Piet was Afrikaans and I knew that the COM COM COM men who had taken my father away were Afrikaners too. I had a vague idea that I was supposed to think that Afrikaners were bad people but I felt truly sorry for Piet. And then I remembered I had done something wrong too and I had to walk over the concrete bridge to the headmaster’s office.
The bridge looked over the playground. All the white children were in their classrooms but three black children, two boys and a girl, had climbed over the gate and were turning over the dustbins. The African children were barefoot and the girl was wearing a yellow dress with only one sleeve. Her hair was cut close to her head like Thandiwe’s hair. Sometimes Thandiwe and I washed each other’s hair in the bath with the slab of Lux. When we got soap in our eyes we had to splash our faces with water and try and find a towel with our eyes shut. We bumped in to each other because the stinging soap had blinded us but we were not as blind as we pretended to be. We liked to bump in to each other. From my view on the bridge I could see that the girl had found some bread and one of the boys had found a green sock. He put it in his pocket. And then he looked up and saw me watching him. When he looked up I ducked, then straightened my knees and peered over the bridge again. The children had run away and Mr Sinclair was expecting me.
‘Show me your book.’
The headmaster sat at his desk drinking a cup of coffee.
My hands moved the exercise book towards him, sliding it across the shiny table. He opened the book and stared at the first page. Then he turned the page over and the page after that too. Mr Sinclair was frowning. I could see his finger pointing to the top line. A tuft of black hair sprouted from his knuckle as he tapped the page with START HERE written all over it.
‘Here. Why don’t you start here? Here. Here. Here. You start here. Do you understand?’
When I nodded my two blonde pony tails bounced from side to side.
He stood up and began to roll up the cuffs of his shirt sleeves. A framed photograph of two children stood on his desk. A boy and a girl. The boy’s hair had been shaved like Piet’s and he was wearing a scout’s uniform. The girl wore a blue gingham dress and had a matching blue band in her lovely ginger hair. Suddenly I felt Mr Sinclair’s hands on my legs. It made me jump it was so unexpected. The headmaster was slapping the backs of my legs with his hands.
There was something I was beginning to understand at seven years old. It was to do with not feeling safe with people who were supposed to be safe. The clue was that even though Mr Sinclair was white and a grown-up and had his name written in gold letters on the door of his office, I was definitely less safe with him than I was with the black children I had been spying on in the playground. The second clue was that the white children were secretly scared of the black children. They were scared because they threw stones and did other mean things to the black children. White people were afraid of black people because they had done bad things to them. If you do bad things to people, you do not feel safe. And if you do not feel safe, you do not feel normal. The white people were not normal in South Africa. I had heard all about the Sharpeville Massacre that happened a year after I was born and how the white police shot down the black children and women and men and how it rained afterwards and the rain washed the blood away. By the time Mr Sinclair said, ‘Go back to your class room,’ he was panting and sweating and I could tell he did not feel normal.
Clutching the book that had got me into so much trouble I decided not to return to my class room. I walked straight out of the school gates and made my way to the park where I swung on a rubber tyre tied with rope to a tree. A sign painted in red enamel nailed onto the fence spelt: ‘This play park for European children only. By order town clerk.’ The sun was scorching my bare knees so I moved to the seesaw which was in the shade and stayed there for two hours.
When I got home I took an orange from the sack in the pantry and rolled it under the sole of my bare foot until it was soft. Then I made a hole in it with my thumb and sucked out the juice. I was still thirsty so I drank water from the hose pipe in the yard. It was the hottest time of the day and our tomcat had collapsed under the peach tree that had once, miraculously, been covered in snow. At six o’clock my mother got back from work and said she needed to talk to me. It was obvious the school had rung her to say I hadn’t turned up for the afternoon because she told me I was going to stay for a few months with my Godmother who lived in Durban. After she hugged me for a long time, I walked back in to the garden to tell Maria.
Maria always sat on the steps of the verandah at night and drank condensed milk from a little tin she had pierced with the can opener. She said she was looking out for the parktown prawns. Sam and I had planted ten watermelon seeds in the garden but Maria had told us the parktown prawns might get to eat the young melons before we did. She said the parktown prawn was actually a king cricket and it attacked the rotting peaches that has fallen from our tree. If we touched one it would leap at us and spray a jet black liquid in to our eyes. When I sat next to her on the steps, she put some Vaseline on my lips and asked if everything was alright at school? I shook my head and she sat me on her lap but I knew she was tired and wanted to drink her sweet milk and be alone. She said the stars were so bright she would be able to see if the parktown prawns flew in and if they did she would see them off. Then she gave me a handful of Pinkies from her pocket and said I must tell her about Godmother Dory’s new budgie when I came home. Apparently the budgie was called Billy Boy. I liked the way Maria said, ‘Godmother Dory’. Was that called a phrase? I resolved that when I got to Durban, I wouldn’t say Dory, I would say, Godmother Dory. It didn’t sound quite right when I said it to myself. In fact every time I said Godmother Dory out loud, that combination of words felt uncomfortable — as if I was walking around with three little stones in my plimsolls. For some reason I did not want to take out the stones.
At the end of the week, a smart air hostess with a big diamond on her finger led me up the stairs to the aeroplane and told me to suck my thumb as soon as the plane took off for Durban.
‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,’ the hostess winked. ‘One day when you get married your fiancé will give you a rock too.’ When her eye flickered, the diamond on her finger flickered too. ‘If the plane crashes I’ll blow my whistle okay?’ Sitting alone sucking my thumb, I waited for her to blow the whistle but she was too busy walking up and down the aisle showing passengers her engagement ring.
Later she said, ‘Look, that’s Maputaland, can you see the lakes and marshes? That’s Rocktail Bay where my lover boy proposed to me. It’s got a coral reef. Nearly in Durban. You must ask your daddy to drive you to the game reserve and show you the lions and elephants okay?’
I nodded.
‘Hey, don’t you speak?’
I shook my head.
‘Left your tongue in Jo’burg?’
I nodded.
‘Is that the pilot calling me? It is isn’t it? Hope the wing hasn’t fallen off!’
She winked and made her way towards the cockpit where the pilot was smoking a cigar. It was his birthday and the crew were singing a rugby song:
She had no clothes on at all
at all at all at all
she had no clothes on at all