Another Woman's Daughter (15 page)

“This African earth would not easily give up its treasures to the white fortune hunters; it took the black man's pickax before it finally succumbed.”

We drove on in silence.

“Now you've really got me going.” He winked at me, a wide grin sweeping away his earnest expression.

“No. Go on, please.” I wished I had something valuable to say.

“Just be proud of your father,” he said, taking his eyes off the road to look at me. “Even if you didn't know him, I can tell you he will have worked hard to build the wealth of this nation. Our people are the true gold. The
black
gold.”

For the first time in my life someone was claiming ownership of me. I was a member of “our people.” It was a heady feeling.

A lull descended again. I spotted a new blot on the horizon. My eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of it. As we drew closer, I could make out thousands of rooftops sprawling across a vast scape of grayness.

Welcome to Soweto
, beckoned a dilapidated sign positioned where the tar road gave way to red dust.

I closed my window as the rust-colored particles settled quickly on our windscreen, conniving with the smog to shroud our view.

Thabo pushed down his doorknob. “Lock your door.”

Characterless, square brick-and-corrugated-iron dwellings stretched for as far as the eye could see, one after another after another. Two windows, one door. Two windows, one door. Two windows, one door—like Lego blocks stripped of color. The only interruptions to this blanched monotony were the bright rags hanging limply on makeshift washing lines. Even the red seemed to have been leached out of the earth.

Smoke spiraled from crude chimneys to blend with the blanket of smog. Mangy dogs sniffed in upturned dustbins, while children dressed in shreds of fabric played in the dirt. Toddlers squatted on steps, oblivious to the flies feeding off their crusty noses. Rusty cars minus wheel or windscreen served as playgrounds. Scrawny chickens scratched in the barren earth.

I tilted my head back to take in the towering streetlights at every corner. They were more suited to prisons.

“Soweto,” I said out loud.

Thabo nodded. “Stands for ‘South-Western Townships' Twenty-four townships clustered southwest of Joburg.”

I sensed there was more to come. Thabo's amiable and easygoing exterior clearly belied a strong passion for the history of his people.

“The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand saw a flood of black people into Johannesburg seeking work, and with time their labor became vital in areas other than just the mines; Johannesburg needed the black man. But where was he to stay? In desperation he built makeshift dwellings on empty lots out of anything he could lay his hands on—rocks, sacking, sheets of corrugated iron—and soon illegal shantytowns sprang up.”

I saw the razor first, a glint of silver out of the corner of my eye. Then I spotted the barber. He cut a dapper figure leaning over his swathed client, in high-collared white jacket and neatly pressed trousers. An orderly queue of prospective patrons stood patiently looking on. On top of the bonnet of an old Toyota was a tray of the barber's instruments glinting in the sunlight. This barber's shop was the roadside; his barber's chair an upturned metal drum. All that was missing was a candy-striped pillar.

“These overcrowded and squalid settlements would quickly become a breeding ground for crime and disease, yet it was only after an influenza epidemic swept through the black population of Johannesburg, nearly decimating it, that a formal housing scheme was born, and with it, the concept of the township.”

Thabo hooted as we passed a group of men playing cards beside the road. They looked up and waved.

“Townships are ghettolike areas positioned on the edges of white cities—an answer to the government's dilemma of where to house the black workforce servicing these cities.”

It must have been break time. A group of children dressed in school uniforms milled around outside their classroom—an old shipping container. The girls looked out of place wearing their black school pinafores and white cotton blouses. Their busts were too big, their hems too high, and their exposed thighs too womanly. The boys seemed incongruous too—their expressions and body language jarring with the notion I held in my head of carefree schoolchildren. These schoolboys looked more like men, their eyes restless and hard.

“Houses began being built under a housing project, but far too slowly. Finally Sir Ernest Oppenheimer stepped in and loaned six million rand to the scheme to help ease the crisis.” He turned to look at me. “Heard of him?”

I shook my head, embarrassed by my ignorance.

“The father of Anglo American—a corporation whose fortune was founded squarely on the backs of black miners.”

We stopped at an intersection. The coins on the dashboard began to reverberate and the earth beneath us shuddered as a massive lemon-yellow vehicle rumbled past, leaving our car cloaked in another layer of grime. Rising up out of the dust, like an apparition, was a pimply white soldier standing on top of the vehicle, his R1 at the ready. He looked out of place, standing there in his khaki army uniform—too young, too fresh faced. School shorts and shirt would have been more fitting.

I twisted the flesh on my wrist. I needed to be sure I wasn't wading through a bizarre dream. It was all so surreal.

