I begged Pa to take me along, but no way. Because of my school work. Come to think of it, this hiding was actually Pa’s fault because he was the one who’d left me at home.
“You’re already so far behind, what with your dreaming,” was all he said.
I had reason to be fed up. After all, it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have a twin like all the others. I knew how it happened too because I overheard Ma tell Tannie Hannie one day when she came over. At the time Tannie Hannie and Oom Stoney hadn’t been living in the house behind ours for long and she and Ma didn’t know each other as well as they did later.
“First it was Mara and Rykie, then Braam and Bella, then Erika and Martina. I had to put a stop to it, Hannie, you don’t know what it feels like.”
“And I have no desire to find out, Ada.” That was Ma’s name: Ada. “No, really, sometimes it’s too quiet for me, you know, with only the two of us in the house, but I can’t imagine how I would’ve coped. It’s bad enough when they’re small, but five grown-up girls in one room, sharing beds and wardrobes – no, thanks, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Like I said, Hannie, once the six little ones were there, it should’ve been the end. But five years later, when I believed that at last, thank the Lord, I was too old and it was all over, there I was: pregnant again.”
“Men don’t know the meaning of the word enough, do they?”
“You can say that again.”
“Look, the only time I still allow Stoney near me is when he wants it so badly that others are starting to notice.”
Ma laughed. “Well, my dear, I couldn’t put the blame on Abram. He was away all week and on weekends I was only too grateful for the extra pair of hands.”
“I don’t know how you coped, Ada.”
“There’s always a way, Hannie. When the two new babies were hungry at the same time, I’d sit down to feed them, and the others could cry all they liked – it was my time out.”
I sat on the steps outside, listening. They didn’t know about me. I was counting Snippie’s teats. Her belly was swollen with puppies, in spite of all the cups of boiling water Ma had flung through the window to chase off the dogs.
“Later the older ones were big enough to help me with the little ones, otherwise I don’t know what would’ve happened when I fell pregnant again. I was very big, and for months on end I prayed, pleading with the Lord not to give me twins again.
“But I’m telling you, Hannie, when your troubles are at their worst, your prayers are always answered. Only Timus popped out. On his own. The only one of my eggs that wasn’t a double-yolk.”
Double-yolked eggs! That was another thing I’d never been able to work out, even though I had five sisters, two eyes and two ears. The girls were always pretending I wasn’t there, they said all kinds of things in front of me, just like Ma and Tannie Hannie, or they ran from the bathroom to their bedroom with no clothes on when they knew there was only me in the house. But no matter how closely I watched them from the corner of my eye, I’d never managed to see an egg of any sort on any of them.
“Timus arrived by himself, but believe me, Hannie, after he was born the least little pain had me in a flat spin – had Timus really been in there alone, I wondered, or was there another surprise in store for me? It was weeks before I relaxed completely.”
They laughed till they cried.
Ma took a hankie from her sleeve. “When the doctor asked me what I was going to call him, I just shrugged. All through my pregnancy I’d been so terrified that I’d clean forgotten I’d have to name him.”
“And then, Ada?”
“Why don’t you call him Septimus, the doctor asked. And even though I knew perfectly well there’s never been a Septimus in our family, I told Abram that’s what we’re going to christen this child.”
“You were probably so glad there was only one, you’d have called him Hendrik Frensch if the doctor had suggested it.”
“Hmph!” Ma replied.
Hendrik Frensch – those were Doktor Verwoerd’s names. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d called me that. Neither would Pa. He voted for the National Party. He was a Nat. But I wondered if it would’ve been quite so easy for him to give me a hiding if he’d had to say: Go to the bathroom, Hendrik Frensch!
One Sunday during the time Ma and the others had gone to bury Oupa, I went to the vlei. On Sundays we weren’t allowed to go to the beach or the woods or the vlei. We had to be quiet. In our own yard. And that was where I’d intended to stay that Sunday while Pa and the rest were away, but then the church Bantus came past our house with their long robes and drums and things and suddenly I remembered the place in the woods I’d seen a while before. A place that had frightened me.
I came across it while I was looking for avocados for Ma. Every tree I knew had already been stripped, but then, in one of the densest parts of the forest, I found a big tree with lots of fruit. I’d never have known about it if the monkeys hadn’t led me to it.
Those monkeys appeared suddenly, out of nowhere. At first I was scared. But when they scattered into the trees I followed them along a footpath through the woods. They veered from the trail, swinging along the treetops, and I had to crawl through the underbrush to see where they were going. It was dark on the forest floor. The earth was moist. Then I reached a place where I could stand up straight. The monkeys had disappeared, but right in front of me was the biggest avocado tree I’d ever seen.
It was a silent and lonely place and I was scared. If someone killed me right there, no one would ever find me, I thought. I didn’t quite know where I was. All around me were shrubs and dense thickets and monkey-ropes and other vines. To tell the truth, I was lost. My stomach began to churn. Then, suddenly, I thought I heard the whistle of a locomotive, and immediately I thought of Joon. When I heard the din of the loco, I always knew that people were working there because Joon had woken them up. And when I thought of Joon I was no longer afraid.
I climbed the tree and crawled along an overhanging branch. When I emerged above the treetops, I couldn’t believe my eyes: only a few hundred yards away were the vlei and the shunting yard and the loco with its rows of trucks and locomotives and electric units. In the distance I could see the compound where the Bantus lived who worked at the loco. Only then did I notice all the avocados hanging from those branches. I picked one and was just letting my arm dangle to see where I could drop the fruit without bruising it, when my fingers suddenly refused to let go – almost directly below me I saw a clearing where the grass had been completely flattened in a large circle, like underneath the swings in the park near the school. Inside the circle the grass grew tall and straight. Around the edges it was flattened. I just knew it was the church place of the Bantus.
Ma didn’t want us to say kaffir – she said they were Bantus. Ma supported the United Party. She was a Sap. She said all people had rights. When Bantu people did something she didn’t like, she called them wretches or creatures.
I went home carrying only that single avocado pear, because it seemed to me I had no right to have been at that church place. The hairs on my forearms were standing on end. But that Sunday when the Bantus came past with their drums and fancy clothes I couldn’t have been thinking straight and so I took the shortcut to the vlei to wait for them there.
I climbed the avocado tree and lay on the overhanging branch, directly above the dancing circle, and waited. The church Bantus were walking through the vlei in single file, coming closer and closer. When they halted opposite me I felt trapped. I wanted to climb down, but it was too late to escape. One by one they approached the circle along a narrow footpath, brushing through bushes and branches till they were directly below me. If you didn’t know about their path, you’d never find it.
They seated themselves around the edge of the circle, and I realised why the grass was so flat there. One