“Ouch!” I dropped the binoculars and held up the soft inner flesh of my forearm to find a red ant feasting on me.
I flicked it off and turned to look at Cat who was lying belly-down in the sand, resting on her elbows in the exact same pose as me.
“Look what you did,” I hissed. “You made us lie down on a red ant nest.”
She looked at the roiling mass of movement in the dirt beneath us and turned to me, her eyes widening in panic. “Sorry!”
“Sorry doesn’t help, dummy. Look at this, we’re under attack! Quickly, let’s move before the boys get here.”
Brushing ourselves off, we crouched and sprinted to another spot that would give us an equally good vantage point though it would place us closer to the action than I wanted to be.
We were at the boys’ meeting spot up in the huge mine dump that was situated right across the road from our suburb. Witpark was a community where mine workers from the nearby Witbok Mine lived; housing was subsidized, and so we all lived together in a neighborhood that bordered the mine property. The mountain of sand was what remained after gold was extracted from rock, and living next to it was part and parcel of the whole mining way of life, my father said. Apparently it wasn’t enough that the mine sank men like him deep into the guts of the earth, he complained, they had to make him look at its innards from his backyard too.
In the winter months, the dump—which rose up eight stories high—was merely a tsunami of sand threatening to drown us all. In the spring, when the wind blew and blew, the scraggly grass and bushes that grew over the dump like barnacles weren’t able to hold on to the soil no matter how fiercely they clung to it. During those months, a fine white powder was swept off it in waves; it coated our houses and lawns and cars—nothing left outside was spared the onslaught—and then it crept into the cracks of our windowpanes and came to rest in the corners of our sleeping eyes.
Only the summer rains could wash the dust away, and then the heat made the dump shimmer like a mirage so that it took on a golden and magical quality. That’s when the dump called to us most loudly, a siren luring us to come and explore the mysteries of its caves and shafts.
Of course, we weren’t officially allowed to play on the dump. We actually weren’t allowed anywhere near it; it was strictly forbidden because of the danger. There were regular cave-ins in which you could break your neck or die of suffocation. We told each other urban legends about children who’d disappeared down a tunnel never to be seen again, and about the ghosts of miners who’d died underground and now haunted the dump looking for revenge. Our parents warned us about the black vagrants who slept on the dump and had no qualms about murdering white children. None of the stories kept us away. The children in Cape Town had Table Mountain; we had the East Rand mine dumps where the most exciting parts of our lives unfolded.
“Quick, hide! I hear them,” I hissed at Cat.
We threw ourselves down in a clump of long grass and kept our heads lowered as we listened to the boys make their way along the path towards the clearing.
They met there almost every day after school and I was dying to know what they got up to. There were six of them ranging between eight and twelve years old and they called themselves Die Boerseun Bende, which translated loosely to “the Afrikaner Boy Gang.” I was desperate to join their group and figured that if I at least knew what their membership entailed, I could support my application.
I knew my chances weren’t that great because the only times I was ever included in their games were when I was invited to be the wicket (not the wicketkeeper, mind you) in a cricket match, and when I served as their crash-test dummy to try out one of their inventions: in that instance, it was an oversized skateboard with a hand brake. It turned out not to be a well-conceived contraption as the scars on my knees can attest to.
I hadn’t shown my true mettle in both those instances; I just needed the right circumstances to truly shine, so I’d been trying to find out for weeks what they did when they disappeared onto the dump. Following them hadn’t worked, because they’d wised up to me and were constantly on the lookout to make sure I wasn’t behind them. Finally, inspired by my literary heroes, the Secret Seven, I decided that a stakeout was the best way to spy on them.
I’d allowed Cat to tag along on the condition that she was quiet and didn’t whine too much. I should have added finding non-life-threatening hiding places as another stipulation but you live and learn.
As we lay there trying to blend in with the landscape, Piet Bekker strode out from the path to the huge rotting tree trunk that took up most of the leveled-out clearing. He was barefoot and wearing white shorts and a long-sleeved green rugby jersey; the rest of his posse was dressed similarly. Afrikaner boys never seemed to feel the cold and would remain barefoot throughout the winter months.
“Where did you put everything?” Piet asked his second-in-command in Afrikaans. I understood the language because we were forced to study it in school, and also because most of our neighbors in the mining community were Afrikaners.
“It’s all in the log,” Wouter replied, also in Afrikaans. “About an arm’s length in on the far side.”
“So, what are you waiting for? Get it out.”
I dared raise my head and rest it on my palm so that I could see better. My father’s binoculars (that he said he used for looking at ships when we went to Durban on holiday, but actually used for looking at ladies on the beach) wouldn’t be of any use because we were too close.
Wouter lay on his stomach and reached into the log. He pulled out a white packet and handed it to Piet who opened it and took out a catty before passing the bag to the next person. Catties were the Afrikaner handheld catapults they carved from the Y-shaped forks in branches. The slingshots were dangerous enough when acorns were used as ammunition and deadly when paired with stones.
