Only after much work by Master Jo and many phone calls was a doctor whom he had chosen allowed to examine Christian’s body.
Brain hemorrhage. Ruptured spleen. Genital contusion. Contusion of the trunk and chest consistent with sustained beatings. Aspiration pneumonia.
Christian had been tortured to death.
Finally, after too many days, I was allowed to be alone with my boy in an ice-green room with frosted-glass windows. He was lying on a stainless-steel trolley, his long body stiff with death.
The skin of a dead person follows familiar lines, yet feels like a stranger’s to the touch. Robbed of the fullness that comes from breath and blood and life, Christian’s skin felt as thick as rubber and achingly cold.
I stroked my eldest son’s face, now a collapsed mask, and cradled his broken body in my arms—a body twice dishonored, first by the police and then by the doctor’s scalpel. I wept savage, raging tears. I wept for the cheeky piccanin running along the red dust road to welcome me. I wept for the schoolboy carrying his satchel and seriousness with such a proud, straight back. I wept for the pain and fear he had suffered alone in a comfortless cell, and I wept for a life that had been so full of promise, so brutally put out.
With two children taken from me, I sank into a life stripped of hope. It was a lonely place to be, but more real than the life the Eloffs had led me to believe was possible. I continued to work for them, but I drew away from their cause. The rainbow I had once briefly glimpsed had faded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1984
Miriam
It was Christmas Eve and snowing. Dave and I had been invited to a party hosted by one of his squash mates. Stooping under a bower of fairy lights, we made our way up the freshly shoveled path.
Dave clasped my gloved hand firmly in his as he knocked on the half-open door. He knew how much I hated these first moments.
Voices and funky Christmas music emanated from within.
“Hellooo,” he called out.
A guy with greasy brown hair appeared from a side door, balancing three full glasses in his hands. “Dave, mate! Season’s greetings and all that jazz. Follow me, the action’s this way.”
“Nick, this is Miriam . . .”
I smiled, but our host was already heading toward the din, sloshing Christmas punch out of the glasses with inebriated carelessness. Dave winked at me as we eased past a couple snogging in the hallway.
Soon we were standing on the edge of a room packed with florid faces, raucous laughter, and gyrating bodies. A wave of marijuana, beer, pizza, and cheap perfume smells hit us. Nick disappeared into the maze of bodies and party people quickly resealed the hole. We’d just lost our introduction. My pulse picked up. I always felt our separateness so acutely. Dave slung his arm around me and gave me a kiss on the ear. Heads turned, then more, until, like a Mexican wave spreading through the room, all eyes were on us. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” competed with the awkward hush.
“Right, now what’ll you guys have? Beer, glass of wine, some punch?” It was the Nick guy, miraculously returned.
Chatter clumsily restarted, the uncomfortable silence lifted, and we—the conspicuous mixed-race couple—began to mingle.
—
It was after midnight by the time Dave unlocked the door to our inner-city apartment and we stepped in out of the minus-four-degree night. He left the lights off, allowing the moon to steep us in its silver shadow. One of the sash windows in the lounge was partially open, the gap channeling in an icy draft and the discordant sounds of revelers on the street below.
Dave pulled it shut, sealing us into a space where the only sounds were those we made—a chair leg scraping across the floor, the squeak of Dave’s sneakers, the jangle of my bracelets. The familiarity of these surrounds began to debrief us and soon we were making love—slowly and deeply, but as always, tinged with sadness. Outside our walls the world balked at the very notion of our bond and tested it at every turn. We could only play at being free inside this cocoon.
Seven years had passed since the evening Dave had accompanied me home from the Patels’—seven years since our surreal love affair had begun. Yet still it felt illusory—me and Dave Bloomfield. Kind, white Dave. He had persuaded me to leave my job at the grocery store and pursue my dream of becoming a psychologist. A scholarship from Cambridge saw that goal eventually realized and, equipped with Dave’s unconditional love and Zelda’s unwavering friendship, I’d risen to the challenge. I was now in my final year, on clinical attachment.
“Dave, you awake?”
He grunted, on the brink of the weightless sleep that follows lovemaking.
“Sorry, must have been dozing,” he said, sitting up on the sofa, his hair all tousled. “God, it’s freezing. Let’s hop into bed.”
“Dave, I’ve been thinking. I need to go back.”
He rubbed his eyes. “What do you mean? Did you leave something at the party?”
“Africa. I’ve got to go back to Africa.”
He pulled on his boxer shorts, as though his nakedness was inappropriate for the words he knew would surely follow. This day had been threatening forever. For years it had been hanging in the wings, and now I was about to confirm what we’d both always known—that our relationship was transient and our happiness borrowed.
He nodded, as if any protestation would be selfish and pointless. Dear, gentle Dave. He’d understood the conditions of our partnership. He knew the limitations the world imposed on us.
“I sit in sessions listening to my patients—troubled individuals trying to find themselves. They hang on my every word, but really I have no more of an identity than they do. I don’t know who I am.”
He closed his eyes.
