by Elsa Joubert
The baby cried.
Take him to the room, mama said to Katie, so he doesn’t see his ma.
Poppie gave her mother the bread she brought from work. Stale bread could be soaked in coffee; the children would like that. She also handed her mother a few onions and potatoes that the old man working in the garden had given her as a present.
Can mama wait till the end of the month for the money?
Stone went back with her. First the bus, then the train, then again the bus. There were long waits, but they didn’t mind, it gave them a chance to talk.
All along she had been against his leaving Lamberts Bay and coming to Cape Town but he had said: How was I to know that I would have such trouble getting a permit to stay here?
But now he told her: You keep your mouth shut about me, I have got my permit.
How did you get it?
I have taken contract.
She didn’t need to ask what contract. She knew. All the black people knew it was what you took when you couldn’t get anything else, when you had to take something to stay on in the Cape. It was at the dairies at Philippi, near Nyanga. The work was hard, people couldn’t stand it, their fingers became sore and swollen and the glands in their armpits swelled up.
It is not far to go, said Stone, because he knew how hard hotel work made life for Hoedjie, who had to walk home in the middle of the night when the buses had stopped. I can get there on foot. I start milking at four o’clock in the morning, and we milk till two o’clock. When the milk cans are brought back, we start washing the cans. Five o’clock I can be back at the house.
It is before she gets home. Yes, but he starts at four in the morning. And she? She starts at six o’clock. And she works until. .. Until nine o’clock, but it is not the same thing. Poppie was not used to arguing with tata-ka-Bonsile. She was ashamed to think she was talking to her husband in this manner, but she thought: I know the Cape better than he does.
There was no other work, said Stone. Because I have come under contract I can get a plot and build a house for us.
How long will that not take!
How long would it take if I had not come under contract?
Yes, but the dairy work, it was the last thing... you are used to better.
It was after ten when they reached her room. From the room next door they could hear the talking and laughing of the men. He looked around him. The rooms were built of brick, with a ceiling, and whitewashed on the inside. It looked the same as when he was here last. There was no sign that anyone else had been there. He knew the blankets, but felt ill at ease in the dim light of the bulb against the ceiling. It made her look different, and made him feel different. They had never gone to bed by electric light anywhere else.
The voices of the workers in the room next door still worried him. But they were voices speaking a language he knew, so that made him feel more at ease in the white people’s place. But at the same time he was jealous. He felt a powerlessness come over him.
From now on you shut your mouth about my work, he said.
The light at the corner of the building burned all night, and even when he had switched off the light in the room, it was not dark, but dully lit by the glow coming through the thin cotton curtain. This dark was not the dark they knew.
He slept with her. All night, it seemed to her, he was on top of her. It felt to her as though his body had grown thin.
He neglected himself when he stayed alone in Lamberts Bay, she thought. And he is going to neglect himself again, even more so with this contract work.
When the night was old, two, three o’clock, he got up. He felt afraid to be there at night in a place where he did not belong. The noise in the room next door had died down. The light outside was still burning, but a strip of shadow ran down the length of the outside wall. He was careful to stay in the shadow on his way to the gate. The dogs started barking at the big house when the animals heard him fumbling at the gate. But before they could make too much noise he had slipped through. He began running down the street.
Whenever he saw motor-car lights approaching from far off, he hid in the moon shadows of shrubs. The closer his running brought him to the main street, the more often he had to duck, moving from one dark pool to the next. He was uneasy, he wanted to get out of that neighbourhood.
Near to the shops he met a night watchman warming himself at a fire he had lit in a broken drum. The man was also a Xhosa, and Stone gulped down the mug of lukewarm coffee he offered him. That way, the night watchman showed him, down the hill and then you’re at the station. He saw the light of the approaching train, and reached the platform just as the doors opened. He got into the last coach. The train was empty, with an early worker here and there. Only when the coach doors shut, and the train started moving again, did he feel safe.
Ever since he had arrived in the Cape, he had felt unsure of himself. Any moment the police might stop him and ask: Where is your pass? And then take him in. And even if he were to go back to Lamberts Bay, they could arrest him there as well.
The return half of the ticket he bought with Nonkosinathi was clasped in his hand. When the conductor came round, he could give it to him.
The workers on the opposite benches were sitting sleeping, their shoulders hunched forward, their bodies shaking with the movement of the train.
Stone fought the urge to sleep. He put his arm on the windowsill and rested his head on his arm. When the coach door opened and the conductor shouted: Claremont! the tiredness had not left his body.
At the station bus stop the bus from Nyanga had just pulled up, bringing in workers on their way to the city. He was the only passenger to go back to Nyanga. The lights in the buses were still on, but showed up more dimly in the greyness of the day which was starting. He sat up front in the bus, his head lowered, but he jerked it up, putting sleep away from him. He was uneasy about the new work. When the bus stopped at Nyanga he made his way past the queues of people waiting and started to run. There were no buses to the Philippi dairies, he had to go on foot. The quickest way was over the dunes through the bush. From kayas or shacks built under the bushes men crawled out on the way to work, paying no attention to him. Light rain was sifting down.
