by Ufrieda Ho
coins. We felt out the sameness of the coppers and silvers, then stacked
the springboks, proteas and blue cranes into columns and zipped the coins
into plastic money bags.
If everyone was in a good mood then I knew my dad had had a good
day. If my mom or dad passed us a few coins or maybe even a R5 note
each, then I knew it had been a really good day.
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My grandfather, Fok Yat Gou
(who became Leon Hing Low),
with slicked-back hair and wearing
a Western-style suit poses for a
photo some years before leaving
China for South Africa.
My grandparents and my
mother pose on a studio couch
for a photo.
My grandfather becomes an alien, a ‘vreemdeling’
of the Union of South Africa on this identity card.
My mother, Fok Jouw Yee, as a young
woman in the years before she became a
stowaway destined for South Africa.
My father, Ho Sing Kee, young and
handsome, hoping for the City of Gold
to offer up some of its fortune.
My mother and my grandmother, Low
Wan Yuk, pose for a studio shot. They
sent this photo to my grandfather who
was a world away trying to make a life
in South Africa.
My parents in their dating days in the
veggie patch on my grandfather’s plot
outside Pretoria.
Mom and dad’s wedding day.
Dad as a young fahfee man in the room he worked in before heading out
for the banks.
My father and others in the community are wowed by a fancy Rolls-Royce that’s
worth posing next to.
Me on a park lawn.
The Ho siblings at a park in Johannesburg. As always, Unisda and I have something
that matches, in this case it’s our handbags with cats embroidered on them.
I show off my butterfly cake, baked and
My parents as tourists at Chiang
decorated by my mom and Yolanda.
Kai Shek Memorial Hall.
On holiday in Durban. Dad wades in to cool off his feet, but the beach is really a
treat for us kids.
Mom and dad attend a swanky ball at the Carlton
Hotel in Johannesburg.
My green-fingered grandfather shows off a mighty winter melon, a Chinese
favourite, grown in his retirement village garden.
My dad is called a ‘gentleman of social standing’ in this document that was needed
to keep him from being tossed off trains during the apartheid years.
11
Weekend Dad
All too soon, the school holidays came to an end. Cheery and upbeat
adverts on TV signalled the coming dread: ‘Back to School is Cool’. We
groaned each time the adverts started. Who needed reminding that soon
the 6.30 a.m. alarm would be piercing through our dreams and our days
would be ruled by more bells at school?
The adverts were a signal for my mom to start making notes about
sales and special offers. Her bargain-hunting skills were unsurpassed and
what she bought she placed in a locked stationery cupboard that we were
not allowed to go near without her supervising the distribution of erasers
and pencils, paint sets and boxes of chalk, crayons and rulers that kept
snapping. By the time I was in matric my mom still had a few exam pads
that she had bought for only 99 cents many years earlier.
January seemed to have an in-built accelerator, like the month was an
autobahn for time. Before we knew it, the early morning alarm was beep-
beeping us back to school.
We went back to seeing dad very little during the school week. While he
was getting in his last few hours of sleep, we were walking to the school
bus past dogs that rushed up to the fences and cars that started to crowd
at traffi c lights in anticipation of the coming rush hour.
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UFRIEDA HO
At night we would be packing away our homework or brushing our
teeth before bed when dad made it through the door; sometimes we would
be in bed already.
Weekends gave us a bit of dad time, especially if he got home a little
earlier on a Saturday afternoon. We never expected to go anywhere and
we never nagged to be taken out or for treats. It was not that we were
extraordinary, good children; it was simply that it was never expected.
Watching Magnum PI together, and maybe the night-time movie if we
managed to stay awake, was a good-enough Saturday night. Sometimes
mom made one of her triple-layered jellies we could eat in front of the
TV. Our happy anticipation rose with each layer she added throughout
the day. We loved choosing the mould, too. We had a rabbit with almond-
shaped eyes and a bump for a tail and a racing car, which was Kelvin’s
favourite. There was also custard, the instant powdered kind that cooked
up in a yellow volcano in minutes. By the time it was ready to serve, it was
cool enough not to burn our tongues but hot enough to make our robot-
coloured jellies ooze and pool, returning to their liquid origins.
Strict as my parents were, they were not austere. They wanted us to have
treats and, when the budget allowed, there were also outings and holidays.
The drive-in was a favourite, especially when we were all small enough to
be bundled into the back of the Cortina. Our haunt was the Top Star. Built
on top of a mine dump, it stood as a landmark to the south of the city until
2010. Depending on where you were in the city, you could sometimes see
the giant screen turn the night sky into a silent movie of flickering scenes,
joined together by your imagination for dialogue.
