Loot (16 page)
Authors: Nadine Gordimer
So our uncle who has a transport business came with his removals van and my friend Meshak, Rebecca, Thandike and I helped the grownups load all our stuff. We also left some things behind, that kind of rubbish isn't going to be what we need anymore, my mother said. Gogo still wanted her paraffin heater and her funny old sewing machine. The sewing machine, all right. My father lifted it in.
This house has rooms for everybody. Rebecca and Thandike share because they want to, they say it's lonely to be by yourself. But I like the room, my room, with all my things around, just mine. I used to share with the girls in the township because Gogo had to have a place. Our big TV that was squashed up
against the fridge in the room that was half-kitchen half-everything, the table and chairs and couch where we sat and ate our food and watched, looks the way it should be, here, in the room that has glass doors you can slide open. We kids sit on the carpet my father bought, thick and so wide and long it covers the whole floor, and that's how you can follow sport with my father in his new chair with its special rest for his feet up.
against the fridge in the room that was half-kitchen half-everything, the table and chairs and couch where we sat and ate our food and watched, looks the way it should be, here, in the room that has glass doors you can slide open. We kids sit on the carpet my father bought, thick and so wide and long it covers the whole floor, and that's how you can follow sport with my father in his new chair with its special rest for his feet up.
Our houses in the township were all the same except that some had a pretty door because people wanted them to look nicer. But in this street in the suburb all the houses are different. Mama says some are very old, they're built of stone, with an upstairs. Ours doesn't look as old as that and there's no upstairs, but in front you can't see the roof because of a kind of white wallâcurly shapes, something like the head of our mother's and father's new bedâthat sticks up into the sky from where you know the roof really begins. Rebecca says she's seen on TV houses like that when they show Cape Town and when she's said that, it reminds meâso that's where I must have seen what makes the house ours, that same wall. The feeling I get, where we've come to live now. There's no swimming pool yet, my father says maybe next year. There's a garden, all the houses in this street have these gardens, there's a kind of lady made of stone or something standing where you can see right down the grass to the flower bushes and high trees from the glass doors that slide away. Plenty of room to play. But we don't play there much. Mama tells us to but we don't. We always used to play in the street in Naledi. There wasn't a garden. In the garden you don't see anybody. When we come home from school we sit around under the street trees on the pavement with our feet in the road, same as always although in Naledi it was just the dust, no trees,
no smooth tar and gutters for the rain. Not many cars pass, just the Watchem Security one that patrols looking for loafers and thievesâMama says everyone living on this street pays for this, to be safe, our father too. The people in the other houses come from work in super cars like my father's only even better, and the gates of their places open by themselves, magicâwe have gates like that, as well, my father has in his car the whachamacallit he presses to work them. There are other kids in the houses, white kids. They play in the gardens of course. We don't know those kids, they don't come out and tell us where they go to school, what they're doing in those gardens. There's just one boy, lives down the street, who comes out, riding his skateboard. He's not black like us, he's an Indian boy you can see, black the sort of way they are, so although his family have moved from the Indians' townships to the suburb, like us, he also doesn't know the white kids. He's begun to come and sit where we fool around and watch him fly past, him showing off a bit. He never offers to lend me his skateboard. Thandike would be scared but Rebecca's cheeky, she's asked him and he said no, his parents don't allow anyone to ride it but him. Because it's dangerous, he says. And he's only allowed to ride it on our street because it's a quiet one and the downhill is just enough, not too much. So he doesn't try it out anywhere elseâI've told him there are much faster runs in the other streets, up and down hills in this suburb. I know. Because the very first day we came here, with Uncle Ndlovu's van with our stuff, I was the first one to unload something, I climbed in and dragged out my bicycle that I'd got from my father for winning a merit prize at school at the same time he won his new great job. I rode off straight away, Mama and Gogo yelling after me, where're you going, you'll get lost, you don't know this
place. But I did know all these streets, which went where, and which one became that one, where to turn to reach this way back to recognise our new house with the fancy white front, or instead take another way. Like my bike had a map. Maps on the school walls. But they're foreign countries.
