Another Woman's Daughter (4 page)

As our feet hurried over familiar ground, I replayed the scene in my head, hoping for something, anything, to relieve me of the burden I now carried. But my load simply grew heavier, and my powerlessness more real. Nothing could change what had happened. I had been helpless to hide the horror. And in just a handful of minutes, my child's innocence had been stolen.

The window had misted up and the room felt airless. Even though the door stood ajar, the night was still and offered little relief.

“Miriam.”

She looked up, her beetle-brown eyes meeting mine.

I paused, wrestling with what was waiting to be spoken, then I broke into Tshivenda, my native tongue, and the difficult words slipped more easily into the space between us.

“Miriam, would you like to go on a holiday?”

She tilted her head.

I focused on her shiny, rounded forehead, avoiding her questioning eyes. “To a special place over the sea.”

I had never seen the sea, though I knew its taste; I knew its smell. On my request, the Steiners often brought me back a bottle of seawater from their travels. Just uncorking it would release the magic of nature's
muti
—the wind and salt and healing secrets
.

Miriam picked up Tendani, the rag doll I'd made from old orange bags stuffed with newspaper. She pulled at a loose thread and the doll's face began to unravel.

“Why?”

I tried to silence the screaming inside my head. I had one chance to convince her. She was a willful child—more so than her brothers. Once she had made up her mind, there was no persuading Miriam otherwise.

I sucked in a deep breath. “The Master and Madam want to take you to England.”

Her eyes grew wide. She knew about England from the Master's dinnertime stories.

“Where the queen lives?”

I nodded.

“The one with jewels?”

“The one with jewels,” I said too loudly.

Miriam's face was still painted with the darkness of that afternoon.

“You'll have your own bedroom,” I said quickly.

“I don't want my own—”

“And you'll be able to go to school with other children.” I knew how much she longed for this. “One day, if you work hard, you might even become a teacher like
Mudedekadzi
Mafela.”

She stood up. “I want to be a doctor like the Madam.”

Little mountains crumbled inside me. “Or a doctor,” I said quietly, taking her hand as she balanced on the edge of the bed. The light was seeping back into her eyes.

“Okay,
Mme
,” she said and, without any warning, leapt into my arms.

I staggered backward, and we both tumbled onto the floor, laughing. As I lay there, her tiny body a wisp of cloud on top of me, I should have felt some relief. I had managed to persuade her to go. But I felt no such satisfaction.

She pushed my nose flat with her fingers.

“Will we still sleep in the same bed?”

My throat tightened.

“Mbila,”
I said, my voice faltering, “I must stay here. Who will look after my mother, your
makhulu
? Who will keep an eye on your brothers?”

“Oh,” she said, pulling back to scrutinize me.

“But you will come back soon,” I said, allowing the truth to lose its way. “Then we will stay up long after even the owls have gone to bed, and you will tell me all about your adventures.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” she cried, bounding off my lap onto the bed again, the weary bedsprings creaking and groaning under her excitement. “
Mme
, does the queen have only one crown, or does she have lots?”

It was then, with that simple question, that I first glimpsed the enormous toll Africa was about to exact from me.

December 1960

Celia

The Steiners had decided. The day before they were due to leave Africa, I would leave Saxonwold, telling Miriam I was going to visit her granny and brothers in the Northern Transvaal. I would return to Johannesburg, and my new job, after they had left for England.

As soon as this decision had been made, time hurried forward like a shepherd returning from the hills, and it wasn't long before the last Sunday was upon us.

For one final time Miriam and I made our way through the suburbs on our well-worn path to salvation. I shunned the company of others as we walked, Miriam's small hand in mine, her warmth pulsing against my fingers.

She did not run ahead to explore, nor chatter much at my side. And even before I had chided her for dragging her Sunday
shoes in the dust, her bubbly exuberance seemed to have disappeared.

In church I did not take my eyes off her, chiseling her face into my memory and trying to imagine how it would grow and change. I breathed in the sweet smell of her young skin, bottling it like seawater in my mind, and only mouthed the hymns so I could hear her pure and cloudless voice more clearly in my head.

That night I could not eat, but I was hungry for every detail of my daughter—her every movement, her every breath. As she chewed and swallowed and prattled, I tried to hold on to it all.

She devoured the piece of steak I'd bought from the white man's butchery in Parkwood, then she took a chunk of bread, mopped up the gravy pooled in the corner of her dish, and stuffed the entire piece into her mouth in one go.

Seeing her little cheeks bulge around it reminded me of a picture I had once seen in her book
The Little Prince.
It was the drawing of a snake after it had eaten an elephant whole. I couldn't help smiling. Miriam had that way about her; she could bring light into the darkest of places.

