When Morning Comes

by Arushi Raina

  The policeman slowly put the gun back in his holster. None of us moved.

  “It’s the cleanest way for us to do our job here, waiting for criminals at the border,” Coetzee said. “No paperwork. No explanations.” Then he walked out of the room. Coobus followed.

  It took a while for the sound of their footsteps to fade out.

  Dlamini finally brought his hand to his bruised face.

  “I don’t understand,” Masi said.

  Vusi put covers over the lanterns and pushed out our chairs, folding them back in the way they’d been. “He’ll wait for one of us to try to cross the border with Zanele.”

  “He could have arrested her now,” Masi said.

  “He’s not sure it was her. He was guessing,” Vusi said. “He doesn’t want just one person, he wants us all, including the ones in SASO.”

  “But what about our Baas education plans? We were all together, and he didn’t even try and question us about it.”

  “Think about it, Masi. Underground cells with weapons, planning to blow things up,” I said. “And a bunch of school kids protesting some education law—what would you pick to investigate?”

  “He is making a mistake,” Masi said quietly.

  The rest of us didn’t say anything. We put out the lanterns and carried them home.

  Jack

  “Your mom hates me.” Megan put a grape in her mouth and looked at me. Her dark, almost-black hair was in a neat bun.

  “I hate my dad’s beer, rainy days and cheap whisky. We all have our preferences.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Anytime. It’s called Trident. Doesn’t make any marketing sense, and he refuses to admit it.” I put my hand over my eyes to shade them, and leaned back.

  “I’m getting restless, you know? Living like this, it’s getting under my skin.”

  When we’d first met, near the end of last year at a party at St John’s College, she’d said something similar about going to Roedean’s Girl School, wearing those brown stockings and sitting in the wooden chapel every day. That night, we’d gone home together. It was a good pick-up line.

  “At least you’re going away,” she said. “You have a new place to get to know. New people to meet.”

  “You can go abroad too.”

  “Don’t talk about things that aren’t going to happen.”

  Megan was studying English at Wits, and spent the rest of the time being part of organizations like NUSAS. My mother thought NUSAS was “radicalized,” but I’d been to a meeting once with Megan. It was just a bunch of thin, tame guys with long hair, arguing in low boring voices. I left the meeting early to fit in a game of tennis with Oliver.

  “Become a journalist, like your dad,” I said. “You like annoying people like the Van Roonens.”

  “Is this a dig at me for showing them for the narrow-minded uneducated racists they are?”

  “No,” I said. “I just wonder what you think we are, you and I. Educated racists?” I drank my glass of water and felt my headache ease a little.

  “We don’t want to be racist.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s the problem with you, Jack. I’ll say you’re a racist, you’ll agree, then go back to whatever you like doing in your spare time, hanging out with Oliver and Ricky, driving your car all over the place. You’re apolitical. No one can hate you for that, you don’t allow them to.”

  “Best compliment you’ve ever given me.”

  “Right.”

  Lillian came in and set up the ironing table on the porch. Every time she entered the room now, I noticed her, expected her to say something. She couldn’t know her daughter had driven my car downtown.

  We got up from the table. Megan leaned in and kissed me. Her lips brushed my two-day-old stubble. I needed to shave. “Take me to lunch,” she said.

  Lillian was ironing the shirt with the mended collar. The stitches only showed if you were really close.

  We passed through the living room to the front door. We got in the car, and as we drove to the Inanda club, I thought of Lillian’s daughter, darker than her mother, skin that covered smaller, sharper bones. Her shifting moods, the way her face changed when she forgot she was talking to me. A showgirl laugh she’d picked up from goodness knows where.

  I should have forgotten about her. But I couldn’t.

  Meena

  On the way to the clinic, Papa was silent. I sat next to him in the passenger seat, staring at Mama’s lucky snowman dangling from the rear-view mirror, jumping with every pothole we went over. She would be pointing, telling Jyoti and I to look at the dirt streets, the mothers in their colourful skirts and their babies bundled tightly to their backs.

  Papa parked the car in front of the faded Lower Jabavu Western Clinic sign, and waited. Outside, there was no line of people. It was early, only eight on a Saturday.

  Dr A. came, holding a long overcoat, carrying a briefcase covered in children’s stickers. When he saw me step out of the car, followed by my father, he nodded. Wordlessly, he unlocked the door to the clinic. Papa stared—a real Indian man working in the township.

  Papa stared at the photographs on the wall. “You play cricket?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Dr A. answered, taking a white coat from a hook. He waited politely for Papa to say something more. But Papa, always quiet with strangers, had become even quieter since Mama died. He just smiled, hesitating. Then he made a sort of bow, and left.

  “Why don’t you get a clean pair of gloves from that shelf,” Dr A. said.

  Around midday a young woman walked in, wearing an orange dress with flares at the bottom, and small shiny flower-shaped earrings. She had put on fake eyelashes. Not that she needed them. Anyone could see that. Behind the layer of blush, her skin was strangely pale.

  “Mankwe,” Dr A. said, “I didn’t expect you.”

