Mother to Mother, Page 5

  People forget who they are when surrounded by scores of faces they do not know, eyes that do not recognize them and would not know them in the morrow, mouths that have never said their names. There is a comforting anonymity, a freeing face-lessness, when one finds oneself surrounded by strangers. Such people have no connection to one’s past or future, and the present is a fleeting blur, never to be remembered.

  Apprehension swamped me, giving me the strength of an ox. Blindly, I fought my way, pushing and shoving and screaming for people to get out of my way. Fording a mighty river would have been easier. Scared people are like blind-starving donkeys - stupid and stubborn.

  In what felt like a year but was, in all probability, perhaps just a few minutes, ten at most, I finally came within shouting distance of my house. Siziwe, my youngest and the only girl, was standing at the door when I eventually got there.

  ‘Where are your brothers?’ I said as I reached the gate.

  4

  7.30 pm

  ‘Where are your brothers?’ again I asked, for I had received no answer from Siziwe, who was standing at the door, looking at me as though she had seen a ghost. I know I looked a sorry sight, but right then, all I wanted was the knowledge, the certainty, that all three of my children were home. That they were all right. That nothing had happened to them. They were safe. I know that earlier, if anyone had asked me, I would have said my concern was for her, for Siziwe. A girl-child, she is more vulnerable than the other two children. However, now that I had seen her, seen that she was in no immediate danger, my secret worry resurfaced, variegated and magnified a thousand fold. Anxiety over the safety of the other two assailed me. But, deep down my heart, I knew I was more worried about Mxolisi. Perhaps it is because we were all alone, the two of us, all those years after his father deserted us. Or, it could be the unusual way in which he came to this world that has created this bond between us that is unlike any other . . . certainly unlike what I feel about my other two children . . . I really don’t know. And sometimes, I don’t even know whether the whole thing isn’t knitted and sewn in my imagination.

  ‘Where are they?’

  My daughter shrugged her shoulders. ‘Lunga is here,’ she said, ‘but where bhuti Mxolisi is,’ there was a slight pause. Then, raising her shoulders up to her ears, she said, ‘Who can say?’ With a careless shrug, she dropped the shoulders back to their accustomed place. This display of lack of concern for Mxolisi irritated me. She should care. Mxolisi, I knew . . . I was certain . . . would care very much were she the one who was not at home and whose whereabouts we could not account for at a time like this. He would be worried about her safety.

  ‘When last did you see him?’

  Siziwe gave me such a look as would be hard to describe. A disquieting look. A cheeky look? But then again, an I’m-sorry-for-you look: brow raised, ever so slightly. Cheeks mounded, just a little. Lips stretched sideways, carelessly, as though she were not aware she had done this. The overall effect was that the eyes, instead of widening because of the raised eyebrows, were narrowed. Baleful. Then, with calm deliberateness, slowly, ever so slowly, she turned away. Turned away and went inside even as I walked up the stoep toward her.

  What was that all about? I wondered. Wasn’t that just the welcome I needed? Here I had worried myself sick about her, and what do I get for welcome? How does my daughter receive me? A sour face. Yesterday’s custard left outside the fridge.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ I yelled after the receding back.

  ‘Mama?’ I wasn’t fooled by the tone of innocence. I’d seen that sinister look. Moreover, I was quite sure Siziwe had heard me the first time. I repeated my question nonetheless. By this time I was inside the house, in the dining-room. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking at me. Gone, however, the look that had so unsettled me a minute ago — the incongruous marriage of haughty indifference and naked pity that had sat on her brow.

  ‘Mama,’ she said, her tone much subdued, softer and without the brashness of a few seconds ago, ‘I have not seen him, today.’ Abruptly, she turned around, wrenched the back door open and left. I was a little puzzled by the brusqueness of her exit. What could be the matter with her? I wondered as I made for my bedroom.

