Afrika (15 page)

Oupa held up all his old twisted fingers, then made two fists, and folded out three more fingers, so Kim could count how many generations of Van der Merwes had been in Africa. Thirteen. That was a lot. But what about Themba? What was he? The thousandth generation? Maybe more.

I saw Lettie's old house
, Kim almost blurted, but something stopped her.
I saw how Lettie's old house had been burned.

Oupa rubbed his fingers through his disheveled hair as if he could hear her silent accusations. He even looked as if he was about to add something else
when Tante Reza beckoned him. Again, he made for the door.“Please. Now you must rest,” he said before shutting it quietly behind him.

Frustrated, Kim tossed the brooch down onto the bed. She remembered the phone on Marjike's dresser, fumbled for the receiver, and tapped out Themba's number by the light of the candle. It was late afternoon – Themba might be in the township, he might not.

He picked the phone up himself. “Kim? Kim, I am happy to hear from you,” he said in his distinct voice. “How are you enjoying your holiday?” He spoke exactly as if she was off on a picnic.

Kim had trouble keeping her voice steady. “Fine, Themba, yes, just – fine. Perfect.” Receiver to her ear, she sat on the bed and began to thump the place where she made a hollow in the mattress. Her jerky shadow jumped on the walls around her.

“How's it man?” Themba asked. “You sound out of breath.”

Kim tried to calm herself. “I sort of stole a horse, if you want to know the truth.”

“Hau
, Kim! Are you becoming a criminal now?” His deep belly laugh rumbled in her ear. “If so, I would suggest that –”

Kim struggled to keep her voice light. “Just hold back on the expert advice for once,” she joked, though she didn't feel at all like joking.

The lightning blinked through the closed curtains. Kim picked up the brooch from the bed and stuffed it into her jeans pocket.

“Tell me what you have found out about your father,” Themba said. “What have they told you?”

“My cousin told me the truth,” Kim said. “Except my mom has gone off to Lion's River and isn't here to confirm it.”

“Then I'll tell you what I know,” Themba began after a moment. “I received your letter yesterday. When you described the burned-down compound, abandoned to the wind and the ants, I figured that there was more to it. I wondered if my ma might know something. When I questioned her, sure enough. She knew Hendrik.”

Kim swallowed. “Go on.”

“‘Colored’ is how your father would have been classified in the old South Africa,” continued Themba. “He dated your mom while they attended University of Cape Town, one of the few universities he could attend. One night he traveled from Cape Town to the farm to find your ma. Hendrik and Riana had had a serious argument about what to do once they found out your mom was pregnant. He came to the farm to find her and it was my ma who hid him in her room in the compound.”

Kim caught her breath. The rain beat hard on the tin roof of the farmhouse. She pressed the
receiver close to her ear to hear better. Themba added, “Ma sheltered Hendrik for three days in her room while your mom visited him secretly so they could talk. Your grandfather found out and in a fit of temper he burned down the rooms and banished Ma from the farm forever. Grandma Elsie wailed for forgiveness, but there was no changing your grandfather's heart. This is the reason Ma has never returned to the farm since.”

The line went silent. After a moment Themba spoke.“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Kim's voice was almost inaudible.

“And the news about your father. Are you in a good shock or a bad one?” he added, letting his voice lift.

Kim didn't know what to think. If her mother and others saw her father as a dirty secret, then what was she? Her words came in a rush.“She was ashamed of my father! That's why she never told me!”

“Calm down,” Themba cautioned. “I can only hear about every second word. Your connection is breaking down.”

“We're having a storm.” She turned in the opposite direction. “Is that better?” She was speaking as loud as she dared. She didn't want her aunt to know she was on the phone.

“Ja, listen,” he said. “You don't understand. You must see it from your ma's side.”

Was he defending her mother? Had he gone crazy?

“I'm going to give you an example,” he said. “They did this test. They did something called the pencil test. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can.”

“A chap I play soccer with told me about his older brother,” Themba said. “He was much lighter than the entire family. It was unbelievable how light-skinned he was. A Greek god, his mother called him. When he was six she had a plan – to pass him off as white. You know, so he could go to the white school and get a better education. At school, the first week, the authorities put a pencil into his hair, to see if the pencil would stick in or fall out. He failed the test, Kim.”

She stood up, took two steps to the desk, and picked up an orange pencil from a jar where Marjike kept them. She stood in front of the oval mirror on the wall.

“Think, man,” Themba continued, “if they found out your pa was colored. You would not have been able to live where your mother lived. Or go to a white hospital if you were sick. Your whole life would have been controlled. Controlled by them.”

What was she doing? Her face in the mirror was distorted by candlelight as she lifted the pencil to her hair.

“Are you there?” Themba asked.

“Yes.”

She heard him take a deep breath.

“Kim, you're six years old, the first day of school, you fail the pencil test.
Think!
You would have been chased out of the white school like a dog!”

The orange pencil stuck fast in her hair. Even as she moved her head, the pencil did not roll out from the place where she had jabbed it in.

“Kim?”

She swallowed but did not answer. From the window she could see the bright lights of Oom Piet's Land Rover coming up the laneway The storm had suddenly stopped.

“Themba,” she said yanking the pencil from her hair. “I gotta go.”

She slammed down the receiver and rushed down the stairs to meet her uncle.

“I
have to see my mom,” Kim said the minute Oom Piet walked into the kitchen.

“Too late, my girl. She's already left for Lion's River.”

“Just drop me off at the train station then,” she pleaded. “I can take the train from there.”

Oom Piet frowned and lit a cigarette. He walked through the dark house into the front rooms. “My girl, forget about that.”

Kim followed her uncle. “Why not?”

