My Children Have Faces

by Carol Campbell

  On the day Miskiet held me down, Jan bought me a one-litre Fanta all for myself because I was so thirsty. He said I mustn’t drink it in the front because Meneer De Wet was around and he got the moer in with the petrol-jokkie’s girlfriends hanging around.

  “You go on, Muis, wait for me by the tunnel and save me a sip.”

  That garage is busy with big trucks driven by blue-black drivers coming from far away and going to Cape Town with their loads. It is interesting to watch them and wonder where they are from.

  I walk slowly with the bottle of cooldrink, lifting it now and then to press the coolness against my face.

  At the tunnel I stop. Where does he want me to wait? There is a nice sitting place on the other side, on the hill, so I run down the steps, enjoying the smacking of my new plakkies on the cement.

  In the half light, with the sound of trucks above, I see Miskiet leaning against the tunnel wall. I feel sweat run down the inside of my legs and my hands go wet but I carry on walking, looking at the ground.

  As I pass him he leans forward and touches my shoulder. I don’t know what to do. He spins me round and presses his lips on mine. The Fanta bottle drops out of my hand and breaks. I try to pull away and one of my plakkies comes off. He pushes me down on the ground and I close my eyes and feel the stone pushing deep into my cheek.

  Jan came like he said he would. I heard his voice, felt the weight lift off me and I crawled to the wall and opened my eyes but all I saw was the silver blade. I only opened my eyes again when old Oom Dollars shook my shoulder. It was then that I saw my hopes and dreams bleeding into the dust in a tunnel that stank of pee.

  10 MISKIET

  My bloodied sheets are bleached and on the line. I don’t like blood on my sheets. The early morning sun lights up flecks of dust as I sweep the floors. Everything feels in order now. I waited and they came. Things will change. On the floor next to my bed is Jan’s old mattress. The boy will sleep with me; Muis’s two klimmeide will sleep in the kitchen on cardboard. I have found some old boxes and flattened them and piled them in the corner. I am ready.

  My blade winks and blinks on the table. It’s a big flick knife with a blade as long as the length of my hand and a brown plastic handle. It’s not rubbish that will break easily. It won’t let me down. It hasn’t before. The day I bought it, there were two in Mevrou Smit’s drawer at the general dealer in Prince Albert. I knew when I saw them, between rolls of ribbon and hair elastics, that it was one like that I wanted: a man’s knife.

  “This’ll cut biltong nicely,” Mevrou Smit said when I gave her R35. “My husband has one and he finds it very handy for cutting biltong.” The old woman showed me how the blade sprung out when you pressed a little button on the side.

  “You hold that button down with your thumb to fold the blade in again,” she said. I could see she liked that knife. She handled it like she had been playing with it when she was alone in the shop.

  It slid into my jeans’ pocket comfortably. That’s what I liked about this knife. A person could walk all day with it resting on the top of his leg. It was in a place where I could touch it easily and that made me calm. Nobody knew what I had in my pocket, that I could take it out and flick the blade any time I wanted.

  It was Klein Muisie, sleeping in her clothes on our kitchen floor, who made me buy the knife. If it wasn’t for her, Jan would be alive and the blade wouldn’t blink and wink at me all the time.

  The first night, when Jan brought her home, she lay down on a flattened cardboard box in front of the stove. I felt her there straight away; the breathing in our house changed.

  Then, a few nights later, I heard Jan swing his legs out of bed and creep into the kitchen and lie down on the floor with her. The breathing was fast, then slow. Every night, when he thought I was asleep in the bed next to him, I heard the springs in his mattress creak as he swung his legs over the side and stood up.

  She stayed with us for a long time, washing and cooking, but in the dark my brother became a tweegatjakkals who lay on the floor with her, making me feel like an unwanted Jappie in my own home.

  The knife was a way to discipline her, to make her understand that it was my house, that I knew what they were doing, and that it would stop when I decided.

  One day when Jan leaves for the early shift at the Shell, I put my arms around her waist and pull her against me so she can feel what she is doing to me, but she pushes me away.