“And that, Miriam, is how this vast
city
, which is not classified as a city in any atlas I have seen, was born.” Thabo swept a hand across the dashboard. “You know, it stretches for more
than two hundred kilometers.” The car veered slowly across the midline before he casually retrieved control. I don't think Thabo even noticed the army vehicle.

We drove through a labyrinth of streets with no names and, after a time, turned down a road that distinguished itself by houses boasting precast walls or small patches of lawn. Thabo pulled up outside a house with
7789
painted in black on the front door.

Behind a low wire fence was a threadbare strip of lawn. An elderly black woman was kneeling on all fours painstakingly trimming the grass with a pair of scissors.

“That's Patience, my brother's mother-in-law.”

“You can say that again,” I said in disbelief. “Cutting grass with scissors!”

Thabo laughed. “That is her name. I live here with my brother and his family. You'll meet them tonight. Everyone except Patience is away at work or at school.”

Zaziwe jumped from the dashboard onto my shoulder, startling me.

Thabo smiled. “I think she likes you.”

“Evidently not that much,” I said, wiping a chalky blob off my blouse.

Thabo parked in front of a pair of lopsided old gates secured with a heavy brass padlock. I wasn't sure about the need for a lock; anyone could have leapt over the waist-high gates.

As Thabo climbed out of the car, the old woman stood up, flinching as her wizened body complained. He spoke briefly to her in his native tongue, then she shuffled over to unlock the gate, a warm smile creeping over her face.

I climbed out to greet her.

She took my hands in her callused ones and pulled me in, her sagging breasts the only barrier to her warm embrace. I could feel her dry, wrinkly skin pressed up against me. I inhaled deeply and a sweet earthiness filled my nostrils, then I closed my eyes, and for the briefest moment, Patience became my mother.

Thabo and Patience were seated at a table in the kitchen when I came in from the outside washroom—a lean-to shed swarming with flies.

He stood up and poured me a cup of
rooibos
tea from the battered aluminum teapot on the stove. He had strong hands—I always noticed a man's hands—with clean, blunt fingernails. I was looking around for the milk when he scooped up a spoon of sweetened condensed milk from an opened can on the table and stirred it into my tea.

This was a very different drink from the tea I was used to drinking in England. First, it was a rust-orange color and it had a sweet, smoky flavor. But I was an instant convert; a cup of char had never tasted so good.

“So our mission is to find your mother,” Thabo said,
pushing back his chair. His words were confident and reassuring, as if our success was a foregone conclusion.

“I'm so grateful to you for your hospitality and assistance.” My words clunked awkwardly. I cringed at my own formality.

“Thabo Rhadebe at your service,” he said, twirling his right wrist three times and bowing. He'd sensed my unease and made light of it.

The old lady couldn't speak much English, but she gave a hearty chuckle.

I felt so silly.

“As you know, I'm a journalist.” Thabo's face was serious. “However, with all the recent unrest and the clampdown on media, my work has been severely restricted.”

The old lady topped up my tea.

“The newspaper I work for has been under close scrutiny. The government considers
The Star
to be part of
Die Rooi
Gevaar.
”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Communism, ‘the Red Threat.' All liberals are communist, didn't you know?” He winked at me and then crushed a biscuit in his hands, sprinkling the crumbs on the table. Zaziwe set about attending to the feast with short, sharp jerks of her beak.

“So, for the meantime I have to abide by my editor's directive and my pen is practically idle. But idle
out
of prison is definitely preferable to being idle inside.” Thabo then proceeded to tell me how my visit would change things. He'd managed to persuade his boss to let him write an account of my search for my mother.

“I think your editor was instrumental in helping me get a visitor's permit,” I said.

Thabo nodded. “
No politics
is what I promised him. Just a simple account of an adopted girl's quest for her origins. It has all the makings of a good story.”

I shrugged. “I hope so.”

“And who knows what I'll be able to slip in when no one's watching,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye. “What I'm trying to say, Miriam, is that I'm looking forward to the challenge and am most happy to be your guide.”

My mind was spinning—the sights, the sounds, the smells, these words . . . Nothing felt real. A telephone started to ring.

It was David calling from England.

“Yes, she is safe and well, Dayyvid,” Thabo shouted into the receiver. “We only got in about a half hour ago. Yes. No, right here at the table having a cup of tea.”

Zaziwe cocked her head to one side as if following the conversation.

“Wait, I'll pass you to her. Uh . . . Just a moment, here she is.”

