Street Kid (22 page)

And so I found myself alone in the hotel. After experiencing the noisy hubbub of family life at the circus, having to eat, sleep, wash my clothes and take myself off to school each day on my own felt awful. Added to which, I had a growing sense of unease. Always, in the back of my head, lurked the fear that someone would find out I was fending for myself and have me sent away to a children’s home. After the horrors of St Joseph’s, I knew I never wanted to experience life in an institution again.

One day, a few weeks earlier, I’d been on my way to some woods near the northern suburbs called the Wilds. I sometimes went for a walk here and would pass what I thought was a private school with a nice-looking playground. It was only when I saw the sign, ‘Houghton Children’s Home’, that I realized it wasn’t a posh school at all and, as the realization hit me, I felt my legs instantly turn to jelly. The feeling took me totally by surprise, the trauma surfacing so suddenly, without warning. I thought that if I stood there too long a big arm would reach out and pull me inside.

In my efforts at covering up the fact that Dad and Freda had left, I became quite adept at dodging awkward questions. If one of the residents asked me where my father was I’d tell them that he’d left early for work. Luckily, it never seemed to occur to them to doubt my answer. Before I left for school each day, I was careful to use a bit of Freda’s soap and leave some of my dad’s clothes lying around. I’d rumple the sheets on their bed, knowing that the maid wouldn’t then tell Mr Adams that it hadn’t been slept in.

Of course, I thought about going back to the circus; but whenever I did, I soon dismissed the idea. I knew it would only cause Mr Wilkie trouble if I turned up again. I didn’t want to go through the awkwardness of his having to tell me to leave if I appeared again, looking for a place to hide. But it wasn’t just that. I felt that the stuffing had been knocked out of me after my last bid for freedom and that to escape again would be an impossibility. My dad would only find me and bring me back again, and the next time he really would kill me.

I’d been in South Africa just over six months now and the summer was coming to an end. Soon, I thought wistfully,
the circus folk would be heading for their winter quarters at the farm. At school, with the cooling of the weather, most of the other girls were starting to change into their black winter uniforms, and I wondered at what point I’d get into trouble for continuing to wear my white piquet dress. I knew, this time, that there was absolutely no hope of getting anything out of my dad as he still hadn’t returned to the hotel.

I got my period for the first time that July. Without any money for towels, I just had to make do with wads of the shiny, hard toilet roll they had in the loos at school. At first, when I saw the blood in my knickers, I thought I must have cut myself somehow. But then, when the bleeding stopped after a couple of days, I put it out of my mind – I had plenty of other things to worry about. It was only when I bled the following month that I put two and two together and realized that this might be a regular thing. And then, a few days after that, I heard a couple of the older girls whispering in the changing room about having the curse and needing a pad, and then the penny dropped.
This is something other girls have too.

One afternoon, I got back to the Allendene to find Mr Adams waiting for me on the steps. Barring my way so I couldn’t pass, he puffed out his stomach, which already protruded quite far between his braces, as if to say,
Don’t try to get past me, Missy.

‘I’ve got a letter here for your father,’ he said. ‘You’d better make sure he gets it. The rent hasn’t been paid for weeks and I’ll need to let out the room to someone else if he doesn’t pay up.’

I took the letter from him and said I’d give it to my father.

‘By the way,’ Mr Adams said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but before she left, your mother gave me an address where I could get hold of your dad if he wasn’t forthcoming with the money. You might as well have it.’

He handed me a piece of paper, on which Freda had scribbled a telephone number and an address. I guessed it was Cherie’s as she’d written, ‘c/o Mrs Warren’.
How it must have galled her to write that,
I thought.

I waited a couple more days, hoping against hope that my father would turn up; but he didn’t. I knew things couldn’t just stay as they were, now that Mr Adams was about to give us our marching orders; so I decided there was only one thing for it: I’d have to go to Cherie’s apartment. That way, I’d be able to hand my dad the letter and find out what was going on. Not knowing what the future had in store was killing me. I was scared of facing my dad – I hadn’t seen him since the beating – but it still felt better going in search of him than sitting at the hotel, helplessly waiting for Mr Adams to kick me out. At least, this way, I felt I was taking some control of the situation.

