Stones for My Father

by Trilby Kent

  “Lindiwe!” I screamed, my eyes stinging with vinegar tears. In that moment, I was overcome with a sensation of being hopelessly suspended in time and space, like a high-wire acrobat anticipating the spring and bounce-back of the safety harness. I heard Lindiwe return my cry — “Kleinnooi …” —but within a few seconds her wails were drowned out by the soldiers’ jeers. By now, Sipho had been lifted onto one of the khaki’s horses and was allowing his hands to be tied behind his back. I only had time to call out his name once before Ma’s hand came crashing against the side of my head.

  “Mind your tongue, or you’ll have us all killed!”

  My eyes felt so hot I thought they might melt. “Please, Ma,” I begged. “Make them promise that they won’t hurt Sipho! Please, tell them that Lindiwe must stay with us — for Hansie’s sake — tell them …” But my words had begun to float away from me, like pieces of driftwood being carried out to sea. “Please, Ma, please …” I started to see blotches of color everywhere, the way you do when you close your eyes against a very bright light. Then I heard a thud — the same sound Lindiwe’s body had made when Smous Petrus knocked her down — and felt the hot surge of blood gushing between my ears as I hit the ground.

  I woke up in the back of a high-sided cart, flanked by my brothers. As soon as he noticed that I was conscious, Gert shuffled closer.

  “The apie, Corlie,” he whispered. “He’s still in the jockey box.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I snapped. My temples pounded; my tongue was so dry that it felt as if it had cleaved to the back of my mouth. Gert shrank back, biting his lip.

  It served him right: imagine fretting about a wild animal when Sipho — a person, our friend — might face hanging in a faraway town? And what about Lindiwe, without whom we would never have survived those perilous days on the open platteland? I couldn’t allow myself to think of the terrified vervet huddling in its box while battle raged outside, then discovering itself abandoned and alone in the eerie silence that followed — for what was to be done? At times like these, if we didn’t harden our hearts against the little things, we would never survive.

  There were twelve of us in the cart — all women and children. I noticed Tant Minna standing up at the front, straight as a rod, gripping the side of the wagon with white knuckles.

  “Where are Danie and Andries?” I asked.

  “With the men,” said Ma. She was standing, like the other women, steadying herself against the side of the cart as we rattled over the rocky ground. She eyed me with disdain. “What happened to you, then, eh? Fainting like a princess. What did you think you were doing, drawing attention to yourself like that?”

  “You should have said something, Ma. You could have saved them —”

  Ma raised her hand. “Don’t you speak to me like that, Corlie Roux. All that fuss over an idiot boy with sticky fingers …”

  In an instant, my grief spun into fury. “You killed him, Ma! You didn’t say anything, and now they’re going to have him hanged —” I hauled myself to my feet, fighting against the lurching of the wagon. “I hate you!”

  She slapped me so hard my head hit the side of the cart, making the others jump. My mother pressed her face toward mine, her breath hot against my skin.

  “Don’t talk about things you can’t understand,” she hissed. “You’d have us locked up with a murderer, would you? There’s enough evil in our midst as it is, my girl …”

  She left me slumped in the corner, cupping my head in my palms. The rocking of the wagon had already begun to make me feel queasy.

  When we arrived at Standerton soon after, the soldiers herded us like cattle off the cart and into a boxcar that was waiting on a remote strip of rail tracks. It was difficult to see where we were going, and there was no time to gauge our location. Before I knew it, we’d been corralled from the cart into a dark, black box. The only light came from a couple of vents in the roof. When we were all inside, one of the soldiers slammed the door to the boxcar, making the entire thing shake. Moments later, we could hear the engines starting.

  I had never been on a train before, and I wished that there might have been a window so I could watch the steam rising from the chimneys. As it was, I could barely make out the shape of my mother and brothers, who had squeezed themselves under one of the air vents. As the train heaved forward, we all stumbled to the back, crushing into one another with shouts of alarm and confusion. It took us a long time to get used to the movement, but after a few minutes everyone became very quiet.

