The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  She blamed her flowing locks for all her troubles. Perhaps it would be better if her mother shaved her head bald again. Then no one would know that she was different. Although her blue eyes would continue to betray her. The blue eyes and the fair hair were the main culprits. Not so much the light complexion. Many normal black people had light complexions. And no one complained about that.

  The blue eyes were an aberration she could do nothing about. But the hair, she could definitely do something about that. Her mother used to shave it off with a Minora razor blade. And then she had been known as the bald-headed girl. Cheesekop tamati lerago la misis. Head that looks like a white woman’s buttock! Until Niki was seized by a spirit of defiance. And left the locks to grow once more. No one would call her child’s head a white woman’s buttock again.

  But Niki’s defiance was not Popi’s defiance. She had never been consulted on the matter. She did not want the hair. It was the curse that other children pulled when they were fighting her for being a boesman. Or that Viliki tied in knots during his wicked moments.

  Popi’s anger had completely melted by the time Niki carried her on her back on their way to the bus rank. Thanks to the trinity’s impersonations of a donkey.

  It was getting late, and Niki was worried that the bus would get to Mahlatswetsa Location after sunset. The modelling had taken longer than usual. But at least there were crisp notes hidden in her bra. Her “dairy”, as she called that hiding place.

  Niki wanted to be home before sunset to see to it that Viliki was home. She was very strict about that. Viliki had to be home by sunset, even though he thought he was a big boy of nine years old and should be allowed to stay out late. She had good reason to be worried about Viliki. He had started running around with older boys. Good-for-nothing boys like Sekatle, Maria’s brother, who was at least six years older than him. That bothered Niki. What did Viliki have in common with fifteen-year-old boys?

  As the rickety bus worked its way along the dirt road to Mahlatswetsa Location, she closed her eyes and silently prayed for the trinity’s long life. For his hands that must stay strong. For his vision that must continue to find joy in cosmos, donkeys, women and sunflowers. For his passion for colour that must never fade. And for his muse that occasionally flung him into a mother-and-child mode. She pleaded with whatever spirits drove his passions to immerse him in more madonna moods before Popi grew too big to model as the child.

  Hunger had become more of a stranger to Niki and her children because of the trinity’s madonnas. They had saved her from the agony of garden parties.

  The thought of garden parties flooded her with images of Tjaart Cronje. A lanky lad of twelve, chasing a rugby ball. A generous giver of cakes.

  RITES OF PASSAGE:

  TJAART GOES SOLDIERING

  WHO IS this little girl standing against a powder-blue sky with pink flowers for stars? Big sky and pink cosmos down to her bare feet like wallpaper. Who is this little girl in a snow-white long-sleeved frock? Covering her legs down to her ankles. Delicate feet with ten toes. An unusual phenomenon. One side of her chest bare and showing a little breast that is beginning to grow. Her neck peeling down to her chest. Who is this little girl with flowing locks and big bright eyes and small lips? Hair dyed black. Roots show that it is naturally light brown. Almost blonde. Sunburnt blonde. Her hands raised as high as her head. Pleading for peace. For rain. Big hands opened flat so that we can count all ten of her long fingers. Piano fingers, the trinity called them. Who is this little girl?

  The little girl was Popi, the last time she sat for the trinity. Stood for the trinity, to be exact. Bye-bye, modelling income. She was not really a little girl, although she looked like one. She was fourteen years old. And she hated the mirror. It exposed her to herself for what she really was. A boesman girl. A hotnot girl. Morwa towe! You bushman you! Or when the good neighbours wanted to be polite, a coloured girl. She had broken quite a few mirrors in her time. A mirror was an intrusive invention. An invention that pried into the pain of her face. Yet she looked at her freckled face in the morning, at midday and at night. Every day. She prayed that her freckles would join up, so that she could look like other black children of Mahlatswetsa Location.

