Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

  My throat constricts and I reach for the tea, take a sip and then set the mug down again. “In the first few years, when he was squashed into the cages with hundreds of other mine workers before the sun rose, he would hope that an owl would not be seen on the headgear, because he said that owls were messengers of death and no good could come of seeing one. But then, later, he said that he came to welcome the sightings.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he believed that dying would be better than living in terrible circumstances.”

  Robin shrugs. “I don’t know why he hated it so much. My dad worked on the mines and it didn’t sound so bad.”

  “Where did your father go after work, Robin?”

  “He came home.”

  “Who did he come home to?”

  “Me and my mother.”

  I am trying to be gentle with her. “Silumko couldn’t come home to his family. He had to stay in the mine hostels, in terrible conditions, sharing a room and toilets and other facilities with hundreds of other men.”

  “Oh. My father wouldn’t have liked that.”

  “And how much money did your father earn?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Enough for you to have your own house and a car and new clothes and food?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was your father the boss or was he a worker who got told what to do?”

  “He was the boss,” she says proudly.

  I explain how little Silumko earned and how different his working conditions were to her father’s. I want her to understand that two men can be in the exact same place doing the exact same things while wearing the exact same clothes and yet they can still be worlds apart. The serious expression on her face shows that she does understand, at least a bit. I worry that I am telling her too much and that she is too young to understand, but at the same time, I have also promised her honesty.

  The phone rings and Edith comes out of her room to answer it.

  “Beauty, it’s for you.” She holds the receiver out.

  I make my way to the phone slowly. My muscles have stiffened up. “Hello?”

  It is the unknown caller again. “Meet me downstairs at the back of the building in ten minutes. This time, no excuses,” he says before the line goes dead.

  “Edith,” I say, “I have to go.”

  • • •

  A white van turns the corner and then comes to a halt in front of me. The name “JC Plumbing” is stenciled across the sides in big red letters.

  A tall, muscular black man steps out of the van and walks towards me. After looking around the parking lot and satisfying himself that no one is watching, he pulls a piece of black material from his pocket and holds it out to me. “Put this on.”

  I take the cloth and shake it out. It is a blindfold.

  “Who are you?”

  “Put it on. Quickly.” His eyes dart around. I am nervous that he will see something to scare him off and that he will leave without me.

  I tie the strip of fabric around my eyes, careful to leave my nostrils open. He grips my arm and pushes me to the back of the van.

  “Mind your head when you step up.”

  I duck as I step inside and feel my way to a seat. I do not know who this man is or where he is taking me, but I am desperate to find my daughter. I will go anywhere and do anything if it means I will find her.

  • • •

  The blindfold is untied and falls away revealing a bare, windowless room. The only light comes from a lamp on the floor in the corner. A red scarf has been thrown over it and the whole room takes on the quality of a massacre. I am sitting on a straight-backed chair facing the only other piece of furniture, a two-seater leather couch. The room is stiflingly hot and stuffy; the air settles around my shoulders like an insincere embrace that I want to shake off.

  The man walks around from behind me and goes to sit on the couch. A handgun is holstered to his side and the sight of it chills me. He pulls a packet of tobacco from his pants and a pipe from his shirt pocket and sets about preparing it, all the while staring at me.

  “Where is—”

  He cuts me off by holding up his hand. I keep quiet. We will speak when he is ready. When the pipe is finished and its smoke and cherry tobacco smell has filled the air, the man is ready to talk. “You are becoming a nuisance, do you know that?”

  Any hope I had is trampled. This man is not here to help me.

  “You are like a tsetse fly with your constant inquiries. Always biting, biting, biting and causing irritation. My people are complaining that you are getting in the way of our cause.”

  “All I want is to find my daughter.”

  “And what if your daughter does not wish to be found?”

  “Then she can tell me that herself.”

  “And what if she does not wish to speak with you?”

  “If she tells me that herself, then I will accept it.”

  He makes a dismissive clicking sound, almost as though he is trying to suck an annoying piece of meat out from between his teeth. “Your questions will reach the ears of the wrong people and put her, and the rest of us, in danger. Stop what you are doing. You are not helping anyone.”

  It finally dawns on me who this man is. “You are Shakes Ngubane,” I say, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

  He does not look happy that I know his name, but he does not reply to either confirm or deny it.

  “I think you are keeping my daughter from me.”

  “You seem to be confused, sisi. I am not your enemy. The white man is your enemy.”

  “No one is my enemy, bhuti, except the person who keeps my child from me.”

  “No one is keeping your child from you. Your daughter has made a choice about where she wants to be and you need to respect her decision.”

  “If she respects her own decision, she will have the courage to tell me of it herself.”

  “You are wasting your time waiting for that. She is not in the country.”

  “Then I will wait until she returns.”

  “If she returns.”

  “Not ‘if’ but when. It is just a matter of time. You send them away to be trained so that they can come back to fight your battles here.”

