You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (11 page)

‘. . . these empty chairs are a sign of the barbarism, the immense task that lies ahead of the educator . . .'

Should she move closer to the front? As his anger gives way to grief, she can no longer hear what he says. In Tamieta's ears the red locusts rattle among the mealies on the farm and the dry-throated wind croaks a heart-broken tale of treachery through the cracks of the door. She must wait, simply wait for these people to finish. Never, not even on a Sunday afternoon, has she known time to drag its feet so sluggishly. If she could pull out of her plastic bag a starched cap and apron and whip round smilingly after the last amen with a tray of coffee, perhaps then she could sit through the service in comfort. And the hot shame creeps up from her chest to the crown of her head. The straw hat pinned to the mattress of hair released from its braids for the occasion (for she certainly does not wear a doekie to church like a country woman) smoulders with shame for such a starched cap long since left behind.

So many years since the young Mieta carried water from the well, the zinc bucket balanced on her head, her slender neck taut and not a drop, never a drop of water spilled. Then she rolled her doekie into a wreath to fit the bottom of the bucket and protect her head from its cutting edge. So
they swaggered back, the girls in the evening light when the sun melted orange in an indigo sky, laughing, jostling each other, heads held high and never a hand needed to steady the buckets.

If only there were other women working on the campus she would have known, someone would have told her. As for that godless boy, Charlie, he knew all right, even betrayed himself with all that nonsense about the carnival while she sniffed for his treachery in quite the wrong direction. Of course he knew all along that she would be the only person there. And at this moment as he stands in Hanover Street with the pink and green satins flowing through his fingers, he sniggers at the thought of her, a country woman, sitting alone amongst white people, foolishly singing hymns. And he'll run triumphant fingers through his silky hair – but that is precisely when the Jewish draper will say, ‘Hey you, I don't want Brylcreem on my materials, hey. I think you'd better go now.' And that will teach Charlie; that will show him that hair isn't everything in the world.

The words of the hymn do not leave her mouth. A thin sound escapes her parted lips but the words remain printed in a book, written in uneven letters on her school slate. Will the wind turn and toss her trembling hum southward into the ear of the dominee who will look up sternly and thunder, ‘Sing up aia, sing up'?

Oh, how her throat grows wind-dry as the strips of biltong beef hung out on the farm in the evening breeze. The longing for a large mug of coffee tugs at her palate. Coffee with a generous spoonful of condensed milk, thick and sweet to give her strength. How much longer will she have to sit here and wait for time to pass? This time designated by strangers to mourn a man with a large head?
For that was what the newspaper showed, a man with the large head of a bulldog, and Tamieta, allowing herself the unknown luxury of irreverence, passes a damp tongue over her parched lips.

She will watch the plants in the concrete flowerbox by her side. She does not know what they are called but she will watch these leaves grow, expand before her very eyes. By keeping an eye trained on one leaf – and she selects a healthy shoot resting on the rim – she will witness the miracle of growth. She has had enough of things creeping up on her, catching her unawares, offering unthinkable surprises. No, she will travel closely with the passage of time and see a bud thicken under her vigilant eye.

It is time to rise for prayer, and as she reminds herself to keep her lowered eyes fixed on the chosen leaf the plastic bag under her chair falls over and the overall, her old blue turban and the comfy slippers roll out for all the world to see. But all the eyes are shut so that she picks up her things calmly and places them back in the bag. Just in time for the last respectful silence. The heads hang in grief. Tamieta's neck aches. Tonight Beatrice will free the knotted tendons with her nimble fingers. She does not have the strength to go into town for the wool, but Beatrice will understand. Tamieta is the first to slip out of her seat, no point in lingering when the rain is about to fall, and with her handbag swinging daintily in the crook of her right arm and the parcel of clothes tucked under her left, she marches chin up into the bush, to the deserted station where the skollie-boys dangle their feet from the platform all day long.

Y
OU CAN'T GET LOST IN
C
APE
T
OWN

In my right hand resting on the base of my handbag I clutch a brown leather purse. My knuckles ride to and fro, rubbing against the lining . . . surely cardboard . . . and I am surprised that the material has not revealed itself to me before. I have worn this bag for months. I would have said with a dismissive wave of the hand, ‘Felt, that is what the base of this bag is lined with.'

Then, Michael had said, ‘It looks cheap, unsightly,' and lowering his voice to my look of surprise, ‘Can't you tell?' But he was speaking of the exterior, the way it looks.

The purse fits neatly into the palm of my hand. A man's purse. The handbag gapes. With my elbow I press it against my hip but that will not avert suspicion. The bus is moving fast, too fast, surely exceeding the speed limit, so that I bob on my seat and my grip on the purse tightens as the springs suck at my womb, slurping it down through the plush of the red upholstery. I press my buttocks into the seat to ease the discomfort.

I should count out the fare for the conductor. Perhaps not; he is still at the front of the bus. We are now travelling through Rondebosch so that he will be fully occupied with white passengers at the front. Women with blue-rinsed
heads tilted will go on telling their stories while fishing leisurely for their coins and just lengthen a vowel to tide over the moment of paying their fares.

‘Don't be so anxious,' Michael said. ‘It will be all right.' I withdrew the hand he tried to pat.

I have always been anxious and things are not all right; things may never be all right again. I must not cry. My eyes travel to and fro along the grooves of the floor. I do not look at the faces that surround me but I believe that they are lifted speculatively at me. Is someone constructing a history for this hand resting foolishly in a gaping handbag? Do these faces expect me to whip out an amputated stump dripping with blood? Do they wince at the thought of a hand, cold and waxen, left on the pavement where it was severed? I draw my hand out of the bag and shake my fingers ostentatiously. No point in inviting conjecture, in attracting attention. The bus brakes loudly to conceal the sound of breath drawn in sharply at the exhibited hand.