  What is eating Siziwe? again I asked myself as I kicked the remaining shoe right off my foot. Fancy that, I thought, she never even noticed that I was limping . . . never noticed that I am walking without one shoe. How could she have missed such an obvious thing? Here I brave a veritable war, concerned for her safety, and she doesn’t even ask me what happened to my other shoe? I don’t believe she missed seeing that I was bedraggled, dishevelled, and totally worn out. Rattled by all the turmoil I’d been through.

  What bothered me more than that, though, was her attitude, her nonchalance and lack of concern for Mxolisi, who loved her so much. That is the trouble with womb siblings, it’s not blood and blood that binds them but blood and water. Besides, both Siziwe and Lunga often accuse me of favouring Mxolisi because I will let him do things I forbid them. But he is older than them. Is that my fault? I also knew that were the positions reversed, were it Mxolisi who was home, he would go in search of whoever was missing, his sister or brother . . . more so his sister.

  7.45 pm

  Bang! Bang! Fists pound on the back door. Could only be Skonana, my next-door neighbour. What does she want? Must have been lying in wait for me, watched me behind her new see-through curtains.

  ‘Ndiyeza, Mmelwane! I’ll be right there, neighbour!’ I had just put my bag down and kicked off the offending shoe but had not rid myself of the light spring jacket I wear when the South Easter’s a little too crisp for comfort. I reached under the bed and pulled my veldskoene, the old leather slippers Mrs Nelson had given me for Christmas five years ago. I liked shuffling in them around the house.

  ‘Yes!’ I called out as I stepped out of the bedroom. Skonana had started banging the door again. ‘Ndiyeza! — Coming!’ I shouted.

  Lunga was either asleep or reading a book. The house could burn down before that one noticed the fire, his eyes were forever buried in something he was reading. Or, exhausted from all that reading, he’d be snoring away, still in his seat, his head to the side, lolling against his shoulder.

  I shambled out of the bedroom, past the dining-room and into the kitchen. The door was slightly ajar. Skonana, leaning over the barbed wire fence that separates the two houses, saw me as I emerged from the dining room.

  ‘Molo, Mmelwane! Hello, Neighbour!’ I said as I opened the door wider and stepped outside.

  ‘Mama kaSiziwe,’ she shouted, totally skipping the customary greeting. ‘But what happened to you?’ She did not give me time to answer her question before saying, ‘I see you’re limping. And whatever did you do with your other shoe?’ Does the woman have eyes even at the back of her head? Trust her to notice each and everything that happens to me . . . or to the children . . . or to Dwadwa. I swear she sees even when she is fast asleep.

  ‘Forgive me for not letting you rest over a cup of tea first,’ she said. And while I was still groping for a response, deciding which of her questions to answer first, she continued, ‘but I . . .’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ I said, knowing there was no escape. She would not rest till her hunger for knowing had been fed. ‘I lost my shoe getting off the bus,’ I lied. ‘Now, you know what happens when anyone walks barefoot on these streets, on which people break bottles every day. I stepped on a bottle neck.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Ag!’ I said, ‘Don’t let’s worry about that shoe. It was an old thing anyway.’ I looked her straight in the eye. ‘But, tell me,’ I said, ‘what has been happening here? What have you people been doing to our lovely township while we were busy sweating at work?’

  ‘My Sister,’ she shook her head.

  ‘What is it?’ I said, painting on my face a look that said I was duly sobered by her solemnity.

  ‘Sukuhlekisa ngathi, sizigugele, Don’t mock us, we are old,�
� Skonana said. ‘Have our children not killed a mlungu woman?’

  ‘One?’

  ‘You don’t think killing ONE white woman is enough bad news for the whole of Guguletu?’

  ‘No! No! No!’ hastily, I said. ‘I’m only saying that because, on the bus we heard so many conflicting stories.’ I did not reveal the figure I’d heard on the bus. It would only compound the confusion if my information was inaccurate. But my neighbour’s words brought some relief . . . not much, but definitely some . . . more than I had had reason to hope. That thin shaft led to a fluttering, then an awakening, a resurgence. Was it not possible? Perhaps only one person had died. Perhaps no one had died. Serious injury, perhaps . . . even that would be something.

