.

  'You see this little girl, doctor? You right about her, this one, she's special, number one.' Mama Tequila paused for emphasis. 'Doctor, I've got people who come here to Bluey Jay, important, high-up people, white men, some even politicians, lawyers and magistrates, one is even a judge. These people will pay very, very, well for this one if I train her right. On her back this clever little skatterbol can make more money in the next eight years than your kaffir doctor or coloured lawyer will make in his lifetime!'

  She pointed a long varnished nail at the doctor. 'I don't want to talk dirty in front of a doctor, but we coloured ladies, we got a saying.' "The best brains a pretty coloured lady got is between her legs!'"

  Or Louis laughed in spite of himself. 'You don't leave me with too many answers,' he said finally.

  'Come, we have some coffee, hey? Sarah made some koeksisters this morning before
she went to Mass. If I tell her you came and didn't eat some she will be very unhappy.'

  Juicey Fruit Mambo had remained behind with Tandia. He didn't know what had gotten into him. Almost from the moment he had set eyes on her he had felt differently about the young' girl who lay tossing and turning in Hester's bed. It wasn't love. He felt a kind of kinetic energy in her presence as though he was connected to her by some form of invisible cord. He could feel the burning of her fever on his own flesh and sense the little girl's despair as though it was his own. Juicey Fruit didn't bother to examine these feelings. In such things his African culture, depending on your viewpoint, was either too primitive or too sophisticated. He simply decided that it was henceforth his job to care for Tandia, that the rest of his life would be taken up with this task.

  Juicey Fruit Mambo had been with Mama Tequila for three years. He too had been a gift from the police. They'd stuck a cattle prod up his arse and burned him, so that he was no longer a man, whereupon they'd dropped him head first down a stairwell so that when he landed two floors below his brains had bubbled through his broken skull for all to see.

  He had refused to die in the wretched cell into which they'd thrown him. In the two days of delirium which followed, the deep cuts to his handcuffed wrists were created, which were to earn him his permanent bracelets. Reluctantly the police were forced to cart him off to a black hospital. For, while his broken skull could easily be explained as attempted suicide, the terrible lacerations to his wrists were plainly the result of police brutality, something the coroner would be obliged to include in his report. When, five months later, he was released from hospital, the so-called terrorist gang of which Juicey Fruit Mambo was supposed to have been a member, had been acquitted by the courts for lack of any reasonable evidence.

  The police had made a real botch-up of the whole affair and the newspapers had been quick to point this out. Anxious not to attract any further publicity they'd taken Juicey Fruit Mambo to Mama Tequila" so that if he tried to make a fuss, he would be immediately compromised by reason of working in a brothel.

  But Juicey Fruit Mambo hadn't made a fuss. He had the rest of his life to get even. The hate in him for the white man was a hot, palpable thing he carried with him every day of his life.

  Mama Tequila poured a large cup of black coffee for Or Louis and, without asking, she added four teaspoons of sugar and stirred. It wasn't the way he usually drank his coffee, but it was the way she believed he did and after a few times it was pointless to bring it up. She handed him the cup. 'Okay, doctor, what must I do to get those notes you made, hey?'

  Dr Louis looked into his coffee. 'You already know that.' Mama Tequila said nothing. How could a man be so smart and so stupid at the same time? 'The price, it is too high, doctor.'

  'Just one year, until she matriculates. Then she can make up her own mind. Let her finish her education, Mama Tequila.'

  'What must I do with an educated whore? Who's going to pay?' Mama Tequila asked roughly, but she could feel the better part of her nature beginning to win. This worried her somewhat; in her experience conscience made a lousy bookkeeper. 'I run a good house, doctor, this isn't a bladdy boarding school!'

  'I tell you what. I'll throw in twelve visits free of charge to you or any of your girls for the remainder of the year if you promise not to put her. to your kind of work until she matriculates. How's that?'

  It was a generous offer; coming out to Bluey Jay in the middle of the night was a big sacrifice for any doctor, let alone a white one, to make for a sick whore. Mama Tequila lifted her coffee cup to her lips and blew the steam from the top; then she took a tiny ladylike sip and looked at Dr Louis out of the corner of her eye. 'Twelve visits, no time limit, maybe it takes two years, maybe even more.'

  'Ja, that's okay by me.'

  'Starting tonight?'

  Or Louis grinned, 'Ja, what's the difference?'

  'Just one more thing, doctor. Tandia is going to this big school to learn how to be clever, but there is things she got to learn here also.'

  'What kind of things?' Dr Louis asked suspiciously.

  'Ag, I can't explain, tricks of the trade. She got to make herself useful. There is all sorts of things a person on the game has to know.'

  'A person on the game? I thought we decided she wasn't going to do that?'

  'Ja, of course, but she like an apprentice. I got a big establishment to run, doctor.'

