My Children Have Faces

by Carol Campbell

  There is no water in this veld. Just a bak by the windmill for the sheep. If I want to catch anything it will be here where animals and birds come to drink. I roll over on my stomach and lie still. With my kettie I shoot two Namaqua duifies. First one and then, as its mate stands next to its body, I hit it with a stone too. I burn off the feathers and gut them with the knife I took from the oom. I cook the meat over a small fire from stokkies off dried-out bushes. The birds are so small I crunch right through the bones and spit out some burnt feathers. Afterwards I find a place to sleep, away from the water, out of sight. If the farmer checks this bak today he’ll find me if I am too close. It’s better to move off a little so I can sleep in peace. For a long time I watch the clouds making shapes in the sky. There is a tortoise cloud that looks like it is drinking from a watergat. One is a kudu spoor and another one is an old man with a beard and hat who looks like he is smoking a pipe.

  Pappie is in my mind. He won’t worry. If they move on I’ll track them easily. He knows that. That oom is behind us. That’s one thing I know for sure. Pappie didn’t kill him with that knobkerrie. He’s not strong enough to bring down a knobkierie on a man and split his head open. Pappie thinks he is strong but I can see how his sore leg has made him weak. He didn’t kill that oom. If he is not badly hurt, he will be after us. That oom is not lekker, but he is not the sort to go to the police. He doesn’t want police to know about this thing he has with Mamma. That way if he kills her they’ll know who did it. Whatever it is, whatever the reason is that he is chasing us, he doesn’t want anyone to know. When I wake up I must check our back trail. That oom is following us, oh jissie, I can feel it.

  In the afternoon a cold wind wakes me and I think about food again. There is soutbos growing near the bak and, like a sheep, I chew leaves. Then a duikertjie comes, picking its way through the bushes to the water. If I hit it between the eyes I can kill it. A stone is ready in my hand and slowly I aim, pulling the elastic back as far as it will go.

  “TstTst.”

  It turns at the strange noise, its ears twitching, its little black nose sniffing the air. The stone flies. Today hunger makes me faster than this bokkie and the animal falls to its knees. I leap on it, bashing its head with a rock to make sure it can’t run.

  I have meat, I have food. My happiness is too much and I fall on my backside and sit with my dead bokkie between my legs. “Dankie, Liewe Jesus, dankie.” Its warm sides twitch and I want to cook again. But then, when I see the oom’s knife lying where I slept, I know I must go. Mamma needs this meat, so they can all eat. This duikertjie will give us her legs and make us able to run.

  With the bokkie around my neck I move away from the mountains to the koppies far away. There is a fence between me and the ridge. A fence always means a road. It’s the road we used to come into the farm. Our tracks from last night are still clear in the soft red sand. There are donkey droppings and my kaalvoet spoor. And then a long thin line that wanders like a dronkie from side to side. A dikwiel bicycle has come after us. A little way on, I find a Black Label bottle so new there are tiny drops of beer dripping into the dust. A person is nearby. I cross the road, climb through the fence and head for the koppies. They will give me a good place to see ahead.

  On top, I sit with the duikertjie next to me and let my eyes move over the vlaktes and the mountains. Everything is still. Then, far away, I see a man and his bicycle on the track heading to the house. One of the workers, maybe. He stops and pushes for a while. Why is he off today when the farm is so busy? He must be a visitor. At the bottom of a small koppie he pushes the bike off the road, leaves it behind a bush and climbs. That man is checking the trail ahead. For a long time he sits and watches. I move down the back of a koppie, out of his sight. It’s going to take longer but I’ll go around the back of the house and come into our uitspan from the other side.

  From so far off I will look like any klonkie to this man. As I run I know one thing for sure. That man sitting on the koppie is the oom. It didn’t take him very long to find us, even with a sore head. Now I know he must be very cross and when he finds us he is going to want his knife. That oom is stalking us because he wants to make a kill.

  When I arrive at the camp, it is nearly dark. I stand there trying to pull breath into my lungs. My legs are shaking from running so fast.

  “The oom has found us.”

  Mamma and Pappie’s eyes go wide. Pappie stops cleaning his pipe and Mamma stands up.

