“It is true,” Xolani says. He lives three houses down and his two sons participated in the march though they both returned home safely. “The youth across all provinces are striving to make the country ungovernable. Riots are breaking out everywhere and there have been reports that many of our people have taken the uprising as a call to arms.”
“The time for speaking is over,” another man says as he thumps his fist into the palm of his hand. “Now we will talk with fists and spears!”
“And knives and fire!”
“Maybe now they will listen!”
The men cheer and Andile quickly stands up. “We must keep our voices down.” The volume drops but the fire in the men’s voices burns strong.
It is not my place to speak in this setting. Even if it was, there is no point in telling these men that I do not condone violence. I have always believed, and still do, that violence begets more violence. We are relics of a bygone era, those of us who support passive resistance. The younger ones do not believe that the meek shall inherit the earth. They insist the struggle must be an armed one because the only way to overthrow the white minority who keep the black majority in chains is with force.
But what quality of freedom will it be if it is won with blood? And after that? Once our rage has boiled and we have taken the life force of our enemies, have we not become the very people we have fought against, the ones who use violence against us? If we ever taste victory, will our fighters lower their fists and live in peace or will they always be looking for the next conflict? I despair that we are all becoming murderers, white and black alike, and that we will never be able to wipe this blood from our hands. I pray that I am wrong.
The young people are singing a song, one that is accompanied by the beating of a thousand drums and makes my heartbeat quicken. Yet, as much as I want to sing along with them, I do not know the words. Perhaps that is what it means to get old: you must let the young ones sing their own songs.
Fifteen
BEAUTY
19 JUNE 1976
Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa
When I heard the rumors of what happened at the church, I thought they had to be false. No matter how evil the white government is, it is inconceivable that its police force could chase fleeing children into a church and open fire at them inside.
Yet, here I am, sitting in one of the pews of the Regina Mundi church in Rockville—the largest Roman Catholic Church in South Africa—and all around me is proof of the attack that took place here three days ago. The marble altar is cracked down the middle, the wooden statue of Christ is split apart and the bricks have chunks torn from them. Six women are on their hands and knees with buckets of water and scrubbing brushes trying to remove the stain of blood from the floors.
How is it that the apartheid government claims to be such a religious government? How can they assert that South Africa is a Christian state when its police officers attempt murder in a church? What kind of men fire bullets at terrified children in a house of God?
I was hoping to find answers here, but instead I have found something I have needed far more than information: I have found sanctuary. That is why I linger under the pitched roof and the light that floods inside, trying to find some calm in the center of this war zone.
There is much to look at, but what keeps drawing my gaze is the portrait of the Black Madonna. It depicts a beatific black Virgin Mary holding a black baby Jesus, halos of light flare from both their heads. It is a wonderful thought that the Messiah could have been black, but that is just a fairy tale. If Jesus were black, surely we, the children of Africa, would not be suffering as much as we are.
I begin to pray. Lord, please take this hatred from me. Anger is a self-administered poison and I want no part of its contagion.
“Was your child one of the injured?”
The voice startles me from my prayer. Those of us sitting here have mostly been silent while taking comfort from the wordless sense of community. I turn to look at the woman who has spoken. She is younger than me as all the other mothers are. That is what happens when you are one of the very few of your kind to pursue an education before having a family. She holds a photograph of a young girl in her lap, one who is about twelve years old by the looks of her, and I try not to stare at it.
“I do not know,” I say. “My daughter is still missing.”
“What school did she go to?”
“Morris Isaacson.”
“Her age?”
“Seventeen.” I try not to get my hopes up. The woman is interested and is making conversation, that is all.
“What is her name?”
“Nomsa Mbali,” I say, beginning to hope that my daughter’s name will be the key that unlocks information that will spill forth from this woman’s lips.
She is quiet and appears to be thinking. Finally, she shakes her head no. I stand, ready to leave—not surprised that this trip did not provide any new information but disappointed nonetheless—but she reaches out and grabs my hand.
“You need to go to the house of my neighbor, Nothando Ndlovu. Her child, Phumla, is the same age as your daughter and she went to the same school. She, too, is missing. Maybe Nothando has information that can help you.”
Sixteen
ROBIN
20 JUNE 1976
Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
A few days after Piet and the neighborhood children receded from the back window of Edith’s car, the terrain of my life changed so utterly that I became a foreigner in it.
I no longer had my own room or my own bathroom; Edith and I now shared her bedroom as well as her bed. She tried to clear cupboard space so I’d have somewhere to put all my stuff, but it wasn’t an easy task since Edith’s closets were already bursting at the seams with all her clothes, shoes, bags and accessories.
I’d managed to carve out one tiny place of my own; a secret compartment at the bottom of Edith’s dressing table where I placed my mother’s mascara tube. It was the only space that was wholly mine and that I didn’t have to share with Edith or Cat.
