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Song for Sarah

Page 4

by Jansen, Jonathan;


  Sarah and Abraham on their wedding day in Cape Town, 1955

  The Dutch Reformed Sarah and the Anglican Abraham, fired up by their new faith, took their jobs as evangelical parents very seriously. Their children would have biblical names – what better way to demonstrate to fellow believers your seriousness of faith? And so the eldest was named Jonathan David, the Old Testament couple whose love for each other was ‘greater than the love of a man for a woman’. Then came Peter, the Rock on which Christ built the church, followed by Naomi (disputed by her brothers, her name nevertheless meant ‘pleasantness’ in Hebrew) and, of course, the sacrificial son of the biblical Sarah and Abraham, Isaac.

  The issuing of serious Christian names was common practice among newly saved Brethren families. Abraham’s closest sister Edith, who married a small man called Goliath, would also be reborn. Their biological children were Lydia, Phoebe, Epaphras, Ruth and Silas; Patsy, the eldest, was Edith’s voorkind (child before marriage), born before the mother was saved. And so throughout the gospel community children bore names like Abigail, Joshua, Peter, James, John, Mary, Stephen, Esther, Gideon – and so on. That many of these biblically named children did not live up to the reputations of their glorious forebears is a story for another time.

  Why would Abraham and Sarah break with tradition and name their last child Denzil? Well, Abraham once worked for a white family in the Southern Suburbs as a domestic worker; they seemed to treat him well and so he named the youngest child after the Madam’s son. Denzil would die tragically on a dark and deserted road around some Philippi farmlands. Naomi was there at the time of tragedy while Firstborn received the heartbreaking news in California where he was studying. Sarah, along with Abraham, was absolutely devastated.

  The poet Frazer Barry would write about these tragedy routines for mothers on the Cape Flats, something he referenced so poignantly in the song ‘Grafte Oppie Vlakte’:

  Nog ’n mammie op haar knieë

  Another mummy on her knees

  Naomi remembers...

  Sally, as she was affectionately known, married fairly late in life. The date of betrothal was 17 December 1955 when she was already twenty-eight years old. Those were the years when Banns of Marriage were read out in church, announcing the intention of a man and a woman to enter into holy matrimony. Out of her marriage union with the lanky Abraham Christian Frederick Jansen, came firstborn Jonathan David, a perfect blend of both his parents (mother’s no-nonsense manner and father’s insane generosity), who arrived on 29 September 1956. Sarah and her likeable husband then had Peter Jeremy in 1958, the soft-hearted animal lover, then Naomi the middle-child tomboy in 1960, Isaac the activist in 1964 and Denzil John, the winsome lastborn in 1966. Midwife Ebden facilitated these and many, many other homebirths on the Cape Flats. No underwater births or Lamaze classes that those high-end medical-aid members these days can afford. It was no coincidence then that her daughter in 1992 chose to have a homebirth as well.

  Sarah had her fair share of pain and disappointment in life. In December 1987 the news would arrive at her front door of a fatal accident in which her youngest child had been killed. He was alone, driving a friend’s car one night when a stray horse crossed the path of the vehicle and Denzil was killed instantly in the collision. The Jansen family was numb with grief. It was the worst thing that could have happened to Sarah and Abraham. I remember very clearly, in the confusion of the news, both Peter and I feeling so overwhelmed by the shock of the terrible thing that had happened to our beloved youngest brother Denzil. We were pacing up and down the house, not knowing what to do, what to say. There were friends, I seem to remember, offering to take us to the scene of the accident about fifteen kilometres away. I think that my father went, we did not want to go. In this moment of great crisis Sarah just seemed to be quietly holding everyone and herself together once again. She told us to go and lie on her bed for a while and rest. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now, how she could be so calm, so together. She had just seemed to absorb the terrifying news of her baby’s death, a week after his twenty-first birthday, and she was telling us to go and rest.

  This same son had been very ill as a child, suffering from ongoing convulsions, often sleeping in a darkened bedroom. Somehow he outgrew this sickness and of course Sarah nursed him throughout, also training me to look after him, given that I was all of six years his senior.

