Tandia (12 page)

For a long time afterwards Tandia lay in Sarah's arms, her body filled with the warmth of loving. Even after her breathing had quietened down she wanted to lie there long enough to be able to fold her feeling into an emotional envelope she could store in her subconscious against hard times.

Sarah stirred. 'Go now, Tandy, when they laugh at you in school, jus' remember, you a proper woman now, you know things they don't know, they can't do nothing to hurt you, they all stupid girls in their brown gymslips, you hear?' Juicey Fruit was waiting for her in the kitchen and when she arrived he sat her down at the head of the table and placed a plate of steaming mealiemeal porridge in front of her, pushing the milk jug and the sugar closer to it, fussing like an old umFazi. Next he brought Tandia two pieces of already buttered toast.

'Thank you, Juicey Fruit Mambo.' Tandia was not used to being waited upon.

'You very beautiful today, Missy Tandy.' Tandia was unable to look Juicey Fruit Mambo in the eye lest she betray her feeling about the bright pink gymslip. 'You too, Juicey Fruit Mambo.'

Juicey Fruit had on a pink shirt and a red bow tie and he wore two gold sleeve bands just above the elbows. The creases in his black trousers were perfect and his black shoes were highly polished. He was obviously pleased that Tandia had noticed his careful colour co-ordination and his gold incisor teeth shone as he smiled at her. 'Mama T she give to me dis shirt, long, long time ago, it is very beautiful I tink.'

They left Bluey Jay at half past seven. Tandia was very quiet sitting next to Juicey Fruit Mambo in the front of the Packard. He had tried to make her sit in the back but she had protested which, in the end, seemed to please him. As they were coming down from the Berea towards the port Juicey Fruit Mambo glanced at her. 'Missy Tandia, why for you are not happy for going to school?'

Tandia bit her lip, but a tear ran down her cheek as she stared resolutely through the windscreen. 'Juicey Fruit Mambo, he also very sad when you not happy today.' He glanced at her. 'Why you cry, Missy Tandy?'

Tandia could contain herself no longer. 'Ag, Juicey Fruit Mambo, you can't understand this thing. In the school the clothes the girls must wear is brown,' she plucked at her gymfrock. 'Like this but only brown.'

'But pink more pretty than brown?'

'Ja, I know, but they don't allow it. I'm going to get into terrible trouble and everyone will laugh at me!' She covered her face with her hands.

Juicey Fruit Mambo drew the car to a halt at the kerb. 'Missy Tandy, Mama Tequila she spend much, much money for dis clothes for your school. Dey not laugh for dis clothes, Missy Tandy. Dis clothes is for new!'

Tandia realised that he was deeply worried by her distress but was quite unable to comprehend the significance the colour of her gymslip and blouse had. 'You are right,' she said. 'Come now, we must go or I'll be late.'

Juicey Fruit Mambo pulled away from the kerb; he knew the matter remained unresolved, there were some things about women which he could never hope to understand, and it was better not to try. He guided the big Packard smoothly through the narrow back streets and finally turned into Prichard Street, drawing up outside the school gates. He suddenly saW what Tandia had meant. Hundreds of girls were milling around the playground and moving through the gates; all wore identical clothes, a brown gymslip, white blouse, short white socks, brown shoes and a brown beret. He put the car into gear and started to turn the steering wheel so when a gap in the traffic arrived he could move off. He had no idea what to do except he knew he couldn't leave Tandia to go in alone in her pink uniform. 'What you doing, Juicey Fruit Mambo? I must get out here.'

'No, Missy Tandy…' His voice was cut short by an urgent banging on the window on Tandia's side of the car. They both turned to see Sonny Vindoo looking at them. He carried a big brown package under his arm and indicated that Tandia should roll down the window.

'Nearly I am missing you! Let me get in the back.' He opened the back door of the Packard and jumped in. 'My very clever son, University of Bombay, B.A. Degree honours, businessman and also photographer, his business is in Pickering Street, it is two minutes, no more, we must go there now.' He passed the parcel over the back of the front seat to Tandia, 'Open please!' he said happily, leaning forward to look over her shoulder.

Juicey Fruit swung into the traffic as Tandia pulled the string which held the large flat parcel together. The parcel contained a new brown gymslip, white blouse and a slightly worn brown beret. Sonny Vindoo giggled. 'I make these for you, Miss Tandy and also, the beret, which I am not making, it is left over from my daughter when she attended this excellent school.'

