Off the Voortrekker Road

by Barbara Bleiman

  ‘God’s truth, I’ll come in and pay tomorrow. Please Mrs Neuberger. Mr Neuberger need not know.’

  Ma stood there, holding the basket and frowning.

  ‘So help me God I’ll pay tomorrow.’ Her voice was insistent rather than pleading.

  Ma looked at her for a moment, then handed over the paper bag.

  Mrs van der Merwe thanked her brusquely. ‘So how’s the boy getting on?’ she said. She turned to look at me and smiled so that her mouth was stretched open and her full row of teeth showed. ‘Understand what’s coming?’

  ‘What is coming?’ I thought.

  ‘Same as always,’ said Ma. She sighed. ‘Still not speaking. It’s a worry to me, I have to say.’

  ‘He’s only four, isn’t he?’ said Mrs van der Merwe. ‘All children speak in the end. Have you ever heard of an adult that doesn’t speak?’

  ‘No but –’

  ‘He’ll be fine, you mark my words.’ She hesitated. ‘Come to think of it, though, there was that boy, the son of those people down near the railway crossing, what was their name again…Jordaan. Mr Jordaan the dentist. Their boy ended up in one of those homes for people who’re not quite right in the head. Slow, he was. Retarded. I never did hear him speak.’

  Ma frowned.

  ‘He wasn’t right in the head, that Jordaan boy. Does your boy show other signs of not being quite right?’ Mrs van der Merwe asked, looking me up and down, with her piercing blue eyes.

  ‘I don’t think so, though he’s not so good with his hands. He won’t bang in the pegs with the little red hammer Sam made for him. A lovely little toy. Sam put a real effort into making it for him. But he just looks at it and refuses to touch it. It drives Sam crazy.’

  Pa had shouted at me that very morning, when Mrs Goldstein had come in to buy a length of calico and some sewing needles, bringing her son Joey with her. Joey had seen the hammer and pegboard lying in the sawdust and made a tottering lurch for it, grabbing the brightly coloured pegs and banging them firmly into the holes. ‘I made the thing for you!’ Pa stormed, when they’d left the shop. ‘Not for blooming Joey Goldstein, who’s barely three years old!’

  ‘Perhaps you should take him to see a specialist?’ said Mrs van der Merwe, still looking straight at me, her icy eyes drilling into me. ‘They could tell you if something’s seriously wrong.’

  ‘I’ve suggested it to Sam but …’

  ‘I know, I know, they’re expensive these specialists. But if you speak to Dr Meller, maybe he’ll find you someone who’ll do it cheap? Or why not ask your father to pay for it? Old Oupa would cough up something, wouldn’t he, even if your husband isn’t so keen on spending the money. Old Oupa loves the little boy, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ma. ‘But I don’t want to go behind Sam’s back. Maybe later. I have other things on my mind at the moment.’ She placed one hand on her stomach.

  The store bell rang and old Mr Rabinovitz came in. He was wearing his usual dirty grey cardigan and stained black trousers. He came over and ruffled my hair, then started rummaging through the brown cardboard box in the corner, with its fraying offcuts of carpet and rolls of linoleum. I pulled at my hair, to try to get it to lie flat and comfortable again.

  ‘Look, still in his soft bedroom slippers,’ whispered Mrs van der Merwe. ‘He’s obviously forgotten to change into his outdoor shoes.’

  ‘Poor man. He’s not the same since his wife died last year,’ Ma said quietly.

  Mrs van der Merwe nodded.

  ‘And he’s worrying about his family in Poland, of course,’ Ma added. ‘An aunt and a sister. He’s not heard from them for a while.’

  Mrs van der Merwe said nothing, as if all this meant very little to her; Poland was as distant and unfathomable as Venus or Mars. The talk between the Jews who came into the store was often about family back home and fears of what was happening. The words drifted around my head but they didn’t make much sense to me either: troubling signs, dark clouds, Smuts and Herzog, neutrality, the war effort, obtaining visas, hiding jewellery, booking passages, trains to nowhere.

  ‘Oh well, I’d best be going,’ Mrs van der Merwe said at last. She nodded a good-day in Mr Rabinovitz’s direction, then picked up her bag of goods and left.

