Afrika (6 page)

At that moment, Riana opened the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the living area. Reeking of her colleagues' smoke, she shuffled into the kitchen with the teapot in her hands. Kim hardly recognized her mom. Riana was pale and she moved like a sleepwalker.

“There's going to be a storm,” Kim said.“Mom!”

Riana did not answer. She set the teapot down and fired up the gas under the kettle. Kim watched her take out a jar and spread marmite onto some crackers. When she lifted a plate out of the cupboard, it slipped from her fingers with a crash.

Kim saw that her mom's hands were shaking. “Riana, are you okay?” she asked.

“I can't get that woman's crying out of my head,” Riana said.

“What woman?” Kim asked.

“The mother,” Riana responded. “She told me there was a purple birthmark on her son's right knee. It was the only way she could identify him.” Riana covered her mouth and grew silent. “I shouldn't be telling you this.”

Riana never told Kim the gruesome circumstances of the stories she worked on, but Kim sometimes found out details by overhearing the tapes that her mom compiled for her producer.

“Riana, you need a break,” Kim said.“Let's take up Uncle Piet's offer and go to the farm for a few days.”

The mention of the farm got the same reaction as the word
grenade
might have. Riana jerked herself to attention.

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you promise me back home that we would visit Milky Way Farm?” Kim asked.

Riana burrowed through the cupboards. She produced a bottle of whiskey and put it on the tray with some glasses. Then, without making tea, she flicked off the gas on the stove.

“Don't leave the garden,” Riana said, as she set the plate of marmite crackers on the tray. Without another word she turned and left the kitchen.

Kim wanted to shake her mother so hard that the real her would wake up and life could go on as before. Kim did not know the best way to solve her mom's problems. If Riana caught malaria in Africa, Kim swore it would be different. People died from this disease and Kim would do whatever it took to nurse her mother back to health. But this was not malaria! And the only solution was to convince her mom to stop working in South Africa and return early to Canada. Riana would never agree to that.

Suddenly there was a sharp knock on the kitchen door and Kim jerked back to reality. Her
heart thumped. She was as edgy as Riana. If she didn't watch it,
she
would need a therapist too.

She pulled back the curtain to see who it was and exhaled to let the tension out as she reached for the doorknob. It was Themba.

K
im pulled Themba into the kitchen. He was soaked, and she handed him a clean dishtowel to dry off with. “Kim! Kim! Did you forget how to count yet?” Themba asked wiping off his face. It was wonderful to hear Themba's deep melodic voice.

She took a breath and began. “
Inye. Zimbini. Zintathu.”

“Hey,” he said, impressed.

It was only this week that he had taught her to count in Xhosa. She had forgotten four and five but didn't want him to know that.

“Kim, listen. How many Van der Merwes does it take to –”

“I'm not falling for that,” she said, cutting him off. Themba had told her that her surname – Van der Merwe – was so common that it was a national joke in South Africa. Even in Canada she hated it, a name she thought to be better suited to tractors or lawn mowers than human beings.

It was just like her mother to give Kim
her
surname and not her father's. Probably her dad had an ordinary English name.

“I have good news for you,” Themba said. “Themba Bandla has come up with a plan to find out more about your father.”

“Sh,” she warned. “Mom is in the next room.” She pulled out a stool for him. “What's the plan?”

“Remember how your ma is coming this Sunday to the township to interview my neighbor, Mrs. Bansi?”

Kim nodded. Riana was very grateful that Themba had suggested the interview.

“My plan is this,” continued Themba. “I'll try my best to get your ma alone and fire off a question or two about your father.”

“You can try,” Kim said, lowering her voice. “But from my experience, she won't tell you.”

“We need to make her,” Themba said. “We need to disarm her until she lets drop one little detail like his age, job, whereabouts, maybe even his name.”

There was a thumping that built in her chest whenever they talked about the possibility of finding her father.

“Don't you have predictions about who he is?” he asked. “A professional athlete? A circus performer? A teacher?”

“I don't know,” said Kim. She noticed that whenever Themba mentioned the search, he became animated.

“What else do we have?” he asked.

“My mom gave me a notebook that belonged to my father,” said Kim.“The writing is illegible. But on the back page I noticed he wrote the word Africa spelt with a
K
. What do you make of it?”

“Maybe he's European.” suggested Themba. “A German baron? A Polish count?”

Kim shrugged. “He's South African, born and raised. I know that much.”

“We'll find him,” said Themba. Kim appreciated Themba's offer. She wished she could do something as important for him. Suddenly, she had an idea.

“Maybe when my mom interviews your neighbor we can find out something new about your father's disappearance,” she said.

There was a pause. It went on so long that Kim jumped in to fill it. “Themba?”

“I'm here,” he said staring out the burglar bars.

“Maybe there will be a new detail you hadn't heard.”

Themba sat up tall and stiff on the stool. His entire expression had changed. “There will not,” he said with a cold voice. “I've heard Mrs. Bansi's story a million times and can't stomach to hear it once more.”

The sharp edge to his voice alarmed her. Kim was sorry to have brought up his father.

Themba jumped off the stool. “I have to go.” He paused to make sure she had his full attention before he said, “I've got a soccer game down at the Arena. Blokes only.”

Filled with envy, Kim said nothing.

“Give a message to your Oom Piet,” Themba said at the door. His anger intensified when he mentioned her uncle's name. “Tell him that his shack's roof is leaking,” he said. A second later he was gone.

Her mood dropped the moment she heard the back gate crash shut. Was it
her
fault Lettie and Themba lived in her backyard and that their roof leaked? And why did Themba mention Oom Piet's name like that?