  “Are we going to Kroonstad?” Gert asked Ma in a soft voice.

  “Ja.”

  “Why?” There was a long silence. “Why, Ma?”

  “Because that’s where the Good Lord wants us,” replied my mother.

  And so it was that we left the Transvaal, and entered the Orange River Colony.

  UNDESIRABLES

  It was a burly young khaki who released the boxcar door, hours later. A dazzling square of light cut blindingly into our dark prison, making us wince and shield our eyes from the glare.

  “Out!”

  We stumbled into the open air like zombies, dropping to the ground and gathering our belongings in a silent daze. Everything seemed to move in slow motion: perhaps because we were dehydrated and sore from the journey, or perhaps it was a tactic employed by our mothers to stall proceedings for as long as possible. They must have known that it would be a long time before we would breathe free air again.

  Blinking dumbly at the expanse of veld stretching out before us, we followed the khakis’ orders to load a waiting cart with our luggage and to form a line behind it. Then we were made to walk, twenty minutes or so, to the edge of a rocky precipice. In the distance, a winding plume of black smoke rose like a question mark over the horizon. As the cart ground to a halt, I imagined with an intense feeling of sudden dread that we would be made to jump over the edge. I flung my arms around Ma’s waist as if she were an anchor, and squeezed my eyes shut. Gert, in turn, did the same thing to me, digging his fingers into my ribs so hard that I gasped.

  That was the first time I saw the camp, stretching below us for miles: row upon row of white bell-tents, the lot of them hemmed in by high barbed-wire fencing. Later I would see pictures of the other camps — sprawling prisons at Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Bethulie, Potchefstroom, and Norvalspont, to name just a few. They all looked the same, more or less: bell-tents and barbed wire as far as the eye could see.

  “What is this place?” whispered Tant Minna.

  The burly young khaki planted his feet and placed his hands on his hips. Poking out from beneath long khaki shorts, his knees were pink and freckled.

  “This is a voluntary refugee camp,” he said in our language. “You will be looked after here.”

  “But we’re not refugees,” said Lettie Lourens.

  The khaki released a bark of laughter. He had a jaw that was straight and pointed like a shovel. “You were found living in the bush,” he said. The laughter didn’t make his voice sound any friendlier. “You have no homes to return to: that makes you refugees.”

  “We didn’t ask to come here,” snapped my mother.

  The khaki’s eyes narrowed at her. “You only have your husbands to blame for that,” he said.

  My mother drew herself to her full height and met the khaki’s gaze.

  “You do this to us because you cannot defeat our husbands on the battlefield,” she said. “That makes you cowards.”

  A collective murmur of agreement rose from the other women. Before the khaki had a chance to respond, Betsie Gouws raised a thin hand.

  “When may we have some water?” she asked in a feeble whisper. “The children have had nothing to drink all day.”

  “There will be water at the camp.” The khaki casually indicated the vast scrubland that lay behind us, the miles of railway tracks leading nowhere, and rolled out his thick lower lip, rocking his head heavily from side to side like a boulder teetering over a precipice. “Of course, if you w
ould prefer to dig for water yourselves, you are free to do so.” He grinned at my mother. “Otherwise, follow me.”

  We were led to a checkpoint where a couple of bored-looking soldiers examined us, checking for concealed weapons, before releasing the lock on a metal gate. We passed through two more checkpoints before the last of our group shuffled into the main enclosure.

  We were not the only new arrivals. Nearby, a larger group of women and children edged forward in the line for water. We filed in behind them, taking in all that we could of our new surroundings.

  The ground under our feet was cracked and dusty, and I wondered how deep the wells must have been to draw enough water for all the inmates. I could not see any trace of a river for miles around. When a breeze built up it blew dust into our eyes and mouths. The tents suffered from the wind, too: they were stained a dirty yellow color from the dust. The people who wandered between them — women and children, mostly, although I did spot a few very old men — stared at us with blank expressions. Some of the women still wore their finest clothes, and it was strange to see them squatting dourly on upturned boxes, stirring soup in their Sunday best. One little child — at first I thought it was a boy, but it turned out to be a girl with sheared hair — tottered up to me, arm outstretched. She was clothed in the scantiest rags, her stomach caved with hunger, her bare feet blistered and filthy, her eyes hollow. In her other arm she supported a tiny infant. As if imitating its sister, the baby clutched at the air with curling, wrinkled fingers, its mouth opening and closing like a fish.

