The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena

by Elsa Joubert

  But Plank swore at his brother. You think you’re better, you think you’re Mister Red Cross. Shut your bloody mouth.

  Everything I say he knows better, Mosie complained to Poppie. When he’s drunk, we can’t talk properly. Meantime I want to tell him: Buti, how can you know anything that goes on? You’re in dreamland the whole year.

  Plank wasn’t afraid of skollies, that was his trouble. But he was very frightened of spooks. One night he saw a baboon. He was drunk. He was walking with another man to Elsies, to mama, through the bush, from Jakkalsvlei through Kraaifontein location. And he said he wanted to pee. But as they stood at a bush peeing together Plank looked up from his pee and the other man had gone.

  You bloody fuck, I said to him, but where I’m talking he’s not there and I look round, and there sits this baboon. He looks at me, he grinds his teeth at me. My little sister, said Plank, then the wine was finished right out of my head. Then the peeing was also finished. It was late, my little sister, past twelve o’clock, the moon was shining so bright, I was running away, fast, but I never saw that baboon again.

  So we don’t know if it was a witch’s baboon or a veld baboon or a drunkenness baboon, says Poppie. But from that day buti Plank didn’t drink so terribly much anymore, and he didn’t speak about Sonny Boy no more.

  We thought: Perhaps oompie Pengi has died and he sent the baboon to frighten the drink away from buti Plank. We spoke a lot about oompie Pengi those days, and wondered if the baboon had been an omen that oompie Pengi was going to die. But then it was not oompie Pengi that died, but Pieta, mama’s eldest son by the stepfather.

  It was time for Pieta to go to the bush. Mama had put by her whole month’s wages to pay for it, and the stepfather had spoken to his clansmen to come and do the work. But I suppose we spoke too much about oompie Pengi and it worked on Pieta. Pieta was fond of buti Plank. Don’t teach the child to drink, mama had begged and buti kept his word to her, but he had spoken to him a lot about oompie Pengi and his guitar and how he tap-danced in his white tennis shoes and the black trousers with the pin-stripe. It was already a long time since oompie Pengi had been sent back to Upington, but Pieta kept thinking about him.

  Sisi, he said to Poppie, I go to the bush one of these days, but before I go, sisi, I buy oompie Pengi a shirt and socks and send it to Upington.

  Pieta was a big strong man, but he wasn’t clever and had failed several of his standards and left school at Standard Three. But he was strong and when he hit out the skollies fell.

  Pieta mixes with bad company, Mosie told mama.

  A week before he died, he said to Mosie: Buti, see that guy, he bullied me when I was a young boy. Now look, I’ve got stronger and bigger than him, now watch I got him under me on the ground, and I keep him down, and he tries to make me scared with his mouth. Wait till I stand up from here, he says. But I say you talk too much, that time you talk so, that time is past now.

  Mosie told Pieta: Little brother, take care, you must keep out of his company. Now that you’re the stronger, you’ll get a knife in your back.

  On Friday after work I go buy oompie Pengi’s shirt and socks in Bellville shops, sisi, said Pieta. That way I get nice to match stuff. I’ll be late back.

  Friday evening I sat in my house, says Poppie. Buti Mannie, my husband’s brother from Worcester, was with me. We were sitting at table, we had finished eating. Then about ten o’clock people came by, the girl’s name was Mongbulu, and she had a boy called Ruben with her. They said, sisi, we come to tell you oompie Veleli – that was Pieta’s Xhosa name – has got hurt. I got a bad fright, I asked: How did he get hurt. We dunno, they said.

  They didn’t tell me that he had been knifed and was dead. Buti Mannie went to Mamdungwana’s husband. He asked: Come with me so that I can see where the child got hurt. I know him from Lamberts Bay days, I saw him grow up.

  The girl and Ruben went along in Mamdungwana’s husband’s car and Mosie and the stepfather.

  When they got there they found the child had been stabbed dead.

  They stood around, they fetched the police. The police stood around and then a boy came forward, his name was Pepe. Pepe said: I know who knifed Pieta. We were together when he was knifed, but I ran away. They stuck him in the neck.

