“I didn’t give them to her. I borrowed them to her.”
“Lent them,” my mother corrected.
“Yes, lent them.”
My father reached across the table to pick up the books. “The Magic Faraway Tree and Five Go Adventuring Again,” he read. “Books by Enid Blyton?”
“Yes, apparently Gertruida took exception to the characters’ names and told me, in no uncertain terms, that Robin is a bad influence and she doesn’t want her playing with Elsabe anymore.”
“What names? What is the bloody woman talking about?”
My mother paused before answering. “Dick and Fanny.”
“Are you being serious?”
My mother nodded. “Yes, she said they’re disgusting names that shouldn’t be allowed in a Christian household.”
My father guffawed and that set my mother off. They were both in fits of giggles and it was my turn to look to Cat in mystification. I didn’t know what was so funny.
I hadn’t meant to upset Elsabe or Mrs. Bekker; all I’d tried to do was start my own secret society like the children in the books. I wanted to solve mysteries and have hidden clubhouses; I wanted to think up exotic passwords about cream buns and jam tarts that no one else would ever guess. Unfortunately though, all the other girls in our whites-only suburb of Witpark in Boksburg were Afrikaners and, from what I could tell, were only interested in playing house. All that cooking, knitting, sewing, baking, looking after screaming babies and yelling at drunken husbands who came home late from mine parties didn’t appeal to me. I wanted, instead, to broaden their horizons and introduce them to a whole new world they were missing out on.
“I just wanted her and the other girls to read the books so they’d join my Secret Seven Club,” I said. “So far, it’s just me and Cat and we need five others.”
“Bugger them,” my father said, reaching over and fluffing my hair. “You girls can have a Gruesome Twosome all on your own. Or better yet, forget the girls and go play with the boys.”
My mother rolled her eyes again, but she was still in a good mood and I didn’t want to ruin it by complaining about how none of the boys would play with me. She didn’t like whining and always said that instead of dwelling on the negative, I should try to think up solutions. Which is what got me thinking about what my father had said earlier.
“Where’s your big gun, Daddy?”
“What?”
“Your big gun? The one you said you’d shoot the Jehovah’s Witnesses with?”
“I was just joking, Freckles. I don’t have a gun.”
“Oh.” This was disappointing. I was hoping to use it as a conversation starter with the boys. “Maybe you should get one.”
“Why?”
“Piet’s dad said the kaffir black bastards are going to kill us in our sleep because we’re sissies. He said if we don’t own guns, we may as well just bend over and take it up the backside like the moffies do.”
“Oh yes, when did he say this?” my father asked just as my mother told me not to say kaffir and moffies.
“The other day when I was there playing with the dogs. What do the moffies take up the backside?”
“That’s enough questions for one day, Robin.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He shot my mother a look and they both snorted with laughter. “End of conversation.”
It had been an ordinary Sunday in every way. My parents fought and then made up and then fought again, switching from being adversaries to allies so seamlessly that you couldn’t put your finger on the moment when the lines were crossed and recrossed. Cat perfectly acted out her part of the quiet understudy twin, so I could take my place in the spotlight playing the leading role for both of us. I asked too many questions and repeatedly pushed the boundaries, and Mabel hovered like a benevolent shadow in the wings.
The only difference was that, without my knowing it, the clock had started ticking; in just over three days, I’d lose three of the most important people in my life.
Two
BEAUTY MBALI
14 JUNE 1976
Transkei, South Africa
My daughter is in danger.
This is my first thought when I awaken and it spurs me on to get dressed quickly. Dawn is still two hours away and the inside of the hut is black as grief. I can usually move around the room and skirt the boys’ sleeping mats in the darkness, but I need a light now to finish the last of my packing.
The scratch of the match against the rough strip of the Lion box is grating in the confines of the silent room, and my shadow rises up like a prayer when I light the candle and place it next to my suitcase on the floor. The lingering scent of sulfur, an everyday smell that has always made me think of daybreak, feels portentous now. I breathe through my mouth so that I do not have to inhale the smell of fear.
I am quiet but there is nothing to help muffle my movements. Our dwellings are circular and entirely open within the circumference of the clay outer wall. No ceilings crouch above us, bisecting the thatch roofs from the dung floors. No partitions cut through the communal space to separate us into different rooms. Our homes are borderless just as the world was once free of boundaries; there would be no walls or roofs at all except for the essential shelter they provide. Privacy is not a concept my people understand or desire; we bear witness to each other’s lives and take comfort in having our own lives seen. What greater gift can you give another than to say: I see you, I hear you, and you are not alone?
This is why, no matter how quiet I try to be, both my sons are awake. Khwezi watches as I roll up my reed mat; the reflected light of the candle’s flame burns in his eyes. Thirteen years old, he is my youngest child. He does not remember the day, ten years ago, when his father left for the gold mines in Johannesburg, nor the agony of the months of drought that came before. He does not remember the gradual slump of a proud man’s shoulders as Silumko watched his family and cattle starve, but Khwezi is old enough now to be fearful of losing another family member to the hungry city.