He coiled his arm around her. “To start with, it's not safe. Besides you need more than just a train trip to get to where your ma is. Lion's River is over an hour's drive from here.” Kim stood still. His arm around her made her feel stiff as a board.

“Please. The storm has stopped,” Kim pleaded.

Piet tried to reassure her about her mother, but Kim wasn't convinced. Especially when she found out that Riana had been called away to cover a fire burning out of control.

“Fire?” shouted Kim. “Nobody said anything about a fire!”

“The fire was set in protest of the commission,” explained Oom Piet. “Some of the locals do not want the Truth Hearings in their town.” Her uncle looked at her face and hastened to add. “She's perfectly safe and away from where the fire is. So, please don't worry. I'm going out there myself. The fire is threatening homes on the outskirts of the town – far from where your ma is – and they need men to divert it.”

“Divert
it!” yelled Kim. “Why not put it out?”

“That's what I mean,” he said. He retraced his steps to the kitchen and ordered Elsie's daughter to make him a large thermos of coffee. Then he turned to Kim. “You must stay here.”

Kim returned to the bedroom and quickly tossed her things into her knapsack. There was no doubt in Kim's mind what she had to do. She moved so quickly that she almost ran head first into Elsie who had come to collect the untouched tea tray. When she saw the packed knapsack, Elsie held her hand over her mouth and cried out.

“No, no, child, you cannot go!” she said.“I will tell Madam.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Kim lied. Then to distract Elsie she picked up the teapot and poured tea
into the empty white cup.“This is for you,” said Kim.

“No, no,” Elsie said with alarm. “Miss Kim, I don't want any.” Elsie glared again at Kim's knapsack.

Kim remembered something odd that had happened that morning. Riana had made coffee for Elsie in a china cup. Yet while Riana was out of the room Kim saw Elsie pour the coffee into the enamel mug that she kept for herself on a hook near the kitchen sink. “Old habits die hard,” Riana had explained when Kim had asked about it. “In our household, like in many traditional ones, Africans did not drink and eat with the same utensils as us.”

“Us?” Kim had asked.

“Whites.” Riana had said.

“My mom is – near – the – fire,” Kim said in a loud and staccato voice, as if Elsie was deaf. “I
have
to go!” But Elsie was no longer alone. Tante Reza was standing in front of her, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Where do you think you are going?” thundered her aunt.

“Nowhere,” Kim said glaring down at the skirt of her aunt's black dress. The handgun was still peeking out of the pocket.

“I am locking this door until Marjike gets back to keep an eye on you,” Tante Reza said. Then she pushed Elsie out and shut the door. Kim heard a sharp click.

How dare they lock her in! The need to escape was overwhelming. Kim flung open the window and saw that there was a tree close enough to climb down. Without thinking, she yanked on her jacket, tugged her knapsack on her back, and straddled the tree. In a few seconds she had jumped to the ground, scraping one of her hands in the process. She slipped into the back of Piet's 4 × 4 and hid under a tarp that was spread out in the back. No one came after her.

Just in time. A moment later Kim heard her uncle climb into the 4 × 4 and turn on the ignition. Soon the tires crunched on the gravel road and a remote control closed the gate behind them. Kim could hear the outside dogs barking as they ran loose behind the electric fence. They would patrol the area around the farmhouse until her uncle returned.

Once they passed the main farm gate, the road was much smoother. Kim heard her uncle roll down his window and flick his lighter. She smelled the cigarette almost at once. Twenty minutes passed, maybe more. The tarp was a tent over her head and eventually Kim found a safe way to peek through the back window.

In a matter of seconds they wound through her mom's old hometown, wet and shiny from the earlier rainstorm. “A shop, a bottle store, and a
church,” her mother had described it when they had arrived here by train five days ago. On the outskirts was the
onderdorp
, or lower town. Kim remembered how her mother had pointed it out to her. In the past everyone who was not white had to live in the onderdorp, and Riana had complained that it looked exactly the same as it always had. Rundown, lime-washed cottages with cement floors, no electricity and no indoor plumbing, housed countless barefoot kids and their parents. “Condemned by the health officials,” Riana had said with a sigh. At the time Riana's words meant nothing to Kim. Now she thought with a chill of Themba's words on the phone:
“You would not have been able to live where your mother lived. Or go to a white hospital. Your whole life would have been controlled. Controlled by them.”

Kim lifted the tarp up an inch. Her last image of the lower town was a donkey cart rattling by, wet mud splattering under its wheels. She felt sick to imagine living here – forced by the government to exist in a slum because of the color of her skin.

As her uncle's Land Rover slipped back into the darkness past the town, weariness and numbness eventually melted through Kim's bones and calmed her. She thought of her mother and began to have a new sympathy for her. Now she understood why Riana was so determined to leave for Canada. What Kim did not understand is why her mother had kept
so many secrets. Soon they would be in Lion's River and she would be able to ask her.

Kim had no idea how long she slept. She was wakened by the loud crackle of static on the radio unit in her uncle's car. Was there some news of the fire? It sounded like her aunt's voice shrieking in Afrikaans into the microphone. Uncle Piet answered in a few quiet words and finished with an “over and out.” There was silence.

After a moment Oom Piet spoke. “Come and sit in the front, my girl. They took half an hour to discover you were missing.”

Kim climbed out of her hiding place. She hoped her uncle was not going to be too mad at her. “I had to see my mother,” she said, by way of explanation.

“Fine,” Oom Piet fired back. He waved his cigarette at her. “I must smoke in my own car. I hope you have no problems with that.”

“That's fine with me,” said Kim as she scrambled into the passenger's seat and clicked on her seat belt. She started when she noticed the rifle on the floor of the Land Rover. “Is my mom okay?” she asked.