  “Leave me alone, I am your brother’s woman.”

  “You are our woman,” I tell her. “There are two men who need looking after in this house.”

  “Sies, you disgusting pig,” she says.

  I take out the knife. The blade flicks open and I hold it at her throat. It is good to see the fear in her eyes. She will learn to respect me.

  There is nothing that makes me angry more quickly than a dom plaasmeid with a fight in her eyes.

  I know now what I will do.

  She wouldn’t lie with me in my own house, on a bed, in a decent way, so I decided she would give me what I wanted in that vuil tunnel near the Ultra City. It was easy to follow her. Easy to know what Jan would do. I never wanted it to be that way, but afterwards I knew it was the way it had to be. You cannot do something like that under your brother’s nose and not expect him to feel angry. It was that plaasmeid who changed everything.

  She is back now to pay for her crimes. That is why she has come back here.

  After Jan was dead, I told the police it was one of those darkies who drive the big trucks. I told them he raped her and killed Jan. She knew better than to point a finger at me. Even after all these years, the police have never knocked on my door.

  “Shame, poor Miskiet,” the people said. “Who will take care of him now? Those brothers meant everything to each other.”

  I expected her to go straight away, but she stayed, like she expected Jan to come back. Then, when the baby was born, he was no darkie. He was yellow and soft just like me. Nobody asked Mevrou Smit in Prince Albert who bought her knives or if they were only used for cutting biltong.

  11 WITPOP

  Mamma loves Fansie more than me. S’true. It could be because he is a boy and brings us food or it could be because I am a girl and make her stressed because I don’t have ears. She always says that. “Jy het nie ore nie. You don’t listen.”

  Fansie runs like a kudu through the veld. He runs for hours and nobody worries about him and when he comes back everybody is happy to see him because he always has a porcupine or a rabbit for supper. If I disappear like that Mamma hits me with a stick when I come back. Really, she does.

  “Where have you been? I can’t do the washing and look after Sponsie” or “Why were you gone so long, where is the firewood, hey?”

  Hit, hit, hit. If I cry it’s like she wants to hit me more. Eina! Eina! Eina! Whack, whack, whack.

  Once I tried to run with Fansie but he threw stones at me so I came back to the karretjie. When I run by myself Pappie shouts, “Witpop, come back here.” So now I walk alone next to the karretjie all day watching the mountains and singing.

  My hartjie, my liefie,

  die son sak weg,

  die son sak weg,

  die son sak weg,

  daar onder by die Blouberge.

  Sometimes I change the words and sing “Daar onder by die Swartberge” when we are close to the Swartberg. It’s stupid to sing about blue mountains when you are walking next to black mountains. Also the sun doesn’t go down over the Swartberg but I sing that it does anyway.

  To run and hunt animals and never wash clothes or look after a baby or collect stokkies must be a feeling like being God. To have a mamma who looks at you with softness in her eyes when you come home must make you feel like a giant. When Mamma looks at me, it’s always with a plan on her face. Like, what can Witpop do now? I try to stay behind her so that she can’t always be thinking of things for me to do.

  She loves Fansie the most of all of us, maybe even more than Pappie, but that coul
d be because Pappie’s leg is too stiff for him to catch food anymore. She’s proud of Fansie. When he comes home with a porcupine or, like yesterday, when he dug out that aardvark, her face shines with happiness. Actually, I am glad he finds the food otherwise we would be eating fresh air with leaves. They don’t have any money for food and Pappie is always looking for work. Mamma won’t work for money; she has to stay with the karretjie and keep us hidden and safe.

  But she moans all the time.

  “Kapok, you are walking our legs off. No meat, no bread, just walk, walk, walk.”

  She could get All Pay but we aren’t registered with the government, so we don’t get anything. You have to register your children if you want to get pay. Mamma wants the money very badly but she doesn’t want to register us and she also doesn’t have an identity. I don’t know why, I just wish she would get All Pay so that I could have a lappie and a pink roll-on and pads.

