Out of Bounds (3 page)

Omar closed one eye, fixing me in the sights of his finger pistol. Billy leaped up the front steps
ready to pull my arms behind me. I began to struggle, flinging myself back with such force on to the stoep and pulling Billy down with me. I could see the surprise in his eyes as he realized I was about to thrash him.

“Hey pal, cool it!” Omar’s voice reached me. His hands no longer made a pistol but were waving frantically like flags. He looked so worried and comic at the same time that my flare of anger vanished as swiftly as it had whipped me up.

“What’s going on here?” Mommy’s voice cut as sharp as her scissors. “I thought I asked you to check on your sister.”

Omar and Billy both looked embarrassed.

“Sorry, Mrs. Peters,” they stumbled.

I bit my lip, confused at my stupidity. I had no idea why I had caused such a row and right within Mommy’s earshot.

“You, young man,” Mommy said, eyeing me, “had better come inside and start packing.”

For the next couple of days, Mommy kept me busy. First it was cleaning and scrubbing. I couldn’t see why she was so bothered, especially since she kept our house spotless anyway.

“But we’re leaving, Mommy. Why must we worry?” I protested.

“I’m not having those whites saying we left the place dirty.”

“But Mommy—”

“No buts. Just do it!” When Mommy had made up her mind, it was like concrete.

Later, when she was ready to deliver her orders, she took me with her to help carry the parcels. It was the day before my birthday although I was trying to put it out of my mind. We set off early in the morning. First there was a long walk to the bus stop and then a long wait under the sign for
NON-WHITES…NIE BLANKES
. Already, there was a thick queue of people ahead of us, mostly black women. A couple had little babies wrapped in blankets, tied to their backs. I had heard Uncle Richard saying that the government was only doing to us now what it had done to the black people before. Pushing them all out of Jo’burg and making them travel for hours and hours to get to work. We watched as three empty buses rumbled past us, stopping for a handful of people at the white bus stop a little way down the road. When I was younger and had come with Mommy on her
rounds, we had been allowed to sit upstairs at the back of those white buses. Now things had changed.

I didn’t like the trudging up and down roads that stretched like elastic, but I was curious to see at whose house we would deliver the Lone Ranger suit. Maybe I would see the boy Mommy had made it for. Perhaps he was having a birthday too, and it was going to be a surprise. We walked down a broad tree-lined road where the grounds of each house could have swallowed up four or five houses along our street. At last Mommy stopped outside one with a white brick wall and a fancy metal gate. As she lifted the latch, two huge golden-haired dogs bounded across a lawn as smooth as a carpet. Their tongues hung out, and their teeth flashed as they barked. An old black man in blue overalls was carrying a hosepipe to a bed of roses. He turned and waved to Mommy. I clung close to her.

“
Ag,
don’t be scared! They know me,” Mommy said. “These two will just bark.”

Before we even reached the front door, it opened. A boy, about my age, frowned at us. He wore a cowboy hat and, around his waist, a belt
with a gun in the holster.

“Why were you so long, hey Betty? I’ve been waiting forever!” His voice had the kind of whine that I knew got on Mommy’s nerves. He hadn’t even greeted us, but Mommy just smiled.

“Is your mother in?”

“Mom! Betty’s here! At last!” the boy shouted over his shoulder.

The front door opened into a large empty hallway. The only furniture seemed to be a small table on which stood a dark-green potted plant with great leaves like elephant ears. The black and white tiles on the floor shone like marble. We heard the click of heels, and a white lady in a pale-pink suit appeared behind the boy. Her honey-colored hair was fixed as perfectly as if she was a film star.

“Good morning, Betty!” Her voice stalked slowly like my teacher’s when he was getting ready to pounce. “Whatever has kept you? I very nearly asked somebody else to make the cowboy outfit!”

“Sorry, Madam. Just too much to do! We have to—”

“Timothy has been asking every day about his suit. You must know how children are.” She shook
her head and sighed before turning to me. “Is this your son?”