Tandia burst into tears. 'Please, please, no time for tears now, must change blinking, jolly quick!' He turned to Juicey Fruit Mambo. 'You must turn here, see the shop, "Singer &

Necchi Sewing Centre'".

'I know this place, baas,' Juicey Fruit Mambo said. He had a huge grin on his face and his gold incisors flashed as he shared in Tandia's happiness.

The car drew to a halt outside a small shop. On either side of the doorway were display windows; on the one appeared the Singer Sewing Machine logo and on the other the Necchi. Painted under each imprimatur were the words,

'Sole Agency.' Several sewing machines of each brand were displayed in their respective windows. In the centre of each window set on a small easel was a large photograph. On one rested a portrait of a prosperous-looking Indian man hand-tinted in the old-fashioned manner, while on the other was a full-length colour photograph of a bridal couple. Above the door was a third sign which read: 'Jamal Vindoo - Photographer, Wedding and Family Portraits. Colour or Hand-Tinted. Apply Rear of Building.' An arrow pointed away from the door to a small lane running down the side of the building. It was a nice tidy little shop.

Sonny Vindoo jumped from the back of the car and hoisted up his dhoti. 'Come, Miss Tandy, hurry please!'

Tandia gathered up the parcel on her lap, got out of the car and followed Sonny Vindoo up the front steps of the shop. A young man appeared at the doorway but the little Indian pushed him aside. 'Good mornings later, Jamal!' Sonny Vindoo shouted. 'To the change room!' Tandia smiled through her tears at Jamal, whom she took to be Sonny Vindoo's Bombay-educated son, and who stood aside as she followed Sonny Vindoo into a shop which was filled with the whirring of sewing machines. At their entrance, several woman seated at the machines ceased sewing and looked up from their work. Sonny Vindoo crossed the room making for a bright orange floral curtain which hung across one corner. As he reached the curtain he held it apart. 'In here, Miss Tandy, I am waiting outside, doing guard duty.' He scowled through his steel-rimmed spectacles at the grinning seamstresses as though to indicate to them that he would not tolerate any interference or even comment.

Tandia found herself in a small store room filled with bolts of men's suiting and bright lengths of dress material. There was just enough room for her to stand. 'Thank you, thank you, Mr Vindoo!'

'No time for thank yous! You must hurry now, please. Any minute the school bell is clanking, then, my goodness, where shall we be then? We shall be up the bloomin Khyber Pass!' Sonny Vindoo fussed and drew the curtain back across the doorway.

Tandia changed quickly. There were no white socks included in the parcel, but she regarded this as a small matter. She couldn't take the grin off her face, she, was saved! Mr Dine-o-mite had ridden to the rescue and at the same time had allowed Mama Tequila to save face.

She emerged from behind the curtains looking just like any other Durban Indian High School girl. 'Over her arm she carried her pink outfit. Even her socks looked no worse than as if they'd been accidently left to soak in a bucket with some red garment which had run.

Sonny Vindoo looked her up and down admiringly and silently congratulated himself. 'Not so pretty as before, but I think you are feeling much better, hey, Miss Tandy? It is a very great pity we do not have time for Jamal to take your photograph!'

Tandia bent down impulsively and kissed the little man. He'd come out without shaving and the white stubble on his cheek felt like sandpaper against her lips. Kissing anyone was something she could not previously have imagined herself capable of doing, but after Sarah's room this morning everything was changed; she was loved and a woman now, and different.

Like Sonny Vindoo on a Wednesday evening, Miss Tandy was a different Tandia Patel. 'Mr Vindoo, I will pay you back, I swear it!' She sighed and grinned and wanted to hug him again and again.

'It is my great personal pleasure,' Sonny Vindoo said and then, glancing at his watch, added in a panic, 'Come, come, we must hurry like blazes!' as he made for the door of the shop. 'Farewells later!' he yelled at Jamal as he disappeared into the bright sunlight outside.

Juicey Fruit Mambo was seated behind the wheel of the Packard, the engine of the big car running and the door on Tandia's side open for her to jump in for a quick getaway.

Parked directly behind him was Abdulla in Sonny Vindoo's Chevrolet, who had tran-sil-meddle-tated from nowhere.