I took the phone. It was like putting my ear to a windy tunnel, the line whistling and howling.

“Hi, darling-darling-dar . . .” Dave's voice echoed down the line. I could almost visualize his words navigating their way through the cable on the sea floor, the weight of water toying with his message.

“Hi.”

“You okay-okay-okay?”

“Just a bit weary. It was a long flight—”

“What is—”

“What?”

“It's a bad line-ine-ine. What time did you get in-in-in?”

“Nine thirty. It seems ages since I left. Can't believe it's only been twenty-odd hours. So much has happened. What?”

“First —pressions?”

“Hot.” I laughed. “And black faces everywhere. I'm not part of a dying breed after all! But listen, don't waste your money; it's such a bad line. I'll try to call next week. What you say? I . . . Look, I can't hear you, Dave. I'll write soon, promise.”

“—you.”

“What?”

“Love you-you-you. Miss y—”

“Me too,” I said self-consciously.

“Me too?” He sounded hurt.

“I love you too,” I said, cupping my hand over the receiver.

“Miriam, remember—”

“Sorry, Dave, I can't hear. Look—”

The line went dead.

I stared at the mouthpiece, then slowly replaced the receiver.

Thabo was sorting through mail at the table. He looked up. “All okay?”

“Just a bad line.”

I felt unsettled. The call had been unsatisfactory. I fiddled with the locket around my neck. Open, shut. Open, shut.

“You have a picture inside?”

“No, not yet.”

—

I had a fitful first night in my bed at the tip of Africa. I couldn't escape the oppressive heat; the toilet was outside and I was sharing
a bed with Patience—not a very comfortable experience; the mattress was lumpy and the frame creaky.

The house had two small bedrooms. Thabo's brother and sister-in-law slept in one with their two older children. The three younger ones and the old lady slept in the other—the kids on a mattress on the floor. Thabo camped out in the living room. And now me, feeling like a real imposition.

I lay very still, anxious not to disturb anyone, listening to the breathing of my elderly bedfellow. Outside, the township wasn't sleeping either, and when I did eventually doze off, fractured voices and revving car engines intruded on my already cluttered dreams.

In the middle of the night I was ripped from my slumber by a chilling scream. I leapt out of bed and yanked open the curtains, my heart pounding in my chest. But I couldn't make out anything in the blackness, except for the luminous face of my wristwatch—1:13
A.M.
Amazingly the others had slept through the disturbance. I slipped back into bed, my allotment of space further narrowed where Patience's limbs had spilled onto my side.

I was hungry. Thabo had told me to make myself at home, but I couldn't just help myself to their food. So I lay there hollow stomached, staring at the ceiling as the minutes and then hours ticked by.

At 4:30 someone stirred in the adjacent room. It was a relief to know someone else couldn't sleep. Then I realized the shuffling and scratching sound was more purposeful. I would later learn it was Thabo's brother and sister-in-law washing and dressing by candlelight. She worked at a drycleaner's in
Johannesburg; he, at a shoe factory on the outskirts of the city. Both caught the train to be at their respective jobs by seven.

I heard the soft click of the front door. The eldest boy and his father, buckets in hand, were heading for the communal tap some blocks away, where they would be met by an already long queue and have to wait in the fading darkness for almost an hour before it was their turn to draw water.

By the time they returned, the second eldest would have made sandwiches for the entire household and left for her job at the local
spaza
shop, where she worked each day before school. Out on the table would be eight neatly wrapped peanut butter sandwiches stacked in a listing tower. Thabo would also rise early to help with the household chores. Only the old lady and the two younger children would be left to wake with the rising sun.

Thabo bowled into my room. “Rise and shine!”

I must have dozed off. Opening my eyes begrudgingly, I struggled to extricate myself from sleep. Sunlight streamed undiluted through a crack in the curtains.

Thabo was standing at the foot of my bed in a creased T-shirt and boxers, a mug of coffee in his hand and Zaziwe on his shoulder. The bird took off from its perch and started circling the perimeter of the room, tweeting a deafening wake-up call.

“So your first night was that bad, eh?” he said with a chuckle.

I was not a morning person.

“I've left a basin of water at the door for you when you feel like washing, and breakfast is ready when you are. We've got a pretty full day ahead.”

I sat up. “I heard this awful scream in the middle of the night.
It sounded like someone was being murdered. Didn't you hear it?”

“Just one? That was a good night, then.”

“But—”

“It's a war zone after dark. You'll get used to it.” Then he was gone.