  'Can she learn these things standing up?' Dr Louis asked. Mama Tequila laughed, but looked hurt. 'We already shook hands, doctor. You got my word, the girl is safe with me until she finish her school, then she can decide what part of her body her brain is in.' Mama Tequila raised an eyebrow. 'If she got any brains left from all that education, she not going to need too many to work that out, also!'

  Dr Louis pushed his chair back from the table and extended his hand. 'I'm proud of you, Mama Tequila.'

  Taking the doctor's hand, Mama Tequila grinned. 'I'm telling you, doctor, I'm getting too soft in my old age. Cmon, hand over, where's the bladdy notes?'

  Mama Tequila was as good as her word. With Tandia standing by, she called the headmistress of Durban Indian Girls' High School posing as Tandia's auntie. The headmistress declared herself annoyed at Tandia's absence. 'I know there have- been extenuating circumstances and we do commiserate, but Tandia has been away for nearly three weeks. I'm sure I don't need to point out to you that a small note from her aunt dropped in the mail with an explanation was all that was required.'

  'Her daddy, you know, Patel the famous boxing coach, he dropped dead all of a sudden, it made her very sad, Mrs…?'

  'Miss Naidoo!' Tandia said in a loud whisper.

  '…Miss Naidoo. You see, it made her sick and everything,' Mama Tequila continued.

  'I'm sorry the child has not been well, but we do expect common courtesy, Mrs…'

  'Mama Tequila!' To Mama Tequila she didn't sound sorry at all.

  'Will she be sitting for the end-of-year exams, Mrs Tekella?'

  'Yes, I suppose, the doctor says one more week, is that orright?' Mama Tequila was not often intimidated, but she didn't seem to be able to get the hang of this stuck-up individual who was Tandia's headmistress. One thing was for sure, this one wouldn't know how to run a brothel if her bladdy life depended on it. All the clients would leave their trousers behind and run for the hills!

  She had thought about adopting her Mae West persona, but as she generally used it only on her clients, she was glad now that she'd kept it straight. An American auntie from the deep South would have seemed an improbable relation for a schoolgirl who was the love child of an Indian and a Bantu.

  'We begin exams in a week. Tandia will have missed all her preparation classes.'

  'That's orright, Miss, don't worry, she's clever as anything. If you want her Monday she'll be there for sure, I guarantee it!' Mama Tequila was beginning to regain her usual composure and now she adopted what she considered was a snooty voice. 'My chauffeur will drop her off in a Packard personal.'

  If Miss Naidoo had felt herself put in her place her voice gave no sign that this was so. 'She will need to bring a doctor's note when she returns. Goodbye, Mrs Tekella!'

  Mama Tequila felt the receiver go dead in her ear. She turned to see Tandia with her fist in her mouth in an attempt to stifle her giggles. She had been able to hear the headmistress's shrill voice almost as clearly as if she had the receiver to her ear and, as far as she was concerned, Mama Tequila had come out quits, even ahead if you counted the bit about the car. Nobody in the history of the world had ever done that with Miss Naidoo before.

  'Humph! This Miss Naidoo, she needs a man real bad, Tandy. I'm telling you, she one mixed-up lady, that one.

  What kind of car she got?'

  Tandia looked at her in surprise. 'She hasn't got a car, Mama T.'

  Mama Tequila clicked her tongue. 'She hasn't got a car
and she hasn't got a man, tell me, has she got lots of pretty dresses and rings and things?'

  Tandia laughed. Laughter was happening to her a lot lately. 'I think she's only got four dresses, they all nearly the same, not pretty at all and she never wears any jewellery, only a watch.'

  'So tell me, why is she so stuck up, then?'

  'Ag, headmistresses are like that, Mama T. She hasn't got time for a man or for riding around in a big car or looking pretty and wearing jewels. A person has got to work very hard and be very clever to have her job.'

  'I see, if you very clever and you get a big education and you work very hard, you get this job?'

  Tandia nodded. 'Ja, but also, you got to be lucky. There's not so many jobs high up like that for women.'

  Mama Tequila put her arm around Tandia's shoulder and drew her into her bosom. 'Okay, skatterbol, if you want you can go back to this school. But I'm telling you something for nothing, this woman can't teach you anything that's going to help you, man, I think maybe it's all a big waste of brains!'

  The pink school outfit was Mama Tequila's idea of sticking it right up Miss Naidoo. When she returned, Tandia was going to be the best-dressed, prettiest girl in the whole school.

  Every time she thought about the pink gymfrock Tandia nearly died of embarrassment. How was she possibly going to tell Mama T? She'd begged Hester to tell her, but there was a darker side of Mama Tequila's nature and she took it badly when one of her projects was thwarted. Hester wasn't game to incur Mama Tequila's wrath on her behalf. In her world you looked after yourself first. It wasn't unkindness, it was instinct, like breathing, and her instincts had served her well in the past.

  Tandia also now understood why Juicey Fruit Mambo had been grinning his head off for the last couple of days. He was happy for the surprise coming her way.