The minutes ticked by and the music started up again inside. I wondered how long King George would still be gone for. I wanted to go home, get into bed and forget that this night and my humiliation in front of everyone had ever happened. My eyelids began to droop and I forced myself awake because falling asleep there wouldn’t be safe.
The radio still didn’t pick up any reception and I wished I’d brought a book with—something to distract me and keep me awake while I waited—but the only reading material in my rucksack was Nomsa’s letter and Beauty’s journal. In desperation, I dug the journal out. Trying to translate words from Xhosa to English would, at least, keep me alert.
I flicked through the first few pages and only understood a handful of words, not enough to decipher any kind of meaning from it, and then I skimmed through the rest. Beauty’s handwriting filled the pages, and the familiar sight of it saddened me so much that I couldn’t bear to look at it. I slammed the journal shut intending to put it away, but as I did so, something caught my eye. It was on the last few pages, an entry that was in English. More than that, it appeared to be a letter to me.
My Dearest Robin,
I find myself at a crossroads where I need to make a decision: to give up or to keep fighting. Giving up and backing down will mean that my safety is guaranteed. Continuing to fight will almost certainly place me in harm’s way.
I always used to think that Nomsa was the fighter in our family. I would look at her and the way she took on the world with her fists raised, fighting the battles that needed fighting, and I would wonder where she got it from, that fire that burned in her veins. Silumko, my husband, was a brave man but he was not a fighter. I thought, perhaps, it was a trait passed down to Nomsa from my father or my father’s father; they were both difficult men who insisted on having their own way.
Yet, here I am at the age of fifty discovering for the first time that the person who Nomsa has taken after all these years is me. Upon being given two choices, I have discovered that giving up is not an option. Perhaps if the person I was fighting for was myself, I would be more likely to step down. We are always so much more ready to give up on ourselves than those we love. But I am not fighting for myself. I am fighting for Nomsa, for her safety and her future.
My daughter is young, she is only nineteen years old, and she still has her whole life ahead of her. Once she is older, has an education, and has seen more of the world, if she then decides to take up this fight, I will respect that choice no matter how much I hate it. As it is now, she is too young to know the implications of what she is doing. She has been led astray by a man she trusts, one who has no moral compass and who is using her as a weapon against the world. I will not have it. I will not have her used as a pawn that he is willing to sacrifice.
It does not matter how often I am told that Nomsa is where she wants to be and what a good soldier she is. I know my daughter. I know that under the passion and the aggression beats a heart that knows the difference between right and wrong; a conscience that will grapple with the implications of bombing train stations and municipal buildings; a heart that will question the morality of hurting innocent people to make a political statement.
When I set out from the Transkei after I received my brother’s letter, I promised my sons that I would bring their sister home. I am a woman who keeps her promises. In the meantime, now that I have decided to push on, there is a very real possibility that something might happen to me. There is no point in telling you who would be behind my disappearance. I do not want to put you in harm’s way in a quest for justice, and the police will not care about another black woman who has gone missing.
I am writing this letter to you in my journal because I know if I disappear, you will look for clues as to what happened to me. I do not doubt that during your search, you will find my diary and this letter buried inside. It will be easy enough for you to find as it is the only entry written in English.
I want to assure you that if you wake up one morning and I am gone, it would not be because I left you willingly. It breaks my heart thinking that you might be waiting for me to come home one day, and if that does not happen, you will think that I am one of the many people who have left you without saying good-bye and without keeping their promises. That would never be the case.
You remind me so much of Nomsa that I sometimes feel as though the Gods took my daughter away but gave you to me in her place. You, too, are a fighter like us Mbali women. When I think of how much life has taken from you at such a young age, I can only marvel at your strength and resilience. The courage you have shown in letting me into your life and allowing me to love you—and I dare say, loving me in return—shows bravery, Robin. I do not think it is brave to pick up a gun or to carry a bomb, but it is brave to open yourself up to the potential for loss and disappointment when you have already felt too much of its sting.
I see greatness in you. I see great things in your future. You are going to grow up to be a woman of substance, and I am proud to have known you and to have shared a part of your journey. Never doubt your strength and never doubt that you are worthy of love.
I love you very much. Do not ever doubt that either.
Beauty
It wasn’t like reading a letter at all. Instead, it was as if Beauty had enfolded me into an embrace; each word was a caress, lips pressed against a wound. I heard her voice speaking to me, and it spurred me on as nothing else ever could have. I wouldn’t give up because I was a fighter, and Beauty believed in me even though I didn’t deserve it. I’d let her down so much already, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—do it again.
I’d go back inside and find Phumla. This time, I wouldn’t take no for an answer. It didn’t matter how much I humiliated myself or if she threatened violence; it didn’t matter if the crowd was on my side or baying for my blood. As Beauty had said in her letter, we fight for the ones we love and we don’t give up. I’d force Phumla to tell me where Nomsa was, whatever it took, because I could never live with myself if I didn’t make things right.
