Afrika (12 page)

Elsie looked Kim over with wonder. “My, my my,” she said, grinning broadly, before stepping back so the rest of the family could be introduced.

Themba's grandmother possessed Lettie's same wide body, but her skin was darker than Lettie's, the color of dark bark. Of course, Kim couldn't write that to Themba. Just like she couldn't reveal the dream she'd had of him wearing only a leather apron.

The Van der Merwes weren't going to be easy to describe either. Briefly: Kim's fair-haired, fifteen-year-old cousin, Marjike, possessed enough nail polish to open a beauty shop, yet her nails were badly bitten, some bleeding. (Her mother forbade her to wear anything but clear polish, so she nibbled at her fingers in protest.) Then there was Marjike's steely-eyed brother, Japie, who smelled of animal droppings and spent his spare time shooting small birds and burying their bones to see if fossils would form.

Not to mention Kim's long lost grandfather, Oupa. Oupa had a wiry old beard and huge, sunburnt hands. “Come,” Oupa had said, ushering them into the dining room for a heavy lunch soon after they arrived.

As if in slow motion, the family crossed the slate floor, past the stone fireplace and dark, museumlike furniture of the front room toward the massive wooden dining table. The sideboard was almost as thick as the table. On top of it were oval-shaped photos of stern-faced ancestors frowning down at Kim with expressions of dislike. With the formality of church, everyone sat on throne-like chairs. “Let's
bow our heads,” said Oupa tugging at his steel-wool beard.

Kim shivered as Oupa gave the blessing. It seemed like the thick stone walls of the house exhaled a continuous cement-cold breath. She said her own prayer. For herself. And her mom.

“Amen,” said Oupa and the food was passed. Riana, who had been a vegetarian for as long as Kim could remember, retreated about three thousand feet into herself when the joints of mutton, and the thick sausage coils were served by Elsie and her grown daughter. Kim surprised herself by enjoying the strange meats. What she did not enjoy was the way Bliksem, who in spite of his itching and drooling had been allotted the status of indoor dog, jabbed his sharp face between her knees as they sat at the lunch table.

“Our arrival at Melkweg has put everyone on edge,” she continued in her letter to Themba. She thought about the best way to describe the situation. She had not been very truthful with Themba about Riana's fragile nerves and nightmares, nor had she told him that her mother was seeing a therapist. She hoped that a week away from the pressures of the Truth Commission might help her mother. However, the atmosphere at Milky Way Farm was as tense as anything Riana had faced in Cape Town. Even Oom Piet was ill at ease. Immediately after
lunch, he cornered Kim in the pantry where she was looking at the rows of preserved food, some as bizarre as the pickled pig's feet in the science room back home. Piet was wearing an open-necked khaki shirt and he waved his cigarette at her. “Do you think she's going to be okay?” he demanded.

“Who?” Kim asked, watching a long line of ants swim across a saucer full of water to get to the sugar bowl.

“Your ma.” Oom Piet exhaled a cloud of smoke. His face was more tanned than Kim remembered and his neck was sunburnt. “Covering this commission – it's not a job for a lady,
nê
?” He stubbed out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot.

Not if a lady is someone like your wife
, Kim thought. Her Aunt Reza was like a character right out of a Halloween thriller. Clad in a black dress, black stockings and shoes, and prone to monster headaches, Tante Reza either locked herself up in the attic all day, or sat silently on the porch drinking tea, waving the flies off her face with an ostrich feather.

Better to write to Themba about the outdoor dogs – half a dozen of them – with their hot breath and dancing tails, and the elegant horses, Willem and Tara, who neighed and pranced in the fields around the house. Kim especially loved the guinea fowl that ran wild on the farm. They had miniature white polka dots and the funniest looking crimson-red
headpieces above their bright blue necks. Cute, but would Themba care?

Kim put down her pen and glanced across the room at Marjike's empty bed. Before they had gone to sleep, Marjike had produced about six different kinds of pimple cream. “Pimple cream for Africa,” she joked as she smeared the most fluorescent brand across her chin. “Ma would have a fit. Ma thinks pimples is, I mean are, a result of standing too long in front of the mirror.”

