“Maria!” cried Niki. “I must warn Maria.”
“Maria and her baby boy were picked up the night before,” said Mmampe’s mother.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
She did not wait for an answer. She scurried back to her shack. Like a field-mouse sensing a rainstorm.
She retrieved the brazier from the back of the shack where it had been gathering summer rust, waiting for its winter tasks of warming the house and cooking the food. She carefully placed dry grass and twigs at its base. She piled dry cow-dung on the twigs and ignited the dry grass.
While the fire was burning outside, she pumped the Primus stove and boiled a little water in a kettle. She poured the water into a blue enamel washing basin, placed it on a grass mat and knelt next it, holding Popi’s head over the steamy water. The baby cried as her mother worked up a rich lather of Lifebuoy Soap on her head. Her hair slid between Niki’s fingers like green algae filaments. The top of the head was pulsating like a wild heartbeat. With a Minora razor blade, she shaved her daughter’s little head clean. No stranger would know that the hair that belonged on that bald head was not black and matted. Not nappy. Not frizzy.
But Popi was still pink. They would see that she was of mixed blood.
Niki took the smoking brazier into the shack and placed it on the floor. She held a naked Popi above the fire, smoking the pinkness out of her. Both heat and smoke would surely brown her and no one would say she was a light-skinned child again. The baby whooped, then yelled, as the heat of the brazier roasted her little body and the smoke stung her eyes and nostrils. Cow-dung smoke is gentle in reasonable doses. But this was an overdose. There was so much that it made even Niki’s eyes stream. She assured the baby that it was for her own good. She sang a lullaby as she swung her over the fire. Rocking her from side to side. Turning her round and round so that she would be browned on all sides. Evenly.
FOR FIVE DAYS, they did not come for Niki. The nights became too long to bear, for they were unaccompanied by sleep. Days were tiresome and teary, for she spent them hovering over a smoky brazier, browning her little girl. Singing lullabies and hoping the baby would get used to the heat and would stop crying so. Singing lullabies until the baby became red instead of brown. Until the baby’s skin began to peel from her chest right up to her neck. Until the baby became truly coloured, with red and blue blotches all over.
Just when Niki was beginning to relax, and to brown Popi for shorter and shorter periods, the police pounced on her. Not in the night, but in the glare of the day when the whole world could see. Two police vans stopped outside her shack. Four burly policemen wálked into the house and dragged her out. Her resistance had no effect. Popi dangled from her hand like a raggedy doll.
When Viliki came back from playing in the street the door was ajar, but there was no one at home. There was nothing to eat either. He sat outside, hoping that Niki would return soon. When darkness fell, he began to cry. Then he walked to Mmampe’s home, three streets away. Mmampe’s mother knew immediately what had happened. She gave him sugared water and a chunk of steamed wheat bread.
SHADOWS SHIFTED around, creating space for her to sit on a mat of grey blankets spread on the concrete floor. She could see their dark outlines vaguely. Shadows holding babies. Gurgling babies sitting on their laps. She could hear Popi crying as a warder walked away from the cell with her.
“Bring back my baby!” Niki screamed. “What are they going to do with my baby?”
“Don’t worry, Niki,” one of the shadows said. “They will bring her back. They are taking her to be examined by the Bloemfontein doctor for traces of whiteness.”
It was Maria’s voice. Niki’s eyes were getting accustomed to the dimness. She could see Maria sitting near the toilet bucket, rocking her baby to sleep. The cell was too small for the ten women packed in it. They barely had enough room to sit with their legs outstretched. Niki knew most of them. Those she could not identify she suspected came from other towns. The sex ring had expanded to include women from farms in neighbouring districts such as Brandfort and Clocolan. Even Marquard, a hundred kilometres away.
“Where is Mmampe?” asked Niki.
“They took her to another cell,” said Maria.
Niki learnt that the warders had had to move Mmampe to another cell because the other women were threatening her with grievous bodily harm. They accused her of exposing their activities to the police.
“How do you people know that Mmampe did that?” asked Niki indignantly. “Mmampe would never do anything like that.”
“She did! She did!” shouted the women in unison.
“Read her the newspaper, Susanna,” said Maria to one of the women.
The woman — Niki learnt later that she was a teacher at a farm school — took out a piece of paper from her deep cleavage. It was a cutting from The Friend newspaper. She shifted closer to the toilet bucket where there was better light. She read with histrionic panache:
AFRICAN WOMAN TOLD POLICE ABOUT AFFAIR
The Minister of Justice, Mr P.C. Pelser, said that all kinds of rumours had been doing the rounds in Excelsior for some time before the police took action. As a result of this a police officer from Ladybrand had given instructions to a warrant officer at Excelsior to investigate the matter. On 21 October he had called a Bantu woman, Mmampe Ledimo, to the charge office and had questioned her. She had admitted that she had had relations with a certain White man. She had, however, added that she had not been the only non-White woman who had done this, and had mentioned a number of others. As a result of this information seven Whites and fourteen non-Whites had been arrested.
“I refuse to believe this nonsense!” said Niki, clearly unable to convince herself that she unreservedly disbelieved the report.
“It’s right here in the newspaper in black and white,” a said the farm schoolmistress.
“A newspaper cannot lie,” added Maria.
“The bitch!” cried Niki.
13. GLORY
THESE WERE DAYS when sunflower fields lost their yellowness and assumed a deep brownness. Days when the trinity’s palette became warm and sombre. Dominated by siennas and umbers.
Niki and Popi frolicked in the wide-open spaces that the trinity created for all those who loved wide-open spaces. Those who relished big skies that merged with the earth. Eliminating horizons. Making it impossible to determine at which point the earth ended and the sky began. It was a rapturous sight. Popi, truly coloured in red and blue patches, running among the brown sunflowers. Petals wilted and lost their yellowness. Popi naked and unevenly coloured. Not old enough to crawl. Not old enough to toddle. Yet frolicking and running in the brown field. Niki, naked and free, running after her. Popi and Niki gambolling in the field whose wilting colours formed a fading image. Like one big veronica. Until woman and infant merged with Payne’s grey. And became one with it. Disappearing into the trinity’s splashes and becoming part of the compassion they evoked.