The Madonna of Excelsior (15 page)

And the gown the madonna wore was blue, even though the caftan Niki had been wearing when she sat for the trinity was white. The trinity, by a few strokes of wizardry, had planted Popi's face onto Niki's body. White was blue. Niki wondered what gave the trinity the right to change things at the dictates of his whims. To invent his own truths. From where did he get all that power, to re-create what had already been created?

“Popi, come and see,” said Niki sweetly, hiding her disapproval of the trinity's distortions of reality. “The Father has painted you twice. You are now your own mother.”

But Popi did not respond. She sharply turned her head the other way, making it clear to everyone that she was not on speaking terms with her mother. She was sulking.

She had been sulking the whole day. Since early in the morning. Since her mother had slapped her bottom very hard for farting in bed before they woke up. Early, at dawn, when both their heads
were covered with the blankets. She had cried. And she rarely cried. She never cried, for instance, when her mother slapped her for stealing her condensed milk and sucking it from the hole in the tin. Then she knew that she had been naughty and deserved to be punished. She was never bothered by Niki's shouting at her, because that's how Niki was. Even at five she had accepted that her mother communicated with her and Viliki by shouting at them. Even when she was happy, she shouted and talked to them in stern tones. To the extent that the children were finding it increasingly difficult to tell when she was really scolding them for some wrongdoing or when she was just talking to them normally or even happily. But the slap this morning had made Popi cry so much that Viliki had woken up from his bedding on the floor, climbed onto the bed and held his sister in his arms.

Popi's deep hurt was due to the fact that she did not understand what wrong she had done. After all, Niki herself farted all the time. And said nothing about it. Not even a “sorry.” And no one complained. Popi had therefore never considered farting a crime.

Popi had sulked all the way from Mahlatswetsa Location to Thaba Nchu. On the rickety bus that took them the bumpy forty-three kilometres to the trinity's mission station, fellow passengers had tried to be “nice” to her.
Coochi . . . coochi . . . coooo!
They had commented on the beauty of the blue-eyed child with flowing locks. She was a white man's child, they had said. “Her mother must be one of the Excelsior 19,” one woman had observed. “Or perhaps those who came afterwards,” another one had said. “It happens every day.” They didn't seem to care whether Niki could hear them or not.

Niki was used to such remarks and had learnt to ignore them. They did not come from any malice on the part of the passengers, but from insensitivity. One could not crucify people for being insensitive.

An old lady had tried to give Popi a sucker. But she had sharply turned her head and looked the other way.

“Popi, how can you be rude to this grandmother who is trying to be nice?” Niki had asked.

But Popi had not responded. Instead, she had filled her mouth with air until her cheeks bulged like a balloon. She had not invited anyone to be “nice” to her. She was not used to niceness.

“This child has an ugly heart,” Niki had said to herself, as she walked from the Thaba Nchu bus rank to the Roman Catholic Mission. “She is only five, yet she can hold a grudge for the whole day. What kind of an unforgiving child is this?”

Perhaps Niki had forgotten that even a child could not forgive someone who had not asked to be forgiven. Who had shown no remorse.

The trinity brayed like a donkey. Popi was determined to be strong. The trinity brayed and brayed. He was bent on coaxing her out of her anger. Popi's face began to melt a little. But just before she could break into a smile, she remembered that she was supposed to be sulking, and became stone-faced again. The trinity jumped up and down around her, braying even louder. She couldn't help but smile. Then she laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

Niki joined in the laughter. She had never heard Popi laugh so much. It was good to hear Popi laugh. Just as she rarely cried, she rarely laughed. Very few things made her laugh. Yet she was the source of other people's laughter. When other children saw her in the street, they shouted, “Boesman! Boesman!” And then they ran away laughing. At first she used to cry. Then she decided that she would not go to play in the street again. She would play alone in her mother's yard. She was only good for her mother's ashy yard. She did not deserve to play with other children in the street.

She blamed her flowing locks for all her troubles. Perhaps it would be better if her mother shaved her head bald again. Then no one would know that she was different. Although her blue eyes would continue to betray her. The blue eyes and the fair hair were the main culprits. Not so much the light complexion. Many normal
black people had light complexions. And no one complained about that.

The blue eyes were an aberration she could do nothing about. But the hair, she could definitely do something about that. Her mother used to shave it off with a Minora razor blade. And then she had been known as the bald-headed girl.
Cheesekop tamati lerago la misis. Head that looks like a white woman's buttock!
Until Niki was seized by a spirit of defiance. And left the locks to grow once more. No one would call her child's head a white woman's buttock again.

But Niki's defiance was not Popi's defiance. She had never been consulted on the matter. She did not want the hair. It was the curse that other children pulled when they were fighting her for being a boesman. Or that Viliki tied in knots during his wicked moments.

Popi's anger had completely melted by the time Niki carried her on her back on their way to the bus rank. Thanks to the trinity's impersonations of a donkey.

It was getting late, and Niki was worried that the bus would get to Mahlatswetsa Location after sunset. The modelling had taken longer than usual. But at least there were crisp notes hidden in her bra. Her “dairy”, as she called that hiding place.

Niki wanted to be home before sunset to see to it that Viliki was home. She was very strict about that. Viliki had to be home by sunset, even though he thought he was a big boy of nine years old and should be allowed to stay out late. She had good reason to be worried about Viliki. He had started running around with older boys. Good-for-nothing boys like Sekatle, Maria's brother, who was at least six years older than him. That bothered Niki. What did Viliki have in common with fifteen-year-old boys?

