Agaat (96 page)

Keep your meat then, Ma, keep it and guzzle it on your own while the children around you are perishing of hunger!

You were out of there with a basket in which you'd thrown the slices of bread, roughly stuck together, and a few pieces of fruit that you'd grabbed from the fruit platter in the front room.

Around the workers' cottages everything was quiet. You went in by the front room and found the child there in same position. You placed the basket by her feet.

Here, just look what I brought you! It's just for you, you hear? Eat it quickly before they take if from you. I'll tell your mother not to bother you.

Maria? a man's voice called harshly from the bedroom. You went out quickly and walked round the back where a bickering conversation fell silent as you came round the corner.

You kept your voice even and commanding.

Maria, I've brought food for the little one, see to it that she eats it. I want to see you at the house, tomorrow morning, nine o'clock, and you bring her along, d'you hear. We must have a little talk, you and I.

The woman gazed at you.

Have you understood me well, Maria, nine o'clock, not a minute later. And remember to bring back the basket.

I sound like my mother, you thought. You wanted to cry. You turned round quickly and walked home, straight in by the front door to the telephone, and booked a trunk call home through the farm exchange. You wanted to act in terms of the insight of the afternoon, in the spirit of the whirligig, you wouldn't allow yourself to be put off your resolve, and you didn't want time to pass over it, because you knew that the power of the everyday, the perspective of those with the whip-hand, could in the blink of an eye make the mere idea seem like the sheerest folly.

Come and fetch me, Jak, I want to come back. And I'm bringing someone with me, somebody who needs care, you announced later that evening when the call came through.

Just not your mother, Jak started.

My mother can care for herself, Jak, it's the youngest child of Maria of Piet who was, she's being terribly neglected here in the hovels, she'll perish if somebody doesn't intervene.

What nonsense, Milla! If the people want to perish, then they perish, why must I take responsibility for it?

You needn't do anything, Jak, it's my child and I'll raise her.

Between you there was the usual barrage of clicks and beeps of the fellow-listeners on the party line.

When Jak spoke again, his voice was dry.

We'll talk later, Milla, you obviously have no idea . . .

Never you mind, Jak, all shall be well . . .

I'll be there at twelve tomorrow, and then I'll want to leave at once, tell your mother I won't be eating.

He put down the phone in your ear. You stood there clutching the receiver to your chest. Images rose before you, of you hand-in-hand with the child turning your back on Jak and walking away, of you glaring at him until he lowered his head and stood aside to allow you to pass.

Your mother came out into the passage. Without a word you walked past her and went to your room and started packing your things.

One by one you held your clothes up in front of you in the unsteady light of the generator: Floral smock, sleeveless summer blouse, full-length petticoat hemmed with lace, before you folded them and packed them in the case. The generator switched off. Through the window you caught a glimpse of a torch moving away from the house in the direction of the cottages. You thought of the child there, in the dark, amongst the people you'd seen that afternoon.

Open-eyed you lay in the dark amongst the cases on the bed and thought about what you'd say, to the frowning elders, to the little deacon of the farm collection in his black frock-coat, to the hatted-and-handbagged older women at the ward prayer-meeting, to George the Greek of the Good Hope Café, to sanctimonious Beatrice, to MooiJak de Wet arranging his cravat in front of the mirror before going out on a Saturday evening.

Your neat speech wouldn't stand up, no matter how often you rehearsed it in your head: Here I stand, I can do no other.

The argument faded before your excitement. Your heart started beating so hard that you had to get up to drink water from the ewer, to light the candle and snuff it again, to stand by the open window looking out over the yard. Your heart. You placed your hand against your neck to feel the pulse.

