Authors: Beverley Naidoo
“Especially horror ones!” interrupted the stylish-haired boy.
“You see,” said Mama, during the advertisements. “It won’t be so bad, will it, Rosa?”
“But, Mama, those white children aren’t like the ones at Oranje Primary.”
“My grandmother taught me an old Zulu saying:
Ubuntu ungumuntu ngabanye abantu
…. People are people through other people. It means we are who we are in the way we treat others. Even here, Rosa, people will begin to learn that too.”
The reporter was back, talking about schools that still took only white children. A boy with a missing front tooth stared cheekily at the camera.
“Soon your school won’t be allowed to turn away black children, Andries. Do you look forward to making new friends?”
“There won’t be any of them after eleven.” Andries grinned.
“Why is that?”
“It won’t be nice for them at break.”
“What are you going to do?” the reporter asked calmly.
The boy’s grin widened as he shrugged his shoulders. Rosa chewed her thumb.
“That’s what they’re like here,” she whispered under her breath.
Mama heard. She pulled her closer and hugged her. “Not all of them, Rosa…and someone has to go first.”
New Year arrived and soon afterward it was the day that Rosa had begun to dread. Walking down their road for the first time in her new Oranje Primary uniform, she felt everyone was staring at her and Mama. Old Mrs. Moloi wiped her eyes and called out good luck over the wall. But a group of older boys, sitting on crates outside the supermarket, stopped chatting as they passed. She thought she heard one of them say “whitey.” Mama took her hand.
“Don’t let anyone take who you are away from
you, my child,” she said gently but firmly.
As they crossed the veld and entered the town, Mama’s hand gave Rosa small squeezes of encouragement. Before they had even reached the corner of Oranje Primary, they could see a crowd of adults and children, lined up by the front entrance. It seemed like Trigger-boy’s gang had grown taller and bigger, a hundred times over. A small gathering of policemen stood a short distance away, next to a man and a woman wearing suits and each carrying a briefcase. The crowd by the gate were all white but some of the police were black, as was the man in the dark suit. Everyone appeared to be waiting for something, including the paperboy. He stood at the corner watching Rosa and Mama approach. He looked worried.
Mama squeezed her hand more tightly as they reached the protesters. Faces and placards became blurred, but Rosa couldn’t blot out the hoarse screams: “NEVER! WHITE AND BLACK DON’T MIX!” “FIGHT FOR A WHITE ORANJE!” “NO BLACKS HERE.”
Mama never turned her face. Rosa, however, took a quick peek behind her and saw that the man and lady with briefcases were following. At
the top of the steps, under the entrance arch, stood a stern, grim man. His folded cheeks were shades of gray and his eyes, behind the thick glasses, reminded Rosa of a rhino standing guard. Was this the head teacher? She felt her stomach twist. A man with a deep-red face under a large khaki hat was arguing with him from the bottom of the steps. He jabbed his finger in Rosa’s direction.
“If you let this one in, we’ll take all our children away! I’m warning you!” He stretched out his arms to stop Rosa and Mama going up.
“If I don’t let her in, the government will close the school! Don’t you understand?” The head teacher sounded like he was pleading. Then he glared toward the couple with briefcases. “We have no choice!” he said bitterly.
Rosa heard a clicking sound. A camera loomed toward her, clicking again.
“This has echoes of Little Rock!” A man with an American accent was speaking into a microphone. “What’s it like to come to a school where people don’t want you?”
He thrust the microphone near her mouth.
“They will want me when they know me!” Rosa replied softly but clearly. But before he could ask
anything more, the man in the khaki hat started to push him violently away. The policemen rushed forward and the next thing Rosa knew was that she and Mama were somehow at the top of the steps, being hurried by the grim-faced head teacher into an office.
The forms filled in, Mama had to leave. She would have to face the protesters again and explain to Mevrou van Niekerk why she was late. Rosa tried not to feel panic as she watched Mama go. She followed the head teacher in the opposite direction down a long corridor and up the stairs to the Standard Three classroom.
As soon as she entered the doorway, she saw him—Trigger-boy. He sat in the far corner of the room, gazing straight at her. Why couldn’t he be one of the children whose parents took them away? Why did he have to be in her class? The teacher pointed to an empty place by the window, two desks in front of Trigger-boy. Rosa saw everyone’s eyes turn from her to the girl who would be sitting next to her. She struggled to remain calm as she walked across the room.
“Eyes on your work, class. I expect at least two pages by break.” The teacher’s crisp voice was
followed by a warning from the head teacher. He was still standing by the door.
