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

Now it is thin, scraped back into a limp plait pinned into a bun. Her shirt is the fashionable cut of this season’s muttonleg sleeve and I remember that her favourite garments are saved in a mothballed box. Now and then she would bring something to light, just as fashion tiptoeing out of a dusty cupboard would crack her whip after bowing humbly to the original. How long has she been sitting here in her shirt and ill-matched skirt and the nimbus of anger?

She coughs. With her eyes still closed she says, ‘There’s Jantjie Bêrend in an enamel jug on the stove. Bring me a cup.’

Not a please and certainly no thank you to follow. The daughter must be reminded of her duty. This is her victory: speaking first, issuing a command.

I hold down the matted Jantjie Bêrend with a fork and pour out the yellowish brew. I do not anticipate the hand thrust out to take the drink so that I come too close and the liquid lurches into the saucer. The dry red earth laps up the offering of spilled infusion which turns into a patch of fresh blood.

‘Clumsy like your father. He of course never learned to drink from a cup. Always poured it into a saucer, that’s why the Shentons all have lower lips like spouts. From slurping their drinks from saucers. Boerjongens, all of them. My Oupa swore that the English potteries cast their cups with saucers attached so they didn’t have to listen to Boers slurping their coffee. Oh, he knew a thing or two, my Oupa. Then your Oupa Shenton had the cheek to call me a Griqua meid.’

Her mouth purses as she hauls up the old grievances for which I have no new palliatives. Instead I pick up the bunch of proteas that I had dropped with my rucksack against the wall. I hand the flowers to her and wonder how I hid my revulsion when Aunt Cissie presented them to me at the airport.

‘Welcome home to South Africa.’ And in my arms the national blooms rested fondly while she turned to the others, the semi-circle of relatives moving closer. ‘From all of us. You see everybody’s here to meet the naughty girl.’

‘And Eddie,’ I exclaimed awkwardly as I recognised the youngest uncle now pot-bellied and grey.

‘Ag no man, you didn’t play marbles together. Don’t come here with disrespectful foreign ways. It’s your Uncle Eddie,’ Aunt Cissie reprimanded. ‘And Eddie,’ she added, ‘you must find all the children. They’ll be running all over the place like chickens.’

‘Can the new auntie ride in our car?’ asked a little girl tugging at Aunt Cissie’s skirt.

‘No man, don’t be so stupid, she’s riding with me and then we all come to my house for something nice to eat. Did your mammie bring some roeties?’

I rubbed the little girl’s head but a tough protea had pierced the cellophane and scratched her cheek which she rubbed self-pityingly.

‘Come get your baggage now,’ and as we waited Aunt Cissie explained. ‘Your mother’s a funny old girl, you know. She just wouldn’t come to the airport and I explained to her the whole family must be there. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with us now, don’t ask me why, jus turned against us jus like that. Doesn’t talk, not that she ever said much, but she said, right there at your father’s funeral — pity you couldn’t get here in time — well, she said, “Now you can all leave me alone,” and when Boeta Danie said, “Ag man sister you musn’t talk so, we’ve all had grief and the Good Lord knows who to take and who to leave,” well you wouldn’t guess what she said’. and Aunt Cissie’s eyes roved incredulously about my person as if a good look would offer an explanation. ‘she said plainly, jus like that, “Danie,” jus dropped the Boeta there and then in front of everybody, she said. and I don’t know how to say it because I’ve always had a tender place in my heart for your mother, such a lovely shy girl she was. ’

‘Really?’ I interrupted. I could not imagine her being described as shy.

‘Oh yes, quite shy, a real lady. I remember when your father wrote home to ask for permission to marry, we were so worried. A Griqua girl, you know, and it was such a surprise when he brought your mother, such nice English she spoke and good features and a nice figure also.’

Again her eyes took in my figure so that she was moved to add in parenthesis, ‘I’ll get you a nice step-in. We get good ones here with the long leg, you know, gives you a nice firm hip-line. You must look after yourself man; you won’t get a husband if you let yourself go like this.’

Distracted from her story she leaned over to examine the large ornate label of a bag bobbing by on the moving belt.

‘That’s not mine,’ I said.

‘I know. I can mos see it says Mev. H.J. Groenewald,’ she retorted. Then, appreciatively as she allowed the bag to carry drunkenly along, ‘But that’s now something else hey. Very nice. There’s nothing wrong in admiring something nice man. I’m not shy and there’s no Apartheid at the airport. You spend all that time overseas and you still afraid of Boers.’ She shook her head reproachfully.

‘I must go to the lavatory,’ I announced.

‘OK. I’ll go with hey.’

And from the next closet her words rose above the sound of abundant pee gushing against the enamel of the bowl, drowning my own failure to produce even a trickle.

‘I made a nice pot of beans and samp, not grand of course but something to remind you you’re home. Stamp-en-stoot we used to call it on the farm,’ and her clear nostalgic laughter vibrated against the bowl.

‘Yes,’ I shouted, ‘funny, but I could actually smell beans and samp hovering just above the petrol fumes in the streets of London.’

I thought of how you walk along worrying about being late, or early, or wondering where to have lunch, when your nose twitches with a teasing smell and you’re transported to a place so specific and the power of the smell summons the light of that day when the folds of a dress draped the brick wall and your hands twisted anxiously, Is she my friend, truly my friend?

While Aunt Cissie chattered about how vile London was, a terrible place where people slept under the arches in newspapers and brushed the pigeonshit off their brows in the mornings. Funny how Europeans could sink so low. And the Coloured people from the West Indies just fighting on the streets, killing each other and still wearing their doekies from back home. Really, as if there weren’t hairdressers in London. She had seen it all on TV. Through the door I watched the patent-leather shoes shift under the heaving and struggling of flesh packed into corsets.

‘Do they show the riots here in South Africa on TV?’

‘Ag, don’t you start with politics now,’ she laughed, ‘but I got a new TV you know.’

We opened our doors simultaneously and with the aid of flushing water she drew me back, ‘Yes, your father’s funeral was a business.’

‘What did Mamma say?’

‘Man, you mustn’t take notice of what she says. I always say that half the time people don’t know what they talking about and blood is thicker than water so you jus do your duty hey.’

‘Of course Auntie. Doing my duty is precisely why I’m here.’ It is not often that I can afford the luxury of telling my family the truth.

‘But what did she say?’ I persisted.

‘She said she didn’t want to see you. That you’ve caused her enough trouble and you shouldn’t bother to go up to Namaqualand to see her. And I said, “Yes Hannah it’s no way for a daughter to behave but her place is with you now.”’ Biting her lip she added, ‘You mustn’t take any notice. I wasn’t going to say any of this to you, but seeing that you asked. Don’t worry man, I’m going with you. We’ll drive up tomorrow.’

‘I meant what did she say to Uncle Danie?’