  IT WAS 1984: the year of passage. Popi wore a permanent frown like a badge of honour. When she posed for a photograph in front of House Number 2014—which was not really a house, but the shack in which she was born—she became blank-faced. That was the best she could do. Reduce the frown to a face on which nothing could be read.

  The photographer said “Cheese!” but her face refused to break into a smile. She just stood next to the giant rose-bush that grew in front of the shack and stared at the camera. The camera captured her sombre image and the cheerful bush in full bloom with pink November roses. It also captured part of the shack, which had long since turned brown from the rusted corrugated-iron sheets. It captured the tyre on its roof whose function was to stop the lightning from sizzling the shack and its inhabitants; the hen that was roped by one leg to a small pole that formed part of the fowl run; the chicks that were feeding on the ants on pieces of a broken anthill; and the paste that Niki had made from the anthill to plaster the corners of the shack in order to stop the rain from seeping into their home.

  The photographer was Sekatle, Viliki’s friend. The twenty-four-year-old brother of Maria. He was not one of Niki’s most favourite people because, according to her, he was “too fly”, and was teaching Viliki bad things. She wanted her son to stay at Mahlatswetsa Secondary School, and matriculate, and make something of his life, instead of vagabonding with a boy who had left school even before Standard Seven. Anyway, what was Sekatle doing loitering in Mahlatswetsa Location when men of his age were already digging white man’s gold in the mines of Welkom?

  He and his eighteen-year-old sidekick, Viliki, of course did not consider what Sekatle was doing as loitering. Adam de Vries had given him an old box camera after Sekatle had done some gardening for him. Now he went around the township and the farm villages taking photographs of people for a small fee. After school, Viliki joined him as he clicked away at school-uniformed teenagers in the arms of village dandies. At vacationing miners who posed with their mammoth gumba-gumba radios. At babies propped up by piles of pillows and sitting on rugs in front of shacks and adobe houses. At trendsetting girls in red and black tartan skirts. Free snapshots for the pretty ones. It was a wonderful way to catch girls.

  Popi’s was also a free snapshot. Not because Sekatle had designs on her. He had a particular distaste for coloured girls. He knew a lot about them, too. His own sister had two such children. A girl of Popi’s age, born of the Excelsior 19 days. And another girl, born years later, for miscegenation had continued unabated after the Excelsior 19 case. He had never forgiven his sister for bringing shame into his home. Very unlike Viliki, who loved his coloured sister and fought daily battles against those who rubbished her.

  The free snapshot was Viliki’s gift to his beautiful sister.

  It took one whole month to “wash the film”, as we called developing photographs. Sekatle had to mail the roll to Fripps in Johannesburg. The company was the popular place for washing films from all over southern Africa, because it sent its customers a free film for every one it developed.

  By the time Sekatle brought Popi’s photo, she had forgotten that he had once photographed her. She was not impressed with the result. It was too real and cold and distant. She did not feel anything when she looked at it. Unlike the trinity’s depictions, it did not awaken any emotions in her. And she said so.

  “It is a gift, Popi,” said Sekatle angrily. “You don’t count the teeth of a gift.”

  “Maybe it is because the photo is filled with too many things,” said Viliki, trying to find a reason to excuse his sister’s ungratefulness. “The house, the fowl run, the chickens . . . too many things.”

  “What do you know about taking photographs, Viliki?” asked Sekatle.

  “Popi is too small in this photo,
” argued Viliki. “Maybe you should have stood much closer to her.”

  “Have you ever taken a photograph in your life, Viliki?” asked Sekatle, getting irritated by armchair critics who didn’t even have an armchair.

  Popi left them arguing and went into the house to wash herself. She had taken to washing herself every few hours. Not to remove the freckles. She wished they could spread and cover her whole body. Making her a whole human being.

  She washed herself to remove the blood.

