Leopold Blue (3 page)

‘I thought you said you had good news,' I said. It slipped out too quickly. I glanced at Mum to see her reaction. She made a show of breathing in slowly.

‘When are you going to stop this?' Beth asked.

Mum looked at Beth. ‘Sweetheart, if by “this” you mean telling very poor, uneducated people how they can avoid getting a disease that will kill them and their children, the answer is I'm not. It's important.'

‘No, it's not,' replied Beth, unusually stubborn.

‘Yes, it is,' Mum laughed, her eyes darting to Dad for support.

‘You're not listening!' I said.

‘How about for once in your life –' Mum started, her voice rising.

‘Ronel's mum says you're upsetting the volk and making the famers cross,' Beth spoke over her. Her face was red. ‘And everyone wants you to stop.'

‘
Every
one,' I nodded.

Mum stared at Beth a moment, then scraped her chair back against the linoleum floor and left.

I looked at Dad, but he held up his hand and finished his supper in silence.

I couldn't remember when my allergic reaction to Mum began. Everything she did annoyed me; everything I said to her sounded childish or whiny. I loved her of course; but recently I'd found it difficult to be in the same room. I lay on my bed, staring up at the poster of Kirk Cameron that was stuck to my ceiling. A nagging guilt wormed its way into my thoughts. ‘I'm not going to apologise,' I said aloud to the grinning Kirk. ‘Somebody has to stand up to her!' Dad was incapable of doing it. Nevertheless the look on Mum's face at supper made me feel mean. Many things made Mum angry, but she rarely got upset.

‘Oh, all right,' I muttered, getting up with heavy feet. I would apologise for being rude. Then I would tell her about the way people looked at us, the parties I wasn't invited to, the raised eyebrows when her back was turned. Surely her family was more important to her than the farm workers?

I walked across the courtyard around which our square house was built and into the family room. There was no reason for it to be called that – it had no purpose other than to link the courtyard to the stoep and garden. The far wall was a graveyard of discarded passions – our baby books, Dad's record collection, the upright piano and Mum's knitting machine. Ahead of me was the sitting room. I paused. Although I couldn't see them, I knew my parents were spread out on the old brown corduroy sofa. While everyone else in South Africa sat on a couch in their lounge, we had a sofa in our sitting room. ‘Airports have lounges,' was one of Mum's mantras, ‘people have sitting rooms.'

‘But Timothy,' came her voice through the open door, ‘AIDS is not a construct of my imagination! It's an epidemic, not a scare story. All the evidence you need is there.' Her tone was softer alone with Dad. ‘It will be on the new government's agenda – there's a committee drawing up a national response.'

‘A committee, hey? This
is
serious,' Dad teased. The sofa creaked. He sipped loudly a couple of times. I couldn't bear the way Dad slurped – it was the only thing about him that I didn't like.

‘Life is short and hard, Vivvy, for the people you're trying to help. You're not bringing them good news. And you're asking them to talk about the only thing in their lives that is private.'

‘I don't understand you!' Mum sounded tired. ‘You're talking about a community where alcoholism and domestic abuse are diseases themselves. Surely this is a perfect opportunity to change some of that?'

‘The things people are most ashamed about are the things they are least likely to talk about. It will take time. You're not going to change ideas overnight because of some numbers on a piece of paper.'

‘But there isn't time, Timothy! That's why Bibi's article is so important.'

‘That woman has too much time on her hands,' replied Dad, ‘She needs to settle down.' Then he added. ‘You know what she needs, Vivvy…'

Mum laughed. ‘I don't think it's a man she's after,' she said.

‘Huh! That's only because she hasn't met a real man yet. A South African man would sort that problem out. What about Hannes?' Their laughter was warm and private. I didn't want to be near them. I felt left out; my awkwardness would make me rude. As I turned away, Mum spoke again.

‘I don't know how to deal with that child, Tim.'

I stopped.

‘She's fine,' came Dad's reply.