  “Our battles.”

  I shrug. “I will wait.”

  “I thought you were more intelligent than that. I thought you were open to reason, but I see that is not so. I will only talk nicely to you like this once. Carry on making trouble and asking your questions, and the next time, I will not be so nice.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Take it however you will. Just stay out of my way.”

  Thirty-eight

  ROBIN

  14 JANUARY 1977

  Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa

  It was the early evening of my tenth birthday, and I’d gone through the whole day without one person wishing me.

  I hadn’t told my teachers or my friends, because they would’ve asked why I hadn’t brought cake to school or why I wasn’t having a party. Edith was away and I didn’t know if Beauty knew the significance of the date. It would’ve been too sad if she didn’t—if I’d had to go through our morning rituals as if it was just an ordinary day—and so I’d slipped out to go to school while she was still in the bath. I missed Cat. If she’d been there, I could’ve wished her and she could’ve wished me; at least we’d have had each other to celebrate with.

  Beauty hadn’t been waiting at the gate at the end of the school day, and I’d run all the way home in a panic to find a note on the kitchen table.

  Dear Robin,

  I have gone out to do some shopping. Please be home by 6 p.m. so we can do your homework.

  Love,

  Beauty

  There was no birthday wish and my suspicio
n was confirmed: Edith hadn’t remembered and she hadn’t told Beauty about it either.

  After making myself lunch, I went out to practice my surveillance skills because I needed to be prepared for the next time Beauty went on a mission to find Nomsa. Beauty didn’t know it, but the night she’d gotten the phone call, I’d snuck out behind her and followed her. As I opened the door to the parking lot, I caught a glimpse of Beauty walking towards a white van with the name “JC Plumbing” on it.

  I quickly stepped back so they wouldn’t see me, leaving the door open just wide enough so I could peek through. A black man handed across what looked like a piece of material, and I watched as Beauty looked from him to the cloth, seeming to consider her options. After a moment, she nodded and tied the strip of fabric around her eyes. He was making her wear a blindfold.

  The man helped Beauty into the back of the van, and as he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side, I felt a wild impulse to make a run for it. If I timed it just right, I could open the back door and hop inside before he pulled off. Beauty hadn’t been there the night with Mabel when the police herded us into the van, and so she didn’t know that no good could come of being blindfolded and driven away in one. She needed protection, and I desperately wanted to be the one to offer it to her.

  But then, I’d allowed myself to think about Edith who was waiting for me and who’d be worried if I didn’t come back, and that was all it took—that one second of doubt—before it was too late to act. The van started pulling away, and all I could do was step outside to get a look at the yellow number plate. I made a note of the black letters and numbers that were getting farther and farther way: BBM676T. I turned around and went back inside.

  I’d let Beauty down. The members of the Secret Seven and Famous Five would never have hesitated; they would have been in that van in a flash! I was determined to do better the next time, and figured that working on my detective skills would serve me in good stead until then.

  I started my training by stopping random people on the street. “Where were you on the night of January the fourth?” I asked an old lady with impossibly thick glasses.

  She blinked at me as though trying to figure out if I was real, and then shook her head and walked off.

  “Do you remember seeing any suspicious characters around ten days ago?” I asked another three people who all said they hadn’t.

  When a scary man told me to keep my nose out of his business, I decided to question only suspects I knew.

  Mr. Abdul, standing behind the cash register in his shop, narrowed his eyes as he thought about it and then said, “The night of the fourth of January? That’s easy. I was in the shop working, always working, never having a rest. And yes, there are always many suspicious characters being about, trying to steal from me.”

  Mr. Papadopoulos considered it as he wrapped slap chips dripping with vinegar in newspaper. “That was more than a week gone by. How I should remember? Suspicious person, you ask? The only suspicious person is my mother-in-law. The Kennedy assassination, you know it? Ask her where she was that day.”

  I made a note using my secret language in my notebook to follow up on that. The only problem was that my secret language was so secret that I sometimes had trouble decoding it, and so I made a note in English as well.

  Tina, the hairdresser, said she was at her boyfriend’s house. “Of course, that was before the two-timing son of a bitch decided to start running around with that slut, Vicky, who should actually be called ‘Icky.’ I’m well rid of the both of them, because you know what? They deserve each other, and another thing—”

  “Aha! I’ve spotted my suspect,” I said just so that I could get out of there.

  When I finally got back to Coral Mansions, it was 6 p.m. and I couldn’t bear the depressing thought of returning to a potentially empty flat. Instead, I went downstairs to look for King George and found him in his room in the basement. I rapped on the door and announced myself, and he called out for me to enter.

  King George had knocked off for the night but was still wearing his flatboy uniform. It consisted of a dark blue cotton shirt with a thin red line on the sleeve hems, which was worn with matching trousers. He smelled of tobacco and polish, and was loosening the leather knee protectors he usually donned on floor-cleaning days.