Then our last night together had passed and I was standing on the steps outside my room watching the sun climb up over a charcoal dawn. Soon the sky was clothed in a pale, cloudless blue—a blue that would deepen over the day to match the kingfisher's bold coat. The dew would dry; the cool breath of morning would be stilled; an orchestra of insects would build to a parched crescendo. Bright blooms would open. A cricket would struggle on its back somewhere in the dirt, unable to right itself, and by evening would be dead. These things I knew as surely
as I knew my name. There was nothing extraordinary about the day that lay ahead. It was just another day in Africa.

—

My taxi arrived early, the wide, turquoise Valiant sagging over an already shimmering road. I wondered where my luggage would fit, so laden was the car with cargo—cardboard cartons and enormous plastic holdalls secured to the roof with reams of fraying rope, and four laughing ladies packed into the backseat as tightly as mangoes in a crate.

The driver was a cheerful fellow, with Malawi-black skin and an orange-segment grin boasting the occasional tooth. When he clambered out of the driver's seat, the car rose several feet.

With the help of the other passengers, I squeezed my bags into the already crammed boot—two rotund ladies using their combined weight to squash the past nine years of my life into the small space remaining.

With my belongings attended to, I turned toward my child. She was standing in front of the house, framed on either side by a Steiner.

I wanted to be alone with her. I wanted to push the two white people out of the picture, grab my daughter's small black hand, and run. I closed my arms around her, pressing her warm, wriggling body to mine.

“
Mme
, I can't breathe.”

“Ni sale zwavhudi,”
I whispered
. “
Go well, my child. God bless you, my last born, my shining star. May God watch over you on your big adventure.” Then I let go.

“Now don't you go worrying about her,” the Madam said, her face loosening. “She will be absolutely fine.”

As I turned, the Master lunged forward and clumsily grabbed my hand.

“We will look after her, Celia. I promise.”

I nodded and, as if under a
nganga
's spell, moved toward the gate.

“Bye,
Mme
! Bye!”

Climbing into the front seat of the Valiant, I heaved the door closed. The car started with a growl and then we were moving.

I did not allow the tears to come until we had turned the corner and I could no longer see Miriam's small pink and black hand waving, waving, waving.

—

It was a long journey back to my homeland—ten hours squashed inside the hot, loud taxi. Yet I was glad for the discomfort and distraction; it kept my mind moving and stopped my thoughts from separating out and settling.

It should have been a six-hour ride, but the car was so overloaded we struggled to pick up speed. Then, just outside Potgietersrus, we got a flat tire.

Everyone had to pile out of the car and unpack the boot in order for the driver to get at the spare tire. While he struggled to jack up the car, I pulled out my Primus stove and boiled up a pot of tea with some of the water he kept for cooling the radiator. The hot, sweet drink helped smooth some of the creases in that awful day and helped our driver find his sense of humor again.

One of the other passengers, a boisterous woman called Grace, had brought a tin of bully beef and tub of cold
mielie pap
with her; I had two oranges and an opened can of condensed milk, which luckily the ants had not yet discovered; and the driver found a packet of Tennis biscuits stashed in his glove box. We pooled our provisions and had a picnic right there in the dry yellow grass on the edge of the highway north.

“Why are you traveling to Louis Trichardt, sister?” Grace asked as we drank our tea.

“I'm going to visit my chil—” I stopped. Children—the meaning of that word had changed. I could no longer pronounce it. It felt small and incomplete in my mouth.

“I am going to visit my mother.”

I dozed for the rest of the journey, always glad to wake to the noisy chatter and unending stretch of road. We drove into Louis Trichardt just before midnight. An hour later I was making my way down the familiar dirt track to my mother's hut, buried deep in the dark blue night.

I pushed on the front door and it creaked open. The hut was in darkness.

A chirruping cricket and my mother's rumbling snores interrupted the blackness. I breathed in the smell of cow dung, bushveld, and family. Strangely, though, it did not satisfy. The peace that would always swathe me on my return to the tiny
rondavel
in the hills now eluded me. I had been returning home every year since the age of fifteen, yet this time it felt different.

Leaving my bags at the door, I crept through the room, past the shadows of my three boys—Christian, Nelson, and Alfred—their dark bodies longer and leaner than I remembered. Three
pairs of feet poked out from under sheets that had once covered smaller boys' bodies. I ran my fingers lightly over their toes, but the reply of their skin was like nails driven into my hand.

I almost resented my sons for being there, their presence making Miriam's absence more real. At that moment nothing but Miriam mattered. God had given me a daughter and I had given her away.
I
had made the decision. Words had been easy to manipulate in my mind, but in real life . . .

