My Children Have Faces Read online

  1 MISKIET

  They move into my circle. When I open my eyes I feel a sparking, like electric wires in my head, and I know they are close. This time she is not going to get away.

  No, Klein Muisie, now you are going to be sorry you ran away. You are going to be sorry you took my son.

  For a while I keep my face on the same warm spot on the pillow, listening. I will hear them come. The donkeys will set the dogs barking when they get to the edge of the houses. They will have to pass my house to get to Leeu Gamka, so I lie, listening for the creak of the disselboom.

  Ja, Klein Muisie, I have been waiting for you to come back.

  Fifteen years watching the veld, knowing you are out there. You must be a dried-out old whore now. Running and hiding up and down the sand roads of the Great Karoo will suck the life out of a person. No, I am sure you are not a fresh, pretty girl with a clean doek holding a newborn in your arms. Now you are burnt black by the withering sun, your bones showing through your skin from hunger. It was a hard life you chose, Klein Muisie, and now you are coming back here, thinking I will have forgotten. You are coming back, thinking I have changed. Well no, a leopard doesn’t change his spots. I have been waiting for you and nothing has changed.

  There was blood on my pillow when I woke up. It had caked on my cheeks, and when I lifted my head I saw it was all over the sheets. The pain hit suddenly, in my mouth. During the night I bit my tongue. It was blood from my mouth that made this mess.

  Today is the day, I feel it.

  The dogs have started. Donkeys are coming.

  I swing my legs out of bed and go to the basin to wash.

  Today I will have my son and I will teach you a lesson. This boy will think his daddy is cool. New blue jeans, All Stars, Old Spice. No stink of unwashed bodies here. All these years of nothing to do but wait for you to come back.

  I have had time, Klein Muisie, time to imagine my son’s face, to think about the father-son things you stole from me.

  Through the curtains I see the donkey karretjie pulling up the hill, Kapok cracking his sjambok. And there she is, sitting beside him.

  I slip out the house and, from behind Ting-a-Ling’s hokkie, I watch them come closer. A warm feeling pumps through my veins.

  I knew all I had to do was wait. You have come back, just like I knew you would.

  The boy is walking next to the karretjie. And, as if he knows I am here, he turns and looks into my eyes. I want to get out of sight but he is too quick so I look back at him and smile. We check each other out and then he turns away, never losing step with the donkeys.

  Oh, Klein Muisie, I wanted you.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Give me a good reason. Always leave me alone. Why?”

  “I am scared of you.”

  Were you afraid I would kill you too? But I wanted you too much.

  You weren’t scared. You wanted Jan, that was all. You thought he was a better bet. That he was a man with a job who bought you packets of chips and Fanta.

  Well, it’s too late now. Now the time has come to show the boy the truth, and I know that is why you’ve come back.

  After the karretjie passes I follow to see where that old bastard Kapok will uitspan. He crosses the N1, steering the donkeys through a gap in the fence and calls a halt to make camp at the bottom of a bank near the road. Ja, Kapok was so quick to take Jan’s place. My brother was only dead a few weeks and I was still making a plan when she went with him.

  I go home and clean my bloodied bed then walk to the white people’s church. The service has started. For the first time today the electric wires in my head stop sparking. As the Afrikaner women’s voices sing hymns of suffering and long ago, my dream of last night comes back to me. A dream of soft skin on a woman’s shoulder breaking between my teeth. Maybe that was when I bit my tongue.

  2 MUIS

  Since we left Leeu Gamka long ago I have moved like a dog on a chain. One end of the chain is attached to a pole hammered into hard earth and the other is rubbing my ankle raw. I make sure the chain never goes loose, but the pulling has made me very tired.

  I am not a dog and I cannot accept my chain is so short. I am thinking that if I don’t break this chain, I am going to die.

  Many times when I sat under a pepper tree or walked next to the karretjie, I thought that to die from hunger or a snake bite would be better than living like this. If Liewe Jesus could have chosen a time, I would have been happy. I wanted my life to be over. But to die with the devil’s thick fingers around my throat is what made me sit all night and watch the veld while everyone else slept.

