by Elsa Joubert
With my father, he said.
It’s too rough in the special quarters, said Poppie. When your father has to work night-shift, they’ll mess with you.
But above all Poppie had felt: I am tired. I am not going back to the office to ask for permission to let my child stay on here at school. And her heart hardened against him. If she had to bear this trouble, why not he?
But he was on the train with her against his will. He ignored the new things he was seeing, the new country, the lushness, the new people. Poppie did not pay him attention. He had to snap out of his mood if he felt like it, she couldn’t be bothered.
You are not going through to East London, the white conductor told them. Your tickets only go to Arnoldon, there you must get off.
He knew their type. It was not the first time he had to put people from the Cape off at Arnoldon, people who had no idea where they were going. They were like a stone you picked up in one place and put down in another. His face showed nothing of his feelings, but he seemed to pity them and retraced his steps before entering the next compartment.
You must give the paper to the station master at Arnoldon, he told Poppie. Arnoldon is the station for Mdantsane.
And then, when Poppie did not answer, he asked: Have you still got the paper?
She took it from her handbag and showed it to him.
Bonsile wasn’t paying attention to what was being said. Here, you, the conductor told him. You’ll have to move to get all your ma’s stuff from the train. We don’t stop long at Arnoldon.
They got off at the tail end of the train. Not on the platform, but on the red earth of the veld. The grass grew tall with long, fat blades. The heat beat up at them from the earth.
Come away from the train, Poppie told the children.
Steam spurted heavily from between the wheels.
Bonsile decided to make a move. He handed the cases and parcels to Poppie and Nomvula, Thandi held Kindjie. The whistle went as he clambered down the steps. The guard who had been watching them as he clung to the train, one foot on the step, one dangling in the air, waved his flag. They watched the tail of the train disappearing.
Some of their stuff had been put down on the grass, the rest on the red soil. Thandi sat down with Kindjie on her lap. A strange kind of sweat was gathering on Poppie’s face and on her body. It came from the heat steaming up from the damp earth and pressing down on them from the sky.
Get up from the grass, she told Thandi.
She looked up at the sun. It is still high, a strange sun sifting through a thick mugginess. The closeness comes into your body when you breathe, it brings a tightness into your chest, it makes you feel you can’t get enough breath.
We must get into the shade, she said.
If each of them carried his share and she and the girls put the cases on their heads as well, they’d manage. They walked slowly to the station building. The station master spoke to them through the small window and took Poppie’s paper. He told the black man behind a desk: Phone up the location office and tell them more people from the Cape have come. And he told Poppie: They’ll send a lorry to fetch you. You must wait here.
It was the lunch hour, so he pulled down the shutter of the window. Poppie felt shut out: Now I’ve lost my papers too, she thinks, but it didn’t bother her.
What must we do with the stuff, ma? the children asked.
Behind the station building there was some shade, but not much, because the sun was high. She picked up the suitcase she had put down when she gave her papers through the window and put it back on her head. They stepped down from the stoep and she opened the roll of blankets and spread one on the red earth. She did not trust this earth; it looked dark and wet. Then she lay down on the blanket, her head on her bent elbow. The children didn’t know their ma in this mood. They sat themselves on the blanket. Poppie kept her eyes slightly open to watch Bonsile.
Where are you off to?
I’m going to pee, ma.
You stay here, she shouted at Fezi. Let Bonsile go alone, you just stand here and pee against the wall.
The girls were thirsty. They took a mug from the bags and searched out a tap. They brought her some water, but she couldn’t swallow the lukewarm stuff.
Did you let the tap run first? she asked.
It stays so warm, ma.
The children’s foreheads glistened with sweat. There was still some bread in the carrier bag, but they were not hungry. Poppie felt food would choke her.
Long after the window shutter had been opened and the white man had returned and several black people had walked by, greeting her but not stopping to talk, the lorry came to fetch them. The white man came outside and gave her papers to the black driver.
Molo, nikosikazi, the driver said. He was an elderly man, she greeted him, but had no feeling for him in her heart, he was part of this heavy thing that she had to bear. She got in front with him, the small child on her lap. The children climbed on to the back of the lorry. As they pulled off, leaving the station behind and taking the tar road to Mdantsane, the movement brought the children to life again. She heard them talking at the back, clutching the suitcases and packages when the lorry took a sharp comer.
It was not far to go, through a gate and then they were in the location. This place is not like the Cape, she thought, everywhere is uphill and downhill. The houses are of brick with bigger plots than at Nyanga, mealies in front of the houses and at the back, and right round the houses.
I saw plenty of hills from the train, but I did not know it was such a hilly place we were coming to.
She saw women wearing the big folded doeks on their heads like her mother-in-law wore in Herschel. They wore long dresses and strings of beads round their ankles. Wherever there was a flat open space, schools and shops and churches had been built, but the houses were built any old how, uphill and downhill. It seemed a very inconvenient kind of place to Poppie, but the soil was rich, which was why the mealies grew so well.