Kim rolled her head back on the stiff pillow. What a bizarre place – a farm named after the Milky Way – her mother's girlhood home. But it was beautiful too. The Cape winter had been cold and rainy but green. By contrast, the landscape around the farm was dry and dusty – more African – and beautiful in a way that she couldn't begin to put down on paper.

Kim turned back to her letter. She knew that what Themba would really want to hear were clues about her father. And she had none. In addition, she was beginning to realize that it would not be easy to get her relatives to open up.

A minute later, Marjike was standing over Kim with a tray of hot coffee and a bowl full of rusks.
“Koffie en beskuit,”
Marjike announced. “Japie says I must practice being more ladylike,” she said, as she poured out the milky coffee.

Kim had never been served food in bed before. A round lacy cloth with tiny pink shells dangling from the edge, covered the sugar bowl. “These are called babies' toes,” Marjike said, as she fingered the fat little shells.

Then her cousin looked at the envelop beside Kim's bed.“Who are you writing to?” she asked.“A boy or a girl?”

Kim found the coffee too hot and bitter to drink. “A guy, you know, in my class,” she explained, carefully setting the cup back on the tray. “When I finish will you help me mail this?”

Marjike's eyes widened as she checked Themba's last name on the envelope.“We will send the letter to town with our garden boy. But don't tell Japie that you have an African friend.” Marjike chewed on her fingers and added, “You're lucky you don't have a brother. Last month I bought myself a Foschini backless halter. Japie cut it up with scissors for a rabbit bed…. Something wrong, Kim?”

“No,” Kim said through clenched teeth. She wasn't about to tell her cousin what she could do with her brother.

Just before breakfast, Kim ran into her mother out on the porch. Except for the hyperactive outdoor dogs that guarded the house, Kim and her mother were alone.

“We should have brought Themba with us,” said Kim. “So he could see his grandmother.”

“Oupa would not have allowed it,” Riana said in a dull voice. She looked as if she hadn't slept.

“In thirteen years, haven't they changed at all?” Kim asked.

“I don't know,” muttered Riana.

At that moment Elsie's daughter, wearing a blue uniform and a blue headscarf around her head, announced that breakfast was served. The family congregated around the enormous yellowwood table in the kitchen. All through the meal, Kim kept her eye on her cousin Japie. He loved to jab his rusk into his black coffee and then scatter the gooey crumbs across the table before plunging the rusk into his mouth. While Tante Reza passed eggs and sausage she ignored her piggy son, yet watched Kim's manners and the placement of her elbows with a sharp eye. “Does Oupa want some more milk?” she asked in a baby voice as Elsie's daughter arrived with a pitcher of boiled milk. With a sinking heart, Kim realized that getting information out of these people would be like communicating with rocks.

Suddenly, as they finished up breakfast, a vehicle charged up the farm road at a terrific speed. Uncle Piet jumped to his feet and went to the back door to quiet the dogs. Japie left the room and
returned with a rifle. Tante Reza glanced nervously from the door to Riana and spoke. “When a car turns up at the gate, we don't know if it's
vriend of vyand.
Friend or enemy.”

Oupa dropped his fork and tried to stand.

“Oupa, sit,” Piet said, as Japie put down the rifle. “It's just Old Koos. He's in a new vehicle.”

The neighbor was in a hurry and would not stay. Marjike translated it all for Kim. “Someone is stealing his cattle. When he finds out who it is, he will set the dogs on them,” Marjike added as she poured out more coffee. “If that doesn't work he'll shoot them.”

“Must I bring Pa's other rifle?” asked Japie.

“Bring it!” Uncle Piet told him.

Kim glanced across at her mom with concern.

“It's just routine,” explained her uncle. “We need to patrol the land.”

“I'm going to show Kim the horses,” announced Marjike, as she got up from the table. “Fix your hair first,” Tante Reza said looking at both her daughter and Kim before she left the kitchen and headed for the wooden staircase on the outside of the farmhouse.