  We have come back to Leeu Gamka so we can eat. It’s shearing time on the farm Genade, and Baas Kobus sent a message for Kapok to come. So many missed seasons, but Baas Kobus told Diksop to tell Kapok he was wanted on Genade. Diksop is Kapok’s sister and she and Gawie, her man, live in a real house on a farm near Rietbron. When Diksop found us we were at the uitspan at Seekoegat, and she gave Kapok the message. I saw him straighten up and he smiled and looked important and I knew we were going back.

  When Kapok was a boy his family uitspanned at Leeu Gamka before moving on to the farms for shearing. While the shearers worked, Baas Kobus, who was Klein Baas Kobus then, and Kapok ran together, stoning koggelmanders and shooting mossies with their ketties. Somewhere between it all, one learnt to be the baas and the other learnt to shear. Kapok could work eighty sheep a day when he was fed and healthy. Before he hurt his leg.

  “My record is thirty-five before brekfes,” he boasted to our children.

  “Never, Pappie, we don’t believe you.”

  “S’true. I will teach you one day, Fansie. Witpop, don’t you believe your father is a strong man?”

  Those thirty-five sheep before breakfast were sheared when Kapok was still named Joseph. Strong Joseph, before the donkey karretjie tipped and crushed his leg, leaving him to hobble like a chicken, a kapok. I wonder if Baas Kobus knows he is Kapok now.

  I used to like farms like Genade. In the morning the women lit fires under the round, black, three-legged pots at the back door of the farmhouse and, before the sun was too hot, the smell of cooking afval and mieliepap would drive us all mad with hunger. The food was for the men. Meat helped their muscles, Kapok said. When it was dish-up time the girls spooned the food into their chipped enamel bowls and plastic tubs.

  Some farmers didn’t give the workers food. Most places we bought tins and flour from the farm shop and paid for them with sheared sheep. But on Genade the workers ate. If any of the food was left, the Klein Mies gave the girls bread to wipe out the gravy before they washed the pots and put them away for the next day’s lunch. In the middle of the afternoon everyone lined up again for a cup of sweet tea. Kapok said that was his favourite time, when the tired men drank tea and smoked Boxer Tobacco and joked who was the fastest shearer and strongest man. At the beginning of the shearing season Kapok held his stomach in the night as cramps came in waves, sending him running into the veld.

  “It is the milk in the tea, Muis,” he said. “I am not used to it.”

  “You ate too much.” I laughed.

  “Maybe it’s the water on the farm.”

  We both knew the cramps went away when he got used to eating every day. After the shearing time, the pain would come back but, this time, it would be from hunger.

  What Kapok loved most about Genade was the Klein Mies. When the weather was hot she wore a yellow top and matching pants and a big hat to keep the sun off her pink skin. When she was outside she would put on dark glasses and laugh when the children ran away from her.

  “She looks like a gogga with big black eyes,” Kapok said.

  “You mustn’t be so dom, those are dark glasses to p
rotect her blue eyes from the sun,” I told him.

  “If she doesn’t wear them her eyes will turn black like ours and then she won’t be so beautiful.”

  In the afternoon, when the work was done, Klein Mies called her girls into a ring and gave each one a needle and thread and showed us how to stitch lappies together to make blankets. I still have my needle and, when I can find a lappie, I stitch it on to my blanket that I have been making all these years. If Miskiet lets me live then I can show Klein Mies the blanket and maybe she will give me lappies.

  Diksop said Klein Mies was like having a mamma all over again. “You can’t walk around with that ringworm on your face,” Klein Mies told Diksop. “Use this cream in the morning and evening.”

  She organised for the government nurse to come to the farm and all the women had to bend for a needle in the backside.

  “You can’t have babies all the time,” the Klein Mies said. Diksop said her backside burnt for two days but she didn’t complain.

