Zoë Wicomb - You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

‘Shsht, shsht,’ she said, ‘you’ll wake the others.’ The trickle of milk had dried up and the child opened an eye to question the source. She smiled, rubbing the thick matting of his head.

‘I told you it would dry up in the summer. You’re a big boy now, nearly two, you can’t go on for ever.’ The uncomprehending eye dropped its shutter and the child rolled back, bleating. She thought of the lambs in the veld wagging their tails in vain for milk as their dams stormed off in irritation. Soon they would find a use for that wagging after all, use it to fan away the summer flies until their tails grow heavy with the storage of fat. By then they would have forgotten the udder.

‘Meid, Meid,’ he called, ‘what can the matter be with this woman?’ as if he could not address her directly through the reeds of the house. Where the mud had flaked off the reeds with heat, the smoke crept through the crevices making her stomach heave. But she sprang out of bed lightly, slipped on the dress which hung from a nail and fumbled for her doekie amongst the bedclothes. In the summer she slept bareheaded but during the day the doekie kept the sun from burrowing into the thick black hair, from worrying at her scalp like lice.

He was mending a wooden stool by the fire. The steel triangle stood stoically over the flames and the flat black pot on it sang. By its side the sound of hissing coffee water issued from the round belly of the three-legged pot brooding over the coals.

‘Where’s the mealiemeal?’ he asked. Her hands hung limp and her eyes scanned the veld as she replied, ‘Yes I’ll get it.’ But he jumped up impatiently, ‘I’ll go and I’ll get the children up as well.’ He moved like lightning and for a moment her body was kindled by a smile turned inward. Still Skitterboud, and she thought of how she had walked all those days from the Kamiesberg and arrived on this farm on the night of a dance. How rare such days with a reward at the end of the road, when he laid down his guitar and danced. Under the yellow moon the earth breathed gold dust and she the stranger whispered, ‘Who is he?’ His eyes were on her, Skitterboud, the man of shimmering thighs who spun like a top, his thin legs studded with stars.

She sprinkled a film of yellow mealiemeal on to the steaming circle and watched the boiling centre draw in the flour in greedy spirals, down, down, until the circles grew outward once again.

‘You must stir it in,’ he said. ‘You’re in a dream today. There’s nothing worse than lumpy mealiepap.’

Pimples of maize lazing in the slush, she could almost feel them captured between tongue and teeth, and her hand flew to her stomach to stem the nausea. He took the spoon from her. Stirring all the while, ‘I’ll bring you some kambroo from Dipkraal. I saw some in the valley last week; some tubers should be ready by now.’

So he knew. After three children he could not fail to detect that she was with child. The kambroo would steady her stomach.

‘Tata, Tata,’ the little girl called, ‘I want to come to Dipkraal.’ He swung her on to his hip and the leather of his face cracked into so wide and relieved a smile that she turned to her brother and from the lofty position chanted, ‘Eehee, Eehee, I’m going to Di-ipkraal.’ For a moment he thought of taking her. She would cool the hours in the stony hills stretching before him, but the sun was already paling with heat and the day would be very long. So like her mother little Blom, his favoured second born, and he put her down to explain to the coalblack eyes how Baas Karel wanted the sheep rounded up for a count. He, Skitterboud, had not seen the merinos for a few days; they may well have been impounded by Baas Coetzee. Stony hills then miles of red sand to cover, through the knee-high bushes dripping their sticky milk. And nowhere to hide from the sun.

‘Boohoo,’ she cried, ‘boohoo, you took Dapperman to Dipkraal.’ He packed the bread and filled the canvas bag with water from the bucket.

‘But that was in spring and Dapperman is older and stronger.’ He patted her head.

‘Yes,’ said the steam engine that was Dapperman, puffing energetically, his cheeks blown taut with concentration as he snaked spitefully around her, puffing, puffing through her amplified boohoos. He narrowly missed his mother’s clout and leapt deftly over the pressed thornbush wall that formed the circle of the cooking shelter. The little one inside had woken up and his cries fiddled to Blom’s boohoos, thickening the morning air, spreading into the vast expanse of open veld around her so that she dug recklessly into the jute sack hanging above their reach for the new enamel plates that she had meant to save for later that day. Pretty plates to catch the tears. What did it matter which set of tears, there would be plenty that day; there would always be snot and tears until the bodies grow strong enough to stifle the sobs and the sun dries up those wells.

‘Blom, Blom,’ she reprimanded, dishing with her back to them the mealie porridge into the new dish and, turning, saw the scrunched face first slacken then light up with pleasure. Blom’s finger circled the white enamel edge around the steaming porridge. ‘And white sugar,’ she crowed. They waited for Meid to explain these luxuries but her face was locked as she reached for the baby on Skitterboud’s knee.

‘You should be going.’ But he held on to the child; he did not want to go. He would give the little one his porridge today. The child flailed its arms wildly and kicked at the proffered plate. ‘No,’ it shrieked, ‘my dish,’ so that the porridge had to be transferred to the old dented tin plate. Now he was happy; he murmured in accompaniment to the beat of the spoon on tin.

‘Ooh,’ cried Dapperman and Blom together and, laughing, they shoved down the porridge to complete the picture that peeped in brilliant flashes of red and green from the brief paths made by the spoons. And there it was. A full-blown rose and a train painted on the white enamel. Dapperman, the steam engine, puffed and snaked once again around her, she crosslegged with face of bursting rosebud. ‘And now my turn,’ so that he collapsed, rose head lolling as Blom beat out a train-dust around him. Neither had ever seen a rose or a train. Dapperman said that roses were printed on, no, grew between the carriages.

The dishes had newly arrived in the shop. Last week on the monthly outing to the village she watched the boy stacking them on the counter and she strained to see the colour shifting under the tissue paper in which they were wrapped. The picture leapt out at her from the last plate. In his haste to unpack, the boy had pulled the paper right off.

With her provisions packed carefully in a bag for balancing on her head she held on to the concrete pillar on the stoep of Baas Piet’s store. She could not leave. Round and round she swung so that her body stretched like toffee in the heat, wrapped itself around the pillar, wanting what she could not have. It was then that she felt the new life twitch in her belly so that she swung the bag defiantly over her shoulder and went back into the shop. Baas Piet, who had long since despaired of discouraging the farm workers from colonising his stoep, looked eager and read aloud from the back of the plate: Made in China. A rose and a train made so far away in China for her children. She wished that she could take them far, far away. Someone had once told her that Chinese people did not look so unlike them, the Namaquas, except of course for the hair, long straight black hair, smooth as a horse’s tail. And Baas Piet? People say that once there were no white people in these parts, that they too came from far, far away, but then she knew that people say all sorts of things as they wait for the purpling hills to swallow up the last of the light. She looked at the Boer as if his face would tell the truth but his eyes were fixed with such intent on the knot she was undoing in her handkerchief that she fumbled with the coin and remembered that he had of course not addressed the Made in China to her.