Another Woman's Daughter (11 page)

January 1978

Celia

I could not make out the faces in front of me. They had melted like butter against the glare of the naked light bulb. Even the shouting voices had grown indistinct and muffled. I let my head fall onto my bare chest, and my eyes closed. I could not keep them open any longer. I wanted to sleep. Nothing else mattered. The scalding pain in my vagina had dulled to a throbbing ache; the boiling water they'd forced inside me had long since trickled out. Even the blood from my left ear had dried to a crusty black ribbon.

I slumped there, no longer ashamed of my nakedness. My bruised breasts did not belong to me. I had no tears left to cry, nor words to speak. Sleep was taking over—the blissful blanket of darkness, which had been kept from me for so long.

The heavy metal cell door slammed shut.

I hauled up my head and scanned the room through the slit
of my right eye. So there was still some residue of fear inside me after all, still a speck of will to survive.

I braced for more blows.

None came. The square of room was empty.

I lapped it again with my good eye.

No one. They had left. With nothing.

I am not knowing where Christian is or who his friends are, Master. No, I never know he is part of the ANC. Yes,
baas
, I understand it is banned. Communist. Bad. Very bad. Yes. I have not seen my son for many month. I believe he is at the medical university studying to be a doctor.
Aikona, baas!
I am knowing nothing more. Please,
baas
. It is true. You must believe it.

I slid off the chair onto the concrete floor and into a pool of my own filth, and there I fell into a sleep that took me closer to death than life. In this darkness I dreamed a dream, a happy dream that took me, Miriam, her brothers, and even Patrick, my husband, back to the beginning.

We are holding hands in a field of golden grass beneath an endless blue sky. Michael Steiner is there too, in the shade of an old thorn tree. And though he stands apart from us, his brow is smooth and his eyes are smiling.

—

Some hours later I was awakened, feverish and shaking, and flung out into the day like a discarded piece of rubbish. I was
of no use to anyone, least of all the big men at John Vorster Square—the notorious security police headquarters.

With not enough money in my purse to pay for a taxi fare, I stumbled down the dirty Johannesburg streets. People stared. Others rushed on—high-heeled shoes, business suits, and shopping bags giving me a wide berth. It was busy day in the city of gold.

“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”

I opened one eye; the other remained shut, pressed closed by a ball of bruised flesh. I was lying on the pavement, my body shaking, hot and cold quarreling over me. I looked up and saw nothing but sky. Then a face was leaning over me—a white madam's face.

One moment she was kneeling down beside me; the next she had jumped up and was stepping off the curb into the traffic and waving her arms wildly. I did not understand. I was confused until I saw an ambulance driving down the narrow street. It pulled over.

“What a stroke of luck,” the madam cried, as the driver rolled down his window. “Quick! I need your help. There's an injured woman on the pavement. We've got to get her to hospital. I think she's been mugged.”

My body slackened. I could relinquish control. Someone was going to take care of me. Two ambulance officers jumped out of the vehicle and broke through the small crowd that was gathering. I saw surprise register on their faces when I came into view.

“I found her collapsed here,” the white woman said, speaking very fast.

The two men stood over me, their uniformed bodies
blocking out the sun and casting a welcome shadow. Yet somewhere in my scrambled mind I knew men in uniform never brought relief.

“Lady, we cannot transport this patient in our vehicle.”

“What do you mean?” she said, squinting into the sun. “She needs urgent medical attention.”

“Yes, but this is a
whites-only
ambulance,” one said. “You need to call the service for blacks. Anyway,
is
she black? She looks more colored to me—got quite a light complexion.” He peered closely at me. “She must be taken to Hillbrow Hospital if she's black and Coronation if colored. Hard to tell, hey?” He stuck a finger in his ear. “She's definitely got a Bantu's nose. You could always pull a comb through her hair. If it sticks, she's probably black,” he said, rolling a piece of earwax between his fingers.

Even through the thick fog in my head I could see and feel the white madam's anger. With electricity crackling all around her, it was like being too close to a power pylon. I think the ambulance men felt it too.