As the rickety bus worked its way along the dirt road to Mahlatswetsa Location, she closed her eyes and silently prayed for the trinity's long life. For his hands that must stay strong. For his vision that must continue to find joy in cosmos, donkeys, women and sunflowers. For his passion for colour that must never fade. And for his muse that occasionally flung him into a mother-and-child mode. She pleaded with whatever spirits drove his passions to immerse
him in more madonna moods before Popi grew too big to model as
the
child.

Hunger had become more of a stranger to Niki and her children because of the trinity's madonnas. They had saved her from the agony of garden parties.

The thought of garden parties flooded her with images of Tjaart Cronje. A lanky lad of twelve, chasing a rugby ball. A generous giver of cakes.

W
HO IS
this little girl standing against a powder-blue sky with pink flowers for stars? Big sky and pink cosmos down to her bare feet like wallpaper. Who is this little girl in a snow-white long-sleeved frock? Covering her legs down to her ankles. Delicate feet with ten toes. An unusual phenomenon. One side of her chest bare and showing a little breast that is beginning to grow. Her neck peeling down to her chest. Who is this little girl with flowing locks and big bright eyes and small lips? Hair dyed black. Roots show that it is naturally light brown. Almost blonde. Sunburnt blonde. Her hands raised as high as her head. Pleading for peace. For rain. Big hands opened flat so that we can count all ten of her long fingers. Piano fingers, the trinity called them. Who is this little girl?

The little girl was Popi, the last time she sat for the trinity. Stood for the trinity, to be exact. Bye-bye, modelling income. She was not really a little girl, although she looked like one. She was fourteen years old. And she hated the mirror. It exposed her to herself for what she really was. A boesman girl. A hotnot girl. Morwa towe!
You bushman you! Or when the good neighbours wanted to be polite, a coloured girl. She had broken quite a few mirrors in her time. A mirror was an intrusive invention. An invention that pried into the pain of her face. Yet she looked at her freckled face in the morning, at midday and at night. Every day. She prayed that her freckles would join up, so that she could look like other black children of Mahlatswetsa Location.

I
T WAS
1984: the year of passage. Popi wore a permanent frown like a badge of honour. When she posed for a photograph in front of House Number 2014—which was not really a house, but the shack in which she was born—she became blank-faced. That was the best she could do. Reduce the frown to a face on which nothing could be read.

The photographer said “Cheese!” but her face refused to break into a smile. She just stood next to the giant rose-bush that grew in front of the shack and stared at the camera. The camera captured her sombre image and the cheerful bush in full bloom with pink November roses. It also captured part of the shack, which had long since turned brown from the rusted corrugated-iron sheets. It captured the tyre on its roof whose function was to stop the lightning from sizzling the shack and its inhabitants; the hen that was roped by one leg to a small pole that formed part of the fowl run; the chicks that were feeding on the ants on pieces of a broken anthill; and the paste that Niki had made from the anthill to plaster the corners of the shack in order to stop the rain from seeping into their home.

The photographer was Sekatle, Viliki's friend. The twenty-four-year-old brother of Maria. He was not one of Niki's most favourite people because, according to her, he was “too fly”, and was teaching Viliki bad things. She wanted her son to stay at Mahlatswetsa Secondary School, and matriculate, and make something of his life, instead of vagabonding with a boy who had left school even before Standard Seven. Anyway, what was Sekatle doing
loitering in Mahlatswetsa Location when men of his age were already digging white man's gold in the mines of Welkom?

He and his eighteen-year-old sidekick, Viliki, of course did not consider what Sekatle was doing as loitering. Adam de Vries had given him an old box camera after Sekatle had done some gardening for him. Now he went around the township and the farm villages taking photographs of people for a small fee. After school, Viliki joined him as he clicked away at school-uniformed teenagers in the arms of village dandies. At vacationing miners who posed with their mammoth gumba-gumba radios. At babies propped up by piles of pillows and sitting on rugs in front of shacks and adobe houses. At trendsetting girls in red and black tartan skirts. Free snapshots for the pretty ones. It was a wonderful way to catch girls.

Popi's was also a free snapshot. Not because Sekatle had designs on her. He had a particular distaste for coloured girls. He knew a lot about them, too. His own sister had two such children. A girl of Popi's age, born of the Excelsior 19 days. And another girl, born years later, for miscegenation had continued unabated after the Excelsior 19 case. He had never forgiven his sister for bringing shame into his home. Very unlike Viliki, who loved his coloured sister and fought daily battles against those who rubbished her.

The free snapshot was Viliki's gift to his beautiful sister.

It took one whole month to “wash the film”, as we called developing photographs. Sekatle had to mail the roll to Fripps in Johannesburg. The company was the popular place for washing films from all over southern Africa, because it sent its customers a free film for every one it developed.

By the time Sekatle brought Popi's photo, she had forgotten that he had once photographed her. She was not impressed with the result. It was too real and cold and distant. She did not feel anything when she looked at it. Unlike the trinity's depictions, it did not awaken any emotions in her. And she said so.

“It is a gift, Popi,” said Sekatle angrily. “You don't count the teeth of a gift.”

“Maybe it is because the photo is filled with too many things,”
said Viliki, trying to find a reason to excuse his sister's ungratefulness. “The house, the fowl run, the chickens . . . too many things.”

“What do you know about taking photographs, Viliki?” asked Sekatle.

“Popi is too small in this photo,” argued Viliki. “Maybe you should have stood much closer to her.”

“Have you ever taken a photograph in your life, Viliki?” asked Sekatle, getting irritated by armchair critics who didn't even have an armchair.