I looked away at the dogs and the garden. I could feel the boy Timothy staring down at me too and my blood rising. He wasn’t tough and threatening like the white boys on the way to town, and given half a chance, I could easily have thrashed him. Even before I had actually seen him, I had been jealous. But from the moment I heard him call Mommy “Betty,” I disliked him fiercely. When Mommy was asked to go inside to check that the suit fitted properly, I stayed outside. I didn’t want to see this pretend Lone Ranger all dressed up! But as Mommy fastened the gate behind us on our way out, he came galloping across the lawn with one of the dogs on a lead and twirling his pistol in the air. The second dog chased alongside, wild with excitement.

“Hi-yo, Silver! Time to hit the trail!” the boy yelled.

Mommy had even made him a mask to complete the outfit.

When we returned home, hot and stiff, Mommy told me to peel the potatoes while she went over to
Mrs. James to collect Lisa. I wanted to protest, but I knew she was as tired as me and that she had to get dinner ready for when Pa came home from work. There was still so much to do, she complained, to be ready for Pa’s friend and his van on Saturday. I imagined spending my last day in Jo’burg—my birthday—helping Mommy pack and not with my friends.

Pa was late coming home. After putting Lisa to bed, Mommy gave up waiting and served our dinner.

“He promised to help tonight, and he’s not even here,” I heard her grumble to Uncle Richard afterward in the kitchen.

But an hour later her voice was much more worried.

“What can have happened, Rich? He’s never this late.”

Uncle Richard had just offered to investigate by walking to the station when Pa stepped through the doorway. His face looked as heavy as a storm cloud. Mommy made him sit down.

It was the police. At the station exit. But it wasn’t one of their usual pass raids herding up black men to inspect their pass books, handcuffing the
unlucky and the forgetful. No, this time it seemed they were singling out the men they thought were Colored. They had demanded Pa’s certificate, and Pa had asked, “What certificate?” He was told not to play the fool. Since he didn’t have a “Population Registration Certificate,” they said he had to present himself within twenty-four hours at the Pass Office for classification! A special office had been set up, and a team of officials had come especially to Johannesburg to start the classification. The police took details of where Pa worked so as to check up on him in a couple of days.

“Didn’t you tell them? We’re already moving to Coronationville? What more do they want? And tomorrow—of all days!” Mommy exclaimed.

“I told you!” Uncle Richard said bitterly. “What they started on black people would come to us.”

I thought my uncle was going to make one of his speeches, and there would be another argument. But instead he asked Pa quietly what he was going to do.

“I must go tomorrow,” said Pa. He was sure the police would make trouble with his employer if he ignored them.

Pa had never missed a day off work and Mr.
Coley, the factory manager, had to be told that he would be unavoidably late. Pa insisted on going back out to use the telephone at Omar’s father’s shop. It would still be open. He knew the white suburb where Mr. Coley lived so he could find the number in the directory. He hoped the manager would not mind being disturbed at home, but it was better than finding Pa absent in the morning. Mr. Coley relied on him. We all knew that, from Pa’s factory stories.

“Why does Pa need a certificate, Mommy?” I asked as soon as Pa and Uncle Richard had left.

“Take these and pack everything in your cupboard,” Mommy said in a voice that was strangely low. “Then I want you to go to bed. It’s getting late.”

I would have to ask Uncle Richard to get an answer to my question.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, I reminded myself that I was now ten. With everything upside down in our house, who else would remember? I found all the grown-ups at the table, including Pa. On weekdays, he usually left long before I was awake. From the discussion, I gathered
that Mr. Coley had given Pa the day off. Pa promised that he would come home straight after he had finished at the Pass Office to help Mommy. If he got there early, he thought he might even be back before noon.

“We’ll manage, Betty. You’ll see,” Pa said with his quiet confidence. Mommy raised her eyebrows and Uncle Richard sat with his arms folded, sucking on his pipe. Pa got up and came toward me.

“Happy birthday, son.”

He put his arm around me, and I grinned. He hadn’t forgotten! Then both Mommy and Uncle Richard wished me a happy birthday. Mommy said that because I had helped her so much over the past two days, I could spend the day playing with Omar and Billy. Mrs. James was going to look after Lisa, so I could enjoy the whole of my last day with my friends. Uncle Richard pulled half a crown out of his pocket. It was mine to buy comics, whichever I liked! I knew he meant
The Lone Ranger
even though he liked to tease me about my hero.