The lights were on full strength at the dairy, shining on the pools where the first workers had hosed down the . cement. The white man wearing gum boots splashed through the wetness. He had put on his thick overcoat.
You’re late for work, he said. But he left it at that. The boss boy will show you where to start. And from now on, come at the time I told you to come.
I think he was afraid you were not pitching up, said the man working next to Stone. After all the trouble with contracts and permits he gets very angry if the people don’t pitch up. But you’ll have to watch the coming late from now on. The boss knows: When a Kaffir has worked for a few days you can start shouting at him, they don’t leave the work if they are going to lose a few days’ pay.
Sundays and Thursdays I had the afternoon off, says Poppie, but Constantia was so far, when I got to the location the sun had already set. Just half an hour together, then we had to leave, when the child was asleep, or my sister had taken him to give me a chance to get away. So my husband was not satisfied that I should work there, and as he was now earning as well, I left after four months.
24
Stone was given a plot in Jakkalsvlei, one of the sections of the Nyanga location. There were several sections where people could build houses, Browns Camp and Elsies, and Kraaifontein and the Dutch Location named after the Dutch Reformed school. Emasekeni, one of the old locations, was built of corrugated iron, like the others. But the ones called the Old Location and the Mau-Mau were built of bricks. Many mixed people lived together, especially Xhosas with coloured wives.
Jakkalsvlei was hidden amongst the bushes, built against a little slope, and behind the houses you could see the sand dunes. Close to Stone’s plot a church was being built of bricks.
Hoedjie came to help build th
e house.
If buti Mbatane bothers me, I’ll move in with you, he said.
Hoedjie was still a gentleman when he came to Cape Town, says Poppie. The girls of Lamberts Bay loved watching him, dressed up in his white jacket with his white cap on his head, balancing the tray on the palm of his hand and serving beer or tea on the stoep of the hotel. He had a way of slipping the tip from the tray into the front pocket of his pants. It was good fun watching him; he was a showman.
But he disliked the work at the Carlton Hotel where his job was washing glasses in the scullery, where the fat barman was rude to him, and he had to walk a long way home at night. He left the hotel job and went to work in a Jewish factory in Bellville and there he got into bad company. He started drinking with his new friends.
The house was built bit by bit and as Hoedjie helped them carry the sheets of corrugated iron Poppie smelt the liquor on his breath. Buti Plank, the fisherman, was always drinking, says Poppie, but here in the Cape drink got hold of Hoedjie too.
Mosie also came to help build the house. I never liked this houseboy business. When your house is ready I’m coming to stay with you, little sister. The Jewish man I work for, this Mr Green, is going to help me. He says with my Standard Six certificate I can do better in his factory.
The house was not ready yet, only the walls of corrugated iron were up, and the roof was fixed, when they moved in. A man from Lamberts Bay brought her wedding dresser in his van and the table and chairs which she had left with some coloured people.
Now only buti Plank must still join us, thought Poppie, and it will be like when we were at Lamberts Bay.
There was only one room in the house, but they managed.
25
With the child on her back she walked to the dunes to gather wood. On the footpaths people passed her by, dragging wooden boards or sheets of corrugated iron.·
You must take care, the woman living in the house across the road, told Poppie.
She was a big woman, stouter and taller than Poppie, dressed in a long dress and pinafore of German print. Poppie knew her by sight, she was the neatest of all the women living there in the newly-put-up houses. She was always clean and kept her children and her yard clean, which was a hard job, because she sold coal. Every week the coal lorry came and unloaded a few bags of coal in her yard, which she would shovel into a rough shed made of corrugated iron and sell by the pail and half pail to the people of the neighbourhood.
Poppie bought coal from her. The winter was nearly over, but on the Flats the cold persisted. The rain kept on, right up to November. In the evenings Poppie lit a fire in the konka with the firewood she had gathered in the dunes. When the coals were glowing in the brazier she carried it into the house.
You must take care, the stout woman – her name was Mamdungwana – cautioned Poppie. Take along some of the bigger children when you go to gather wood. And watch where the children go. There are many skollies in the dunes.
Stone liked some heat to be still in the konka when he got up in the early hours to go to the dairy. He warmed his hands before leaving. He was no longer feeling well. As he had been warned, his fingers had started swelling from the continuous milking, the pain crept up to his armpits and the glands in his armpits became swollen.
At that time the contract was very strict, says Poppie, if you broke your contract, you were caught and they locked you up.
Mamdungwana talked of courage to Poppie and gave her advice. They saw each other every day. She was also a church-goer and took Poppie along to her church. Poppie no longer went with mama to the Methodist church, because at Lamberts Bay Stone had changed and become Anglican and she had to join up with him. Mamdungwana took her to the Nyanga Holy Cross church of the Anglicans.
Tata-ka-Bonsile made me to leave the Methodists, she often complained to Mosie, and now I go on my own to the Holy Cross, because he has no more spirit left for his church.
Mamdungwana gave her advice: You must get papers, sisi. That’s why it went so badly with you in Constantia. If you don’t have papers, the white people do just what they want with you.
How do I gt under contract it will be hard for me.