  X

  Concealing the shame

  Sarah was never pregnant; at least it never seemed that way. For her generation, sex was seldom discussed and its consequences, such as a swollen tummy, even less so. So your mother was not pregnant and the five babies simply appeared. When the bedroom door was closed and the family matriarch did not emerge, you knew of course that something was amiss.

  For a long time Sarah’s children believed that the baby was brought home rather than conceived through intimate sex and delivered through the reproductive channels of the woman’s body. This belief was reinforced when Mrs Ebden periodically appeared in her stylish horse-and-cart in front of Number 51. She was the tall, calm and dignified midwife whom everyone knew and relied on to bring the baby home from the mountain or wherever. After Mrs Ebden left the bedroom there was, miraculously, a baby to be introduced. The children would be called in to see and to hold the new arrival. Then, as swiftly as she had alighted from under the black canopy of the horse-and-cart with her mysterious bag, Mrs Ebden was gone, leaving another baby behind.

  In Sarah’s home and church, sex was talked about as sin and nothing else. It was something to be avoided and practised only under the ordinance of marriage. There was a rumour in Brethren circles that some of the men believed sex was for procreation; any other reason for intimacy fell under the category of ‘worldly pleasures’ and therefore was without saintly purpose. In everyday talk among the Gospel People, sex and sin were intertwined, part of a raft of prohibitions that Sarah’s children would come to learn throughout their young lives.

  Those were Sarah’s times, when even teachers at public schools were not allowed to be seen pregnant and would be sent home well in advance of any physical evidence of the fact. Generations of women teachers were penalised if they got married, let alone had sex. Married women would lose their permanent positions and therefore the ability to accumulate pension and other benefits so essential on retirement. A married teacher was dispensable and this injustice had far-reaching consequences for her family. In other words, Sarah might have lived in an unforgiving church environment when it came to being a woman, let alone a sexual woman, but such attitudes were hardly in tension with those of society at the time.

  The newly married couple in Pacaltsdorp with Abraham’s grandmother, Ouskassie, and her dog Mary-Ann

  Any display of women’s sexuality was quickly extinguished in the Brethren churches. Long dresses were the norm since it was said that men would be distracted by a short skirt or a dress above the ankles. Nail polish was an abomination in the same class of vanity as necklaces. The cautionary tale for bejewelled sisters was an Old Testament whore called Jezebel. However, the harshest treatment was reserved for those women who cut their locks for ‘if a woman has long hair, it is a glory for her; for her hair is given her for a covering’. Your sexuality as a woman had to be played down at every turn and that meant permitting your hair to grow naturally without interference.

  The centuries have taught that no amount of prohibition prevents ordinary mortals from rolling in the hay. And so of course young women became pregnant outside of marriage and occasionally church men and women drifted off with lovers other than their spouses. When that happened a dark cloud descended over the gospel churches for this was the most common reason for excommunication: sex. And there was only one way you would know about it – the pregnant woman. This shame had to be concealed and so it was not uncommon in those days to banish the pregnant girl to upcountry towns with ironic names like Genadendal, which means ‘valley of mercy�
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  Naomi remembers...

  Sarah was a healer. There were regular knocks on the blue front door from neighbours’ kids being sent by their parents to ask Nurse Jansen for gauze, for cotton wool, for ointment, for Vidaylin. Sometimes, for example, she’d find herself cleaning and dressing the wounds of children who had been playing in the road. She would do what was needed whilst scolding them about the need to be careful.

  Sarah knew many young women cast aside by church and society because they became pregnant outside of marriage. While Sarah herself preached the gospel of abstinence among unmarried women, she did not discard those frightened and isolated individuals. She loved them, taught them basic homemaking skills and listened to their stories. In Sarah’s spiritual world, restoration was as important as condemnation, and once the deed was done there were some practical things to be learnt quickly, such as how to care for a baby and make a home for the new family with or, more commonly, without the father. She was, to all intents and purposes, a practical woman.

