Afrika (20 page)

Relieved, Kim put the notebook back in her bag. Hendrik led her to the car and opened the door for her.“When do you and Riana leave for Canada?” he asked.

“In eight days.”

“I am hoping I can see you again.” He paused and added,“Ginger is very excited to meet you. And about having a half sister.”

Kim climbed into the car. She was curious to meet Ginger but hadn't known how to suggest it. “I think that would be okay,” she said.

His eyes lit up at her response. “Shall we go up Table Mountain and see the view?” he asked.

“Right now?”

“Ja. If you have time.”

“Sure!” Kim said. She was relieved that he was not taking her home just yet. Time was running out and she had not asked him the important questions.

T
hey drove through the city in silence. Hendrik brought out the chocolate again. This time Kim took a piece. Driving with her father was so different from riding in the car with Oom Piet. Hendrik's hands were large and took up a lot of space on the steering wheel. They finished off the bar together.

“Do you play sports?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the road.

“I play soccer,” Kim said. “Junior League.”

“What position?” he asked.

“Forward. I missed a whole season to be here.”

They turned up a steep road and parked near the cable car. “The wind's died down,” he said. “Would you like to go up?”

“Yes!” Kim said. She knew her mom would never take her. It was midweek and the cable car was deserted. Hendrik purchased two tickets.

Kim steadied herself as the cable car twirled away from the platform and climbed high above the parking lot. They moved away from the ground quickly. Her stomach lifted and then dropped.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Butterflies in my stomach,” she giggled. “It's wonderful.”

“Your mom and I used to come up here.”

“No way. Mom hates heights.”

He smiled. “Ja, she does, but it was one of the few places we could go on dates. We hoped people would think we were tourists and leave us alone.”

Kim tried to imagine her parents as young people. Hendrik had an open boyish face, yet he now had some gray, wiry, jack-in-the-box strands jumping out from his cropped hair. As for Riana, it was hard to imagine her as anyone other than her mom.

Thinking about her mother reminded Kim of all the questions she needed to ask. She was slightly more relaxed with Hendrik but he was still basically a stranger. He sensed her tension.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It's hard to imagine Mom going on dates,” Kim answered.

Hendrik placed his large hands on the window of the cable car and stared down. “Your mom was so perfect. Around her I was afraid of making a fool of myself or setting a foot wrong. After class she gave up going out to restaurants and cocktail lounges to be with me. She wanted so much for me – as a writer, I mean.” He paused briefly. “She believed in
me. Without that belief I never would have finished my book.”

Mom
, Kim wanted to shout,
hid you from me
! But in front of the conductor Kim didn't say a word. Instead, she glared down at the harbor. Far into the bay she could see Robben Island.

When they finally arrived at the top, the conductor opened the door for his passengers. As soon as the cable car moved away, she turned to Hendrik. She blurted the words out quickly, before she changed her mind. “Mom, never once showed me your photo,” she said in a shaky voice. “She kept you hidden from me!”

If Kim sounded rude, she didn't care. She was suddenly furious. It was as if this was only about Hendrik. If her words bothered him he didn't appear to be affected. He led Kim up the trail.

She couldn't look at him.“Like a convict!” she added sharply, just so he would get the point.

“I'm not surprised,” he answered calmly.

“You're not
surprised!”
Kim repeated, stumbling on a rock. Hendrik helped her find her balance. She pulled her arm away from him. “You never contacted us!” Her voice broke. “You never once made an effort –”

Hendrik interrupted. “Kim, we had to keep it a secret. It was 1984, the height of apartheid. I was
deeply involved in politics. Even after she left for Canada, we just had to keep that secret sealed up.”

Kim struggled to understand why Hendrik and her mother needed to keep their relationship a secret, even when Riana was in another country.

Hendrik read her mind. “The truth is,” he said, “I loved your mother, but I
was
selfish. The relationship would have harmed me.”

The wind blew across Kim's face. “Because it was illegal?”

“Our relationship wasn't just illegal,” he explained. “Your ma was white and an Afrikaner. In my organization some people were against mixing with Whites. Your mother talked about building bridges, others spoke about burning them.”

Now he sounded bitter. His jaw was set and his face was flushed. For a moment no one spoke.

With an effort he calmed himself. “The best times we had were when your ma and I were alone. Just her and me. We lived undercover for one year, until your mother found out she was pregnant. That's when the fights began. Cat and dog we became. She wanted a father for you and could no longer accept our secrecy. She woke up one day and gave me the chop. Then she ran away – back to the farm. What's its name?”

“Milky Way.”

“Ja, that's it,” he nodded. “Melkweg. I followed your ma there. It was night when I arrived and the whole sky was filled with stars. I saw a light coming from one of the workers' rooms. I caught sight of the woman who lived there, explained who I was, and asked her to fetch Riana from the big house. That woman let me stay in her room.”

“Lettie,” Kim said.“That was Lettie who helped you.” Kim bit her tongue and did not say what she was thinking –
She was banished from the farm for doing so.

“Riana booked her ticket in less than a week,” Hendrik said. He swallowed loudly and added. “Her mind was made up and off to Canada she went.”