Two women pant like dogs as they swing themselves on to the bus. The conductor has already pressed the bell and they propel their bodies expertly along the swaying aisle. They fall into seats opposite me – one fat, the other thin – and simultaneously pull off the starched servants' caps which they scrunch into their laps. They light cigarettes and I bite my lip. Would I have to vomit into this bag with its cardboard lining? I wish I had brought a plastic bag; this bag is empty save for the purse. I breathe deeply to stem the nausea that rises to meet the curling bands of smoke and fix on the bulging bags they grip between their feet. They make no attempt to get their fares ready; they surely misjudge the intentions of the conductor. He knows that they will get off at Mowbray to catch the Golden Arrow buses to the townships. He will not allow them to avoid
paying; not he who presses the button with such promptness.

I watch him at the front of the bus. His right thumb strums an impatient jingle on the silver levers, the leather bag is cradled in the hand into which the coins tumble. He chants a barely audible accompaniment to the clatter of coins, a recitation of the newly decimalised currency. Like times tables at school and I see the fingers grow soft, bending boyish as they strum an ink-stained abacus; the boy learning to count, leaning earnestly with propped elbows over a desk. And I find the image unaccountably sad and tears are about to well up when I hear an impatient empty clatter of thumb-play on the coin dispenser as he demands, ‘All fares please' from a sleepy white youth. My hand flies into my handbag once again and I take out the purse. A man's leather purse.

Michael too is boyish. His hair falls in a straight blond fringe into his eyes. When he considers a reply he wipes it away impatiently, as if the hair impedes thought. I cannot imagine this purse ever having belonged to him. It is small, U-shaped and devoid of ornament, therefore a man's purse. It has an extending tongue that could be tucked into the mouth or be threaded through the narrow band across the base of the U. I take out the smallest note stuffed into this plump purse, a five-rand note. Why had I not thought about the busfare? The conductor will be angry if my note should exhaust his supply of coins although the leather bag would have a concealed pouch for notes. But this thought does not comfort me. I feel angry with Michael. He has probably never travelled by bus. How would he know of the fear of missing the unfamiliar stop, the fear of keeping an impatient conductor waiting, the fear of saying fluently, ‘Seventeen cents please,' when you are not sure of the fare
and produce a five-rand note? But this is my journey and I must not expect Michael to take responsibility for everything. Or rather, I cannot expect Michael to take responsibility for more than half the things. Michael is scrupulous about this division; I am not always sure of how to arrive at half. I was never good at arithmetic, especially this instant mental arithmetic that is sprung on me.

How foolish I must look sitting here clutching my five-rand note. I slip it back into the purse and turn to the solidity of the smoking women. They have still made no attempt to find their fares. The bus is going fast and I am surprised that we have not yet reached Mowbray. Perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps we have already passed Mowbray and the women are going to Sea Point to serve a nightshift at the Pavilion.

Marge, Aunt Trudie's eldest daughter, works as a waitress at the Pavilion but she is rarely mentioned in our family. ‘A disgrace,' they say. ‘She should know better than to go with white men.'

‘Poor whites,' Aunt Trudie hisses. ‘She can't even find a nice rich man to go steady with. Such a pretty girl too. I won't have her back in this house. There's no place in this house for a girl who's been used by white trash.'

Her eyes flash as she spits out a cherished vision of a blond young man sitting on her new vinyl sofa to whom she serves gingerbeer and koeksisters, because it is not against the law to have a respectable drink in a Coloured home. ‘Mrs Holman,' he would say, ‘Mrs Holman, this is the best gingerbeer I've had for years.'

The family do not know of Michael even though he is a steady young man who would sit out such a Sunday afternoon with infinite grace. I wince at the thought of Father creaking in a suit and the unconcealed pleasure in Michael's successful academic career.

Perhaps this is Mowbray after all. The building that zooms past on the right seems familiar. I ought to know it but I am lost, hopelessly lost, and as my mind gropes for recognition I feel a feathery flutter in my womb, so slight I cannot be sure, and again, so soft, the brush of a butterfly, and under cover of my handbag I spread my left hand to hold my belly. The shaft of light falling across my shoulder, travelling this route with me, is the eye of God. God will never forgive me.

I must anchor my mind to the words of the women on the long seat opposite me. But they fall silent as if to protect their secrets from me. One of them bends down heavily, holding on to the jaws of her shopping bag as if to relieve pressure on her spine, and I submit to the ache of my own by swaying gently while I protect my belly with both hands. But having eyed the contents of her full bag carefully, her hand becomes the beak of a bird dipping purposefully into the left-hand corner and rises triumphantly with a brown paper bag on which grease has oozed light-sucking patterns. She opens the bag and her friend looks on in silence. Three chunks of cooked chicken lie on a piece of greaseproof paper. She deftly halves a piece and passes it to her thin friend. The women munch in silence, their mouths glossy with pleasure.

‘These are for the children,' she says, her mouth still full as she wraps the rest up and places it carelessly at the top of the bag.

‘It's the spiced chicken recipe you told me about.' She nudges her friend. ‘Lekker hey!'

The friend frowns and says, ‘I like to taste a bit more cardamom. It's nice to find a whole cardamom in the food and crush it between your teeth. A cardamom seed will never give up all its flavour to the pot. You'll still find it there in the chewing.'