Embrace (29 page)

What had gotten into me? Why could I not read aloud in front of other children? Faced by that Grade One class of thirty-one kids — more children than I had ever seen together — something had become bigger than my will and ability to read well. I could do adding and subtracting — had been doing that for two years before from the exercise cards Lena had brought to the bush. Moreover, when I had to read to Juffrou Knutsen alone at her desk, I read like the champion I had always imagined myself to be. But reading aloud to the class tripped me up as I began thinking the audience was sitting there ready to laugh at me. Despite my rote learning of the entire book, I continued to stutter and become terrified when faced by large groups of children. The words seemed like traps, gaping at me from the page. I bit my nails, sometimes till the fingertips bled. When I spent a long time in the water taking a bath or swimming, the flesh around the fingernails became soft white and blue ridges. Like undulations in papier mache.

Singing perie — perie instead of period as we took to calling each half-hour and later each forty-five-minute silence between clangings of the hand-rung bell — became my favourite. It was the second time in my life I had come this close to a real piano. The first was when Bokkie went to Johannesburg for an ear operation and we stayed with her ear specialist Dr Godmillow and his family. The Godmillows were Jewish and Bok had taken Dr and Mrs Godmillow on trail. Dr Godmillow had said he thought he could fix Bokkie s hearing — there was something wrong with the stirrup — a stirrup in the ear, I thought, how extraordinary — but the operation had been a failure and Bokkies left ear remained deaf. I was not allowed near the Godmillow s piano, because Bokkie said it was a very expensive piece of furniture. Noting my fascination with the instrument, Mrs Godmillow invited me to stand beside her as she played and explained to me the function of the black notes, the function of the whites, how to make a semi-quaver. That the right hand plays the tune, the left the accompaniment. It was so grand, being treated like an adult in the Godmillow mansion by such a smart and important woman. All the while my parents and siblings sat outside in the sun with Dr Godmillow, my mother with a white bandage around her head. We never saw the Godmillows again. We later heard that they had emigrated. To Australia, to start a new life.

I had seen pianos in books, heard them on the radio and on our Jim Reeves, Dean Martin and Gene Autrey records, but it was exhilarating being that close to the big upright instrument in its shiny wooden casing, with its perfectly ordered row of shiny black and white notes. Now, in Singing period, it was magic, to see and hear how, when Juffrou Sang pressed just a black note, it sounded wrong, and then, when she pressed certain black and white notes together, how it became right. I thought of Mrs Godmillow, taking my fingers and pressing them to the notes, her eyes sparkling as I marvelled at the sounds produced from a mysterious process started beneath my fingertips. Single white notes played alone, for example when Juffr ou Sang was teaching us a new song, held no appeal to me, they and their tune sounded thin and boring. But when she pressed a few notes — even two — together, it made what Mrs Godmillow had called a harmony, sounds, that seemed to come alive in my body, sounds that made me want to dance and sing. How I wished we could have a piano at home. I loved the new songs we learnt from thin music books and from the big fat guide of the FAK: A1 die veld is vrolik’; ‘Nooit hoef jou kinders wat trou is te vra’; ‘Wie is die Dapper Generaal De Wet?’ Juffrou Sang, whose real name I no longer recall, also taught us ‘Die Stem’/‘The Voice’, our country’s national anthem, and a verse of ‘Nkosi Sikeleli Africa’, which she said was the Zulu people’s. And, to my delight, a song called ‘Molly Malone’, which, when I sang it to Aunt Siobhain, had her weeping as it was an Irish folk tune she had learnt as a girl in Dingle.

In our new St Lucia house, Lena and I shared a room. Being the eldest, Bernice had her own, where I was not allowed without permission. Afternoons the three of us sat around the dining-room table doing our homework. Reading aloud could not be done there — though I tried it a few times just to get Lena into a rage — and had to be practised in our bedroom or outside on the lawn. Once done, I would go off on my own or wait till Lena had finished. Then we’d take to the outdoors together. Lena, almost without fail, would want to go to the jetty down on the estuary to fish for grunter or salmon. I enjoyed fishing, but only if they bit immediately. My sister, in turn, could sit hour upon monotonous hour, till it was almost dark, even when there were no bites. Lena would rage at me for my lack of patience and tenacity; while she grudgingly fished alone, I could lie for hours on my stomach, doing nothing but looking down at the movement of water and fish beneath the jetty. Lena would tell me how useless I was at baiting hooks — she could do three for my every one. And I’d try to work quicker, but never with success. When Bernice was with us, she’d tell Lena to lay off me, that I could bait a hook at my own pace and that it wasn’t hurting anyone. Then Lena would glare at me as though I were a hated enemy.