  She was not yet used to her bleeding, as she had gone to the moon for the first time in her life only three days before. It had been a scary moment. When she saw the blood for the first time, she hid it from her mother, for she was filled with shame. She bathed secretly. It was not as if she had not known what it was all about. She had already heard at school from the biology teacher that a time would come when this would happen. And from older girls who had seen the moon before her. She had never discussed matters of womanhood with her mother. So she did not know how to tell her. Until Niki wondered at her new obsession with bathing, and found her squatting over a metal basin filled with red water.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Niki had asked quietly. It was strange when Niki talked to her in quiet tones. She always shouted. The quiet tone made Popi even more fearful.

  “I am sorry, Niki,” Popi said.

  “This means that you are now a woman, Popi,” said Niki. “You must now only play with girls your age, those who have seen what you have seen. Not the little girls you like playing with.”

  Popi played dibeke or rounders with little girls because they passed no judgement on her. Six-year-olds. Seven-year-olds. Eight-year-olds. They knew she was a boesman. They had heard as much from their mothers. But they were able to see past the boesman in her. Into the warm soul that was hidden by the light-complexioned and blue-eyed mask. And now, if blood meant she could no longer play with them, then blood was a punishment. Blood would consign her to the lonely life of her mother. Although Niki’s aloofness was of her own choice. She had gradually withdrawn from the affairs of the location, and was in communion only with herself and her two children.

  Popi’s withdrawal from the world of her age-mates had been an escape from their snide remarks. Even at school, she kept to herself. And when she did, they said she was too proud to mix with them because she was a misis—a white woman. But when she tried to socialise with them, they called her a morwa—a coloured girl. Jokingly, of course. But still it stung.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Niki asked, dreading the answer.

  “No!” cried Popi. The very thought of a boyfriend disgusted her. How could Niki ask her such a stupid question?

  “If you sleep with a boy, you will get pregnant,” said Niki. “Don’t play with boys. Don’t even touch a boy. As for white men, stay away from them. Don’t even talk to them unless you are buying something at the store.”

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Niki and Popi went to gather cow-dung from the veld. Cattle were grazing and Popi was frolicking among them, selecting the dung that had already dried, and putting it in a sisal sack. Suddenly Niki remembered something, and sharply called Popi back.

  “A girl who is in the middle of the moon is not allowed to walk among the cattle,” said Niki.

  “But why, Niki?”

  “Because you will bleed for a long time,” said Niki, shouting at her as usual. “You will bleed for days without stopping. You don’t want that, do you?”

  Popi laughed. There could be no connection between cattle in the veld and the workings of her body.

  “You can laugh all you want, but you will cry one day,” said Niki. “Don’t you know that some people work their cattle with bad medicine? Precisely to make foolish girls like you sick! I warn you never walk among cattle when you are up there, especially if they are black cattle. Never go near a cattle kraal either.”

  “Only if they are black cattle, hey Niki? What if they are black and white like the Frieslands? Or fawn like the Jerseys?”

  “I am talking of cattle that are owned by black people!” screamed Niki, losing patience with the impertinent girl. “Black people are full of witchcraft, that is why. Ba loya! It does not matter with cattle belonging to whites, because they know nothing about witchcraft medicine.”

  “How will I know if the cattle are owned by blacks?”

  “You can always see them . . . they are emaciated. Anyway, don’t walk among the cattle, full stop. Whether they are owned by blacks or whites.”

  Once her mother said “full stop,” Popi knew that she had to shut up.

  NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR WAS the year of passage, not only because Popi went to the moon for the first time. But also because her legs began to grow hair. The moon was part of becoming a woman. But the hairy legs were not. Even Niki said as much. Other black girls her age did not grow hair on their legs. Her peers at school discussed the changes that were happening in their bodies. The biology teacher gave lessons on how the body functioned and on proper hygiene. But no one said anything about hairy legs. About shaving or not shaving. Yet her legs grew hairier by the day. The brown hair became a source of further embarrassment. She just let it be. She dared not shave it. The belief was that those women who grew facial hair were better off leaving it like that, because if they shaved it, more would grow. Popi feared that if she ever shaved her legs, they would become even more hairy. Instead, she resorted to wearing Niki’s old frocks that covered her legs down to her ankles.