  She opened and closed her handbag, a cheap, shiny brown thing. “I came to check if you had some of those supplements.”

  “You passed out again?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Your sister and mother know?”

  “No.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone to sing,” Dr A. said. “I told you.”

  Mankwe lowered her eyes, looking for something in her handbag. Then she said in a quiet voice, “I wake up every day and I don’t want to leave the bed, do anything. My mother, every morning, goes to Houghton to clean. My sister goes to school and takes care of me, sings for me all those nights I can’t make it. And she hates it. Why should a girl still in school have to sing in the shebeen?” Mankwe looked up. “So I go and sing. It doesn’t matter.”

  Her eyes moved slowly from the doctor to me. The resemblance was so strong—except for her voice. Mankwe’s was softer, nicer than Zanele’s.

  “Zanele,” I said. “She’s your sister?”

  “Who is she?” Mankwe asked Dr A.

  “She’s helping,” he said.

  “How do you know my sister?”

  “I’m her friend.”

  “Zanele never said anything about you.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t tell you everything,” I said.

  “Don’t talk about things you don’t know.”

  “Mankwe. Supplements.” Dr A. handed her a bottle. “It’s the last one we have.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.” Mankwe hugged him.

  Dr A. was so much taller than her, it looked like he was hugging a child. Mankwe opened her handbag and held out some money. “See? I did a show every night this week, and so I can pay. Here.”

  He took the change and put it on his desk. She smiled. Then she left.

  Dr A. rearranged his medicine cabinet.

  “So she’s anaemic?” I asked.

  “Yes. Severely,” he said.

  I stared at the change. “But
can’t anaemia be helped with a good diet? Chicken livers, dates, spinach?”

  “Meena,” he said, “that girl’s fiancée was just stabbed to death with a screwdriver. She’s lucky if she wakes up and finds some paap and can convince herself to eat it. And you know something about mealie meal? It doesn’t have any iron at all.”

  Eight

  Zanele

  I ducked under the roof and skirted around the back. The only thing I could hear were the sounds of cars coming and going, their tires through the puddles of water on the side of the road.

  “You’re late.” Meena stepped out from under Starlight Cinema’s awning, wearing a black woolen coat and her school shoes.

  “I know.”

  “You’ve seen this?” Meena pushed a copy of The World toward me. I tipped the paper under the streetlight: Anti-Afrikaans Pupils Go on Strike in Soweto.

  “It was Phefeni,” she said. “They threatened to beat up the headmaster. Cut his tires.”

  “I know.”

  At the corner of the picture, behind all the children, I saw Thandi, her fist raised. I handed the paper back and started walking, keeping close to the sides of the building.

  “They didn’t agree to their demands though,” Meena said.

  “Shhh,” I said. I imagined her putting pillows in her bed and sneaking out. She was young. If she was seen with me now, that Special Branch policeman Coetzee would be after her too.

  I cut in front of Meena and upped the pace.

  “You’re too worried,” Meena whispered, catching up to me. “It’s an open meeting for the Young African Religious Movement. That’s what the police think.”

  “You think they’re that stupid?”

  I pressed her back against the shadow of the storefront as a police car came driving by. It passed and we walked on, heels clapping against the pavement. She didn’t say anything else.

  Inside, it was brightly lit. I put my back against the wall, scanning the room as Meena took off her beanie and scarf. People stared back at me, muttering. For half of them, I was the tsotsi’s girlfriend, and for the others, I was the girl in the front row of the classroom all through standard five, six and seven.

  Vusi walked over to me. “Good to see you,” he said. I could see he was irritated I was there with this Indian girl.

  “You too, Vusi.”

  Vusi turned to stare at Meena.

  “I saw you at the SASO meeting last week,” Meena said. “You’re one of their masterminds, aren’t you?”

  “And who are you?”

  “What happened to that school teacher? Stabbed in his own schoolyard.”

  Vusi stepped closer. It was a lazy step, almost as if he didn’t mean it. “Sorry, I don’t understand. Why are you here?”

  “Same reason as you,” Meena said.

  “Watch it,” Vusi said, an edge to his voice. Then he walked away.

  “Meena, what was that?” I said.

  “He didn’t like me mentioning the stabbing, did you see that?”

  “I knew that man. And my sister knew him too.”

  “Sorry,” Meena said. “I didn’t know.”

  “If I knew you came here to fight with people, I’d have left you back home.”

  By now a group of people were standing at the front of the hall, and four men entered from the side door. People stopped talking.

  The four men took off their hats and coats. The banned PAC leaders.

  Meena’s face lit up as they talked about freedom, about resistance and hope. Meena didn’t get it—all those PAC men did was give advice. People like Billy, Vusi and I were the ones who took risks.

  Jack

  Oliver’s dad leaned over and helped himself to more meat. In the candlelight, folds of white fat showed through the pink. Superintendent Joubert liked his meat rare. Next to me, Oliver was turning the knife over and over in his hand, watching his father eat. The dinner had already stretched past an hour. I was going to be late.

