Colour Me Yellow. Thuli Nhlapo

even seeing where I was going because I was too short.

      All I could hear was Father shouting, ‘Stop, fool! Do you want to climb the stoep?’

      I was relieved. Miraculously, I had done it. True to her nature, Mother did not come to my rescue but, as always, stood by her husband. To avoid being brutalised again for the urine on the seat, I immediately rubbed my dress on the seat and when father opened the door, I left the car and ran into the house and straight to my room.

      Because Mother was serving tea to her good husband, no one noticed that I had changed my clothes and my wet panties. Upon my reappearance, there we were, a happy family waiting to have a big lunch on Paternal Grandmother’s veranda as though nothing unusual had happened. Because the cousins and aunts were watching through the window, probably happy to see that the boesman and the yellow thing was put to shame once again, I had to survive unwelcome giggles, knowing looks and nudges during the entire delicious lunch. For some reason I didn’t feel like eating, so I emptied my plate onto one of my cousins’.

      Father didn’t travel to work in the Ford Fairlane – he left it under the tree in the yard. There were other cars in the garage. I celebrated a small victory when the Fairlane broke down. Driving wasn’t the only task I had to carry out on that car. As an ambitious mechanic, Father always wore an overall when he worked underneath the car. On those occasions, I had to play his assistant mechanic. I knew the spanners by name, the bobbejan, number 12, shifting – you name it, I knew what every tool inside his tool box was called. Memorising the names and knowing the tools didn’t mean I was intelligent – I was just scared shitless. While he was under the car, he called out the names of what he wanted and I had to give them to him as quickly as possible. Failure to do so would mean that I’d risk seeing him come out from under the car to perform mechanic duties on my body. And he wouldn’t go to the house to get his belt or his sjambok, he would use the very tool I had forgotten the name of to discipline me and to make sure that the next time I didn’t forget it. If there’s one thing I’ll thank Second Aunt for, it was for pouring sugar into the petrol tank thereby damaging the engine beyond repair. But she wasn’t doing me a favour, she was being mean, just being a Nhlapo and merely following family tradition. But her action meant a lot to me.

      The madness could have continued forever in Paternal Grandmother’s yard but one night I noticed that Mother was packing goods inside boxes and wrapping fragile stuff such as glasses in newspaper. Before I knew it, a big red lorry was standing in front of our house. We were moving away from Paternal Grandmother’s family. At the time it didn’t matter where we were going – the happy news was that we were leaving the yard, leaving the other houses behind. And, yes, we were leaving everyone else behind. It was just Father, Mother and us – the three kids – who were leaving.

      I prayed that we were moving to a place where I would be able to play with other children. In my mind I imagined some of them might also be boesman and yellow but we all played together and we were happy. I couldn’t understand that whenever I dreamed of being happy and playing with other kids, I’d imagine the father that I didn’t know playing with my hair and I’d bury my face in his chest. Those days I’d wake up smiling and feeling very light, only to realise that it was just a dream and I didn’t remember what my daddy looked like. I didn’t know him. It was only in my dreams that we were happy together.