‘She's a pain in the bloody arse.'

My heart constricted at Mum's words; I knew I shouldn't be listening. But I couldn't move.

She sighed. ‘I don't blame her.'

Outside the crickets seemed unbearably loud.

Mum continued: ‘I'm worried about her. She has no friends.'

I bit my bottom lip and squeezed my eyes shut.

Dad clicked his tongue. ‘Come now.'

‘It's true,' replied Mum, ‘We should be hanging up on boyfriends and barring her from using the phone, we should be finding cigarettes in her bag and gating her for months on end.'

I wanted to burst in on them and scream, ‘It's not my fault I'm a social retard! It's yours! It's this town!' I wanted to shake her and yell: ‘Don't you see, you stupid woman, don't you get it? I would do anything to have a friend, let alone a
boyfriend
, anything!'

But I could not bear to face their pity. What was there to say? Nothing they could say would make it any better.

The door leading out onto the stoep was slightly open. I pushed it further and stepped out. The moon had risen late. It was full and heavy and as it climbed silver light bathed the garden. Despite the cold air I sat down on the bench by the door until my breathing returned to normal and the tears dried up. Up in the Camp, Marta would be making her way back from her prayer service, along the narrow streets where even at this time there would be kids playing out on the road, light spilling out from open doors, radios playing and bursts of laughter or shouting. Here the
creek-creek
of the crickets and the distant frogs were the only things that kept us from being swallowed up in the silence altogether.

Juffrou du Plessis, the grande dame of Leopold, sat at the front of the classroom, the regulation school chair hidden underneath her. I held my breath as I skirted around her large table – it was a reflex action, a poor substitute for being able to make myself disappear altogether. Being invisible to Juffrou du Plessis had been my priority ever since she had been appointed my homeroom teacher two years ago. It was a priority for anyone with any sense. At first glance my Afrikaans teacher looked uncannily like the granny on the Ouma rusks box. She had an unchanging rotation of floral or polka-dot dresses in the summer or pleated skirts in winter, from which the hemline of her apricot petticoat often protruded. Her dark brown hair, which she wore pinned back in a severe roll, was streaked with a top layer of white, like a Top Deck chocolate. Juffrou herself was an unpalatable mixture of disappointment and meanness. Her tongue's lashings hurt more than a sjambok
^[*]
.

She was marking books, something she did infrequently. Her red pen flew disdainfully through the pages, scattering a spray of little red arrows that would leave an imprint several pages deep. Every so often another book landed on the growing pile on the floor beside her. We took our seats – fifteen girls in total, seven pairs of two, and me – and still she continued. The silence slid into lesson time, long enough for a shiver of anticipation to pass around the room. Finally, without slowing the speed of the marking, she said: ‘The good Lord created the world in six days. On the seventh day,' she paused to draw breath, ‘what did He do on the seventh day, Isabel?'

Isabel looked flummoxed. This was supposed to be Afrikaans grammar.

‘Isabel?' Juffrou's red pen hovered in the air.

‘Rested?' Isabel offered, screwing up her face with the effort.

‘Exactly!' agreed Juffrou du Plessis, with a final slash into the page before she plonked the book on the pile. We watched as she opened the next. She shook her head and sighed, then picked up her ruler. She drew a red line diagonally across the double page and continued: ‘and He calls upon His children to do the same.'
Smack
went the ruler on her table as she lifted her head to look directly at me.

‘Sunday is a day of rest, to be spent in fellowship at church and at home, not careering around the countryside, upsetting hard-working people.'

I lowered my eyes, and sank into the wooden seat. Juffrou pushed her chair back and stood up. In the social hierarchy of Leopold, Juffrou du Plessis was second only to Mevrou
^[*]
Dominee, the Dutch Reformed church minister's wife. The du Plessis family had been farming in the area for almost 200 years. Juffrou ran the Kinderkrans
^[*]
group, and presided over the flower show committee and the Leopold Women's Circle. She could smell out mischief before it had been committed. She was the public opinion. On matters of interest that arose outside town, her friend Santie de Vries, who worked the telephone exchange, fed her daily updates. Now it appeared that Mum was beginning to annoy her.

