Bloodlines (7 page)

Entire black communities were forcibly moved from their homes into newly established Homelands, culled from land that was barely arable, with limited mobility because of the Pass Laws, and no opportunity. It was this forced movement based on race that occasioned Michaela’s editorial about Sophiatown, one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg.

Your mother’s father Samuel was a quiet man. He preferred to be in the background, which is where he lived most of his life. But he and your grandmother, Selma, had just picked up their daughter at the main police station in the center of Johannesburg. It was not an experience for which life had prepared them.

Michaela told me what happened, and much later, after you were born and your grandfather believed for a brief moment that her days of dangerous protest were over, he shared with me his recollection of the conversation they had on the way home from the police station.

“Teach your daughter some respect for the law,” the duty officer had said. “The time for these games is over. If you can’t control her, we will. Now take her home with you and make sure she keeps her
kaffir
-loving ideas to herself. Understand?”

Neither of your grandparents had ever been treated with such contempt, and they were angry and shaken.

“I hate that the police were so awful to you,” said Michaela, filled with indignation. “And I’m sorry that I had to call you to bail me out.”

“You did the right thing, Michaela,” said her mother. “Of course you had to call us. But how did you expect them to treat you? They didn’t invite you to a bloody tea party. If you’re going to fight against a police state, you have to be prepared for retaliation. They’re not going to lie down and let you roll over them.”

“She’s not fighting anyone,” said her father. “This is over and done with, Michaela. You’re out of it in one piece—this time. God only knows what they’ll do next time they get their hands on you. It’s a lesson to all of us. No more incendiary editorials,” he warned.

“You want me to just keep quiet and watch as families and communities are destroyed?” she said as they drove home. “That’s not what I’ve learned from you. You taught me that if we cower when tyrants flex their muscles, nothing will ever change. It may be more dangerous now, but these black people are being treated like cattle. Don’t we have a responsibility to stand up for them?”

“Time to get off your soapbox,” he said. Michaela told me later that never in her life had he spoken so sharply to her. “The people running this government are fanatics. They think they have God in their pocket, and they believe they’re passing His laws. They don’t care about anyone’s welfare but their own—and you know that even in their churches they preach that the blacks are an inferior race put here for their convenience. These people have a different name and a different uniform, but they’re motivated by a belief as hideous and deluded as the Nazis’. They’re full of themselves and their destiny, and they’ve given us fair warning tonight. In their theatre the only place for blacks is backstage, and there’s standing room only for people with our political beliefs. For Jews, there’s no room at all. We’re out in the parking lot.”

He looked at her, and in the darkness of the rearview mirror, she could see that he was trying to smile.

“Their political beliefs will eventually backfire and kick them right in the backside. But in the meantime, they hold all the cards.” He was silent, and she stretched out a hand from the back seat and squeezed his shoulder as he drove.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“Don’t think you didn’t scare me, too,” said her mother, turning in the passenger seat so that she could look back and forth from her husband to her daughter. “The difference between your father and me is that while I’m concerned for your safety, I’m also proud of you. I don’t want you to stop fighting these bastards. I just want you to do it with intelligence, and I don’t want you to do it alone. You can be far more effective if you join—”

“No, Selma.” Samuel interrupted his wife sharply. “There will be no political organizing tonight. Please. Not after this. Not now.”

Your mother was alone in the university news office when I arrived, sitting with her back to me, typing furiously. I stood in the doorway, staring at her. She was using an old manual typewriter—an Underwood—you had to work hard on those machines—and even from behind I could sense her determination. Her hair was cut short, revealing a tanned, slender neck, and she sat with her back straight, swaying slightly as she typed so that her head remained motionless as she concentrated on what she was writing. But for the staccato sound of the typewriter, she might have been dancing.

Pursuing her was risky, and I had never been a risk-taker. She was beautiful and headstrong; everyone knew her. Men with a lot more to offer than I did were in constant pursuit—men with charm and good looks, some of them from wealthy families. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted from me. Several times I almost turned and tiptoed out, but I didn’t leave, and eventually I called her name. She stopped typing, turned around, and her face lit up when she saw me. I wondered whether she was really glad to see me—or whether this was how she was with everyone.

There was no small talk with your mother. Not then. Not ever. She always got right to the point, I think because she felt there was so much to do. And that first day we sat down together, she wanted to get right to work—to discuss what I liked and didn’t like about her editorial. At first I was flattered to see how interested she was in what I had to say, but after awhile I realized that no one before me had the courage to tell her that her approach wouldn’t work, or to explain why. Other people had complimented her on her willingness to tackle a topic as controversial as Sophiatown, but warned her that what she was doing was dangerous. But I soon learned that there was a reason why no one gave her any feedback on how she could be more effective: she didn’t make it easy.