It took me ages to find Newlyn Mansions. The flat was on the sixth floor at the end of a long corridor. I checked the number on the door and knocked. I couldn’t hear any sound inside. I knocked again and again.

Finally, a woman came out of the next door flat. ‘It’s no use your knocking,’ she said. ‘Mr and Mrs Petch have gone away to Natal. There’s no one there.’

The woman was about to go back inside her flat but stopped when I spoke: ‘I’m not sure I’m at the right flat,’ I said. ‘What does Mr Petch look like?’

‘He’s tall and thin. Dark. With a little beard.’

Definitely my father.

After Cherie’s neighbour had closed the door behind her, I slumped to the floor and sat there for a while feeling sick and hopeless, my back against the door of the empty apartment.

What on earth am I going to do now?

Chapter Nineteen

M
y situation rapidly became a crisis. I went to Cherie’s flat every day, but she and my father were still away. As expected, Mr Adams told me we had to be out of our room within the week and I began to cast around for a plan in earnest. I rejected the idea of telling one of my teachers at school or talking to any of the hotel residents. Either way, it would probably mean a children’s home for me, or the most terrible beating from my father. If Mr Wolfe had still been alive I would have told him, but he wasn’t and there was no one else I trusted. I always felt safer working things out for myself. Talking to adults only meant one thing – trouble. As I’d always been brutally schooled to keep my mouth shut, doing anything else felt unsafe.

I left the Allendene the following Sunday. I knew the streets would be empty as the African workers were at home in their townships and the majority of whites at church. I got up early and packed my brown school case with just the bare essentials: my school books and uniform, a bar of soap and a comb, a change of clothes, underwear, and a few bits of fruit I’d taken from the hotel dining room. I made sure that I ate a good breakfast
before I left as I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from.

I slipped out of the hotel and onto the sleepy early-morning streets, walking in the direction of Hillbrow, an upmarket neighbouring district which had plenty of restaurants and hotels. I reckoned that it would be a good area to search for somewhere to sleep as there was a greater likelihood of my being able to scavenge food there.

When I got to Hillbrow, the streets were almost deserted: just a couple of stray dogs and one or two people going about their business. I tried to look as though I knew exactly where I was going so that I wouldn’t get stopped by anyone. People might have wondered, otherwise, why a twelve-year-old was out on her own, looking lost and carrying a case.

Most of the backyards in Hillbrow had secure fencing or locked gates, and it took me a good part of the day to find anywhere that might be suitable to spend the night. Eventually, when I was almost ready to give up, I spotted a gap in the wall of an alleyway that led into a yard. Luckily, it wasn’t overlooked. On one side of it was the back of a liquor store; facing it was an old shed, which must have once been the servants’ quarters. Now it was where the owner of the shop stacked up his crates of empties. I reckoned it would provide as good a home as any.

Inside, the shed smelt of damp earth and stale beer, but it was dry and would give me what I needed. And, as I checked out the yard, I realized my luck was in: there was a water tap against the wall.

Before I made camp in the shed, I thought I’d better check out my immediate neighbourhood. I wanted to make sure I’d worked out my safest entry and exit to the alleyway and where the nearest public toilets were. I found I
didn’t have too far to go; there were a couple of cinemas close by which I could use in the evening, the Clarendon on Pretoria Street, and the Curzon on Kotze Street; and during the daytime, there was a department store, the OK Bazaars. If I was really stuck, there was always the hospital or the railway station.