Kim watched her aunt slowly climb the stairs that led up to the attic. What would it be like to be the daughter of a crazy mother? Kim might be in that position herself, if Riana wasn't back on a plane
to Canada in three weeks as planned. Kim pulled back her hair with the thick vegetable elastic she kept in her pocket for when it became too frizzy. Then Oom Piet appeared in the doorway with two rifles.

“This is ridiculous!” cried Riana. “If there's trouble you should phone the police. You don't take matters into your own hands.”

Uncle Piet was feeling for his cigarettes.“Forget calling the police,” he said. He exhaled heavily. “They're in league with the thieves now.”

Kim looked anxiously from her uncle to her mother. Would it be safe for Marjike and her to leave the farmhouse?

Riana got up abruptly from the table.“Nothing's changed,” she snapped.

“My girl, you've got that right,” Oom Piet said, slamming the door as he left.

“W
hat is she saying?” asked Kim. It was very obvious to Kim that Elsie's daughter, Rosie, was talking about her. As soon as Oom Piet had gone off with the neighbor and Marjike had gone to her room to fix her hair, Rosie had padded out with a large tray and begun to clear the table. Suddenly she stopped what she was doing, stared across at Kim, and said something to Riana in Afrikaans.

“Nothing,” said her mother, rubbing her lips together. Riana had announced that she had a story to work on, but instead of bolting away from the table, she sank deeper into her chair.

Rosie clicked her tongue against the side of her cheek, exactly like Lettie might have done, and continued speaking.

“She's talking about me,” insisted Kim to her mother.

Riana leaned forward. She was stroking the table like it was a long lost friend.“Look, Rosie, how you've kept it polished up,” she muttered.

“Mother!” Kim said.

“She says you remind her of her oldest daughter,” Riana explained. “She is your age and she is away at school.”

Kim was about to question how she with her long unruly hair could look anything like the cropped-haired, chocolate-skinned Rosie. But before she could say anything a voice came from the first door off the kitchen. Kim peered inside, heard her name, and took a few steps forward.

When Kim's eyes adjusted to the dim light she saw that the room was filled with rows of books in high glass bookcases. In front of her, sitting on an antique desk, was an old-fashioned Bible, bound in leather. Suddenly she heard the sharp strike of a matchstick and wheeled around. It was Oupa, her grandfather, lighting his pipe with a long match. Behind him, in a glass case, were three large guns.

Kim moved closer to inspect them. “Can you shoot those? I mean do they still work?” she asked.

“We all shoot,” explained Oupa in careful English. His voice was raspy and uneven. “Except your mother. She refused to learn to shoot a gun.” Oupa and Kim listened as Riana and Rosie laughed together in the kitchen. Then he pointed to an oval frame on the wall. “Riana takes after her great-ouma, her great-grandmother, as you say.”

Oupa sucked on his pipe as Kim looked at the portrait. The woman had a high lace collar and the
man beside her, a dark Sunday-best suit. The man clenched a long gun in one hand.

“Her husband, Marthinus van der Merwe, fought and survived the Zulu wars up North,” he explained. “They had six sons before Great-Ouma was bitten by a snake. Great-Ouma survived a British concentration camp only to come home and be killed by a snake. Why? Because she did not know how to shoot.”

Kim wanted to know more about snakes – and what to do if she saw one – but she decided to ask something else instead. She needed something to tell Themba, and she was getting impatient. She decided to jump in with her question. “Oupa,” she began boldly.“Did my father know how to shoot?”

Her grandfather's forehead furrowed. “I wouldn't know that,” he responded.

Kim heart was thumping. “Did you ever meet Hendrik?” she asked.

Oupa's pipe had gone out and he knocked the ash from it before responding. “I met him once,” he said. “He had come up here to the farm from Cape Town to see your ma. He came up in secret, and Lettie hid him in her room in the compound.”

“Lettie?” Kim asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She wasn't sure she had heard her grandfather correctly. “The woman who works for us in Cape Town?”