Street Kid (18 page)

I could hear snorting and whinnying coming from a big, long tent and went straight to it. Inside were the horses and cream ponies, llamas and camels, each in its own stall. The horses had beautifully plaited manes and tails, just as I’d imagined they would. At the end of the tent were two elephants, tethered by the foot, who lifted their trunks when they saw me.

I stayed a few minutes in the animal tent, soaking it all up, before moving on. Outside, I could see a group of kids gathered at the front of an open-sided trailer and eating candyfloss. When I got closer, I saw two tigers inside, pacing back and forth behind the bars. I went and stood behind the rail in front which had a sign which read,
‘Please don’t feed the animals’. I supposed that if there hadn’t been a sign there, some of the kids might have been stupid enough to give them candyfloss.

I made my way around the side of the big top to the back, carefully avoiding tripping over the guy ropes and wooden pegs. There I found a place where the canvas had been pinned back to reveal a large, corridor-like backstage area. I went in. All the props were laid out ready for the show, including a miniature red open-topped car, a couple of unicycles, and a see-saw. Hanging from hooks on the white canvas was a row of plumed headdresses for the horses. Everything looked so shipshape and orderly.

I wasn’t on my own for more than a couple of minutes. The first people to come along were two African circus hands, rolling the big yellow tubs which I guessed that the elephants would stand on. I moved quickly aside, flattening myself against the canvas, so that I wouldn’t get in the way. A moment later, two men with shiny black hair walked past me from the direction of the ring. They were wearing dressing gowns, open at the front, and underneath I could see they were wearing tight silver trousers. No one stopped to ask me what I was doing there. They didn’t seem to care, and I could sense that their minds were wholly intent on the job in hand.

A group of musicians walked past me, climbed a ladder to a platform above the ring, and started tuning up. When I heard the cymbals and trombones, I felt my whole body wake up, as if charged by volts of electricity. I wasn’t the only one to feel thrilled by the music. Inside the big top, I could hear the excited buzz from the audience, and the sound of the last stragglers rushing to take their seats. Even the animals seemed to feel the excitement.

A few minutes before the show began, a pair of circus hands carried an arched cage into the backstage area and set it down. Moments later, the big cats were sent down a tunnel into it, ready for the first act.

What followed was a noisy kaleidoscope of colour, sound, and movement as one act after another came on and off stage, seamlessly, like a regiment of the best-trained soldiers you could ever imagine. Every prop, I realized, had been lined up the right order to be used so there was no fussing or noise. I saw the lions and their tamer – a strong-looking, rather dour man; a family of chimps – the girls in little frilly skirts and the boys in shorts and dickie bows; the clowns with their tiny red car; and a little girl who rode on the back of a pony in her tutu. She couldn’t have been much older than seven.

All the while, the band played great oomp-pah-pah waltzes and the artists and animals skipped and paced, alert to their cues. As I stood there enthralled by the whole, wonderful spectacle I knew I was utterly hooked.

There was nothing going on at home to deter me from spending every spare moment of the next few days at the circus. I bunked off school each morning, and the longer I spent there the more I realized I couldn’t go back to how things were before – the daily misery of school, and my loneliness in the long afternoons and evenings; and, on the very few occasions my dad and Freda had both been in, the poisonous silence between them.

My father had a way of looking straight through Freda as if she wasn’t there. I knew that stare only too well and it still managed to terrify me. It made you feel like you were no better than a worm, and Freda was obviously hurt that Dad used it on her. She rarely asked for anything of
him, though – her pride wouldn’t let her – and she never broke down in front of us. But I knew that when she used to leave the room to let off steam, she’d invariably go out for a walk and a cry as her eyes would look red and swollen later on. Freda was a tough one, though, and I knew she’d rather die than let my dad see she was hurt.

As the week went on, the circus folk got used to my hanging about the place. There were plenty of poor white kids in Braamfontein, where the rows of cement semidetached bungalows were the nearest thing to a white slum Johannesburg had. I’m sure everyone just presumed I was from there.