I slipped onto the mattress I would share with my mother and lay there, looking out of the window at the navy sky clothed in stars. The ground was still swaying beneath me like the taxi chassis. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a moth snag its wing in the sweep of a spider's web. Dazed, the moth swung loosely in the moonlight, then began to flap its free wing, frantically trying to escape the spider's sticky silver trap, each jerk and shudder only entangling it further. I scanned the ceiling for the spider.

There it was, its swollen black body tucked into a corner.

Fear climbed up my throat and my heart began to flap about inside my chest like the trapped moth. I sat up, hungry for air, and whispered out loud the Steiners' last words to me.

We will write often.
I had already asked Philemon if he would read to me the letters that would come.
We will send photographs. In about a year we'll bring Miriam home for a visit. She'll be fine, I promise.

Like a punctured balloon, the certainty of these words shriveled and shrank. Could I wait for that first letter? Could I live through an entire summer and winter before seeing my child again? How would I fill the emptiness?

My mother stirred on the mattress beside me. I looked over at her aging body—her strong arms, her ridged fingernails, her collapsed breasts. For as long as I could remember she had lived in this valley, under this sky, never too far from my reach. Now Miriam lay somewhere under the same canopy of stars, but beyond my grasp.

Then, like a donkey's tail, my mind swung to the other side, and I was chiding myself for being weak. I had to be strong. I had done this for my daughter. My gift to her. The promise of a new and better life. There could be no room for selfishness.

Alfred cried out in his sleep and in an instant I was standing at his bedside ready to comfort him. He was my youngest son, yet I knew so little about him. What games did he like to play? Which songs made him giggle? Who was his best friend?

He'd been a colicky, clingy baby, and I'd had to send him home to my mother earlier than I had done with the others. He called me
Mme
, but I knew it was his
makhulu
he truly loved. She had been the one to cradle and caress him, to rub his small back when mischievous spirits toyed with his dreams.

I hurried from the room into the brisk black night and was sick, spewing my pain over the cracked red earth.

December 1960

Miriam

The sheets on my new bed were as soft as tissues, and I slipped in and out of them a few times just to feel their coolness against my skin. But soon they became all warm and wrinkly. It was a very big bed and I had to hold on to the pillow to stop myself from disappearing down it, like Alice down that hole. I pulled the top sheet up under my nose. It smelled funny—different from the smoky blanket
Mme
and I lay under at night.

Mme
had made the bed up for me in the spare room before she left. It hadn't been an easy job; there wasn't much space to spare with all the boxes of furniture for the holiday stored in it. I wondered why there was no furniture where the queen lived.

Mme
had kept clicking her tongue and shaking her head as she'd wrestled with the sheets. Then big drops of water had trickled down her cheeks. I'd never seen her get so upset over a tricky job before.

The boxes made scary shadows on the walls and I was glad when the Master put his head around the door. He started laughing when he saw me. I giggled too, though I wasn't really sure what we were laughing about.

“How's my lucky bean?” he asked, sitting down beside me.

I liked lucky beans. A tree in the garden grew the skinny black pods. If you cracked one open you'd find a row of pumpkin-colored beans tucked into a long bed like well-behaved children. Every bean had a thin black saddle around its tummy.
Mme
said the beans brought good luck. I'd often collect them to trade with Sipho, because there were no lucky beans in Orlando.

“Would you like me to read you a story?” the Master asked.

“Yes, please, Master.”

“How about you call me Michael, eh?”

“Yes, Master. I mean . . . Yes, Master Michael.”

We both started to laugh again. This time I understood why. It was definitely hard trying to call the Master a new name, and I had to think very carefully about my words every time after that. “Master” just knew its way out of my mouth.

Then the Madam came into the room. At least she didn't ask me to call her something different. “It's half past eight, Miriam, and I think you should be getting off to sleep.”

“I was just going to read to her a bit, Reet,” said the Master quickly.

I was glad he'd remembered that.

“I think we should get into a routine right from the start,” the Madam said, patting the side of my bed. “A well-slept child is a happy child.”

I didn't know what a routine was, but it sounded bad, especially if it meant no stories.

“Just a little read, eh?” the Master said, winking at me.

I tried to wink back, but I couldn't without shutting both my eyes.

The Madam chuckled. “All right, then, just a quick one.” She bent down to give me a kiss on the cheek. I didn't like the feel of her lips on my skin; they were floppy and wet and not at all like
Mme
's soft, tickly kisses.

“Good night, Miriam,” she said. “Sleep well. Tomorrow is a big, big day. Are you excited?”

“Ooh, yes, Madam. Very.”