  ‘You’ll come in and pay tomorrow morning, then?’ called Ma. ‘First thing. Don’t forget, will you?’

  ‘Of course not, Mrs Neuberger. Tomorrow.’ Gently she closed the shop door behind her and the bell tinkled to signal her departure.

  I kept my eyes fixed on Mr Rabinovitz. I hoped he would not touch my hair again, or take a soft bit of my cheek between his finger and thumb and squeeze it, as he sometimes did when I was sitting on my sack of beans and couldn’t get away. He would touch or prod me with his dry, wrinkled hands, or laugh loudly and call me boychick or bubula, with that voice of his that sounded like it was being ground up into coarse mealie flour. Ma might feel sorry for him but I couldn’t look at him with anything other than disgust. I watched him pick out a small roll of dark-blue carpet and look hopefully towards Ma.

  ‘No, Mr Rabinovitz. Absolutely not. I’m sorry. My husband says no more on account. You have to pay what’s already owing.’ She sighed.

  Mr Rabinovitz held the roll in front of him and looked at it mournfully. He placed it carefully back in the box, stood staring at it for several minutes and then turned to leave, shuffling towards the front door. Glancing back at me, he waved, with a slow, sad sweep of the hand and opened the door to go.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, just take it,’ I heard Ma call out to him. What was she doing? ‘It’s not worth much and it won’t be noticed. Take it and go before I change my mind, or my husband walks in and tells me what a damned fool I am.’

  Mr Rabinovitz shuffled back and seized the roll of carpet. He placed it carefully under his arm and edged his way out of the store, smiling to himself as he went and muttering, ‘Thank you, bless you. It’s a mitzvah, an act of goodness. God will thank you.’

  When he’d gone, Ma slumped back down on the stool and kicked off her shoes again.

  ‘God may thank me but what’s your pa going to say when he finds out how soft I’ve been?’ She looked at me, sitting on my sack of beans. ‘At least I know I can trust you, Jackie,’ she said. ‘I know that you won’t say a word.’

  *****

  ‘What’s happened with the money in the till?’ asked Pa when he got round to checking it the next day, after the front door had been locked and the shop was closed for lunch. He had come back late the previous evening from Paarl and had spent the morning unloading the truck and stacking the dusty sacks in the shed in the yard, while Ma and Ada minded the store. Finally, now that it was quiet, he had turned his attention to the till, adding up the notes and the coins, placing them in neat rows and piles on the countertop, licking his finger and thumb and flicking through the notes while his lips moved, silently counting.

  ‘It doesn’t tally. There’s money missing.’

  ‘Don’t get angry, Sam,’ Ma said. ‘I can explain.’

  I looked at my father. His face was turning red and the veins stood out in his neck, like thick sinewy rope. His body was rigid, his limbs stiff. Suddenly he swept his arm across the counter and sent the spools of string spinning off the edge. They turned and turned crazily in the sawdust on the floor.

  Now Ma was going to cry and climb the stairs to her room. She would close the door behind her. She might not come down for hours and hours and I would be left on my own, sitting in the kitchen or the store, wondering whether she would be better by suppertime, or whether Ada would give me a thick slice of bread and butter instead of the borscht, sour cream and warm potatoes that Ma had promised.

  Ada would say, as she always did, ‘Ag shame, man. A kiddie like you don’t need to hear grown-ups s
houting like that,’ or ‘Seis tog, Jackie, I feel sorry for you in this crazy place!’

  This time, though, Ma stood there silently. There was no crying. Her blank face, pale and waxy as greaseproof paper, was almost worse than tears and I wondered what was coming next.

  Pa looked at Ma. The colour in his face had faded a little but his forehead remained furrowed, his eyes dark. He slammed the till shut, so that it rattled.

  ‘I hope you can explain,’ he said.

  I sat on the rough wooden floor, tracing patterns in the sawdust with my finger, feeling the soft wood dust powdering my hand. I looked up towards Ma.

  ‘It’s Mrs van de Merwe again. She promised she’d come in this morning to pay. I felt sorry for her. She was short of cash. She promised to come but she must have forgotten.’

