Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

  The woman sitting behind us hissed at me. “Shh!”

  I ignored her and plowed on. “If you saw them and you say they’re really dead, then I’ll believe you.”

  “Shh,” the woman said again, holding a finger up to her lips.

  Victor spun around. “This is her parents’ funeral and she can speak as much as she wants to! Try shushing her one more time and that finger is going to end up where the sun doesn’t shine. Do you hear me?”

  She shrank back.

  The minister’s voice rose and he began to speak in a booming register, taking long, shuddering pauses between every sentence. “When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him and so he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan. The lowest of slaves he will be to his brothers.’ And just as God curses Canaan, the son of Ham, he blesses Japhet.

  “Now, the bible tells us very clearly that we whites are the blessed descendants of Japhet and the blacks are the cursed descendants of Ham. They are the ‘lowest of slaves.’ So the murder of two of God’s blessed children, Keith and Jolene, at the hands of slaves is especially despicable in the eyes of the Lord.”

  I couldn’t make any sense of what the minister was saying, but most of the congregation was nodding along with him. All I knew was that I couldn’t let Edith get distracted. “Did you see them?” I persisted, shouting at Edith to be heard above the sermon.

  As my voice ricocheted across the room, the minister dropped his bible in alarm. He stared at me, and seeing his consternation, the rest of the congregation’s eyes traveled from him to me.

  Edith lowered her head into her raised palm, and through the netting of her hat, I could see that her eyes were closed. “No, Robin, I didn’t see them.”

  I considered whispering, but the entire church was now so quiet that I could hear my heart racing; the blood whooshed past my eardrums, and I could hear the pews squeaking as a few gawkers leaned forward, craning their necks to get a better look at us.

  “Then how can you be sure? On that show, everyone thought they were sure, but then the man woke up and—”

  Edith sighed. “What do you want me to do, Robs?”

  “We need to make sure,” Cat said. “Tell her!

  I took a deep breath, speaking for both Cat and myself. “We need to open the coffins up and see for ourselves.”

  There was a collective intake of breath. One or two people started muttering to their companions but were immediately silenced by those around them.

  “If we open the coffins up, and I have a look, and I tell you that they’re dead, will you let us go ahead and bury them?”

  I considered this and the possibility that Edith would lie to me. She clearly wanted the funeral and burial to go ahead, but I knew she wouldn’t allow her sister to be buried alive just to silence me. I wasn’t too sure about whether she’d extend the same consideration to my father, given her feelings for him, but reasoned that he’d yell blue murder if he was alive and I would hear him.

  “What do you think?” Cat asked.

  “I think we can trust her.”

  “Okay then, let’s do it,” Cat said.

  I turned back to Edith and nodded solemnly.

  “You promise you’ll let us bury them after that?” Edith asked.

  “Yes, I promise.”

  Edith rose slowly and turned to face the congregation. She cleared her throat and then spoke loudly and clearly. “I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m afraid we’ll need to open the coffins up. Just for a moment and then we can proceed.”

  • • •

  After the funeral, when everyone milling around outside on the steps started to leave and the last people had come up to offer their condolences, Edith pulled me aside.

  “Victor is going to take you back to the flat now.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just remembered an errand I need to run.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, kiddo, not this time. It’s something I have to do alone, okay? I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  Victor held out his hand and I took it. His palm was softer than my dad’s—he had no calluses at all—and I let him usher me away from the church to his green Jaguar. When I looked back, the coffins were being loaded into the back of a strange-looking black car; their polished wood gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Where are they taking them?” I asked.

  “Umm . . . well . . .” Victor was searching for something to say, something that wouldn’t upset me, and I could see the conflict on his face. “They’re going to the cemetery, Robin.” He admitted it so reluctantly, and with such kindness, that his words were a burr in my heart.

  “They’re going to bury them,” Cat said in a quavering voice.

  I dared a peek at her in the rearview mirror. She had her fist shoved up against her lips, stifling a sob. I didn’t like how deathly pale she’d grown and how stark her red-rimmed eyes looked in contrast.

  “Are you okay, Robin?” Victor asked as he took my hand again. “Edie said I should lie to you, but honestly, I think the lies just make it worse, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re going to put them in the ground,” Cat said.

  “I know,” I whispered, “but we gave Edith permission, remember?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Don’t think about it,” I whispered. “Just don’t think about it.”

  I’d decided by then that the best way of coping with the situation was not to dwell on it, because as I saw it, we could either tread water or we could drown. Later in life when I became acquainted with psychology textbooks, I was surprised to discover there was a whole branch of study dedicated to what I’d experienced; it wasn’t the unknowable black pit I’d thought it was.

  There were experts in the world who’d concluded there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, but while I was stuck in that whirlpool of churning sorrow, my nine-year-old self didn’t know anything about coping mechanisms or working through the pain to come out breathing on the other side.

  All I knew was that if we only glanced at our loss from the corner of our eyes, if we kept it firmly in our peripheral vision without ever tackling it head-on, if we circled around it rather than forging through, I could keep Cat’s tears at bay. That became my only goal from hour to hour and day to day. If I could manage her devastation, I could manage my own.