There still wasn’t a soul around when I came back to the yard. I quickly set to work. First, I rearranged the crates to make a space for me to sleep, making sure that I’d be hidden from sight should anyone come in. I then took my face flannel, wet it, and began wiping down the dirty, cobwebby concrete floor as best I could, going back and forth to the tap to rinse the cloth. When the job was finished I shut the door and sat down on a crate. The small window had been blacked out, which meant I was all at once entombed in thick darkness. I shivered then, and was glad of the sliver of light coming from under the door.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering the local streets and watching families out for their Sunday lunch. I didn’t know it then, but I was going to hit the point of near starvation in the coming weeks and these open-fronted cafés and restaurants would be a godsend.

It never crossed my mind then that I might have to sleep rough for more than a few days. I was sure my dad would return to Johannesburg soon and that this was simply a temporary arrangement. It was, however, nine months before I once more had a home, nine months of sleeping on a concrete floor, washing in public toilets, and scavenging from bins.

That first night was pretty grim. I hardly slept a wink. I tried to lie down on the floor but insects ran over my body and, without any sort of mattress, the cold soon
seeped up into my bones, chilling me stiff. Eventually, I tried to sleep up against the wall with my head against my school jersey, which I’d turned inside out and rolled into a ball. I sat there in the pitch black, feeling alone and terrified and on full alert in case there was a need to run for it. There was no lock on the door and I could hear raucous men’s voices in the alley late into the night and the crash of their bottles as they chucked them against the wall.

Please God, don’t let them come in here,
I prayed silently.

The next day, I was up just before first light, not wanting to spend a moment longer in the shed. I knew I had to be out before the first workers arrived – luckily the first tram of the day went past the bottle store, so I could judge what time it was from that.

I filled a bottle under the tap, making sure that I didn’t leave any splash marks on the ground, and took it into the shed. My flannel was no use now so I used a wad of toilet paper to clean myself, taking care to rub behind my ears as Mrs Poole always checked our necks during her dress drill. As I had no toothbrush, I rubbed the paper across my teeth as well. I needed to wash away the sour taste of fear which still lingered in my mouth.

As it was Monday, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the streets were busy with early-bird commuters heading for the city centre; in another couple of hours, kids would be on their way to school. My intention was to keep going to school until the term finished. I knew I’d get my dad into trouble with the authorities if I was a truant again, and that he’d most likely kill me if I did. I realized with a sickening feeling that I was going to find it hard to look anything other than crumpled. With no basin, and only the tap in the yard, my white school dress and socks wouldn’t stay white for long.

On my way to school, I thought how strange it was that, while I knew what the other children had in their bags – exercise books, pencil cases and packed lunches – none of them would ever imagine that my case held clothes and a bar of soap. It was hard to see them chatting brightly to their nannies, well-breakfasted and with their sandwiches safely packed away for later.

I was relieved that I only had a few weeks left of school before the start of the holidays. I was concerned, however, that once Barnato Park packed up for the long break I would no longer have my free breaktime snack to live on. Every day we were given a bottle of milk and a piece of fruit, and on Fridays chunks of cold fried fish, which I knew I’d be able to hide in my pockets to keep for later.

When school finished that day, I walked back to Hillbrow and used the afternoon to hunt for something that would make lying on the cold floor of the shed more comfortable. I managed to find some flattened cardboard boxes behind Woolworth’s and laid them out to make a mattress of sorts. That night, feeling a little more used to my new home, I slept a bit better.

Every day, I went back to Newlyn Mansions to see if my father and Cherie had returned. As I walked there, I’d be thinking, in rhythm with my steps,
He’s going to be there today. He will be there today. He’s got to be there today.
But when I got to the flat and knocked on the door there was never any sound. The first week, I was sure he would turn up, find the letter, and go back to the Allendene to check on the situation there; but, as time went on, I began to lose hope.

One afternoon, I went back to the Allendene and looked up at our window from the street. I hoped I might see a
sign that someone was staying in the room; but all was quiet, and the window was closed. I skulked on the pavement for a few minutes, under one of the jacaranda trees that lined the street, but didn’t dare go inside the hotel. Then, after three weeks, I stopped going to Newlyn Mansions altogether.