Come to Woodstock with me, said Mamdungwana. If they made you come from Lamberts Bay by force, they must give you papers.
The man in the office of Native Affairs sat behind his table and listened to her story, looked at her mama’s file and gave her a paper. It was the first time that Poppie had a paper with her name, her plot number and a date.
It is for three months only, said the man, then you must come back for an extension.
Three months seemed a long time to Poppie then. Her heart lifted.
We are not going home now, she said to Mamdungwana. I want to go and show you old Ben Menjane’s shop in Salt River.
They took the bus. Old Ben did not know her, but she knew the shop. She showed Mamdungwana the rolls of cloth, the blankets stacked up right to the ceiling, the boxes of shoes, the crockery.
Here my ma and I came to shop when we were living in Lamberts Bay. Here my ma bought all my wedding things.
With the papers in her bag, Poppie felt that Lamberts Bay lay behind her, that she was now one of Cape Town’s people.
She bought them two cool drinks and she paid the bus fare back to the location for both of them.
26
Now that she had the papers, it wasn’t so hard for Poppie when tata-ka-Bonsile began talking of breaking contract. One day he came home and said: I told my boss to sign off my pass/ I’m not going back there.
His fingers were swollen and stiff, he could hardly bend them to bring a spoon to his mouth. His work was slowing down.
I’ll go to the office in Langa and show them my fingers.
She spoke to her ma: Will mama look after my child for me, if I get a char job and work by the day?
Mama agreed. Mama was not working at this time and it was only at night that the stepfather made trouble for her if she looked after Poppie’s child.
A church-going woman whom she knew, told Poppie of a job at Bellville, charring for a Mr Pullen who had a garage and lived above it with his sick wife. She only needed to take one bus, seven o’clock from Nyanga, to arrive at Bellville by eight. Mr Pullen was an elderly man whose hands were stained with black grease. You can leave again by three o’clock, he said. There’s not so much to do. And on Saturdays you can leave by twelve. The pay was two pounds five shillings per week, and even paying bus fare twice a day left her with more than she had earned at Constantia.
It was a good time for us, says Poppie.
At the office it went well with tata-ka-Bonsile too. The white man had already told him that he would have to go back to the country, to the Ciskei, because he had broken contract, when a black man came into the room and put down a form on his table.
Wait, said the white man to tata-ka-Bonsile after he had read the form. This wood factory needs a worker, I’ll give you another chance. If you are given the contract at the factory in Bellville, then you may stay on.
This time the work was not so hard. He worked as toolboy to an electrician. He worked there till he got sick again.
After Poppie had been given her papers, and tata-ka-Bonsile had got a better job, the house in Jakkalsvlei began to feel like their house in Lamberts Bay. Tata-ka-Bonsile liked gardening. He worked over the sandy soil with ash from the fire and with mqomboti bran which she begged off beer-making people as manure was scarce. He started planting vegetables, potatoes, cabbages, beetroot, beans, mealies. And Poppie learnt to look towards the mountain like the Cape people, and when clouds started gathering about the mountaintop she would say: Look, the weather is turning. She loved telling Mamdungwana about her first house at Lamberts Bay. Her brothers got to like Mamdung wana too.
Four o’clock in the afternoons she would get back from Bellville, fetch Bonsile from her ma, do her washing at home and cook. While tata-ka-Bonsile had been staying with sisi Violet, when Poppie worked sleep-in, he had neglected hi
mself and become thin. Now she cooked the food she knew he liked. But he remained a poor eater, Poppie says.
After three months she went back to Woodstock and the white man in the office asked: Have you got a job, else I can’t give you extensions. I’ve got a job, she said. Mr Pullen signed the papers she was given for him to sign and he posted them back to the office.
Those days the permit story wasn’t so difficult, says Poppie. And when I left Mr Pullen because I was going to have a baby, the office gave me three months to stay at home.
When you go to work again, come back here to have your pass signed, the white man said.
I left the job at Mr Pullen’s because of the baby and so I had to stay at home to look after it. The child was breast fed and it’s hard to give a suckling child to someone else to look after. This child was only four months younger than my ma’s last child, her girl child called Georgina, whom we still call Baby. Poppie’s child was born in the house. A Xhosa district nurse, nurse Bam, helped her. It was a girl and they christened her Rose in the Holy Cross church. Her Xhosa name was Nomvula, meaning child born on the day it rained.
It was during that time that Mamdungwana and I got so completely used to one another. I went to see her often and she came to see me. And when she was in bed with ‘flu, I would clean out her house and cook her food. After a while it felt as if we were sisters born. If she was having a baby and the pains came in the night, I was the first one to be called. When the nurse came, I was already there, I had boiling water prepared and put everything she was going to need together. She helped me in the same way. If I was having a baby, she was the first to be called. Then my husband would go to call my ma. Then they’d call the old Makhulu, who lived next door. Then everybody was with me to help me if something should go wrong.
We looked after each other’s children when we went to work. When the baby was a bit bigger, I went to char for Mrs Graham who lived in Bishopscourt, three days a week, and she paid me twelve shillings and sixpence a day, that gave me about eight pounds a month. The other days I stayed at home and then Mamdungwana went to work.