I
was
excited, but I was also a bit scared. Master said we were going to fly over the sea on a big bird. I hoped we weren't going to fall off.

“Michael, remember to put out the rubbish now Celia's gone,” the Madam said, switching off the main light to leave us trapped in a small circle of light from the bedside lamp.

Hearing
Mme
's name made me miss her. I wanted to snuggle up to her under our big blanket, just like we always did. But before I could say anything, Master Michael had opened
The Wind in the Willows
, and soon I was sliding toward sleep with Toad and Badger for company
.

—

The shuttle bus shuddered and stopped, throwing me against a wall of legs and arms. The Madam caught me just in time. Then the glass doors were sliding open and all the shoes, skirts, trousers, and handbags were pushing to get out.

We waited for the bus to empty before stepping onto the tarmac. A hot wind was gusting, orange lights were flashing, and everywhere machines buzzed, whirred, and beeped. The air smelled just like the inside of Michael's workshop—of rubber, lawnmower fuel, grease, and ground metal.

I sucked in a big breath. “Look, Michael!”

Spread over us was the wing of a giant silver bird. The Madam had shown me a picture of one and I'd seen them flying overhead—tiny gray insects glinting in the sky. I could never understand how they went straight through clouds and not around them.

But this bird wasn't as small as an insect; it was as big as a Johannesburg building tipped on its side. Sipho would never believe me. The wings were straight and stiff, and I couldn't imagine how they were going to be able to flap properly. Before I could ask Michael about this, he took my hand and we followed the Madam up a steep, wobbly staircase.

At the very top, Michael stopped and turned. The wind had made his eyes water.

“Good-bye,” he said, waving. I followed his gaze, though all I could see was a mango-orange sun melting in the sky and the long strip of road the bird was going to run along before taking flight.

Tears started trickling down Michael's cheeks, just like
Mme
's when she'd made up the bed for me in the spare room. It seemed as if all the grown-ups were crying lately. Maybe a witch doctor had put a crying curse on all the big people.

“Michael, I want
mme anga—
my
mme
.”

I don't think he heard me. Either the people pushing past us or the wind, or maybe the
tokoloshe
, had stolen my words.

Michael tugged at me gently, and we stepped inside the belly of the big, big bird.

—

“‘Welcome to Norwich,'” Michael read aloud.

“And not a moment too soon,” the Madam grumbled.

The windows of the car had steamed up and I was tracing pictures on the glass with my gloved fingers. I peered through the stripes of clear glass, my eyes searching for somewhere to stop. There were no edges or angles to land on, no color to catch me. My eyes just kept on going, sliding over the never-ending white. Someone had thrown a huge sheet over the world, covering everything in a soft, quiet whiteness.

Our car lights swung into an empty driveway. In the glare stood a little house with two droopy-eye windows, a red-nose door, and a thin gray balcony of mouth. I didn't like the look of this house. I don't think it liked me either.

“Here at last!” Michael said, pulling up the handbrake. “The rental agent's probably been and gone.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “She said if we were delayed she'd leave the key under the mat.”

“We're hardly late,” muttered the Madam.

“At least she's left some lights on,” Michael said, opening my door.

I was wearing a bright pink woolen scarf, a pair of gloves with red and black ladybirds on the fingers, a vest,
and
an itchy yellow jumper, but still I was cold. My body kept shaking without any instruction from me.

The three of us climbed the four concrete stairs to the front door. As Michael opened it, I peered down a cold blue runway of carpet into the narrow, gloomy passageway.

“Come on, then. Let's see what we have here,” Michael said, stepping inside.

The Madam switched on some lamps, though they were shy to share their glow and cast stingy rounds of light on the walls.

Someone had been drawing on the walls—a brown swirly pattern.
Mme
would have been very angry. There were a few pictures hanging on the walls too, but I didn't recognize any of the people in them. There was also a dusty glass cabinet on my left, or maybe it was my right (the white mark on my left pinkie nail had disappeared, making it really hard to tell left from right), and imprisoned inside were lots of tiny figures: a lady with big blue hair playing the piano, a glass dove, a pink horse with a horn coming out of its nose . . .

“God, it's freezing in here,” the Madam said, slapping her gloved hands together.

I copied her. This made her laugh, which was good, because she hadn't laughed very much since we'd left Saxonwold.

“Don't worry, I'll have it warm in no time,” Michael said, dropping our bags and switching on a heater. Soon it started to creak and groan. Michael said the noise was just the oil heating up, but I didn't believe him. It sounded as if someone was locked inside and trying to get out.

After a while, the air in the house started to smell strong and bitter, the dust on the heater burning. There was so much dust in the house I knew for sure
Mme
hadn't been there.

