My Son's Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

the veld where no-one was too young to be out in the streets, caught between crossfire.
    No wonder parents wanted removed from the school a teacher, one of their own kind, who led their children over there.

    What made him allow himself to be seen with his woman in a public place? What made him go with her to that cinema, in a smart complex of underground shops and restaurants, moving stairways and piped music? Well, what made me go there: I thought no-one’d see me. No-one would know me. A suburb where well-off white people lived, always had lived; at a cheap cinema in one of the grey areas where we’d moved in there’d be bound to be people who would have recognized me. Recognized him. Seen him with her.
    So we both went across the city, tried to get lost in foreign territory, deceiving each other. Though I flattered myself; he certainly didn’t have me in mind as I, fifteen, had him , the parent, in mind when I bunked study leave that afternoon. Do you ever forget about them, the parents, for a moment? They are always there in the hesitations—whether you will obey or defy—the opinions—where did you get them from?—that decide what you’re doing. Because even while you defy the parents, deceive them, you believe in them.

    And then there he was. What are you going to see? he said. But I had seen. He kept his distance from me because he thought he must smell of her arm and shoulder pressed against his. Perhaps he’d been touching her in the dark. His hand worming up her sleeve and feeling her breast. We try it with girls at parties when someone turns off the lights.
    He had shown me something I should never have been shown.
    I came into the kitchen for supper when the others were already at table. I had stopped outside the door before I went in, my whole body shying away. He was there in his usual place, as if he were my father again, not the man with his blonde woman in the foyer of the cinema. I slid into my place beside my sister on the bench he had made himself—and I had helped him—when he was assembling the do-it-yourself ‘breakfast nook’ unit for my mother. In the ease of the family presence we often didn’t actually greet each other at meals; it would have been like talking to oneself. So I didn’t have to speak. He was shaking the salt cellar over his food, I saw his hand and I did not have to see his face. My mother was talking softly, commenting on something or other Baby must have mentioned, as she went between stove and table as a bird flies back and forth with food to drop into the open beaks of her young.—Sit down and eat. He can help himself.—My father spoke of me like that; he spoke with gentle consideration to my mother. Then I looked up at him, perhaps he was willing me to do so. We saw each other again.
    Nothing happened; as if nothing had happened. My mother said I looked tired.—I think he ought to be taking Sanatogen.—
    â€”Oh Aila, you don’t believe that nonsense!—He was smiling at her.
    â€”Well, everybody took it for exam nerves when I was at school. Will, won’t you have a glass of milk? Don’t you think he’s done enough, he’s been at it all day, Sonny, he should close his books and have an early night. Tell him.—Although my father was no longer a schoolteacher she kept the habit of referring to him as the expert in matters affecting our education. And those deeply-recessed eyes gazed at me across the table: —Now that’s a good idea. Sleep’s the best tonic. What’s the subject you write next week?—
    I spoke to him for the first time.—Biology. On Tuesday.—And so there was complicity between us, he drew me into it, as if he were not my father (a father would never do such a thing). And yet because he was my father how could I resist, how could I dare refuse him?
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    It might even have been that the principal protected the schoolteacher