  The room was as spartan as I remembered. The only furniture was a small bed and a single chair. A rope was strung up across the one wall and a few items of clothing and a towel were hanging from it. Something was different and it took me a moment to figure out what it was: all the rows of drawings taped to the walls. There were dozens of them, all beautifully rendered in pencil or charcoal on different-sized scraps of paper. Most of them were of faces, but some were of marinas or town scenes.

  “Did you draw these?”

  “Ja.” King George smiled shyly. “King George normally keep them inna box but he decide to hang them up like inna art gallery he see down the road. He like that kind of fancy kak.”

  I skimmed past a few of the portraits and focused on a street scene showing an old-fashioned car parked outside a shop. “Where’s this?”

  “Home.”

  I squinted at the name of the store. “You lived in a liquor store?”

  “Ja, inna back room.”

  “Huh.” I carried on scanning until a drawing of a beautiful girl on the opposite wall caught my eye.

  “Wow. Who’s that?”

  “King George’s wife.”

  “Your wife? This girl?” I didn’t mean to sound so scornful, but it seemed highly unlikely that an old man missing a few teeth was married to such a young and lovely woman.

  Instead of answering, King George studied my face. “Jinne but Little Miss is dikbek today. What’s wrong?”

  I sighed heavily. “It’s my birthday and no one gives a crap.” I’d wanted to say “shit” but couldn’t bring myself to say it. “Crap” was as far as I would go to show how upset I was.

  “Must be lekker for Little Miss to know when her birthday is.”

  “You don’t know when your birthday is?”

  “No, Little Miss. King George’s ma was slapgat and didn’t mark the day down in the bible and the white ouballie had made gat skoon by then.”

  This news was shocking. “Your father was white and your mother was black?” I’d never heard anything like it. Was it even possible?

  “That’s mos what King George is saying. King George is a klonkie.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He a colored.”

  “Oh.” That explained his odd color and why he didn’t look either black or white.

  “Ja, and the klonkies have it moerse hard in this country. The whites hate them because they have black blood, and the blacks hate them because they have white blood. A ou sommer can’t win.”

  “Is that why you talk so funny?”

  “Hey, don’t be cheeky. This is mos the way all us Kaapse klonkies talk.” When I just stared at him blankly, he explained that he was from Cape Town, and that’s how all the colored people from District Six spoke. He waved at his drawings when he said this, including all the faces and the scenes in his statement, so that I understood they were all drawn from his past.

  “So why are you in Joburg then?”

  “The gatte came and told the klonkies to live in the Flats, die gat kant of Cape Town. King George didn’t want to live in the Flats, so he packed up his wheels with sommer alles he own and came to Joeys.”

  “Oh.” From what I could make out, the police had used violence to move everyone from District Six to a place called the Flats, and King George decided to move to Johannesburg instead.

  “You have a car?”

  “Why so geskok, Little Miss? A ou mos needs wheels for business.”

  “You need a car to be a flatboy?” That seemed highly unlikely. Flatboys mostly cleaned
the communal areas, washed windows, polished the parquet flooring and brass-ware, took out garbage and stoked the boiler fires. You didn’t need a car for any of that.

  “Flatboy is mos King George’s day job. The real bucks come from the night job.”

  “Oh, and what job is that?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “So where’s your wife then?”

  The mischievous expression on his face suddenly gave way to something raw resembling grief; it lasted just a few seconds before King George shook it off and changed the subject. “That’s kak for Little Miss that no one care about her birthday. Come to King George. He will give you a drukkie.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Jinne, Little Miss being racist now? Won’t let the colored man give her a drukkie?”

  “I’m not racist. You just stink, that’s why I’m not hugging you. When last did you bathe or spray on some deodorant?”

  “Deodorant and soap cost money, Little Miss.” I turned to go and he called out, “Come visit King George again, né? Just don’t be so woes next time.”

  “Okay.” I decided my birthday couldn’t get any worse, and so it was time to call it a day and head home. I let myself into the flat and my spirits sank even further. It was dark inside, which meant Beauty wasn’t home yet. I flicked the switch and that’s when it happened: people appeared seemingly out of nowhere—from the bedroom and the bathroom, and behind the curtains and couch—and they all yelled, “Surprise!”

  Almost everyone who mattered most to me was in the same room: Beauty (smiling broadly), Morrie (hair more poofy than usual), Mr. and Mrs. Goldman (bearing gifts), Victor (wearing an aquamarine bow tie because I’d told him once that aquamarine was my favorite color), Johan (minus his stitches), Wilhelmina (no longer a baddie!) and Maggie (no longer my only guardian angel). Black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, Christian, Jew, Englishman, Afrikaner, adult, child, man, woman: we were all there together, but somehow that eclectic jumble of labels was overwritten by the one classification that applied to every person there: “friend.”