“Tonight I need the papsak more than the saw,” he said. “Tonight this papsak is an emergency.”
An emergency is when you can’t wait for something but have to have it now, now, now. For me food is an emergency, but I don’t have a saw to give for bread, so my emergency is happening all the time.
When Pappie has a papsak he is in a very good mood, and even before he takes a slukkie, he swings his hips and claps his hands above his head. Witpop and Sponsie and me all laugh and dance with him.
“Suikerbossie, ek wil jou hê. Al sou jou Mamma wat ook sê!”
If Pappie has been working then sometimes we have money for radio batteries and we dance to RSG. When he starts dopping I watch him. For a while he stays funny and wants to dance but then he gets cross and then it’s better to go sleep in the veld. Even if he calls, “Fansie, bring stokkies for the fire,” I stay in the veld or he klaps me for sports, saying I took too long or the stokkies are too green or there are not enough. When he has been dopping for a while, everything, this whole damn life, is my fault.
When the wine is finished he and Mamma sleep. In the morning, before they wake up, Witpop, Sponsie and me go back to camp and make the fire and, if there is any, we make coffee. When they open their eyes they don’t remember anything. They just have a moer of a babalaas and want coffee straight away. Mamma says another doppie would help her head but there is never any left over.
On those nights, when we are alone in the veld, we make houses. It was my game to make Witpop shuddup so she didn’t want to run back to Mamma when they were drinking. If she went back when Mamma had a papsak then Mamma klapped her or, like one time, she tried to give her away to a man for a papsak. That’s why I hid Witpop, and now Sponsie, just like Pappie’s tools and the donkeys. I hide them away and keep them quiet until they stop dopping.
It’s easy when there is a big moon, then we can see better, otherwise we just let our eyes grow used to the dark and we build houses. We each make our own house with little klippies for the walls. When Sponsie wants to sleep we put her in one of the bedrooms. She likes to choose which house she is going to sleep in and we have to make her a bed and give her pretend food and then she always falls asleep very quickly. In my house I have a bedroom, a kitchen and a TV. Witpop makes me laugh because she makes a room for a car in her house.
“You have never even been in a car, now you make it a whole room. Are you a larney?”
“My car is a fancy red one and I don’t want it to get damaged so it needs its own room,” she says. She spends a lot of time washing her car too. Like she saw our cousin Kobus do one time for the Boer on the farm where he lives.
“Why don’t you make a room for the donkeys?” I ask her, just for a joke.
“Donkeys don’t sleep inside, they will kak everywhere.”
When she says this we laugh our heads off, thinking of Pantoffel and Rinnik in their own room.
When we are tired I invite her over to watch 7de Laan on my TV. Witpop loves 7de Laan and we talk about the programme and the news. Then she gets us coffee before we say good-night and go to our bedrooms to sleep. The problem is our houses don’t keep the goggas out. Once when I was sleeping in my bedroom, a scorpion stung me on the arm. It was a big sore for a long time but Pappie rubbed aloe and ash on the sting and then, when it had been sore for a long time, it got better and went away.
Tonight Witpop wants to build houses but I can’t relax and so I shout at her, “Why do you always want to do baby things when big people’s things are more important?”
She cries when I say that and she and Sponsie make a little camp by brushing all the stones and rocks away from where they want to lie down. Then they go to sleep. When I look at her she’s sucking her thumb, with Sponsie lying in her arms. Witpop can be so stupid sometimes. Everything is just games for her.
This oompie visiting here tonight is lekker cross, but when he came into camp I saw Pappie was very clever and gave him wine quickly to make him happy. Maybe later he will dance and find a place to sleep by the fire. But this oompie is not like the others. He’s got something on his mind and even though he is taking a dop I can see he is not in the party mood. Pappie has rolled him a skuif now and is trying to talk to him, to get a chat going, but the oompie is ignoring him, drinking wine and smoking.