“I expect no nonsense too! I want to hear no bad reports from Miss Brink.”
“
Ja
, Meneer Botha!” the class chorused.
Rosa heard a low snigger behind her as the head teacher left. Miss Brink looked young but severe. Her lips were a deeper red than her rust-colored hair, which was pulled tightly back into a neat bun. She walked briskly down the aisle to Rosa with an exercise book.
“The title for your composition is on the board. Let’s see how good your English is.”
Rosa stared at the two words “My Holidays.” She hadn’t really had a holiday. Did she want to tell Miss Brink that she had been working as a
kleinmeid
at Hennie van Niekerk’s house? She was wondering whether she should make something up, when she heard Miss Brink talking to her.
“There’s no time to sit around. I expect you to catch up with the others.”
The girl in the desk next to her caught Rosa’s eye and made a quick “better watch out!” face. It wasn’t unfriendly. Carefully writing her name and “Standard Three Oranje Primary School” on her
new English book, Rosa remembered Mama’s words: “Don’t let anyone take away from you who you are.”
Well, she would tell Miss Brink how she had spent her holidays. Although Hennie was in the class above, he would probably tell his friends and word would spread anyway. And it was nothing to be ashamed of. Rosa smoothed down the first page and began to write.
As soon as she started on the mischief that the twins got up to, there was no stopping. Only once she paused briefly, peering out of the window past the lacy tops of the jacarandas and down to the playground. How strange to see it from this side of the fence! But she wasn’t looking forward to going out there at all. If only Thato was with her. She returned to her writing. It took her mind off the coming breaktime and when the bell rang, she had reached the end of her second page. Miss Brink asked if someone would like to take “our new girl” out to play. The girl next to Rosa volunteered.
“Thank you, Marie,” said Miss Brink. “And show her where to find the toilets.”
Rosa kept her eyes on Marie’s mouse-colored plaits as they tramped with the crowd down the
stairs. Yet again Rosa was aware of sideways glances. They had just reached a corridor leading towards the playground, when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“Meneer Botha wants to see you,” a girl panted. “Don’t worry, Marie, I’ll take her.”
Rosa looked from the girl to Marie. Why was she being sent for? She was anxious but didn’t want to show it.
“Come,” said the girl when Marie had left. “We’ll go to the office this way.”
The girl began to lead her in the opposite direction to everyone else, along a corridor with Standard Four and Five classrooms. It was after they turned into a narrow alley leading out into a deserted yard, however, that Rosa became really worried. On one side was a windowless wall with a wooden door and two large metal bins. In the distance the playing fields stretched out, still and silent.
“But the office, isn’t it near the entrance?” Rosa’s pulse beat faster, as if sensing an invisible trap.
“
Ja,
it is. I’m just showing you round our school.”
The girl’s voice was calm, except there was a
slight stress on the “our.” Faint sounds of children’s laughter and shouts came from the playground on the other side of the building.
They were halfway across the yard when Trigger-boy and a small posse of children stepped out in front of them from behind the bins. His elbows swaggered outward, hands resting on hips.
“You!” he demanded. “Come here!”
Rosa stood rooted to the spot, the knife-gray eyes burrowing into her. She was aware of the girl at her side shifting slightly, as if ready to grab her should she try to run back. Folding her arms, she clutched her sides. She hoped they couldn’t tell that she was shaking inside as she stared back squarely.
“My name is Rosa.”
Trigger-boy wrinkled back his upper lip, showing his front teeth. Like a bulldog. “What did you say?” he drawled.
She knew he had heard. Her lips sealed themselves, and her mind raced desperately as five sets of eyes pinned her down. This time there was no fence between them.
“Anyone seen a rose this color?” he sneered to the others.
“Yuk!”
“Do you think we can pick her?”
Trigger-boy snapped his fingers. His hand whirled like a crazy wasp. Rosa clenched her fists. She would fight them if she had to.
“Leave Rosa alone!”
She knew that voice! Swinging around, she saw Hennie stride out of the alley. His angry eyes and forehead were so like his father’s! Even his voice had the same fierceness. Rosa’s stomach did a somersault.
“
Ag,
Hennie, we’re only playing,” whined the girl who had led Rosa out to the yard.
Hennie ignored her. Trigger-boy and his friends were suddenly deflated, like let-down balloons. Hennie turned to Rosa.
“The playground is that side. I’ll show you.”
Before they were out of earshot, Rosa heard Trigger-boy complaining loudly.