  Pepe went with the police to the house of the boy who had done this thing and they caught him that same evening.

  Three o’clock they were back at my house. My husband had been back too because he was working night-shift. He had gone after them. But they didn’t speak to me about it. I asked if they had taken Pieta to hospital and they said yes. Next morning I got up early and went to my ma’s house and only there I heard that he had been knifed.

  Mama worked sleep-in with Mrs Louw. She dreamed. She dreamed she saw her child amongst the coloured boys, quarrelling. One of the boys is holding an axe. My child is a strong big man, my fine boy, my young tree, but the others come up from behind him and throw a jacket over his head and hold him and when he turns round, they stab. It was on a Friday night, coming from Bellville, in Nyanga East at the place they call Kraaifontein.

  Then mama heard dogs barking in the lane outside her room, and she woke up, and she knew.

  The child is dead, she said when they knocked at her window and told her to get up.

  She did not shed a tear. I had a dream, she told Mrs Louw whom she went to wake up. And my child is dead.

  Mr Louw took them by car to where Mosie and the step father directed them, but the body had been taken away.

  He didn’t come home from work with the rest, said Mosie. He first went to the Bellville shops to buy oompie Pengi’s stuff, then he walked home alone. On a Friday night you mustn’t walk home alone, not with your wages in the pocket, not if you’ve already had trouble with the skollies.

  It was after this that buti Plank started drinking badly again, and never got to see Lüderitz or Sonny Boy or his own child.

  After Pieta’s funeral, Jakkie, the only boy left of those born to mama from the stepfather, came to mama and said: I am now leaving school.

  He was in Standard Six and had wanted to get more learning. He was cleverer than Pieta.

  I’ll take Pieta’s job, and bring home Pieta’s money, he said.

  Mama complained to Mosie: I don’t like it that Jakkie must go to work. You must speak to him, Mosie.

  But he wouldn’t listen. He was sixteen years old.

  So mama had no more hope of having an educated son. Only Mosie still read books. He went to first-aid classes at St John’s in Cape Town, he sat the exam and got the Advanced Certificate and then the silver one. He taught people first-aid in the school building in Nyanga. He also helped with the classes in Guguletu and there he met Rhoda.

  Actually I knew her mother first, says Mosie. She belonged to the Red Cross of Simonstown, they came to Cape Town to the Drill Hall, sometimes the Mutual, only later her daughter joined up too. Together we taught the others, we were teachers like.

  Mosie wore a khaki gabardine uniform and medals when he went to class or when somebody died who had been a member and they attended the funeral. He helped many people. If he saw an accident on the street, he would stop the bleeding, or put on splints. Ouma Hannie had said when he was a child: Mosie must one day be a doctor.

  Now he threw in his weight with the Red Cross and St John’s. He belonged to the Faking Club. They pretend someone is hurt, on the street or anywhere, and then people can come and see how they fix him up and by looking, they learn how to do it.

  39

  At the pass office there were new people behind the desks. The people in the queues were those that had arrived in the Cape after 1960. There were raw people, people from the tribal areas that got helped before her, and were even given houses.

  What then have they got against me? Poppie asked herself.

  It was for seven years now that she hadn’t known longer ahead than two months or sometimes three that she could stay in the Cape. The longest extension had been six months. S
ometimes she got nothing.

  Once I stayed in the location for two weeks without a permit. I got used to it. If they were to catch me, my husband would just have had to pay the fine, I could do nothing about it.

  Those years, 1966, 1967, the police were very hot, says Poppie. And a Mr van Jaarsveld came from the office in a combi to catch us and check our permits. When the children saw the combi they ran along the streets shouting, Jaarsveld, old Jaarsveld, here comes old Jaarsveld. Now we hid, under the beds or in the wardrobe. Constance didn’t have a pass. She was a stout woman, so I just put her up against a corner of the room and threw blankets and clothes over her. They ran a lot of people in and raided the houses.