Many afternoons we were joined by the Pierce kids, who lived in’ the trailer park. Their father worked for Natal RoadWorks and they were always moving around. Mr Pierce could hold a fifty-cent piece between thumb and forefinger and bend it into a perfect half. Patty and Sam Pierce were our friends and went to school with us in Matubatuba. They were the only other kids on the bus in the mornings for almost half the way to school, and then in the afternoons the last off before our stop, which was the final one of the route. Sam was in Grade One with me, but in the English class. Patty and Lena were friends too, though they did once have a fist fight on the side of the road. Patty tore the collar off Lena’s school uniform and Lena gave Patty a blue eye that stayed swollen for a week. Bokkie gave Lena a hiding for behaving like a Makoppolander in public. For a few weeks we were prohibited from playing with the Pierces.

We did all kinds of things: fished, swam, collected bait, built sandcastles and huge tidal dams, climbed trees, flew kites, played beach cricket with a tennis ball. We loved swimming and although we were always on guard for crocodile and hippo, Bernice, Lena and I disregarded our fears and spent hours in the water. In addition to the sheer pleasure of the cool water, there was another reason for me always trying to get Lena to swim: swimming was the one thing I could do better than her. She was a head taller than me, she could outrun and outsprint me, could pin me down in wrestling, catch bigger fish, intimidate even older boys at school, hit a ball farther in beach cricket, score double what I did in soccer. But in the water I was like a fish. I had taught myself to swim. When I was four she and I had visited the Hancoxes in Hluhluwe and I had, on my own accord, jumped into the camp pool and, to the consternation of Willy and Molly Hancox who were meant to be looking after us, swum to the side. When Bokkie heard about my bravery she was furious and we were not allowed near water without the blow-up water-wings Aunt

Siobhain had to send from Durban. The water-wings went with us in the afternoons when we went fishing. We never wore them. Not once. Simply lied to Bokkie.

And I could swim faster than Lena. Through swimming I had also discovered my sisters Achilles’ heel: she was afraid to stay under for very long. I, on the other hand, remained till it felt my head would burst, often leaving me with a headache. Later, when we visited Mumdeman at Midmar, I could swim a length and a half under water while Lena could barely manage a length. Poor James, unsporty as a stick insect, could do only a breadth. At St Lucia I developed the trick of coming up underneath Lena and dragging her down, screaming. This so infuriated her that she left the water at once, waited for me on land, prowling along the shore like an angry lioness. I often daren’t leave the water for fear of reprisals — on land I stood no chance against her speed, strength and agility: talents that neither friends, family nor casual acquaintances could witness without heaping praise on the tomboy who was my biggest rival.

Many afternoons I took Bok’s new bull terrier Simba and, bearing carrots or sugar, went to Camelot where he was paddocked with two other horses. He soon knew me. I couldn’t wait for him to grow, to be broken in so that I could learn to ride. I asked Bok whether I couldn’t just try riding Camelot since he had now gotten to know me. Bok warned me to stay away until the horse was old enough to be properly broken in. On occasion Lena or Sam could be convinced to join me at the paddock. I got them to hold onto Camelot’s bridle — to which I would tie rope as reins — while I tried to get onto the eight-month-old. If Lena or Sam stood in front of the horse, he would sometimes allow me onto his back. However, the moment my aid tried to pass the rope-reins over his head, he’d start moving and I would jump off. Failure after failure, I never let up. Once, when Camelot unexpectedly bucked, I came a cropper. I struck the ground at an odd angle and thought I’d broken my arm. I screamed all the way home, lied to Bokkie and said I had fallen off the swing at thecaravan park, and within days was back at the paddock. I silently undertook that one day I’d lead Camelot onto the beach where falls in the soft sand would not result in fractured limbs. The experiment would have to wait till Bok was away.