The driver took her to one of the flat open spaces to the office.
Do you come from the Cape? the black man behind the desk asked.
Yes, said Poppie.
He gave her her house number and handed it to the driver as well, adding: It’s now too late to fill in a house card; you must come back here tomorrow so that we can write down everything.
The children were waiting on the lorry and the boys in the street were talking to Bonsile, pointing out the school.
The old man got into the driver’s seat, and as they drove, he asked her about the Cape with curiosity, and with some envy. I hear the money is good there, he said. His clothes looked shabby for a driver. She looked down at his feet struggling at the brake as they went downhill. His shoes were tattered. In the office the people waiting had also asked her about the Cape. We hear there is much work and much money, they said, and they looked at her clothes, from her head to her toes, until she felt embarrassed. A woman said to her, I come from another location, Duncan Village, and they’ve given me a house here, but she looked terrible to Poppie, sick and starved and clad in rags.
Poppie felt strong: Stop when we come to a shop, she told the driver. I want to get milk for the child and fresh food.
She kept fifty cents in her hand as she put away the change, and when she got back in, she gave it to him: Buy yourself something to eat on the way back.
He let go of the steering wheel and took the money with both hands, as a child would accept something from an older person. She felt embarrassed at an old man taking it from her like that.
They left the older part of the location and drove into the newly-built section, left the tarred road for a dirt track and then stopped. He helped the children to unload the stuff, then turned the lorry round in the track and drove away.
She and her children stood in the road, their belongings piled around them. They looked at their house.
There were no other people in the street where the lorry left them. This way, that way, wherever they loo
ked, they saw no one.
The sun is setting, mama, screamed Nomvula. The sun goes down on the wrong side, mama, he’s going down where he has to come up, mama, he must go down that side of the mountain, and look what he’s doing now.
At first it seemed very raw, that place, says Poppie, because they were new houses. There were rough pieces of cement lying in our way, and the earth was all dug up, and the grass around the house was overgrown. I felt very heartsore because the place was strange and I knew nobody. I felt, really, I’m now quite thrown away. When you get to a strange place it is nice if someone meets you. There I was just put in a new house with my children, but there was nothing there, no people yet in the houses next door, no doors inside, only a front door at the front and a back door at the back. But the house was clean, there were cement floors and panes in the windows, but no ceilings, you had to put them in yourself. There was a water pipe in the kitchen but you yourself had to buy the tap and fix it. The house stood on the slope, there were three steps inside.
Yes, it felt very hard when I walked round the house and saw there was no other person living near us.
We had been put in a desolate place.
Loneliness was all round us.
47
Bring in the things, Poppie told Bonsile.
The children walked round the house, looking for the nearest outside tap in working order, jumped over the building rubble to the other empty houses, peered in at the windows, but when the sun slid lower and the shadows between the houses lengthened they became afraid.
Bonsile carried the stuff in. He put everything in the back room and Poppie did not go against him.
We must open to get a draught, he said.
Their voices were loud in the empty house.
A woman who lived near Poppie in the Cape and had been sent to Mdantsane before her, had written to tell her: Bring a Primus with your hand baggage. Poppie opened her boxes and put the Primus on the floor. She took the small saucepan she had bought with the fresh bread and milk, and boiled some water. She made tea on the floor. She crumbled bread and added it to the milk in Kindjie’s bottle.
The children were tired and went to sleep on the blankets. It was too hot to cover them. The little one couldn’t settle down, sweat gathered on her forehead. Darkness fell fast. After the noisiness of the evenings in the location in the Cape, and after the noise of the train wheels under her head at night, it seemed to Poppie as though she had come to lie down in her grave here in this closed-up house.
Bonsile had carried his blankets into the next room. He had matches with him. She heard a match being struck, and saw the small glow against the roof before it died away. He was not wasting matches, just off and on he struck one, as if deep in thought. She was content that he had moved to the next room, without asking her first, just taking his blankets and going.
Long after he slept, Poppie still lay awake. Her mind told her: My children and I are lying here quite helpless. We can be murdered. Skollies may be roaming around, who will hear if we call out in this desolation? She had hidden her money between her breasts, would that stop thieves? How often had she not heard the skollies shouting about a woman they had mugged: Milk the cow, milk the fat teats of the cow. They knew the hiding place. They’d scream: Empty out the fat teats.
But these fears-even for her daughters who were ripe to be plucked – did not seem to take hold of her. As she lay there sweating in the close, half-completed house – they had shut the windows out of fear – she felt the emptiness of being completely alone, discarded. She felt some part of her had been lost.
She was tired, but sleep wouldn’t come to her. She thought: I have been cast aside by my people. They allowed me to come here, alone. My husband and my mama and my brothers stood on the station platform and said goodbye and together they walked away from me. When the train left the station they walked away together. Now my heart has deadened towards them.
It felt as though her heart had also hardened towards the Lord. If the Lord wills, you will stay, if the Lord wills, you will go, the white man had said, but the Lord had not willed that this trouble should be taken from her.
