Come Sunday: A Novel (35 page)

“This is the third time my sink has blocked up, and if you cannot fix it once and for all, I’ll evict the bloody lot of you, so help me!” But I can see she is straining from the effort not to smile, even though she has her right hand raised as if before a judge. She looks at me and says, “Oh yes, the Spenser girl,” and then does a U-turn and exits before I can say anything. Etienne follows her and Susannah bids me sit.

“Delia!” she crows, “tea please,” and I hear cupboards opening and china being set down in reply.

“My mother lives in the adjoining granny flat,” Susannah explains, “but this used to be her house. She conveniently forgets she sold it to us fifteen years ago, and uses it now as leverage to get Etienne to do her bidding. Not that he wouldn’t anyway.”

“You seem very happy,” is all I can think of to say.

“Oh, we get along all right; it’s when the boys come home that all hell breaks loose.”

“The boys?”

“Our children. Well, they’re not boys anymore. Neville is forty-one and Toby is thirty-three. The one lives in Jo’burg—Neville—he’s an architect like his father. And Toby hasn’t settled down anyplace particular yet, so he often ends up crashing here between adventures.”

“Very English names,” I comment.

“Well, we are all English, I guess, except in surname. Etienne’s mother was straight off the boat from Southampton, and she married an Afrikaans farmer from Parrow, hence ‘Bredenkamp.’ Etienne got his father’s Afrikaans name but his mother’s breeding and the best private education sheep’s wool could buy. And we du Toits haven’t been anything other than roaring Lefties since the Boer War. Both my mother’s sisters are still alive, but Mother swears my father’s kin all died off because God was doing target practice on the Nats.”

I smile, and when Delia walks in carrying a tray of tea and homemade meringues, I try not to dwell on how it is that a left-wing democrat can be employing an old black woman to make her a cup of tea she is perfectly capable of making herself. I forget the dichotomies of Africa, the double standards, the layers of life and politics, and how sometimes they intersect and sometimes they do not.

As if reading my mind, Susannah says, “You remember Delia. She is part of the family and practically raised our two sons single-handedly, didn’t you, Delia?”

“Yes, two very naughty boys, madam.” She laughs.

The air is so comfortable between them that I half expect Delia to sit down on the Queen Anne settee with us and take the cup of tea that Susannah pours and offers me. But she doesn’t. Traditions bind us together long after naughty boys grow into men, after constitutions are written and enacted. Instead, she heads out to the kitchen, and Susannah picks up the milk jug and says, “White or black?”

THE DOOR TO THE COTTAGE is open, and I notice a window box mounted on a ledge beneath the front window. It is filled with brown soil, and Susannah explains how she just planted daffodil bulbs, hoping they will “cheer the place up a bit” come spring. The watering can is
next to the front door, and if I want to give them a bit of water each day, that will be lovely, she explains. It seems ridiculous to be so overwhelmed by the responsibility for something growing, so I issue a hasty “Sure.”

The room looks different. Although its thick walls and small windows reminded me earlier of a cave, it is now caked with cheer. An enamel pitcher of protea is centered on the table. The faded quilt has been replaced with one of bold fall hues. The single lightbulb now has a beige shade on it, and when Susannah turns it on, a warm glow fills the room.

“No need to hang on to Jesus,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

She points to the faded picture of the carpenter’s son hanging above the bed. “It’s been up there forever, but take it down if you like and we will find something else to hang in its place.” She shows me the bowl of chocolate Easter eggs on the bedside table. “Should you choose to indulge.

“And we changed the lock; here’s your key. It is the only part of the property that doesn’t have an alarm, unfortunately.”

I give her five twenty-rand notes and thank her, and she turns to go, then thinks better of it.

“I hope it’s comfortable enough for you.” After a pause she goes on. “I sense you want your privacy. You will find us to be a rather private bunch ourselves. But I want you to know you are welcome at the main house anytime, should you need something. Even if it’s just company.” And then, quite unexpectedly, she puts her arms around me in a quick embrace, and before I can respond she flutters away. Her kaftan sails behind her so that she appears to be a moth.