  Rude reality pulled me back to the here. ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard,’ Skonana was saying. ‘But Mzonke, my cousin who’s a policeman, told me himself that a white woman was killed here in Guguletu, today. A young woman, he said.’

  Guguletu is a violent place. Every day one hears of someone who was killed . . . or nearly killed. Often more than one. Every day — rape, robbery, armed assault and other, more subtle forms of violence. Every day. Guns are as common as marbles were when we were growing up. But, a white woman? To kill a mlungu woman? Where would we sleep? What would the police do to us?

  The police are not our friends. They are to this day worse than ineffectual. Here in Guguletu we do not like the police. They are an endless source of irritation, at best. At worst, a presence we dread, an affliction. We know that many innocent people have died in their hands. Their blood-stained hands. Died. Killed by the police. With impunity they killed our people in the past. Therefore the perpetrators of evil, those who have made crime a career, live in the benign atmosphere cultivated by that corruption. As warm wet dirt breeds maggots . . . so have criminals thrived. Sheltered by the police who conducted deeds even worse than theirs. Thus, crime thrives. But killing a white woman was quite another thing. Quite another thing.

  Young and old alike, men and women, no one is exempt from the scourge. Violence is rife. It has become a way of life. When a husband leaves for work of a morning, there is no guarantee he’ll safely find his way back home come night. Nor is there such casual certainty about children going to school. Between drunk drivers of stolen cars, the police, tsotsies and those who kill those with whom they do not see eye to eye in matters political — safety has become quite, quite fragile.

  I woke up as from a deep sleep. But the nightmare would not leave me alone. It was there in my neighbour’s eyes. It was not going to leave me alone. Real and tangible as the fingers on my hand.

  ‘What is the matter with our people? Don’t they know the police will pull this township apart? Is it not enough we kill each other as though the other is an animal and one is preparing a feast? Is that not evil enough? A white woman? Are people mad? Have they lost their minds?’ My voice was shrill to my own ears and I saw that my hands shook. Indeed, my whole body was trembling.

  ‘It’s schoolchildren who did that,’ said my neighbour.

  I gasped, memories of the debate on the bus returning to haunt me. Words I’d taken not quite seriously, now wore a ghastly sinister shade of meaning.

  ‘Who else would do such a mad thing?’

  I thought I detected a note of gloating in her voice. Skonana has no children and somehow manages to make that seem such a virtue. ‘I have no children and no worries’, is her favourite saying, whenever any one of us complains of some misdeed one of our offspring has sprung on us. Skonana seems to equate child with problem. Mind you, looking at what scraps our children do get into these days, she could have a point. But I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that.

  ‘Murderers are countless as the trees of a forest in this Guguletu of ours,’ I told her. ‘Most of them, I’d say, are well over thirty and do not attend any school.’ I was fed up with her and wanted to go back into the house. Close the door to her face and go about my own business — change into something comfortable, which is what I was doing in the first place before she called me out, the meddlesome gossip. But I was also curious as to what, exactly, had happened. Skonana is a very busy, very successful Shebeen Queen and a useful source of information about the goings on in the township during the day. My curiosity got the better of me.

  ‘On the bus, people were saying that cars were stoned here in Section 3?’

  ‘What Section 3?’ she asked, her brows shooting up and writing semi-circles. What was she going to say happened to bring this pandemonium to our street? How account for the masses mobbing our very gates? We have no market anywhere near this street. And the Saracens. What were all those Saracens doing at the Police Station? Taking a vacation?

  ‘The thing happened right here on our street!’ my neighbour said conspiratorially. ‘Right here, on this same NY 1.’ Each word rolled off her tongue as a bullet from a gun: bang! bang! bang! bang! ‘Over there,’ she said, pointing toward the bridge further down NY 1, in a southerly direction.

  At that, I gave her a sharp look that asked a thousand questions.

  She nodded her head, eyes widened knowingly.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Now I understood. Her negative was irony, to emphasize the positive. Leave the rest of Section 3 out of it, she was saying. Only our thin slice of it is affected this time.