  Pa thumped his fist down hard on the counter, making the row of biscuit jars shudder and jump along the counter.

  ‘Don’t be angry with me,’ Ma said. ‘I couldn’t say no to her. They’re still struggling after the bankruptcy last year. Her husband’s not back on his feet yet.’

  ‘You may not have noticed but we’re a shop, not a welfare board. We’re not in the business of helping out every blooming Afrikaner who’s having a hard time. What are you doing, giving out favours left right and centre, the minute my back’s turned?’

  ‘I do my best. I try.’ There was a silence. ‘It doesn’t come naturally to me,’ she said.

  He sighed.

  ‘I didn’t ask to be a shopkeeper’s wife.’

  ‘Ah, that again, how far beneath you it is to be serving in a store.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘A woman with your education shouldn’t have to serve customers.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘A woman like you, who could have been a schoolteacher, or a nurse.’

  Ma turned away, towards the kitchen. Now, though I couldn’t see her face, I knew that she would be blinking away the tears.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this meshugas,’ she muttered wearily. ‘I’m so tired of this shouting all the time.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Pa said. There was a little note of doubt in his voice.

  ‘I know what I’d do, if it weren’t for Little Jackie, and the one on the way.’

  ‘What, go back to your parents? Go, if you’re so keen,’ Pa said. ‘Go crying to your parents to have you back. Go! I’m sure they’d be delighted!’ and then finally, in Yiddish, ‘I’ll give you sandwiches to help you on your way!’

  ‘You’re just trying to upset me,’ Ma sobbed.

  ‘No,’ he said, more quietly. ‘I’m not. Why would I want to do that? But for God’s sake, Sarah, we need to make a living. I’m trying to build this place up, make something of it. The last few years have been hard, but now maybe things are starting to look up a bit. Please, help me. No more nice gestures to Mrs van de Merwe or anyone else for that matter.’

  He stepped towards her to put a hand on her arm but Ma turned away from him, picked up a pile of papers from the counter and without looking up, said, ‘I think I should tell you, before you ask; I gave Mr Rabinovitz that piece of blue carpet. In case you’re wondering where it went.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sarah!’ he shouted, but she was already in the kitchen. I heard her slow footsteps climbing the staircase and listened for the silence at the top, where she usually waited to catch her breath. I heard the bedroom door open and shut quietly behind her. I knew that she would be gone for the rest of the afternoon and that once again there would just be bread and butter for my supper.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ma wailed. ‘Don’t go.’ But Pa had already grabbed the keys to the truck and was heading out the back door. I heard the truck door slam and the engine hiccoughing into life. Ma sat down heavily on the stool behind the counter. Her shoulders were shuddering.

  They’d had another argument, soon after Ada left, this time about the money that Pa was giving her to spend. Ma had asked how he expected her to put food on the table, unless he gave her the money to buy it. Why couldn’t she budget properly, like other women, Pa had demanded to know. ‘You’re clever enough, aren’t you?’

  That had been the final straw. She’d shouted at him that other women had husbands who gave them enough money to run a decent home.

  And then he’d taken the keys and gone.

  ‘Go for your afternoon nap, Jackie,’ Ma said, sniffing into her sleeve. ‘I’ll bring you a biscuit and a glass of milk later, if you’re a good boy.’

  I went up to my bed and tried to sleep but tossed and turned in the hot sheets. My hair was damp with sweat. I thought about the biscuit and the glass of milk and of Ma downstairs, sitting on her stool. The patterns on the walls drifted before my eyes, the flowery wallpaper, the stain above the bed and the dark patch where the photograph of Auntie Essie had once hung and been taken down. I stared at the glass lampshade, with its dusty yellow light. A pair of flies circled the bulb, like little aeroplanes that had lost their controls.

  Briefly I dozed and woke to hear Ma coming slowly up the stairs. She opened the door and stood there. She was panting for breath.

  ‘I’m not well, Jackie,’ she breathed. ‘I need help. Pa’s driven away in the truck, goodness knows where, and Ada’s gone for her bus home. You’re the only one here, so you’ve got to look after your ma, Jackie my boy. You’ve got to help me.’