“She's probably drunk and been beaten up by her husband,” one said quickly. “You know what they're like.”

I lay on my back in the midday heat, a broken insect, life leaking slowly out of me. At that moment I would have been happy to slip from this world. I felt ashamed for wanting to give back God's precious gift, but even my shame was tired and did little to frighten me.

“You've got to be joking!” the madam screamed. “What about the Hippocratic oath? What about helping your fellow man? This is appalling!” She was throwing her hands about as
if directing traffic. “Help me get this woman to hospital before she dies here on the pavement.”

“Look, lady, we don't make the laws.”

The crowd was growing—a concern of mostly black faces. The ambulance officers shifted uneasily, then, after a quick nod to each other, they turned and jumped back into their vehicle.

“You've not heard the end of this!” the madam yelled, as the ambulance lurched away down the road. The madam turned back to the crowd. “Someone. You. Yes, you! Come on. Help me put this woman in my car.”

Strong black arms were lifting me, carrying me, laying me across the scorching backseat of a car that smelled of wet dog, sweating leather, and ripe pineapples. A horn blared and we were moving.

I recall only pieces of that wild journey as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I do remember hearing the madam say she was taking me to Hillbrow Hospital, and thinking that at least she had got my classification correct.

—

When I awoke, the smell of the car had been replaced by the strong stench of disinfectant. I was surrounded by a sea of white—white sheets, white coats, white faces, white voices.

“Overwhelming sepsis, ruptured eardrum, renal contusion, second-degree vaginal burns, and burns to both breasts—probably cigarette inflicted. Speculum, Sister.” A fat white man with an unshaven face and caramel-colored skin stepped forward. His doctor's coat was spattered with old blood. A cigarette hung loosely from his mouth.

A black nursing sister appeared. At first I was relieved to see her, but then I saw what she was carrying—a stainless-steel instrument surely only the security police would use. She drew a green curtain around the bed, shutting me in with the fat doctor and five others. The cigarette still hung from his mouth as he spread my legs and pushed the cold steel inside me. The pain was terrible, but I could not cry out. Not in front of this important white audience.

One by one, the serious white faces peered up the metal tunnel into my vagina.

“IV antibiotics for another forty-eight hours, then we'll review,” were the doctor's last words as he trotted away, the others hurrying after him like suckling puppies chasing a bitch.

—

One week later I was discharged.

I had never missed one single day of work cleaning offices in the city for Master Nicholson, nor had I ever been late for a single shift. Yet on the day of my discharge from the hospital, I lost my job.

I tried to explain to my boss I had not been able to contact him to let him know I was in the hospital. I even offered to work a week for no pay. But he would not listen. He just said I was like all the rest. Anyway, he had already replaced me; some other black person from the pool of people in the townships had filled my position.

I sat down on a bench in a park. I had just six rand and twenty-five cents in my post office book. Not even enough for
taxi fare to Louis Trichardt. And hardly enough to live on for more than a few days in Johannesburg.

I was tired. My back was stiff and my joints ached; my body had lost the elasticity of youth. The tool that had always guaranteed me work was wearing out.

“Be strong, Celia,” I said out loud. Self-pity would not earn me a wage.

Two children playing on a seesaw near me stopped and stared at the crazy black woman talking to herself.

I fingered the few loose coins in my purse, trying to plan my next move. And that was when I felt it . . . I pulled out the crumpled gray card and turned it over. It was covered in red scribble. How had it come to be in my purse?

“Ndi khou humbela u vhudzisa!”
I called out, flagging down a passing black man.

The well-dressed man looked at me suspiciously, my face still a swell of cuts and fading bruises.

“Sorry, brother. Can you read for me, please?” I asked, holding up my find.

He stopped, but refused to come closer.

“Please,” I begged.

Relenting, he stepped forward and squinted quickly at the card. “Sylvia Eloff,” he read and rattled off an address in Parktown North. Then he turned and hurried on.