“Don’t block me,” I said, even though he’d offered no verbal resistance. “Tonight I listened to all those Christmas songs and felt nothing. I ate plum pudding as though eating some strange foreign delicacy. I looked out on the snowy landscape and I felt like a visitor. These things are not a part of me. Not my heritage. Not my custom. I’m an observer, looking on at life from behind a screen. I can’t feel it. I can’t believe it. It eludes me. I don’t belong here!”
He turned, the moonlight silvering his silent tears.
“I’m tired of trying,” I went on. “Trying to fit in. I want to be accepted. I can’t swim against this tide anymore. I just can’t.”
He picked up my hands and kissed them tenderly.
But there was more. I couldn’t stop. “I feel dead inside. Are there smells somewhere that will wake me up? Landscapes that will move my soul? You delight in Handel’s Messiah, in Mozart and Brahms, yet I still haven’t heard music that moves me.”
He was sitting so still it frightened me.
“I love you more than you will ever know, and the thought of us splitting up is unbearable, but I can’t keep offering you only half of myself. I have to go back. I have to see what I’ve left behind so I can navigate the road ahead.”
After a long silence he spoke. “What about us?”
I looked at him.
“What about marriage, kids, everything?”
I sat, silent. I couldn’t say the words he wanted to hear. I’d always been able to use the demands of my degree to delay this discussion. Now my studies were nearing completion.
He dropped my hands.
I stood up and started pacing the room. “I know how much you want kids, but how can I have a child when I flushed the last one down the toilet? How can I be a mother when I don’t know my own?”
He bent over and held his head in his hands. It tore at my heart to see him like that. I sat down again beside him, but his body was stiff and held me off.
“Could we really bring a colored child into this world,” I whispered, “when we know what sort of reception it’ll receive, what sort of existence it’ll have? We live the difficu
lties every day and we’re adults.”
The moon had slipped behind a cloud and darkness enveloped us. We sat there camouflaged by the blue-black night—our love, our sorrow, and our color momentarily hidden.
—
Silver cutlery clanged on the fine bone china.
“It was such a nice surprise to get your call the other day,” Michael said, rescuing another long pause. “We don’t seem to have seen much of you two this year.”
Rita, Michael, Dave, and I were spaced out around the large mahogany dining table that could have comfortably seated twelve.
It was Dave who had helped me salvage my relationship with my parents, the one who’d insisted I maintain regular contact. He didn’t like Rita, but he understood how fragile my emotional well-being could be and recognized that the good Michael brought into my life outweighed the cost Rita exacted.
“How’s that thesis of yours coming along then, David?” Michael asked with overanxious zeal. “Must have been quite a strain being a student again. I bet you’ll be glad to be soon earning a proper wage again.”
“More potatoes, anyone?” Rita interrupted, spearing one with her fork.
“Not for me, thanks,” I said.
“Anyway, it must be time for a toast,” she said, pushing the dish of spuds aside. “Get the champagne, Michael.”
On cue, he stood up and disappeared into the kitchen.
“There’s a bottle of sparkling grape juice in the door of the fridge for Miriam,” she called after him, then turned back to the table. “So, tell us all about it, then.”
Dave hesitated. “Uh, Rita, the thesis has yet to be marked. Maybe a toast is a bit premature.”
“All in good time, David,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We’ll toast your success soon, I’m sure. But today we have something even more important to celebrate, don’t we?” She gave me a vaudeville wink.
Had I missed something?
David cast me a questioning glance. I shrugged.
“I must admit, Michael and I were beginning to lose hope–perpetual students that you are. We’d almost resigned ourselves to an end to the Steiner lineage.”
“Reet!” Michael tried to silence her.
“How many weeks, then? You’re barely showing,” she said, eyeing my midriff. “Mind you, careful you don’t go eating for two now. So many do and later regret it.”
I looked across at Dave, his mouth agape as Rita’s words swept with careless ease into the room.
“I’m not pregnant,” I blurted out. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
Rita’s face collapsed. She looked across to Dave for help. “You phoned us yesterday, David. Said you had something important to discuss with us and—”
Comprehension dawned. Dave pushed back his chair. “Rita, Miriam is not pregnant. That is not what we came here to discuss.”
“Not pregnant?” Rita repeated. “You can’t be getting married? I know how antiestablishment you both are.”
Ignoring the melodrama, Dave carried on. He was good at that sort of thing—defusing and placating. “Miriam is going back to South Africa to try to track down her birth mother. We just wanted to let you know and enlist your help. We need to gather as much information as we can before she leaves.”
Michael righted the listing tray of champagne glasses just in time.
“Put the tray down, for God’s sake!” Rita flashed.
I sat back in my chair and watched the scene unfold before me. I felt strangely detached. Even the words “Africa” and “birth mother” sounded one-dimensional and unreal. I watched Dave with his big doe eyes and strong hands. He was so caring and loved me so much. I didn’t deserve him. What I offered in return was muted—merely an outline of the real thing. I felt like a ghost, a guest, a visitor. Always a visitor.
Michael retreated to the kitchen and started making a lot of noise at the sink.
Rita sat sulking.
