Zakes Mda - The Madonna of Excelsior

As the rickety bus worked its way along the dirt road to Mahlatswetsa Location, she closed her eyes and silently prayed for the trinity’s long life. For his hands that must stay strong. For his vision that must continue to find joy in cosmos, donkeys, women and sunflowers. For his passion for colour that must never fade. And for his muse that occasionally flung him into a mother-and-child mode. She pleaded with whatever spirits drove his passions to immerse him in more madonna moods before Popi grew too big to model as the child.

Hunger had become more of a stranger to Niki and her children because of the trinity’s madonnas. They had saved her from the agony of garden parties.

The thought of garden parties flooded her with images of Tjaart Cronje. A lanky lad of twelve, chasing a rugby ball. A generous giver of cakes.

WHO IS this little girl standing against a powder-blue sky with pink flowers for stars? Big sky and pink cosmos down to her bare feet like wallpaper. Who is this little girl in a snow-white long-sleeved frock? Covering her legs down to her ankles. Delicate feet with ten toes. An unusual phenomenon. One side of her chest bare and showing a little breast that is beginning to grow. Her neck peeling down to her chest. Who is this little girl with flowing locks and big bright eyes and small lips? Hair dyed black. Roots show that it is naturally light brown. Almost blonde. Sunburnt blonde. Her hands raised as high as her head. Pleading for peace. For rain. Big hands opened flat so that we can count all ten of her long fingers. Piano fingers, the trinity called them. Who is this little girl?

The little girl was Popi, the last time she sat for the trinity. Stood for the trinity, to be exact. Bye-bye, modelling income. She was not really a little girl, although she looked like one. She was fourteen years old. And she hated the mirror. It exposed her to herself for what she really was. A boesman girl. A hotnot girl. Morwa towe! You bushman you! Or when the good neighbours wanted to be polite, a coloured girl. She had broken quite a few mirrors in her time. A mirror was an intrusive invention. An invention that pried into the pain of her face. Yet she looked at her freckled face in the morning, at midday and at night. Every day. She prayed that her freckles would join up, so that she could look like other black children of Mahlatswetsa Location.

IT WAS 1984: the year of passage. Popi wore a permanent frown like a badge of honour. When she posed for a photograph in front of House Number 2014—which was not really a house, but the shack in which she was born — she became blank-faced. That was the best she could do. Reduce the frown to a face on which nothing could be read.

The photographer said “Cheese!” but her face refused to break into a smile. She just stood next to the giant rose-bush that grew in front of the shack and stared at the camera. The camera captured her sombre image and the cheerful bush in full bloom with pink November roses. It also captured part of the shack, which had long since turned brown from the rusted corrugated-iron sheets. It captured the tyre on its roof whose function was to stop the lightning from sizzling the shack and its inhabitants; the hen that was roped by one leg to a small pole that formed part of the fowl run; the chicks that were feeding on the ants on pieces of a broken anthill; and the paste that Niki had made from the anthill to plaster the corners of the shack in order to stop the rain from seeping into their home.

The photographer was Sekatle, Viliki’s friend. The twenty-four-year-old brother of Maria. He was not one of Niki’s most favourite people because, according to her, he was “too fly”, and was teaching Viliki bad things. She wanted her son to stay at Mahlatswetsa Secondary School, and matriculate, and make something of his life, instead of vagabonding with a boy who had left school even before Standard Seven. Anyway, what was Sekatle doing loitering in Mahlatswetsa Location when men of his age were already digging white man’s gold in the mines of Welkom?

He and his eighteen-year-old sidekick, Viliki, of course did not consider what Sekatle was doing as loitering. Adam de Vries had given him an old box camera after Sekatle had done some gardening for him. Now he went around the township and the farm villages taking photographs of people for a small fee. After school, Viliki joined him as he clicked away at school-uniformed teenagers in the arms of village dandies. At vacationing miners who posed with their mammoth gumba-gumba radios. At babies propped up by piles of pillows and sitting on rugs in front of shacks and adobe houses. At trendsetting girls in red and black tartan skirts. Free snapshots for the pretty ones. It was a wonderful way to catch girls.

Popi’s was also a free snapshot. Not because Sekatle had designs on her. He had a particular distaste for coloured girls. He knew a lot about them, too. His own sister had two such children. A girl of Popi’s age, born of the Excelsior 19 days. And another girl, born years later, for miscegenation had continued unabated after the Excelsior 19 case. He had never forgiven his sister for bringing shame into his home. Very unlike Viliki, who loved his coloured sister and fought daily battles against those who rubbished her.

The free snapshot was Viliki’s gift to his beautiful sister.

It took one whole month to “wash the film”, as we called developing photographs. Sekatle had to mail the roll to Fripps in Johannesburg. The company was the popular place for washing films from all over southern Africa, because it sent its customers a free film for every one it developed.

By the time Sekatle brought Popi’s photo, she had forgotten that he had once photographed her. She was not impressed with the result. It was too real and cold and distant. She did not feel anything when she looked at it. Unlike the trinity’s depictions, it did not awaken any emotions in her. And she said so.

“It is a gift, Popi,” said Sekatle angrily. “You don’t count the teeth of a gift.”

“Maybe it is because the photo is filled with too many things,” said Viliki, trying to find a reason to excuse his sister’s ungratefulness. “The house, the fowl run, the chickens. too many things.”

“What do you know about taking photographs, Viliki?” asked Sekatle.

“Popi is too small in this photo,” argued Viliki. “Maybe you should have stood much closer to her.”

“Have you ever taken a photograph in your life, Viliki?” asked Sekatle, getting irritated by armchair critics who didn’t even have an armchair.

Popi left them arguing and went into the house to wash herself. She had taken to washing herself every few hours. Not to remove the freckles. She wished they could spread and cover her whole body. Making her a whole human being.

She washed herself to remove the blood.

She was not yet used to her bleeding, as she had gone to the moon for the first time in her life only three days before. It had been a scary moment. When she saw the blood for the first time, she hid it from her mother, for she was filled with shame. She bathed secretly. It was not as if she had not known what it was all about. She had already heard at school from the biology teacher that a time would come when this would happen. And from older girls who had seen the moon before her. She had never discussed matters of womanhood with her mother. So she did not know how to tell her. Until Niki wondered at her new obsession with bathing, and found her squatting over a metal basin filled with red water.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Niki had asked quietly. It was strange when Niki talked to her in quiet tones. She always shouted. The quiet tone made Popi even more fearful.