‘Trappe van vergelyken
^[**]
.' She picked up her ruler and pointed to the blackboard, across which three examples were written. She started down a row. The ruler was poised, ready to smash onto a desk as she passed.

‘Right,' she barked at Martie.

‘More right, the most right,' replied Martie quickly.

‘No, Martie, if you are right, you are right. End of story,' said Juffrou, looking in my direction. She stopped at the back of the classroom and leaned briefly against the display board. It was dedicated to her ‘Home-Grown Heroes'. The opera singer Mimi Coertse had been there so long that she was beginning to fade. Next to her were Chris Barnard, Bles Bridges, and Gary Player. In the centre of the display were her two favourites – Naas Botha and Steve Hofmeyr. ‘Proper young men, those two. Decent boys,' she'd say, nodding at the
Huis Genoot
^[***]
pull-outs.

‘Foolish.' She was off again, this time pouncing on Sunette. I twisted the skirt of my dress as she made her way towards me. Dad had laughed when I told him I was terrified of Juffrou. ‘Sonja du Plessis?' he'd said. ‘It's all bark. She's a big softie really.' By now the Big Softie had reached the top of my row and I was finding it difficult to breathe. As she started towards me, something caught her eye and she turned to the door. Through the centre pane of glass we saw tannie Hanneke, the school secretary, beckoning her.

Juffrou called out an exercise before hurrying away.

I breathed out slowly.

‘You're in trouble!' Esna swivelled around in her desk and picked up my pen. Esna had completely bypassed adolescence – she'd left for the holidays at the end of last year with a bit too much puppy fat and returned in January a tannie.

‘No I'm not,' I said, taking the pen out of her sticky fingers.

‘No man, not her, her mother!' said Elmarie next to her. Elmarie Goosen was the only person who ever offered to be my best friend. We were eight years old. I'd been to stay with her a few times. She lived on a large family farm in the mountains. Our weekends were spent jumping down into the silos filled with acorns for the pigs and making tea parties for her dolls and running away from her demonic younger brother Flip. At mealtimes Elmarie's mother practised her English words on me. ‘Chutney' was her favourite – it made Elmarie and Flip laugh. On Sunday we gathered in her grandfather's lounge for a hymn and prayers while P.W. Botha smiled benignly down at us from his gold-framed photograph on the wall, in a manner not unlike the Pope. Then on Monday morning, while it was still dark, we drank sweet moer koffie
^[*]
and ate beskuit
^[**]
under crocheted blankets in the back of the bakkie
^[*]
and drove to town in time for school. I loved it.

Our friendship lasted until the day I let slip that my second-best friend was Simon. This put Elmarie in an impossible position. My admission made me a rooinek kaffir-dogtertjie
^[**]
and no friendship could survive that. I ran home in tears and found my parents sitting at the kitchen table, about to have lunch. Dad gave me a squeeze and told me that it wasn't Elmarie's fault; she was operating from a very limited gene pool. Mum gathered me on to her lap, and for a moment looked ready to cry. Then she stood up, deposited me on a chair and announced she was taking this matter to the headmistress. Dad disagreed. Under the circumstances it would only damage ‘relations'. Mum put her finger on her lips and they moved off to continue their discussion behind a closed door. I was left on the kitchen chair, clutching my damp tissue. It was only then that I noticed Marta, who must have been there all along. She placed my favourite peanut butter and cheese sandwich and a glass of Oros on the table. She turned my chair to face her and knelt down, leaning in so that her browny-black eyes were inches from mine.

‘You listen to me,' she said, her knobbly finger poking my shoulder, ‘Never again do you let that Elmarie Goosen make you cry, do you understand?' I nodded, fighting back another bout of tears, ‘You are Margaret Bergman, you do not cry for no one.'

