by Elsa Joubert
What’s the matter? asked a passing white woman. She would have liked to help, but was unsure whether the black woman was drunk or not.
What’s the matter? she asked again. Poppie held on to a lamp post with both hands, spasms passed through her body, tearing at her, her legs were shaking, the spasm rose, pushed up from her belly, her mouth opened, colourless slaver dribbling out at the corners, then her gullet jerked uncontrollably, and she doubled up retching. Not much came out, mostly bile.
She leant her head against the lamp post to which she was still clinging, her eyes closed, her mouth wet with the yellow bile that was still dribbling out.
The white woman saw that Poppie was really ill not drunk, and she took a white tissue from her handbag. Here, take it, to wipe your mouth. She pushed the tissue in between the fingers clamped around the post.
Mr Stevens pointed to the map with a stick. Now you must choose, Rachel, there’s Hinge near Queenstown, and Dimbaza near King William’s Town, and Mdantsane also in the Ciskei but right next to East London.
I do not know these places, said Poppie.
Mr Stevens stopped her protest. Look, I want to help you. You have been used to town life since childhood, and I think it best that you go to East London. I’ve seen those other places, but let me be frank with you, you mustn’t take them.
Is there a house for me? I won’t be able to build a house like my brothers built me here in Jakkalsvlei.
We will give you a house.
And will there be school for my children?
There will be school for your children. Is it all right so, Rachel?
It is all right.
Then we put down your name for a house in Mdantsane.
Outside a woman she knew was waiting. Are you leaving, Poppie?
What can I do? said Poppie. I can’t break the law with my hands?
45
By Christmas Poppie had not yet had news from the office.
Stone bought a sheep and he and his buti Spannerboy and other relatives, also a man without a pass called Koopman, slaughtered the sheep in their backyard and skinned it. Poppie had given him the name of Koopman, he was a Xhosa but light complexioned, and to get a job, he had to pass as a coloured. Now what coloured name can I take, he had asked her, and she had said: We call you Koopman, and Koopman he stayed.
Buti Plank also came home on Christmas Eve.
They laid sheets of corrugated iron on the sand and the one man held the sheep while the other cut its throat. They held it carefully so as to catch up the blood in a dish, not to make a mess in the yard. Plank shouted at the little boys standing around: Go dig a hole, that we can bury the blood.
They milked out the entrails, Spannerboy saw to the fire, and they fried the entrails on the coals. When the carcass was skinned and the meat hanging, the men sat round the fire to fry the liver. Johnnie Drop-Eye was there too, he had returned from Durban and stayed with Poppie again.
The wind started blowing, and buti Plank raised the sheets of corrugated iron on which the sheep had been slaughtered to keep the wind from the fire.
Poppie brought food outside, porridge and bread. Constance was cooking in the kitchen, she had not yet returned to the tribal land.
Poppie saw that someone else had joined the men at the fire, and behind him a woman was sitting on her haunches. She recognised the skinny body. It was buti Hoedjie and Muis.
Molo, Poppie, how are you? said Muis.
I’m all right, said Poppie. How are you?
I’m all right too, said Muis. She got up to come nearer. But Poppie stopped her, turning away from her so that Muis couldn’t reach out to the baby on her back. And this now? she asked. What new trouble are you bringing to us?
Why do you ask me such a thing? said Muis.
Mayn’t I ask? Buti Hoedjie nearly got killed because of you, and now you see he’s not dead yet, now you come back to see if they kill him off properly.
She put down the porridge and bread on the ground.
Buti Plank told her: Shut up and leave the woman be. But she wouldn’t listen to him.
Talk to her, brother-in-law, Plank told Stone. Poppie wouldn’t listen to them. She was screaming: I don’t want her here in my backyard. She must go. I don’t know what she is looking for here, because my troubles are heavy.
She started weeping.
To see buti Hoedjie again tagging along so meekly after Muis, infuriated her. If something happens to buti Hoedjie, she cried, then it’s me who has to help him. She has now seen that buti is not dead yet. She’s had enough of the other man, now she comes back to him. I don’t want her in my house. And you can all go away too, she screamed at the people who were trying to quieten her.
Now old Hoedjie has left with Muis, and God knows where he’ll spend the night, lying drunk under a bush, said buti Plank.
I suppose it’s my fault.
Buti Plank didn’t yet know what she had told the people in the office. He was looking for the bottle of wine he’d left in the kitchen.
Buti, she wanted to say to him, next year I won’t be here. Who will look after buti next year, and after buti Hoedjie?
Yes, buti, she wanted to say to him, you worked so hard to build this house, and what will become of it when I am gone? And what will become of you when tata-ka-Bonsile has to move to the bachelor quarters and you have no roof over your heads?
Now she knew: The trouble is not only mine, it has come over them as well. That’s why they were against me giving up hope, all these years. Try again, Poppie, they kept on saying, try once more.
Buti Plank will be sorry when I am gone, Poppie thought. Buti Hoedjie will be sorry too, when Muis has got him beaten up again and I’m not here to help him. And buti Mosie will be sorry when I am gone and Rhoda treats him badly, and looks down on his brothers, and refuses to help them when they are drunk.