I took some toilet paper from the bathroom and started to wipe down the furniture.

“Don't be doing that, Miriam,” the Madam said, taking the paper from me. “Why don't you go and explore a bit?”

So I wandered through this strange holiday house with drawings on the walls, crazy creatures in the cabinets, and heaters that moaned and groaned. I was tired, my legs were slow and grumpy, and my head hurt. My tummy also felt funny—as if there were a hundred beetles buzzing around inside me.

Michael scurried back and forth, carrying in suitcases and supermarket bags from the car, while the Madam directed him this way and that, just as she always did with
Mme.
“Put it in here. God, I'm getting a migraine. Can you get my toiletries bag from the car? Don't forget the milk in the boot. We need to find the linen, Michael. What did the agent say about the linen?”

Someone had left the back door open, so I slipped out into the still, white garden. The air had no smell. Nothing. The section was steep and rose up from a small, bricked patio. I scrambled up the bank, leaving behind me a trail of crunchy, white footprints. At the fence I stopped. My throat was stinging. Then . . .

“Michael! Master Michael, fire!” I screamed, sliding back down the bank and sprinting toward the kitchen.

I collided with Michael coming out the back door.

“What is it, Miriam? Stop! Talk to me. Where's the fire?”

But I couldn't get any words out; the
tokoloshe
had tied up my tongue. So I just waved my arms and pointed at my mouth.

Michael lifted me up. “Miriam, speak to me. Slowly. Now, what is wrong?”

“In me,” I managed. “The
tokoloshe
is here. Look, Master Michael.” A cloud of smoke tumbled from my mouth. I was on fire.

The crumpled skin on Michael's forehead smoothed and his worried mouth turned into a wide, laughing smile. He laughed and laughed and all the while the
tokoloshe
kept stoking the coals inside me. Only when I began to cry did Michael finally stop.

“Dear child,” he gasped, wiping his eyes. “It's not the
tokoloshe
. It's your warm breath meeting the cold air for the very first time. They've never met—and you've never been this cold before, have you?”

I shook my head, confused.

He blew a breath into the evening air and a ball of silver smoke rolled out of
his
pink mouth. “You won't have had a snowball fight either,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. He put me down, gathered up a fistful of snow, and crushed it over me.

I squealed as the cold confetti fell into my hair.

“Well?” Michael said, already running away. “Aren't you going to get me back?”

I sank my hands into the freezing powder.

My first snowball hit him on the back of his head. Then lots of snowballs were flying. It was war!

“Enough, I beg of you,” Michael finally pleaded. I was standing over him, threatening another bombardment.

I threw my last icy ball against a tree and lay down beside him on the frozen ground.

“Next thing we have to do,” he said, pushing up on an elbow to look at me, “is make an angel.”

“An angel?”

He started swooshing his arms and legs up and down in the snow as if doing star jumps on his back. He didn't look like an angel, but I didn't want to say so, because he was trying really hard. Then he stood up. Sunken into the snow was an imprint of a Christmas angel. It was beautiful. I made a whole family of angels before we finally went inside.

After I'd had a mug of warm Horlicks and two digestive biscuits, sleep started to slip its soft glove over me. I wasn't even in bed yet, but my eyes were already closing on their own.

“Go find Rita and get some pajamas on, then it's off to bed with you,” Michael said. “It has been quite a day, young lady.”

I wandered through the dark house in my cold, wet clothes, until I found the Madam unpacking her suitcase in the dim light of her new bedroom.

“Madam Rita.”

“Yes, Miriam?” She glanced up, her tired eye smaller than the other.

“Thank you, but now I must go home,” I said.

She stopped. “This
is
home, Miriam. Your
new
home.”

“No. I must go to my
mme
.”

She straightened, her lip curling to one side. “Come now. Your time with us has barely begun. Just you wait and see how much fun we're going to have.” She patted the bed, beckoning me to sit down beside her open suitcase. “This house isn't very nice, I know, but we'll only be here for a short time until we find one to buy.” She took my hand in hers. “What you need is a nice hot bath, then straight to bed. Michael shouldn't have let you play outside for so long. You're frozen, poor child.”

I shook my head, my teeth chattering in my head. “I'm not cold, Madam Rita. Can I go home?”

She looked straight at me, her small eye growing bigger. “Now, I don't want to hear any more of that, Miriam.” Then she went over to the door. “Where
has
Michael got to, anyway? Michael!”

She peeled off my damp clothes and wrapped me in a towel. I sat shivering on her bed while she drew me a bath. She called for Michael again, and when he didn't appear, she sat down beside me. That was when she said those awful words.