The door met with resistance when I tried to push it open. I’d been so distracted by the journal, I hadn’t noticed anyone making their way to the car.
“I’ve been looking for you.” A face appeared at the window and I started.
It took me a moment to realize it belonged to the boy I’d danced with earlier. I rolled the window down.
“It’s you,” I said stupidly. “Why have you been looking for me?”
“I want to help.”
“You do?”
He nodded.
It didn’t make sense. I’d thought that my only chance at salvation was through Phumla, because I’d done something to help her once that might’ve made her likely to help me in return. I didn’t know the boy—I’d never met him before our dance—and he didn’t owe me anything at all.
“But . . . why?”
“I met Beauty once. It was when my brother was dying,” he said. “She tried to get my mother and her friends to take Sipho to the hospital for treatment, but they wouldn’t listen.” He was quiet for a moment before continuing. “Beauty was kind to my brother. She’d found Sipho lying in the road after the police started shooting on the day of the uprising. He was bleeding and afraid, and she stayed with him to comfort him. I never thanked her for that. If she wants to find her daughter, then I want to help her.”
“Your brother died?”
“Yes, he was my twin.”
I wanted so much to tell him that I’d had a twin as well and that she, too, had died, but I knew that his real loss was greater than my imaginary one. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“But, you’re just a child, like me. How can you help?”
“I’ve been asking a lot of questions since the uprising, and I’ve been following the movements of the man Nomsa has been with.”
“Shakes?”
“Y
es, that’s him.” His voice was flat and hard.
“So, what do you know about him?”
“I know you’ve arrived just in time. One more day and you would’ve missed them.”
“Why?”
“Their trip was delayed, which is why they’re now only leaving tomorrow.”
“What trip?”
“Shakes and Nomsa were leaving for Moscow.”
“Where’s Moscow?”
“In the Soviet Union.”
“Is that a Bantu homeland?”
“No, it’s a country very far away where they’re happy to fund the training of communist soldiers.”
“Why was the trip delayed? What happened?”
“The security police caught wind of it. Someone tipped them off and they raided Shakes just before they were planning to leave.”
“Someone?”
“Me,” he confirmed after a beat.
I gasped. “But you’re black. How can you report one of your own people to the security police?”
“Shakes is a bad man. He recruited many young children for the march. He knew it would be dangerous and what was going to happen, but he didn’t care because their lives meant nothing to him. I was there the day he threatened my brother with violence if he didn’t join the students’ movement. My brother would still be alive if it wasn’t for Shakes. I want him to suffer for that.” He glared at me, challenging me to disagree with him. When I didn’t, he continued. “They managed to escape before the police got there, but luckily didn’t find out who’d tipped them off.”
That explained Phumla’s paranoia and her insistence in believing that I’d only come to find Nomsa to turn her over to the police; it explained why she thought Beauty being in the hospital was a trap to lure her to waiting security officers. She thought I’d used Nomsa’s letter to tip off the police. Now, with only one day to go until Nomsa left, Phumla wouldn’t betray her best friend’s whereabouts to someone she didn’t trust.
“After that,” the boy continued, “Shakes delayed their departure until it was safe again. I’ve heard that tomorrow is the day.”
“Is that why you work here? To spy on people and get information?”
“No, I need money to support my mother. The information is an added bonus. Children are invisible because we’re thought to be powerless, so people say things in front of me here that they wouldn’t say otherwise. The drinking loosens their tongues too.”
“Your English is very good.”
His face broke into a smile as wide as the one he’d given me while we were dancing earlier. “Thank you. I’ve been studying it outside of school. It’s important to learn other languages.”
I nodded in agreement. “I’ve been learning Xhosa, but I’m nowhere near as good as you. Maybe one day.” A bottle broke nearby and we both turned in the direction of the noise to see if anyone was coming. When no one appeared, I pressed on. “So you can help me get a message to Nomsa?”
“No.”
My spirits dropped. I knew it had been too good to be true.
“I can do better,” the boy said. “I can tell you where to find her so you can deliver your own message.”
“Really?”
The boy nodded and then looked away before continuing. “Can I ask you something first?”
“Yes, of course. Anything!”
“Why do white people hate us?”
We were separated by the car door that was closed between us. I opened it and got out so that I was standing next to him.
“What’s your name?” I asked, realizing that he hadn’t told me.
“Asanda. I’m sorry if the question has offended you, Robin, it’s just that you’re the first white person I’ve ever met. I told myself it was a question I’d ask when I got the chance.”