Here we go round the mulberry bush, went through your head, one two buckle my shoe, blind man's buff, you're it, you must hide, you must seek, you're out, ring-a-ring-a'roses, pocket full of posies, a-tishoo! a-tishoo! we all fall down, pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, bake me a cake as fast as you can, four stand in the road four hang in the road, two gore you in the groin and one flicks away flies, what is it? Look at the clouds, do you see the cayman with its pointy tail and do you see the centipede, do you see the Magicman? And the swift-spit snake? Let's count the horses stamping their hoofs behind the moon and the stars of the Southern Cross and of the Scorpion and the thirty-three fleeces of the thistle till we get sleepy, till we sleep. Outside walks a sheep. Iron on the hoof, pumpkin on the roof, down in the stable all the calves are fast asleep. Do you hear the rainman shuffle-shambling along the Langeberg? Do you see his grey sleeve trailing along the slopes? And the wind in the black pines, and the wind in the ears of wheat hissing over the hills, as far as the ear can hear, the hills of Rietpoel and the hills of Protem, the round-backed hills of Klipdale and Riviersonderend, the dale of rocks and the river without end, swishing
and sweeping, one rustling billowing blanket of sweet quivering stalks to where the lands end against the slopes of the mountain of which this side is Over. Overberg. And on the other side the Table Mountain that I'll go and show you one day when you're grown up.

 

The next day you were waiting for them at the back door. You saw the bickering party approaching from afar, hurrying to the yard. Maria with the basket in one hand and the refractory child in the other. And Lys, the eldest daughter by Maria's first husband. Hessian bag in one hand, gesticulating with the other. According to your mother the only member of the family who was worth anything. She worked in the house. She was the one who tattled the tales of the cast-off child.

Behind you in the kitchen your mother cleared her throat.

Think before you act, Milla, you're not the only one who's going to be affected by this, she said. Hard-heeled she stalked into the house.

Sheepishly the little group came to a halt before you. Maria mumbled a greeting, her head hanging. Lys stepped forward, performed an arm gesture, a sweep of the elbow, signifying that she could be trusted as the representative of her family's interests.

Morning Kleinnooi, I've heard Kleinnooi wants to see my mother and the child, so I came along to hear what the kleinnooi has in her heart, if the kleinnooi doesn't mind.

The little girl didn't make a sound, just wriggled with all her might to escape.

Maria yanked the child closer.

This picture didn't accord at all with your fantasies. In Lys's gaze there was something you couldn't fathom. As if she had a suspicion of what was coming. She met your eye insolently. You had to look away.

What would you have thought if you'd been she? So, you in your floral dress, with your armpits smelling of lavender, bite it off, and chew it as we've been chewing it for a long time, and then you swallow it gobbet by gobbet with your whitey spit. Take! Guzzle it! It's our crippledness here that's been born to us!

Is that what Lys thought? Improbable. Absolutely practical considerations rather, you realised. Her voice was full of calculation when she started speaking, her eyes much more impertinent than her voice.

Kleinnooi, excuse, but is Kleinnooi perhaps feeling out of sorts?

Not out of sorts, out of place, you felt out of your depth, caught out. There were, except in your head, no histrionic thoughts, only a scene that must have played hundreds of times in the past, on farms everywhere in the region.

No what, Lys, I'm fine, let's just get out of the sun, come in, I have cooldrink for us.

You walked ahead of them into the kitchen to where you'd set out the glasses and the Oros and opened the fridge to take out the cold water. Behind you you felt how Lys, as an initiate in the whiteman's home, accepted the unusual invitation on behalf of the others and hustled them in at the back door.

So tell me a bit about the child, you started while you poured the cooldrinks into the glasses.

How did she get so deformed?

Lys had her story ready, she delivered it in between smacking gulps of Oros.

No, Kleinnooi, she was just born like that, she started, her arms folded, regarding the child.

Very small and red, with the little hanging arm, at first we thought it was a bit of gut hanging out. Dakkie said sis, Hekkie said take away.

And you, Lys? you wanted to ask, but you swallowed your words.

Ma here was quite odd from looking at it. Didn't want to give the child tit.

Lys waited behind her glass for a reaction.