I sat in the already too-hot sunlight, gripped by a sudden loneliness and longing. I missed Dave cuddling up to me in the wee hours; I missed our tiny student flat in the middle of Cambridge; I even missed my troubled patients.

We climbed into Thabo's car. My seat was baking hot and the perished plastic stung the backs of my legs. The day promised to be a scorcher. I wound down my window a little, but the tepid breath of morning did little to relieve the unremitting heat, even when the car was moving.

The journey out of Soweto felt shorter than the previous day's trek through the sprawling township, and it wasn't long before we were drawing into a small town on the outskirts of Johannesburg.

“We need to refuel,” Thabo said, slowing for a red traffic light.

A small pickup truck, or
bakkie
, as Thabo called it, pulled up alongside us. In the cab sat a white man and his dog. The dog was straining its head out the open window, hungrily swallowing the sluggish breeze. In the back, among farming implements and exposed to the elements, crouched a weathered black man. He saw me staring and his face crumpled into a toothless grin. I gave a self-conscious wave. Then we were moving again.

White men in safari suits strode purposefully down pavements. Women with big hair and high heels tottered about their business. From the heights of a banner strung across the local church, Jesus promised to save those who renounced their sins
.
A black boy struggled across the road under a load of animal feed. Shining farm equipment stood chained out in front of the local hardware store. Next door, lolly-colored Crimplene dresses hung off dusty, lifeless mannequins, while two shops down, a home-industries cooperative boasted crocheted creations and homemade carrot cake.

A delicious aroma of vanilla and caramelized sugar filled the car.

“Mm—that smells so good,” I said hungrily. It was coming from a bakery advertising impossible-to-pronounce delicacies—
koeksisters
,
vetkoek
, and
melktert
.

“Traditional Afrikaans fare,” Thabo said as we passed. “
Koeksisters
are plaited ropes of sweet bread soaked in a thick syrup, and
vetkoek
is a sort of fried dumpling filled with savory mince.”

“What's the
melk
thing?”

“
Melktert.
It means milk tart—a simple but extremely delicious cinnamon custard tart.”

“You're making me hungry.”

“We've just had breakfast! You English have big appetites!”

It was strange to once again be lumped with a group of people, given a label, a presumed identity. I'd never thought of myself as English, yet I
had
spent most of my life in England.

We cruised on through the wide tree-lined streets until Thabo spotted a car park right outside Jacobus's Slaghuis. A
blackboard at the door distracted the eye from the butcher's bloody window, guaranteeing the shopper a bargain.
Spesiale aanbod op boerewors. Special on boerewors sausage. Beef chuck for servants and boys only 60c.

“Back in a minute,” he said, hopping out of the car and darting into the butchery.

He was in the shop a long time. Through the window I could see him being bumped to the back of the queue each time a white customer walked in.

Across the road a handful of barefoot black urchins
—
all angled bones and gaping smiles—hovered around an overflowing dustbin promising treasure.
Recycled bottles 5c refund
.

“Have a piece of biltong.” Thabo was at my window, his joviality undampened by the humiliating wait in the butchery. “It's a South African delicacy.”

Gingerly I took the unappealing stick of dry, shriveled meat.

“Chew on it,” he said, climbing back in the car. “It'll keep you going for hours. A great distraction on a long road trip.”

I was reluctant at first, but had to concede it did actually taste good. The salty meat had a strong, spicy flavor.

Two blocks farther down, we pulled in to a petrol station beside a vacant pump. As soon as Thabo turned off the engine, a black attendant appeared, dressed in navy trousers, an emerald-green shirt, and a peaked hat with the BP logo on the front. He stood to attention at Thabo's window, his white teeth gleaming. He had the blackest face I'd ever seen, his features completely swallowed up by the darkness of his skin. Just the light bouncing off protuberances hinted at a nose, a chin, a forehead.

“Regula or supa?”

“No worries, brother, I'll fill her up. But the windscreen, she needs a clean.”

In a few slick movements the eager attendant had sloshed soapy water over the glass then skimmed it off. Thabo thanked him, tipping him a coin for his efforts.

Another car was pulling up and the attendant once again sprang into action, volunteering his infectious smile in greeting.

“Fill her up.”

As the pump ran and the driver went inside to pay, the attendant started uninvited to clean the car's windscreen. The female passenger in the front seat shifted uncomfortably as the BP man beamed at her through the glass. She looked away.

Once he'd completed the job, he lingered. The woman fiddled at her feet, then finally tossed something out of her window. It was a mangled toffee in a gold wrapper. The attendant leapt into the air to catch it, his smile never once leaving his face.