rested on the seventh day, on our calendar that is Saturday. God rested that day and set it aside for worship to celebrate creation. At the end of time, it will be a test of faithfulness to the true God, the creator to keep the Sabbath day holy!”
I question, “Oh, so why do other people go to church on Sunday?”
Mommy eagerly supplies the answer,
“Constantine the Great, whomever he was! made a law a long time ago, which changed the Sabbath to Sunday, and now the world is wandering after the Great Beast of Revelation. At the end of time the beast will persecute the remnant people, a small group who are left over, who keep God’s commandments, rather than mans’ and love Jesus. We are the remnant people and need to help others to see the truth.”
I am silent thinking Phew Hell! An expression I have just learned from our new friends. Am I supposed to tell our Nun that she is going to church on the wrong day and following after a ferocious beast which I have seen in pictures, on the Sabbath School Lesson Quarterly, with huge claws and monstrous teeth? Even when she gives me those pretty stamp stickers! I think not.
One time on the way home from Leribe, as the sun is setting, I am asleep in the back window, John on the floor and Ian on the back seat, David must have been on Mommies lap. I awake to the screech of brakes as the Studebaker swerves to a halt. Daddy’s voice sounds tense: “That car is out of control!” Then comes an almighty bang-crash as we land in a tangled mass of metal; leather; and our arms and legs in strange positions. The oncoming car has narrowly managed to cross the one-car culvert but is still going too fast to miss us parked on the side of the road. The vehicles are both damaged too much to drive, and I remember crying with pain in my head and neck, but the fear and sadness for Daddy and Ian seem far worse - they are so proud of the Studebaker. Besides, how will we get home? Some kind soul takes us back and that night before supper we kneel in a circle and Daddy reads from the scriptures about how the angels protect us, and he prays,
“Thank you, our Heavenly Father, for protecting us from injury or being killed today.”
And Mommy says,
“Yes, Lord!”
Daddy buys a brand-new grey Humber Super-Snipe with red leather upholstery, and we are all so proud of the new car! Somehow the sense of status is communicated, although I am no more than eight at the time, I know that we have arrived!
School is not in the picture for me yet. Education seems to be essential for boys though, as Mommy teaches John with a correspondence course. I am keener than he and relentlessly peer over his shoulder, making suggestions, much to his annoyance and my hurt from his rebuffs,
“Why don’t you go play with your silly dolls or cats”; “Push-off you little menace! Stop following me around,” and later, “I wish you were dead!”
But, I have no one else to play with, since I have been warned not to play with the Basotho children. One day Mommy gives me a devil-of-a-hiding when she finds me sharing the servants’ bounty out of their three-legged iron pot.
“Your father has told you time and again that you must not play with the kaffirs, they do not have toilets and baths as we do, and their food is not safe, they have no fridges.”
It is so humiliating to lift my skirt and have my bottom thwacked with a stick.
“Damn, damn, damn,” I mutter under my breath – these new words seem very useful under these circumstances.
The influence of the newly established Apartheid system in 1948 by the Nationalist Government, must have reinforced these ideas about Black culture and inferiority, which then became the norm for us, how sad is that! The laws imposed were oppressive and inhumane, and I will reflect how they affected us all later in the story
John and I steal ‘C to C’ cigarettes from the trading store. We have an elaborate game and the place to play it for hours on end, in the nearby forest. We pretend to be Mr and Mrs so-and-so. We visit the ‘pretend neighbours’ and smoke in their pretend lounge. One day I singe my fringe, and Mommy asks how it happened. I say that I have been playing with matches,
“Show me where they are,” she says.
In the background, John is gesticulating to me to keep quiet and threatening to hit me if I show her, but I show where our matches are stashed, and of course the cigarettes are there too. By this time, John is running away, and Mommy beats me for stealing and fibbing to boot and later John gives me a clip for telling our secret. I am very cross to have gotten two hidings! To this day I don’t know if John got any at all, he doesn’t remember and maybe that’s why he continued to smoke until recently?
When Ian comes back from boarding school, and we tell him the story, he reassures us,
“When you are older, you can get baptised, and all your sins will be forgiven.”
We are unsure of what sin and baptise mean, so he takes us to the dam nearby and demonstrates; putting one hand on my forehead and the other in the small of my back, he says,
“I now baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost”. Then he says,
“Bend your knees” and dunks me over backwards, until I think I’m drowning! I struggle to get back on my feet, spluttering and gasping for breath, but at the same time, I feel so much better. I think this must be the way out of all the sinning and hopefully the hidings! John declines a further demonstration on himself and trusts my assessment with a chuckle.
James is born in Ficksburg when I am eight years old, soon after we had moved again. This time to a farm called Beginsel, on the banks of the Caledon River in the Orange Free State. Fouriesburg is the nearest town about 45 minutes away. John and I are constant companions - there are no others of interest in my life on this isolated, beautiful farm. By now, I know not to play with the kaffirs. Ian is far away at boarding school near Heidelberg, and David and James are too young to play with us. I must look after them sometimes to make sure that they don’t fall down the lavatory pit, or into the dip tank or drown in the river - what a nuisance they are.
We play by the willow-lined Caledon river with sprawling lucerne lands on its banks, we practise circus stunts on Daddy’s polo ponies and hike in the mountains. I recall no fear of anyone or anything. We eat fruit, nuts and of course all the other bounties of Mommy’s vegetable garden, kitchen and pantry. Our days are one long holiday and our nights' such sleepy bliss under the thatched roof of the cut-stone rondavels that group around to form our home. Often our lullaby is the Sotho ululations from across the river, beseeching the rain goddess to shower us with rain and I imagine other blessings.
On Saturdays, Mommy calls us all for Sabbath school, at about nine o’clock as there is no church nearby. The Sabbath School Lesson Quarterly, Bibles and Hymnals are passed around. The Lesson Quarterly has structured readings and bible verses to substantiate the theme for each day during the week. Mommy plays the piano, and we sit in a circle to sing our favourite hymns, open with prayer and then either Daddy or Mommy read from the Sunday to Friday lessons. Those of us who can read, look up the texts and read them out loud when it is our turn.
“I don’t feel like Sabbath School today,” I venture one day. “It is so boring I am going to play with the kittens.”
“Oh no - you are not,” says Mommy. “You can play with them all week, This day is the Sabbath Day, and God asks us to keep it holy. We keep it Holy by doing what he asks us to do.”
I