I was scared when he got up and walked over to me so I ran away to Witpop. I don’t smaak this oompie but I am behind him now, keeping just out of his sight. Mamma can see me. I follow the wet shine of her eyes in the dark but she has been careful not to show that she can see me.
He is on his feet. There is a click and a flash and I see he has a knife. So that’s the thing he was touching in his pocket.
What is happening now? What is he going to do? The blade is out. He is going to steek Mamma.
19 MUIS
A klap always gets me when I don’t expect it. One minute I am sitting enjoying a dop and the next I am on my back like a tortoise with a boot going at my head or my back or my guts. Sometimes I think there is something about my face that really makes men the moer in. When I was small my pappa said I had a cheeky face with attitude in my eyes. That attitude got me a lot of hidings. I just had to look at Pappa and he would be standing up, loosening his belt.
“Hester,” he says to my mother and he’s dragging me across the room by my ear, “this blerrie klimmeid doesn’t want to hear.”
Once when I was very small Mamma tried to stop him but the belt came down on her back when he was finished with me. After that she didn’t ever stop him again. She told me I must stay out of his way and not look at his face. When he was very angry Mamma would feed me at the back door and tell me to sleep in the bush until his bees were back in the hive. My pappa had a lot of bees living in his head and, jinne, when they came out you didn’t want to be around.
But Jan was a good man. In all the months I lived with him he never hit me, even when I had an attitude. He didn’t have any bees living in his head. He only drank Fanta and that’s most probably why he didn’t get the moer in so quickly. Jan would have been a good pappa for Fansie. Someone who smiled and brought him sweets and not a pappie who hit and chased him.
When I think about it, I can’t be too angry with my pappa. Life is very hard, especially when you are working sheep, and a person feels like a little doppie at the end of the week. It’s a pity that a doppie makes some people want to kill someone else. It was a big pity that that someone else was me, with my cheeky face.
I also like a wyntjie but I don’t want to kill anyone. I want to be happy and dance to forget my troubles and then sleep. The best feeling is to be in the mood for a party and to dance and sing and then sleep.
Kapok takes a dop too when he has money. Then his bees come out and I get a few klaps because it makes him feel like a strong man. But he is not so angry as my pappa used to be. Really, if you want to know the truth, I think Kapok is scared of me. Once I threw boiling water in his face when he hit me. His face looked bad for a long time, with the skin peeling away and half of him was like a whitey. I would never have done that to my pappa. No way, jinne!
Tonight I am getting a big hiding. I know that. This hiding is the one Miskiet has been waiting a very long time to give me. This hiding is going to be one of those death hidings, where the man giving it wants the woman getting it to be dead when he is finished. Aunty Loos had one of those hidings from Oom Japie. Oom Japie was my pappa’s brother who lived with Aunty Loos on the farm with us in Fraserburg. Afterwards, when Oom Japie was finished with that hiding, we buried her in the veld on the farm and the police locked Oom Japie up for a long time before he was back, giving a new aunty the same hidings as the ones he gave Aunty Loos.
When Miskiet comes tonight I feel like one of the mice Fansie catches and keeps in a box. No matter how much I want to run away I can’t find a way out. Fansie lets his mice go but I don’t think that is going to happen to me. Now I am watching and waiting for his bees to start buzzing and then for the kick from his ni
ce clean tekkies. My bones feel small and my skin is black from walking in the Karoo sun. Why does he bother with someone like me? I am not important. I am nothing. I can’t read, I don’t have money, I just walk this way and that way across the Great Karoo with my children, a sick man, two skraal donkeys and a dog. If a farmer chases us, we go. If a car comes, we pull out of the way. If we see people, we turn another way. But this Miskiet won’t leave me alone and he has become the devil watching my life.
Go away, Miskiet. Find a woman who dresses in shop clothes and cooks white people’s food. I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to kick and klap me until I am bleeding out my mouth and nose.
But now, a blade shines in the firelight and I close my eyes. It is coming.
