me. Don’t you think I can do better than that?’
‘There are weddings,’ Marietjie said, the desperation evident in her voice. ‘It’s the in-thing these days to have a violinist at a wedding. You could play at weddings!’
‘Really, Ma? You’d have me spend my life playing some bitchy bride’s favourite pop song? There aren’t that many weddings around here anyway and even if there were, I doubt most people could pay. I told you we should go to Joburg or Cape Town, but you insisted on bringing us here. To Mthatha.’ He flung his arm in the air to encompass the small, tidy kitchen and the flat-pack wooden furniture. ‘I’m serious, Ma. I can’t go on like this.’
The light went out of Marietjie’s eyes and when she spoke, her voice was as small as a little girl’s. ‘You’re leaving me then.’
André gave a quick nod. ‘Will you go back to Bloem?’
His mother looked away from him. Her lips trembled as she gulped a mouthful of air and then another. It was as if she’d fallen off the side of a boat and was struggling to stay afloat. ‘I think I’ll just stay where I am,’ she said at last.
‘But you don’t know anyone here.’
She shrugged, much as André might have done. ‘It’s quiet, André. I like that. No crowds jostling you in the mall. No one climbing over your wall at night to hit you over the head. No agricultural shows with so much cow shit the stench stays in your nose for days.’ She took a deep breath then went on. ‘They only invited me to those places because I was Mrs Trevor Barnes.’ She enunciated the name slowly and with as much scorn as she could muster. ‘At least in Mthatha I can be myself.’
André reached across the small table and covered his mother’s hand with his.
‘There’s another reason I need to go,’ he said softly. ‘You need to stop fighting my battles for me, Ma. I can look after myself.’
Marietjie dabbed at her eyes, not caring that she might be ruining her makeup and leaving dark smudges on her cheeks.
‘They’re not like us, you know,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘The English.’
André sighed. His mother had a factory-set resentment towards the English. It was like she forgot her son was half-English.
‘The Harrisons are all right,’ he said brightly. ‘They’re English. I’ve never met Mrs Harrison’s husband Bill, but Claire has always been very kind to me.’
‘I don’t mean the Harrisons. I’m talking about the English English,’ his mother said. She gave a heavy sigh. ‘But you’ve set your heart on going to London, haven’t you?’
André avoided her gaze. ‘I’ve not decided yet,’ he said.
She looked at him and while her mouth was firm, her eyes were glassy with tears. ‘You don’t have to lie, André. You made up your mind a long time ago.’
CHAPTER 7
Everyone was pleased when Teacher’s parents left and went back to Ghana. Even Teacher looked relieved. Karabo missed Paa Kofi but she was glad Ma’ama was no longer in the house. They hadn’t gone to church when Ma’ama was there because the charismatic church they went to wasn’t up to Ma’ama’s evangelical standards. She said it was Karabo’s mother’s fault that Teacher had turned his back on the Methodists.
‘All that raising of hands in your church,’ Ma’ama said. ‘It’s not right. It’s not as if God was sitting up there, twirling around on the ceiling fan like a pigeon that’s flown in through the window.’
The church Karabo and her parents attended was called the Latter Day Church of Holy Fire. It was a large and inescapable presence in Mthatha, although the building itself was rather small. The Nigerian pastor whipped himself into a fervour every Sunday and swept the congregation, ululating and swaying, along with him. Pastor Fola Adebayor’s eyes blazed with righteous fury when he was in full oratorical flight. His sermons were suspiciously like entertainment. Karabo looked forward to it at the start of the week but, although she’d never admit it, she couldn’t help thinking that maybe Ma’ama had a point.
Karabo’s mother Precious set the rhythm to life in the Bentil household. On Mondays and Tuesdays, she would be strangely reticent, as if she’d just moved into the house and was restrained by her new surroundings. By Wednesday, she’d be dropping oblique hints about the perils of an ungodly life and Teacher would nod wisely in agreement. By Friday she’d be clapping her hands as she did the housework. And by Sunday, oh Lord! by Sunday she’d have worked herself into a lather and be singing hymns at full blast. It was as if she was on a celestial parade ground, not living in a little three-bedroomed house with tufts of withered grass masquerading as a lawn.
On Sunday mornings as they got ready for church, Karabo and her parents listened to hymns on the radio. Then they’d go to church and sing the same hymns all over again. Her mother was always resplendent in a buttoned red jacket atop a black skirt. Karabo particularly liked the white satin sash her mother wore across her chest, for it matched the little bobble hat perched on her head. She looked like she was dressed to do battle, which in a way she was. As for Teacher, he always went to church in a suit and tie, even in summer when it was thirty degrees outside. Sundays were when Karabo got to wear little white dresses and shiny black leather shoes with decorative perforations in the leather. Her mother and father both laughed when she said her Sunday clothes made her look like a girl.
‘But you are a girl,’ her mother cried.
But Karabo didn’t want to be a girl. She wanted to be like Teacher.
One morning when they were about to set out to church, a man shuffled up to the Bentils’ gate. Karabo was almost fifteen by then and she no longer wore little white dresses or the shoes with the perforations. She went up to the gate where their dog, Saddam, was leaping up and down in excitement.
There were kernels of white hair scattered about the man’s head and his fingernails were chipped and encrusted with a dark residue. Karabo could hardly hear him speak over Saddam’s excited barking.
She shouted at him through the wire. ‘We don’t have any jobs.’
He smiled at her suddenly, exposing wet gums in a startling shade of red. His teeth, at least those that still remained in his head, were a gnarled mix of brown and yellow. Karabo shuddered. It was like looking into the mouth of an animal.
‘No piece job,’ she said, criss-crossing her arms a few times to make sure he understood. She could tell from the slouch of his shoulders and the battered shoes he wore that he had no real conviction that they would have a piece job anyway. He stood there staring at Karabo until she began to feel uncomfortable. ‘No job,’ she said again and took a step back. She was glad the fence was between them. Then she turned and walked towards the car where her parents were waiting. She could feel the man’s eyes on her.
‘What did that old man want?’ her mother asked.
The man shuffled away and Saddam followed him, barking madly all the way to the corner of the yard where the palm trees stood in a tight, bearded clump.
‘A job.’
‘He should go to the ANC. Maybe they will give him a job,’ Teacher said mildly.
Karabo caught his eyes in the rear-view mirror. They were uncharacteristically hard and flinty. Not many people knew how militant Teacher could be. He had an acute sense of social justice which he hid behind a soft-spoken manner and an endearing stammer. He wasn’t one to make placards at the kitchen table or march in the vanguard of a protest rally. He was more likely to be at the rear, walking slowly with a pensive look on his face. He had odd rules, too. He refused to give money to a beggar if he were kneeling down. Teacher always said a man should never kneel for anyone, no matter how hard his lot. There were a lot of beggars in Mthatha.
‘It’s Sunday,’