The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena

by Elsa Joubert

  It was 1960 and the children were ten years old and nine and eight, or maybe eleven. And others were younger, but they remembered.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing for children to see, Poppie says. They lost their respect.

  FOUR

  Poppie’s pass

  32

  After the strike Poppie went to the clinic to ask if the bed in the hospital was still free. The doctor said: Yes, Stone must come.

  But Stone was again unwilling and accused Poppie: You want to get me out of the house.

  She took him to the clinic and went along in the bus to the hospital in Westlake, but he wouldn’t speak a word to her. She walked with him up to his bed in the ward and helped him undress, but still he didn’t speak a word to her.

  You can come on Sunday afternoons to see him, the nurse said.

  A month after the strike, Mrs Graham went back to England and Poppie lost her char work. To get her pass fixed before taking on a new job she went to the new office in Nyanga, two old brick buildings where white people had formerly lived, now fixed up as an office.

  They gave me an extension for six months, but after six months when I went back-I didn’t have a job yet because with a sick husband and small children at home it was too difficult-now Mr Strydom looked at my pass and he said: You don’t qualify for the Cape, you must go away to the Ciskei.

  It was the first time that I had heard such words. I thought: They brought me here to the Cape, they wouldn’t say such a thing now. I didn’t think it so serious, I thought: Perhaps it is just his way of speaking.

  Mama, said Poppie that night to her ma – but she made it sound like a joke, because she didn’t believe it – mama, they want to send me to Kaffirland.

  Mama didn’t take it seriously either. But still she said: Then you must see that you get a job. If you’ve got a job, they can’t send you away. Katie must leave school and look after your children.

  Poppie wouldn’t have it that Katie should leave school. I’ll manage by myself, she said.

  She went to work for Mrs Scobie at Rondebosch for eight pounds a month.

  When the clinic heard that I had a job, they took away the disability grant because a person working doesn’t qualify for the grant. So the job meant only four pounds extra to what I had been having, but working helped me to change my pass.

  The work at Mrs Scobie’s was inconvenient. She worked sleep-out, from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon, she cooked in the afternoons and put the food in the warming oven for the four adults who were at work, the parents and two children. She worked from Sunday right through the week. Sundays Mrs Scobie’s other married daughter and husband and two grandchildren came to dinner, they ate till two o’clock, then she didn’t leave the kitchen till after three.

  Sunday was the only day I could go to Westlake to see my husband, says Poppie. It’s beyond Retreat, past Pollsmoor, and on Sundays the buses were few. When I got there, it was too late, past visiting time. As I came down the road I’d see my husband standing inside the gate, waiting for me. But the gates were locked and we’d have to stand talking through the bars. That’s where he started getting jealous. Where were you? he asked. With whom have you been carrying on? What are you doing all the time, while I’m stuck away here?

  Sometimes he started weeping. He became thin and weak.

  It was also very difficult because I had no one to look after the children. Mosie and Johnnie Drop-Eye stayed with me, and buti Plank off and on, but they were at work. When the weather was bad, buti Plank came home from the boats. When he wasn’t drunk he was as gentle as a woman with the children.

  But other days I had to leave them in the house. The little boy, Bonsile, was in Sub A but the others did not go to school yet. When I left them there, I hid the matches – because children like playing with matches – and locked them in the house. I’d say to the neighbours, I’m going to my job, keep an eye on them. I kept the boy from school and he looked after the other children well. He was seven, the girl five years and the youngest two. Later on they got used to staying alone, because I told them, I don’t want other people’s children in my house when I’m at work, because I lose my stuff, the children carry things away. Now they are content, and I leave them bread and cold tea, everything cold, they must eat it cold.