As much as I liked being with Lena and the Pierces, some of my time was again spent alone: walking the beach searching for shells, sitting at one end of the jetty reading while Lena fished from the other, feeding and grooming Camelot, or, with Simba, exploring the bush along the estuary. I found a huge wild fig where hadidas and finches nested and soon we and the Pierces formed a gang and built a tree-house. I came to regret having told them about the Hadi-tree, for now the solitude of the place was gone. Suddenly there were all kinds of rules about who was allowed at the treehouse — no strangers; not our cousins when they came to visit; not Lena’s friends who sometimes came to stay over. It was our gang’s secret hide-out. Lena, thanks to her superior strength, was always the gang leader. There was not much to lead us to — decisions as to whether we’d go fishing, collecting bait, smoking or not smoking stolen cigarettes, playing in the trailer park, ‘drawing up rules for the fort, playing church or doctor and nurse — a game during which I was allowed to touch Patty’s poefoe and she my filafooi while Lena and Sam touched each other’s. Patty’s poefoe was a delight. Once I had started feeling it I could barely stop. When I stuck my finger inside it was wet and slippery, like the inside of an oyster. I wondered what was up there: just loose folds of flesh, blood, or pee? Or, if you stuck it in too deep, would your finger come out of her bum covered in poo? But when my finger came out it was clean: no blood, no pee, no flesh, no poo. I wanted to touch Lena’s, but she refused, saying brothers and sisters don’t touch.

Lena and I fought almost daily, while Bernice, four years my senior, inhabited a world of homework and older girlfriends from which I was mostly excluded. It felt as though for the first time I was getting to know my siblings. I was rarely alone with Bok and Bokkie. Now everything had to be shared, where before everything — includingattention — was mine except for every second weekend and holidays when they had come home from Hluhluwe. But what frustrated me most about Lena was not having to share attention. It was that she was stronger than me. While I could and did inflict pain, she, ultimately, would get the better of me, either during free fights or when Bok supervised wrestling matches on the lounge carpet. Lena had the resilience of a leopard. Even at school boys spoke of her strength. James, who was her age, stood no chance against her. Besides the swimming and my ability to frighten her in the water, my one defence was my mouth: I could sling abuse, in an array of curse words and snide remarks that Lena could neither counter nor countenance — at least at first. Later, when frustration drove me to bouts of verbal anger she began counter-attacking, saying that while I might think myself clever I should remember what happened to all the clever ones in the family. She warned that I was going to burst a vein in my head and go mad like Great-Uncle Klaas. The older we got, the less necessary it was to even use his name, and when we understood that Aunt Lena had dropped out of school because she had epileptic fits and a nervous breakdown, all Lena would say in response to my provocations, was: ‘Remember the mad gene.’ After Aunt Lena married Uncle Joe and ended up having shock treatments at Tara, Lena would say: ‘Remember, those shock treatments.’ Having lost my verbal ability to get back at her for what I perceived as her all-round superiority, I told Bokkie that Lena said I was going to go mad like Groot-Oom Klaas and Aunt Lena. Bokkie said it was a cruel thing to wish upon anyone and that Lena would get a hiding if she ever again used it against me. Though Lena continued reminding me of the mad gene and those shock treatments, I no longer reported her to Bokkie. Through an intricate system of trade-offs we had worked out ways in which transgressions could never be reported; I would say nothing about her using the mad gene if she said nothing about me getting it on the hand at school for back-chatting Juffrou Knutsen; I’d remain silent about her catching undersized salmon if she kept mute aboutme sometimes playing with her or Patty Pierce’s dolls. For dolls, along with dressing in girls’ clothing, had now been prohibited: sometime before I turned seven, Bok had said I was to stop handling Lena’s dolls and that I could no longer play with girls’ dresses and tea sets. We were no longer living in the bush, he said, I was now in the eyes. This was civilisation and I could not go about pretending to be something I was not.

Another of our exchange of silences was Lena’s for me getting onto Camelot’s back, mine for not saying anything about her fishing with sea lice when sea lice were a species Bok was responsible for protecting. Sea lice made the best bait. Both of us knew it. There was no way I would have reported her anyway for I delighted in their use almost as much as she did. The big difference was that fishing was more important to Lena than it was to me. I held the sea lice and the salmon over her head like the sword of Damocles. As she did the dolls and Camelot over mine.