Edith decided she was keeping me out of school until the dust settled, and I didn’t argue; I was getting away with something most children only dreamt about. It hadn’t fully occurred to me yet that since Edith lived in Yeoville, a suburb in the city center that was miles away from Boksburg, I wouldn’t be going back to my primary school, the place I’d happily attended and taken for granted for the past three and a half years. I had a few friends in my class and had I known that I wouldn’t see them again or even get to say good-bye, I would have put up more of a fight.
Along with attending classes, after-school activities fell away too. I was never very good at sports, so I had no qualms about letting any of my teams down. My library membership was greatly treasured, though, and my pink lending card was one of my most prized possessions. The thought of not being taken to the library, where I would spend hours browsing the shelves, was distressing.
Also books had always helped me make sense of the world and given me answers when I needed them.
“Edith?”
“Hmm?”
“Can we go to the library, please?”
“The library? But there are lots of books here.” She waved her hand in the direction of her shelves where all her travel books were stacked.
I didn’t know how to tell her that those books would only be useful if I found myself embarking on a world tour; instead, I found myself in a parentless new reality that I desperately needed to come to grips with.
“I don’t really like picture books,” I said instead.
“Picture books?” Edith looked pained. “Those aren’t picture books. They’re travelogues put together by some of the world’s finest travel writers and photographers.”
I could see I’d have to play along and humor her if I had any hope at all of getting what I wanted.
I went over to the shelves, pulling books out and flipping through the pages, sighing loudly every few minutes until Edith asked what the problem was.
“These books are beautiful,” I quickly assured her. “It’s just that there don’t seem to be any orphans in them.”
“Orphans, hey? That’s what you’re looking for?”
I nodded.
“Okay, I see where you’re coming from. We’ll get to the library soon, I promise.”
• • •
I wanted to explore my new environment, but Cat was reluctant to venture out. We’d grown up in Witpark, a tiny suburb in the sticks, where hardly anything ever happened. Cat wasn’t used to city life. She was overwhelmed by its hustle and bustle, the constant activity and noise, the wail of sirens, the stench of garbage and the clusters of buildings that were even taller than the mine dump. All those thousands of people of different colors milling around like ants scared her and so I chose to stay inside with her instead.
During that week, Edith fielded various calls from senior mine officials updating her on the investigation. Their general consensus was that the murder hadn’t been personal and that my father wasn’t specifically targeted. Edith was convinced by their assurances, but I wasn’t. I’d seen the expression on our garden boy’s face once when my father called him a “useless kaffir with less sense than a mule” for digging up chrysanthemums that he’d mistaken for weeds. I didn’t know how my father spoke to the blacks at work, but if it was the same as the gardener, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that they hated him.
When I voiced my doubts, Edith said that murders like theirs had occurred throughout the country on the same day as certain groups of blacks took the uprising in Soweto to be a sign that the revolution had begun.
“Your mom and dad were just really, really unlucky, Robs. They were at the wrong place at the wrong time. The police are doing everything they can to catch their killers.”
Since finding out the truth about the “Squad Cars” team, and after my own horrible experience with the police, I didn’t have that much confidence in their ability to find my parents’ murderers.
“Can we go to where my parents died?” I asked Edith.
“Why? Would you like to lay some flowers down?”
“Flowers? No, I want to go look for clues.”
“Clues?”
“Yes, something that the killers left behind that could help us find them.”
Edith sighed. “Like what?”
“Like lots of things. A monogrammed handkerchief, or a lighter that’s been engraved, or a calling card, or a rare cigar butt or monocles made up to an unusual prescription.”
“Kiddo, you do realize this isn’t nineteenth-century England?”
I couldn’t understand her skepticism; those were the kinds of clues literary sleuths found all the time and I told her so.
“Robs, the men who killed your parents are almost certainly dirt-poor and uneducated, and couldn’t afford handkerchiefs or cigars or monocles.”
“Oh,” I said, considering this for a moment. “But there might be gum-boot prints that are in a very large size or a particular kind of snuff that very few miners use.”
“Hmm, well, those are better things to look for, but the police have already looked over the crime scene.”
“But maybe they missed something. And if you just take me there, I could use a magnifying glass—”
“Robin, no! This isn’t a game or something that’s happened on the radio or in a book. This is real life and these men are dangerous and you’re just a child—”
“But—”
“No buts! This isn’t something you’ll hear me say very often because it makes me sound like my mother, and quite honestly, there’s nothing I hate more, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to put my foot down with this. We’ll leave it up to the professionals to find the killers and we absolutely won’t be sticking our noses in. Do you hear me?”
I mumbled something inaudible.
“I said, ‘Do you hear me?’”
“Yes,” I sighed, “I hear you.”