  The hardest thing for me was when the children got sick. You leave the children well in the mornings and when you come back in the afternoon, you find one is ill with a cold, or earache, or feverish. By then the sun has already set, but you’ve got to leave the other two again and walk with the sick one to hospital, that was the hardest. And the houses we lived in, they could take fire so easily, they were only pondokkies of corrugated iron and wood. At work, I used to think perhaps: Has my house burnt down? And have the children run out in the street? Sometimes when you got to Claremont station, you’d hear them talking of a child run over by a car, then you’d get a fright that makes water of your body, and you’d be in a hurry to get home to see if the children were all safe.

  The boy was a quiet child, like his father, but he was a good child, fond of his little sisters, not fond of fighting or naughty like. The little girl was four or five years old when she asked me in Xhosa-the children in the location didn’t learn much Afrikaans – she asked me: Mama, who does mama love, me or Thandi. Then I got a fright, because I didn’t think a child of mine would ask such a thing. I didn’t know what she had seen, Thandi was about two, they were close together in age. Then I said: No, but I love both of you. Then she said: Oh, I thought mama loved Thandi more.

  It gave me a fright, because she was too young to ask such a thing. What made her ask it, I don’t know. I was always tired and worried when I got home, perhaps I didn’t always treat the children right.

  33

  Your buti keeps talking about Muis, said mama. Muis was half-coloured, half-Xhosa. After the strike it seemed she’d dropped him. Now they’d made up again. Mama didn’t often come to see Poppie, she worked sleep-in and, when she was off,.had to see to her own house and children.

  She’s not the wife for buti Hoedjie, said Poppie.

  Mama sat at the table on a straight-backed chair. She rubbed her hand over the table, the table which she had bought Poppie in Lamberts Bay. She’s a hard worker, said mama.

  Forget the hard work, mama, I don’t like her ways. I had a good look at her when she and another woman came here to see Mamdungwana. She works for a month or a week, they say she can’t keep a job.

  Perhaps she’ll help your buti, said mama.

  But who are her people, from where does she come? We only know she hasn’t got no people, and she grew up in a reformatory at George.

  But mama’s heart was for Muis. I can’t help it, but I already love her. It’s surely because of her hardworkingness.

  Poppie wouldn’t go to the wedding. Buti Plank was on the boats at sea, but Mosie went. Poppie wasn’t pleased that he went. That thin girl with the legs like sticks, I can’t stand her, she told him.

  Mosie thought: My little sister is jealous that her buti is leaving her for another woman. Even if he gives her so much trouble.

  They were married in Rylands, in the house of the minister of Muis’s church.

  It’s not the place for our people that, said Poppie, the Indians and coloureds live there in brick houses, but the Xhosas must live in pondokkies.

  The only comfort for Poppie was that buti Hoedjie didn’t need to pay lobola for such a cast-off orphan child.

  Mama gave them a party and Hoedjie and Muis roomed with her. But after two weeks she left mama to stay at another woman’s house. Then she started drinking with Hoedjie.

  And where now is the woman that’s so hardworking? Now mama can see her for what she is.

  She is good to Hoedjie, mama kept on. But she’s just like kleinma Hessie was, she’s got long fingers and she can’t keep her hands off my things.

  Perhaps that’s why she was sent to the reformatory, she is a thief.

&nb
sp; Keep your mouth, Poppie, said mama. She never had no ma or brothers like you had.

  Kleinma Hessie wrote: When Mosie has to go to the bush, he must come to us, he was always like our child.

  Kleinma Hessie had gone back to kleinpa Ruben, who now was the Ethiopian preacher in Knysna.

  Because mama worked sleep-in, she felt it was better so, that Mosie should go to Hessie. The stepfather said he didn’t feel like taking Mosie’s bush ritual on his shoulders. Mosie was glad to go, because he was nearing thirty.

  Come along with me, he said to Johnnie Drop-Eye. But Johnnie wouldn’t go, because he had been converted to the Zionist Church and was an office-bearer and at that time the Zionists said: We don’t go along with the bush ritual, it’s a heathen custom.