I smile to reassure him, but he does not smile back. His thin face is serious as he reaches up absentmindedly to rub the shiny patch above his ear. The mottled pink tissue, in the shape of an acacia tree, is what remains from a long-ago fall into an open fire. There was a reason God placed the scar in a spot where Khwezi cannot see it but where I, from my height as a mother, cannot overlook it. It serves as a reminder that the ancestors gave me a second chance with him; one I was not granted when I failed to protect Mandla, my firstborn son, from harm. I cannot fail another of my children.
“Mama,” Luxolo whispers from his mat opposite his younger brother. His gray blanket is wrapped around him like a shroud to ward off the morning chill.
“Yes, my son?”
“Let me go with you.” He posed the same plea soon after my brother’s letter arrived yesterday.
The crumpled yellow envelope bearing my name, Beauty Mbali, has traveled a circuitous route to get here from my brother Andile’s home in Zondi, a neighborhood in the middle of Soweto.
Our village is so small that it does not have an official name that can be found marked on a map of the Transkei, and so there is no direct mail delivery to the foothills of this rural landscape in our black homeland. Once the letter left my brother’s hands, the postal service carried it out of the township of Soweto—on potholed and sandy roads—into Johannesburg, the heart of South Africa, and then south across the tarred arterial highways of the Transvaal, over the Vaal River, and into the Orange Free State.
From there, it traveled south still over the fog-cloaked Drakensberg Mountains and then down, down, down zigzagging through hairpin bends to reach Pietermaritzburg, after which it branched off into the veiny, neglected side roads that would officially deliver it to the post office in Umtata, the Transkei’s capital city.
Its journey not yet complete, the enve
lope still had to be passed hand to hand from the postmaster’s wife to the Scottish missionary in Qunu—a distance of thirty kilometers that would take six hours for me to walk, but takes the white woman forty minutes to drive in her husband’s car—and then onwards still from the missionary’s black cleaning woman to the Indian spaza shop owner. The final leg of its journey was made by Jama, a nine-year-old herd boy, who ran the three kilometers over dusty pathways to my classroom to proudly hand it across to me.
I do not know how long the envelope took to travel the more than nine hundred kilometers from black township to black homeland to bring its warning; the post stamp is smudged and Andile, in his haste, did not date his letter. I hope I will not be too late.
“Mama, take me with you,” Luxolo entreats again. It is only his desire to prove himself as the man of the house that spurs him on to challenge a decision I have already made. He would not risk disrespecting me for any other reason. Only fifteen years old, Luxolo tries to fulfill the duties of a grown man in our household. He believes that protecting the womenfolk is as much his responsibility as tending the cattle that is our livelihood; by accompanying me on the journey, he will help keep his sister safe from harm and ensure that we both return safely.
“The village needs you here. I will fetch Nomsa and bring her home.” I turn away from him so that he cannot see the worry in my eyes and so I cannot see his wounded pride.
My bible is the last of my possessions I pack. Its black leather cover is careworn from hours spent cradled in my hands. I slip my brother’s letter between its hope-thin pages for safekeeping though I have already memorized the most worrying parts of it.
You must come immediately, sister. Your daughter is in extreme danger and I fear for her life. I cannot guarantee her safety here. If she stays, who knows what will happen to her.
I blink away the vision of Andile writing in his cramped scrawl, the wave of ink blowing back over his sentences like ash from a veld fire as his left hand smudges over the words he has just written. With it comes the memory of our mother superstitiously hitting him over the knuckles with a sapling branch every time he reached for something with the wrong hand. She could not torture his left-handedness out of him no matter how hard she tried, nor could she quench my thirst for knowledge or my ambition. Just as I could not rid Nomsa of her obstinacy.
Once I’ve wrapped a doek around my head, I slip the shoes on. They are as unyielding and uncomfortable as the Western customs that dictate the donning of this uniform. Here in my homeland, I am always barefoot. Even in the classroom where I teach, my soles connect with the dung of the floor. However, if I am to venture out into the white man’s territory, I need to wear the white man’s clothes.
I unzip my beaded money pouch and check the notes folded inside. There is just enough for the taxis and buses as I journey north. The return fare will have to be borrowed from my brother and it is a debt we can ill afford. I slip the pouch into my bra, another constrictive Western invention, and say a silent prayer that I will not be robbed during my journey. I am a black woman traveling alone, and a black woman is always the easiest target on the food chain of victims.
A cock crows in the distance. It is time. I hold my arms out to my sons and they rise silently from their beds to step into my embrace. I hug them fiercely, reluctant to let go. There is so much I want to say to them. I want to impart both words of wisdom and remind them of trivial matters, but I do not want to scare them with a protracted farewell. It is easier to pretend that I am leaving on a short journey and will return before nightfall. It is also important for Luxolo to know that I have complete faith in him to take care of his brother and the cattle while I am away; I will not belittle his efforts with entreaties for caution and vigilance. He knows what needs to be done and he will do it well.
“Nomsa and I will be home soon,” I say. “Do not worry about us.”
“And you, Mother, must not worry about us. I will take care of everything.” Luxolo is somber. He wears this new responsibility well.
“I will not worry. You are both good boys who will soon be great men.”