We said to Ma, Ma take her, give her tit, she's going to kick the bucket.

That's enough, Lys, you wanted to say, but the woman was playing for the benefit of Ma in the gallery.

Pa Joppies said give here, let me go and get rid of that, it's not my child, my arms are straight as poles, both, my hands are as good as shovels, look, nothing's the matter with me. Yes, Pa Joppies, I thought to myself, your two feet with which you kicked Ma good and proper in the belly when she was carrying, they're straight too.

You gathered the empty glasses.

So this child got her kicks in the other place already, Kleinnooi.

Lys scraped her chair across the floor as she turned it round to the sink to get your attention.

And then later when they started kicking her so, they just waited for her to start walking, to get the foot in under nicely, Hekkie and Dakkie both, then I said, if you wanted her dead, you should've kicked and have done when she came out, then she didn't know of anything. Now she's a person. Now you must have respects. The Lord made her like that. She also has a right.

You waited for the Lord's appurtenances, the devil, the angels, three crows of the cock.

But they won't listen and I get the kicks if I try to get in between and our ma she turns her back on it and says nothing, she's scared of them. Those two, they've become like savages under their new pa. Looks to me they want to be like him, kick harder and hit harder and curse harder . . .

Lys worked herself up for the climax.

As if they want to go Satan one better with fire, with blows coming down so that you smell sulphur and hear a screaming like pigs down in the poplars, and more I'd rather not say, the Lord is my witness . . . So it will be a deliverance, it will be a mercy, that's what I'm saying, if the kleinnooi . . . if . . .

If the kleinnooi what, Lys?

Actually you wanted to scream at the woman and throw her out of the kitchen by the scruff of her neck.

Lys had a firm grip on the child's thin arm, but she was a bit calmer now and stood there, one foot over the other, the glass of cooldrink untouched in front of her on the kitchen table. She started trembling and once, twice, looked anxiously from face to face.

You caught her eye and tried a smile, sent her a wordless message: Come, we must be brave now you and I, now we have to help each other here!

The child's look just grazed me, she started squirming ferociously. Her glass of cooldrink fell from the table, shattered on the floor, a chair capsized.

Never mind, you said, it doesn't matter.

Your mother appeared in the doorway, small and old there in the door.

Sorry, Ounooi, excuse, Ounooi, Lys said, on her knees with the scoop and the broom and the floor-cloth, very subservient, but with a venomous set of the mouth. I'll clean everything nicely, Ounooi.

You put an arm around your mother's shoulder and accompanied her some way down the passage.

Sorry about the ruckus, you said.

Ai Milla, my dear child . . .

My dear child, you thought, must I figure in a Greek tragedy before you can call me your ‘dear child'?

She turned away and opened the linen cupboard in the passage.

You'd better clean up that little one before you load her into the car.

She fished out a little worn towel from the cupboard and with a sharp yank tore it in two and pressed the two halves into your hands.

One for washing, she said, and one for drying.

When you got back to the backyard you found them standing outside next to the water tank.

You talked past Lys who was waiting arms akimbo.

Maria, I'm taking the child to Grootmoedersdrift and I, my husband and I, we'll look after her. What's her name?

You felt Lys's eyes sliding over your face. You didn't want to look at her, but she was the one who replied.

She doesn't really have a name, we call her Gat, Asgat, because she sits with her arse in the ash in the fireplace all the time. She won't wear a panty.

She won't want for anything, you said. Either you give her over into my care or your days are numbered here on Goedbegin. There's quite enough reason to fire the whole lot of you. You squat on the ounooi's back and mess with one another and don't pull your weight. You go home now and leave her here, the ounooi and I will manage from here on and the kleinbaas will be here just now. I'll phone the police and report that Joppie beats his wife so that they can be prepared if there's trouble again. The ounooi knows what's going on and she now knows what to do if he or Dakkie or Hekkie misbehaves any more. Is that clear?