“Set up the targets,” Piet instructed.
One of the other boys, Marnus, set down a heavy-looking bag he’d carried in and started pulling out various empty containers. Most of them were either Lion or Castle beer tins and bottles; the rest were Gordon’s gin and Smirnoff vodka dinkies.
I gasped as I recognized the little tot-sized bottles as ones that we’d thrown away. My aunt Edith worked as an airhostess for South African Airways and she brought my parents the little bottles of alcohol that she’d filched from planes and hotel minibars. I was scandalized that Marnus had gone through our rubbish and stolen them.
He lined a row of ten bottles and cans on the log and the boys then took up their positions. That’s when I realized how unfortunate our vantage point was. Cat and I were lying a few meters behind the tree stump; they’d be shooting their stones in our direction as they tried to hit the targets.
I darted a look at Cat and mimed for her to duck. She didn’t need to be told twice and tucked her head under the cover of her arms. There was an ominous silence as the elastic of Piet’s catty was pulled back and then an almighty thwack as the catapult was released. From the eerie whistling noise, I knew the stone was airborne, and then glass shattered as the ammunition found its target. Cheers went up and within a few seconds, stones began raining down all around us as the other boys joined in.
Cat was lucky and managed to avoid any direct hits, which was fortunate because she wouldn’t have been able to stifle her yelps of pain like I did. A pebble landed on the sole of my one takkie and then skittered off, and another stone, sharper and more irregular, nicked my knuckle. The sting was terrible and it took every ounce of willpower to stop myself from crying out as a droplet of blood welled up. I refused to let a few wounds prevent me from completing my mission.
The boys thankfully ran out of targets pretty soon and the noise and dust died down.
“Wat gaan ons nou skiet?” Wouter asked. What are we going to shoot now?
“We can see who can shoot the farthest.”
“No, that’s boring. We
need something more challenging.”
“Like what?”
They were all silent for a few moments as they thought about it.
“Birds,” Piet said, “let’s shoot birds.”
But there were no birds. For once, the trees and heavens were free of feathered creatures and I was thankful for their reprieve. The boys had just grown bored of looking up when there was a rustle of movement along the path they’d come in through.
“Shh, wat is dit?” Piet asked. What is that?
A mangy-looking cat burst into the clearing and darted towards the log. A dog barked from somewhere nearby and the cat swung around, its fur raised as it prepared for attack. It hissed wildly and when its pursuer didn’t materialize, it turned and scampered towards the log again, dashing into the hollow.
I saw the idea occur to Piet and how he slowly raised his catty, aiming it at the other end of the trunk where the cat would exit through. He closed one eye as he pulled back the elastic, yanking it taut.
“No!” I was up and running before I even realized that the person shouting was me.
Piet, surprised by the yell and the figure hurtling towards him, let go of the stone, flinging it ineffectually over the log. Just as the stone landed, the cat made a break for it, and Piet cried out in frustration as the cat careened off out of the clearing.
By the time I got to Piet, carried along by the momentum of my anger, there was nothing left to protect, and I was suddenly an easy target in a circle of angry boys.
“She was spying on us!” Wouter shrieked in Afrikaans and the other gang members joined in expressing their incredulous outrage.
I tried to speak to them in their own language as I hoped this would temper their anger. “Ek is nie ’n sampioen nie!”
The boys regarded me as one would look at a mental patient and then they all started laughing and spluttering. I thought this was because I was so brazenly lying to them, but I realized too late that I’d gotten the Afrikaans words for “spy” and “mushroom” confused.
I spoke to be heard above all the laughter. “I want to join your gang.”
Piet was so incensed by this statement that he stopped chortling at my stupidity and even swapped over to speaking English. “A member of dis gang? I don’t fink so!” He spoke with the strong accent of a staunch Afrikaner, rolling his r’s and sharpening his th sounds into v’s, d’s and f’s.
“Why not?”
“You is a meisiekind.” He said this as though being a girl was one of the worst things you could possibly be. “You must go play wiff da udder girls.”
“No, I don’t want to play with girls. I want to join your gang and be one of the boys.” I didn’t point out his own mother had forbidden me from playing with his sister.
“But,” Piet spluttered, “you is a rooinek.” The way he said it made it clear that being English was way worse than being a girl.
I knew the Afrikaners hated the English because of something called the Boer War, but I didn’t give much weight to it. Considering almost a hundred years had passed since the Brits and the Afrikaners tried to kill each other, the mutual hatred should’ve died down by 1976, but it hadn’t.
Apparently the Afrikaners never got over losing the war, nor did they get over their women and children being imprisoned in the world’s first-ever concentration camps at the mercy of the British, and if there’s one thing I learned early on in my childhood, it was this: the Afrikaners had long memories and they could hold a serious grudge.
“Go now before I frow you wiff dis stone,” Piet instructed sternly while reaching for another projectile.
“You mean you’re going to throw the stone at me, not pick me up and throw me with the stone.”
