Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

  “No, she did not run away from home.”

  I wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery of what happened to Beauty’s daughter, but her stony expression told me she wouldn’t answer any further questions about it. I’d ask Edith.

  “So why don’t you find work here as a teacher?”

  “I tried but there are no jobs for teachers here.”

  “Oh.” We were quiet again and I searched for something else to say. My gaze fell on her bare hand. “If you have a child, why aren’t you married?”

  “I did get married.”

  I pointedly looked at her ring finger. “Married ladies wear gold and diamond rings.” The only jewelry Beauty was wearing was a silver necklace with some kind of medallion on it.

  Beauty sighed. “White women wear gold and diamond rings. Black women give up their husbands so they can dig up the gold and diamonds to make those rings.”

  “My father worked on a gold mine.”

  “My husband worked on a gold mine as well.”

  “Oh, I wonder if they knew each other. Maybe he was one of my dad’s boys.”

  Beauty’s smile was grim. “My husband was a forty-nine-year-old man when he died. He was not a boy.”

  I was about to explain to Beauty that all the blacks who worked underground were called mine boys just like all gardeners were called garden boys, but she looked so annoyed, I dropped the subject.

  Beauty stood up. She reached for my bowl and I yanked it back; I liked to lick the bowl clean. As I pulled it, the spoon toppled and landed against me, messing some of the porridge onto the front of my uniform. I immediately rubbed it in, not wanting Beauty to see it. She went to the kitchen where she washed her bowl and spoon, setting them on the dish rack to dry. When she came back out, Elvis squawked loudly from under the blanket covering his cage.

  Edith had forgotten to uncover him and he sounded tetchy. “Elvis has left the building. Elvis has left the building,” he chirped, which was his way of saying that he wanted to be released from the darkness.

  Beauty clutched her chest, staring at the gigantic cage hidden behind the blanket. “What is that?”

  “It’s Elvis.”

  “What is Elvis?”

  “Elvis is not a what. Elvis is a who.”

  “Then who is that?”

  “Elvis is Edith’s parrot. He’s an African gray and she named him after Elvis Presley.” Beauty looked at me blankly so I clarified. “Elvis. You know? The King?”

  “The King? Of England?”

  “No! The King of rock ’n’ roll. Jeez, and you call yourself a teacher.” I walked to the cage and pulled the blanket off.

  Elvis bobbed his head and delivered up his usual, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” I noticed that his bowl was empty.

  “You’ll need to give him seed. He’s hungry.”

  Beauty stared at the cage openmouthed. “Hayibo. A talking bird.”

  “Yes, you need to feed him.”

  “No, I will have nothing to do with a talking bird.”

  “Why?”

  “It is not natural. Only people should talk.”

  I sighed. “That’s just stupid. Fine, I’ll feed him. He doesn’t like black people anyway.” I reached under the pedestal to get the tin with Elvis’s seed and scooped some out into his bowl after making sure to throw out all the husks like Edith had taught me.

  “Why?”

  I was distracted with my task and didn’t immediately make the connection. “Why what?”

  “Why does the bird not like black people?”

  “Because black people kill white people.”

  “You think white people do not kill black people?”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “And those men who the police caught, the ones they say killed your mother and father, how do you think they died?”

  “Edith says they fell out of the window at the Brixton police station. It was an accident.”

  Beauty snorted. “Yes, many black people are accidentally falling out of windows these days.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “You’ve messed on your uniform,” Beauty observed, nodding to the stain of brown on my dress’s lapel.

  “That’s okay,” I lied. “I actually prefer it this way.”

  When I was finished with Elvis, I escaped back to the room where I took the uniform off and inspected the damage. The brown mark looked terrible.

  “You look like you pooped on it,” Cat said.

  “I know,” I wailed. “How can we fix it?”

  “We can try washing it.”

  We waited until we could hear Beauty opening and closing cupboards and when she switched the radio on, we sneaked to the bathroom. I opened the tap and put the plug in the drain, filling the basin with water until it was full, then dipped the top half of the dress into it. I reached for the bar of yellow Sunlight soap and rubbed it into the stain.

  “It’s not working,” Cat said.

  I rubbed the soap in harder and decided not to rinse it so that the effect of the soap would be more powerful. I took the dress back to the room with me, ignoring the drops of water that marked my trail, and laid the dress over the foot of Edith’s bed. I read for a while and then checked on the dress again.

  “It looks worse than before!”

  The yellow soap had congealed into a paste. I tried to scratch it off with my fingernail, but it stubbornly clung to the fabric. I crumpled the dress into a ball and threw it under the bed.

  “Come, let’s go,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. The park or for a walk.”

  “But what about the dress?”

  “I don’t want to think about that now.”

  When I returned a few hours later, worried what Edith would say about the dress when she got home, I found Beauty at the dining room table hunched over an exercise book that she was writing in. I wondered what was in it and if she was writing about me. Beauty didn’t say anything, didn’t acknowledge my return at all, but when I went to the bedroom I found the dress washed and ironed, and neatly hanging up in Edith’s wardrobe.

