(NG) Kerk, blue ones for Catholics and long starched dresses for the African Zionist Apostolic churches. My three aunts were domestic workers, while Mother was and still is a housewife. The aunts brought sweets back from work. And for me at least one aunt also brought hand-me-down dresses because Paternal Grandmother – who was the mother-in-law of Mother – had said loud and clear that none of her son’s money was to be wasted on buying me new dresses. I didn’t mind. What did I know? I looked good in what I was dressed in any day. Even the dresses that were bought at the NG Kerk on bazaar days fitted me perfectly and I liked their bright colours. By that time my younger sister must have been three years old and she was the darling of the family. The family clan name was reserved for her only, uSgegede, but again I did not see anything wrong with that; she was a cute baby girl with chubby cheeks.
On one particular Thursday when all the kids ran to meet the Second Aunt as she was coming home from work, I followed them. She gave them sweets, which she also gave to the neighbours’ children. My younger sister who was standing in front of me got her share. When it was my turn, I looked down with my shy smile and brown eyes, holding out both hands in a receiving gesture. Instead of pouring sweets into my hands, Second Aunt shouted, ‘Nx! Go away, you boesman! I don’t have sweets for white things. Go and tell your drunkard boesman aunts to buy you sweets.’
Although I had been called that name many times before, it had never hurt as much as it did the day I was turned away from the sweets and told in front of the other kids that something was wrong with me. But I was a child and, like all children, I forgave and forgot the incident. But a similar one soon afterwards carried even greater hatred and anger.
* * *
Now here I must explain the structure of my so-called family. There were four houses in one yard; each family lived on its own but all were ruled with an iron fist by one feisty woman, the Paternal Grandmother. She was neither a tall nor short woman but was medium sized, pitch black, wrinkled, overweight and she wore glasses – not just for reading but ones with really thick lenses. I’d heard, and she later confirmed, that her husband died when the family still lived on a farm between Standerton and Bethal in what was then called the Eastern Transvaal. Paternal Grandmother had two boys. The older one was quiet and gentle and the younger was Father, Mother’s husband. He was quick-tempered and feared and evil in some ways, but he was a good provider for his family. Then there were five daughters. So, all in all, Paternal Grandmother was left to raise seven children all by herself.
‘Had it not been for his older sister, the man would still be single to this day,’ one aunt volunteered this information about Older Brother one Sunday afternoon in the back room where she used to sew dresses. ‘He enjoyed fixing cars, getting his hands dirty and all that, but he was never the type to be linked to girls, not even on the farm.’
After interventions from one of his sisters, Father’s Older Brother got hitched. He married Mother’s Cousin, bringing another Ndebele bride into the Nhlapo family, much to the disapproval of Paternal Grandmother who I heard would have preferred her older son to remain single for life. Apparently, Paternal Grandmother made her wishes known on the day of the wedding right in front of the bride’s family, announcing that her son shouldn’t be getting married at all. Family legend has it that the bride’s family was so upset by that statement that they asked their daughter to cancel the wedding, but she refused and became a wife in a family that had made it clear that she wasn’t wanted.
On the other hand, Father, the younger son, was a well-known and celebrated womaniser right from the days on the farm. Mother, when she’s in one of her good moods, will talk fondly of those days.
‘Your father used to have lots of girlfriends,’ Mother would say proudly. ‘He liked girls very much but he chose to marry me out of all those girls.’
As a result, Father married before Older Brother, which was a taboo in those days. As Mother fails to forget, she was honoured to be married to the younger son of Paternal Grandmother. Truth is, I still don’t know who and what the family ethnic group is, but that has stopped being my concern. Mother’s side of the family was Ndebele, albeit very light-skinned ones with blue and brown eyes, and they were mainly Afrikaans speakers, like most Ndebele families, I guess.
To the Nhlapo family, they had won the lottery with bonus numbers – scoring two girls who were both Ndebele and therefore respectful, hard-working and humble.
The story of Paternal Grandmother and her daughters, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the old days when girls were reared just to get married and produce babies. Well, babies were produced at an alarming rate, but marriage? Not quite.
I knew that I should have studied Paternal Grandmother’s family a long time ago. Not only would the findings have helped to save my knees from kneeling and praying for a miracle that would never happen, but it might have helped me understand the behaviour of the stepfather – yes, the one still being referred to as my real Father to this day. Many say that if witchcraft runs in the family it’s almost impossible to break the spell. That’s the information I should have researched more thoroughly. But, better late than never, I know that now. Well, I’ve been kneeling and forgiving for way too long to abandon the search for the truth now. Didn’t the Good Book say the truth shall set us free? There really was no turning back. My only quest was to find the truth.
‘We’ve heard from many praying pastors’ – of course Mother omitted witchdoctors – ‘that you were born with a gift. You’re very lucky with money and you are highly intelligent. You’re the one who’s supposed to be uplifting this family financially, so the pastor told us. We know this. We’ve always known and we’ve seen it.’
I knew I had done something wrong by being a boesman. Since it was clear that there was something amiss with me, I resolved to stay out of trouble by playing on my own and not visiting other people’s houses, because I wasn’t sure who might be offended by me being a boesman. I also noticed that if I spent longer hours playing in the sun, my light complexion became a bit browner, so I made it my secret mission to try to transform my skin, just in case I succeeded and became a more acceptable darker colour.
* * *
A lot of changes took place in my seventh year. To this day I’m paranoid about the seventh year because I seem to expect something to change in my life, either good or bad. One day in that same seventh year one of my cousins called me. This cousin was named Saturday but the Zulu word for it. I was in my favourite spot next to the main gate and my cousins were playing with other kids next to the garage. I was puzzled when she said, ‘Ja, let’s fight,’ because I was not a fighter and she was older than me. Worse, I was the only skinny kid among all my meaty cousins. My big cousin, another good fighter, loaded sand in both her hands and closed them in her fists. This practice was to determine who was a coward: the first person to pound the fists was considered brave. The group began cheering, and I was hoping someone would come to my rescue, when the cousin punched my face.
‘Aye ye ye, boesman!’
‘Look, she’s turned blue!’
‘No, look, she’s turning red!’
It was obvious that the crowd was excited to see a fight between a normal person and a boesman. The punches rained down on my mouth, stomach and face. I was on the point of falling over but the cousin picked me up and shoved my head under her left arm where she punched my face mercilessly. I didn’t cry, but by the time she let go of me I fell to the ground and felt the earth rotate. The group was still cheering. I felt an urgent need to wipe my nose. My hand came away with blood on it.
‘Oh, look,’ shouted one girl in the group, ‘she’s got red blood! I thought boesmen had a different colour.’
‘It’s not red like ours. See, it’s weak. This thing has green veins, so what makes you think it can have the same blood as ours?’
I could not afford to mess my clothes. Mother would be hysterical. Moreover, how was I to explain what had happened? She was not going to believe it. Even with her eyes wide open Mother didn’t see a lot of the things that happened to me. Even if by chance she saw the blood, she was not going to believe me. But if she did, for a change,