Yellowness ran amok. Yellowness dripped down with her screams. He slapped her and ordered her to shut up. Her screams were now muffled with his hand on her mouth. His pants were at his ankles. He lay on top of her and pleaded, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But if you make noise, people will come and spoil our fun.”
Niki wept softly as his hardness touched her thighs. Intense heat sucked out his slimy seed before he could penetrate her. He cursed his pipe as it leaked all over her. He damned its sudden limpness. He just lay there like a plastic bag full of decaying tripe on top of her. She heaved him off her body and jumped up. She grabbed her skirt and ran like a tornado, destroying a swathe of sunflowers in her wake. Johannes Smit’s accomplices called after her, “Niki! Niki! Wait for us!”
At home she got under the blankets and cried for a long time, until she fell asleep. She woke when her father arrived in the evening, drunk as usual. He was fuming because she had not cooked any food. She tried to explain that she was not feeling well. And in any case, there was no food to cook because he had not left her any money. But he was not prepared to listen to any lame excuses. He was going to beat the laziness out of her. He was going to lash her buttocks with a belt until they were sour. To placate him, she ran to the tuck shop and used Johannes Smit’s money to buy her father a loaf of bread and a big can of pilchards in tomato sauce.
There was a lot of change left over.
MARIA AND MMAMPE CAME the following day. They were eager to lap up every morsel of gossip.
“How did things go with Hairy Buttocks?” Maria wanted to know.
At first Niki did not want to speak to them. She accused them of being traitors. They must have knowingly led her into a trap. They, of course, denied having been Hairy Buttocks’ agents. They bubbled with excitement until they melted her anger.
“Did it enter?” asked Mmampe.
“No. it just. it just. ”
The two girls shook the corrugated-iron shack with shrieks of laughter.
“It never enters,” said Mmampe.
“His desire is only in the heart,” explained Maria, “but his manhood always fails him.”
“It happens like that with all the girls he has seduced with money,” said Mmampe.
“Perhaps we should call him Limp Stick in addition to Hairy Buttocks,” suggested Maria.
“Or Sleeping Horn,” said Mmampe.
“Lame Horn.”
“Horn of Sorrow.”
Niki was not amused. “I am going to report him,” she cried. “I am going to tell the police about what he has done to me.”
“Don’t be foolish, Niki,” admonished Mmampe. “Do you think the police will believe you had nothing to do with it? You took his money, didn’t you? They will arrest you and charge you with the Immorality Act. Haven’t you heard of black women who are in jail for sleeping with white men?”
“But he forced me! You were there! You saw it happen!”
“He will deny everything,” said Mmampe. “And we didn’t see either. We were not in the sunflower field with you. Don’t be stupid, Niki. You can make a lot of money from this foolish white man. Just give him what he wants and eat the money.”
“For sure he’ll be back,” added Maria, laughing. “Just take the money and let the man water your thighs.”
HE CAME BACK. That very afternoon. A child came in and said there was a white man in a battered bakkie outside, looking for Niki’s father.
“Tell him he is not here,” said Niki. “He can go and search for him in all the shebeens of this location.”
The child came back again.
“He is calling you.”
“Tell him to go to hell.”
But Johannes Smit did not go to hell. He walked into the shack instead.
“What do you want?” asked Niki.
“I am returning your broeks,” said Johannes Smit, throwing her panties at her. She did not catch them. They fell on the cow-dung floor.
“If you try anything, I’ll scream,” threatened Niki.
“Is that the way to welcome your lover?” demanded Johannes Smit.
He leapt at her. She jumped away and ran out of the door.
JOHANNES SMIT WAS a persistent man. His offers of cash mounted with her stubbornness, until her good friends prevailed on her. After all, it would not enter, they assured her. A full stomach at bedtime and new leather shoes under the bed would be worth the filth on her thighs. She relented. On every occasion in the yellow fields, she just lay there and became a masturbation gadget. Then she went home and secretly wept while she bathed him off her body. But he was an obstinate stain.
To his utter amazement one day he entered her, rupturing and haemorrhaging her maidenhood. He howled that he was dying such a beautiful death. She tried to vomit him out. Only the last meal and bitter bile came out. For many days she tried. For many days, only half-digested food came out.
She vowed: never again!
His thirst for her could not be quenched, while she imagined the most cruel death for him.
5. THE WEDDING
THE BRIDE is in turquoise calf-length taffeta. The scrappy palette-knife-created white lace that hangs from her head right down to her powder-blue shoes makes her look very delicate. She wears a crown of purple and white cosmos blooms. A shoeless full-figured woman is giving the bride a cuddle. She is saved from total nakedness by a pink giant cosmos that covers her jewel like Eve’s leaf of shame. Another giant cosmos grows out of the fissure of her buttocks. She also wears a crown of cosmos. Big feet. At last the toes!
The round-eyed groom is in brown overalls and yellow woollen cap. His face is well fed and is round like his eyes. He steps gingerly on the yellow ochre mud in his black rubber boots. A naked bridesmaid embraces him tightly. Her thick thigh is raised to his stomach. Another naked bridesmaid is tickling his ear with a pink cosmos. Full figures. Round stomachs. Each of the women wears a white lace veil that flows to the ground and has pink cosmos attached to it. The frills are tattered. The women’s bare feet are attached to elephantiasis legs. They stamp on the yellow ochre mud with stern dignity. They too have toes!
Three blue moons shine out of a violet sky.
Earlier that morning vows were made and papers were signed before the minister, who had taken the opportunity to complain about the leaking roof of the church and the tightfistedness of his congregation. Now opposing sides stamped on the yellow ochre mud. It had rained all morning. Rain always came with blessings. The wedding was blessed. Girls and boys from the groom’s side sang of the blessings. But the blessings were wasted, they lamented tunefully, as the handsome Pule was marrying this Niki, who was world-famous for her laziness. The beautiful round-faced Pule was going to die of hunger as soon as he set up house with this clumsy Niki. They danced around the blessed couple as they heaped scorn on the bride. Boys and girls from the bride’s side responded with their own musical derision. Pule, they sang, was so ugly that when he walked out of the house at midday, the sun was bound to set and the world would be covered in darkness. His was the ugliness that banished the light of day. How could Pule think that he deserved a seponono — a woman of soaring beauty and dimpled smiles — like Niki?
For the whole day, the bride and the groom’s parties threw verbal mud at each other. Each side had spent every evening for one whole month practising new songs that would excel in mocking the other side. Biting songs under a fluttering white flag that had announced the wedding for weeks in advance.
After thoroughly disparaging each other, both parties settled down in an old red and white marquee and shared mutton, samp, beetroot, ginger beer and cookies. Boys and girls exchanged addresses. Other weddings could result, since weddings gave birth to more weddings. Just like funerals.