Under African Skies (34 page)

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Authors: Charles Larson

BOOK: Under African Skies
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Carefully, she extricated enough for the fare and put the rest back where it had been, securely tied it into a knot at one corner of the handkerchief. And then back went the purse, safe and secure.
Her wait wasn't long. A bus came. She clambered on—one of only a few still making their way to the shopping suburb at that time of day, and
definitely the only woman from Guguletu (or any of the other African townships, for that matter) on that bus. The buses coming back from Claremont were full with workers and shoppers returning home.
Mamvulane found a seat easily. Her heart was quite calm. Her chin quite firm. Her head held high. She was amazed at how unbelievably easily she had accomplished her mission thus far. But she knew that the real difficulty lay ahead … in Claremont? Or would it be harder for her back in Guguletu ?
Ndakubona ngoko.
That stubborn thought planted itself in her mind.
I'll cross that bridge when I get to it
.
At Pick 'n Pay the aisles were full. She began to wonder whether the boycott had been lifted and she and her neighbors were maintaining a boycott long past because they had not heard the good news. But a closer look told her the people milling about there were not from the African townships. They were from everywhere else. And what they were doing there, they were doing quite openly—freely and without one little qualm.
Soon, her own timidity left her. She forgot that what she was doing was forbidden. Once more, it had become, to her too, a normal and very ordinary activity. Only the unusual exhilaration she felt, silent laughter of parched gardens drinking in rain after a drought, gave any indication of her deprivation. That, and the serious weighing of choices, which items to select, which to discard, and which to ignore completely. Deep drown, on another level of knowing, she knew that she had to travel very light.
Her purchases made and paid for, Mamvulane went to the train station. There was a toilet there that she could use. She had put back a lot of the articles that, at first impulse, she'd grabbed and thrown into her trolley. Not unaware of the dangers that lay in her homeward-bound journey, she saw the virtue of ridding herself of most of what she wished for. It would be stupid to make her venture that obvious that she ended up losing all she had risked her neck for. The problem of packaging was of prime importance.
With her two Pick 'n Pay plastic bags, Mamvulane entered the toilet at the railway station. Fortunately, there was no one there. In her mind, all the way from her house, on the bus, and in the store itself, she had turned and turned the problem of what to do with her purchases and now that the time had come it was as though she had actually rehearsed the whole thing. Several times over.
In less than ten minutes, Mamvulane left the toilet. She now carried only one plastic bag. And it was not from Pick 'n Pay. To any eyes happening on her, she was just a rather shabby African woman who might have gone
to buy some clothing, not much, from Sales House. For that is what the bag she was carrying said now: SALES HOUSE. And everyone knew Sales House was a clothing and drapery store. Indeed, since the bag had long lost its crispness it could be taken that she was a domestic worker carrying home goodies her madam had given her.
Deliberately avoiding the Guguletu bus line, Mamvulane made a beeline for the Nyanga bus. The line was not that long. Soon she would be home. Soon. Soon.
When the bus came she was one of the last to board it. But still found a seat, for most workers were already back in their houses, the time being half past six.
Ordinarily, she would have been concerned that her husband might get home before her. That was something he didn't particularly care for. Mdlangathi liked to get home and find his wife waiting supper for him, so that, should he feel in the mood for it, he could go back out again to get a drink from one of the
shebeens
nearby. To make matters worse, Mamvulane reminded herself, in her haste and caution, she had not told even one of her children where she was going. Ahh, silently she told herself, I'm sure when he sees where I've been he will not only understand; he will be mighty pleased.
The Nyanga bus passes Guguletu on its way to Nyanga, for the two townships are neighbors, with Nyanga lying east of Guguletu. Somewhere in the indistinct border between the two, there is an area neither in the one nor in the other, a kind of administratively forgotten no-man's-land. And there one finds all sorts of people, including some not classified as Africans or as Coloured—those who somehow escaped government classification. Some of them work, others don't. No one really knows what does happen in that place, which has come to be called
kwaBraweni.
How it got to be Brown's Place is a mystery, or perhaps a myth awaiting excavation.
Mamvulane let the bus ride past Guguletu with her, making no sign at all that that was where she was headed. Only when the bus came to
kwaBraweni
did she ring the bell, indicating to the driver that her stop approached.
From the bus stop where she got off, it was less than a kilometer or so to her house. But Mamvulane was well aware that that was where the greatest challenge lay. In covering that distance that seemed insignificant and easy.
There was a shortcut through a thicket. Avoiding the road, where she
risked running into people, she chose the shortcut. Here and there she had to use her hands to separate entangled branches of trees so she could pass. Dry twigs scratched her bare legs and she kept her eyes peeled for dog and human shit. Her slippers were old and torn and anything on which she trod would certainly get intimate with her feet.
In the middle of the woods, when she was halfway home, she heard voices, loud enough but still a distance away. Quickly, she stepped away from the path and went deeper into the woods. When she was a good few meters away from the path, she chose a well-leafed shrub and squatted in its shadow. In the case of prying eyes, she would look like someone relieving herself or digging up some root to use for an ailment. Either way, she should be left alone—unless the passersby happened to be people with more on their minds than she bargained for.
The foursome, two young men escorting their girlfriends somewhere, from the look of things, passed along. They were so engrossed in their discussion that they hardly paid her any heed. If, indeed, they saw her at all.
After they had gone past, Mamvulane resumed her journey, which was without event until she had almost cleared the thicket. She could plainly see the houses to the back of her own, on NY 72, when suddenly her ears picked up a not too faraway buzzing.
