Forgive Me (7 page)

Thirteen

N
adine met Maxim on her first day in the Nutthall Road house. After she dropped her backpack in what would be her bedroom, Nadine sat at the kitchen table and shared an afternoon beer with George. George was writing all day, but his words, he said, weren’t adding up to much of a novel. He was clearly jealous of Maxim, whose photographs were selling well. Maxim, George told Nadine, worked his ass off, driving his car into the townships and documenting the bloody battles there. Blacks were attacking blacks, blacks were attacking whites, and Maxim was making a name for himself, signing with a prestigious agency and garnering paid assignments for newspapers and magazines. George looked wistful as he described his successful roommate.

“And Thola?” asked Nadine. “How did the two of you meet?”

George grinned. “It’s a long story.”

The beer was cold in Nadine’s mouth. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in a week. “So go on and tell it,” she said, relaxing into her chair.

“I was ten years old when I first saw her,” said George. “Her leotard was the color of orange sherbet.”

“Very dramatic,” said Nadine. “I’m guessing you’ve told this story before?”

“Be quiet, you,” said George.

The program was called Dance for All, and it was one of the few ways a child could get out of the townships. “They hold auditions every year,” said George. “Kids come barefoot, hungry, whatever. Kevin Holderman, Thola’s teacher, he chooses the ones with talent, and he trains them. One of Thola’s classmates is in the London Ballet.”

“Fantastic,” said Nadine, smelling a lifestyles feature.

“So Thola came to San Francisco,” said George.

“In an orange leotard,” said Nadine.

“My mother took me to the ballet,” said George, ignoring Nadine. “I fell in love with her by the end of the first dance. That night, I lay under my Batman bedspread and dreamed she was in the top bunk. In the morning, I begged my mother to find her and invite her to lunch.”

“What’s your mother like?”

“Rich, confused, beautiful. Anyway, she found out that Tholakele was staying in the Stanford dorms. She thought my crush on a little African girl was adorable, at first.”

“Is she still alive?”

“What? Who?”

“Your mother,” said Nadine.

“Of course she is,” said George. “Will you zip it and listen?”

T
hola arrived late. She wore a starched dress and plastic jelly sandals. She told George her teachers had made her wear the stupid dress. She much preferred jeans, she said, and she was going to be a Freedom Fighter.

Ten-year-old George fidgeted behind his plate of turkey sandwiches. Thola hadn’t turned out to be the quiet ballerina he had imagined. He wasn’t sure what a Freedom Fighter was, and he didn’t know what to say. His strategy of impressing Thola with his collection of butterfly wings seemed increasingly ill conceived.

“These little sandwiches are fab,” said Thola, who had put away four already and was slathering mayonnaise on a fifth. George watched the way expressions came and went quickly on her face: enthusiasm, anger, delight. She took a bite and sat back in her chair, one arm across her chest and the other holding her food aloft. “So, George,” said Thola, “I hear you love me.”

George’s heart hammered in his chest. This was not going according to plan. He could feel his palms and his armpits grow damp. “I…,” he said.

“It’s okay, man, no worries,” said Thola. “You’re not the only one, let’s leave it at that.”

“Oh,” said George. His food sat in front of him on his plate. He never wanted to eat again.

“I don’t have time for boys,” said Thola. “My cousin Albert’s in the MK. I want to be in the MK, too. But I’m only nine, so I must wait. There are more important things than boys, you know?”

“I thought,” said George. “I thought you wanted to be a ballerina.”

“Dancing’s okay,” said Thola. “I love to dance. And I can go places. Here I am in America! It’s great, but I miss my mom. Someday I’ll go back to dancing. When my country is free, I will be a ballerina. It will happen, you know, whitey.”

George was speechless, completely flummoxed. Was there a chance for a hug? He looked at her brown arms, and imagined them around his shoulders. Did she wear perfume? He couldn’t tell from across the table. He wanted to get one milk shake with two straws. Then they could both sip at the same time, as George had seen in movies.

“What are you staring at, boy?” said Thola. “Don’t look so unbelieving.” She finished off her sandwich and leaned across the table. Her face was very close to George’s. Was she going to kiss him? George looked into Thola’s brown eyes. Thola opened her mouth and sang joyfully, “Free Nelson Mandela!”