Living in a brothel soon became a normal way of life for Tandia. Bluey Jay represented a grand step up for her; the dark little shed with its earth floor and constant smell of paraffin from the lamp which had been her only source of light at night was replaced by her own brightly-lit room with its divan bed and chenille bedspread, dresser, wardrobe and small painted table and chair where she did her homework. From her window she looked out into the branches of a huge old wild fig tree which had stood for a hundred years before Bluey Jay was built. One branch grew so close she could have climbed out onto it, and looking through its leaves seen the glint of the river bordering Mama Tequila's property and the five grass huts of the small African village resting beside it.

After her recovery Tandia often walked through the hills surrounding Bluey Jay with Juicey Fruit Mambo. At first she had been appalled by the open space and the vast domed sky above her. Even the soft rustle of wind through the tall summer grass made her nervous, and the sudden blurr and whirr of a covey of quail rising in front of her would send her terrified into the arms of Juicey Fruit Mambo. Juicey Fruit Mambo, who came from a Zulu village close to the high mountains of the Drakensberg, was patient with her and tried hard not to laugh at her city ways. He told himself that he too could remember when, as a country boy, he had first seen the city with its hard, square surfaces; even the trees along the roads stood in circles cut from the concrete hardness and the air came down from the same blueness he had always known but seemed stale and stifling, and the people around him had lost the calmness in their faces. It had been as daunting to him as the countryside now seemed to Tandia. After a while he would see that she was gaining confidence and would jump from one rock to another or stoop to pick a flower or ask him the name of a bird which sang in the green kloofs of tree fern and monkey vine that grew in the creases and folds of the foothills.

Mama Tequila, despite her seemingly benign exterior, ran a strictly ordered establishment where the rules were disobeyed at one's own risk. As she well knew, girls who make their living on their backs have a tendency towards indulgence in food, wine, pills and Mary Jane, which was her name for
boom
or marijuana. Mama Tequila needed her girls alive and kicking when they turned a trick and the 'trick zombies' who worked the dockside BB-TMs were not a part of Bluey Jay. To work for Mama Tequila a girl had to be able to please a man, not simply with her body, but with her entire presence.

At eleven o'clock every Sunday morning all the girls would meet in the kitchen for brunch. It was Josie the cook's day off, and Mama Tequila took pride in serving the repast herself.

She would be up quite early on a Sunday morning baking bread and scones so that Bluey Jay on the sabbath always smelled of furniture polish, fresh-baked bread and brewed coffee. Her speciality was the omelette, and she would prepare her mixture in advance, thickening it with fresh cream and dusting it with finely chopped parsley. Then she'd carefully remove the rind and cut out the white strips of fat from the crispy bacon which she served with her eggs. Mama Tequila might have been fat herself, but she knew that a good brothel can afford only one fat ride. In the case of Bluey Jay this was Hester, who, anyway, was more plump than fat and whose diet Mama Tequila watched like a hawk.

Mama Tequila called these Sunday morning meetings, 'chew the fat chats,' an expression which might have spilled over from her Mae West pose into her everyday language. Chew the fat chats were as close to democracy as Bluey Jay came. It was at these times that the girls could discuss the house with Mama Tequila, bring out any problems they might have with a regular client, or ask her considerable advice on the ways of mice and men.

Mama Tequila had been blessed with a limited talent as a singer and in her youth when she wasn't at the bioscope picking up what she thought of as Black American language, she used to sit around in bars waiting for a singing gig. She liked to dance and she liked a drink and she was just sufficiently light-skinned to pass for white in a nightclub. She also discovered before she was Tandia's age that men couldn't keep their hands off her. The rest, as they say in the classics, just came naturally and she was retired as a chanteuse and on the game full time before she was nineteen.

There was very little Mama Tequila didn't know about men and nothing about them that she trusted, unless it was the wilfulness of their one-eyed snakes. She'd had a hundred or more affairs with men in her life and none of them had turned out well. Mama Tequila knew how to make money out of men but men always seemed to end up making a monkey out of her.

At sixty-five she'd given up hope of being loved without being robbed and purchased Bluey Jay. The year she'd taken off to repair and restore the beautiful old house had seen her also fall in love again, this time with the thing she had created. Now, five years later, she was running the prettiest and, some said, the best whorehouse in the Southern Hemisphere.

On Sunday mornings Tandia often rose early to help Mama Tequila in the kitchen. At Bluey Jay everyone worked for their living and this included Tandia. Mama Tequila kept her promise to Or Louis and Tandia was kept on her feet at all times doing her share to keep the house running smoothly.