  “Where is he?” asks Pappie.

  “Sitting on a koppie watching us.”

  For a while nobody says anything. Then Pappie says, “We must eat as if there is nothing wrong. There are skaapsterte. They were docking the tails today. Everyone was given as many as he wanted. Eat, Fansie, tonight we do not go hungry.”

  Mamma has cooked them, still in their wool, in a large pot of boiling water. She fishes one out for me and I slip the meat and bone out of its woollen coat with one squeeze. Sponsie and Witpop have already eaten. They are sleeping, full of meat and so tired from last night’s running.

  “Mamma?” I say. She is quiet again but she smiles.

  “Dis ’n mooi bokkie,” Pappie says. “We’ll clean it and carry on like nothing is worrying us.”

  After I have eaten my skaapsterte we work together with the oom’s big knife. First stripping off the skin, then hanging up the carcass by the feet under the windmill. Rinkhals is so full he lies on his side, snoring. “We need to cut it in pieces and dry it on a fence,” Pappie says. But we know tonight we will be running, not making biltong.

  When we have finished washing the blood from our hands and arms Pappie says, “There is no moon. When it’s dark we’ll move off. There is a road around the back of the house. We must let the fire go down now and make it look like we are going to sleep.” He stretches as if it is the end of a hard day and speaks quietly. “He won’t come tonight, there are too many people here for murder.”

  25 MISKIET

  I open my eyes. A bird hops on and off the circle of stones where they had their fire. The place reeks of donkey shit and stale wood smoke. It’s a smell that glues itself to karretjiemense. I do not know how they stand it. Stinking human-animals, never washing, never changing their clothes.

  For a while I close my eyes again. There is a bloody taste in my mouth and my ears are ringing. I must have bitten my tongue again. My head throbs. She was pinned under me. I had her. My knife was ready. And then blackness. That old bastard hit me over the head with something. When I open my eyes the bird is close to my face and I lift my hand to touch it but it flutters off and settles on the rocky circle again.

  Be afraid, little bird. If I catch you my hand will close around your small body and squeeze until your tiny head hangs and beads of blood form in your nostrils.

  What makes me sick is she has raised my son to be a filthy rat. He is starved, dressed in lappe, and the look of a jackal is in his eyes. When he is mine I will donder these karretjie manners out of him.

  I can see him dressed in clean pants and an ironed shirt with new tekkies, the envy of all the filthy little rats scavenging in the lokasie streets. But she took him into the veld and now he is worse than they are.

  Eina, my head is so sore. A big knop has swollen up and I let my hand rest on it. My hand falls back to the ground and I lie still. Trucks on the highway make the ground shake, making the throbbing in my head worse. One, two, then a car, three, four, five.

  I push up on to my backside and sit for a while before I try to stand. He hit me hard, but not hard enough to kill me. He wanted to kill me. He should have killed me. Now he will have to die too. I would have left him before this. When I spit, it’s all blood. For a while I stare at the red stain in the dust, but when flies land on it I get up.

  My knife is gone. My flick knife that I bought from Smits that was so sharp and ready is in their hands.

  The boy has taken it, ja. I can feel it. He wouldn’t have left a knife like that.

  Okay, have it boy.
It is a present from your daddy. I have another one, boy. I have Jan’s knife. Take my knife but you better know I am coming.

  Tracking two donkeys pulling a karretjie isn’t difficult. They won’t move quickly. They can’t.

  When I catch up to them I will drag her into the veld and slap her bony face, this way and that way, this way and that way. She can scream, she can beg for her life, but this time she will fall to the ground and I will kick her useless. What I am looking forward to is taking a rock and bashing her face, and when the world finds her she will be a bloody, dirty, faceless nothing. She will lie for months in the Leeu Gamka mortuary and no one will know her name, and no one will know what her face used to be, and then she will be tossed like a dead dog into the ground so that the rest of us don’t have to live with the stink. Or, even better, no one will find her in this wasteland and the crows can pick her bones clean.

  My first few steps are a stagger. I need a drink of water and a wash. There is time for all of that, and still I will catch up with the slow donkeys and filthy karretjie-nothings who think they can run from me.