“D
id you have any idea what she was talking about?” said Nadine, opening two more cans of beer.

“Fuck no,” said George. “But she did kiss me after lunch. She tasted like Reddi-wip.”

“Whipped cream?”

“We’d had banana splits for dessert,” said George. He shook his head. “She ate most of mine.”

Nadine laughed.

“I wanted to stay in touch. She gave me Kevin’s address. I wrote her for months.”

“Did she write back?”

“Not for a long time. The company went to LA, New York, Boston. I started researching South Africa at the library. Can you imagine? There I was, this sheltered kid from Pacific Heights, learning about apartheid. I’d never really understood how…how big the world was, how horrible and exhilarating. It blew my mind.”

“It was the same for me. I grew up in a tiny town on Cape Cod. When I was twelve, we went to Boston for the Saint Patrick’s Day parade and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I mean, people looked so different. I heard other languages for the first time. And people were talking about…fucking foreign policy! Well, not at the parade.” Nadine smiled, remembering a dim pub called the Black Rose, where she overheard two students arguing about bombings in Northern Ireland while her father tried to order her a Coke. “Woods Hole,” she said, “they talk about clamming and boats. They don’t want to know what’s going on off-Cape.”

“Something to be said for that,” said George. “A simple life.”

“I guess. But it isn’t for me.”

“I hear you,” said George, and they tapped their cans together, a toast. George sat back and studied Nadine. Nadine touched her neck. “Back to the story,” she said.

“Right,” said George. “Right. So I started researching South Africa. I finally found a
Newsweek
article explaining what Thola had meant by
MK.
”

“You were ten, reading about the MK?”

“Wild, huh? I read that they sent kids to Mozambique and Angola for military training, and I was hopeful, but I saw on my light-up globe that neither spot was near the Bay Area.”

“No,” said Nadine, laughing.

“I read that the MK were given guns and hand grenades, taught how to fight, and then sent back into South Africa. The idea of Thola as armed and dangerous only made her more attractive, of course.”

“Of course,” said Nadine, thinking of Sammy again, the biker whose tattoos and bad attitude had been his best characteristics.

“I went around singing the ANC anthem, which I’d found on a Time-Life cassette of world music. I still remember it.
Nkosi Sikelel…
”

Nadine winced at his off-key rendition. “I get the picture,” she said.

“At this point, my mother no longer thought my crush was so cute. She did not appreciate my singing African songs, and she threw away my
FREE MANDELA
T-shirt. She said it was the nanny, but I knew better.”

“What about Thola?” said Nadine. “Did she ever write back?”

“Not until I was in seventh grade.”

“What did the letter say?”

George put out his cigarette. “I have it,” he said. “You can see for yourself.” He went into his bedroom, returned with a timeworn piece of paper.

“You saved it, all these years?” Nadine asked.

George shrugged, gave the paper to her.

Hola George,

Thank you seven times for seven letters. I am very happy to have them. I am very busy with school and dance, of course, but I do think about you and about your nice mlungu home in America. My cousin (Albert) is home you will be glad to know. Things are not good and happy here, but we have faith. During the day there is fighting in the streets, nyaga nyaga, which means trouble, as I am sure you appreciate. The area around my house and in my house is safe for now. Two friends are dead, and I sing for them and I pray for them. They have not died for nothing.

In school, we are learning about white man history and also science. At ballet school I am becoming a master of the jeté and Albert teaches me the toyi-toyi. You should see me. Do not worry that I will fall in love with a Freedom Fighter, George. I told you before and tell you once more I do not have time for such things. When there is a free South Africa you will hear from me. You can write again and tell me more about this Alcatraz. Also, how did the San Francisco Ballet Gala Benefit of your mother go? I hope well. Send prayers for me and for you I will do the same. My sister Evelina says hello and she would like to come to America. Unfortunately, she is clumsy, and can never be a ballerina.

Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,
THOLA
(The Lion)

“This was what—fifteen years ago?” said Nadine.

“Right,” said George, taking the letter back and folding it carefully.

Nadine leaned forward. “How did you reconnect?”

