— Baba, about Gary. Gary Elias.—
Before she could go on, her father took moments to look at her, them together on the time-plane for this. — How old is he? — He certainly knew but it was necessary for him to be accurate: if you have spent a lifetime with schoolboys you have learnt that every week, month, is a whole period as a year is in adulthood, not alone the body is budding, changing with awareness of itself. The question of the child’s place among others is looking for some form of assertion.
He has a better way of seeing this. — What does he do, in the family.—
— Baba?—
— What I say, my child.—
— We’re his parents, we do…for them, the children, I hope the right things. — English now, comes as the language. — I mean, we love him…show him…we are busy with whatever he needs at school, we let him have his friends around welcome, any time. If he gets into trouble he can come to us…help sort it out, he doesn’t have to become aggressive, Steve’s the last man in the world even to slap a naughty child…sesibone udlame sekwanele. It’s difficult to understand how our child could punch another kid in the face — he did it — a close friend thinks we should encourage him to take more interest in sport even though he’s still only kicking a ball around, but at a big soccer match he couldn’t wait for it to be over. Of course Steve’s not a great fan, himself.—
Her father takes his time.
— A boy must have duties. Yes, he must do things for you. Yes. A family can’t be together if children have no part in what has to be done every day. When they have these things, obligations (he was speaking in their language but now changed to the particular harsh cadence of English) tasks they don’t like too much, these give them the knowing they count for something, they’re not just there for what did you say, love.—
It is always clear from her father when the final word has come.
Mothers, sisters and the one brother still left at home, the others, absent husbands, gone to work and live in the cities — they were ready for her. Only the eldest sister, born a year ahead of her, was aware of the sister’s difference as the one who had been in prison in the apartheid past; the others placed the difference as her being among the women transformed, in the soaps they watched on TV. When, once or twice, a sister had been invited to visit Johannesburg, the house in the Suburb, she wanted to wander shopping malls as a tourist in a real-life television scene — there was the admired sister’s difference, the world to which she belonged; although that house didn’t look much like a television set.
Now sitting all together with her among them at home the difference, prison cell or shopping mall, wasn’t present; they chattered and laughed in their shared idiom, the latest-born baby was handed to her lap and stared to her encouraging drawnback face with eyes newly able to focus—Uyabona ukhuti uyaba ngummeli omkhulu! — exclamation from an aunt or grandmother chipping in, she’s seeing you will be a great lawyer. The exaggerated gasping, whooping of people who are happily at ease to be gathered when there are so many partings, this sister-daughter long missing from among them for unimagined reasons, prison and marrying a white man. But the oldest aunt or grandmother kept her everted lips down-pressed on either corner in the withdrawn certainty that this is one who can inhabit the future.
— What do you do? — A girl of about twelve, from the look of her breasts, has been mouthing to herself for the courage to speak, nervously remembers respect to add — Mama Jabu, please.—
Her father is there in the background ignoring moves of homage to vacate a chair for him. — If someone is arrested by the police for something he didn’t do, mama tells what really happened and why he should not go to jail. She works for justice, that’s what’s right.—
— And if he did do something bad? — The Zulu language is voluble about transgression — Uma enze okubi?—
Laughing Jabu calls as if across to her father what he might answer. — Then there’ll be another lawyer who’ll say he didn’t do it. — Shall she try to explain the concept of justice Constitution defines, to this child — it would seem like bragging. The small place she’s made for herself in the new dispensation (that’s what it’s called among lawyers) — and isn’t it him, he who made it possible for her to do it.
She’s carried off to admire the queen-size bed and the paraffin-powered refrigerator-cum-freezer one of the husbands working in the city has had delivered to his wife. (And didn’t she herself want just such possessions when Steve and she were moving to the Suburb.)
Her father walked with her to the car, his very presence having made clear to her mother and the extended family all were to respect this, once the exuberant and tearful farewells had been made. Gary Elias was already scuffling with two boys in the back seat.
— Baba…I don’t usually appear in court, I mean for a complainant. Mostly I prepare witnesses. For cross-examination. It’s scary for them, the kind of close questioning, they need to know how to deal — say—
She doesn’t need to add, not to incriminate themselves.
— That is just as important. — He’s standing by the praise he gave, not something glibly produced to impress children. She turns to cling to him for a moment and his arms in his stiff black jacket are firm around her, with a quick release. A few words over his shoulder to the boys and they tumble out of the car; her boy, as if commanded, takes his place in the front passenger seat. — Wave to Babamkhulu! — as she shifts into gear.
Her father’s hand, lifted like a salute.
Time to talk; pack the day aside. Sindi and the boy have been allowed to watch a wildlife documentary DVD, and although in the shared living room, their attention to the screen means isolation from anything, anyone else as the way is for children of their time. (Nothing to be done about it, and at least a nature series is not a channel soapie.) — You were going to tell. What did he say.—
— My father. Well. — Can’t take him lightly. — He says he must have — tasks, he called it (old word, italicised, from Baba’s childhood among missionaries) — things to do, for us, the family, some of the everyday things. Responsibilities.—
— I don’t get it. Responsibilities? Nine years old. — Of course the father’s not only a headmaster he’s also an Elder in the church, always with the habit, some subject to preach on. But her attachment to Baba is central to her, mustn’t be fingered.
— He should have duties. Kufanele abe nezibopho. When children have these — even doing things they don’t like too much — this means they’re important, they know they count for something. They’re somebody.—
— You love him, I love him, we love him isn’t that what shows how he counts.—
— Do, give something, not just here to be loved.—
Love. Irrelevantly at this moment he knows how he desired her. — Jabu my darling. What could he do for us, empty the kitchen bin instead of me taking it out, wash his shirts in place of Wethu and the washing machine. What ‘tasks’—no goat for him to milk here, no chickens to feed here, no wood to fetch. — The sharpness is kindly — not patronising?