Was this why she could not say, tonight before she lay down with the children: Lord, watch over us in this strange place? Why she could not say before they ate the bread and drank the tea: Lord bless this food? And against Bonsile, her child, her heart had hardened so that she wanted to say to him: Go your own way, I don’t care.
She heard someone groaning. She thought it was someone outside, groaning, like the night when buti Hoedjie had been stabbed and he stood outside groaning, waiting for her to open up. Who could be wandering between these empty houses? she thought. But before fear took hold of her, she realised that it was she herself who was groaning. It was her own body giving voice to her pain. She tried to still the sounds, but her body started shaking, like someone with fever. She drew a blanket around her and the shivering subsided.
And as her body calmed down, quiet came to her heart. She thought: I am here now. They tore up my papers in front of me. They took me from the house my husband built for me. They took me from my husband and my mama and my brothers. They can do what they will, but I am not dead yet. Now I go forward. I go forward with what I have kept, and that is my children. And the first thing I must do, is to see that my children get their schooling.
Then she could sleep.
When daylight came she got up, lit the Primus stove and cooked porridge for the children to eat before they went to the new school.
48
I was thinking why had they put me in a house on the dirt road. There were three empty houses on the tarred road, but they had to give me the one on the dirt road. So I decided I wasn’t taking that house. I wrote down the numbers of two other houses 3351 and 3353.
I told Bonsile: Get up and dress, for you must go alone this morning and take the children to school.
We knew where the school was, just opposite the office in NU 3. There wasn’t a school yet in NU 6 where they put us. The children had to walk a long distance to school. I unpacked their school clothes. The girls wept, but I said: I can’t go with you, I go to the office, because I don’t want this house.
I gave them food and told Bonsile: Take the children to school and take along the papers the principal gave us.
When they had left, I tidied my things, put the baby on my back and locked the house. Outside I saw that some more people had arrived. They were unloading stuff at the house next door. It was the woman from Duncan Village bringing her things. She was called Mantolo. She asked me: Are you satisfied? I said, No, I want to change. I don’t like the house.
I walked along the tar road to the office. Mr February, the man in charge, wasn’t there, but the others told me: You must take that house, there’s nothing wrong with it, don’t come to us with your Cape nonsense.
It isn’t nonsense, I said to them, you don’t give me the house for free. I rent it, and I won’t stay in that house.
I waited the whole day, but Mr February didn’t come to the office.
Thursday I again went, and found Mr February.
What? Aren’t you written up yet? he asked me. I am waiting for you.
Then you must come to my office.
Inside the office I told him: I don’t want to rent that house. It’s on the muddy side of the street. I want a house on the tar road.
The house is all right, the houses are all the same, said Mr February. What’s the difference?
The difference is that in the rain you walk through mud to the house.
I’ve written the other number in your card.
I kept quiet but I stayed put.
All right then, I’ll do it, he said, and scratched out the number on my card and gave me the house I still have.
Then I was very satisfied and went home.
Mantolo asked me: Did it come right? I also want to change. But when she got to the office Mr February chased her out and said: Go home.
Bonsile als
o didn’t think they’d change me. The people at the office thought they wouldn’t change me. It made me very satisfied that they did change me.
After a week they started filling the place up. They brought in people any old how. If the houses stayed empty, the skollies messed them up, and took out the panes to sell. Many people came from Duncan Village which was a slum and being broken down and Punzana location, others from Mossel Bay, and Beaufort West and Noupoort. Cape Town was only given three houses a month.
Two weeks later Poppie’s furniture came by goods train. A few times she had gone to enquire at the station. Once the old man who drove the lorry picked her up, because it was long to walk. The white man at the window would tell the black man at the desk: Go through the papers. See if Nongena’s stuff has come yet.
The fourth time she went it had come.
The old man and a helper brought the stuff on the lorry and Bonsile and school friends helped to unload. Poppie cooked for them on the Primus. The boys enjoyed unloading furniture of new arrivals, pulling off the wrapping, and throwing handfuls of straw at one another. Poppie made tea for the old man and this time gave him a rand tip.
The furniture looked strange in this raw cement house, the dresser and table and chairs from the Lamberts Bay days, and the bed. Nothing was left to put in Bonsile’s room.
Fezi, do you want to sleep with Bonsile? Poppie asked Weekend. At school they called him Fezile and she got used to it. But Fezi wanted at first to sleep with her and his sisters.
49
I stayed at home and cooked and worked and did the washing. My children were unused to the place, they slid in the mud and messed their clothes. It was too difficult for me to get a job there. I had no friends to care for the baby. I felt it would harm my children if I was away all day. They had to walk a long way to school. There were no buses, the place was too raw. I got up at five o’clock to get something hot into them. It was a long walk home, too, and I didn’t want them to come home to an empty house and no cooked food. They were often cold and wet, because it rained terribly that summer. The whole Mdantsane was sluits everywhere that overflowed when it rained.