“I wrote to her all through high school; and then during college, I finally saved enough to come over. Kevin set me up with this apartment about a year ago. Maxim was headed to Bucharest, and wanted to make some extra money by renting out rooms.”

Nadine nodded and sipped her beer. “Go on,” she said.

Fourteen

G
eorge worked in the campus bar during his junior year in college, and by summer he had saved enough money to buy a ticket to South Africa. (His parents had refused to supplement the “African girlfriend fund,” as his father called it.) Though there had been other women for George, he still pined for Thola. When the plane landed in Johannesburg, George felt something in his gut. He looked out the window at the dusty, red earth. He thought, grandly,
I am home.

He arrived in Cape Town four hours later, and called Kevin Holderman, whose number he had written on a square of notebook paper. Kevin, an energetic older man, drove him to the Nutthall Road house. “Okay,” he said, “here’s Thola’s address, and the keys to Maxim’s car. Ask around Site C in Sunshine township. Everyone knows Tholakele. But watch your back.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” said George as he walked outside with Kevin.

“Listen,” said Kevin. “You’ve got to be careful. It’s illegal for blacks and whites to mix.”

“I know,” said George. He muttered, “Fucking ridiculous.”

Kevin lit a cigarette and stared into space as he inhaled. The trees around them were vibrant. “It’s the way things are,” said Kevin, finally.

“That’s a stupid thing to say,” said George.

“Why don’t you soak it all in,” said Kevin, “before you start casting judgment.”

I
t was afternoon in Cape Town, but the middle of the night at home. George felt woozy from cigarettes and lack of sleep. He went outside and found the yellow Tercel parked in the middle of a pile of weeds.

There was a map on the passenger seat. Styrofoam cups and fast-food wrappers littered the car. One of the back windows had a bullet hole. It took a few tries, but finally the car started. George picked up the map, which was marked with red
X
’s. Cape Flats was a blank expanse, but Maxim had filled in some of the streets. He had noted
Sunshine,
so George started the engine and drove.

After about ten minutes, the streets of the city, lush and landscaped, ended, and then the townships began: tiny shacks and concrete blocks lining the road. George followed the signs to Sunshine, but found himself lost on a street filled with animals, people, and garbage. He passed brightly colored tin buildings. On one building,
QUEENS’ HAIR SALON
had been painted in red, followed by a list of services, including
RELAX, S-CURL, BLOW
, and
HOT WATER
. A few blocks away, he found Thola’s address.

As soon as he stepped from the car, George noticed how many people were watching him. From windows and yards, from the makeshift bar across the street, men and women stared openly. He had never felt so conspicuous. He was scared and guilty for being scared. He hadn’t even showered before coming to see Thola, he realized, pushing loose strands of hair back into his ponytail. He felt ashamed.

George walked past a row of concrete buildings. Laundry hung on a line, and a few empty plastic buckets had been overturned to make stools for women who sat and gazed at him. The buckets, George learned, were for human waste. There was no plumbing in Site C. There were no electric lines: there was no electricity.

Thola’s house, a corrugated-iron shack with horizontal windows, was surrounded by a dirt yard, which had been carefully swept. There was a spindly tree and a walkway made of stones. In the chilly afternoon, smoke curled from a fire in the backyard. George swallowed. The sky above him was closed in by smog. He approached the metal door and knocked.

An older woman with close-cropped hair opened the front door. She looked tired, her shoulders folded forward. “Hello,” said George, with way too much enthusiasm. “I’m here to see Thola! My name is George. I’m a friend of hers from America!” He grinned, and the woman looked at him levelly. She stepped back, indicating that George should come inside, and spoke to someone in the back room. George could not grasp what she was saying; he later learned she spoke only Xhosa.

On the wall, framed pictures and cutout newspaper articles had been hung. George recognized the girl in the photos: Thola. He smiled.

“Welcome,” said a woman in a green headdress, offering a tray with a teapot and a mug. “Thola is not here. Thola is at work.”

“She got a job?” said George. “I didn’t know. That’s great! That’s really great.”

A young girl at the kitchen table snickered. She wore a school uniform, plaid skirt with an oxford shirt. Her hair was pulled into two braided pigtails. When she looked up, George could see that one of her eyelids opened only partway. In front of her was a math textbook. “Where is she dancing?” said George.