“What’s wrong with being straightforward?” she argued. She had small hands; her fingers were slender and graceful, and she used them for emphasis as she spoke—as exclamation points, full stops, question marks. “I have strong views of what’s right and wrong, and I express them clearly. That’s what an editorial is supposed to do, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I explained patiently, “but it’s only a first step. You have to do more than state your case clearly—you have to make it convincing in a way that people can hear.”

“The police were apparently convinced enough to arrest me.”

She glared at me and pursed her lips in a gesture that would become a hallmark of her determination, and I learned eventually that it was a sign for me to back off. But at the time everything was too new, for both of us, and I stumbled on, not knowing where I was taking us.

“Don’t delude yourself,” I said. “Being arrested isn’t a sign that you’ve written well—it’s only an indication that the authorities are threatened by your subject matter. Even a badly written editorial that was critical of what’s happening in Sophiatown would have brought them down on you like a ton of bricks.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said sullenly. “So how would you have made this more convincing?”

“You need it to tell a story,” I said, “what does it feel like to people being tossed out of their homes? You have to interview more of them and tell their tales, in their own words. Bring in other voices, more authoritative than yours—quote liberal politicians like Helen Suzman, who’s probably as outraged as you are. You have to persuade your readers that this is bigger than just you. You’re not an isolated voice—you reflect the views of many people, some of them influential.”

I paused and looked at her, fearing that she’d had enough of my frankness and was about to tell me to leave. But she was looking at me with interest and curiosity.

“Go on,” she said. “What else?”

“You’re writing for the provincial white audience in this country—but you can’t bring about real change that way. You need the opinion of the civilized world behind you. That means you have to provide some historical perspective; condemn what’s happening here in a way that lets the whole world see what the Nationalists are really doing.”

“What is it you think they’re doing?”

“Can’t you see it?” I asked, incredulous. “It’s so obvious. The British abolished slavery over a hundred years ago, and these people are trying to bring it back in all but name. But Michaela,” I said, softening my tone, “you have to find a way to do all this without getting arrested. And I don’t know how to do that.”

“If speaking my mind will get me arrested, then so be it,” she said. “It’s still legal to express an opinion in this country. If they don’t have a reason to detain me they have to let me go. That’s the law.”

She banged her closed fist on the table, and I found myself reaching over to cover it with mine. Her hand was small and warm, and she opened and closed her fist within my grasp. It felt like a bird fluttering against the cage of my fingers. Her eyes were wide, and the heat radiated from my face as I spoke.

“They can close you down as easily as this,” I said softly. “What you really need right now is to shut up and listen.”

I looked at the delicate curve of her jaw, at the promise of her full mouth, and what I did next surprised me as much as it did Michaela. I was shy and inexperienced, and I felt clumsy. But the impulse to kiss her was irresistible. Through the dark lashes and into the depths of her liquid eyes, there was a dawning recognition that she knew she was about to be kissed—even before I was aware that I was going to kiss her. And her kiss expressed the more generous part of a personality that was often harsh, angry and uncompromising. Her lips were soft and yielding, and with her tongue she signaled that she would be as passionate in love as she was in argument.

Our first kiss, sitting at the scratched table in the press office, with my hand covering her fist, typified our relationship. Somehow she managed me into things before I even knew I was being manipulated, and I found myself being assertive in a way I hadn’t thought possible. She would say later that no other men she went out with were able to match her; they just buckled under her tireless onslaught.

What was telling, about both of us, is that she wanted me to withstand her battering; she admitted that I was the first man she didn’t want to overpower. To my amazement, I became what she needed me to be.

I was proud and gratified to see that your mother found something worthy and acceptable in me. We were so different, and she was far ahead of me in so many ways. I found her reckless, but her activism showed a degree of courage that I lacked. She was convinced that I was naïve, but she valued my ability to think strategically. That combination, she felt, might make me a willing student, someone she could persuade and bring along to the point where I too would respond to the crushing injustice of the shameful world we lived in. And then, she hoped, I would be willing to take risks, too.

I looked up at your mother and wondered how she came to know it so clearly, and so much earlier than I did. But the truth was that I had known for a long time what was and wasn’t shameful. As a little boy, growing up in a small town outside Johannesburg, I’d experienced firsthand what living in this world had done to us, both black and white. I learned that in a world where unwritten laws governed the conduct between the races, every word has a consequence. But I didn’t know what those consequences were until I had caused terrible harm to someone I loved.

Let me tell you a story about how I learned not to speak the unspeakable when I was just a child.