All the boys suddenly reached for stones and I decided that the English lesson was over. I started running, the dust from the dump billowing up around me and coating me in incriminating powder, which would have to be washed off. It was only once I was almost home, out of breath and burning with humiliation, that I remembered Cat. She’d stayed out of sight while I’d almost been lynched. I wasn’t surprised. That’s why I called her Fraidy Cat.
I considered turning around and going back for her but figured that would only give her away. She’d be fine. No one could be as invisible as Cat when she set her mind to hiding.
Four
BEAUTY
15 JUNE 1976
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
How much longer, Mother?” The girl, Phelisa, sighs and turns away from the taxi window, which she has steamed up with her breath.
She reminds me of Nomsa though she is plumper and wears a resigned look that I have never seen on my daughter’s face. Perhaps the only similarity is their age or perhaps my daughter is so much on my mind that I am projecting her onto any canvas that is blank enough to absorb my memories.
A child lies draped over the girl, his head resting against the pillow of her breasts while his arms wrap around her neck, clinging to her. He kicks out with surprising strength and his foot connects with my stomach as he wrestles with his dreams. I am envious of the child. I wish I could sleep. I wish also that I could slow the drumbeat of my frenzied heart or tame the wild flight of my thoughts that swoop and circle like bats at dusk.
“More than two hours we have been sitting here,” Phelisa says as she pats her son’s back, soothing him so he will not awaken from his fussing. “How much longer until we go?”
“I do not know, my child.” I sigh. “We must resign ourselves to the wait as impatience will only make the time pass more slowly.” It is not the first time I have told her this.
It has been twenty-eight hours since I watched Khwezi scamper up the hill back to the village, more than a day since I traded the wide-open space of home for the cramped and stale interiors of one minivan taxi after another. We are parked on the side of the road near a petrol station just outside Pietermaritzburg, already packed together like cattle as we wait for the vehicle to be filled even further. The driver will not depart until another four passengers squash into the space at the back that could comfortably seat only two. This has been the way of the entire journey, more time spent waiting than in motion.
The girl frowns at me as though I am a problem she must solve. “I have been thinking . . . you are not really one of us, Mother, are you?”
“What do you mean, my child? I am from here just like you.” We are speaking in Xhosa, our mother tongue, and are both traveling from the Transkei, which is the Xhosa Bantu homeland. I know I could trace her clan’s ties to my own with just a few questions if I had the energy for the usual pleasantries.
“I mean only that you are not like the rest of us, Mother. There is something that is different with you. The way you talk and the things you say.”
She means that I speak like an educated person whereas most of our people cannot write their own names. I have heard this many times before, this assessment that, although I am black and poor and as oppressed as the rest of my people, I am not one of them; sometimes it is said with admiration and respect but more often as a criticism. I will never understand why we hold each other in contempt like this, why we are all so scared that one of us will rise above their station when the white man has appointed himself the guardian of making sure that never happens. If there is one thing a black woman knows from the moment she is born it is her place; she does not need anyone reminding her of it.
“I am a schoolteacher,” I say by way of explanation.
“Hayibo.” Phelisa smiles. The thought of a woman teacher is amusing. “My teacher was a man. I have the standard two.”
From her shy smile, I can see that she is proud of this achievement. She managed to stay in school until the age of nine, which means she knows the alphabet, how to write simple words and how to do basic arithmetic. This is the only education she will ever have.
I pat her knee, too sad to g
ive her the praise she seeks, and change the subject. “Why are you going to Johannesburg?”
“The father of the child works in the mines, but he does not send the money. I am worried.”
I nod and do not say what I am thinking. If she finds him, he will probably not have money to give her, nor will he come home to look after her and the child. There is no work for young men in the homelands and the mining industry takes them far away from their culture and clan and customs. For eleven months of the year, they live and breathe the darkness underground; it has a way of seeping into their souls. What little money they have is often spent on distractions like women, gambling and alcohol.
“And you, Mother? Why are you going?”
“My brother sent me a letter about my daughter. She is living with his family in Soweto this year while she completes her schooling there. There must be some kind of terrible unrest in the township because he said she is in danger. I am going to fetch her.”
She nods. “I have heard the township is a dangerous and ungodly place. There is talk of shebeens where people get drunk illegally and also of dancing halls. Gambling and prostitutes. I have even heard—”
I cut her off and change the subject, because I have enough to concern me without hearing the full extent of Soweto’s depravity. “Would you like me to hold the child?”
“Yes, thank you, Mother.” She accepts the offer gratefully, handing the sleeping child across to me before stepping out of the van to stretch her legs.
Another hour passes and two more passengers pay their fare. The child awakens and I pass him back to his mother to be fed. I need the toilet but do not want to wake the old man sleeping on my other side. His thin arms and legs are folded in upon himself as he tries to take up as little space as possible. His ribcage expands and contracts against my arm, and a dry whistle—like the wind through reeds—escapes his lips. Just when I cannot wait any longer, he snores himself awake.
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