  I tried not to cry but there was a voice out there in the room, outside of me, sobbing, a high-pitched moan. Was it mine?

  ‘Be brave, Jackie. My time has come.’ That phrase again. And now it was here.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said fiercely, through gritted teeth but then stopped midway and held her breath, seemingly unable to finish her sentence. Then all of a sudden she started to moan and when I looked down I saw her dress was wet, a burst of water rushing down her legs and pooling on the linoleum by her feet.

  Now she was whimpering. ‘Come with me, Jackie,’ she whispered. ‘We must get help. ’

  She pulled me out of the bed by the arm, bruising me with the pressure of her hand on my elbow. Heaving herself out of the bedroom door, she lowered herself slowly onto the stairs and slid down, one at a time, pausing for breath and to steady herself, pushing me ahead of her with one hand.

  Halfway down, she stopped. I saw her bite hard on her lip, till a small bubble of crimson blood welled up. She licked it away and then, when more appeared, let it trickle lazily down her chin. She eased herself further down the stairs, then crawled into the store, keeping close to the counter, and edged towards the locked shop door. I had never seen her like this, on her hands and knees, lumbering across the dusty floor. I clung to her arm. A few yards from the door, she stopped and sank down.

  ‘Open the door,’ she said. ‘Try to reach up, Jackie, and see if you can do it. Try hard, Jackie.’

  I stretched up for the catch. If I stood on tiptoe I could just about reach it but it was too stiff for my small hands to pull back and I couldn’t open it.

  I looked out. On Main Road, it was quiet. The shops had all closed. It was that time of day when stoves were being lit and everyone had headed home, when children played in the yard and cats and dogs came back to be fed, when mosquitoes began to seek out lamps and the gazanias closed their blooms for the night, when the rubbish lorry had already passed. I looked out and saw no one. I banged on the door. Ma yelled for help but no one came by.

  I stood looking out at the empty street. No one. Finally, from the corner of my eye, I saw something coming. It was Piet du Plessis, strolling down Main Road.

  I knew Piet from the times he came into the shop with his mother. I’d heard Ma say, ‘He thinks he’s a real man now with that swagger of his,’ and Ada had giggled. ‘Gone gi
rl mad,’ Ma said. ‘Eyeing up everything that moves.’

  Ada had laughed. ‘Got a few years to go before he nabs one, I reckon. Fifteen’s too young to be sniffing around the meisies, the young girls.’

  Now he was strolling down Main Road. Perhaps he was off to the corner shop to buy an ice and hoping that there might be a girl or two there. He passed the Handyhouse, all dark and shut up.

  He was about to walk past. ‘It’s Piet,’ Ma panted. ‘Get him to stop.’

  I tapped on the window. He walked on. How could I make him stop?

  *****

  Later, Piet told the story to everyone who came into the store: Mrs van de Merwe, Mrs Shapiro and Mikey, Millicent, April Fortune and all the others who crowded round the counter to listen and make ooh and ahh noises at the puling, shrivelled little prune who was my new brother.

  ‘I thought it was Spot-eye the cat, that tapping noise, scratching at the shop window, trying to be let out. Something made me turn back. I looked into the darkness and saw nothing. I looked more carefully. And there was Little Jackie, standing at the door, tapping away. And there on the floor of the store was something big and lumpy, up against the counter, that turned out to be Missus Neuberger. I didn’t recognise her at first. I thought it was a pile of clothes, or old curtains or something.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. Should I go and run for help? Should I leave her and the little boy? Or should I break down the door and help her myself? Jeez, it was the most difficult decision of my life.’

  Mrs du Plessis laughed out loud at that. ‘You’ve had no decisions in your life, Piet. You’re only fifteen.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘Shut up, Ma,’ yelled Piet, blushing furiously. She was spoiling his story.

  ‘Anyhow, I decided there and then. There was no time for help. So I pushed the door hard but it wouldn’t give. And then I kicked at the door as hard as I could. First time it only shuddered. So I tried again. Second time no good. Third time round I hurled myself at it and what d’you know, the lock gave and I went flying in, glass shattering all around me and Little Jackie sitting there with it sprinkled all over him like shiny frosting. She was in a bad way, boy oh boy, was she in a bad way!’