  In the grey morning I walk back to the house on the hill above Leeu Gamka, through the tunnel and up the path. Ting-a-Ling’s dog eyes me but it knows better than to bark unless it wants a kick. And today if it barks I will kick it to death.

  In my house I wash my body carefully with a cloth and soap, and drink three pain pills. For a little while I sit on the chair in my kitchen. The window and the door are closed and I enjoy the quiet. I make sweet coffee. Then I pack a bag. Money at the bottom, tinned food, a can opener, matches, soap and spray. In my drawer I look at all my knives. The big one my daddy used to slag sheep is hard to carry. There are three little fold-away knives and then another smooth black flick knife that Jan bought from Smits after he saw mine.

  I flick it open and study the sharp point. It has never been used.

  Ja, Brother, when I flick your knife it will be so that I can stick it into the guts of your stinking whore.

  26 MUIS

  That first week, after Jan found me and took me to their house, I liked Miskiet more than him.

  His things were on a little wood table by his bed. A small bowl with yellow soap, a plastic comb, a metal razor and spray that smelt so lekker. When he was out, I touched each item and put it back exactly the way he had them. My favourite was the spray. I liked spraying some and then sniffing the air. I had never smelt a thing like that before. My father and brother smelt of wood smoke and tobacco, sheep and sweat. But this roll-on made you want to keep on smelling.

  When Miskiet and Jan came home from work they sat together by the fire outside, rolling cigarettes from newspaper and drinking coffee. At bedtime they both took off their clothes. Jan had a petroljokkie uniform and Miskiet wore a blue overall like an ordinary worker. Jan left his smart clothes on the floor by his shoes but Miskiet folded his and put them on a little shelf at the bottom of the table by his bed. Then they both crawled under their grey blanket, each on their own bed, and went to sleep. My pappa had the same blue overall as Miskiet and a grey blanket, but he didn’t have a bed. In the summer, when it was too hot to breathe, Pappa laid his blanket on the ground outside the door and slept so he could feel the evening breeze.

  In my new life in Leeu Gamka, away from the farm, I was cleaning for two men who slept high off the ground and washed with soap and used spray. It felt fancy, like I was working for larnies. Jan cleaned himself in the morning. His shift at the petrol station started before sunrise and he would wake me so that I could boil water for him to bathe. When it was ready I would say “Jan, your water is waiting” through the curtain that separated the kitchen, where I slept, and the room he shared with his brother. He would come through in shiny sleeping shorts, bare-chested and rubbing his eyes.

  “Muisie, wait outside,” he would say each time.

  I would go outside and sit on an old Coke crate at the door listening to the splashing as he washed his face, then his armpits, his privates and last his feet. He’d dry himself with a small pink towel then dress in his petrol-jokkie shirt, blue shorts, tekkies, and a cap. Before he left I made him coffee and we sat together talking for a few minutes. When he was gone, I prepared for Miskiet. The plastic bakkie of Jan’s dirty water I tossed on a small patch of grass. Miskiet wanted boiling water in two jugs next to the bak. His towel was blue and had to hang over the chair. Next to the plastic bak I laid out his soap bowl, razor, comb and spray, which he allowed me to take from his bedside the night before.

  When it was all ready, I said his name softly. “Miskiet, Miskiet, you must wake up now. Your washing water is ready.”

  Then I went back to sit on the Coke crate while he prepared for the day. Sometimes I peeped through the back window and I could see him standing naked with his back to me, leaning over the bak and washing his face. He wasn’t so skraal as Jan. When I peeped at Jan I just saw bones and stick legs. Legs like Fansie has now.

  When he was dressed, he left the house without a word and I went inside to make their beds and sweep.

  Miskiet looked smart and smelt nice when he went out. Jan told me his brother was looking for work in Leeu Gamka and that, some days, he hitched to Beaufort West.

  “He wants a sitting-down job,” he said, “and a car.”

  “He dresses smart enough for a sitting-down job,” I said. “He should go to Cape Town on the train and get a job there.”

  “No, he won’t go to Cape Town, that’s too far away.”

  I preferred Miskiet because it felt like he was important. Jan talked to me and was friendly but he stank of petrol and his hands were always greasy, with black under his nails.