‘OK,' I'd promised and started on my sandwich in case I started all over again. I never did cry after that day, but neither did I mention Simon again.

Elmarie and Esna had been best friends ever since, and to prove it they spent lunch breaks doing French plaits in each other's hair.

‘It's your mother,' Elmarie smirked now. ‘She's causing trouble. My dad says so, he says she's making mischief.'

I rolled my eyes. Everything Elmarie said was qualified by ‘my dad says'.

But she was not finished. ‘He says she's upsetting the volk on all the farms with stories about some disease and saying they must go the clinic for check-ups.'

Esna looked alarmed.

‘My dad says it's giving the farmers a big bladdy headache. And for what? What business is it of hers?'

They looked at me, as if I knew the answer. I looked down. One of Mum's strands of hair had snaked itself around the sleeve of my school jersey. I picked it off and flicked it away. How dare she do this to me? I wouldn't defend her, I couldn't. Instead I looked out the window. ‘Ooh, look over there! It's Jaco Visagie! What's he doing here?'

‘Where?' Esna jumped out of her desk, sending the wooden seat clattering back and knocking her books to the floor. She had been devoted to Jaco, the local hunk from the agricultural college, for over a year. She hadn't said a word to him, but according to her he was spoken for.

‘
Vark!
' she sneered at me, resembling a pig herself.

‘I wonder if Jaco will be asked to the matric dance?' I continued. Elmarie hid a smile. Dates for the school leavers' dance were hard to find in Leopold. The agricultural college was the only source of boys in town. Unless you knew someone who was willing to drive three hours to drink Coke and Fanta and dance to the local squashbox band, you were stuck with one of them.

Juffrou reappeared. Her face was red and in a burst of energy unlike her, she started calling out commands before she'd sat down: ‘Come, come! Top of page 152.' She pulled out her hankie from inside the top of her dress and dabbed away a few crumbs from her top lip. ‘
Ag genade
^[*]
, Isabel, why are you not ready?'

Juffrou glowered from her table, her ruler and pencil poised like a knife and fork. Once and then again she glanced at the closed classroom door.

‘Begin, child, begin,' she said as Isabel haltingly started to read.

A few moments later came the
clack, clack, clack
of the headmistress Mrs Franklin's stilettos down the corridor.

A rap on the door, followed without pause by her entry, had us all clambering to our feet. Mrs Franklin was small and fierce. Even in the sweltering heat she remained crisp and efficient. We rattled off our greeting as Juffrou tugged her hemline back over her petticoat.

‘Juffrou du Plessis.' Mrs Franklin smiled broadly.

‘Headmistress.' Juffrou beamed back, her hands folded one on top of the other. Their perfect manners highlighted their mutual dislike.

Mrs Franklin turned to us. ‘We have a newcomer today.' She looked back over her shoulder towards the classroom door with an impatient frown, before the bright smile returned. ‘I'm sure you will all make her feel welcome, just as I am assured she will make every effort,' here she paused, ‘to make the best of her time here.'

It was the same each time a new girl arrived. In the moments before she stepped into the classroom I would clutch at a wild hope that at last I might have a friend. And then she would step in and have long blonde hair caught back in a scrunchie and her ankle socks would be rolled right down over her carefully tanned legs and I knew that to her, I was one of the dim locals. Nothing would make her want to speak to me.

‘Her name is Xanthe, and she will join your class as soon as she can find her way back from the school boarding house. Ah! There you are!' She beckoned at the doorway and into the classroom stepped a tall, pale girl with very black hair. Mrs Franklin pointed to the empty space next to me. ‘Margaret, we will assign Xanthe to your capable care.'

I looked at my fingers to hide my blush.

‘That's all.' With a last nod at Juffrou, Mrs Franklin left. For a few moments the only sound was the echo of her shoes disappearing down the corridor.