  I peeked around the corner, careful not to let her see me because I didn’t know if I should say anything. Beauty was smiling. I surprised myself by smiling too.

  Thirty-one

  ROBIN

  6 THROUGH 30 AUGUST 1976

  Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa

  Edith’s first trip away was meant to last a week but somehow got extended to six.

  “I’m sorry, Robs,” her voice crackled down the line after the first nine long days away. “There was a problem with the fuselage and so my flight back got canceled. And then Moira got sick, and since I was already in New York, they asked me to take over her route. I’ll be back next week, I promise.”

  The promise—like most of Edith’s promises, I would come to learn—was a loose and slippery one. If other people were shackled by their oaths, then Edith was the Houdini of hers; she always managed to extricate herself from them while you were left trying to figure out how she’d managed the sleight of hand.

  Her next call came after fifteen days out of the country. “I’ve had to pick up another route. It couldn’t be helped, Robs. I’m not in a position to be dictating my schedule to my bosses. Anyway, Beauty seems to have everything under control there. How are you? You’re not misbehaving?”

  “No.” I didn’t consider mounting regular skirmishes against Beauty to be misbehaving.

  “How’s school?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Have you made any friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just remember what I said about being careful not to tell anyone about Beauty.”

  “I haven’t said anything to anyone,” I told Edith, “but pe
ople are starting to get suspicious.”

  And it was true. Each extra week Edith was away was another week that the neighbors saw only Beauty and me coming and going from the apartment; it piqued their curiosity. One night, after we’d run out of the money Edith left for the week she was meant to be gone, Beauty slipped out to the Goldmans’ after 8 p.m. to ask for bread to make my school sandwiches for the next day. Upon returning, Beauty had been confronted by old Mr. Finlay who lived three doors down. I listened in from the dining room where I was sitting waiting for Beauty to return.

  “What are you doing?” Mr. Finlay demanded, just as Beauty was pushing the door open.

  “I work here,” Beauty replied. Her tone was pleasant but firm.

  “Where are your manners? Hey? You call me ‘baas’ when you’re talking to me.”

  I winced. By then, I knew Beauty well enough to know that there would be no bowing and scraping.

  “I work here, sir,” Beauty said.

  “But you’re not allowed to be out so late at night. And there are no maid’s rooms in these flats.”

  Thankfully, Mrs. Goldman turned the corner at that moment. “Good evening, Angus,” she said.

  “Evening, Rachel. Do you know what this coon is doing here so late? Where’s Edith?”

  “She’s sick in bed.”

  “With what?”

  “Women’s problems.” I smiled at Mrs. Goldman’s ploy.

  “Oh. But what’s the—”

  “I’ve asked the maid to stay over for the night to look after Edith and the girl.”

  “But the spoonies are not allowed—”

  “‘Spoonies’?”

  He laughed and it was a nasty sound. “Cockney rhyming slang. ‘Spoonies’ as in ‘egg and spoons’? Meaning ‘coons’?”

  “How delightfully droll.”

  He must have picked up from Mrs. Goldman’s tone that she was being sarcastic because he became belligerent again. “The kaffirs are not allowed to sleep inside these flats! This isn’t a bloody township, you know.”

  “Stop kvetching, Angus. She won’t be sleeping. She’ll be up all night playing nursemaid. Does it look like she’s in her pajamas getting ready for a slumber party?”

  “But—”

  “I can’t look after Edith, Angus. I’ve had a long day and I’m tired. Unless you’d like to go in there and keep an eye on her all night what with her ovaries—”

  “No. No, never mind!” Mr. Finlay’s grumbling voice faded away as he returned to his flat. “Kikes and kaffirs . . . all the same.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief as Mrs. Goldman and Beauty slipped inside. “Mrs. Goldman,” I asked, “what’s a kike?”

  She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “It’s a bad word, bubelah, that bigoted people call Jews. Don’t ever clutter up your head with insults. Forget them as soon as you hear them and remember the endearments instead.” She turned to Beauty while opening her purse. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking before. Bread’s not going to be enough to tide you over until Edith gets back. Here, take this and if you need more, let me know.” She put a wad of bills down on the table instead of in Beauty’s hands, and I realized that she’d done it that way so that Beauty wouldn’t have to clap her hands and curtsey as black people were expected to do when getting anything from whites.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Goldman,” Beauty said.

  “It’s Rachel, please. Or else I’m going to start calling you Mrs. Mbali.”

  Beauty smiled and we both bid Mrs. Goldman good night.

  After that, Beauty made sure to be locked inside from 5 p.m. onwards so there wouldn’t be another incident. She wasn’t the only one keeping to herself; I was as well. While I hadn’t lied to Edith about making friends, they were very superficial friendships because I had to be careful about keeping my distance. I’d been sworn to secrecy about our living arrangements, and I wasn’t allowed to tell a soul (not even if they pinky swore on it) that Beauty lived in our apartment and looked after me when Edith was away. Morrie’s parents, the Goldmans, were the only people in the building who’d been entrusted with this information because Edith said they were her friends and weren’t racist, but she was paranoid about anyone else finding out. Although I wanted to invite my new friends over to play, I didn’t want Edith to get sent to jail if the police found out about Beauty, so I kept my mouth shut.

