下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
H ow much longer, Mother?” The girl, Phelisa, sighs and turns away from the taxi window, which she has steamed up with her breath.
She reminds me of Nomsa though she is plumper and wears a resigned look that I have never seen on my daughter’s face. Perhaps the only similarity is their age or perhaps my daughter is so much on my mind that I am projecting her onto any canvas that is blank enough to absorb my memories.
A child lies draped over the girl, his head resting against the pillow of her breasts while his arms wrap around her neck, clinging to her. He kicks out with surprising strength and his foot connects with my stomach as he wrestles with his dreams. I am envious of the child. I wish I could sleep. I wish also that I could slow the drumbeat of my frenzied heart or tame the wild flight of my thoughts that swoop and circle like bats at dusk.
“More than two hours we have been sitting here,” Phelisa says as she pats her son’s back, soothing him so he will not awaken from his fussing. “How much longer until we go?”
“I do not know, my child.” I sigh. “We must resign ourselves to the wait as impatience will only make the time pass more slowly.” It is not the first time I have told her this.
It has been twenty-eight hours since I watched Khwezi scamper up the hill back to the village, more than a day since I traded the wide-open space of home for the cramped and stale interiors of one minivan taxi after another. We are parked on the side of the road near a petrol station just outside Pietermaritzburg, already packed together like cattle as we wait for the vehicle to be filled even further. The driver will not depart until another four passengers squash into the space at the back that could comfortably seat only two. This has been the way of the entire journey, more time spent waiting than in motion.
The girl frowns at me as though I am a problem she must solve. “I have been thinking ... you are not really one of us, Mother, are you?”
“What do you mean, my child? I am from here just like you.” We are speaking in Xhosa, our mother tongue, and are both traveling from the Transkei, which is the Xhosa Bantu homeland. I know I could trace her clan’s ties to my own with just a few questions if I had the energy for the usual pleasantries.
“I mean only that you are not like the rest of us, Mother. There is something that is different with you. The way you talk and the things you say.”
She means that I speak like an educated person whereas most of our people cannot write their own names. I have heard this many times before, this assessment that, although I am black and poor and as oppressed as the rest of my people, I am not one of them; sometimes it is said with admiration and respect but more often as a criticism. I will never understand why we hold each other in contempt like this, why we are all so scared that one of us will rise above their station when the white man has appointed himself the guardian of making sure that never happens. If there is one thing a black woman knows from the moment she is born it is her place; she does not need anyone reminding her of it.
“I am a schoolteacher,” I say by way of explanation.
“ Hayibo .” Phelisa smiles. The thought of a woman teacher is amusing. “My teacher was a man. I have the standard two.”
From her shy smile, I can see that she is proud of this achievement. She managed to stay in school until the age of nine, which means she knows the alphabet, how to write simple words and how to do basic arithmetic. This is the only education she will ever have.
I pat her knee, too sad to give her the praise she seeks, and change the subject. “Why are you going to Johannesburg?”
“The father of the child works in the mines, but he does not send the money. I am worried.”
I nod and do not say what I am thinking. If she finds him, he will probably not have money to give her, nor will he come home to look after her and the child. There is no work for young men in the homelands and the mining industry takes them far away from their culture and clan and customs. For eleven months of the year, they live and breathe the darkness underground; it has a way of seeping into their souls. What little money they have is often spent on distractions like women, gambling and alcohol.
“And you, Mother? Why are you going?”
“My brother sent me a letter about my daughter. She is living with his family in Soweto this year while she completes her schooling there. There must be some kind of terrible unrest in the township because he said she is in danger. I am going to fetch her.”
She nods. “I have heard the township is a dangerous and ungodly place. There is talk of shebeens where people get drunk illegally and also of dancing halls. Gambling and prostitutes. I have even heard—”
I cut her off and change the subject, because I have enough to concern me without hearing the full extent of Soweto’s depravity. “Would you like me to hold the child?”
“Yes, thank you, Mother.” She accepts the offer gratefully, handing the sleeping child across to me before stepping out of the van to stretch her legs.
Another hour passes and two more passengers pay their fare. The child awakens and I pass him back to his mother to be fed. I need the toilet but do not want to wake the old man sleeping on my other side. His thin arms and legs are folded in upon himself as he tries to take up as little space as possible. His ribcage expands and contracts against my arm, and a dry whistle—like the wind through reeds—escapes his lips. Just when I cannot wait any longer, he snores himself awake.
“Excuse me, tat’omkhulu , but I need to get past you.”
He shuffles over to let me pass and tips his hat at me as I step out of the van.
Two eighteen-wheeler trucks fly past kicking up gravel and leaving me in a cloud of exhaust fumes. A bakkie towing a boat follows; it is probably on its way to Durban. The sea is approximately a hundred kilometers east of here, and it is a well-known fact that the whites in Johannesburg make the journey to the Natal coast at least once a year to holiday there. They spend their three-week vacation time lying on the beaches, swimming in the warm Indian Ocean and fishing for free food when they could afford to buy it in shops. Why they lie for hours in the sun trying to get brown when they find our own skin color so displeasing, I do not know.
I have never seen the ocean and the idea of it I have is one that I have taken from photographs in books and newspapers. I have never lived close enough to the sea to make easy travel arrangements to see it, and since blacks are not allowed on the beaches or in the water, there seems little point in going. I cannot swim, but it would be nice to wade into the water up to my knees and feel the salt of it against my skin.
One newspaper article I read a few years ago told a story of Transvaal families who pitch tents in camping grounds for their holidays. Apparently, it is something they enjoy doing, which tells me a lot about white people. Only those who live in proper houses and are safe from the elements will find novelty in sleeping outside under the cover of a piece of cloth.
As I trudge along the road to the petrol station, which is a hundred meters away, a banana plantation flanks me on the left and a sugarcane field stretches out on the right. The year-round tropical temperatures of Natal are good for these kinds of crops, which we would never be able to cultivate in the Transkei. It is no coincidence that the parts of the country given to the blacks for their homelands are the parts where nothing of value grows.
When I get to the station, I skirt around the pumps where cars pull in and out at regular intervals.
“Excuse me, my son, but where are our toilets?” I ask a young petrol attendant who is waiting for change from the cashier.
He smiles and removes a matchstick from between his teeth. “They are round the back, Mother, but you cannot use them.”
“Why not?”
“They have been broken for a week. The owner here will not spend the money to fix them.”
“Where do you go then?”
He nods to the fields behind the station and then excuses himself.
I do not want to squat in the fields where the people in their cars can see me. I will not act out the role of savage that is expected of us. Instead, I approach the whites’ toilets and stand in the shadows by the pay phones and watch. Two women exit the lavatories as an old woman shuffles her way through the doors. Another two girls follow after her; they all emerge together a few minutes later. There is a lull. My bladder is going into spasm. Now is the time for me to dart inside; if I time it correctly, no one will see me.
I have just taken a step towards the entrance when a mother and daughter turn the corner. The little girl looks to be six or seven and has curly blond hair that needs to be brushed. She sucks her thumb, a habit she is too old for, and the mother smokes a cigarette. I freeze at the threshold, pretending to be disoriented. A stab of pain shoots through my pelvis; I pray that I will not wet myself.
“Mommy, that black lady is not coming to our toilets, is she?” The girl speaks around her thumb and it slurs her speech.
“No,” the mother says as she drops the cigarette on the concrete and stamps on it. “She’s not allowed in our bathroom and she knows that.” The woman looks at me with a raised eyebrow.
They disappear through the doors and the little girl turns back to ensure that I stay outside. Once she is certain that I know my place, she smiles and waves with her free hand. I force myself to smile and wave back.