Juicey Fruit picked Tandia up from school at three o'clock and they were back at Bluey Jay by a quarter to four. She was then allowed an hour or so for homework. At five o'clock she took over from Josie the cook or one of the girls as room maid. She would replace the bottom sheet and clean the wash basin, placing fresh towels beside it after each client. Tandia would work from five in the evening until half past nine, when she was packed off to bed and the other girls took over as room maids again until one in the morning, when the house closed.

On Saturdays, Bluey Jay only opened at half past six in the evening and Tandia was required to work through until closing. With the boys from the boats invading Bluey Jay, the joint would be jumping from early evening, and every hand was needed. Two coloured women also came out from Durban around five and worked with Tandia to keep the linen changed and the rooms clean. After Bluey Jay had closed down for the night, the two ladies would sleep in the servants' quarters at the back of the house and Juicey Fruit Mambo would take them back to town on Sunday morning when he drove Sarah to early Mass.

The chew the fat chats had made Tandia an expert in the theory of how to make a man happy, and Mama Tequila referred to her as the 'wise young, virgin'. Mama Tequila saw no point in not exposing her to the finer details of the game. Tandia was a coloured girl, though a very clever one, and the more she knew about life, the better she might be at surviving it. The life of a high-class whore for a girl with a coloured skin was a damn sight better than most and Tandia had the looks and brains to go right to the top. Mama Tequila had very little time for dumb, lazy women and she demanded the highest standards from the eight she employed at Bluey Jay. 'Whores with a future' was how she described them.

Hester liked the idea of being a whore with a future. She was a back-slidden Pentecostal and it worried her a lot. Before she became a whore she'd worked in a fish factory, scaling and filleting fish and packing the fillets into trays of crushed ice. She had suffered from permanent chilblains and it was here, in the freezing fish hall standing up to her ankles in water, where she had first developed nasal polyps. For her efforts Hester had earned five pounds a week with overtime. The only thing she had going for her was her skill with a filleting knife and the fact that God loved her; as a born-again Christian she was absolutely, positively guaranteed a place in heaven.

It was an evangelical chorus much favoured by Pastor Mulvery, the new preacher at the Assembly of God mission hall she attended that finally decided her destiny.

I will make you fishers of men,

fishers of men,

fishers of men.

I will make you fishers of men,

if you only follow me!

Hester finally realised in the middle of singing this dumb chorus one Sunday morning that Jesus Christ had recruited mostly fishermen as his disciples. Which meant that somewhere on the shores of Galilee there had to be a fish factory where they dumped their catch for girls like her to clean and pack. Working in a fish factory with Jesus Christ as the foreman wasn't Hester's idea of heaven and so she'd become a whore, which seemed much the more intelligent option when you had enormous boobs which even the pastor couldn't take his eyes off during prayer meetings. She'd open her eyes in the middle of all the 'Hallelujahs' and 'Praise the Lords' and see him looking straight at them, his eyes almost standing out on stalks! So when Mama Tequila described Hester as a whore with a future, she liked it a lot.

Hester wasn't surprised or even cynical when Pastor Mulvery had turned up one day at Bluey Jay, ostensibly to witness to the girls, but after half an hour with Mama Tequila he'd paid his money and had his way with Hester. After which he'd asked her to pray with him, saying he'd ask God in his infinite mercy to forgive them both because, 'We know'd not what we were doing.' The Bible didn't say anything about Jesus doing anything for the girls who worked in the fish factory on the shores of Galilee, but now it seemed, all of a sudden, he was walking around forgiving whores all over the place. She felt grateful to Pastor Mulvery, with his sticking-out buck teeth which had trouble sucking on her big boobs, for pointing this out to her.

Sometimes the chew the fat chats would get quite specific. One Sunday morning, a month or so after Tandia arrived at Bluey Jay and after she had started school again, Sarah asked a question about fellatio. 'Mama T, last week old Coetzee, you know, the magistrate from Pinetown? He couldn't get it up, too much brandy, so I tried to give him a number three, but it was hopeless. It just keeps hanging there like a old piece of
biltong!'

Even though the girls had all laughed, this was serious business. Mama Tequila guaranteed satisfaction and it meant Sarah would have to give him a free session next time he came.

Mama Tequila rose slowly and waddled over to one of the shiplapped kitchen cupboards. From her apron she took the large bunch of keys which she carried about her person at all times. Selecting a small key, she unlocked the cupboard and withdrew the chamois leather drawstring bag which contained Herman the Hottentot.

