My name is Vaselinetjie
Anoeschka von Meck
Translated from the Afrikaans by Elsa Silke
Updated and Revised by the Author
Tafelberg
Dedicated to every child and staff member at a children’s home who, despite difficult circumstances, refuses to stop believing. Also to the little girl who was left for dead at the edge of the desert, but survived against all odds.
Introduction
She’d hoped it would be over by the time the sun came up.
She’d hoped for a full moon, so that she could find her way in the dark.
She’d hoped to die before sunrise.
Towards evening she’d felt it was time.
The time she had been fearing.
When at last her body would be rid of its secret.
She’d finished her homework and pretended to want an early night. In her room she’d taken out the bag she’d hidden at the bottom of her wardrobe a while before. She’d locked her bedroom door and climbed through the window.
No one would suspect a thing.
No one would come looking for her.
Who cared anyway?
During the past few months the other people in the house had become used to her doing her own thing. Refusing to speak. Bursting into tears and sulking and taking fright for no reason at all. Being up first in the mornings and leaving the bathroom smelling of vomit.
If anyone suspected she might be in trouble, no one cared enough to ask.
She was alone.
Some distance from the house the pain grabbed hold of her. It was far worse than she had imagined. She bit into the towel she’d brought along, but after a while she couldn’t stifle her screams any more.
She had to carry on: Someone might hear her moaning and screaming.
If only she could reach the first koppie.
At first she kept walking – she was heading for the outskirts of town, for the wall that surrounded the cemetery. No one ever went there. She knew exactly w here to go. Like a cat that had searched out a safe place in a dark corner to have her litter.
It was completely dark now: a few times she stumbled and nearly twisted her ankle, and a few times the pain made her sink to the ground, loose stones biting into her knees.
In the distance she could see the orange glow of a few late fires in the township. She tried to stifle her panting breath as she listened for the approach of voices.
It was the longest, most terrifying night of her life.
At first light she no longer cared. About what was happening to her, about bleeding to death. She was too tired.
She hadn’t quite made it to the koppie. A few metres away she’d collapsed under a shrub that had taken root among the rocks.
Sometime during the morning she stopped moaning and lay inert, the blood on her clothing and legs drying in the sun.
1
The blood trickling down Vaselinetjie’s right knee felt sticky. A drop fell on the floor in front of her desk and she stuck out her foot and rubbed it away with the sole of her shoe so that the teacher wouldn’t notice.
On the blackboard Donovan Roman was writing out “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” for the umpteenth time that week. All the other grade fives knew the national anthem by heart – Vaselinetjie best of all. A large clock hung on the wall over the blackboard. Vaselinetjie tried her best to ignore it, because she knew it always stopped sometime during the day. Still she found herself watching the hands anxiously.
When the last bell went, she had to be the first one out, or she’d have more than a skinned knee by the time she got home.
They’re going to beat her up, they said.
They’re going to kick her and rip out her pigtails.
They said they’d never leave her alone till she told them the truth.
Aunt Kitta Bosman saw the smart car pull up at the gate and untied her apron.
It was the headmaster.
It was the third time this term that he was bringing Vaselinetjie home in person. He’s a good man, Aunt Kitta thought. A man who cared.
Before opening the front door, she stole a glance at her granddaughter through the tiny kitchen window.
When she saw the dark-haired little figure with the two long pigtails get out of the headmaster’s car, she breathed a sigh of relief.
As long as the child was safe!
She opened the door and greeted the headmaster with a smile. “Good afternoon, Meneer, and how are you today?”
“Afternoon, Mevrou Bosman. Mevrou, we need to talk …”
Vaselinetjie remained standing behind the headmaster until the grown-ups began to chat. Then she brushed past them and disappeared down the passage. After a while she emerged from her room. She had washed and put on a crocheted top and skirt. In the kitchen she made tea for Ouma and Meneer. She arranged the cups on the saucers with the ears all pointing in the same direction, the way Ouma had taught her, trying her best all the while to overhear the conversation in the sitting room.
“It can’t go on like this,” Meneer was saying. “You do understand that something will have to be done, don’t you?”
Vaselinetjie was unable to hear Ouma’s reply, but when she entered, carefully balancing the tray, she noticed that Ouma was brushing away tears.
2
During the second term of the next year a strange car drew up at Vaselinetjie’s school. A few weeks earlier the headmaster and the dominee had come to see Oupa and Ouma one evening and stayed till late.
Two smartly dressed ladies got out of the car, one white and the other one black. They looked uncomfortable in the afternoon heat in their shoulder pads and high heels.
It was clear to Vaselinetjie that they weren’t from around here, for the dusty windscreen was splattered with dirt and dead bugs. She didn’t recognise the registration number either. The children stared at the two strangers and giggled behind their hands. A few peered into the car to see whether it had those fancy windows that move up and down at the press of a button.
Even before Vaselinetjie was called to the office, she was overcome by dread. She considered slipping through the school gate and running to Oupa’s greengrocer shop on the other side of town. But she knew if she arrived there during school hours, she’d embarrass Oupa in front of his customers.
In the office Meneer carried in an extra chair and told her to sit. “Vaselinetjie, these ladies are from the welfare and they’d like to talk to you.”
Her eyes went from the strange ladies to the papers on Meneer’s desk. She tried to see whether her report card was there and she wondered whether Meneer was going to show them her good marks.
The white lady asked a great many questions. She was friendly and seemed kind. She complimented Vaselinetjie on her beautiful shiny long hair. The black lady didn’t speak to Vaselinetjie at all, only to the headmaster and the white lady. Vaselinetjie didn’t like the way she stared at her, making notes in her file. It made her feel uneasy.
When the secretary brought in the tea trolley, Meneer told Vaselinetjie to go back to her classroom.
“See?” Katie Draghoender jeered as Vaselinetjie sat down in the desk they shared. “Those aunties have come to fetch you because you’re such a liar!”
Cherise,