  I thought Miskiet didn’t like me. He listened to my small voice in the morning to wake up but otherwise he didn’t speak to me. When he came home at night he ate the food I made but never said if it was good or bad. Jan always said my food was lekker, that I was the best cook, and he thanked me for doing a good job cleaning and washing his clothes, but more and more when Miskiet was there I felt like dirt on his shoe, like a piece of rubbish.

  One day, a long time after I came to their house, just as he was leaving, Jan took my hand and brought it to his lips. I was so shy. I looked at the ground but my heart was beating and that night I couldn’t wait for him to come home. When he did he brought me a can of Coke. We sat under the pepper tree and drank it together. After that I waited for Jan to come up the hill, singing or whistling as he came back from the Ultra City. Many times I walked to the petrol station and waited for him to finish and then we walked home together. All this time Miskiet said nothing. I knew I was just a meid in his thoughts. Someone to clean and make his food, someone he didn’t see.

  Then one night Jan came into the kitchen and I let him do what he wanted because it made him feel happy.

  After that night I saw Miskiet didn’t talk to Jan anymore. Before he said a few words, but now he said nothing and the silence was like a heavy rock on the house. He was always under the pepper tree smoking and watching us. It was this watching that started to drive me crazy in that house. Even when Jan came to me in the dark hours I knew Miskiet was awake and listening to our noises.

  Now Fansie says he saw him watching again, from the koppie. When he said that, fear came at me like the water in the Gamka when it has been raining. My legs started shaking.

  “He has found us,” I say to Kapok.

  “Ja, but he can’t keep up on foot.”

  “Pappie, he has a bicycle,” the boy says.

  “Ag well, unless he has solid tubes he is going to have a pap wheel very soon.”

  Kapok laughs but I am thinking what will happen when he visits our camp the next time.

  27 MISKIET

  They are running now. Kapok’s sjambok comes down on the donkeys, whipping them on into the night. Faster, faster, running for their lives.

  It’s no use, Kapokkie, I am coming. I am coming to catch you.

  Even in the dying light I can see the cart and its h
uddle of people shapes. They have a long way to go before they disappear and, even then, I will see the choices they make, no matter how fast those donkeys gallop. At the farm’s southern gate they must go left or right. Right will take them to the Leeu Gamka road. They are not going to take that one. They will want to hide from me and that road is open, connecting farms where there is nowhere to hide. Left will take them to the mountains and the tar road to Oudtshoorn. That’s the way they will go. They’ll take that one and branch off at Klaarstroom and maybe go back to Prince Albert. The only problem with that road is there are no escapes. When they are in the Gang it will be straight or nowhere and I will be right behind them. They could go into one of the farms – Paradys has nice hiding places, but I would pick up their tracks easily. What they might do is take the Willowmore Road, this side of Meiringspoort, and head east. Kapok knows the Willowmore farms; it’s shearing country and they need to eat. They won’t leave the Great Karoo. With its side roads and farm gates there are plenty of places to hide on the Willowmore Road. Yes, that’s what I want them to do. The Willowmore Road is a way into open space and loneliness, and a good place for settling old scores without anybody to see.

  Kapok will never go through Meiringspoort to Oudtshoorn. People like him have no courage for that, they stick to what they know, to roads they always travel. To cut through the Swartberg to a world of big towns and cars and white people would take guts he doesn’t have. Besides, Meiringspoort is a tunnel that catches you between high peaks and the river. Even Kapok won’t be that stupid – to take them into the mountains when they are running from a leopard who will keep after them long after all other hunters have given up.

  Their fear floats on the air towards me and I laugh, watching them run. They are afraid of me. How do they know I am here? Something has spooked them. It is impossible. Nobody saw me. Why, when they were already resting, supposed to be settled for the night, did they pick up and take off? That’s what is so irritating about karretjiemense – they smell you, even when you are a mile away. They were calm until the boy came back from his wanderings. He came from the side of the farmhouse with something around his neck, a buck or a rabbit, which Kapok skinned and hung under the windmill. The boy put something in a bucket and pushed it under the seat of the cart. Everyone was resting. Then, all of a sudden, they all stood up, inspanned the karretjie and were off.