When Omar, Billy, and I held our powwow in Billy’s backyard, we all agreed that our last day together should be something special to remember. Not just
a day of talking about other people’s adventures in comics or even our favorite films. I had already told them about Pa being stopped by the police and how he had to report to the Pass Office. It was Billy’s idea to track him down there.

“You said your Pa was going to get you that cap gun! So we surprise him when he comes out! We walk home with him past Solly’s, and you remind him. He buys it for you, and then we spin around with it!”

It seemed like a good plan. Tracking Pa was part of the adventure. I had heard him mention President Street. Pretending that we were detectives on a case, we made a game out of watching people as we walked. We imagined crimes and discussed the meaning of every twitch, scratch, or flickering eyelid of each of our suspects.

We were having fun until we saw the Pass Office. I had passed it before but never taken too much notice. Men were lined up on the pavement in a queue that stretched all the way along the side of a fat dirty-looking building. They looked tired, like prisoners of war. All of them were black. I knew from Uncle Richard that his black friends hated the little book they had to carry everywhere
they went. It had to be signed by a white man who decided where they could live and work. As if they were work animals to be kept chained and branded with their owner’s label, said Uncle Richard.

But where would Pa have gone inside the Pass Office? One of us would have to go up to the door and look. Omar and Billy both agreed that it should be me. They would keep watch from the opposite side of the road. As I neared the entrance I suddenly felt nervous. What if Pa was angry that we had followed him? Then he certainly wouldn’t get me my cap gun. But it was too late now to change the plan. I slowed down at the entrance, trying not to be put off by the dozens of eyes now on my back. As I peered around the corner of the doorway, I got a shock. A black policeman was standing just on my right. My fingers could have touched the baton hanging from his belt! He was looking straight ahead and hadn’t seen me yet. I had to force myself to stay rooted while I quickly scanned what seemed like hundreds of faces inside. My heart was pumping like a frantic piston. I couldn’t see Pa anywhere, but there was a corridor on the far side leading away to other doors. The policeman
began to jiggle his knee. I swiveled and ran.

We set up watch on the opposite side of the street. We took turns to be the lookout. Omar had his brother’s old wristwatch and announced the end of each twenty-minute duty. I told my friends that I was sure Pa could not be too long. The queue for Coloreds was surely shorter than the one that stretched outside. But when each of us had been on duty twice and two hours had passed, we began to feel discouraged. Each hour that passed was an hour less to play with the gun. Once again I was sent across the road into enemy territory to look for any signs of Pa. There weren’t any. Had he actually left the building and one of us had missed him?

I was into my third round of duty, and Omar and Billy were beginning to get restless. I was also feeling hungry, wishing I had eaten some of Mommy’s porridge. Billy suggested we spend some of my half a crown on chips. I was reluctant to eat into my comic money and was hoping to delay when Pa appeared in the Pass Office doorway. He stepped out very slowly with a piece of paper held in front of him. He wasn’t really looking where he was going. His feet seemed to be
feeling their own way like those of a blind man.

“Pa-a!”

I heard my own voice. Thin and high like it had been squeezed through a sieve. Pa didn’t look up. I darted in front of a bicycle to get across the road.

“Pa? You OK, Pa?”

My father didn’t look at me. His gaze was tied to the piece of paper. There was a blankness in his face that scared me, as if he didn’t understand what was written. His head was now shaking ever so slightly, and his hand with the paper was trembling. I touched his sleeve lightly with my fingers. Pa glanced at me but didn’t seem really to see me because his eyes steered back to the paper. I was aware of Omar and Billy behind me and that people were watching us. I didn’t know what to do. Pa seemed to be in a daze. Then an old black man with stubbly gray hair and a face crisscrossed with furrows left the queue and took Pa by the arm.

“Come,
umfowethu.
Come, my brother. Rest here.”

Gently, he led Pa to the other side of the door, away from the crowd. He eased Pa against the wall and looked gravely at me. His eyes seemed as old as a hundred winters.