As I became bolder, I started to explore more. My favourite thing was stroking the animals in their stalls. I learned to leave the llamas alone, though, as they used to spit at your eyes without warning. Crack shots, they were.

The only place I hadn’t dared venture inside was the big top, but I studied the outside of it and saw how it was put up; how the guy ropes were stretched down to the big pegs and tightened. The caravans and red-and-yellow trucks parked in a circle around it were mostly used for storage. The circus families, I discovered, stayed in their own steam train parked in a railway siding across the field.

One day, I was in the animal tent stroking the ponies when a boy came in carrying a bucket of feed. He was blond and athletic-looking and looked a couple of years younger than me. I didn’t know his name then, but I knew who he was as I’d seen him with his dad, the lion tamer.

The boy smiled at me and started emptying oats into the horses’ troughs. I took a few steps towards him.

‘What’s the name of this one?’ I asked, stroking the nose of one of the palomino ponies.

‘That’s Lady,’ the boy said.

‘She’s my favourite,’ I said. A few moments later, I added, ‘What’s your name, then?’

‘Carl. What’s yours?’

‘Judy.’

And there it was.

After that, I hung around with Carl quite a bit. He was a gentle boy who didn’t think it strange spending time with a girl and I felt immediately comfortable with him. Tall and graceful, he had inherited his Dad’s quiet confidence and had a wonderful way with all the animals. I watched him wash the elephants or screw the horses’ plumes into their harnesses before the show. Once, I helped him catch the llamas in the paddock. Carl said they always gave him the runaround and he looked grateful when I managed to grab them pretty quickly, ducking and dodging out of the way of their perfectly aimed bullets of spit.

On the Wednesday, as I watched the artists running back on stage at the end of the show to take their bows, I heard the roaring and clapping from the audience and watched the sheer joy in the faces of the performers. I could see that the animals got a huge kick out of the applause too, and I watched the chimps hanging around the necks of Billy and Marion Dash as they came out of the ring, giving them big, sucking kisses on their cheeks. For a moment it was as if the scene stopped still, as if crystallized in front of me. And the thought came to me then with such clarity –
I’ve got to be part of this.

People were happy at Wilkies. I never saw anyone carping or criticizing, like Dad and Freda. I asked myself,
How can a family this big manage to get along so well, organizing everything so it runs like clockwork? Freda and Dad can’t even manage to rub along together for one minute without going for each other’s throats – or, more often, mine.

Still feeling the glow of my day at the circus, I returned at five o’clock to the Allendene. I wasn’t expecting to see Freda or my dad there, but they were in when I got back and I could tell a nasty row was brewing. Later that evening, I lay in bed with my head turned to the wall, my good ear pressed hard into the pillow. It wasn’t any use, though. I could still hear every word.

‘You’re never at home.’

‘Well, you’re never in either.’

‘I know you’ve got someone else. You don’t even bother to cover your tracks. It’s always Cherie this, and Cherie that. I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘God! Lay off, will you.’ Dad spat back at Freda. ‘You’d drive anyone away with your carping and complaining.’

‘You only brought me to South Africa so that you had someone to take care of your brat.’ I could almost feel Freda’s malevolent, slitted eyes on me when she said that.

And there it always ends,
I thought.
With me. The brat. All my life I’ve felt that it would be better if I wasn’t here. If I just disappeared. Well, I’ll show you both … I’m old enough now. This time, I’m going to do it. I’m going to disappear for good.

The thoughts pounded round my head and, as the minutes passed, the more I became convinced of my own logic. They didn’t want me here. I didn’t want to be here. And what I wanted, more than anything in my whole life, was to be at the circus. There was the answer.

I felt suddenly as hard as steel.
This isn’t a game, Judy,
I said to myself.
If I’m really going to run away, then I’ll need to get every tiny detail right. Cover my tracks. Because, if he catches me, God only knows what he’ll do.

I always knew that my dad had in him the power to kill me. He just needed the excuse.