“I wish I could tell you, Asanda, but I honestly don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out myself, but I just keep going in circles. First, I thought it was because black people kill white people, but then I found out that white people kill black people too. I was told black people are lazy and stupid, and that they’re dirty and have germs that we don’t, but none of that’s true either.” A thought occurred to me. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“See? And yet you have a job working late nights and then you go to school the next day. You work hard to study and you’re clearly very clever. And Beauty . . . Beauty is the nicest, kindest and most intelligent person I’ve ever met and she’s black.” I shook my head in frustration. “Maybe it’s that the whites need the blacks so much and that puts you all in a position of power that scares us. Or maybe it’s just that everyone needs someone to hate, and it’s easier to treat people terribly if you tell yourself they’re nothing like you.”
“Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Promise me you will not grow up and become one of them.”
“One of who?”
“The whites who hate us. Don’t grow up and forget how much the same we are, you and me. Promise?”
He was right; we were the same. Asanda and I had more in common than any other person I’d ever met. We both liked kwela music and loved to dance. We’d both had a twin sibling who we’d lost, and we both spied on people and acted like detectives. Both of us loved learning new languages and we both respected Beauty and wanted to do right by her. Each of us was also trying to make things right in our own way. In another time and place, Asanda and I could have been best friends; in another lifetime, he could’ve been my boyfriend.
“I will never grow up to be one of those people.”
He was taller than I was, and so I had to stand up on my tippy toes to brush my lips against his cheek, white skin against black, to seal the promise.
Fifty-seven
ROBIN
3 OCTOBER 1977
Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa
Drive straight,” I shrieked as King George veered off the road. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“It’s mos no use, Little Miss,” King George slurred in reply. “King George is seeing three roads where jussa one road should be.” He tried squinting with first one eye closed and then the other, but it didn’t improve his aim.
When he’d gotten back into the car after finally returning to the shebeen, I’d ambushed him, yelling that we had to follow Shakes to wherever he was going. Now, with Shakes only a few hundred meters ahead of us, I could see he wasn’t doing much better at driving than King George was. The van was careening all over the place.
“Sorry, man. King George has never been this poeg-eyed. Jurre, that’s what six zols and eight beers will do to a ou.”
“Just watch where you’re going! We can’t lose him.”
“Why we following him, Little Miss? He mos a dangerous ou that carry a big gun. He like killing mense. He told King George hisself.”
“He’ll take us to where Nomsa is. Watch out!” A goat had darted into the road. After we swerved to miss it, it disappeared from the headlights as quickly as it had manifested.
“How ’bout Little Miss steer and King George do the pedals and gears?”
“Well, I can’t be worse than you, I suppose. Quickly pull over.” I scooted across to sit on his lap. “Okay, go!”
Shakes was luckily driving very slowly, and King George was able to respond relatively well to my instructions to brake, slow down or speed up. The steering wheel was much harder to turn than I would’ve imagined and required both of my hands and a lot of exertion.
We followed Shakes through a maze of streets, down a dip through open marshy veld and then up into another neighborhood that was built on giant boulders. We passed a few other cars without incident though one of them honked their hooter when the van swerved into oncoming traffic. Finally, Shakes turned right into a yard and came to a stop.
/> “Brake,” I yelled and King George responded. I switched off the lights.
Shakes opened the van’s door and staggered out. He bent over for a moment in the yard and then stood up again, disappearing around the side of the house.
“Are we there yet?” King George asked.
“Yes, this is the decoy house.”
“Huh? Decoy house?”
“Yes, Asanda told me Shakes parks here and then walks around the side of the house pretending to go inside. If the security police are following him or staking him out, they’ll storm this house, but it’s empty and rigged with some kind of bomb.”
“Jurre! So where he really go?”
“He jumps over the back wall which you can’t see from here, and then heads to his real hiding place, which is another house a few hundred meters down that road. Asanda described it to me.”
“King George is jus gonna get inna backseat and rest his eyes for a klein bietjie. Little Miss wait for him to wake up before she go, orright?”
He was snoring within seconds. I cranked the window open to let in some fresh air. The alcohol fumes, coupled with the general stink of the dirty car, was making me nauseated. After five long minutes of waiting, I got out of the car and headed for the house. When I got to the yard, I stood behind the protection of the van for a beat and then rushed around the side to the wall Asanda had told me about. Luckily it was a low one and I was able to jump over without any hassle.
There was an empty lot on the other side, and I cut across it heading left towards the grouping of three houses on the opposite side that Asanda had described. When I got to number twenty-one, I knew I was at the right place and crouched low in the shadows. Nothing stirred and after a minute or two I ventured forward. Either all the lights in the house were off or Shakes didn’t have any electricity. The rest of the windows of the houses in the street were similarly dark.
The house was built from cinder blocks and had a tin roof like so many other houses in Soweto. It was a small rectangular shape, which probably meant it had a bedroom at the back and a lounge and kitchen in the front. The bathroom was an outhouse at the back of the property. Unlike Mama Fatty’s shebeen, this garden was completely bare; there were no trees and no junk piled up, which meant there was nowhere to hide.
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