  Today I decided that one day, when I don’t have to tramp behind their karretjie, I am going to live in a town with shops and eat chicken and rice every day and drink tea with sugar from a glass cup. Really, that’s what I am going to do. I am going to have those brown, glass see through cups that Didi’s mamma has. Didi says she bought them at Smit’s Winkel in Prince Albert. I am going to get All Pay and use my money to buy some of those brown glass cups from Smit’s. And a lappie and a pink roll-on and pads from Pep. Really.

  Mamma makes nice food with the Karoobossies and the meat Fansie brings, but if you ask me what my favourite is, I say chicken stew and rice. Chicken tastes like town. It’s soft and easy to chew, not hard and bony like the rabbits Fansie brings. Once we asked people for their empties and made enough to buy big red slippery Russians from the shop at the garage. Really, that’s my other favourite thing to eat. Those big red worsies.

  If I think about it, Mamma loves Fansie the most because he brings food and his real pappie is dead. In her heart she feels sorry for him because he is half an orphan. Fansie never knew his pappie because he died before he was born. Mamma says he was a good man who loved her and he bought her plakkies. My pappie also loves Fansie very much. He is always saying things like “My son, help me here please” or “My son, you will learn to shear sheep one day”.

  I don’t know why he calls him “my son” when he is not really his son. It is because he is a boy. That’s what I think.

  Mamma and Pappie never call me “my daughter”. They just vloek me and shout “Witpop, I am going to bliksem you if you don’t do what I say” or “Witpop, what is your problem?” That’s all I ever hear. That I have a problem. And they don’t know what it is.

  Fansie thinks he is the boss of me and Sponsie. He has also started coming with this: “Fetch wood, fetch water, I am going to hit you.”

  Nobody sees, but sometimes I sit a little way from the karretjie on a flat stone between the bushes and I let the tears roll down my cheeks. They are hot and feel nice when they come. When I sit alone I have time to feel where they hit me, on my back, across my legs. Today, when I wouldn’t carry Sponsie, Mamma hit me across the face.

  12 MUIS

  I would be happy if I could never come back to this place. What is here but sadness? What is here but fear? He says it is the only place where he can find work. All these years he found work in other places but now he thinks we will starve if we don’t come back to this place. As the donkeys pull us closer I see the red brick houses on the hill. Big trucks pass on the highway to Cape Town. There is the Shell Ultra City. Nothing has changed. There are very few trees in Leeu Gamka. From far away I can see the old pepper tree where Jan and I used to sit, where I sat with Fansie after he was born. It’s the only tree I can see.

  The chain around my ankle tying me to Leeu Gamka is loose. For so many years I have been like a dog pulling to break free. Now, after all this time, I have raw sores where this chain has cut through to my flesh. Kapok thinks I will lick Miskiet’s hand, then lie at his feet asking for forgiveness. The one who raped me, the one who took away the only person who cared. I never wanted to see him again. I never wanted to remember. Here I am, at the beginning again. The donkeys are pulling me closer until we are at his house. The red brick house where I slept on cardboard on the floor.

  Kapok is sure he can find work. Baas Kobus will fetch us in his bakkie and take us all to Genade.

  “I know people in Leeu Gamka who will help us,” he says.

  “He will kill me.”

  “When we have money we can go to Oudtshoorn and get birth papers and your identity.”

  “He will kill me.”

  “No, he has forgotten you.”

  “He is waiting to kill me.”

  Kapok does not know the part of Miskiet that I fear. Kapok has not looked into his eyes when he has decided something and you know you have to do what he says. What Kapok knows is the smiling, smoking, talking Miskiet. I know the man who smells of spray, who takes my arm in a way that I cannot escape, who looks at me with black staring eyes that make me move without him saying anything.

  I want my children to be registered and have an identity before he finds me again. I think about this all the time and I know government papers can be my protection. If you have an identity, the police know when you are killed. They ask questions like: “Here is an identity, but where is the person?” They say things like: “This person has gone but their identity is here, we must find this missing person.” If you have no identity then they don’t know you are gone and they don’t look for you.