  “What I don’t get, Anna,” Joubert said to my mother, after taking another bite of meat, “is why you won’t tell the boy to get his education here. We have good schools.”

  My mom laughed politely and nibbled on a bean. My father walked in, hung up his coat and wiped his hands on a napkin. My mother’s eyes lingered on his dirty fingers.

  “Because, Jacques, she wants him to grow up an English gentleman. And South Africa’s not the place for that.” My father smiled, tired. He was returning from another failed Trident sales pitch.

  Joubert snorted.

  My mother finished chewing and gave my father a warning look.

  “You see, that is your problem. You people aren’t used to fighting. Always trying to get out of conscription. This country isn’t for English gentlemen, we showed you that, we drove you out in the end.”

  “I served my time, Joubert. Angola,” my father said, as he took his seat and put a napkin over his lap. “So don’t be cross with me. I paid my dues.”

  If you looked closely at my father’s face, you could see where the bullet had grazed him. The skin was a different colour there. It was whiter, stretched out.

  Joubert turned to me. “Ah, you people must be so happy that Angola is done. This boy will never have to know how to hold a gun.”

  Oliver stopped eating and waited for me to say something. I smiled back.

  “My son was captain of the rugby team, if you remember.” There was a controlled note in my mother’s voice. Of course, a reminder of how I’d made it to captain while Oliver was only a reserve. “And he hunts with his father. He’s more than capable of handling a gun.”

  “Thanks, Mother,” I said. I turned to Joubert. “I heard there’s been some unrest lately in the townships.”

  Oliver coughed, clearing his throat.

  “Had a meeting with your friend Van Roonen to get my beer into the Bantustans and to Soweto,” my dad said to Joubert. “He gave the excuse that the political climate is inopportune, not only in the townships, but over there too. What with Transkei getting independence and all.”

  “Ja well, we’ll see. I’ve got my men out in the townships, and I guarantee it’s nothing, just a few black kids making noise. Easy to find them and lock them up.”

  “Just a few?” I asked.

  Joubert chewed and swallowed a piece of steak.

  “Jack has got a theory of how to control the townships, Joubert. I think it’s pretty interesting.” My father leaned back and took out his cigars.

  I had no theory.

  “Interesting?” Joubert said.

  “It’s a matter of research,” I said. “I believe it’s possible to predict the size of a protest based on the prevailing mood in the townships.”

  Joubert grunted.

  “Take past incidents, for example. You record where the most serious incidents of unrest have happened, and when, and how frequently. Then you plot a trend line to predict township unrest. A parameter for where an incident is most likely to happen. When it’s going to happen. And how big it’s going to be. From that, a very rough model can be developed for policing more efficiently and effectively.”

  Joubert took a cigar from the case my father offered and let my father light it. “Interesting.” He put the cigar in his mouth and leaned back. “I’ll give you this, John, your boy is not stupid.” He rolled the cigar around in his fingers before taking a long drag. “But he doesn’t realize how irrational the black man is. But maybe Coetzee would be interested in talking to this boy.” He paused, hesitating. “He likes these kinds of theories. And he is in charge of the intelligence coming out of Soweto.”

  I would find out more about Coetzee later, from Oliver. But back then I didn’t pay much attention to the story or the mention of the man. Oliver had met him once at dinner with his father. Coetzee told them over dessert how his parents had been murdered
, and had chuckled afterward. When Coetzee was seven or eight years old, the gardener had set the house on fire with his family inside. Oliver was impressed by the fact that he was fluent in Zulu and Xhosa. Months later, I would imagine Coetzee as a child, with the gardener leaning down and telling him all about the flowers and birds.

  A couple minutes later, I was driving away from Joubert, Oliver, the dinner, having lied to my mother, my father, Oliver and his father. Lies had to be finely balanced, a mixture of detail and vagueness. This time I said I was going to see a friend, maybe catch the late night show. They all thought I was going to spend the night at Megan’s, but didn’t want to say so.

  That night at the shebeen came vividly to mind—Zanele’s glittering red dress against the inky black night, leading the mob of men and children. The shards of glass as the headlight smashed. And the firm set of her lips in profile against my car window.

  I slowed the car and stopped to check if I’d got the address right. Then I saw a stream of people running past the car. It looked like the meeting was over. Students were running from the building, ducking under cars and yelling. It was worse than that time at the shebeen, and somewhere in the middle of this would be Zanele.

  Zanele

  I saw Vusi’s figure ahead of me as we ran. I went in a different direction so we wouldn’t be caught together. I held on to Meena too, which slowed me. As we rounded the corner we came slap into a policeman.

  Behind him, his car flashed green and yellow.

  “Passbook,” he said. His uniform looked tight and new on him.

  I did nothing. If I took my passbook out, it would show I didn’t have a stamp for today.

  “I said, passbook.”

  “Do it,” Meena whispered, her eyes fixed on the policeman’s chest.

  I reached inside my shirt and pulled out the passbook. The policeman stared. His head was too large and round for the rest of his body.

  He took his time to open it and page through it.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Both of you. What were you doing here? Get in the car.”