  After Mosie had come back from Knysna, things weren’t the same between him and Johnnie, says Poppie. When a boy has been to the bush he can’t be on the same footing with those who haven’t been. Johnnie felt all my friends have become men, excepting me.

  I can’t go around with you any more, Mosie, said Johnnie Drop-Eye. I can’t go to the bush either, because of my faith. I’ll always be the small boy, although I’m your age. Boys that haven’t been to the bush show you respect, but they call me the old man who is still kwedini. I am going away to a place where they don’t know me.

  He suffers a lot, said Mosie to Poppie. But he’s decided to take the train for Durban. Perhaps he’ll fit in better with the Zulus, whether he belongs there or not.

  34

  The winter after she had finished a year working for Mrs Scobie, it became too hard to leave the children early in the dark, cold and empty house, with only spread bread and cold tea. When the children got whooping cough she made up her mind to leave the job.

  When she came to the office in Nyanga to change her pass, because her work extension had run out, Mr Strydom said: As the law stands now, I must give you a phumaphele. That’s what they say in the location for: You must get the hell out, you must go away.

  The law was strict that the wives of men who had not been in the Cape fifteen years or hadn’t worked ten years for the same boss must be sent back to their homes.

  But where to must we be sent back? said mama. They brought us to Cape Town from Lamberts Bay.

  Mama had trouble with the pass too, but she used hard words when she went to speak at the office.

  Do you want to send me to Kaffirland? I belong to this land with these people here. I was born here and grew up here. My husband worked in Lamberts Bay from ‘forty-five. I have no knowledge of Kaffirland. For what must I go and live with those raw people? Must I go and eat red mealies in my old age?

  They gave mama’s pass a stamp for a six months’ extension, and later for a year. But Poppie was not so lucky.

  Her stepfather threw words at her: I told you you would have trouble when you married a man from the raw country. But he was lying, he had never gone against her in her marriage to tata-ka-Bonsile.

  You don’t qualify for the Cape, said Mr Strydom. It was again this thing about the Cape being a place set aside for the coloured people, the thing of getting the black people away to where they came from.

  She tried to tell Mr Strydom about Lamberts Bay, about the house built of corrugated iron in Jakkalsvlei. The contract. About the children. Her husband in Westlake hospital.

  We know your story, said Mr Strydom. It’s here in your file. We know it as well as you do. You don’t qualify for the Cape, but because your husband is sick, we’ll give you two months’ extension.

  After two months she was back again. And then she got a month. And after a month, a week. After the week, when she brought papers from the welfare, they gave her two months. From Observatory to Nyanga, from Nyanga to Observatory. A month, then three months, then a week. She spent her days sitting at the pass office.

  Why do you put this heavy load on my shoulders? she asked the white man.

  He talked more gently. With the back of his hand he beat on her papers. I can’t help you. It’s the law. It is written here. We are helping you too much as it is.

  Then he raised his voice. Don’t argue so much. Again he struck the papers with his hand. Here it’s written. Here. Read so that you may know.

  But in spite of that he gave her a paper with a week’s extension. To take back to Observatory to have the extension stamped in her pass.

  I don’t know how this thing comes about, Poppie said to mama. They don’t give me the permit because tata-ka-Bonsile is so sick and can’t work. But then they give me the extension because he is sick and they are sorry for me. Now I don’t know if his sickness helps me or stands in my way.

  Mama named some people who’d come to the Cape after they had, and who had been given exemption passes.

  Some people manage to fix everything, she said, they buy the passes with money. But when once your papers are wrong, it is very hard to get them right again.

  Look, said Poppie, if the office in Nyanga has chased you away, even if the man in Observatory feels he wants to help you, he’s scared to do so, in case the office in Nyanga thinks you’ve bribed him.

  Poppie’s trouble came through her husband, Mosie says, because they said: This man is from the homeland. If he’s from the homeland he must go back there. But you can’t force the man, because the white people need him to work for them, so the wife must go. It was the same thing at Lamberts Bay – the woman must leave.