When he hits me I fall back on the ground. Ja, I think as I am falling. Ja, Kapok, I told you he wouldn’t just be happy to suip with you. I feel the weight of him on top of me and I smell dop on his breath. Is this how a sheep feels when it has its throat cut? I feel my shoulders scraping on the stones. He is so heavy. I can’t breathe.
“Muis? Muis? Kom.”
The weight is off me but I keep my eyes closed tight, waiting for a kick.
“Muis. Kom.”
I open my eyes and look at the stars. Kapok and Fansie lift me on to my feet and I hear Kapok telling Fansie to bring in the donkeys and fetch his sisters.
“We are going to blerrie Oudtshoorn tonight,” he says.
Miskiet is lying next to me with blood coming out his mouth. His eyes are closed. Kapok is using his knobkerrie as a walking stick. His leg always gives him trouble when he sits too long.
“We can get away if we leave now,” he says.
Miskiet’s hand is closed around his knife. I look at it and think that knife is the same one that killed Jan.
20 KAPOK
A man can’t inspan donkeys when he’s had a dop. Jislaaik! My fingers don’t want to work and I can’t get the buckles up so I just push it all into Fansie’s hands and I hold the donkeys still. Fansie is a real little bliksem. He sees I am struggling with the buckles and that we are in a rush but he just watches me. Even though I have a maybe dead man lying next to my camp fire, who I have bliksem’d, and we are about to make a run for it, he doesn’t say anything or try to help.
Now, when I tell him, his young boy hands do the job quickly.
“Kom, kom!”
He uses a knee to push Pantoffel into position in front of the karretjie.
“Staan!”
“Skuif!”
Both donkeys back into the karretjie. He is good with donkeys and they listen to him.
Miskiet hasn’t moved since I hit him. Even though it was dark I saw blood dripping into the dust near his mouth. He is lying on his side with one leg folded over the other and one arm stretched above his head. I bliksem’d him so hard he is surely dead. And you know what? I don’t care. He can blerrie vrek. He comes into my camp acting like a grootmeneer, kicking my coffee over and not saying a word and then trying to stick a knife in my woman. If he got that right, what am I going to do with her children?
“We should pull him away from the road into the bushes,” I say to Fansie. The boy stops what he is doing and looks at the body, then shakes his head.
“He just looks like a dronkie who has passed out. Leave him.”
Tonight, when I saw the knife, I knew he had come to murder. Muis was right, he hadn’t forgotten. The first chance and he wants to slag her. She is still standing on the spot where Fansie and I pulled her to her feet, moaning. No words, just moaning like a baby.
I bliksem’d Miskiet without thinking. He was going to kill Muis and I stopped him. And now a big man with a knife is lying next to the road and he’s maybe dead because I hit him. The knobkerrie was next to me when we sat by the fire, then in my hands, above my head, then it came down so fast I didn’t have time to blerrie think. My ears roared when I cracked it down. Still now my heart is beating fast and I can feel thundering in my ears. “He’s not dead but he might die because I hit him as hard as I could,” I say to Fansie.
“You must have cracked his kop,” says Fansie. The karretjie is hitched and the klimmeid has loaded all our things. For a few moments she and Fansie stand, and in the moonlight I can see them looking at Miskiet. “If he dies the police will come for us. We must run now,” I say. “I did it because he was going to kill Mamma.”
“Let’s go away, Pappie,” says the boy.
Witpop’s girl voice says, “If he was a porcupine we would be braaing now.”
“Sies, Witpop. It’s not right to talk about a dead person like that,” the boy says. “Shoo, how can you say something like that?”
Then she starts laughing and Fansie too. Blerrie children. Their pappie has cracked someone’s head, their mamma is not lekker and they are laughing.
It is too dark for me to see Miskiet’s face, but I bend over his body and feel for a pulse. I can feel it beating.
“He is not dead.”
“No, and when he wakes up he is going to have a moer of a headache and he is going to be looking for us. Kom, Pappie, let’s go now,” says Fansie.