Dave continued. “Miriam’s past is integral to who she is. For her to move forward she needs to explore her past. It’s her history, her connectedness.”
“Bravo! Very eloquently put,” Rita retorted, quickly recovering. “What noble intentions! Pity they’re the product of two completely out-of-touch kids espousing purist notions from the safety of their university towers. Let me tell you about the real world.”
Michael hadn’t resurfaced. He was hiding, and I was angry with him for his cowardice.
“Have you thought through how it will be for Miriam, returning to a country where apartheid rules? Where she’ll be treated according to the color of her brown skin? Have you?” Rita leaned forward on both elbows. She was on the attack. “By all accounts it’s not safe for anyone.” Her voice trembled. “Not with the recent unrest. Sally Wilkinson’s sister was shot at point-blank range, for ten rand. Life there is cheap, Miriam!”
I stared into Rita’s angry pink mouth, at her large tombstonelike teeth. She was desperate, pulling out whatever she had in her armory to dissuade me. But why was she so against my going? It didn’t make sense. Why did she even care?
“We’ve given you—given you everything, and this—this is—this is how you repay us!” she said, her sentences splintering. “So you want to meet your birth mother. And where do you hope to find her?”
“Stop!” Michael boomed. “Stop, right now. I’ll have no more of it, you hear?” He was standing in the doorway.
No one moved. Rita closed her eyes. Then Michael slammed the kitchen door behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
1984
Miriam
I edged through the sliding doors and squeezed onto the tube. It was rush hour and the train was packed.
The doors closed, sealing me into the overcrowded compartment. Then we were moving—a bullet of fluorescent light shooting through the blackness.
Usually I enjoyed people watching, but today bodies were crammed too closely to gaze freely. I didn’t know where to rest my eyes and kept diverting them from the hungry stare of a man two people away from me.
A bright orange advertisement on the ceiling caught my attention. It was for a recruitment agency. Do you know where you are going? in bold black letters.
I smiled to myself. No, I don’t.
Bayswater. Bayswater. Bayswater flicked by like the start of an old cine movie. Metal screeched, the tube slowed, and we came to a standstill. All motion was momentarily suspended—people frozen facing their closest door. Even the haunting moans of the tunnel drafts were for a second silenced. Then the doors slid open and the train gave birth to a monster of jostling arms, stiletto heels, and striding purpose.
A rough hand squeezed my crotch. I swung around. There was just a wall of faces. Everyone looked like a pervert.
“Swine,” I cursed, feeling tainted and grubby. But before I could gather myself, the crowd was sweeping me toward the escalator and I was moving up, to be finally flung out onto the street with the rest of the human flotsam.
Aboveground, the chaos and color were immediately calmed. It was snowing, and rooftops, chimneys, fire hydrants, and cars had all been given a magical dusting—one centimeter of white transforming London.
I stopped to buy a bag of roasted chestnuts from a nearby vendor and stood against a shop window savoring them, their heat percolating through the brown paper bag to warm my frozen hands. Then I was continuing on my way.
Eventually I spotted the sign—The Ploughman—swinging from a bracket above a large wooden door pockmarked by staples and Borer. I peered through the small square of bars set into the door, then heaved it open and was met with a wall of heat and noise.
I stepped inside and self-consciously scanned the heaving room, my eyes snagging on the absent glances of patrons purveying “the newcomer.”
Finally I spotted Michael at a far table, beside an open hearth. He must have been
there for some time to secure such a prime position. He waved and, like a lost child claimed at a fair, I felt the knot in my stomach loosen.
I removed my scarf and coat and made my way across the room, dodging trestle tables, rowdy men, and miniskirted waitresses balancing jugs of amber ale.
“Sorry I’m late.” I leaned forward and gave him a kiss, the tip of my nose thawing against his cheek. “I was delayed at work and then the Underground was so busy . . .” I was out of breath.
“Sit, child.” He always had such a calming manner. “What can I get you to drink?”
“I’d kill for a glass of white wine. Sweet, please. But I’ll get it.”
“No, you won’t,” he said, and before I could protest, he was swallowed up by the crowd.
I sank into a chair beside the fire. Archaic farming implements decorated the hearth, lending the place a rustic, earthy feel. It felt homely—an honest sort of place—except for the suspender-belted waitresses.
Soon the heat had melted the chill inside my bones, and the flickering orange flames were seducing me. The stresses of my day, my week, the past month, began to dissipate.
After a while, Michael returned, glass of wine and tankard of stout in hand.
“What an obstacle course!” he shouted above the din, sipping off some of the froth on his stout. “But not a drop spilled.”
I tapped the side of my mouth.
He chuckled and wiped away the white mustache with the back of his hand.
Over the next hour we chatted about this and that—inconsequential things happening on the surface of our lives—until I began to wonder whether there had been anything more to our arranged meeting than one of our intermittent catch-ups coinciding with us both being in London for the day. When he’d phoned I’d assumed he’d wanted to clear the air after the recent altercation. But judging by the ways things were going, either my assumption had been wrong or he’d lost his nerve.
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