Over a series of phone calls, the mine also informed Edith that the ERPM Benefit Society was arranging and covering the cost of my parents’ funeral and she agreed it was the least they could do. A woman from the society, who introduced herself as Mrs. van der Walt, phoned Edith one night to discuss arrangements for the funeral. She spoke so loudly that Edith held the receiver away from her ear, and I could hear every word the woman said.
“Shall we begin by deciding on the hymns? Most people like ‘Amazing Grace,’ but I am particularly partial to ‘Morning Has Broken.’”
“Keith and Jolene weren’t religious people,” Edith said, “and I, myself, am an agnostic. Could you play Elvis’s ‘Crying in the Chapel’ instead?”
Mrs. van der Walt sounded scandalized. “The church is no place for rock ’n’ roll music!”
“Excuse me, but Elvis Presley has also recorded many, many gospel songs!”
“Ag, those songs are even worse than rock ’n’ roll. You really cannot underestimate the evils of kaffir music—”
Edith cut her off. “Look, never mind. Pick whatever hymn you prefer, anything except ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd.’” Apparently, when Edith and my mother were children, they had two maids who pinched and hit them whenever they thought they could get away with it. Their names were Goodness and Mercy; Edith said the thought of them following her all the days of her life gave her the screaming willies and she was sure my mother would feel the same.
That out of the way, they moved on to flowers. “How about yellow roses for the church? They’re cheerful and were Jolene’s favorites,” Edith suggested.
“But yellow is not the color of mourning,” Mrs. van der Walt said. “I think we would do better with white lilies instead.”
“I’m not sure why you’ve bothered to consult with me at all,” Edith complained, twisting the cord around her index finger.
“I am just trying to help, Mrs. Vaughn—”
“It’s Miss. Miss Vaughn.”
I couldn’t hear what Mrs. van der Walt said after that, because she’d lowered her voice enough that Edith had to hold the receiver back up to her ear. There was a moment of silence as Edith listened, and then she raised her voice in annoyance. “Of course Robin will be at the funeral. She is their daughter, you know.”
More silence ensued. I assumed from Edith’s raised eyebrows, and the deep crease that cleaved her brow, that she did not like what she was hearing. She started tapping her long nails on the dining room table and took a deep drag from her cigarette. Finally, it looked like she couldn’t listen to another word. “I don’t care that you people think children shouldn’t attend funerals. She is their daughter, their only child, and I will not, do you hear me? I will not keep her from her own parents’ funeral. It’s bad enough the poor child has had to endure this whole ordeal, but not to get to say good-bye to them is completely and utterly ridiculous. She will be there and you can, quite frankly, shove your sanctimonious objections up your big Dutchman arse!”
Edith slammed the phone down and Elvis started yelling, “Up your big Dutchman arse! Up your big Dutchman arse!”
My aunt took a final drag of her smoke, stubbed it out viciously and told me to get dressed so we could go shopping for the funeral.
“God, could those people possibly be any more conservative and uptight? Well, we’ll just have to show them, won’t we? We’re both going to be in the brightest fucking yellow we can find. So fuck Mrs. van der Walt and the horse she rode in on.”
I didn’t like the sound of the yellow outfits; they sounded too much like my school uniform, but I perked up at the mention of the horse.
“Do you think she’ll bring it with?” I asked.
“What?”
“The horse. Do you think Mrs. van der Walt
will bring it into the church?”
Edith was quiet for a beat and then started laughing. “You crack me up, kiddo.”
I wasn’t sure what was so funny, but I remained hopeful about the horse.
Seventeen
BEAUTY
21 JUNE 1976
Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa
My eyes take a few moments to adjust to the darkness of the room. At first, circles of light are the only things I see after the brightness of the yard, but then the halos fade and are replaced by faces—worried faces—coming into focus. They sit in a row facing the door through which I have entered; it looks as though they are keeping vigil.
I can tell that I have interrupted a conversation in which my name has been mentioned by the way the room falls silent after I cross the threshold. This is not the way of African people. We talk and talk and laugh. Our voices are layered one on top of the other, always; even in mourning, we talk or wail or lament. Silence is foreign to us—it is the way of the white man, not the black woman—so it is never a good omen when the sight of your face can make a dozen voices die within their throats.
I greet the room in the customary way, “Molweni,” and then I make my way to sit next to the woman of the house, Nothando Ndlovu.
She is the one I was told about at Regina Mundi, the mother of the missing girl. When the churchwoman mentioned the girl’s name, I knew it was familiar. On my way home to my brother’s house, I recalled the conversation he and I had had the morning after the uprising when he mentioned Nomsa’s friend. Andile confirmed that Phumla Ndlovu is Nomsa’s best friend and she, too, went missing after the police started shooting. She has also not been found in any of the hospitals or other children’s houses.
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