  It was as we were pulling away from the church that Edith’s face slid past us. She was in her Beetle and had joined the procession of cars going in the opposite direction. She’d taken her pillbox hat off and an unlit cigarette hung from her mouth. Tears were streaming down her face. I put my hand to the glass of the window—wanting to touch her, wanting so much to wipe her tears away—but then she was gone.

  On the way home, Victor stopped for ice cream at the Milky Lane in Hillbrow. I forced the chocolate sundae down and smiled at his silly jokes. Victor, like Edith, obviously wasn’t used to being around children and he was doing his best to cheer me up. My kindness to him was pretending that he was succeeding.

  When we got back to the flat, Cat disappeared to whatever place Cat went when I wanted to be the center of attention. I liked to think that she had a whole interior life of her own, a magical one I wasn’t privy to, and I tried not to feel guilty about the times when she ceased to exist. It’s not as if I banished her; she herself sensed when she was needed and when she wasn’t.

  “Okay, what would you prefer to play?” Victor asked once I’d hauled out all the games in the lounge. “Dominoes, Snakes and Ladders, Draughts or Old Maid?”

  “Snakes and Ladders?”

  “Good choice! And just between you and me, you might want to get rid of the Old Maid. I’m pretty sure Edith will take it as an affront to her feminist principles just having it in
the house.”

  We played one game and then another as the hours passed until the afternoon sun quietly withdrew and left us sitting in the gloom. I was just teaching Victor Fifty-Two-Card Pickup when Edith finally returned home. She looked terrible—all of her mascara had run and her lipstick was wiped off—but she wasn’t crying anymore. Elvis swooped down from his perch at the top shelf and squawked his welcome as he flapped around her.

  Dinner was a muted affair with us all picking at the quiche Victor made. The adults communicated in glances, raised eyebrows and shrugs, and I knew if I went to bed, they would finally talk. I excused myself early saying I was tired.

  When Edith came to check on me half an hour later, the orange glow of her cigarette tip a beacon in the dark, I pretended to be asleep, breathing evenly and trying to look serene. I waited a few minutes after she left before I carefully peeled the duvet off me, crept out of bed and tiptoed to the door with Cat following close behind. We sat down in the darkness, wedged behind the door and Edith’s bedside table so we wouldn’t be seen if one of them went to the bathroom.

  Edith’s and Victor’s voices were hushed and I had to strain to catch what was being said. They spoke for a while about trivial things and then there was a lull in the conversation. The silence was broken by the clink of a glass and the snick of Edith’s lighter. Just when I thought they’d both dozed off, Victor spoke.

  “So tell me. How did it go?”

  Edith laughed; it was a joyless sound, jarring in the quiet of the apartment. “Christ, it was terrible. Terrible! I never thought I’d see my baby sister being lowered into the ground, you know? I always thought I’d be the one to die young. Thank God our parents weren’t alive for this.” Edith sighed. “And thank God as well that you were there to take Robin or else I wouldn’t have been able to go to the cemetery. I was wrong taking her to the funeral, wasn’t I?”

  “No, Edie, no. Not if that’s what Robin wanted.”

  Edith cried out, “I didn’t even ask her what she wanted. I just hate being pushed around, you know, hate being told what to do, especially by that kind of repressed, condescending Afrikaner bitch. Some of them really went out of their way to make Jolene’s life hell and I wanted to push back a bit, so I just said Robin was going and that was that. Jesus, I’m going to fuck her up, aren’t I?”

  Victor made soothing noises. “No, you’re not. You did what you thought was best. That’s all you can ever do.”

  “Well, clearly I have bad judgment.”

  Victor sighed. “What arrangements still need to be made?”

  “The mine’s already replaced Keith and the new shift boss wants to move in, so I told them they could bloody well empty the house out themselves. At least we don’t have to go back there. I don’t think I could put Robin through that.”

  “So what are you going to do now? Going forward?”

  “Christ, Vic, I don’t know. I really just don’t know. I’ve never wanted the husband and the kids and all that crap that goes with it. My lifestyle isn’t suited to a child. I’m away more than I’m here and that’s the way I like it.”

  “Can’t someone else take her? I know your folks are dead, but isn’t there someone on his side of the family?”

  “No. I’m her only relative.”

  “How will you manage?”

  “They had a policy that will pay out and that will help, but I don’t know what I’m going to do about work. She’s too young to be left alone while I’m away and it’s not like I have a support system. It’s a complete fuckup, and I have no idea what to do about it.”

  Cat shifted next to me. “We’re going to be sent away.”

  “No we aren’t.”

  “She doesn’t want us. You heard it yourself.”

  I’d suddenly lost my desire for information. I crept back to bed, relieved that I wasn’t supposed to cry because I suspected if I started, I might never stop. I climbed out of bed again after a minute or two and headed for my secret hiding place. I reached my hand in and pulled out the mascara tube that had become my most prized possession, and then I crept back into bed where I clutched it against my chest.