  “I let them prick my bum because I want Klein Mies to be happy,” Diksop said.

  Sometimes the workers drank a papsak at night, then their pappa, Baas Kobus, shouted at them the next morning.

  “We know he is going to shout, but sometimes a person does things and only feels sorry about it afterwards,” said Kapok.

  “There is no time for drinking in shearing time. If you drink, you can go,” Baas Kobus would shout. Hanging their heads in shame they went to work, the hung-over drinkers shearing only a handful and the women wishing for a regmaker instead of tea.

  If the Klein Mies thought someone was too thin there would be a talk on eating vegetables and potatoes.

  “Why do I see starvation on your face?” she asked me. “What’s the story?”

  She listened when I told her that my man was paid only R20 a day in some places and that he didn’t find work very often.

  “Sometimes we don’t have food, Klein Mies.”

  Ag, Klein Mies, where does a woman living on a donkey karretjie in this wide dry land of jackals and scorpions find a bunch of carrots to cut into the pot with the creature she has killed for her children to eat?

  “You mustn’t spend all your money on wine and tobacco. That’s why you go hungry.”

  “Yes, Klein Mies. You are right,” I said.

  I didn’t want to come back. All these years this place has grown in my mind. The name Leeu Gamka makes my head deurmekaar and then I can’t talk and I want to go into the veld with my children and hide.

  “Anywhere in the Karoo but, I ask you, not Leeu Gamka, Kapok. We can go straight to Genade and pass Leeu Gamka.”

  “Muis, it’s too far to the farm for the donkeys.”

  “He will kill me.”

  “We must leave the donkeys and the karretjie with my people.”

  “I will not get away from him again.”

  “He is older now and not worried about a dusty-faced piece of kaiings like you.”

  But I know he hasn’t forgotten. Blood he spilt soaked into the dust of this place while I watched.

  “You had your chance to do this nicely.”

  We are in the tunnel under the highway. He has waited for me.

  My mouth tastes sand and his weight comes down on my lungs. I close my eyes so I can’t see him laughing.

  Words form in my mouth but no sound comes.

  Then I hear Jan’s voice. “Muisie, wait. Muisie, wait for me. Have you got the Fanta I bought for you with my tips?”

  Help me, Jan. Help me. Praying that the words in my mind will reach his ears.

  Air and breath. Like a spider I crawl to the wall and try to stand.

  Jan and his brother circle each other like two fighting dogs. Jan’s shouting makes me open my eyes, but all I see is the quick, silver knife.

  Each day of the long trek back to Leeu Gamka the chain loosens more. There is no choice. The veld is black from the sun. The watering holes we know are dry and, although no farmer ever turns us away from his water, many have none to give.

  “Please Baas, can we water our donkeys?”

  “Ja, but don’t let them graze, there isn’t enough for donkeys and sheep.”

  The donkeys drink deeply and when they wander off we catch them again and lead them back to the karretjie outside the farm gate and let them find what they can in the langkampe between the fence and the road.

  But the langkampe grazing is gone and Pantoffel and her foal, Rinnik, have no strength to pull the karretjie very far. No matter which way we go there are fences protecting the sheep’s grazing. The donkeys are so hungry that when I light the fire their brown eyes follow my hands as I stir the pot or knead bread.

  When Fansie brings in a bony rabbit one night I dish a bowl for each of them and they eat it. Starving donkeys eat our meat, crunching bones between their teeth like two dogs. This has been the way, for the last weeks, that we keep them alive, until Kapok decides we have to move south, closer to the mountains.

  “The cold winds are coming and the Swartberg brings more rain than this desert land. I know people who can help us there.”

  When Diksop finds us she is excited. “Baas Kobus and the Klein Mies will feed you. They have been asking for Kapok every year for fifteen years. You must leave a message for them at the Ultra City at Leeu Gamka and they will come for you.”

  Now, as we steer the karretjie back towards Leeu Gamka, all these stories come back to me and I wonder, if I live another day, if I will see the Klein Mies again and sew lappies and have an injection in the backside.