Luxolo steps out of my embrace and nods as he accepts the compliment. Khwezi is reluctant to let go. I kiss his head, my lips touching his scar. “Try to get another hour of sleep.” Like the good boys they are, they obey me and return to their mats.
I step out into the dawn with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and make my way down the narrow hillside trail. The scents of wood smoke and manure rise up to say their farewells. Crickets chirp a discordant good-bye. My breath is visible in the cold moonlight; ghostlike puffs of air lead the way ahead of me, and I trail them just as I trail the phantom of my daughter down this sandy path. My feet fall where hers did seven months ago when she traded our country life for a city education.
I try to recall how she looked on the day she left but what comes to mind instead is a memory of her at the age of five. Our thatch roof needed repairing, and for that, I had to use the panga to cut the long grass. Fearful of the children getting in the way of the blade, I sent them to the kraal to see the lamb that had been born in the night. Three-year-old Luxolo ran off trying to keep up with his sister and I set to work harvesting the thatch.
Later when the cry tore through the fields, setting a flock of sparrows in flight, I dropped the panga and started running. By the time I neared the kraal behind two other women who were racing ahead of me, the cry had turned to shrieking. Another more ominous sound threaded through the noise though I did not register what it was until I cleared the last hut.
There Nomsa was standing with her stubby legs apart in a fighter’s stance. She had inserted herself between Luxolo and a low-slung jackal that was snapping and snarling at her with foam frothing from its muzzle. The jackal was rabid and out of its mind with aggression.
Nomsa’s small fist was raised and she shook it while shouting at the beast that was sloping towards her. Before I could begin running again, Nomsa reached for a rock and threw it with such force that it hit the jackal square in the head, sending the animal staggering off to the side. When I got to them, I grabbed both Luxolo and Nomsa and pulled them up into my arms while the village women chased the jackal away. Nomsa was trembling with fright. My daughter, only five years old, had bravely fought off a predator to protect her younger brother. I expected to see tears in her eyes but what I saw instead was triumph.
I force the memory and the accompanying uneasiness from my mind. There are still six kilometers of dusty paths to walk before I reach the main road near Qunu. A rural village like ours, sunken into a grassy valley surrounded by green hills, Qunu is inhabited by a few hundred people, which has accorded it a proper name. It is rumored that Nelson Mandela grew up in those foothills so the soil is said to foster greatness. Perhaps touching it along my journey will bring me luck.
From Qunu, I must catch the first taxi to take me out of the protection of the Bantustan of the Transkei into the white man’s province of Natal, specifically four hundred kilometers northeast through sugar-cane and maize fields to Pietermaritzburg via Kokstad. After that, I will need to make my way north past the Midlands, through the Drakensberg Mountains and then on to Johannesburg.
My journey will take me from this rural idyll where time stands still to a city that is rocked from below its foundations by the dynamite blasts used in the mining of gold, and assaulted from above by the fierce Highveld thunderstorms that tear across its sky. Almost a thousand kilometers stretch out between here and Soweto in a thread of dread and doubt, but I try not to think of the distance as I hold my suitcase away from my body to stop it from drumming into my thigh.
I follow the morning star and look forward to sunrise, which is my favorite time of day, though Nomsa prefers sunset. There is no lingering twilight in Africa, no gentle gloaming as day eases into night; a tender give-and-take between light and shadow. Night settles swiftly. If you are vigilant, and not prone to distracti
ons, you can almost feel the very moment daylight slips through your fingers and leaves you clutching the inky sap that is the sub-Saharan night. It is a sharp exhalation at the closing of day, a sigh of relief. Sunrise is the opposite: a gentle inhalation, a protracted affair as the day readies itself for what is to come. Just as I now must ready myself for whatever awaits me in Soweto.
I have just turned into the valley to follow the meandering path of the river when a thin voice calls out to me.
“Mama.” The word expands in the hushed sanctity of the morning and is absorbed by the mist blanketing the riverbed. I think I have imagined it, that I have conjured up my daughter’s voice from across the country calling to me for help, but then I hear it again. “Mama.”
I turn and look back upon the trail I’ve walked and a figure bounds down the path towards me. It is Khwezi, sure-footed as a mountain goat. Within a few minutes he is next to me, our breaths mingling in puffs of exertion as we face one another.
“You forgot your food,” he says, holding up the bag in which I wrapped the roasted mielies and chicken pieces the night before. “You will be hungry.”
He looks so much like his father—the boy his father was before the gold mines took his joy and crushed it—and he smiles an unguarded smile, proud of himself for having spared me from hunger. My heart swells with love.
“You will bring Nomsa home?” he asks and I nod because I cannot speak. “You will come back?”
I nod again.
“Do you promise, Mama?”
“Yes.” It is a strangled sob, a fire of emotion robbed of air, but it is a promise. I will bring Nomsa home.
Three
ROBIN
15 JUNE 1976
Boksburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Something tickled as it made its steady way up my arm, but I didn’t want to interrupt my surveillance to see what it was. I didn’t consider it a threat to my top-secret spy mission until it stopped to take a chunk out of my skin.
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