no smooth tar and gutters for the rain. Not many cars pass, just the Watchem Security one that patrols looking for loafers and thievesâMama says everyone living on this street pays for this, to be safe, our father too. The people in the other houses come from work in super cars like my father's only even better, and the gates of their places open by themselves, magicâwe have gates like that, as well, my father has in his car the whachamacallit he presses to work them. There are other kids in the houses, white kids. They play in the gardens of course. We don't know those kids, they don't come out and tell us where they go to school, what they're doing in those gardens. There's just one boy, lives down the street, who comes out, riding his skateboard. He's not black like us, he's an Indian boy you can see, black the sort of way they are, so although his family have moved from the Indians' townships to the suburb, like us, he also doesn't know the white kids. He's begun to come and sit where we fool around and watch him fly past, him showing off a bit. He never offers to lend me his skateboard. Thandike would be scared but Rebecca's cheeky, she's asked him and he said no, his parents don't allow anyone to ride it but him. Because it's dangerous, he says. And he's only allowed to ride it on our street because it's a quiet one and the downhill is just enough, not too much. So he doesn't try it out anywhere elseâI've told him there are much faster runs in the other streets, up and down hills in this suburb. I know. Because the very first day we came here, with Uncle Ndlovu's van with our stuff, I was the first one to unload something, I climbed in and dragged out my bicycle that I'd got from my father for winning a merit prize at school at the same time he won his new great job. I rode off straight away, Mama and Gogo yelling after me, where're you going, you'll get lost, you don't know this
place. But I did know all these streets, which went where, and which one became that one, where to turn to reach this way back to recognise our new house with the fancy white front, or instead take another way. Like my bike had a map. Maps on the school walls. But they're foreign countries.
So I dare Fazeelâwe've told our names, Rebecca and Thandike tooâto skate along with me all over, sometimes the downhill I know makes him fly so fast he even overtakes me on my bike, it's a superbike, I can do all sorts of tricks on it, now. He jumps and lands smack on his board that's running away from him, I pedal full-power, hands off, we zigzag round each other, the girls shout and laugh at us. It's real fun. And all the time it's in English, Fazeel wouldn't understand us in Sesotho, we're talking English every day at school and anyway where we live it's the language of everyone, the one for the suburb, we hear the voices of the white people we don't know, in their gardens. My dad (that's what we've got used to calling him in English instead of Tata, although our grandmother's still Gogo for us) also bought me a Superman helmet to wear when I'm on my bike, it's yellow with red arrows. Rebecca loves it and I let her wear it sometimes while she and Thandike run and dodge around Fazeel and me when we're having a competition in the fastest streets. I ride such a lot I'm getting to be a star, I could go on TV with the stunts I do. On the street where you can whizz down to the sharp corner that comes off from the main road, although you can't see it the five o'clock traffic's like the volume turned up full blast on a TV.
Look!
Fazeel's just done
something
!
something
!
Man! Man! But fabulous! He's jumped, turned himself right round, and landed back on the board! It's wobbling but he doesn't fall. The girls are shouting, Rebecca's dancing her bottom around, my helmet's too big for her, it's falling over her eyes, stupid, she must give it back but I must show Fazeel, I must show them all, everybody in our suburb where we're living, the streets I knowâLook! Look! Look what I'm going to do now! They're yelling, So what! What you think you are! Laughing gasping because I'm no hands, I'm full speed, and I'm bending back, I'm looking up at them, show-off Fazeel, show-off silly girls, upsidedown. Now the bike's thrown me it's on top of my legs I'm on my elbow. I'm shouting
I'm okay, okay, don't touch me.
I'm going to get up right away. I'm going to get up but now there's a terrible noise the volume is up, on me, the underneath of a truckâ
I'm okay, okay, don't touch me.
I'm going to get up right away. I'm going to get up but now there's a terrible noise the volume is up, on me, the underneath of a truckâ
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Sometimes the Return is such a short one.
Hardly worth it? No-one can know. No-one is ever to have such knowing. And if a Return is supposed to atone for errors, wrongs committed, acts uncompleted in a previous existence, how could I atone, sent back briefly as a life of a child to the streets, to the house with the fake Cape Dutch gable where something was not realised: awry, abandoned halfway.