  “When you die nobody will even know you existed.” Words he hisses in my ear as he pushes my face into the dirt.

  When I thought about what he said I said to myself, “But other people will miss me, a life can’t vanish. Somebody will know I died from a slit throat and a killer is out there.”

  Then, as if he can see all my thoughts, he says, “In court the police have to prove to the judge you existed. If they can’t find your body and you have no identity how will they know it isn’t all a big lie? Klein Muisie, the time will come when no one will ever know you were here.”

  We are in Leeu Gamka now and, when Miskiet finds me, he will kill me.

  13 KAPOK

  If he comes we’ll drink wine together and Muis will see her worry is for nothing. There is a R25 papsak under the karretjie seat that I bought at the shebeen on the edge of town. I have had a little smakie already. Heh heh! Just a little sippie. Ag jissie, it’s been a long time since I felt my arms go lam and my legs just want to sit down. Tonight I am going to suip and my friend Miskiet is going to suip too. What I am waiting for is that deep sleep that only a papsak gives a person. A papsak sleep makes the ground feel like a soft bed and my wife’s ugly face look like an angel’s. Heh heh heh!

  Oh, my leg is so blerrie sore.

  Muis is scared of Miskiet but I told her she should not be afraid, she should feel sorry for him. That kind of person you just talk to and soon their anger turns into dust and, when they see you have a papsak, then you are pals for life. Wait. Tonight I will make Miskiet my pal for life.

  Really, I don’t know why he would be angry at me for taking Muis off his hands. She was Jan’s woman with Jan’s baby. I don’t know why he wanted her so much. If a woman didn’t want me I would let her go. A man must have a woman who likes to stay with him. Even if she moans and complains, like Muis does to me, in her heart she must want to stay. But Miskiet would not take no for an answer. In the end all he got right was to make himself cross and Muis unhappy. If you think about it, it was dom. Before Jan came from Beaufort West, Miskiet lived very quietly in that red brick house in Rondomskrik on the hill. The other people didn’t smaak him. They said he was a malletjie with eyes that looked right through you. He was always alone, walking in the veld even in winter when the freezing wind cut at his face. Then back again in the afternoon. His hands were always in his jeans’ pockets. Sometimes he would take one out and wave at me sitting under the pepper tree smoking my pipe, but he never stopped to talk. There wer
e other times when he looked at me but I could see he saw nobody under the pepper tree. There were times when he would be gone for two or three days and when he came back he was dirty, with grass and sand in his hair from sleeping on the ground. That was the thing with Miskiet. You knew when he had slept on the ground. Most of the time he was clean and shiny. His hair was oiled and his yellow skin was scrubbed. When he went into one of his strange moods then he became dirty and deurmekaar. He is someone to feel sorry for, I tell you.

  “That guy needs a nice girl to look after him,” I told old Oom Dollars.

  “He a malletjie,” the oom said. “The nice girls is scared for him.”

  “I don’t know why, he just goes a bit funny now and then. He won’t hurt them.”

  “I am scared of him,” Oom Dollars said.

  I didn’t feel scared of him but I didn’t bother him either. A person doesn’t want someone like Miskiet in his life if he can help it.

  Then Jan, his brother, came from Beaufort West, and we all felt better that he at least had someone to talk to. Jislaaik, but Jan was a lekker outjie. He was always laughing and popular with the nice girls in Rondomskrik. When Muis turned up and needed a job he was quick to take her in. We could all see he had his eyes on her from day one. I wondered how it was going to work in that house with the three of them. Miskiet was so peaceful when he was alone and now all of a sudden he had his brother and a woman sharing a room with only a curtain between. He never complained, well, not to the men smoking pipes under the pepper tree.

  The day of the killing, it was old Oom Dollars who found Jan in the tunnel. And Muis, rolled into a ball with her eyes shut tight.

  “Who did this? Who did this?” he asked, shaking her, but she looked at him like she couldn’t see, even when he was right there, in front of her. She wouldn’t stop crying. The smell of blood and sex was in the tunnel, Oom Dollars said, all mixed up with Fanta Orange.