  Poppie kept on. Every month, every two months, depending on her extension, she went to Observatory, to Nyanga.

  It’s working on my nerves, she told mama, I have the same pain in my stomach that tata-ka-Bonsile had. Am I going to get sick? What will become of my children? But she kept on.

  She was heavy again.

  At the clinic the doctor who had sent her husband to Westlake, asked her: How’s this? Your husband is in hospital and you’re pregnant?

  Poppie was shy to answer. Once a month he gets a weekend off, she said.

  Then we’ll call the baby Weekend, said the doctor.

  He gave her a note to Mrs Retief, the white social worker who had helped her with the hospital papers and the grant papers and who worked with the T.B. patients’ families.

  A fourth child? That’s not so bad, Poppie. How old are you now?

  Twenty-six, said Poppie.

  Don’t lose courage. Every baby comes from the Lord.

  If you look at her, Poppie said to mama, you’d think Mrs Retief is a hard-tempered woman. She’s got such a long face and a big body and her voice is hoarse like a man’s. But she’s a woman of faith. If the Lord sends another mouth He will also send a crust of bread along, she says.

  Mrs Retief had helped her with the pass. Once when her extension had elapsed and Mr Strydom had said: This time I will not extend it again, Poppie took the bus to Bellville to Mrs Retief’s house. Mrs Retief lay sick in bed, but when Poppie spoke to her, she got up and phoned the office to give the extension. She got work for Poppie in Bellville, but Poppie couldn’t take it, they wanted to pay only three pounds a month.

  My God, Mrs Retief said when she heard this. God help us. Don’t lose courage, Poppie, we’ll look for something else.

  35

  Sunday afternoon at the Westlake hospital the sister said to Poppie: The doctors think it’s better for your husband at home, you can take him back today. Here are his pills. He is not making progress, maybe he is longing for his family.

  God forgive her, but her first thought was: It is one more mouth for me to fill.

  When she got to his bed in the ward, he was dressed and ready. His clothes hung loosely on him. He had never been a stout man, but she had grown used to him in his night clothes; dressed in his suit, he seemed to have shrunk. He was shaky as they walked down the passage.

  Buti Plank was surprised to see him. My God, brother-in-law, you have shrunk to nothing. We must put some fat back on to you.

  He helped them every week with fish, and money earned on the boats. Stone’s own brother
, Spannerboy, also helped when he came from the boats, and Mosie too.

  Stone wasn’t so partial to fish as his brothers-in-law who had grown up at the sea. He would eat a small piece and then push it away. Poppie started cooking food for her husband behind the cooking shelter, the way she remembered his mother had cooked on the land, she made inqodi to drink and baked water bread. One day he would eat and the next day he wouldn’t touch the food.

  During the day he would try to keep himself busy. The second room had still to be lined with wooden boards. Then he would take the hammer and nails and start nailing the boards, but soon he grew tired.

  When the disability grant had been taken from him, Stone started doing handwork in hospital, plaiting baskets and making trays, as a means of earning some money for his children. There he had got to know a witchdoctor man. A week after his discharge from hospital, the witchdoctor man knocked at their door.

  Tomorrow I’m coming to doctor you in my way, he said.

  Poppie lay watching him from the settee where she was resting. Has he ever earned any money with this doctor business? she asked. His shoes are tied with wire and his shirt is in rags. No man, here in my house, he won’t get money. He wants to practise on you.

  Poppie didn’t believe in the witchdoctor people, but Spannerboy believed and old Makhulu and the witchdoctor woman who lived with the old grandma.

  The witchdoctor woman had started dancing again on Saturday nights. She put on her long white dress, strung beads round her neck and the small of her back, and bound shells round her ankles to make a noise as she walked along the dirt road. And when she saw children watching her, she stamped her feet and did fancy steps. She was on the way to a house in Zwelitsha Drive where they danced. Poppie hated the witchdoctor business and wanted to stop the children dancing after the witchdoctor woman.