  And when the police lorries came, the children shouted in the streets: Umgqomo, which means petrol drum, because they looked like huge petrol drums. Or they yelled: Nylon, which was what they called the pick-up with the nylon mesh netting. Then people fled into the bushes and waited there till the police had finished their raid. Once old Jaarsveld told the police to surround Jakkalsvlei, because he wanted to clean it up of people without permits, but he arrived too early and we fled before the police turned up. We heard him shouting: I told the police to guard the roads, now all the fucking bastards are taking cover in the bushes.

  When we had made the bushes it was impossible to catch us. And the children couldn’t be caught either because they don’t carry a pass.

  More than once I hid because I did not have an extension. After the police, one black policeman and one white, were gone, we’d laugh and tell Constance she could come out from under the blankets. It was great fun for the children to see their pas and mas and aunties and oompies climb out of wardrobes and come out of lavatories. Luckily I was never caught, but this always running to hide was no life for me.

  In sixty-eight when I came to the Native Affairs in Observatory, a Mr Steyn took my pass book and my files and my folders to the big boss and then the big boss said: This woman must leave at once. He wrote on my folder: She must leave at once. Mr Steyn was a believer, religious man, a man of much faith. He told me: If it is the Lord’s will that you stay, then you will stay, and if it is the Lord’s will that you go, then you will go. He was a man to talk courage into you, but he was a little scared of the big boss himself, he turned round two, three times at the door before he went into the big boss’s office and then he now came back with the story: She must leave at once.

  The woman for whom I charred told us to go to an attorney in the Volkskas building. He helped people who were being chased away to get permits. My husband went along with me to the Volkskas building and the attorney came to Observatory with us. He spoke and we got a one month extension, and then again two months. We paid him twenty-one rand.

  The big boss can’t help it that he can’t give the extension, Mr Steyn told us. It’s not him that wants the people to leave. It’s the law.

  40

  Poppie went to church with her children.

  Molo, sisi, the women said to her. Molo, she answered. She sat with the women. Most of them were clad like her, in a white blouse, with a turned-over collar, and a purple overblouse with a black belt, a black skirt, black shoes and stockings and a black beret. In front at the altar there were flowers and candles and the little mist of incense shed over the beakers and Bibles. It was a big church, and slowly the people filled the seats.

  The preacher was in the pulpit. Wherever you go, he said. Wherever you go, the interpreter repeated in English, there the Lord protects you. If by day you go to your place of work, said the preacher, if by day you go to your place of work, repeated the interpreter. There the Lord will protect you.

  Poppie listened to the words. When the devil is on your tracks, then the hand of the Lord comes to you and takes your hand. As Mr Steyn took her hand. If it is the Lord’s will that you stay, you will stay. If it is the Lord’s will that you leave, you will leave.

  Poppie felt her soul was thirsting for the words she was hearing. Her soul drank in the words, she could scarcely remember them separately, they had sunk deep down into her soul. Only now she understood fully. She felt her heart grow big and strong. She wanted to tell of this blessing, it swelled up in her bosom, she wanted to sing it out to the congregation. When the singing started and her voice rose with the rest, it was as if she was being released from everything pent up within her breast, as if she had found peace in this release. Her body started swaying slowly from side to side, her eyes closed, her voice climbed up above the rest.

  They were singing to the tune of ‘Jerusalem, my happy home’, a hymn that Mosie had learned at the Mission school in Lamberts Bay. Here they were singing the Xhosa words:

  Jerusalem ikayalam endithanayo

  wofeza nin urnzamowam

  zundi phumle kuwe?

  She was standing before the throne of the Lord, singing these words that He might hear her:

  Wabona nini amehlo am

  lomasango mahle

  nezi trato zegolide

  zomzi wosindiso?

  She felt her head wet with sweat, as if a fever had been broken. When the preacher closed down the hymn and said: Now we want a few prayers, perhaps one of our sisters... she heard her voice praying. She knelt on the little mat in front of the bench and softly she started: Protect me, 0 Lord, that I do not perish before your countenance. Her voice got louder, words of hymns she knew poured through her lips: Lord we have gathered in your house, do not leave us by ourselves. We are here before your countenance. Show us your countenance, do not hide your face from us, O Lord Lord Lord Lord, take my hand.

