You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town Read Online Free PDF Page B

her boots, she’ll land in a madam’s kitchen all right.’ But there was no need to separate us. Jos left school when she turned nine and her family moved to the village where her father had found a job at the garage. He had injured his back at the mine. Jos said they were going to have a car; that she would win one of those competitions, easy they were, you only had to make up a slogan.
    Then there was our move. Pa wrote letters for the whole community, bit his nails when he thought I was not looking and wandered the veld for hours. When the official letter came the cooped-up words tumbled out helter-skelter in his longest monologue.
    â€˜In rows in the village, that’s where we’ll have to go, all boxed in with no room to stretch the legs. All my life I’ve lived in the open with only God to keep an eye on me, what do I want with the eyes of neighbours nudging and jostling in cramped streets? How will the wind get into those back yards to sweep away the smell of too many people? Where will I grow things? A watermelon, a pumpkin need room to spread, and a turkey wants a swept yard, the markings of a grass broom on which to boast the pattern of his wingmarks. What shall we do, Frieda? What will become of us?’ And then, calmly, ‘Well, there’s nothing to be done. We’ll go to Wesblok, we’ll put up our curtains and play with the electric lights and find a corner for the cat, but it won’t be our home. I’m not clever old Shenton for nothing, not a wasted drop of Scots blood in me. Within five years we’ll have enough to buy a little place. Just a little raw brick house and somewhere to tether a goat and keep a few chickens. Who needs a water lavatory in the veld?’
    The voice brightened into fantasy. ‘If it were near a river we could have a pond for ducks or geese. In the Swarteberg my pa always had geese. Couldn’t get to sleep for months here in Namaqualand without the squawking of geese. And ostriches. There’s nothing like ostrich biltong studded with coriander seeds.’ Then he slowed down. ‘Ag man, we won’t be allowed land by the river but nevermind hey. We’ll show them, Frieda, we will. You’ll go to high school next year and board with Aunt Nettie. We’ve saved enough for that. Brains are for making money and when you come home with your Senior Certificate, you won’t come back to a pack of Hottentots crouching in straight lines on the edge of the village. Oh no, my girl, you won’t.’ And he whipped out a stick of beef biltong and with the knife shaved off wafer-thin slices that curled with pleasure in our palms.
    We packed our things humming. I did not really understand what he was fussing about. The Coloured location did not seem so terrible. Electric lights meant no more oil lamps to clean and there was water from a tap at the end of each street. And there would be boys. But the children ran after me calling, ‘Fatty fatty vetkoek.’ Young children too. Sarie took me firmly by the arm and said that it wasn’t true, that they were jealous of my long hair. I believed her and swung my stiff pigtails haughtily. Until I grew breasts and found that the children were right.
    Now Sarie will be by the side of the sick and infirm, leaning over high hospital beds, soothing and reassuring. Sarie in a dazzling white uniform, her little waist clinched by the broad blue belt.
    If Sarie were here I could be sure of climbing the two steel steps on to the train.
    The tall boy is now pacing the platform in unmistakable imitation of the policeman. His face is the stern mask ofsomeone who does not take his duties lightly. His friends are squatting on their haunches, talking earnestly. One of them illustrates a point with the aid of a stick with which he writes or draws in the sand. The girls have retreated and lean against the eucalyptus tree, bright as stars against the grey of the trunk. Twelve feet apart the