More than anything, she hated the way Themba had brought up the soccer match. Beside the back door was the calendar where she had ticked off each day since their arrival. Today was July 30th – back home it was the middle of summer. She normally played soccer every day in the summer. Her heart pulled at the memory.“Ready, over here!” she would bellow, and on cue, one of her teammates would pass the ball to her. The perfection of those passes – the thrill of moving the ball successfully from one teammate to another – was almost as intense as scoring a goal. Yet when Kim tried to scroll down the faces of
the girls on the team, she could barely recall them. No doubt whatsoever – in the time she had been gone they would have forgotten her.

Outside, the wind snapped the bare branches against the glass. She shivered. The cottage was a freezer. It was amazing how quickly it got dark. “You keep me a prisoner in here,” she had told her mom more than once.

Kim saw the light on in Lettie's room at the end of the garden. Nobody, not even Riana, could stop Kim from roaming around her own garden! Kim stuffed her feet into her rain boots and ran through the wet shrubs to Lettie's room. Why bother to leave a note? Let her mother put two and two together.

Lettie stood beside a hotplate. Despite the rain, she had the top half of her wooden, two-piece door propped open.

“Hello, Kim,” she said.“Is your mom at home?”

Kim nodded and shrugged off the question.

“Come right in,” said Lettie, moving a pile of clothes off the end of her bed. Lettie wore an apron and two sweaters over her uniform. On her head was her navy woolen beret.

Kim sat on the bed and watched as Lettie emptied her tea bag into the garbage and wiped out the cup with a dishrag. Kim's stomach growled. Her stomach said precisely how she felt – empty and drained.

“Biscuit?” Lettie asked, pulling a canister down from a shelf.

Kim eagerly helped herself to a cookie. She leaned back against the wall and munched it. By now she knew Lettie's room by heart. There was a bed, a stool, an enamel hotplate, a cupboard, and a fold down cot that Themba used when he slept here. A worn woven rug covered most of the concrete floor. Outside the small room stood an outhouse and a tap for washing. Lettie kept saying she aimed to whitewash the place, but she never got around to it. Instead, she'd plastered magazine pictures on the walls.

Kim took a second cookie. “Themba told me that the roof is leaking,” she said as she brushed the crumbs from her mouth. “I'll tell my uncle.”

Lettie lifted her eyebrows to indicate a tin bucket that was catching the leak. “Don't bother your uncle,” she said, as she sat down heavily on her stool. “Themba is good at school, but it is an expensive school. He has only been there for one year and he must work very hard to keep up. We are very lucky that your uncle pays the fees.”

“Oom Piet pays Themba's school fees?” This was the first time she had heard this information. She remembered how angry Themba was when he spit out her uncle's name.

Lettie nodded. “Those students need two of everything. Two school blazers, two shorts, two
shirts, two long pants.” Lettie clicked her tongue against the side of her cheek and added. “Then there are the books.”

Kim tried to concentrate on Lettie's words, but the skeleton trees clawed against the side of the tin roof, distracting her. Suddenly she had an idea.
Why didn't I think of this before?
she wondered. “You knew my mother and uncle in the old days, didn't you?” Kim asked, louder than necessary.

“Eh?” Lettie's eyes fastened on Kim's as if she saw a ghost. Then she composed herself and looked away. She said, “I grew up on the farm that belongs to their father. My ma, my sisi and her children still live there.”

Kim stopped chewing and sat very still on the bed. “What year did you come to Cape Town?” She held her breath and waited. If only Lettie had come before 1983, the year Riana left for Canada, she might have known Kim's father!

“Let's see,” Lettie sat in such a way that her apron stretched like an old elastic across her bare thighs. “It was early in 1984,” she said. “I know the date, because I met Sandile soon after, and Themba was born at the very end of the year.”

Kim's heart sank. Lettie had come to Cape Town just after Riana left for Canada. And since Riana had left the farm years earlier, there was no hope that Lettie knew her father.

Lettie flicked on her radio. After a moment she spoke.“Do you think your ma will be missing you?”

Was Lettie trying to change the subject or just get rid of her? That wouldn't be too surprising, since Kim had spent most of her evenings that week in Lettie's room.

“She needs you,” continued Lettie. “She works too hard and I worry about her.”

“Oh, sure,” Kim said. “I'd worry too, if it wasn't so stupid.”

“Stupid?” Lettie asked.

“Yeah, stupid,” snapped Kim. Suddenly her breath was raspy and uneven as if she had been running a marathon. “Themba's right. This commission allows killers to get off scot-free. And the stories that the journalists have to cover are so awful that they need therapists to help them sleep at night.”

Kim was surprised at how the words whipped out of her. The mention of Themba's name reminded her of her earlier blunder in the kitchen. Would Themba ever forgive her for the suggestion about his father? “I hate this Truth Commission!” she added.

Lettie took the finger-smudged butcher's calendar on which she marked her days down and fanned her face with it. “I love our country,” she said. Her smooth brown skin was flushed. “I am proud to be a South African. But this wasn't always
a good country, and your ma knows this, and she must tell these stories. Themba must get some sense. He must stop being so troublesome. He has not been to the bush, and will not have his initiation for a couple of years yet. He is still a child, but he tries to sound like a man.”

Kim began to kick her sneaker toe against the bedframe. She didn't want to be caught between Themba and his mother. Then she remembered that Lettie supported the commission and had decided to attend the upcoming hearing to find out what had happened to her husband.

Kim softened her words. “Themba told me that if a killer appears before the commission and confesses to a crime he will not have to go to jail,” she said.

Lettie dunked the corner of her dishcloth into a tub of water and wiped down the small corner table.

“He might get amnesty,” said Lettie. “That is true.”

“What's amnesty?”

Lettie lifted her eyes so they were level with Kim's. “A pardon,” she said.

“He will be free to walk away?” Kim asked.