  Lord, Lord, take my hand. Ewhe, the women joined in, ewhe siyavuma Lord Jesus, have mercy on us, Dear Lord Jesus come down from Heaven and join us, a voice started up shrilly.

  Amen, said the preacher from the pulpit.

  An old man had started praying. The men sitting together, held on to his words. The old men, their hands resting on the kieries held between their knees, listened with their eyes closed, he was speaking the words of their hearts, he was giving voice to what their hearts were begging of the Lord. Ewhe, they repeated. In the eyes of the old man who was praying tears were gathering, running down his cheeks in shiny wet streaks. He was praying for his children: Bring them to your temple, 0 Lord, fetch them out of the bush in the night when the devil of darkness is wandering. Bring them to the light of the street lamps, protect them with your kierie, beat down the servants of the devil.

  Everything Poppie felt in her heart, was being said. She thought of buti Plank, of buti Hoedjie, Lord, protect them, Lord beat down with your staff everything wicked which approaches them, Lord come to us. She thought of her husband: Lord help him. She thought of Pieta: Lord have mercy on his soul. She felt strength rising in her as she repeated these words, she was strong once more. Life had not defeated her, she could get up again.

  After the service she had to leave with the children, she was unwilling to leave the body of the Lord. The members of the choir were still singing as they left the church, the women in their purple blouses were singing as they poured out through the open door. The singing bound her to the other women, she was no longer alone. The Lord was with her.

  When she got home, tata-ka-Bonsile was still asleep. He worked night-shift and came home at two or three o’clock in the morning. She started cooking. Peace reigned in the house.

  The church is my mainstay, Poppie thought. As long as I remain true to the church, the Lord will be with me.

  In 1967 Bonsile was twelve years old and Nomvula ten years, and they were blessed in church. The bishop sat in front of the altar, clad in his purple robe, his hat on his head, his long staff in his hand and the children one by one came to kneel before him. He dabbed oil on their foreheads and laid his hand on their heads and said: I accept you, I lay hands upon you.

  Poppie served tea and cake to her friends who came to congratulate the children, the two children received small gifts.

  Poppie was satisfied.

  I feel as if my desire
has been fulfilled, she told mama.

  Tata-ka-Bonsile was not able to attend the service because he was on duty at the garage. But he went along to buy the clothes, a white dress for Nomvula and a new suit for Bonsile. Although not a regular church-goer, he too was satisfied that the children had been blessed.

  On a Sunday afternoon after she had washed and put away the dishes, Poppie stood resting at her front door. She saw a combi stop down the road, let a white girl get out, and then drive away again. The girl stood looking around her hesitantly, but as she caught sight of Poppie in her doorway, she approached her.

  Good afternoon, she said.

  She was carrying a Bible, holding it pressed against her heart, as if taking courage from it.

  Good afternoon, Miss, said Poppie.

  The girl looked around her, to Poppie’s house, to the other houses.

  Do many children live here? she asked.

  She showed Poppie the Bible, holding it out towards her as if presenting it as a gift. Will you help me, I want to teach Sunday school to the children.

  Weekend came out of the house and clutched at Poppie’s skirt. The girl sat on her haunches and talked to him.

  Do your children speak Afrikaans? she asked Poppie. She had been speaking Afrikaans all along.

  They hear when you speak Afrikaans, Miss, but they are too shy to speak it themselves.

  The girl pointed to the flat piece of ground in front of Poppie’s house.

  If the children come and sit here, I’ll tell them Bible stories. She beckoned Thandi and Nomvula, who had appeared at the door too, to come closer.

  Poppie knew about Sunday-school teaching in the houses of black people. She would like it very much to have Sunday school taught in her house.

  Miss can come inside. Tata-ka-Bonsile is asleep and buti Mosie has gone out, the kitchen is empty.

  She sent Bonsile: Go and call the children of Majola and ouma Vuyiswa. Tell them a school teacher has come and she’ll teach the children Sunday school.