  “Please, meisie,” the girl said, “Please —” Her mouth was ringed with chapped sores, and a trail of sticky goo dribbled from her nose to the point of her chin.

  A woman in a starched uniform squeezed between us, brushing the child off like a harmless pest. “Ration cards,” she bellowed. The woman had arms like ham shanks, thick ankles, and fat, sausage fingers, which she used to hand us square cards listing quantities of food and drink.

  3/4 lb mealie meal, to last the week

  7 oz coffee (weekly)

  14 oz sugar (weekly)

  35 oz salt (weekly)

  condensed milk

  Meat:

  1 lb. meat (twice weekly)

  1 lb. meat (weekly)

  none

  “So how much will they give us?” Tant Minna asked Ma.

  The woman in the starched uniform grabbed the card from my aunt. “Last name?” she demanded.

  “Rossouw.”

  The woman consulted a clipboard, which hung around her neck by a piece of string. “Your husband is on commando,” she noted.

  “Yes. We haven’t heard from him in almost three months.”

  The woman scribbled something on the card and handed it back to my aunt. An X filled the space next to “none.”

  “My husband is dead,” said Ma as the woman turned to us. She gathered the three of us around her. “Their father. He died years ago.”

  As the uniformed woman considered us, the muscles around her nose twitched and quivered as if she was trying to ignore an unwholesome smell.

  “One pound a week, for the family,” she said, marking Ma’s card. “You can collect that tomorrow. There’s no more today.”

  “And the baby? Hansie is only two.”

  “Can’t you read? There’s condensed milk for the child.” She began to move away from our group. “Queue here to receive your rations,” she bawled. “Your ration cards must be completed before you present them at the front …”

  A bucket of water was passed around while we waited for our rations. Each person was allowed just a few sips from the ladle before it was passed on to the next family in line. In a way, it would have been easier not to drink at all than to have just a couple of drops, which whetted our thirsts without quenching them. With each sip, particles of sand caught meanly in my throat, and I was almost glad to pass the bucket on to Irene Wessels.

  We stood and shuffled forward for what seemed like hours before reaching a camp table positioned in front of one of the tents. A man in a khaki uniform took Ma’s card and passed it to a boy in the tent. Minutes later, we were presented with a sack of mealie meal and a box containing coffee, salt, and sugar.

  My mother began to open the sack to inspect its contents when the man pushed a hand in front of her. “You can’t do that standing in line,” he said. “Other people are waiting. Move out of the way.”

  We did as we were told. When we’d found a quiet spot, Ma ripped open the sack. But almost as soon as we had gathered to peer over her shoulder, Gert and I fell back in horror.

  The flour was crawling with maggots. There were so many that the bag seemed to heave with their curling bodies, and even Ma leaped with disgust. When she jumped, half of the flour scattered to the ground.

  “No better than floor sweepings!” she gasped, crouching to touch the clumps of grayish matter with hesitant fingers. Before she could stand, a gang of children descended on the maggot-strewn scraps, scraping the ground with desperate fingers for every last grain. With a cry, my mother was knocked to the ground, and I shot to help her.

  “Don’t touch me, Corlie Roux!”

  I recoiled, watching the children disappear between the tents, my eyes stinging.

  “They’ve taken most of our flour,” said Gert.

  “Quiet, Gert!” snapped Ma.

  We were ushered into another line; this one led into a tent that was slightly larger than the others. Gert sneaked ahead to eavesdrop by the entrance, and soon returned with news.

  “There are nurses inside,” he said. I noticed how the skin on his neck just beneath the bushman arrow had remained perfectly white, like an inverted shadow. Weeks out in the sun with few opportunities to wash meant that the rest of him had long since tanned a ruddy brown.

