It was on her first visit back to Kliprand that she found cousin Sofie merry with drink and the two-year-old toddler wandering about with bushy hair in which the lice frolicked shamelessly. Then she pinned the struggling child between her knees and fought each louse in turn. She plaited her hair in tight rows that challenged the most valiant louse, and with her scalp soaked in Blue-butter the little Beatrice beamed a beauty that is born out of cleanliness. And Tamieta knew that she, not unlike the Virgin Mary, had been chosen as the child’s rightful mother. She who adored little ones would have a child without the clumsiness of pregnancy, the burden of birth and the tobacco-breathed attentions of men with damp fumbling hands. Sofie agreed, weeping for her own weakness, and found parents for the other two, so that the validity of choosing a child at one’s convenience was endorsed by the disposal of those she could no longer care for.
Eight good years together testify to the wisdom of the arrangement. Beatrice loves the yearly visits to Kliprand where Ousie Sofie awaits them with armfuls of presents, not always the sort of thing a girl would want in Town, but so jolly is Sofie telling her fabulous stories with much noise and actions that they all scream with mirth. A honey mouth that cousin of hers has, full of wise talk which only gets a person into trouble. Just as well she has kept to the country; Cape Town would not agree with her.
Beatrice has brought nothing but good luck. After serving the terrible English family in Cape Town — they paid well but never talked to her, nor for that matter did they talk to each other except in hushed tones as if someone in the family had just died — came Tamieta’s lucky break at the UCT canteen where she could hold her head up high and do a respectable job of cooking for people whose brains needed nourishing. She was the one who kept the kitchen spotless, who cooked without waste and whose clockwork was infallible; it was only right that she should be chosen to run the canteen at the new Coloured university. The first kitchen boy was quiet, eager to please, but this Charlie is a thorn in her flesh. Full of himself and no respect for his elders. Why should he want to go on about the pondokkies of country folk? She casts a resentful look at the girl just sitting there, waiting for her coffee with her nose in her blinking book. She too is from the country. Tamieta knows of her father who drives a motor car in the very next village, for who in Little Namaqualand does not know of Shenton? The girl speaks English but that need not prevent her from saying something educated and putting this Charlie in his place. She, Tamieta, will turn on him and say as she rolls the pastry, pliant under her rolling pin, strike him with a real English saying which will make that know-all face frown. She has not worked for English people without learning a thing or two. She has learned to value their weapon of silence, and she has memorised Madam’s icy words to the man with the briefcase, ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ Oh to see Charlie’s puzzled look before he pretends to know exactly what it means. Her fingers stiffen as the boy rises with his board of chopped onions, but what if he were just to laugh at her if she said it now? If only she could leave him alone, but Tamieta calls out just as he is about to drop the onions into the pan. Curtly, ‘It needs to be finer than that.’ Charlie’s onion tears stream down his face.
‘See how you make me cry, Tamieta? This is the tears of all my young years, and I’ll have none left for your wedding. They say you getting married, Tamieta, when is the happy day?’
He runs his hand over the mirror surface of his greased hair, asserting his superiority. This Charlie with his smooth hair and nose like a tent will find every opportunity to humiliate her. She ought to ask him to wash his hands. No one wants Brylcreem-flavoured bredie. But her legs ache and her back starts up again, the itching pores like so many seething hot springs, so that she really can’t give a damn. The stove will tend to the germs. This is no ordinary itch.
Tamieta turns to Charlie. ‘We must get a move on. All tomorrow’s work has to be done this morning as well ’cause this afternoon is the memorial and the cafeteria will be closed.’
‘Ooh-hoo,’ the boy crows loudly, ‘I’m going up Hanover Street to get the material for our Carnival uniforms. We start practising next week and this year the Silver Blades is going to walk off with all the prizes.’
‘Sies,’ Tamieta remonstrates, ‘I don’t know how you Slamse can put yourself on show like that for the white people to laugh at on New Year’s Day.’
‘Oh, you country people know nothing man, Tamieta man. The best part is when we come out at midnight in our costumes. Have you ever been in the city for the midnight?’
Tamieta seals her face and maintains a scornful silence.
‘No,’ he continues, ‘you won’t have seen the lights all down Adderley Street, man, twinkling like home-made stars, man, like all the planets just jiving in the streets. Then all the bells start ringing and that’s when we run out from the shadows with the black polish.’
His hips grind as he dances towards her, waving his spread palms. She cannot ignore him and when she retreats with her wooden spoon, Charlie grabs his knees with mirth and crows breathlessly, ‘That’s when we get all the whities and rub the black polish all over their faces.’
‘I must be a baboon to listen to all this nonsense. Where will a white person allow a troop of coons to even touch their faces? I may have been born in a pondok but I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.’
‘’Strue Tamieta, ‘strue,’ he begs her to believe him. ‘It’s been going on for years now, it’s a tradition you know,’ and taking up his chopping knife he adds soberly, ‘I suppose the whities who come there know it’s going to happen and come specially for the black polish, but perhaps there is, yes there must be, one or two who get the fright of their lives when we jump out from the shadows.’
Tamieta sets the cups out on the counter. She really can’t be listening to this boy’s nonsense and if he doesn’t know that he’s supposed to spend the afternoon at the ceremony, well then, that’s his problem.
‘Here,’ she calls to the Shenton girl, ‘here, the coffee’s ready.’
Midst these unlikely sounds of clattering cups and the regular fall of the knife, the bass of the bean soup and the sizzling onion smells, the essay is going tolerably well. There are human voices in the background, the amicable hum of Tamieta and Charlie, harmonising with the kitchen sounds that will materialise into bean soup favoured by the students and bredie for the staff.
I have followed the opening thrust with two more paragraphs that wantonly move towards exonerating Tess. Retief’s notes are no good to me. He will not be pleased. Things are going well until an ill-timed ten o’clock siren sounds, signalling a visit to the lavatory. Since the collapse of the beehive I have not found a satisfactory way of doing my hair although the curve of my flick-ups is crisp as ever. Fortunately one can always rely on Amami hairspray. I wet my fingers at the tap to tug at the crinkly hairshaft of an otherwise perfectly straight fringe. Cape Town with its damp and misty mornings is no good for the hair. Thank God there is no full-length mirror to taunt me although I have a feeling that the waistband of my skirt has slackened. After a final glance at the now stabilised fringe and a rewarding thumb between my blouse and waistband, I am ready to face coffee-break.