“Just because he’s in Standard Four and good at rugby, he thinks he can boss us around.”
Hennie took no notice.
“I saw you and your ma come to school this morning…with all those people.” He paused awkwardly. “You were very brave.”
They turned the corner, following a path alongside the orange-brick building. Hennie walked a little more slowly. Rosa’s heart was still thumping. She let Hennie’s words sink in. Did they mean that Hennie didn’t like the protesters? But surely his father thought like them! They were coming to the playground. Already Rosa could see children on the tarmac ahead glancing in their direction. She stopped and turned to Hennie.
“Somebody has to be first,” she said.
Before he could reply, there was a shout. “
Ag,
Hennie, we’re waiting for you! Hurry up, man!”
“I’ve got to go, OK?” Hennie’s voice was low.
“Thank you, Hennie,” she said simply, pausing slightly before saying his name.
His face flushed a little, then he disappeared into a cluster of boys tumbling after a ball.
Rosa scanned the playground. She deliberately took no notice of the stares. Her eyes traveled across the tarmac, and beyond the children who were chasing, skipping, running, and shouting, to the criss-cross wire fence. In the distance, she glimpsed the paperboy slipping in between cars at the red light. On the way home she would ask him if something was in the paper. A broken placard
rested lopsided against the wire. “
NEVER
!
WHITE AND BLA
…” If the protesters came again, she would have to learn to face them on her own. Mama couldn’t come with her every morning and be late for work.
But that was tomorrow. Rosa gave her head a little shake. One step at a time, as Mama would say. Her eyes reached the benches under the jacarandas. A girl with mouse-colored plaits seemed to be looking in her direction. It was Marie. Was she smiling? It was hard to make out from this far. Rosa took a deep breath and stepped out on to the tarmac to cross the playground.
2000
Out of bounds.
That’s what his parents said as soon as the squatters took over the land below their house. Rohan’s dad added another meter of thick concrete bricks to their garden wall and topped it with curling barbed wire. He certainly wasn’t going to wait for the first break-in and be sorry later. They lived on the ridge of a steep hill with the garden sloping down. Despite the high wall, from his bedroom upstairs, Rohan could see over the spiked-wire circles down to the place where he and his friends used to play. The wild fig trees under which they had made their hideouts were still there. They had spent hours dragging planks, pipes, sheets of metal and plastic—whatever might be useful—up the hill from rubbish tipped in a ditch below. The first squatters pulled their hideouts apart and used the same old scraps again for their own constructions. Rohan could still see the “ski slope”—the
red earth down which he and his friends had bumped and flown on a couple of old garbage can lids. The squatters used it as their road up the hill. Now it looked like a crimson scar cut between the shacks littering the hillside.
“There’s only one good thing about this business,” Ma said after the back wall was completed. “We won’t have to wash that disgusting red dust out of your clothes any more!”
Rohan said nothing. How could he explain what he had lost?
At first, some of the squatter women and children came up to the houses with buckets asking for water. For a couple of weeks his mother opened the gate after checking that no men were hanging around in the background. She allowed the women to fill their buckets at the outside tap. Most of her neighbors found themselves doing the same. Torrential rains and floods had ushered in the new millennium by sweeping away homes, animals and people in the north of the country. The television was awash with pictures of homeless families and efforts to help them. No one knew from where exactly the squatters had come. But, as Ma said, how could you refuse a woman or child some water?
It wasn’t long before all that changed. The first complaint of clothes disappearing off the washing line came from their new neighbors. The first African family, in fact, to move in among the Indians on Mount View. No one had actually seen anyone but everyone was suspicious including the neighbor, Mrs. Zuma.
“You can’t really trust these people, you know,” Mrs. Zuma tutted when she came to ask if Ma had seen anyone hanging around. However, it was when thieves broke into old Mrs. Pillay’s house, grabbed the gold thali from around her neck, and left her with a heart attack that views hardened. Young men could be seen hanging around the shacks. Were some of them not part of the same gang? Mrs. Pillay’s son demanded the police search through the settlement immediately. But the police argued they would need more evidence and that the thieves could have come from anywhere.
A new nervousness now gripped the house owners on top of the hill. Every report of theft, break-in, or car hijacking, anywhere in the country, led to another conversation about the squatters on the other side of their garden walls.
At night Rohan peered through the bars of his window before going to sleep. Flickering lights from candles and lamps were the only sign that people were living out there in the thick darkness. In the daytime, when Ma heard the bell and saw that it was a woman or child with a bucket, she no longer answered the call.