I unwrap a chocolate and look at Jesus daydreaming. “So. How’s Easter working out for you?” Which makes me wonder how Greg’s Easter went. His first without a pulpit. Did he miss proclaiming the mystery this year or did he miss planning the coronation more? If Greg had been a first-century disciple, he might not have outrun Peter to the grave site after hearing Mary’s incredible news, but he most surely would have arrived with his clipboard and tape measure and digital
camera. Perhaps it is unkind to say the details of the Easter event capture Greg’s interest more than the event itself. But Greg is not one for apparitions; an incorporeal Jesus who begs not to be held suits him less than this more sensible rendering still averting my gaze. “Think we can get along for a few days?”

I unpack my suitcase and arrange a framed photo of Cleo and the windup alarm clock on the bedside table. Cleo’s blanket goes at the foot of the bed and her bunny she got for her first Easter goes at the top. And I look around, eyes finally resting on Jesus. There: home.

I wake up, disoriented, to the crowing competition between roosters and peacocks. Turning on the small electric heater to dispel the chill of Paarl’s April morning, I stumble out the front door into the tepid sunlight and mark time to keep the seeping cold of the cement floor from making too much progress up my legs. The mauve light of dawn stretches out beyond the darkened pine trees lining the Bredenkamps’ driveway. The morning mist is lifting above the town, brushed in a golden glow. Somewhere to my left is the faint sound of gospel music. Walking around the side of the
kaia
, I locate the boom box perched on top of a rusty petrol can. Next to it is Delia, hanging her madam’s washing on the line behind the garage and singing along in the clicks and clacks of the Xhosa language, a typewriter’s hammering keys. Between hanging up her boss’s pants and reaching into the basket for the next item, she lifts her hands and bounces them heavenward as though she were propping up the sagging contents of a top shelf.

When I return from the outhouse, I sit down on the red vinyl backseat from some long-gone car and watch the century-old tradition of a black woman hanging white people’s laundry. When the line between the tree and the end of the garage roof is full, Delia lifts her basket to the top of her head and reaches for her boom box. She sees me and shouts,
“Molo, m’faan, kunjani?”

“
Molo
, Delia; I am fine, thank you,” I reply.

She walks toward me, her free hand steadying her basket on her head. “
Ow
,” she exclaims, “madam not feeling all right?”

“Just the outhouse, probably, and I ought to eat breakfast,” I say.

“I’ll bring you some,” she offers, and then turns to walk up the path with her renewed purpose.

“Delia,” I call, “please don’t go to any trouble. I can go to the shop and pick up something there.” The local grocery shop that Etienne owns is only half a mile down the main road and is flanked on one side by a petrol station, and on the other by a pub named Ye Olde Aardvark. Painted on the store windows in white shoe polish are advertisements for such local delicacies as ostrich
biltong
, sausage rolls, and
samoosas
, all of which sound strangely tempting for seven o’clock in the morning.

“
Aikona
, madam. No trouble. I’ll be back
chop-chop
.” She grins, and I notice she is missing all her front teeth. Delia is not a beautiful woman, nor is she young. Her fierce face has sunken cheeks and her small black button eyes are set too close to her wide, flat nose. She wears a
doek
, which covers her hair, and I can’t decide if she looks more like a pirate or a warrior. Her skinny frame recedes from me, seesawing with a limp. Looking down past the hem of her dress, I notice how her right foot drags a black boot with a two-inch platformed sole.

The back of the Bredenkamps’ property is interspersed with aloes, pelargonium, and vygies. Africa is aromatic this morning—a cross between bush tea, thyme, and cat pee. The Cape canaries call to one another from their lofty perches in the Port Jackson trees, the
piet-my-vrous
joining in the chorus. It is good to be back; fancy that.