  The missionaries sowed seeds of faith and culture among the Cape Flats believers. The restrictions enforced on the sisters in the meetings were particularly cruel. Women were not allowed to cut their hair, wear long pants, carry jewellery or have their ears pierced. If they did, the women could expect one day to be called on to give an account before the Great White Throne of Judgement for that bit of skin that had been removed from the ear lobe. Warnings were given regularly about the jewellery-bedecked Jezebel, the Old Testament harlot, who was torn to shreds by dogs, no less!

  XI

  Sarah-iah law

  The married Sarah went home to Montagu for the birth of her first child while Abraham continued working in Cape Town. Handwritten letters of love and regret at not being together travelled between the Mother City and the small Boland town. This arrangement was clearly not sustainable and so while Firstborn was still a baby in the middle 1950s the family left Montagu and moved to Kleinskool in Port Elizabeth (PE) where Abraham hoped to find work. Fiercely independent, it must have been difficult for Sarah to live with other families on a pig farm belonging to the Benjamins, prominent members of the Eastern Cape Brethren.

  That was a short stay, however, for the family picked up again to settle in Steenberg on the Cape Flats where the main childhood memory was of the house nearly burning down after Peter took burning matches to a feather mattress. The final move of the Jansen clan was a short one to the next-door suburb of Retreat and there, at Number 51 Tenth Avenue, Sarah’s family would lay down its roots. Sarah would eventually find and settle into a new nursing job at Princess Alice Orthopaedic Hospital in Retreat, which was much closer to home.

  It was a strange place, Retreat, sandwiched between the koephuise (koophuise, in proper Afrikaans) of Square Hill and the dirty flats of Lavender Hill. If you left Retreat for Square Hill, that was a sure sign of upward mobility; there the people owned detached homes, each with a slightly different design. They all spoke English and their hair somehow seemed straighter than the rest. Square Hill Primary made sure they kept out the riff-raff from the Avenues – their roads had real names. Sturvy was the word then used to insult this pretentious community.

  If you left Retreat for Lavender Hill, on the other hand, you were going downhill fast. That’s where most of the gangs were and where the media went for the stereotyped Coloured woman – loud, hair in curlers, missing front teeth, the whole package. Sarah would come to raise her family in that precarious space between upward and downward mobility, Square Hill and Lavender Hill respectively.

  Sarah and Abraham at church, enjoying tea with the congregation after a service; usually tea would be laid on for special occasions such as the birthday of a congregant

  Number 51 had three small bedrooms, a little kitchen area and the fancily named dining room off the main door entrance. Things were tight for there was always a cousin or aunt from upcountry living with Sarah’s family, sometimes nine human beings inside this small space. Such a crowded home needed to be managed, and there never was any doubt about who was in charge.

  Even though both Sarah and Abraham worked, it was the mother who did the bulk of the household chores. She washed and ironed the clothes, bought the groceries, cooked the meals and disciplined the children. Except on Thursdays, when Abraham knocked off early and made a curry dinner so strong that only he and Firstborn could possibly enjoy the meal.

  Sarah wore the pants, a put-down expression in those times for bossy women in a marriage. In the Jansen family you were unlikely to hear the familiar mommy threat of ‘wait till your father comes home and then you will see what happens’. For Sarah’s children justice was instant, meted out on the spot by the family ruler.

  There was a rhythm to Sarah-iah law. As Staff Nurse Jansen came through the gate of the house she involuntarily grabbed a branch of the Port Jackson willow that to this day hangs over the entrance as if to say ‘pick me’. Sarah would look around and quickly find something out of order. Occasionally, one of the children would volunteer wrongdoing in the vain hope of escaping Sarah’s wrath. And then the children jumped, literally, all over the beds, under the kitchen table, behind the long curtains – to no avail. Screaming ‘Mum-mee’ would have no effect other than to draw attention to your half-hidden hide.

  Once Firstborn dared to ask Sarah through the tears, and in the grammar of the house: ‘But if Peter broke the window, why is Mummy hitting all of us?’ The answer was painful but, in time, understandable: ‘Somewhere in the next few hours you are going to do something wrong; so while I’m at it...’