All the neighbors were agreed. Why should private house owners be expected to provide water for these people? That was the Council’s job. If the squatters were refused water, then perhaps they would find somewhere else to put up their shacks. A more suitable place. Or even, go back to where they came from.
The squatters did not go away. No one knew from where they managed to get their water or how far they had to walk. On the way to school, Rohan and his dad drove past women walking with buckets on their heads.
“These people are tough as ticks! You let them settle and it’s impossible to get them out,” complained Dad. “Next thing they’ll be wanting our electricity.”
But Rohan wasn’t really listening. He was
scanning the line of African children who straggled behind the women and who wore the black and white uniform of Mount View Primary, his old school. He had been a pupil there until his parents had moved him to his private school in Durban with its smaller classes, cricket pitch, and its own rugby ground. Most of the African children at Mount View had mothers who cleaned, washed, and ironed for the families on top of the hill. But since the New Year they had been joined by the squatter children and each week the line grew longer.
The queue of traffic at the crossroads slowed them down, giving Rohan more time to find the “wire car” boy. He was looking for a boy who always steered a wire car in front of him with a long handle. He was about his own age—twelve or thirteen perhaps—and very thin and wiry himself. What interested Rohan was that the boy never had the same car for more than two or three days. Nor had he ever seen so many elaborate designs simply made out of wire, each suggesting a different make of car. They were much more complicated than the little wire toys in the African Crafts shop at the mall.
“Hey, cool!” Rohan whistled. “See that, Dad?” The boy must have heard because he glanced toward them. His gaze slid across the silver hood of their car toward the trunk but didn’t rise up to look at Rohan directly.
“It’s a Merc—like ours, Dad! What a beaut! Do you think—”
“
Don’t
think about it, son! You want us to stop and ask how much he wants, don’t you?”
Rohan half frowned, half smiled. How easily his father knew him!
“No way! If we start buying from these people, we’ll be encouraging them! That’s not the message we want them to get now, is it?”
Rohan was quiet. He couldn’t argue with his dad’s logic. If the squatters moved away, he and his friends could get their territory back again.
Rohan returned home early from school. A precious half day. In the past he would have spent it in his hideout. Instead he flicked on the television. News. As his finger hovered over the button to switch channels, the whirr of a helicopter invaded the living room.
“Hey, Ma! Look at this!”
Ma appeared from the kitchen, her hands cupped, white and dusty with flour. On the screen, a tight human knot swung at the end of a rope above a valley swirling with muddy water.
“A South African Air Force rescue team today saved a baby from certain death just an hour after she was born in a tree. Her mother was perched in the tree over floodwaters that have devastated Mozambique. The mother and her baby daughter were among the lucky few. Many thousands of Mozambicans are still waiting to be lifted to safety from branches and rooftops. They have now been marooned for days by the rising water that has swallowed whole towns and villages.”
“Those poor people! What a place to give birth!” Ma’s floury hands almost looked ready to cradle a baby.
Rohan was watching how the gale from the rotors forced the leaves and branches of the tree to open like a giant flower until the helicopter began to lift. Members of the mother’s family still clung desperately to the main trunk. Rohan saw both fear and determination in their eyes.
He and Ma listened to the weather report that followed. Although Cyclone Eline was over,
Cyclone Gloria was now whipping up storms across the Indian Ocean and heading toward Mozambique. Where would it go next? Durban was only down the coast. Rohan had seen a program about a sect who believed the new millennium would mark the end of the world. They were convinced that the floods were a sign that The End was beginning.
“What if the cyclone comes here, Ma?”
“No, we’ll be all right son. But that lot out there will get it. The government really should do something.” Ma nodded in the direction of the squatters.
“Now, let me finish these
rotis
for your sister!”
Ma returned to her bread making. When she had finished, she wanted Rohan to come with her to his married sister’s house. He pleaded to stay behind.
“I’ve got homework to do Ma! I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t answer the door unless it’s someone we know, will you?”
“No Ma!” he chanted. Ma said the same thing every time.
Alone in the house, Rohan daydreamed at his
desk. He was close enough to the window to see down the hill. What if there was so much rain that a river formed along the road below! As the water rose, people would have to abandon their shacks to climb higher up. They would be trapped between the flood below and the torrents above. In assembly they had heard the story of Noah building the ark. Perhaps it wasn’t just a story after all. Perhaps the people had tried to cling on to the tops of trees as tightly as those they had seen on television.