I fetch a glass from the cupboard, fill it up with water from the tap at the sink, and return to my backyard throne just in time to hear Delia’s “Helloo, madam!” Setting down the laden tray on the seat, she tch-tches, “Madam must eat. Madam is too skinny. Not good for a woman in Africa to be so skinny.” There is a bowl of granola, a banana, a soft-boiled egg in an egg cup, triangles of toast, and a mug of tea with a picture of Charles and Diana on it. Don’t these people throw anything away? From the pocket of her apron, she extracts two apricots,
“from Ou Miss Antjie’s tree,” she tells me, referring to Susannah’s mother. “She says the apricots are not for the family, but I pick them anyway when she’s not looking!”

“What does she do with them if you aren’t allowed to eat them?” I ask.

“The Ou Miss gives them to the
kleintjies
at the children center. She only goes every other Tuesday, and then she has me or the boy pick them.”

“The boy?”

“Pepsi. He’s a
skelm
, that one.” By way of an explanation for calling him a scoundrel, she says, “Too many girlfriends, too much gambling. Too much fighting. I keep telling madam that the Boss should send him away,” she says, clicking her disapproval once more.

“The gardener?” I ask.

“Ewe.”
She nods. “He works here Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but he is very lazy.
Ow
.”

Sometimes it seems that nothing changes in Africa. Delia has been a voting member of society since 1994, her political party goes on unchallenged more than a dozen years later, yet she serves me toast with the crusts cut off and uses the vernacular of the apartheid era with her talk of “the boy” and “the Boss.”

“Thank you for the apricots,” I say, and eat a perfect triangle. “Do you think it would be all right to use the phone?” I have forgotten the place where I am to meet Piet Slabbert.

She squints at me, mops her perspiring face with the dish towel she has draped over her shoulder. “Yes, madam.”

“Please do not call me ‘madam,’ Delia. It makes me feel old,” I lie. It makes me feel white, is what it really is. “Everyone calls me Abbe.”

She shakes her head and mutters something in Xhosa.

“Excuse me, I think I will eat inside,” I say, and pick up my tray and make my retreat from her disapproving frown.

KONSTANTIA KOMBUIS, the restaurant where Piet and I have arranged to meet for lunch, is set off the beaten cuisine path of downtown
Paarl with its jazzy eateries, art stores, and gift shops. Rather, Drosty Street has a row of Cape Dutch homes, most of them converted to small businesses. One of them is this slightly decrepit café—its thatched roof worn, the shutters shedding their bottle-green paint, and its austere dining room empty. Instead of boasting the region’s finest KWV wines like its more frequented counterparts on Main Street, it offers a special on Windhoek lager. I order a shandy and take in the decor, which is a mishmash of French colonial and tribal hut. Before long Piet breezes in wearing coveralls, a backpack slung over his shoulder, and a lit cigarette perched on his lower lip in defiance of the anti-smoking ban. The restaurant manager claps his back and says, “Piet!
Jou blerrie skilpad!
At your age you can’t afford to keep such a beautiful woman waiting!”

“
Luister, ou pal
, instead of reminding me of my age, why don’t you make yourself useful and pour me a cup of coffee—or has it been so long since you’ve had a customer that you’ve forgotten how to serve one?” he volleys back, winking at me.

When he approaches our table he is scowling as the smoke hits his eyes. “Abbe! What a pleasure to see you,” he says, removing the cigarette from his mouth so he can kiss the back of my hand. “So long; too long.”

“You still look exactly the same,” I say, and he does, apart from the liver spots dotting his bald head and the mustache that is now white and thinning at the corners.

“And look at you, all grown up;
pragtig nes soos jou ma
,” he says. People who knew my parents always thought my features favored my father’s, but I take his compliment that I am pretty like my mother without argument.

We order the specialty of the day—kudu kebobs—and he pulls from his backpack a folder with the offer from the firm, five percent more than asking price, which Piet says he set deliberately high. They hope to finish construction of the resort before the winter rains next year, he tells me. A win-win, Piet concludes his report.