What was sensuously close drew suddenly away; he was removed from it and the isolation of his presence offered its meaning. A rich white man's domain of quiet and beauty screened by green from screams of fear and chants of rage, from the filth of scrap-heap settlements and the smashed symmetry of shot bodies; he had no part in it. He did not know what he was doing there.
He pulled himself out of the chair and went into the cottage; to that one room.
Now there are things he doesn't know. I wasn't snooping, this time. I was alone in the house and I heard one of the women who come from the farms hawking mealies in the street. Her call hollowed my stomach; as kids, mealies were one of our favourite treats, my sister and I loved any hand-held food you could eat while you played. I heard that old cry GRE — EE — NN MEA-LIES right through the reggae beat of UB-40 on my cassette player, and I ran out to catch the woman before the cry became too distant. She swung the sack down from her head; everything about her was stockily foreshortened to carry weight — bare chunky feet, thick body, pediment neck, face and skull broadened for burdens. How black they always were, these women; black blackened by labour in the sun, it's as if nature, which supplied our founding parents with the right degree of pigment to inhabit this continent, also supplies them with the camouflage under which to appear to submit to slavery. If you're mixed you don't have the protection. She strips the green leaves and spills the floss back from the cobs, digging her earth-rimmed nail to spurt milk from a row of nubs, because I ask her for young mealies, and her black face has no recognition for me, my half-blackness and this half-white man's street we live in as one of my father's political acts. She doesn't know I have anything to do with her. So much for his solidarity with the people.
And then I found I didn't have enough money in my pocket to pay her. She smells the same, of the grease smeared on her red-black cheeks and the smoke of wood-fires in her clothes, but mealies have gone up in price since the days in Benoni-son-of-sorrow. One of our Afrikaans neighbours had come out to buy, as well, and she intervened to pay for me — Ag now, don't worry, you can give me back later, it's nothing — once you get one of them round to making an exception of you, there's no limit to their neighbourliness. My mother's dignity and beauty make our family an exception, although my father says exceptions change nothing, they merely confirm mob racism. For him, we are in this street to challenge the general.
I ran back to the house to look for my mother's store of small change, as my sister and I used to do. But there was no jamjar on the kitchen shelf. She was at work and would have her handbag with her; I thought there might be another purse or loose money in her dressing-table drawers. I know my mother; her sort of innocent, easily-found 'safe places' for things. Under the plastic tray where her cosmetics are ranged was a five-rand note and an envelope printed with the logo of a passport-photograph vending machine.
I ran, again, to the black woman seated with indifferent patience under the blanket-skirt and the young Afrikaner wife, legs strutted wide on high heels, arms crossed under her breasts, smiling at me as if I were an athlete racing for the tape. She was another pink-and-yellow one. But not emancipated, like the other, not a prison visitor or a lover. She greeted me with a little sharp twist of the smile in the direction of the mealie vendor. — They just charging whatever they think you'll pay. I've told her, not fifty cents each, forty cents. So no, wait, that's too much — you only owe one-twenty.—
My father's passport (he went overseas to a conference in Germany before he was detained) has been withdrawn, Baby left illegally, I've never had one. Neither has my mother. I went back into their bedroom to find what she had placed under her cosmetic tray. Photographs are not like letters, anyone may look at them. There were six. There she was, her neck held as you do when seated upright in the booth as the flash comes. The slightly defiant embarrassment with which exposure is met, because you never know for whom, in the world, your image is meant. Hair smoothed a moment before; wearing her seed pearls.
Where is she going? Is she going to leave him? Wild idea. my mother! Where is there for her to go. There's an accountant cousin who emigrated to Toronto a few years ago, at the Saturday tea-parties there's news of him doing well.
So I know nothing about her. Like him, I don't know the invasion of unhappiness in her; the devastation left by him and his daughter.
I don't have a photograph of my mother. If I took one of these, would she miss it?
Aila has her passport. She told her husband only after it had been granted and issued.
He had the curious impression that she must have mentioned, indicated, her intention. A torn-off strip of paper buried in a pile of problems documented in his mind; the new series of bans imposed on his comrades had brought a crisis and reshuffle of responsibilities.
There was a moment's pause. His wife evidently decided— they both decided without a glance — to accept the lapse as genuine. Her taking the necessary steps for application with the absolute minimum of reference to him was what he would have advised; it was as if she had acted upon this. Aila was in the clear, innocent. She had done nothing beyond visiting him in prison as his wife and keeping a carryall packed with toiletries against his re-detention. But of course there was guilt by association, by loyalty. Aila had to show she was not involved; a stay-at-home wife. The affectionate diminutive by which she knew her only girlhood sweetheart, the chummy appellation by which crowds knew him — the police files' alias Sonny—did not have to be filled in between first and surname on forms requiring name of husband. Aila's best chance of getting a passport was to distance herself from him, his record, his activities, his life.
A stay-at-home wife — and mother. There was the question of Baby, as well. The Security Police surely knew about Baby; but maybe not, the illegal movements of young people presumed to be erratic and adventurous could pass unnoticed until and unless someone was picked up and gave out names under interrogation.
Sonny knew where Aila would go. — And a visa? — He spoke almost humbly.
She had one; everything was arranged through a lawyer both knew well. Lawyers have the habit of discretion sometimes to the point of absurdity or unintentional slight; he saw the man frequently, he was a close adviser to the trade unions, and there had been no mention of a passport for Aila. Well, the lawyer, too, had other things on his mind. Anyway, it was necessary to feel assured Aila had been in good hands.
As Baby's mother and father, they discussed money. — I thought I'd take some clothes. I'm making warm things — they say it gets quite chilly there in winter. — Yes, lately the sewing-machine had to be put aside when the table was used for meals, he'd noticed, without attaching any significance to Aila's preoccupation. — She'll always need money. Wherever you are— (he stopped himself from citing his prison experience, the inference would be alarming to Aila). — You don't know the value of money until you're in certain situations— He laughed, as an explanation, confession: he and Aila had begun their child's life in a situation where money was associated with greed.