Muis’s moaning becomes louder and Fansie helps me lift her into the back, where Sponsie is already fast asleep and wrapped in her blanket. Muis lies next to the girl, curled small, and now she looks like she will sleep too.
Fansie gives me a hand up and I take the reins. The two children move up front, whispering to the donkeys, and we move off, onto the gravel road, and then we are heading for the far-away mountains. I look back once and see the body, still there in the dirt. Very soon the lights of Leeu Gamka are like lost stars behind us. The roar of the trucks fades and all we can hear is a jackal yelping far away in the veld. After a while I slow down to let Witpop up into the karretjie.
“Where are we going, Pappie?” she asks.
Before I answer I look over at her mamma, still curled like a baby, but now crying quietly in the karretjie.
“Blerrie Oudtshoorn,” I say, loud enough so Muis can hear. “We are going to get you birth certificates and your mamma an identity.”
21 WITPOP
For Mamma to get an identity she needs a picture of her face and she doesn’t know how to get a picture. Aunty Diksop told me that we have to go to Prince Albert on the day the government comes to give identities and they will sort out a picture. The problem is that the government comes so little and we never get it right to be in town on the same day. Really. You tell Pappie he must be in Prince Albert on a Monday and he looks at you skeef.
“What day is it now?”
“It’s Monday, Pappie.”
“But then we must be there now.”
“No, Pappie, next Monday.”
“No man, I can’t worry about next Monday on today’s Monday.”
Really, it’s very hard to get Pappie to understand.
It’s because of all this that we don’t get pay and we don’t have birth certificates and Mamma never gets her identity. If we did get pay, then Mamma said I could have money to buy a pink roll-on, a lappie and pads from Pep. I was so happy when she said that, it was like I had these things in my hands already. All I could think about was that one time when I went to Pep and the lady there let me smell all the roll-ons. The Pep lady said the pink one smelt like roses. Didi told me that roses are flowers, like a vygie.
“They are big white and pink balls and they only grow in Prince Albert because they need water. They are too soft and sweet for this hard veld.”
Didi told me that next time we are in Prince Albert I must look at the museum if I want to see roses.
“They have pink ones there that smell just like roll-on,” Didi said.
Once, when Didi was in Prince Albert, she asked Kobus to steal a rose from the museum for her. Really, he did it. He pulled a pink ball off one of the bushes and brought it to her. She said afterwards he was the moer in because he didn’t know those pretty balls had thorns and they pricked him very sore. Didi keeps the rose in her scho
ol Bible. She showed it to me and even though it was brown and hard it still smelt a bit of roll-on. She wouldn’t let me touch it.
“Your hands are too hard for it,” she said.
If we went to Prince Albert I would try and be brave enough to smell those white and pink balls at the museum, but I am sure someone would chase me now, after Kobus pulled one off. Then, I thought, maybe Fansie could take me in the night and I could steal a rose too, even though I don’t have a Bible where I could keep it.
After a few days of thinking about roll-on and roses I changed my mind. What I really want with my pay is school shoes. Shiny new ones. I can see them in my head. They must be black with a buckle on the outside and cut-out flowers on the toes.
“Mamma, when we get our All Pay, I think I must get school shoes first.”
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “At least your feet will be warm in winter.”
It was decided then. I would get school shoes.
“Can I have a pink roll-on, a lappie and pads the next month?”
“Yes, yes, you can have those things the next time.”
Pappie said he would teach me to polish my shoes with his special shoe brush.
“My father taught me to keep my shoes shiny,” he said. “If you keep your shoes shiny they last longer and they are softer.”
When I get my new shoes he says he will cut out board from an old box and put it inside to make them last longer.
I was so happy when he told me that I couldn’t stop smiling and Fansie got cross.
“You are not going to get stupid shoes because we don’t get pay because Mamma doesn’t have an identity,” he said.
“Leave her,” Mamma said to him. “Leave her to think about her shoes and her spray.”
“Not spray, Mamma, roll-on.”
Mamma didn’t hear. She was already walking off to look for stokkies.
My Children Have Faces Page 6