  Cat covered my hand with her own, and together we drew strength from one of the last things we’d seen our mother touch.

  Twenty-one

  ROBIN

  24 JUNE 1976

  Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa

  There was a knock at the door and I opened it thinking it was probably Morrie coming to ask about the funeral. He’d wanted to come with to take photos of the proceedings, but his mother wouldn’t let him, telling him that funerals weren’t the kind of occasion you wanted to commemorate.

  Instead of Morrie, a stranger stood at the threshold. It was a woman with a large, beaky nose crouched under hooded eyes, and her long pointy chin jutted forward, made more prominent by her shortly cropped gray hair. Her severe face was completely bare of makeup—she didn’t even wear lipstick—and her only adornment was a gold pendant on a chain.

  “Hello.” She smiled. “Is Edith Vaughn at home?”

  “No,” I said, before remembering that you shouldn’t ever admit to strangers that you’re home alone. “She’s just gone to the shops so she should be home soon.”

  “You must be Robin,” she said. “Keith and Jolene’s daughter. I’m Tannie Wilhelmina.”

  She had an Afrikaner accent, and even though it was a lot subtler than Piet’s, it was still there like gravel woven through silk. I didn’t recognize her as one of my parents’ acquaintances from the mine or from the funeral.

  “Yes, I’m Robin.” I wasn’t going to invite her in. Even if she knew my parents, she was still a stranger to me.

  “Are you okay, liefling? This whole gemors must be very upsetting for you, nè?” She reached out and cupped my face, searching it for a sign to confirm her assessment that I wasn’t coping with the whole “mess.”

  “Ja,” I agreed.

  “So you’re living here with your auntie now? Your mother’s sister?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you like her?”

  I shrugged.

  “Come on now,” she encouraged, “you can tell me.”

  “She’s nice. She let me drink a brandy and Coke last Christmas,” I confided.

  “Liewe hemel! Regtig?”

  “Yes, really. And she said she’ll show me how to stuff my bra when I’m thirteen.”

  Before I could say anything more, a throat cleared behind Wilhelmina, and she stepped aside to reveal Edith.

  “Can I help you?” Edith asked.

  “How do you do? You must be Mrs. Vaughn.” The woman held out her hand to shake Edith’s.

  “Ms. Vaughn,” Edith said, drawing out the zzz sound at the end. “I’ve never been married. And who, may I ask, are you? And why are you standing here quizzing my niece about me?”

  The woman blushed. “I’m Wilhelmina Labuschagne from the Child Welfare Society of Johannesburg.”

  Cat was suddenly at my side. Her eyes were wide with fear. “I told you,” she whispered. “I told you Edith doesn’t want us. This woman is here to take us away!”

  “Child Welfare?” Edith asked.

  “Yes, we get notified when situations like this arise and we try to make ourselves useful with providing assistance to the new family unit.” Wilhelmina stressed the words “situations” and “useful” and they suddenly became heavy with menace.

  “Hmm.” Edith looked as skeptical as Cat and I felt. “You make yourself useful or you butt your nose into other people’s business?”

  “I’m a qualified social worker, Ms. Vaughn, as well as a registered nurse, not the local busybody peeping through the curtains.”

  “I can’t say I see much of a difference. I’ve always thought it takes a particular kind of person who has no life of their own to become a social worker. Why el
se would they be so fascinated with the lives of others?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “Now, if you could please be so kind as to let me get through the doorway of my own home.”

  Wilhelmina quickly stepped into the passage.

  “Next time, I’d suggest you call and make an appointment instead of just showing up. Good-bye.”

  Before Edith closed the door in her face, I caught a glimpse of Wilhelmina’s expression. It was clear that she didn’t take kindly to Edith’s rude dismissal.

  Edith waited a beat—leaning against the door until she heard Wilhelmina’s retreating footsteps—before she launched into action.

  “Shit,” she exclaimed, lunging at the row of empty wine bottles and overflowing ashtrays that were still lined up on the lounge table from the night before. “I should have bloody cleaned this up after Victor left, but I was too tired, and then, this morning, I had too much of a headache to try and deal with it. That’s what I went to the shops for. Headache tablets.”

  Edith carried the bottles to the garbage bin in the kitchen. “God, can you imagine if she’d seen this?”

  “That lady scares me,” Cat said.

  “She doesn’t scare me,” I said. But, of course, that wasn’t true.

  Twenty-two

  BEAUTY

  7 JULY 1976

  Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa

  By the time I find the right street in the rich suburb of Houghton, it is much later than I planned to get there. The sun is setting and I am irritated with myself for taking so long to find the address scribbled on the crushed piece of paper that was passed to me under a table in Soweto a few days ago. It is the address of the White Angel, a woman who is reputed to help blacks who are seeking refuge from the security police. It is whispered that she supports our cause and has assisted dozens of our people who have needed to disappear.

  The house in Mofolo that the boy told Nothando about was found empty, and the man who was last seen with Nomsa and Phumla has disappeared. That trail has now gone cold and the White Angel is my only hope.