When dad and mom made the announcement that we were going to go
to the drive-in, we knew we were finally going to connect the movie with
the scripted dialogue. Our Cortina wound its way to the top of the old
mine dump, flattened on the top to make room for this starlit park-and-
view. You paid per car, not per passenger, and our car was always full of
passengers, not to mention armfuls of blankets, pillows and teddies.
You were meant to tune in the car radio to the frequency at the drive-
in but it would often crackle with static. You could also use the piped-in
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audio from a speaker that was affixed to poles that cars could park next
to.
We chose our spot and drove up to the speaker. Dad immediately started
fiddling to get everything working. When the signal went dead, dad was
never convinced it was the speaker that was faulty. So he would keep
fiddling. Eventually, he gave up and we drove to another spot. In this new
spot, we all adjusted ourselves to maximise the altered view of the screen
and dad started all over again to tame the crackle.
With the audio finally in synch, we could connect the picture and the
sound and the silent movies of the night sky we knew so well from afar
took on a whole new audio delight.
For whatever reason, we always seemed to watch double bills with
horrors as the second feature. It was why we were ready with our teddies
and blankets. As the terror reached out from the screen and headed fo
r our
car, we wanted to have a furry friend to squeeze. We girls often had more
than one teddy each because tough-guy Kelvin would eventually also grab
for a teddy once the baddie made his move or the lurking supernatural
evil force emerged. This was before PG ratings and the idea that young
children could absorb too much of the plot of scary movies. Mom would
say, ‘Just close your eyes and try to sleep’, but this did not block out
the scary music, the heavy breathing and the screams that worked into a
perfect crescendo of Hollywood fear.
The final credits rolled and we had not slept a wink, even with our eyes
closed most of the time. Worse still, there remained a ride back home in
the dark, dark night. Places like the secluded mine dumps were perfect
hideouts for a psycho with a chainsaw, a werewolf scavenging among the
moonlit trees or a vampire in need of an anti-anaemic fix. We closed our
eyes as we wound down the dark circular track of the Top Star drive-in
until we felt the road straighten out under the car’s tyres and we knew
soon we would be safely home.
Another treat for us was our roadhouse outings. Piled into the car, we
drove north of the city to the Doll’s House, which was on Louis Botha
Avenue. As a child, it seemed to be at the far end of the world, making
the trip a real adventure. Dad ordered chicken and mayonnaise toasted
sandwiches, burgers and chips and soda floats. His window was rolled
down halfway and we held our breath as the waiter carefully set the
specially made tray to hang over the glass, leaving our food floating in
mid-air. It was all part of the roadhouse adventure we loved so much,
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sitting in the back seat and drinking tall glasses of cooldrink or maybe a
cream soda float, deliciously sweet and fizzy and topped with soft-serve ice
cream adrift in a sea of green. These foods were fantastically foreign to our
daily menu, making them all the more yummy to us.
One time, after one of our meals, dad flicked the car lights for the
waiter. He asked for ‘puppies’ for us children. The waiter nodded and
scribbled something on his small notepad. Devastated at what we thought
was about to be served to us, we started pleading: ‘No, Ba, we do not want
puppies; please, Ah Ba, we do not want any of that.’ My father just told
us to shush.
Our waiter emerged from the food pick-up spot a few minutes later.
He carried a tray with a spectacle of strawberry, ice cream and cream all
swirled up inside sundae glasses. Maybe he was going to another car? No,
he was heading straight for us. They were ‘parfaits’, in my dad’s imperfect
French, but we ate our ‘puppies’ happily as our parents laughed.
My dad also did ‘posh’ from time to time. Posh for us was a trip to
Mike’s Kitchen in Market Street in the centre of town. The restaurant had
red and white decor, proper tablecloths with tiny red and white squares,
booths with cushy seats and even tables for two where diners could peer
out of the windows of the old building with its thick stone walls.
My dad usually ordered ribs for us, but what we loved most was the
salad bar. It was a fascinating and completely foreign idea to us that you
could fill your plate from the deep bowls of vegetables displayed under
lights and you could daub the vegetables with oils and dressings or pile
up your plate with vegetables and other bitty things all slathered in a
creamy pink sauce. Later I would learn the names for these things – from
the thousand island dressing to the croutons – and we also demystified the
phenomenon of the finger bowl.