“God bless you,” I called after him. “God bless you, brother.”

“Sylvia Eloff. Sylvia Eloff,” I repeated. It did not make any sense.

Then I remembered something. When I had been lying in
the emergency department of the hospital, slipping between this world and the next, the kind one who had driven me to the hospital had pressed something into my hand. I couldn't keep a hold of it and it had floated to the floor. Perhaps she had picked it up and put it in my purse.

—

It was early afternoon when I climbed off the bus. I hadn't wanted the journey to end. The rumble and shudder of the old vehicle had sieved out my thoughts and left me in an easy state of numbness. Yet now, as I stepped onto the pavement at the top of Chester Road, my life stood waiting to demand more of me. My legs felt heavy and reluctant to move. Not only because of the injuries I'd received at John Vorster Square—the uncertainty of what lay ahead also slowed my progress.

I turned into Second Avenue. A cool lane lined with plane trees stretched out in front of me, yellow light spearing the dense canopy of green to break up the tarmac with splinters of warmth. The scene reminded me of another life I had once lived, and I realized how much I'd missed the soothing stillness of the suburbs. For such a long time now the dust and dirt of the townships and the anger and screech of the city had been eating away at my soul.

I breathed in the sweet, shade-cooled air and started to walk with difficulty, but less reluctance. Then I was standing outside the house. Doubt and fear circled like buzzards. I had never before asked anyone for charity. However, hunger was gnawing at my insides, hollowing out my final shame.

I unlatched the small wrought-iron gate coming off the main
entrance and pushed on it tentatively. The jarring sound of metal grinding against metal startled me and I felt instantly guilty, as if I'd just stolen something, even though I had only opened a gate. I made my way up a winding brick pathway overhung with lush vegetation. The bricks were wet and the dark green leaves heavy with beads of water. A hosepipe lay coiled beneath a garden tap like a snake asleep in the sun, and a wind chime jangled in the breeze. I stood in front of the glass front door for several minutes before finally lifting my hand and rapping against the glass.

Two small dogs appeared, yapping excitedly and steaming up the glass with their hot breath. Then a white madam was making her way down the passage toward me. My whole body started to shake—my hands, my legs, my heart.

As she came closer I saw her face was different from the picture I had held in my head. My hope plunged down a shaft. The card in my purse had
not
been from the madam who had rescued me. I had got it all wrong. I wanted to turn and run, but it was too late; this madam with bark-brown hair and sloping eyes hidden beneath soft hoods of skin was already standing on the other side of the glass.

She opened the door and her dogs shot out. “Fleabag, Piglet, down! Down! Don't worry, they won't bite.”

I was relieved by the sound of her voice; it was the voice of the kind one.

“May I help you?”

I lifted the card made limp by my clammy hands. “Madam is very good to me last week when I am in trouble. You take me to hospital. Thank you.”

Her face softened. “Of course! Goodness, how are you? I didn't recognize you.”

When she touched my arm I tensed. Her fingers were soft.

“You look a lot better than you did a week ago. Come. Come inside, please.”

Her polite words were like a
nganga
's spell. Parts of me simply fell away, the Celia I'd lived for so long—the maid, the char, the black—all dropping off me like ill-fitting clothes. I hesitated, then stepped into this madam's sweet-smelling house a woman.

She led me into a room filled with sunlight. On the floor lay a huge Basotho rug, its knotted wool woven into mountains, a river, red earth, and a blue sky. The scene felt instantly familiar, like a distant cousin. A tall vase of lilies filled the air with a soothing freshness, and a clay pot in front of the fireplace, though cracked and old, leaked the faint aroma of my childhood. Not thinking, I steadied myself against a leather chair, then quickly lifted my hand off the polished hide.

“Can I get you a cup of tea?” the madam asked. “I was just about to have one.”

A white madam offering to make me a cup of tea! My head—a room of rules—screamed
no
 . . . but my mouth was dry. I had not drunk anything all day. “Thank you too much, please, Madam,” I said, lowering my eyes, ashamed at my impertinence.