“No, Ouma.”
“Tell me.” She sat down beside me on the rim of the bathtub. She always smelt of cloves and snuff and things. She put her hand on my knee. Her fingers were thin and knobbly and cold. “Come on, tell me.”
I shook my head. “You’ll just say I’m lying too, Ouma.”
“I won’t.”
I told her the whole story: how we had to go to church twice on a Sunday and couldn’t do anything nice and how I hadn’t been allowed to go to Oupa’s funeral and how out of boredom and pigheadedness and curiosity about the church Bantus I’d gone to the vlei and how my arm got broken.
“Did you tell it to your father just like that, child?”
“No, Ouma, not that it was a Sunday. But he already knew. Joepie’s mom told him.”
“Her Christian duty, I suppose?”
Ouma knew everything about everybody. She got up. Before she left, she said: “You wait here for a bit.”
After a while I heard her voice in the kitchen.
“Awerjam, are you going to give that child a hiding?” She never called Pa Abram. I pricked up my ears. I couldn’t hear Pa’s reply, only the droning of his voice, but I could hear that it was a long answer.
“Were you never a child, Awerjam? Didn’t you ever imagine stuff?”
Imagine stuff, she said. So Ouma didn’t believe me either.
“I don’t want to stick my nose into your affairs, I’m grateful to you for taking me in, but I’m telling you, if you give that boy a hiding today, it’ll be a sin. He saw what he saw in the vlei.”
“A kaffir rising up into the air, Ma?” Pa’s voice was suddenly loud.
“I’m telling you, he saw what he saw. The two of us, Awerjam, who don’t have his gift, mustn’t try to take it away from him. Innocence comes from above, and, Lord knows, it certainly doesn’t last.”
I heard Pa’s footsteps approaching. “Go and play, but see that you’re back for supper,” he said sternly before going down the passage to the sitting room.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I got up. Ouma was still in the kitchen. For the first time I was glad she’d come to us. As soon as my arm was better, I’d find her the best avocados in the woods. I’d cut one in half and mash it with a fork so that she wouldn’t even have to put in her teeth to eat it.
“Thanks, Ouma.”
She motioned with her hand to show that it was nothing. “Come here,” she said.
Ma had told us not to shy away when Ouma wanted to give us a hug.
“Ouma?”
“Yes, Timus, my boy?”
“What’s innocence?”
“I don’t know how to explain it.” She took out her hankie. The snuff had stained the fabric. She blew: prrrr! Then she put her arm around me again and said: “Innocence is something you recognise only when you no longer have it.”
“Then what’s the use of having it, Ouma?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But this I can tell you, Timus, my boy, we’ll get it back in heaven one day.”
Ouma Makkie walked out of the kitchen and past the bathroom on her way to her room.
2
I headed up the street to get out of Pa’s sight before he could think of something else to send me to the bathroom for.
It was almost time for Mara to come home. When the girls went to town on a Saturday morning, they had to be home by one. Ma liked having all her children round the table at lunchtime.
If I waited at the bus stop, Mara might buy me something at the café. She didn’t like it when Pa gave me a hiding. If she was home, she’d stop the first ice-cream cart that came along and allow me to choose whatever I wanted. Real ice cream too, not the ice suckers Ma bought.
“Pa almost gave me a hiding today,” I told her as soon as she got off the bus.
“Why?”
“He asked me how my arm got broken.”
“And?”
“So I told him.”
“The truth?”
Was she going to start with me too? “Yep.”
“Even that it happened on a Sunday?”
“How do you know it was a Sunday?”
“Joepie’s mom. She says she’s worried about you.”
“If she was really worried about me, she wouldn’t have told Pa.”
It seemed I’d been waiting for Mara in vain. We’d already reached the vacant lot before you turned into our street. We were long past the café and we’d almost passed the OK Bazaars.
“Know what, Timus?”
“What?”
“I think I know the real reason why Pappie wanted to give you a hiding: it’s because of the trees. Now that you’ve broken your arm, you can’t help him with the trees.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
On Saturdays Pa chopped down trees. Trees that were messy or made people’s houses too dark, or had roots that caused walls to crack. Or that people feared might fall on their cars and stuff. That was why we’d be going to Kenneth’s house one of these days. Even though he was English, Kenneth Shaw was in my class at school. His mom wanted him to be bilingual. Their house sat right at the top of the hill on the other side of Bluff Road. Rich people, with two sheets on each bed. I couldn’t understand why, though. Their blankets were so soft, there was no chance they’d be scratchy. Kenneth’s mom was pretty. She didn’t look like the other moms. Her hair was always neatly done and she wore red lipstick. When I went there after school and I stood on their front stoep, I sometimes saw Pa’s bulldozer far below us where they were reclaiming the vleiland next to the harbour.
“Pa isn’t fair, Mara.”
“That’s no lie,” she replied.
I was beginning to despair of the ice cream.
“If he was fair, he would’ve allowed you to dance at your twenty-first.”
“You can say that again too.” Mara stopped in her tracks. “I’ll tell you what . . .”
“What?”
“Why don’t you bring a partner to my party?”
As if that would make up for all those hours in the bathroom.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“What about Elsie?”
Elsie was in my class too. She was pretty. Prettier than any other girl I knew. Except for Helen. Helen was Zane’s girlfriend. If you saw Helen at the pool or at Anstey’s, or Brighton Beach in her shiny bikini and she stopped to say hello, you just knew all the girls were jealous of her. And all the boys of Zane. When Helen talked to you and looked into your eyes, you couldn’t look away. And if you stood close to her while she was talking to someone else, you could see the fine, downy hairs on her legs and the faint shadow that led downward from her navel. Braam said he could understand why Zane said he’d kill if anyone messed with her. Or if she ever cheated on him. The only other guys she was allowed to talk to were us, because we were too young for her, and Joon. Joon could visit her at home, even when Zane wasn’t there. I always thought it was because of Joon’s squint, but Ouma Makkie said no, Zane was afraid of Joon – in a way that he couldn’t