“Give this to your mother,” he would say in Sesotho. “And be careful, boy, don’t lose that envelope.”
Viliki would run like the wind all the way to Mahlatswetsa Location and proudly give the envelope to his mother.
Viliki and Niki were living a wonderfully comfortable life, what with Pule’s relentless remittances! And the few coins Niki earned once in a while when Madam Cornelia sent for her to look after Tjaart when the regular nanny had not turned up — attending her grandmother’s funeral for the tenth time. Occasions that Tjaart relished because for him there was never going to be anyone who could take Niki’s place. Occasions that Niki relished because they kept her in touch with Madam Cornelia. If only to give Madam a self-satisfied smirk. And to rejoice in Madam’s blissful ignorance.
The romps on the hay deteriorated into moans. Moans relayed from one pair to another. Simultaneous moans. A barnful of moans. And howls of enjoyable pain. The baby cried. But no one paid attention. The baby bawled and bawled. The Brahmins outside went berserk. With their big ears, they had very keen hearing and were sensitive to strange noises. The Brahmin bulls bellowed and raised dust. No one paid any attention to them. A cacophony of moans, howls, baby cries and the deep bellowing of the bulls.
In the middle of it all, Niki suddenly felt the weight of a chilling ball of iron somewhere between her stomach and her lungs. It was not Stephanus Cronje’s heavy body on hers. It was the weight of a memory that was determined to come between her and ecstasy. She had filed the fact that she had missed her times in some dark compartment of her mind. Now it was forcing itself back in the cacophony. More than a month had passed without her visiting the moon. To add to her woes, most mornings she was nauseous. And had a strong desire to eat damp soil.
She wondered what Stephanus Cronje would say when she told him. And what murder Pule would commit when he got to know of it.
She pushed Stephanus Cronje with both her hands, and shoved him away from her body. Just when his was getting hard and rigid.
He watered the hay.
11. BIG EYES IN THE SKY
AMAN IN blue pants, blue shirt and red beret stands on the black roof of a skewed house one blue night. He lifts his arms to the heavens in a supplication that is reminiscent of the five women in their prime. The roof almost caves in from his weight. Wide-eyed heads appear in the blue and white and yellow sky. Milky-white eyes with pitch-black pupils staring at the man. Penetrating the house with their amazed gaze. Disembodied heads like twinkling stars in the blue night. White cosmos grows wild around the house.
Bright eyes in the sky see everything. They see a newly-born baby wrapped in white linen. An intrusive star of Bethlehem has sneaked in through one of the two skewed windows and shines on the baby’s body. It fills the room with light and yellowness. Two humans kneel on either side of the sleeping baby, hands clasped in prayer. One is a man in a blue suit and blue beret. The other is a woman in a blue nun’s habit. The big star of Bethlehem suspends itself above her buttocks.
It had not been easy for Niki, although this was a second childbearing. The water had broken. The contractions had flooded her body. Fewer and fewer minutes apart. It should have been smoother. But the baby had other ideas. It gave the village midwives its back, and remained stuck in the passage of life. The Vaselined hand of a midwife forced its way into the channel, trying to turn the baby, so that its head should come to the fore instead. A hundred razor-blades were cutting the very depth of Niki’s being. Making incisions that bled profusely and throbbed with a pain that she believed would be etched in her memory forever. She moaned and wailed. The midwives softly admonished her: a true woman accepted her lot with bravado. A true woman hid her pain inside her chest and presented an unflinching face to the world. It was a disgrace for any woman to yell like that at the agony of bringing a new life to the world. Even more shameful in a second confinement.
She was tired of pushing. Yet they egged her on. They cajoled and threatened. They mocked and ridiculed. They burnt herbs near the bed, and filled the room with incense. Until the baby turned around. After many hours. After one whole day and one whole night. Just when she thought she was giving up on her life and the baby’s, the baby’s head mercifully erupted like red molten lava onto the midwives’ exhausted hands.
Big eyes in the sky saw Niki’s relief. The midwives heard her sigh and joined with their own unison of sighs. The struggle was over. The baby uttered one good yelp. They cut the umbilical cord and clamped the piece that hung from the baby’s stomach with a clothes peg. Niki fell into a deep sleep, while the midwives buried the placenta in the ash heap at the back of the shack.
She owed her body a dream-free slumber.
When she woke up, they showed her a beautiful baby girl. A flood of love overwhelmed her. She wanted to hold her tightly against her breasts. And to protect her fiercely against anyone who would dare question her reason for existing. The midwives said the baby looked like a porcelain doll. They jokingly called her Popi, another word for “doll”. And that became her name.
When we finally got to see Popi, we were not in the least taken aback that she looked almost like a white woman’s baby. The midwives who attended to Niki were not astonished either. Of late they had been helping quite a few black women from Mahlatswetsa Location and the neighbouring farms, who had been giving birth to almost white babies. Or to “coloured” babies, as they were called. As if they were polychromatic. Or as if everyone else in Mahlatswetsa was transparent. Some barn women were already cuddling their own coloured offspring, while others’ stomachs were expanding by the day. It was a bursting of forbidden sluices that we were all talking about in Excelsior.
After the baby had been cleaned and wrapped in a soft white blanket, she slept peacefully in her mother’s arms. The baby was obviously exhausted after the long struggle. The midwives snickered and whispered among themselves that she shared features with Tjaart Cronje. She had Tjaart’s eyes. She had Tjaart’s fingers. She had Tjaart’s ears. She had Tjaart’s nose. She had Tjaart’s rosy cheeks.
Niki heard every word, for she was not asleep after all. She had just closed her eyes, enjoying the softness of the baby’s body against hers, careful not to hold her too tightly against her breast, lest she squeezed all life out of her tiny body. She wondered how the midwives had suddenly gained such great expertise on the shape of Tjaart’s body parts. Her child had nothing of Tjaart’s, she convinced herself. The midwives were seeing what they wanted to see. Their ill-gotten knowledge of barn escapades made them reinvent her beautiful baby in the image of Tjaart Cronje.
The image of Tjaart Cronje began to haunt her restful state. It transformed itself into a daymare. Tjaart Cronje. All of seven years old, yet his crush on Niki had persisted. Exacerbated by her naked body that continued to loom large upon the floor scale of his imagination. Exacerbated even more by her big round belly.
Madam Cornelia had continued to use her services as Tjaart’s part-time nanny until the very last month of her pregnancy. Part-time in name only, for her services were demanded almost daily, as the boy wanted only Niki, and none of the regular nannies employed to look after him.
It was an unspoken covenant of mutual enjoyment. Tjaart enjoyed caressing her protruding stomach that stretched her maternity dress to its very limits. And laughing at the violent kicks of the baby. Niki secretly enjoyed the calming effect of the little hand. Madam Cornelia meanwhile enjoyed teasing her about “her people” who were always having children in spite of the overpopulation of the world.