  The problem with being on guard all the time was that it made it difficult to just be myself. I had to think through every sentence before I spoke it in case I inadvertently said something that could bring the police back into our lives, and this hesitation on my part created a wall between me and the new friends I’d made.

  At least the schoolwork was easy, and after hours spent diligently getting through all my work in class every day, I could be sure Beauty would be standing outside the school gates waiting for me. This wasn’t in any way suspicious as most of the girls had maids who came to fetch them, so at least I didn’t have to explain it. I’d grunt at Beauty’s greeting, hand over my satchel, and then walk ahead of her all the way home pretending not to know her.

  Elvis still made Beauty nervous and so I made sure to let him out of his cage as soon as I was through the door every afternoon. I’d then profess not to know how to get him back inside while he swooped and whooped around the room, making Beauty duck and cringe as he whizzed by. Besides scaring her, Elvis also pooped all over the apartment, which Beauty then had to clean up; he was a very effective weapon in avian form.

  For the first few days after Edith had left, I’d made a point of wiping the toilet seat down and scrubbing the bath in protest for having to share them with Beauty, but when the pantomime with the yellow rubber gloves and Handy Andy didn’t provoke her, I stopped giving myself the extra work. Same went for rewashing all my crockery and cutlery before I’d use it as it just made Beauty commend me for my wonderful personal hygiene.

  Besides, no matter how much I studied the bathroom and the cups and plates, I couldn’t see anything different about them after Beauty had used them. It seemed they were in no way tarnished or tainted by her touch. It was confusing because my mother had been so adamant about Mabel never using our things that I was sure she dirtied them in a way that could never be cleaned.

  While Beauty didn’t leave a mark on our crockery, she definitely affected my relationship with Cat. I began to conduct my conversations with my sister in private when I started to suspect that Beauty was the only person I knew who preferred Cat to me. One conversation in particular tipped me off.

  “When will Edith be back?” Cat had asked as we sat at the dining room table doing my homework.

  “I don’t know. She says it will be another few days.”

  “But it’s already been a week and a half longer than she said.”

  “I know. She says it can’t be helped and she’ll be back as soon as she can.”

  “What if she doesn’t come back?”

  “Will you stop being such a baby? Of course Edith’s coming back! Why would you say she isn’t coming back when she promised she’ll be back?”

  “Mom promised—”

  “I know Mom promised they’d be back that night and then they never came back. I know! But that doesn’t mean the same will happen with Edith.”

  Beauty had been scribbling in her notebook while Cat and I spoke, and I wasn’t aware she was listening in until she cleared her throat and spoke. “Fear is not a weakness, you know.”

  “What?”

  “You do not need to shout at your sister because she is afraid. Fear is what makes us human and it is in overcoming fear that we show our strength.”

  “Brave people don’t get scared.”

  “I do not agree with you. I think that brave people do get scared and what makes them strong is admitting their weakness and learning to accept it while still carrying on regardless.”


  “But Cat is scared all the time.”

  Beauty smiled. “And so am I. So are most of us.”

  It unsettled me that she hadn’t ridiculed Cat like all the other adults in my life had done. While I didn’t want to become too attached to Beauty, I didn’t want her preferring Cat either. That’s why I bit my lip and didn’t comment on how much she used the phone even though my mother only ever allowed Mabel to use the phone once in a blue moon, and then only for a minute or two at a time.

  When Beauty wasn’t preparing my meals, helping me with homework or otherwise attending to my needs, she was making calls and taking notes in her journal. Most of the conversations were in Xhosa and so I couldn’t understand what was being said, but from the ones conducted in English, I knew that the calls centered on the search for her daughter. I didn’t complain either about the calls that came through in the middle of the night even though they woke me up.

  I tried a few times to read what she’d been writing in that book of hers, but once she noticed my interest, she stopped leaving it lying around. A surreptitious search of Beauty’s cupboard as well as her suitcase didn’t reveal the journal, and I realized that she’d taken to hiding it when she wasn’t writing in it.

  Beauty’s constant search for Nomsa didn’t impact me much until the day she wasn’t at the gate waiting for me after the bell rang. It sent me into a spiral of panic, and I ran home by myself when it became clear Beauty wasn’t just running a few minutes late. I had a key to the flat and I let myself in only to see that she wasn’t there either. The first tears had just started to build when Beauty came through the door, out of breath.

  “There you are.”

  I turned away so she couldn’t see my red eyes. “Yep.”

  “I am so sorry I was not at the school to meet you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Apparently there’d been word of her daughter just after she’d come home from walking me to school. She’d taken the call and then immediately gone out to meet with someone. “The meeting ran later than I expected.”