Surita
“How’s the financial adoption campaign going?” the chairperson asked.
“Three hundred and eleven people have adopted dogs. We’re thinking of expanding it to cats.”
The meeting stirred. “Hear, hear,” said someone.
“Plenty of cat lovers!”
“If we keep it up, we can employ someone full-time at the animal sterilisation clinic,” continued the chairperson, a dignified woman with bobbed grey hair.
Surita was sitting at the back of a church hall in Rosebank. She’d entered the meeting a few minutes late, having come straight from the dojo. A guy her age had turned and smiled, gesturing at an empty chair next to his. She’d ignored him and had taken a seat next to the door. Surita wasn’t up for flirty glances now. But she found herself thinking, for the first time in months, of Willem, an up-and-coming judo guy from Joburg. They had seen each other at tournaments and training camps, and though some people said they were a couple – her teammates in the SA Women’s Judo squad teased Surita about it – that wasn’t how it felt. They were friends who worked out together, talked about training and occasionally their personal lives. Surita had a lot of respect for Willem, but wasn’t in love with him or anything like that. Physically she preferred working out with him than fooling around, which they sometimes did when they were alone in a dormitory. She’d been upset when he said the relationship wasn’t working, that it didn’t feel like the real thing. Wasn’t she real? she asked him. What was more real than her?
Recently Daylin had played her an interview with a 104-year-old Japanese judoka, the first woman to get a black belt. She said she’d never married because she’d been married to judo all her life. But then the woman started weeping. It wasn’t clear whether the great fighter was crying because she’d been so true to herself, so dedicated and pure, or because she’d missed out on something. That had bothered Surita, and she’d told Daylin about it.
“It’s complicated,” Daylin had said, “to be a champion. You have to stay on track with everything – getting moves just right, cardio, strength, eating, sleeping, keeping your mind in order. But in another way it’s simple. You can’t spend much time on anything else. Be like a laser: narrow and sharp.”
Surita knew she wasn’t the most talented fighter, and she didn’t have money for fancy equipment or training in Japan or France. But she used what she had. Surita often thought of Michael, her one good foster father, a carpenter and a talented boxer – paunchy, but still fast. He would knead her biceps and tell her she was too weak to fight – “chickens aren’t bred for combat” – but then he’d teach her a few moves, nodding when she got them right, sometimes falling to the ground to reward her for a perfect punch or kick. After his fatal stroke, Michael had left her his old Rolex, handed down from his own father. Surita had pawned it and used the money to enrol with Daylin. She’d seen him in a judo demonstration at her school in Woodstock, and decided that she wanted to take her martial arts beyond what Michael had shown her. From the first lesson, her dedication was apparent. Was she still devoted enough, though? Daylin had not said anything during this afternoon’s session, but she’d sensed his impatience. She was not progressing. Extra push-ups, sit-ups, drills and practice fights weren’t helping. In some way, she had to dig deeper. But how much deeper could she go?
She’d spent so much energy looking up her “family”. It had taken months for the orphanage to track down the details of her grandmother. Grandmother. A stranger with a la-di-da voice. On the phone, the woman had recovered quickly from the shock of Surita’s existence and had gone on to take charge of the conversation: yes, she told Surita, her mother Camille was dead, a car accident, but her father was assumed to be alive, and she would try to find him. The conversation felt unreal, even while she was having it. To have biological relatives was the stuff of dreams. Her grandmother had wanted to meet her in person straight away, but Surita had found herself backing off from this pleasant, posh-sounding person. She said that she’d prefer to start with her dad and maybe go on from there. Even about her father, though, she felt uncertain. Now that she was starting to get in touch with “family”, she was filled with trepidation. Also, she remembered the letter from the orphanage – there is always a reason why a baby is given up for adoption. Surita wasn’t sure that she wanted anything to do with that.
It wasn’t just the family stuff that was eating up her time. She was here for the animals: abandoned to their fates, hardly anyone talking for them, taking up the struggle. Millions of them – no, billions – unable to make their suffering heard. Surita volunteered at the animal welfare place, she distributed leaflets, but what she did had no effect on the bad stuff that went on. Very few people changed their minds: they cared about animals already, a bit, or they didn’t want to know. She’d recently seen a report on conditions at a battery farm outside Cape Town that was so upsetting she’d had to stop reading partway.
If Daylin was frustrated at her – and who could blame him, given her recent tournament result – she was more frustrated with herself. Everything came back to her; everything was her responsibility. When things didn’t work, she was accountable. And when she didn’t take control, she lost her fights. Or found herself in the back row at a meeting like this, using up energy on trivia. Enough. Surita put up her hand.
“Surita?” The chairperson knew her – there were never more than twenty or thirty people at these meetings.
“This is not the right way to spend our time,” Surita said. The chairperson waited. “Focusing on adopting a dog or a cat isn’t going to get us anywhere. We all know there are terrible cruelties – like on the battery farms – that are ignored because the animals involved aren’t cute or don’t have names or whatever. Isn’t that urgent? We’re fiddling while Rome burns!” This was another of Daylin’s expressions.
But the chairperson of the animal committee was not offended or cowed. “I share your feelings,” she said. “We do what we can. That’s the point of these financial adoptions: individuals pay for animals they can see. They get regular photographic updates – people like that kind of thing. They don’t much care for an abstract principle, but they do care about a dog they feel they’ve come to know. Getting donations to fight the maltreatment of cattle, pigs, chickens – a much harder sell. We siphon what we can to that side of things.”
“It’s not enough,” Surita said.
“It isn’t enough,” the chairperson repeated, “but we do what we can.” In everyday life, she was a psychologist. Surita felt that she was being handled.
“We can do more,” she said. “Those battery farms are concentration camps. What we have to do is bring them down.”
A few people clapped, but then a woman wearing a green cardigan and slacks stood up a few rows in front of Surita. “What, practically speaking, are you saying?” She half-turned towards Surita. “We march up to a battery farm, free the chickens, burn the place to the ground? We’ll be put in jail.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” Even to herself, Surita sounded naive and unschooled, but that was what she had in mind, or at least something along those lines. “We can do it if we decide that we want it.”
“I agree,” said a woman, getting to her feet two rows in front of Surita. She was middle-aged, red hair turning white, wearing a yellow T-shirt and a tie-dyed skirt sewn with sequins. “I’m Berenice,” she said. “I haven’t been to one of these meetings before, but,” – half turning her head to indicate Surita behind her – “she’s right. You don’t get anywhere without . . .” Berenice raised a scrawny fist.
The woman on the stage coughed. “You have valid points. We all want to do something that makes a difference. But the pen is mightier than the sword! Our newsletters from the financial adoption campaign are working so well for us. Also: social media. We’ve got Twitter ambassadors –”
Surita shook her head. If that woman on stage ever found only her muscles and tendons between her and the enemy, between success