the big ones that smoked when they were burnt.
Because Father would be away at work, male cousins, their mothers and Paternal Grandmother did as they pleased, giving Mother a headache in the process. All the households in the yard had coal stoves and Second Aunt would make sure to keep her stove burning with free coal the whole weekend, both day and night, just to waste enough coal to make sure that Father’s profit suffered.
Imagine it, the boiling Pretoria sun and my aunt’s stove plates glowing red with free coal! Second Aunt would stand by the table holding a heavy iron. If she was ironing clothes it might have been understandable, but in order to keep the stove burning the whole day, this woman would even iron yellow dusters, floor cloths and anything that wouldn’t be burnt by her thick iron. Because her home faced the area where I played, from time to time I saw her coming out with her iron to rub it on the ground, which meant she’d burnt something and it was stuck underneath the iron.
It wasn’t possible to waste all the coal, so older cousins would make sure to steal the cash every time they served a customer and even went to the extent of walking straight into our house to liberate some of the money made from coal sales. Sooner rather than later, the business had to close down.
Despite being odd, Father’s family was an interesting one. There was hardly a dull moment when all the family members were around. I’m not supposed to know about the following event, but I do because not everyone in the family was as diplomatic as Mother. When Mother was pregnant with her second child – a boy – who would be the firstborn son and family heir, the sisters and Paternal Grandmother were not impressed. A bride having more babies meant less money for Paternal Grandmother and her daughters. To make sure Mother didn’t give birth to the child, the story goes that one day when she was just over seven months pregnant the aunts followed her to the well (we didn’t have taps – and wells were called amapitsi those days). Without any provocation, the aunts punched Mother’s big tummy, which led to her giving birth to a premature baby who died soon after birth.
Try asking Mother what actually happened and she’ll curse you for digging up old ‘stuff’ before lying to you by saying she tripped and fell into the well and didn’t receive proper medical attention afterwards. The truth was that that incident had a negative impact on Mother, who struggled to conceive another baby afterwards. No matter how hard it is for me to understand that I was an unwanted baby, I do understand the love that Mother had for her other children, especially the one who was born long after her premature baby boy died. To drive the point home, Mother named her little girl Hope because she said Hope had kept her alive. The other name goes something like Ngibadelisile, ‘I’ve shown them’, and that’s what came into Mother’s mind when she first held her little girl: ‘My in-laws thought they had sorted me out, that I’d never conceive again but here she is – I’ve proved them wrong.’
As if to prove another point Mother conceived another baby soon after the darling of the family was born. The problem was that it was a boy and once again Paternal Grandmother didn’t take kindly to the fact. As a result of Paternal Grandmother’s angry ‘black’ heart, the elders said, the baby cried non-stop. When the problem persisted, Mother was forced to take the newborn to different doctors but nothing helped. No medical practitioner was able to tell her what was wrong with the baby and no amount of medication helped to calm the little boy down. In desperation, Mother packed her bags and headed to her father’s house with her sick baby. Maternal Grandpa was a praying man, deeply spiritual, truthful and honest, and he didn’t believe in mixing his Jesus with the ancestors. When Mother arrived with the crying baby, Maternal Grandpa took one look at it and his Spirit told him what to do.
‘I am sending you back to fetch your mother-in-law because I want to talk to her,’ he said.
When Mother returned she was accompanied by her mother-in-law who had been summoned by Maternal Grandpa. That was how he resolved issues until the day he died – he never went behind anyone’s back.
Maternal Grandpa didn’t say too many things to Paternal Grandmother.
‘This baby is not sick,’ he said. ‘You know in your heart what’s wrong. So, take your makoti and the baby back to your home and sort them out.’ Those were wise words from Maternal Grandpa who then said a prayer and set the Nhlapo family free to go and get their house in order.
I was told that when Paternal Grandmother returned home, she took the child close to the place where the family threw coal ashes and mumbled some angry words to the ancestors. As from that night, the baby didn’t cry and he never got sick – not until after his twenty-first birthday when he had a cold and missed a few days at work. Because Older Brother was childless and the first boy was born prematurely after some unfortunate events, the one whom Maternal Grandpa rescued from the grave was the family’s only boy and the apple of Mother’s eye.
Again, I might not like Mother’s husband very much but I knew he was a good father to his own children and in his own way he loved them dearly. In fact, Father would climb mountains to meet his children’s needs, but then he’d also climb Mount Kilimanjaro to make sure I remained in bondage, under his spell and as miserable as possible.
It’s something he started doing when I was a child. I remember one Sunday when we were coming back from the NG Kerk in Klipgat. I was wearing my nice white socks and lovely Sunday shoes and a beautiful girlie dress. He was driving his white Ford Fairlane, which was a big long car. While we were used to riding in his car to and from church, that particular Sunday was different because instead of parking the car inside the yard, Father left the car outside, just a little way from the gate. After the other passengers had gone into the house and I was about to open the door, he gave me one of his killer looks before ordering me to come to the front seat. Mother was sitting in the passenger seat but she made way as if to allow me to occupy the seat. But she didn’t have to move because apparently that was not what her husband had in mind. After shouting that I was stupid, he dragged me to the driver’s seat and Mother got out and made her way to the gate.
‘I’ll only say it once so you better listen very carefully, you fool,’ he barked at me because I was distracted and my eyes were following Mother. ‘This is the clutch, the brake and the accelerator. Look at these things, you stupid thing. You press the clutch down with your stupid foot then put your other stupid foot slightly on the accelerator. Slowly, you release the foot on the clutch and press the accelerator, then the car moves. It’s as simple as that.’
That was a good lesson for a short, barely seven-year-old girl who was in no way fit to move such a big car. In my mind I was thinking that as an adult I’d try to remember the lesson when suddenly Father grabbed me with considerable force and helped my small feet on to the pedals he had told me about.
Before I knew what was happening, he continued, ‘You’re going to move this car into the yard. If you dare, I repeat, dare to mess up my car, you’re dead.’
Only then did it dawn on me that he expected me to drive the car into the yard. I hesitated and he slapped my hand so hard I made the mistake of pushing hard on the accelerator.
‘You damn fool,’ he said as he moved to stand inside the gate. ‘You damage any part of my car, you fix it. Now move the car, I don’t have the whole day.’
His eyes were blood red and his mouth was trembling and I knew I was in trouble. Tears rolled down my cheeks. At the speed of lightning, he managed to slap me at least three times before returning to the spot where he could watch me drive his car into the yard. Perhaps he could see the tip of my head inside the car but I couldn’t see anything except the dashboard. I was shaking and in the process I wet myself. The more I tried to move the car, the more it continued to make a loud noise. I prayed because he was on his way back to me again and that meant another round of slaps. Before he could reach me I tried so hard to move it that the car jumped. He also jumped aside and Mother came out of the door.
‘Just move the car,’ she said. ‘What can be difficult about that?’ And she disappeared into the house.
Now, let me state clearly that Mother had never attempted to drive a car and she never ever bothered to try. Once again, I was on my own and I had to make a plan either to smash Father’s