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â ⦠sooner or later every action brings its retribution, in this existence or in one to come.'
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an you believe such a thing. Dump a baby in a toilet. Well it was the church toilet, whoever did it that Sunday knew when we brethren came to morning service we'd hear the crying. No-one could get hold of Welfare on a Sunday and the policeâwe know our police boys, they're our own sons or other relatives in our township, what'd they know about looking after a baby couldn't have been more than two weeks old! So Abraham and I took it home, just for the day, we don't have kids of our own and other brethren have the house full with them.
an you believe such a thing. Dump a baby in a toilet. Well it was the church toilet, whoever did it that Sunday knew when we brethren came to morning service we'd hear the crying. No-one could get hold of Welfare on a Sunday and the policeâwe know our police boys, they're our own sons or other relatives in our township, what'd they know about looking after a baby couldn't have been more than two weeks old! So Abraham and I took it home, just for the day, we don't have kids of our own and other brethren have the house full with them.
A girl. Pretty little thing. Had no hair yet just a bit of fine fluff, so what's the easiest thing you can tell whether a baby is one of us, tight, curly, wasn't there. Except for hair, most of our babies could be whites when they're born, they're very light-coloured, the white in us only gets taken over by the black as they get older. The noses usually aren't flatter than all babies have, and if the eyes are greenâour grandfathers, great-grandfathers all the way back were Malay, Indian, Bushmen, real blacks, whites, you name it, and somehow from the mixture many of us have green eyes, like whites. By the time the Welfare made up their minds about which orphanage to get her into we'd ⦠well, no kids of our own, we'd got fond of her, our life was different not just the two
of us like before, Abraham had a good steady job with his Jewish boss at the shoe factory, I didn't really need to go out to work. So we kept her. We named her a lovely name, Denise, and gave her our name. She was christened in our Seventh Day Adventist church by our minister. It was only about the time she began to be steady on her feet and begin to walk that there was no doubt about it; she was a white kid. The reason why her hair was so fine and slow to cover was that she was going to be very blond. The green eyes didn't help; this kid was white. You do get throwbacks among us that can pass for white, but she was the real thing. Everybody saw it, all the neighbours and Abraham's and my aunties, uncles, cousinsâand looked from the kid to us, saying nothing but thinking, we knew, what were we going to do, later? For school. The children played with her as if she was the same as them; children learn the names for difference, from us, what did apartheid mean to them: just another grown-ups' word. The local nursery school, run by our church with charity grants, was no problem. All shades of our skins passed, there, some were blacker than it was meant for, slipped in by parents from the nearby black township through family or church connections with our people; if one tot was whiter than she should be, who was going to ask questions.
of us like before, Abraham had a good steady job with his Jewish boss at the shoe factory, I didn't really need to go out to work. So we kept her. We named her a lovely name, Denise, and gave her our name. She was christened in our Seventh Day Adventist church by our minister. It was only about the time she began to be steady on her feet and begin to walk that there was no doubt about it; she was a white kid. The reason why her hair was so fine and slow to cover was that she was going to be very blond. The green eyes didn't help; this kid was white. You do get throwbacks among us that can pass for white, but she was the real thing. Everybody saw it, all the neighbours and Abraham's and my aunties, uncles, cousinsâand looked from the kid to us, saying nothing but thinking, we knew, what were we going to do, later? For school. The children played with her as if she was the same as them; children learn the names for difference, from us, what did apartheid mean to them: just another grown-ups' word. The local nursery school, run by our church with charity grants, was no problem. All shades of our skins passed, there, some were blacker than it was meant for, slipped in by parents from the nearby black township through family or church connections with our people; if one tot was whiter than she should be, who was going to ask questions.