Herman the Hottentot was an eight-inch, beautifully carved, wooden penis standing at full erection. The carving, complete with testicles, was of sneezewood, a handsome, finely grained rose-red wood darkening to golden brown with a beautiful satin lustre. The detail was meticulous and the piece was much, much better than a simple pornographic curio. It also looked to be fairly old and someone, not Mama Tequila, had bored a hole into its flattened back and glued into it a one inch piece of pine dowelling to act as a hand grip.

In fact, Herman the Hottentot, so purposefully carved, would have made an awkward dildo. But for Mama Tequila's purposes it was ideal.

The girls were all seated at the breakfast table with Mama Tequila at the top in her specially reinforced bentwood chair. Now she held Herman the Hottentot up and demonstrated with the tips of her fingers how to begin the massage and then, bringing the carving to her lips, she showed how the stimulation was completed with the lips and the mouth. She placed Herman the Hottentot back on the table in front of her. 'You can do it perfect, but sometimes you going nowhere, man, the one-eyed snake is fast asleep. You can feel and kiss and stroke and suck, but you won't make that old one-eyed snake stand up. So you got to tell it a story where it is the hero.' Mama Tequila paused. 'You see, the mind makes the best erections. If you can get the mind on your side, then nearly always, the one-eyed snake will open his eye and stand to attention. In a case like magistrate Coetzee, you have to talk dirty, but not filthy, you hear? For Coetzee, who is Dutch Reformed Church, dirty is okay, he can understand dirty, but filthy reminds him you a whore. He a magistrate, he don't like that!'

'Mama T, how do you know the difference between dirty and filthy?' Hester asked. 'I always thought they the same thing? With the Pentecostals they all banned, even saying "hell" and "dammit", they not allowed.'

Mama Tequila shook her head. 'Ag, never mind that, Hester, language is a wonderful thing, you can play with it, get it just right, like a acrobat on the high wire in the circus, balanced just perfect. If you got the right words, I'm telling you, you can get a man like old Coetzee to stand up every time!'

The girls all stopped eating. This was always the best part of a chew the fat chat. When Mama T got going there was nobody on the game who was better. Now looking over at Tandia she said, 'Make some more coffee please, skatterbol.' Tandia rose from the table as Mama Tequila took a cork-tip out of her silver cigarette case and lit it with her Zippo. 'Here the words you going to say,' she drew on her cigarette and the lighted end glowed brightly as she inhaled deeply; then with her head thrown back she exhaled a surprising amount of the smoke up towards the ceiling where the big fan caught it and dispersed it over the room.

'When you begin, you speak very slow, you hear? Like you a clairvoyant or something. Coetzee, you a naughty boy! I seen you, I seen you looking at her, the little kaffir girl. You hiding behind this big rock, I seen you, man, hiding there where the kaffir women come to wash themselves. This little kaffir girl, she maybe thirteen, fourteen, the same age as you, but she very mature, a woman already. The water on her, it makes her black skin shine and her bottom is nice and tight and round and firm, hey? Her legs is long and her little boobies, they perfect, turned up and big enough for only one handful. She is washing herself and the soap and her hands as they go all over her body, they your hands, man! You can feel they your hands. Her hands go between her legs. Her bottom, it moves round slowly as she washes there. She is a kaffir, a dirty kaffir, who you not allowed to touch. But your snake inside your pants, this snake doesn't know this. No, man! No way this snake knows. It wants to touch, there is a place it wants to go.' Mama Tequila picked up Herman the Hottentot and allowed her fingers to do wondrous things to it, demonstrating what they should be doing while the words were weaving their way into the mind of Coetzee the magistrate. The girls watched, completely fascinated as Mama Tequila continued her verbal titillation. 'Now all the other women, they go away, only the one your snake wants, she stays, the forbidden fruit is alone in the hot sun and cool water. The water she splashes over her body rinses away the soap. Then she sits down in the river and goes under and then stands up, her beautiful black body shining with the water running off her. She begins to come out, her feet are splashing in the shallow water now. She walks towards the big rock, her hips slow, nice, to where you are hiding. She lies down, right there on the warm river sand next to the rock. She lies there with her wet, shining black body and she closes her eyes. You take off your short pants and your snake is free, strong, standing up, a white man's big strong…' Mama Tequila laughed suddenly and almost simultaneously the girls around the table let out a surprised sigh. 'Ag, damn!' Hester cried, dismayed that she wasn't going to hear the end.