  Sarah obviously believed in those scientific laws regarding the conservation of energy rather than the principles of natural justice.

  There was something curious about the application of Sarah-iah law. When Sarah beat you, she switched over to Afrikaans. Perhaps that was where Firstborn’s initial aversion to ‘the white man’s language’ came from; it was the language of pain. A lovely evening dinner would proceed in English and then, as news leaked of a sibling misdeed, up jumped Sarah returning with the Port Jackson branch in hand. ‘Jul-le-wil-mos-nie-luis-ter-nie!’ (Since-you-do-not-want-to-listen!) That was the other fascination of the hiding – she spoke in staccato, a fragment of a word at a time, while breathing audibly between lashes as she progressed slowly from one child to the next in energy-saving moves that would have made Eskom proud.

  Such display of maternal authority might well have bothered the soft-natured Abraham. As a driver for Nannucci, the dry-cleaning firm in Woodstock, he earned much less than Sarah. Then and now, a salary difference in favour of the wife causes tension in patriarchal households. After all it was not just the money – it was the difference in status between professional nurse and laundry driver. But if such difference bothered Abraham, he did not show it.

  Sarah seemed to have the last word on everything, from matters regarding the discipline of the children to whether there was room for another upcountry family member to move in. None of this made sense in the doctrinal commitments of the gospel community. In the Brethren, the sisters were invisible. The Apostle Paul clearly did not have Sarah in mind (or maybe he did) when he instructed that ‘the women learn in silence with all subjection’. So women could not preach or pray in church gatherings, at least not while men were present. They might sing but in some of the more extreme Gospel Halls they could not even deliver a solo item during services; they had to sing in communion with men. Their heads with uncut hair were covered all the time, a further sign of their subjection for ‘the head of the woman is the man’.

  While this kind of subjection of women would drive white feminists crazy, for Sarah and other Cape Flats women there were bigger fish to fry under the oppressive conditions of the times. Ronelda Kamfer put her finger on the more urgent dilemmas of the Cape Flats mother in the poem ‘Sterk staan vir plat skoene’:

  En ek kan sien waarvoor

  My ma’le gefight het

/>   Om van hulle knieë af te kom

  Omdat die rewolusie

  Nie vir hulle sexual was nie

  ‘Standing strong for flat shoes’

  And I can see what

  Ma and them fought for

  To get up off their knees

  Because the revolution

  Was never sexual for them

  The children of Gospel People knew of course that there was a big difference between how the church saw their mothers and what transpired at home. And nowhere was this more obvious than under Sarah’s roof.

  Naomi remembers...

  From being this NG Kerk Klein Karoo lass from Montagu, reared by an especially strict mother, Sarah became a wife whose wanderlust husband decided that moving to Port Elizabeth as a newly married couple with a young child was a really good idea. After all, Abe’s favourite, once very glamorous singer-dancer sister, Edith Rademeyer, now a born-again Christian herself, lived there and he could be closer to her and Goliath, her very Brethren husband, who had a deep affection for his brother-in-law. The love between the brothers-in-law Abe and Gollie, as he was known by all, would stand the test of time.

  Broer Radie, as he was known in church circles, derived from his surname Rademeyer, was nothing short of precious and silly. Their styles of fathering, discipline and discipleship could not have been more starkly different. Abe was the happy-go-lucky, life-of-the-party person with the memory of an elephant who found it difficult to get angry with anyone, while Gollie was an elder in the local assembly in Fairview, Port Elizabeth, an energetic preacher who beat the wits out of his children. As the head of the household, he was going to show the local believers, through the harsh disciplining of his children, that he led by example. This was the church culture in which Sally found herself.

  One often wonders what exactly caused Abraham and Sarah to stay in this Eastern Cape city for the brief time they did because before long they moved to the Cape Flats of the Western Cape, where parenting the brood of five would be set against all the challenges presented by the debilitating backdrop of apartheid laws that so bedevilled the cohesion of especially poor South African communities. School dropout rates were high, very few high-school leavers made it to university and older siblings often had to leave school to start earning a living that would help parents with the necessary income to keep looming poverty at the door.

 

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