“She is not dancing anymore,” said the girl, looking at George angrily. “She is a maid.”

“A maid?” said George.

The older woman pushed a mug of weak tea into George’s hands. The mug was very hot, its handle broken off. George switched it from hand to hand, trying to ignore his scalding fingers. The woman spoke in Xhosa. “She says it’s a good job,” said the girl, rolling her eyes.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” said George, trying to feign enthusiasm.

“We have heard many times about you,” said the woman in the green headdress. “I am Tholakele’s aunt, September. This is her mother, Fikile, and Evelina, her sister.” George looked long at Fikile. He could not believe the stooped, round-faced woman was Thola’s mother. He tried to catch her eye, to smile, but Fikile looked into her tea.

“Howdy, partner,” said Evelina. She was trouble, George could tell.

“Where does Thola work?” said George.

Fikile spoke, and George stared, trying to find Thola in her. September translated, “A fine home in the city. Twelve Serpentine Avenue.”

“Oranjezicht,” said Evelina, naming a suburb not far from George’s apartment.

George sipped from his mug. “I sure am glad to be here,” he said lamely. “Will you tell Thola I came by?”

Fikile giggled like a young girl—George was startled to hear such an innocent sound from Thola’s world-weary mother—and spoke softly to her sister. “She says that Thola was right. You are handsome, for an American,” said September. Fikile hid her smile with her pudgy hand.

“Thank you,” said George. He didn’t want to leave, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. “See you very soon, I hope,” he said, moving to the door.

Evelina followed George to his car and asked for a ride to a friend’s house. George agreed, and then saw two boys walking toward them. “Start the car, please,” said Evelina tensely.

“What’s the matter?” said George. The boys looked about ten years old.

“Please start the car at once,” said Evelina. “
Tsotsis,
” she said, after George had pulled away. “They are the hoodlums.” She added, without emotion, “They raped my friend.” George opened his mouth to ask questions, but could not decide where to begin.

Evelina directed him through the narrow, busy streets. Finally, she told him to stop outside a small house. “Studying?” said George as Evelina reached for the car door.

“Yes, studying,” said Evelina flatly.

“Well,” said George. “It was great to meet you.”

“I feel the same,” said Evelina, and she slammed the door, looked both ways, and ran to the house.

George couldn’t help himself. He drove out of the townships with relief and followed the handmade map to the leafy suburb of Oranjezicht. He was shocked by the contrast between the townships and the stunning suburbs a few miles away. As he drove, the road wound up the side of Table Mountain; some homes would have views of the sea.

Twelve Serpentine Avenue was a white house with an elaborate garden of frangipani and hibiscus. It was surrounded by a high metal gate, and signs warned of alarm systems and guard dogs. George sat in his car, and then he saw a figure outside the gates, underneath a blue gum tree. His heart beat quickly as he got out of the car. He approached the figure, who he knew, just knew, was his Thola.

Her eyes were closed, and she leaned against the trunk, smoking a cigarette. George watched her, the planes of her cheekbones, her lips. He had dreamed of her for years, and now here she was, more beautiful than he had imagined. She wore a gray uniform, and her hair was cut close to her head. Her ankles were crossed, her feet wrapped in ugly shoes. She wore a thick cardigan pulled over her chest.

Thola opened her eyes. Outside the gates of an opulent home, years later and on the opposite side of the world, they saw each other again. George knelt before her, and she smiled.

“Ah,” she said slyly. “My Prince Charming. At last, you have arrived.”

“J
esus,” said Nadine. “That’s quite a love story.”

“Have you ever been in love?” asked George.

“No,” said Nadine quietly.

“I’m sorry,” said George. He reached across the table, but before his hand touched Nadine’s the front door banged open. A blond man in his thirties entered the room. He was thin and unshaven, and wore jeans and a black T-shirt, three cameras around his neck. There was dirt smeared on one of his cheekbones, and with his wild blue eyes and bony frame, he looked a bit frightening. Nadine felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. His sweat smelled of spice. “Motherfucking Cape Flats,” he said.

“This,” said George, “is Maxim.”