Joburg’s inner city was an outing in itself. Its tallest building, the
Carlton Centre, offered a bird’s-eye view of the city. The elevator raced
up so fast we had to clear our ears by exaggeratedly faking yawns. Once
at the top, we walked up to the windows that surrounded the whole floor
and we peered down to the matchbox cars on the ground. We dared each
other to stand closer to the window panes. Mom or dad kept telling us
to be careful, then they dropped 20 cents into the timed binoculars so we
could look over to the pale yellow of mine dumps to the south and at the
lights of the city all around. I did not think about what lay beyond the
mine dumps, which was the sprawl of Soweto where there were no neat
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green and red roofs, trees or regular streetlights, where the townships of
the fahfee betters were.
Instead, we trained the binoculars to the east. ‘Can you see our house?’
dad always asked and he pretended to make out a landmark that we
should be seeing, maybe the round cylinder building of Ponte, and we
peered more intently into the binoculars as if the harder we looked the
more certain it would be that our house would come into focus.
Our main annual family outing came at Easter when dad took a few extra
days’ break as the religious holidays freed up his calendar. As Good Friday
arrived, we knew what was coming: the Rand Easter Show. We headed out
after an early dinner. The cars’ lights were already turned on and so were
all the lights inside the showgrounds. We joined the human snakes making
their way to the cashiers and the turnstiles.
Once through the gate, people dispersed as they headed to the halls
they wanted to see first. We hurried, too, dragging our parents, urging
them to walk faster. Then we saw it – jar upon jar of honey making the
light around the display golden. The best of the best of the viscous goo was
marked with a ribbon rosette. The honey display was a staple of the Rand
Show, as was the icing-sugar sculptures. Some women’s guild members
created dolls’ houses and scenes with Easter bunnies, hens and decorated
eggs. We walked in circles around the displays, calling each other to look
at some little detail we had just seen.
The Rand Show was a highlight, but it held a shadow of terror, too,
for us children. One year Yolanda got lost in the crowds, sending us into
a panic. She remembered that a man with a cigarette popped her balloon.
She was distracted as she looked up at where the balloon had been and
then down to the fallen piece of string dangling around her feet. When
she looked up again, we had disappeared into the thick of the crowds. She
burst into tears. Kindly strangers took her to a designated pick-up point,
but minutes of panic ticked by when we could not find her anywhere.
Then an announcement came on the public address system and thankfully
we knew where she could be found.
She remembered: ‘I was so scared not just because I was lost but because
I knew when I was found I would be shouted at for running around or not
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listening to mom and dad. But when dad came he was glad to see me, and
in fact he bought me a rabbit-shaped balloon, one of the more expensive
ones. I guess he was just glad to have found me.’
It meant we received an extra lecture every time we arrived at the Rand
Show. We were reminded to hold hands
as we drifted from hall to hall
where faux leather sausage dog doorstops and the latest vegetable slicers
competed for attention. Even dad succumbed to the special prices and we
ended up with a sausage dog with its plastic eyes and two flaps for ears.
That was the Rand Easter Show of 1981 and the dog survived into the
new millennium; I know because my mom marked his ears with the date
he came home with us.
Of course, there were the rides, all lit up with people screaming on the
roller coasters, gripping on to guard rails as their heads were thrown back.
As the rides ran out of steam and people got off with smiles plastered on
their faces, talking fast and gesturing wildly, we begged to be allowed to
have a taste of the rush, too. ‘When you are bigger; it is too dangerous,’
mom would say. Then she distracted us with the carousel ponies with their
mechanical prancing and their slow orbit around a mirrored centre as
tinny music played.
We chose our horses carefully as we waited behind a closed gate. Then
as soon as the attendant opened the gate, we raced to beat other children
who had eyed out their favourites, too. Dad and mom waited for us as
we went round and round and up and down, holding all the extra jerseys
and jackets and with a few ride tokens still fluttering from dad’s hand. He
invariably suggested the Ferris wheel, the family ride we could all do. We
swayed a little in our capsule as we were shifted up one by one until the
whole Ferris wheel was filled. Then the man with the lever and button
brought the metal ring to life. We rose higher and higher until the people
with balloons and glow-in-the-dark bracelets grew tiny and we could see
out over the lights, across the parking lots and towards the darkness of
Soweto, whose people we did not even realise were barred from the Rand
Show gates.
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Christmas was the big exhale for our family. Finally dad got to slow down
for more than only an afternoon or the night or a long weekend.
The city was infected with the spirit of the season and came to life in
lights. We went downtown on slow drives to see the fairytale lights strung