  “It’s the surgery,” whispered a woman with a face like a peach stone. Her belly was swollen high with child, but looking into those dead eyes I realized that the baby inside her was no better than a parasite, leeching its mother of precious strength. “All new inmates have to be vaccinated.”

  “My sons have never been vaccinated,” huffed Tant Minna, and we were instantly reminded of the fact that they weren’t there with us. “They’re perfectly healthy boys.” Her gruff tone belied the lost look in her eyes, although I knew she would never give the khakis the satisfaction of seeing her grief at being separated from her sons.

  “Don’t be stupid. You want them to catch measles, or smallpox? Children have died of dysentery, typhoid, and bronchitis this week alone. You take the medicine.” The woman grunted at Hansie. “I’d give him a few weeks at best.”

  “Mind yourself,” hissed Ma, lifting Hansie up into her arms and turning her back on the woman. As I watched her smooth his fine curls, I noticed that my mother’s hand was trembling.

  Some of the other children cried when the doctor jabbed the needle into their bony arms, but I refused to give him such satisfaction. To be fair, the doctor didn’t look as if he was enjoying the procedure: all those wailing babies, all those stony-faced mothers, and the relentless heat. But still, he was English: he didn’t have to be there. The second he pressed a ball of cotton wool to the spot where the needle had gone in, I snatched it from him and turned on my heel, holding my head high even as my arm began to throb.

  Within the hour, both Gert’s arm and mine had swollen to double the normal size. The soreness was too much for my brother, who began to gasp and gulp like an infant. I thumped him on his good arm and shot him a look.

  “Don’t be a baby, Gert. You want the others to think we’re soft?”

  “Your arm, Corlie —” He pointed. Like his, my arm blushed an angry scarlet, and the lump near my shoulder was turning as hard as a rock.

  “You don’t see me crying, do you? Or Hansie, for that matter.”

  We were classed as Undesirables. This meant that we hadn’t come to the camp voluntarily and that we had uncles who were still on commando. Families that came of their own accord, and who
se men had surrendered — the hensoppers — were classed as Refugees. They got extra sugar and real milk and sometimes even the odd sweet potato, and they were put in furnished tents. As we wandered between the rows, we peered into each tent we passed. Some of them housed up to twelve people, while others had only three or four. Nearly every tent had a sick person in it. Some contained empty cots decorated with scrub flowers or bits of black cloth.

  Our family — Ma, my brothers, and I — was assigned to a tent where a family of five was already living. The tent smelled sour, and I had to hold my breath as we were shown to our cots. The woman who lived there was called Agnes Biljon, and although you could see that she was disappointed to have to share the space with newcomers, she did her best to make Ma feel welcome. She told us that she had three children, all girls, aged sixteen, fourteen, and seven. The youngest and the eldest were out collecting rations, while Agnes tended to the middle child, Antjie, who was ill.

  Only then did I notice the girl lying against the far side of the tent. Less a girl than a shadow, really: there was so little of her that you would have been forgiven for thinking there was nothing beneath the blankets. She was asleep, and with each breath a tired, wheezing sound escaped through the corners of her mouth. It was hard to say whether or not she was pretty. Her skin was so fine it was almost translucent, the tiny blue veins that traveled to her temples illuminated like branches caught in a flash of lightning. I could tell by her eyebrows that she was a redhead, but much of the hair on her head had fallen out, leaving only the thinnest tangle of flyaway wisps on her bluish scalp.

  “It hurts her when I try to comb it,” said Agnes, as if she had read my thoughts.

  I had expected the white tents to be cool in the midday heat, but ours wasn’t: it was suffocating. Perhaps the canvas was too thin; the sun seemed to bore straight through it. The only furniture was a trunk, black with flies, which functioned as a larder. There were no chairs or tables — there wouldn’t have been room — and there were just two available cots, without mattresses. Gert and I would have to share one, and Ma and Hansie would take the other.