  It was a year of passage for Niki as well. To a world of hermitry. It had started soon after the Excelsior 19 case and gradually became the almost total solitude that we saw this year. When we came to see her, she hid herself behind the door and instructed her children to say she was not home. She was always away in Lesotho or in Thaba Nchu, even though we saw her early in the mornings gathering cow-dung in the veld. Her close friends Mmampe and Maria gave up on her. And carried on with their boisterous lives. Her only companions were her children, who had their own lives to live. At least Viliki had a life outside the confines of the home. Popi spent all her time between home and school. Between home and church on Sundays.

  THOUGH NIKI SHUNNED fellowship with the men and women of her community, snatches of gossip sought her and found her. The ear is a thief, our elders have said. As it happened one afternoon when she went searching for fields that had recently been harvested in order to get gleanings. She found one such field and joined two girls whose sacks were almost full of gleaned sheaves of wheat. Niki did not greet them. They looked her over dismissively, and then continued with their business of filling up their sacks and baring their souls to one another. Niki picked up strands of wheat and put them into her sisal bag without talking to anyone.

  The two girls were slightly older than Popi. The same age Niki was when she used to go on those carefree cow-dung-gathering expeditions with Maria and Mmampe. The girls were talking about the white men in their lives. Niki heard the name of Tjaart Cronje jumping about in their conversation. She gathered that one of the girls had been fired from the butchery after Madam Cornelia Cronje had accused her of being a temptress whose mission was to lure Tjaart Cronje into a deep sinful hole. They dismissed Madam Cornelia’s concerns, ascribing them to the fact that she was old and manless and had no one to scratch her itch. She could not stop Tjaart Cronje if he wanted adventure. She couldn’t always be looking after Tjaart Cronje. Tjaart Cronje was a big man.

  “Especially now that Tjaart has gone soldiering,” said one.

  “And did you see how beautiful he looked in his brand-new uniform?” asked the other.

  “The boeremeisies were swooning. That Jacomina Bornman . . . the dominee’s daughter!”

  “What does she want with him? She is much older than he is. Has already been married!”

  “The boeremeisies, my dear, they see him in that uniform and they want to gobble him up!”

  “They do not know . . . they do not know that I know him in ways that they will never know.�
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  The girls laughed as they walked away, their sacks full, their pride fuller.

  Tjaart Cronje . . . gone to be a soldier. The thought nagged Niki. Soldiers fought wars. Soldiers died. Tjaart Cronje was going to die. She stopped collecting the strands of wheat. And stood contemplating the meaning of it all.

  Barking dogs jerked her out of her reverie. She saw Johannes Smit approach with three Alsatians on leashes. Bursting out of his khaki safari-suit as of old.

  “What do you want on my farm?” asked Johannes Smit, raising his voice above the din of barking dogs. They were threatening to attack, but he held them back.

  Niki had not been aware that the field was part of Johannes Smit’s farm. She did not think that he would make any fuss about it. Farmers generally did not bother people who gleaned their fields after harvest. But Johannes Smit intended to do just that: make a fuss. He threatened to let the dogs loose.

  “You of all people have the cheek to trespass on my farm,” shouted Johannes Smit. And he released the leashes.

  The dogs attacked. She tried to run. But they grabbed her brown seshweshwe dress with their teeth and ripped it off. She fell on the ground. She swallowed her screams as the dogs tore into her legs and arms. She was going to die in silence. She was not going to give Johannes Smit the satisfaction of hearing her beg for mercy.

  When he thought he had given her a lesson she would never forget, he grabbed the leashes, pulled his dogs back and walked away. Niki stood up, brushed the soil from her tattered dress and limped home, leaving the bag of gleanings on the ground. She was almost naked, and her legs and arms were bleeding.