  ‘Ja!’ again she nodded her head. ‘And it wasn’t even one settler, one bullet, my friend.’ How could a person die from the car she’s in being stoned? Terrible visions of necklacing flared before my eyes. Oh, no! No! Not that! Dear God, not that!

  ‘What happened? How . . . ?’ I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t come out and say out loud — how did the children kill this woman? as though I were talking about the slaughter of a chicken. Wringing its neck. Nkq! Done.

  ‘Knife,’ she said quietly. Her right fist, thumb up, plunged into the cupped palm of the left hand, making a noise softer than that produced by two hands clapping against each other. Softer and duller than a smack or fist hitting hand. Harder, though. A thunk, lacking sharpness but heavy as hell. ‘They stabbed her.’

  5

  My stomach turned. Skonana’s eyes softened. ‘Come over, let me put the kettle on.’ I shook my head, closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve had quite a time getting here, I can tell you that. Let me lie down for a while.’ For some inexplicable reason, I felt weepy, like bawling my head off. My knees were giving notice of their intent to give up the duty of carrying me, of holding me upright. They were trembling and felt weak and wobbly as though someone had spun me round and round and then abruptly let go of me.

  ‘Thanks, Mmelwane,’ I said, my voice feathery, barely above a whisper. ‘Why don’t we have our tea on Sunday, when I’ll be off?’ Not waiting for her reply, I dragged myself back into the house. My head was reeling.

  Guguletu? Who would choose to come to this accursed, Godforsaken place? This is what I want to know — what I can’t begin to comprehend. I keep asking myself the same question, over and over again. What was she doing here, your daughter? What made her come to this, of all places? Not an army of mad elephants would drag me here, if I were her.

  As for myself, I came to Guguletu borne by a whirlwind . . . perched on a precarious leaf balking a tornado . . . a violent scattering of black people, a dispersal of the government’s making. So great was the upheaval, more than three decades later, my people are still reeling from it.

  It was on a Friday that the rumour of removals first surfaced in Blouvlei. Although we went to school five days a week, on no day were my nine-year-old feet as light as on Friday to take me there. They were lighter still bringing me back. Things happened on Friday. Good things. Lovely things. Delicious things. Everything seemed expanded and carefree, the parents relaxed and more generous than on any other day.

  Sure, there were more chores to do on Fridays, from early morning till late at night. But there was more play-time too, mother sending Khaya and me up and down the location: �
��Get me skaapkop from Mandaba! Get me isityhwentywe from Mapheka! Go to Mavuthengatshi’s shop and get me some sugar. Better still, she would send us to the shops over by the Main Road, where cars and buses zoomed up and down the busy streets that were tarred and where abelungu lived in their big, lovely houses with electric lights. When that happened, we were likely to be given a cent or even a whole five cents to spend as we pleased. With all the toing and froing of a Friday, Mama was not as particular as on other days about keeping time. She didn’t notice when I went in or out of the house. And that was just fine with me, for then I could play outside as much as Khaya did . . . play outside and not come inside till well into the night.

  Mama worked half day, so she was always home when Khaya and I returned from school. This Friday, I hadn’t even taken off my gym dress when she urged me:

  ‘Run to Mandila’s and get me a ten cent’s vetkoekies. Here,’ she said, fishing out money out of her overall pocket.

  ‘Put the kettle on first, and run!’

  I knew what that meant. She wanted me back before the water boiled. That was a test that I hadn’t dawdled on the road. I ran out of the house, across the field of scraggy grass, past the little dam fringed with a thin crop of straggling reeds and oonongobozana, so delicious to the taste. This day, however, I completely ignored the fare. On the other side of the dam, beckoned Mama Mandila’s little pondok, where could be found the best, the most scrumptious, cookies in all Blouvlei.

  Even before I reached her door, the warm, tangy smell of vetkoek frying hit me. My mouth watered and I swallowed several times. Swallowed, although there was nothing but good, fat hope in my mouth.