You’re jealous of your butis’ wives, mama had told her once before, and see how nicely they behave to your husband.
It’s not the same thing, mama, not at all the same, said Poppie.
On Christmas morning Mamdungwana awaited her at the church gates.
Why didn’t you tell me? she asked Poppie.
Where did you hear?
The woman who was on the bus with you told me.
Mama does not know yet.
It’s better you tell her yourself, that she does not hear it from strangers. Ag, sisi, where to are you now going?
It’s only the Lord that knows, Poppie answered.
Then it must be enough for you that the Lord knows, said Mamdungwana.
Ewhe, said Poppie, but her heart was not in her words. It seemed to her that not only was she leaving her friends and her brothers behind but the Lord as well.
Christmas afternoon when tata-ka-Bonsile was working shift at the garage – he was glad to work on Christmas Day, then the white people are tipsy, he says, then they give good tips – she spoke to buti Plank.
They are sending me to Mdantsane near East London, buti. Your brother-in-law doesn’t wish us to go to his people, he doesn’t wish his children to bear the hardships of life on the land. That’s why I chose Mdantsane, where there are schools.
Mdantsane, Mdantsane, I dunno nothing of this Mdantsane, why do you keep on talking of this bloody Mdantsane? Buti Plank was drunk, he didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him.
You must go ask the office why I keep on talking of Mdantsane, buti, said Poppie.
Buti Mosie and Rhoda came to have tea with her and when Rhoda took the children to the cafe to buy cool drinks – the children had shown their oompie their school reports and he had given them money to spend – buti Mosie stayed behind with her.
My little sister, how is it that I don’t have your confidence any more? he asked her. Why is it that I must hear from strangers ...?
I have been telling buti for a long time that I can’t live like this any longer, if there is chance to lead a good life somewhere else, then it is better that I go the
re. If there is a life somewhere else for me, I had better go and live there in 1971.
I am also worried like, said buti Mosie. I have my troubles too. I cannot get a house, and this staying with my wife’s people is no good. And for my sake, too, I feel like going to the office to say: Please, boss, we too are people of this country, we don’t know another place, let us stay here, give us place to live, we don’t want anything, only the right to stay here. But who will listen to me? My heart is heavy that you are leaving. We are children of one mother. We should stay near to one another.
Christmas night she stayed awake. She got undressed, but did not go to bed. Someone had to stay awake to unlock the door when tata-ka-Bonsile got home, to close it behind him, quickly, as soon as he was inside.
She kept his food hot in a plate on the saucepan of boiling water on the Primus stove. The stove was turned low and she had to watch it carefully. If the head cools off, the paraffin shoots from the nipple and sets it alight. This was the way many houses in the location had been burnt down.
The alarm was ticking. It was past two o’clock. She expected him at two o’clock, half past three at the latest. Often he had explained to her: If the ten o’clock boy does not pitch up, or if he’s drunk, I have to stay on. It’s no good sitting up waiting for me. Then she had replied: How must I know what has happened, it may be that you have been knifed, or beaten over the head or thugged, and are lying beaten up somewhere in the bushes, or there might have been a hold-up at the garage.
Buses didn’t run at that time of the night. He had to come by foot from Goodwood, and take a short cut through the bush.
She heard his step, unlocked the door and held it ajar for him to see the chink of light as he approached.
It was quieter tonight at the garage than on other Christmas nights, he told her. He ate the food she placed in front of him, the steam rising from the stamped mealies and dried beans. She heated water for his feet. While he ate she sat with him, when he had finished, they had tea together.
She shut down the Primus, and lit a candle. It was quite still in the room. The others were asleep. The candle was burning quietly, the shadows on the walls had stopped moving.
She must choose her words with care. If tata-ka-Bonsile got a shock, it could hurt him inside, make him get sick again and to take to his bed. She couldn’t tell him straight what was in her mind, she must put it in such a way that the words seemed to come from him.
She talked about the children. He was fond of his children, sometimes it seemed to her that he cared more for the children than for her. She talked about the coming year. What if they stop giving me monthly extensions, what if it is in the middle of the school year, then I must leave at a very inconvenient time she tells him. And then what happens to our children’s schooling?
He did not answer her. She pitied him. He cares for us too much, she thought, he always will be the first to see that a child needs new shoes, or a jersey. That is his nature. He looks after us well.
Then it is best that you leave early in the new year, he said, to give the children a full year’s schooling.
But the next morning he had a headache and stayed in bed and Poppie fetched pills and remedies from Makhulu to make him feel better. As he got used to the idea of their leaving, he slowly recovered.
The week between Christmas and New Year, we talked: my mother, my stepfather, my husband, my brothers and me, says Poppie. Then we took the trouble on us. The second of January 1971 my husband went to Observatory and told the boss to get me a place as soon as he could, I now chose to leave.