Eventually, that night, my dad and Freda stopped rowing and went to sleep, their backs turned away from each other in a rigid stalemate. In the quiet of the night hours, I planned my escape, and when it was all sorted in my mind I finally felt able to relax and fell into a sound sleep.

The next morning, I went down to breakfast earlier than usual, dressed for school. I knew it was important that Sunday, the head waiter, saw me in my uniform when he handed me my packed lunch. Chances were that Freda and my dad would both be out for a few nights following their row, and so long as no one reported anything out of the ordinary to them this morning, it could be days before either of them would know I was missing.

I went and hid in the alcove under the stairs. From there I could keep tabs on people’s comings and goings. First, I heard Freda coming down to breakfast, then leaving for work. Then I heard my dad’s footsteps on the stairs about twenty minutes later.

As soon as my father had walked into the dining room, I ran up the stairs to our room. My plan was to hide in the wardrobe until I knew for certain that he’d left for the day. It was the only space big enough for me. I opened the door and quickly decided that it would be too dangerous to hide on the side my dad hung his suits, in case he went to get something and saw me standing there. Instead, I crouched in a squat on a shelf on the other side, where my dad kept his socks. On the inside of the wardrobe door was a rack for his ties and cravats. I looped one of them over the bar so that I could close the door behind me, leaving a tiny crack so that I could see what was going on in the room.

Only once did I let myself wonder what Dad would do if he found me crouching behind his shirts, but then I quickly dispelled the thought. I was frightened enough already.
My legs are getting sore,
I thought to myself, after ten minutes had gone by.
What if I sneeze? What if the shelf gives way and I fall?

Then I heard my dad’s footsteps in the corridor outside. The door swung open and he came into the room. At one point, he moved so close to the wardrobe that I could hear him breathing and smell his aftershave through the crack in the door. I was certain that he must have heard the hammering of my heart. It seem deafening to me.

Oh God! I’ve got cramp in my knees. I’m going to fall!

I hung on there, desperately, willing my dad to leave, but he seemed to take an age fiddling about in his briefcase and folding his newspaper. Finally, he took his jacket off the back of the chair and put it on.
Please go. Just go!

At last, I heard him close the door. I stayed in the wardrobe long after I heard him go down the stairs, mentally counting his footsteps, calculating where he must have reached.
He’ll have left the building. He’ll be walking past the cars. Down the street. At the tram stop
…

I couldn’t wait any longer. I knew the cleaning girl would shortly let herself in to make the beds. I got out of the wardrobe, my legs so cramped that they almost buckled under me, and quickly packed my brown school case with my shorts and shirt. It was going to be a real bore having to lug my school books around in it but I couldn’t leave them in the room.

I was nervous having to walk the same route that my father’s tram took, but I reckoned he’d be ten minutes or so ahead of me. I walked fast, feeling anxious the whole way. When I reached the circus grounds, half an hour
later, my school dress was already soaked in sweat, although it was still early. And even then, I couldn’t relax until I knew that I’d managed to hide my case.

I planned to sleep in a horse box I’d found. There didn’t seem to be much stored in it, other than a few blankets and bridles. I was early enough to be able to let myself in without being seen as the artists and their families hadn’t yet left their apartments on the train. I managed to steer clear of a couple of hands who were going about their business, mucking out and feeding the animals.

After checking the coast was clear, I walked quickly up to the horse box and climbed inside. I quickly changed out of my dress and put on my shorts and shirt, hiding my case under a blanket. Once I’d got changed out of my school clothes, I felt such a sense of liberation. I’d been having to wear my uniform, on the weekdays at the circus, and it was only now that I felt I’d truly escaped.

That day, instead of having to leave after the afternoon show, I was able to stay and watch the evening one as well. It felt wonderful not having to drag myself back to the Allendene. I hid behind one of the caravans and watched the dusk slowly darken the sky over the circus ground, waiting while the tired performers finished putting away their props before going home to their train. When all was quiet, I slipped out of my hiding place and crept like a shadow along the side of the animal tent, edging my way towards the horse box. I had to tread carefully as there were guy ropes everywhere, waiting to trip the unwary.