But when the time came for
real
school, Government school, we had to make up our minds, Abraham and I. To be white in apartheid days was to beâeverything. Everything! From, you know, sitting on a bench waiting for a bus, to getting a job in a bank, renting a flat, owning a house, qualifying in a trade, getting a good educationâall these came to you, just like that, if you were white, all these were closed to you if you were some
other colour. We had to decide whether our little girlâbecause who else's was she, she called us Mama and Daddyâshould grow up to be one of us, our own people, here in the places and jobs, the lives the whites decide for us, or whether we owed it to her to try for white. And that's not the right way to put it, either, because that means you're not white but may be able to pass, and our girl
was
white. Easy to be accepted by our kind because what are we? Such a stew-pot most of us don't even know, from way back, what's made us whatever we are, our family names are only clues, Dutch, English, German, Jewish, Malay-Muslim, some of this is even hidden behind family names taken which are just names of monthsâSeptember, February, that's two families in this street where Abraham and I took in what is called a foundling who had no name at all.
real
school, Government school, we had to make up our minds, Abraham and I. To be white in apartheid days was to beâeverything. Everything! From, you know, sitting on a bench waiting for a bus, to getting a job in a bank, renting a flat, owning a house, qualifying in a trade, getting a good educationâall these came to you, just like that, if you were white, all these were closed to you if you were some
other colour. We had to decide whether our little girlâbecause who else's was she, she called us Mama and Daddyâshould grow up to be one of us, our own people, here in the places and jobs, the lives the whites decide for us, or whether we owed it to her to try for white. And that's not the right way to put it, either, because that means you're not white but may be able to pass, and our girl
was
white. Easy to be accepted by our kind because what are we? Such a stew-pot most of us don't even know, from way back, what's made us whatever we are, our family names are only clues, Dutch, English, German, Jewish, Malay-Muslim, some of this is even hidden behind family names taken which are just names of monthsâSeptember, February, that's two families in this street where Abraham and I took in what is called a foundling who had no name at all.
We decided to try to put her in a white school. That meant Government school was out. Government schools were separated: blacks at black schools, us coloureds at coloured schools, whites at white schools. Our child, living in our place, would have to go to the local school for our kind. But there were private schools we heard about. A convent school. We were Seventh Day Adventists, no whites or blacks in our local church, but people said the nuns had some arrangement, they took in a few black or coloured children if the parents could pay. But the convent refused her, the vacancies for exceptions were full, and then when we tried a private Anglican school, although the headmistress who interviewed us with our child looked at her curiously and kind of sadly, she wasn't given a place there, either. The headmistress said that, even with us paying, the school couldn't afford to take our child because for coloured or black
children the Government supplied no subsidy as it did for other private pupils.
children the Government supplied no subsidy as it did for other private pupils.
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Denise Appolis attended primary and high schools in a coloured township outside the city and suburbs, like the townships and schools designated for blacks and for Indians, and matriculated as head prefect with three distinctions, in English, Afrikaans (the language spoken in her home) and history. Abraham and Elsie Appolis were unsurprised and proud of her. There had grown up in them, as she grew up, the unspoken shared sense that because she was not their biological creation, she had not been made in their bed, she was somehow chosen. Not alone in the sense that they had taken her for a day and kept her; chosen for a different life, other than theirs. A life of fulfilment they thought of as happiness. Had they, then, not been happy? Yes, in their way, the way open to them. Happiness as being white: no boundaries! God's will.
Now it was possible for her to be what she was: white. The private business schools in the city were given as her home address that of Abraham's white Jewish boss (appropriated, with or without consent?) when Abraham and Elsie sent her for application unaccompanied by their presence and obvious place in the official race classification. She carried a letter of parental authority written carefully in English (corrected by the girl who had gained Distinction in that subject), and proof of the parents' ability to pay fees, in details of their savings bank account. There she was, a white seventeen-year-old among other young white men and women. She evidently made no friends but concentrated on her computer and general secretarial courses and every day came home by way of one of the roving minibuses in the
city, back to the township, her friends there. Just as well she was the quiet one who kept to herself at the business college, she didn't bring any fellow student home; Abraham and Elsie never brought up the subject, neither did she offer any explanation.
city, back to the township, her friends there. Just as well she was the quiet one who kept to herself at the business college, she didn't bring any fellow student home; Abraham and Elsie never brought up the subject, neither did she offer any explanation.
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