Tough as ticks.
The phrase popped into his mind. Wasn’t that what his dad had said about the squatters? Yet the one sure way to get rid of ticks was to cover them in liquid paraffin. Drown them. A terrible thought. He should push it right away.
Rohan was about to stretch out for his math book when a figure caught his eye on the old ski slope. It was the thin wiry boy, but he wasn’t pushing a car this time. He was carrying two large buckets, one on his head, the other by his side. He descended briskly down the slope and turned along the road in the opposite direction to that taken by the women who carried buckets on their
heads. Rohan followed the figure until he went out of sight, then forced himself to open his book.
The bell rang just as he was getting interested in the first question. Nuisance! He hurried to the landing. If someone was standing right in front of the gate, it was possible to see who it was from the window above the stairs. He stood back, careful not to be seen himself. It was the same boy, an empty container on the ground each side of him! Didn’t he know not to come to the house up here? But he was only a child, and it looked as if he just wanted some water. It would be different if it were an adult or a complete stranger. Rohan’s daydream also made him feel a little guilty. He could see the boy look anxiously through the bars, his hand raised as if wondering whether to ring the bell again. Usually when the boy was pushing his wire car on the way to school, he appeared relaxed and calm.
By the time the bell rang a second time, Rohan had decided. He hurried downstairs but slowed himself as he walked outside toward the gate.
“What do you want?” Rohan tried not to show that he recognized the boy.
“I need water for my mother. Please.” The boy held his palms out in front of him as if asking for
a favor. “My mother—she’s having a baby—it’s bad—there’s no more water. Please.”
This was an emergency. Not on television but right in front of him. Still Rohan hesitated. His parents would be extremely cross that he had put himself in this situation by coming to talk to the boy. Weren’t there stories of adults who used children as decoys to get people to open their gates so they could storm in? He should have stayed inside. Should he tell the boy to go next door where there would at least be an adult? But the boy had chosen to come here. Perhaps he had seen Rohan watching him from the car and knew this was his house.
“We stay there.” The boy pointed in the direction of the squatter camp. “I go to school there.” He pointed in the direction of Mount View Primary. He was trying to reassure Rohan that it would be OK to open the gate. He was still in his school uniform but wore a pair of dirty-blue rubber sandals. His legs were as thin as sticks.
“Isn’t there a doctor with your mother?” It was such a silly question that as soon as it was out, Rohan wished he could take it back. If they could afford a doctor, they wouldn’t be squatters on a bare hillside. The boy shook his head vigorously. If
he thought it was stupid, he didn’t let it show on his troubled face.
“Wait there!” Rohan returned to the house. The button for the electric gate was inside the front door. The boy waited while the wrought-iron bars slowly rolled back.
“OK. Bring your buckets over here.” Rohan pointed to the outside tap. The buckets clanked against each other as the boy jogged toward him.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
The unexpected softness in his voice had a strange effect on Rohan. It sounded so different from his own bossy tone. Suddenly he felt a little ashamed. This was the same boy whose wire cars he admired! If he were still at Mount View Primary they would probably be in the same class. They might even have been friends, and he would be learning how to make wire cars himself. Why had he spoken so arrogantly? It was really only a small favor that was being asked for. The water in the bucket gurgling and churning reminded Rohan of the water swirling beneath the Mozambican woman with her baby.
Her
rescuer had been taking a really big risk but hadn’t looked big headed. He had just got on with the job.
When both buckets were full, the boy stooped to lift one on to his head. Rohan saw his face and neck muscles strain under the weight. How would he manage to keep it balanced and carry the other bucket too?
“Wait! I’ll give you a hand.” Rohan’s offer was out before he had time to think it through properly. If the boy was surprised, he didn’t show it. All his energy seemed to be focused on his task. Rohan dashed into the kitchen to grab the spare set of keys. Ma would be away for another hour at least. He would be back soon, and she need never know. It was only after the gate clicked behind them that Rohan remembered the neighbors. If anyone saw him, they were bound to ask Ma what he was doing with a boy from the squatter camp. He crossed the fingers of one hand.
At first Rohan said nothing. Sharing the weight of the bucket, he could feel the strain all the way up from his fingers to his left shoulder. When they reached the corner and set off down the hill, the bucket seemed to propel them forward. It was an effort to keep a steady pace. Rohan glanced at the container on the boy’s head, marveling at how he kept it balanced. He caught the boy’s eye.
“How do you do that? You haven’t spilled a drop!”
The boy gave a glimmer of a smile.