20. BLESSINGS
HIS SUBJECTS ARE ordinary folk doing ordinary things. Yet God radiates from them. As He radiates from the man sitting on a blue kitchen chair. Ovaleyed man wearing a red beret and a brown overall. He holds a big blue cross close to his chest. Big man in big black miners’ boots sitting against a whitewashed wall with light blue smudges. Thick black outlines make him and the chair appear very robust. His head is slightly bowed in prayer.
After the prayer, Popi stood over the banana loaf cake on the “kitchen scheme” table. Tiny pink and blue candles burning on the brown cake. Four candles. They sang happy birthday to Niki. Forty years young. Yet she looked old and battered. Like a woman whose face had been exposed to many a thunderstorm. Floods had eroded it. And hydroquinone had caked it with scaly chubaba patches of black, purple and red. There was a slight suggestion of irritation in her eyes. All this unnecessary fuss!
“I told you, I don’t want any of this,” she said.
“Come on, Niki, don’t be a spoilsport,” said Popi.
“Blow the candles,” commanded Viliki.
“Ja, blow the candles,” agreed Pule weakly.
She blew out the candles. Everyone applauded. Popi cut the cake. She passed the plate to Niki, who was sitting on the bed. She took a slice and sniffed it before she took a bite. Popi then passed the plate to Viliki and Pule, who were sitting on the chairs at the table. Each took a slice. They all sipped green cream-soda from enamel mugs.
Popi stood in front of everyone and clapped her hands twice, calling for silence. She was radiant in her first ready-made dress. All her previous dresses had either been hand-me-downs or dresses sewn from cheap multicoloured calico by amateur dressmakers. Today she was wearing a dress that had been bought off the peg, from a real shop. A pink dress with tiny blue and yellow flowers. A knee-length dress that exposed her hairy legs. It had been brought by Pule from Welkom only the week before. He said he had looked at girls he knew to be Popi’s age in order to estimate her size. His estimation had not been far off the mark, for the dress fitted her as if she had been measured for it.
Popi made a speech. She thanked God for the blessings of rain. It was a sign of good fortune. Its drops made her spinach in the backyard acquire a deep greenness and leaves that were rich and broad. Although rain muddied the unpaved streets of Mahlat-swetsa Location, it was the giver of life. And of bountiful blessings. Hence our ancestors said rain heals and destroys at the same time.
She wished her mother a very long life. And thanked her for all she had done for her and for Viliki. Life had been kind to them, for rarely did they sleep with empty stomachs. All because Niki was the kind of mother who would sacrifice everything for her children. She was like a hen that protected its chicks under its short wings in the face of swooping hawks. Popi was now eighteen and Viliki was twenty-two, she reminded her mother.
“We are adults because of you,” she said, “and we vow that we’ll look after you, and we’ll always be there for you. Don’t we, Viliki?”
“Of course we do, Popi,” replied Viliki.
“And we won’t be leaving her alone for weeks on end,” she added. “Not so, Viliki? You vow you’ll stop gallivanting all over the place?”
“You know I can’t make such a vow, Popi,” pleaded Viliki. “You know exactly why I can’t do such a thing.”
“He is always away, this boy,” said Niki quietly. “He’s always away. They always take my children away. They are taking Tjaart away too.”
People who worked in the kitchens of white people had brought it back to Mahlatswetsa Location that Tjaart Cronje was being transferred from the military base in the neighbouring Ladybrand district, where he had been fighting the terrorists who were infiltrating the Free State farms from Lesotho. The army was sending him to Johannesburg to fight the terrorist school children who had been petrol-bombing Soweto since 1976. After hearing this, Popi had cruelly said to Niki: “Did you hear that your Tjaart Cronje is being sent away to fight real wars in Suidwes and in Soweto?”
The Suidwes part was her own invention, just to make the danger to Tjaart Cronje’s life even greater. Everyone knew that the Boers were dying in Suidwes, as they called Namibia. Niki had not responded at the time. It was as though she had not heard her. But now it was obvious that Tjaart Cronje’s imminent transfer to more dangerous war-zones had been eating at Niki all this time. Popi was angry with herself for having been so cruel to her mother. She could not help but hate Tjaart Cronje for having held Niki’s compassion to ransom for so many years — from the time she had been his nanny.
“You know, Mother,” said Viliki patiently, “it is possible that this Tjaart Cronje you seem to care so much about does not even know that you exist.”
“I care about all my children, Viliki,” said Niki. “Not only those of my womb.”
Popi shushed them and continued with her interrupted speech. She thanked God for preserving them until their eyes could see the return of Pule. She called him “our father”. The return of our father. Even though the mines had now eaten his lungs, she was grateful that the Lord had shown him the road back to Mahlatswetsa Location, to be sick in the bosom of his family, to be nursed back to health by those who loved him.
Viliki whispered to Popi, “Speak for yourself.”
A loud whisper that everyone heard, but ignored.
Viliki was not prepared to forgive his father for deserting them for seventeen years. For deserting him. If Pule had a quarrel with Niki, why did he, Viliki, have to pay for Niki’s sins? He was, after all, his son. A child of his blood. What had he done to be hit by stones that should have been aimed only at his mother?
Pule had returned the week before, a shadow of the man he used to be. A fleshless body that coughed blood. The doctors had diagnosed him with phthisis. As a mzalwane — a born-again Christian — he had put his faith in the Lord. He had consulted faith healers and prophets. But his mouth and nostrils continued to spew blood. Then he had resorted to traditional doctors — the san-gomas and dingaka — who threw their divination bones and prescribed herbs from the mountains of Zebediela. None of which cured him. This went on until most of the pension money he had received from the mining company was gone. When the vat-en-sit woman with whom he had been cohabiting in Welkom left him for those who still had their health and wealth, he had remembered the wife he had left in Excelsior all those years ago. He had gone to town and bought Popi a ready-made dress, Viliki a navy-blue suit and Niki a red two-piece costume. Peace offerings. He had packed his few clothes into a suitcase and had boarded the maroon South African Railways bus to Excelsior.
Popi had welcomed him with open arms, Viliki with a sour face, and Niki with quiet dignity, bordering on indifference. She had thanked him for the two-piece costume, but had added that unfortunately only the cardboard boxes under her bed would wear it, as she could no longer be seen in such hedonistic clothes. Viliki had threatened to donate his suit to charity. Pule’s pleading eyes had not melted his resolve not to have anything to do with this man who used to be his father.
“Now that he is dying, he comes back here,” Viliki had grumbled.
This sickness of Pule’s: it was like that with many men from Mahlatswetsa Location. They worked in the gold mines of Welkom, and when they came back, they were finished. Gold had eaten their lungs. Gold had drained them of all flesh and blood. They were gaunt. They were walking skeletons.