On the seventh of January we got a letter: Come to the office, we have a house. We went, and after that I did not take much time to get my things ready, I wanted to get away from it all, I couldn’t stand it any longer. So we packed up quickly. I gave my house to Makhulu, I asked at the office: Can we give the house to the old woman? Mr Stevens refused, because he said: She’s a pensioner. Then I said, why can’t you let her have the house because I didn’t want to break the house down, it was built of iron sheets, but nicely built, lined with planks on the inside. I was too sorry to break down the house, and the old woman lived in a shanty affair. Then he said, all right give it to her.
My husband went to live in a brick house in the special quarters, the bachelor quarters which they call Mau-Mau. It was not far from the house my mother was given when she left Elsies and Mamdungwana’s house after she had left the iron house in Jakkalsvlei. They called it Zwelitsha.
We packed the furniture and everything in boxes from the administration office. They give you everything, even the train ticket, sacks, bags, planks, everything to wrap your things in. You tell them when everything is ready, then the office sends a tractor or lorry and men to come and load your things and take them to Bellville. There they load them on a truck. They came in the middle of the week to load my stuff.
I left on the Sunday, the seventh of February. The whole family came to my house. My stepfather said a prayer and the church-women prayed and sang. They gave me presents or money, Mamdungwana gave me five rands and a piece of material. All the neighbours came. I didn’t make a big party, but everyone came to me the day I left. They came to pray and give me money and cool drinks and cake to take on the train. Mama had baked enough bread and given us butter and cold meat and fruit.
We rented a bakkie to go to the station. My ma and my sisters came along, Katie and Baby. At quarter past six the train pulled out. My baby was only a year and three months, but the others were big, Bonsile was almost sixteen, Nomvula thirteen and Thandi twelve. Buti Hoedjie was there and buti Plank and buti Mosie and Rhoda. Rhoda brought her child along and buti Mosie carried the child on the arm. My girls were so fond of their father, they just kept at his side all the time. And Bonsile and Jakkie walked along the platform looking at the trains. The church-women came by bus to see me off, because there was not room for them on the bakkie.
My husband could have come with us if he had wanted to, the law doesn’t mind, but if he went along he would have had to be a new boy again, and we knew people who came back from East London and told us: There’s no work there, you stay idle for a year or eighteen months before you find work, or you have to buy work from the foreman. My husband couldn’t risk it, because the children had to be kept at school and he had to earn money for us. So he decided to stay at his job here. What the law wants is for the wife and children to leave and the man to stay.
I didn’t feel so badly as we pulled out of the station. I must be honest and say: No, I didn’t feel badly at all, because I was fed up of the law, I could not stand it any more. I didn’t even see the point of going to the office any more, because every day it was the same story: We don’t want you here. What are you still doing here? I am going to make you eat gubu mealies in Kaffirland.
I didn’t cry when the train pulled out of the station. For what must I cry? What can you do, if you can’t go one way any more, then you take a road the other way.
FIVE
The Ciskei
46
Poppie didn’t find the train journey hard. She was used to all the long journeys from Lamberts Bay to Upington with ouma Hannie and kleinma Hessie. The children were old enough to look after Kindjie when Poppie wished to sleep. They travelled third class in a coach with green seats, not wooden benches, but harder seats than in the second class. With them in the compartment was a woman with two children, going to Aliwal North but she hadn’t been sent away, she was going visiting. They travelled through Sunday, and arrived at De Aar on Monday where they could walk around and look at the shops and she bought the children cool drinks. Up to Noupoort Poppie knew the country, but when they turned off at Noupoort, when the coaches on half the train were hooked off and pushed back and shunted on to a new line, when the train whistled in a new way and jerked the newly-hitched wagons to life behind him, and set off on a railway line that she could not see, the old life fell away from her.
Night fell and the conductor came to switch on t
he lights. The children’s faces looked different in the jolting train under the lights. The two girls sat on the bench opposite, next to the woman from Aliwal North and her two children. Thandi’s face was thin. She had the high nose bridge of her great-uncle Pengi. She was tired, half lying on the bench she tried to sleep with her head against Nomvula’s shoulder.
Kindjie was asleep on her ma’s lap, one leg dangling, sucking her thumb. As the lips relaxed in sleep, the thumb dropped from her mouth. Poppie took her hand and held it in hers. Fezile sat hunched up against her. Although he was seven years old, he never let go of her. Even when she went down the corridor to the washroom he clung to her dress and walked with her.
At four o’clock in the night they stopped at Queenstown and heard the people on the way to the Transkei getting off the train to continue their journey by bus. After that she did not sleep again. Shortly before five, before the washing room was occupied, she got up and went to wash herself.
Bonsile had not talked to Poppie since he heard that she had agreed to leave Cape Town. He sat next to her, staring out of the window as though he could see more in the dark than his own reflection in the glass.
There is no reason why I must leave, he had said. I will stay with my father. Buti Spannerboy had agreed: Leave Bonsile behind, he can live with me, he is sixteen years old, he is grown up.
Do you think they’ll keep him at school if he’s no longer registered on my house card? Poppie asked.
There are many children like me whose mothers have been sent away, Bonsile said.
Where do you think to live when buti Spannerboy is away on the boats and your auntie has been sent back to the land?