Kim did not know if she should be angry or sad. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on the harbor. She traced with her eyes the route she imagined the tall ships took, coming around the Cape of Good Hope. Then she spoke.

“If you were in love why didn't you follow Riana to Canada? After all that had happened, why didn't you?”

Hendrik turned to her. “I was not as brave as your mother. What was Canada to me? Who was I to Canada? Nothing! I would stay and fight for South Africa to change! And when it did – when all those years of hard work and believing in victory
paid off – I took my rightful place. How could I not take it?”

“Did you ever ask for a picture of me?” Kim asked.

“I wanted to contact you. So often I have lived this encounter in my mind and in my heart. But I couldn't risk that a newspaper might try to dig up the fact that I had a child – a white child – and was not the person I appeared to be.” He forced himself to look at Kim. “I shouldn't have cared what people might think. But I did.”

Kim continued to stare at the water. She wanted to find the exact place where the ultra marine blue ocean and the gray-green one, mixed one with the other. Kim had always believed that this bay was the precise spot where the two oceans met but recently Themba had told her that wasn't true. According to scientists, the meeting place – and the farthest tip of Africa – was farther to the east at Cape Agulhas. How many things in life are like this, thought Kim: you think it's one way, but it turns out to be a lie.

She turned back to Hendrik.
Am I still a secret?
Kim wanted to ask him.
Are you still afraid of what others will think of you? You and your white child?

Hendrik read her expression. “I have told Ginger about you, and soon everyone will know,” he said.

She focused again on the bay. Eventually she found what she was looking for. Beyond Robben Island was a long white line of breaker waves. Maybe the scientists were wrong and this was where the warm Indian waters collided with the cold Atlantic.

“Can we go down now?” she asked. “I've had enough.”

“Of course,” said Hendrik as he led them back to the cable station.

“Y
ou're disappointed in him, aren't you?” Themba said. He and Kim were kicking a soccer ball between them in the schoolyard as they waited, and he was slightly out of breath.

“What are you talking about?” Kim asked.

He frowned. “I'm talking about your father, your pa.”

She booted the ball and he sprinted after it. For a few moments they passed it between them. Finally, Kim charged up to the goalpost and kicked the ball.

“He was okay,” Kim said. “I told you. He's basically a nice guy. We just don't have an awful lot in common, that's all.”

But it was hard to conceal her real feelings from Themba. He knew her too well.

“You think he should have dropped everything and followed your mom to Canada?” Themba asked.

She adjusted her sunglasses on her sweaty nose. “I don't know,” she said.

“You think he should have given everything up to enter the white world of your mother?”

Kim jammed her heels into the hard earth and glared at him. The way he said
white world
reminded her of when Hendrik called her his
white child.

“Sorry, hey,” he said drawing close. “But you don't understand what it was like in those days. Young children fought with stones and bricks to defend what they believed to be theirs. Daily people like my father were willing to die for liberation. This was Hendrik's country and he wanted to be here.”

Kim did not respond. The sun, that had been partly hidden by the side of the school building, had shifted so that it drilled into the back of her head. She belted the ball back into the field. She was irritated. With the heat. With Themba. With Hendrik. With herself.

The week had gone fast since she and Hendrik had taken the cable car up Table Mountain. Afterwards she went home and collapsed on her bed. Riana had given Kim homeopathic tablets for upset stomach. But her stomach didn't hurt. Nothing hurt, really. She was entirely numb.

It was Lettie who unlocked the emotions that Kim needed to feel. She came in with sweetened tea and marmite smeared on large white crackers. She set the tray down and stood over the bunk bed to feel Kim's forehead.

For the first time, the full realization that they would be gone in less than a week, hit Kim. Tears
burned the back of her throat. She wished Lettie and Themba could come back with them to Canada, but she knew her mother would never allow it.

“Will you soon visit Grandma Elsie and your sister at the farm?” Kim asked as she turned away. She didn't want Lettie to see how she chewed her lip to keep the tears in check.

“I am going to see them next weekend,” Lettie responded.

It was hopeless. Kim could no longer hold on. She threw the covers back and pounded the mattress like a two year old. Then came a cry that began deep in her gut and vibrated through her body like a spasm. “Why don't you hate them?” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “All of them! My mom! Oupa! The policeman!”

Lettie laid a cold facecloth across Kim's forehead trying to calm her.“I have no heaviness toward your ma,” she said. “She was brave, too. I lost my home at the farm, but I did gain a different life for my children. Toward your Oupa and that policeman, I am angry. But I try not to be bitter.” She paused. “When you are bitter, you are lost.” Kim had closed her eyes and let the facecloth cool her brow. Her heart stilled; her outburst had released something inside her.

Kim looked up and started. She remembered where she was. Themba was standing beside her with
one foot on the soccer ball. The sun was very hot.

Themba took a brown paper bag from his rucksack and handed it to her. “Open this after I'm gone,” he said. Then he packed the ball away.

“Where you going?” she asked.

Ignoring her question, Themba pointed across the street from the school and asked,“Is this them?”

Kim turned to look. The two figures were still a distance away, but Kim recognized Hendrik, tall and dignified in his trousers and light jacket. Beside him was a young girl with pigtails, in a cotton dress and long white kneesocks. They were waiting for the light to change.