She stopped to hear better from which side it came. But even as she stood, her ears straining hard to pinpoint the source of the disturbance, the sound grew to a cacophony, discordant and threatening.
Right about the time her ears told her to look a little toward her left, in the bushes hiding Fezeka High School from view, her eyes picked up tumultuous movement.
She stood as though rooted to the spot. From sheer terror.
Mesmerized, Mamvulane watched as the unruly throng crowded in on her. Leading the rabble were a few women and one elderly man. She realized then that a few of those whose heels were chasing their heads were not just ahead of the group—they were actually fleeing from it.
She needed no further notice. Turning from the spectacle approaching her, she ran toward the houses, now so desperately near.
Mamvulane ran. The other women and the old man with them ran also. They all ran. But the army of young people at their heels had speed born of youth on their side.
Just as she came to the T-junction, where NY 74 joins NY 72, she found her way blocked. Some of her pursuers had taken a shortcut by jumping over fences from NY 75 to NY 74 and were now ahead of her. In seconds, she was completely surrounded.
Without further ado, someone snatched her plastic bag from her. “Let us see what you have in that bag, Mama?” he said, ripping it open.
Out spilled her groceries. And as each packet tumbled onto the hard, concrete road, it split or tore open, spilling its guts onto the sand, and there joined other debris that had long made its home there.
Happy and willing feet did the rest. Stamping and kicking at her food so that everything got thoroughly mixed up with the sand and with other food items. The samp and the mealie meal and the sugar and the dried milk and the coffee and the broken candles and the paraffin—everything became one thing. All those things, mixed together, became nothing. Nothing she or anyone else could use.
“
Sigqibile ngawe ke ngoku, Mama.
We are finished with you,” announced her tormentors.
Walking home, her knees weak from the encounter, Mamvulane met one of her neighbors, attracted by the noise. “Mvulane, what is happening? Why are all these people staring at you?”
“I can't talk now, Mandaba,” answered the other, not pausing in her unsteady walk. Mandaba, suspecting the cause of her neighbor's reticence and disheveled appearance, remarked,
“Hayi,
you are naughty, Mamvulane.” To which the latter said not a word but just continued walking to her home as though the other had not spoken at all.
When she got to her gate, Mamvulane shooed away the straggling group, mostly curious children and one or two adults, that was following her. What the comrades had done to her had disarranged her. But her heart grieved. And that was definitely not on their account. About the comrades, she supposed she should be grateful they had done her no bodily harm. She remembered the man Mdlangathi had told her about the previous evening—the man the comrades had forced to drink
Jovel.
That man, after he had brought up little chunks of meat, and of course the liquor that had caused him all the trouble to start with, had eventually brought up blood. His own. So, when all is said and done, I suppose I'm lucky, Mamvulane told herself after she had calmed down some. At her home. But, her eyes smarting, she could feel her heart bleed. Because of the other thing.
Her husband was home when she got there. “What happened to you?” he asked, seeing her disheveled appearance. For although she had not been beaten, she had been manhandled.
Mamvulane recounted her experience while her husband listened to her in dumb silence. And then she told him, “ … and among the comrades who did this to me, there was Mteteli, our son.” There, it was out in the open. She had mentioned the despicable, unmentionable thing that had gnawed at her heart since the comrades had fallen upon her.
When she said that, mentioned Mteteli as one of her attackers, she burst out crying. Mdlangathi started up and for a moment his wife thought he was going to go out of the house in search of their son right there and then.
But no, after two or three hesitant, halfhearted steps, he sat down again and quietly inquired, “You saw him? With your own eyes, I mean?”
“Oh, why wouldn't I know my own child, even in a crowd.”
“Mmmhhmh.” That is what Mdlangathi said. Only that and nothing more. On being told that his son was part of the crowd that had spilled his wife's groceries on the sand, all that was heard from him was that sigh. That is all.
Mamvulane waited for more reaction from her husband, usually so easy to reach boiling point. But no, not today. Today he kept so calm that his wife became resentful of exactly that calmness that she had so frequently and desperately sought from him. Today, when she least expected it or welcomed it for that matter, here was her priceless husband displaying remarkable sangfroid.
“I'm glad, Father of Fezeka, to see that you appreciate the risk I took, nearly getting myself killed by these unruly children, so that you would have something to eat.” She spoke in a quiet voice. Inside, however, she was seething. What did he think! That she had gone to Claremont only so that she could buy a loaf of bread and stuff it down her own gullet? That would have saved her all the trouble and bad name she, no doubt, had earned herself.
But Mdlangathi would not be drawn to a fight and, after seeing that, Mamvulane soon found her anger dissipate.
When she had rested a little and was sure there would be no follow-up action on the part of the comrades, Mamvulane went to her bedroom and closed the door. When she emerged, in her hand was a tray full of sausage. There were also two loaves of bread and a plastic packet of powdered milk.
“That is all I was able to save,” she told her husband, showing him her spoils. “To think I spent more than fifty rands at Pick 'n Pay … and that is all that I was able to save!”
“But how?” he wanted to know.
And she knew he wasn't talking about the money she had spent.
For the first time since she had come into the house, harassed and agitated, Mamvulane allowed a slow smile to appear on her face. Her eyes widening in mock disbelief, she exclaimed,
“Tyhini, Tota kaFezeka!
Don't you think that a woman should have some secrets?” And refused to divulge how she had achieved the miracle.
As she prepared the meal, she wondered what he would say if she were to tell him that she had girdled the sausage around her waist, put the packet of milk in the natural furrow between her breasts and carried the loaves of bread flattened in the hollow of her back, one atop the other so that they formed a pipe. Ah, Mdlangathi, she thought, feeling the smile in her heart, these are not times for one to be squeamish.

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