  The NG kerk’s steeple grows taller as our donkeys struggle towards town.

  The chain is going loose and I know the time is coming closer when the years of running like a rabbit will be over.

  3 WITPOP

  I stink. Really, s’true. When we come to town, the children hold their noses and poke me with sticks. If I try to hit them they run away laughing. So I spit. Like a snake. If I am fast then I hit them with my spit on the legs and that makes them mad and then they want to come back and hit me. The little ones and the other girls are scared of me so they throw stones. If I can spit in their faces then that makes me happy. But I don’t laugh, I just curl my lips back like I am going to spit again and they run away screaming. I am not scared of the big boys. They can hit me and push me but I don’t care. Nothing they do can hurt me on the inside, even if they kill me.

  Last time in Prince Albert there was a big boy who looked nice. He was playing with the little children and being so kind. When he sat down I went and sat near him but he said, “Stinking karretjie girl, sies, get away from me. You stink.”

  I looked at him and felt juice in my mouth. Really, I was going to spit a big one and hit him on the nose but something made me stop.

  You were playing nicely with the little kids, boy. You are ugly to me but I won’t make you run away screaming.

  I stood up and walked away and sat under the thorn trees and watched them. Some of the children looked dirty, just like me, but they didn’t stink. They didn’t like my veld stink. I don’t go to school and I can’t write my name. I also think children don’t like that. If they ask me about writing then I lie.

  “I can write it. My name is very long and I don’t have time to write it now. Ssshhhaaarrrmmmaaayyynnn. That’s my name. It’s very long.”

  Some of the girls in Prince Albert have new clothes and hair with white ribbons in it. Really, how did their mammas get their hair to grow so long? I wanted to ask them if it was sore to have their hair pulled and twisted in vlegsels but I was too scared to go near them.

  “Stinking karretjie girl. Voetsak!”

  If the clean girls’ mammas saw me walking too close they called their daughters. “Come in. She’ll make you sick,” they said. “Those people give you germs.”

  Germs. Is that the sores on my mouth? I don’t know what germs are, but Fansie says they give you omlope that itch and make circles on your body. There’s lots of circles on my body.

  My hair
is a bush that stands straight up like it is reaching for the sky. When we stop at a watering hole I look at my hair in the water and I wonder why it grows straight up like that, like grass. I don’t think my hair can be put in vlegsels with white ribbons.

  They have shoes, these town girls who hate me so much. Pappie says we don’t need shoes because our feet are tough like dogs’. “Shoes are for children who go to school. Why do you need shoes?” he says. “You must be glad you don’t go to school, children hate school.”

  Fansie and I laugh, and Pappie laughs and we forget about shoes. But sometimes I wonder. What would it be like, squeezing my toes in black school shoes?

  The funny thing is, even when the town children hit me and run away from me I want to go to school with them more than anything in the whole world, but we never stay long enough for me to go. Mamma says we can’t go because we don’t have birth certificates.

  “Birth certificates mean you are registered and then you can go to school. None of you are registered so that means no school. Now shuddup.”

  Karretjie people like us don’t worry about papers. Papers are for white people and for coloureds who want to be white. S’true, Pappie said that. We are not white people, Pappie said, and we are not coloured people who want to be white. We are karretjie people and we are free.

  “Where am I going to get you a birth certificate in the middle of the veld?” Mamma said when I asked if I can go to school.

  We don’t have birth certificates because Mamma doesn’t have an identity book. She was never registered, so she can’t register her children and we can’t ever go to school. Really, it’s a whole lot of can’ts. Mamma can’t be registered because she was born at a moddergat with no one but her mommy and the moon to see her come into the world.

  “The government wants a person to be born in a hospital before they will register you. How am I going to prove where I was born when I don’t know the day or the year? I don’t even know which moddergat it was where I popped out.”

  “Just make it up, Mamma,” Fansie said.

  “And if the government finds out? Hey? Then I go to jail.”