and bring back to me tomorrow: ‘I repent of being the devil’s hands and feet.’
One hundred lines. Easy. I knew I could get that done on the toilet during break, and as for the signature, well, I had a copy of Mom’s that I’d traced many times. True, it didn’t look quite right sometimes—a little shaky—but most teachers would chuck the paper away with a sniff and a beady-eyed look that said, ‘Don't think I don't know that’s a fake, but I can’t be bothered right now.’ I’d learned that I had to do whatever I did bravely, because bravery confused people, especially teachers, putting them on the back foot. You exasperate them enough, and it becomes too much hard work to follow through on discipline.
By the time I’d shuffled back to class, taking my time so I didn’t have to run into Sister Bemvita again, Mrs Robsyn was behind her desk. She sniffed as I entered the room, and screwed up her nose as though I smelled bad. Involuntarily I scanned the class, a reflex action, gauging the level of support I might expect. Most heads were bowed over the opening of homework books. One or two faces sneered derision at me, while Nicola maintained a blank expression that I’d come to expect from self-righteous people, a tolerant look-down-the-nose-at-an-alien expression. Meanwhile a big friendly smile from a girl called Adrianna, her round cheeks pink with pleasantness, met my scowling response; I shut her down pronto. Adrianna was too fat and her hair too greasy to be anyone’s friend, so there was no way I’d be wooed by her, either. I sat down and stuck my nose in the air, silently screaming out, ‘See if I care!’ I decided there and then that I didn’t give a damn about any religious stuff; it was all hocus-pocus drivel.
Chapter Nine
While at school, I could chuck my chin in the air and pretend not to give a damn, making out that I was tough and strong. There was no way I’d have dared to behave like that at home, so, given the choice of two shitty places to be, I’d have chosen school every time.
Returning home from school was the most dread-full part of my day, except that I got to walk home, so I knew exactly how much reprieve I’d have before—bam!—whatever would happen.
I clutched the handle of my schoolbag, silver buckle bumping against my leg, first in my left hand for ten steps, then over to my right hand for ten steps. It was vital to keep the order going, counting, along with the banging on my legs. The counting provided some rhythm, some control over my otherwise uncontrollable life.
While counting, I’d also anticipate the various situations I might find at home: what Mom’s mood might be; whether she’d know I’d been in trouble at school again; whether she’d discovered the hole in the biscuit box or noticed the missing silver. It was dangerous to relax my guard when things had been going well at home. I’d been through this before—Mom would spend time with me, laughing, smiling, shopping, talking to me about what I liked or didn’t; I’d fall into believing she’d always be like that, and then I’d allow myself to trust her again; then without warning she’d turn on me and seem to hate me more than ever. I’d learned the importance of being alert and prepared for anything that might happen. There was no saying what might set her off; only luck, which I worked at shoring up, might keep me safe. If I ever questioned the lack of positive results from my superstitious behaviors, I’d quickly set my doubts aside and continue counting: so many steps to the curb; so many steps to cross the road; my bag in the appropriate hand when I set foot on the first brick of a particular pathway.
I’d dawdle my way through the golden dry veld, where Kiewiets reigned supreme, dive-bombing and screeching, until I reached Ararat Road, where I’d cross over by the zebra crossing that led to the Dutch Reformed Church. The church stood on the corner of a large park, named after the Dutch founding father of white Afrikaans of South Africa, Jan van Riebeek. It was a mostly barren place, dry grass crunching underfoot and desperately thirsty trees struggling to stay alive in the summer heat. The Dutch Reformed Church faced-off the Anglican Church, which stood less imposingly on the opposite side of the park.
Smack between the two was ‘Die Taalmonument’, a monument to the ‘wonders of the Afrikaans language’. The monument felt like a bully’s fist to the face, a warning that the ground one was on was ‘taken’, owned by the Afrikaner for the Afrikaners, and ‘don't you forget it’. English and Afrikaans-speaking people hardly mixed at all in those days. We went to different schools and called each other disparaging names, like rock-spider (the English term for Afrikaners, implying that they lay low on the scale of evolution) and rooinek (the Afrikaans term for the English, implying that we had red necks because our sensitive skin couldn’t handle the African sun).
I had to keep my bag in my left hand in the park, always counting—fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, ending on an even number with a six or an eight in it—before crossing to our sidewalk, where I had to change hands. Doing so pronto meant that things would be okay. Often a dripping sound behind my left ear would kick in at this time, a distraction from my counting, and I’d bang on my head to make it go away, or at least to drip more slowly.
It wasn’t a pleasant surprise one day when a lanky boy with close-cropped hair (the local Afrikaans school made the boys shave their heads if their team lost a rugby match) strode up to me and offered to carry my bag. ‘Dra-die-Tas,’ he said, with his hand outstretched. Unnerved, I could only stare at him in consternation. He’d interrupted my counting; my chances of good luck were disappearing the longer I didn’t move. I clutched hard to the handle of my schoolbag, worried that others were ready to pounce, that someone would see me talking to an Afrikaans boy and accuse me of ‘looking for attention’ in the lowest of places.
He had no such worries; his face was full of an enormous smile that had the immediate effect of making me want to burst into tears. It wasn’t often that someone was genuinely nice to me. I was like a sponge, desperate to lap up any kindness coming my way, so I let him take the bag, and from a few paces behind him I tried to resume my counting. His kindness had jinxed me, though; I didn’t have the school bag in the right hand for where my counting was at. Dra-die-Tas placed my bag on the dusty sidewalk by our front gate, flashed me another huge smile and, with a bow, strode off on his long spider-like legs.
An itchy-ball hit my head, disintegrating into a shower of brown seeds that clung to my hair and clothes. I turned to see Steven scouring the ground under a plane tree for another missile, but I was in luck: the balls had mostly dried out, seeds blown away by the summer wind. In winter, the balls of seed hung hard and green on the trees, and bullies loved the pain they could inflict with them. By spring the now-brown and dry seed balls were a favorite of bullies, who like to shove them down shirt-fronts or into undies, where the extremely fine, hairy seeds created a terrible itch. My interactions with Steven were mostly like this. He relished being a bully, and had no other way to interact with me other than shunning me, which, thankfully, happened more often than not.
With his attention on me now, I broke out in a sweat, hemmed in by fear. I’d lost all sense of control over my circumstances by not abiding by the rules of counting. Steven shouted, ‘Afrikaner lover, rock-spider!’ My body refused to come to my aid. Frozen to the spot, I was staring at Steven, infuriating him, forcing him to do the inevitable ‘whatever’ to punish me. But he just shoved me aside to enter our yard first, and commanded, ‘Use the back door—you stink, rock-spider.’ To Evelyn, who was sweeping the porch, he threw out an order, ‘I’m hungry; get me something to eat,’ slamming the front door behind himself.
Evelyn threw me a ‘look’, which usually meant trouble for me, so while she followed Steven into the house with a cluck and an ‘Eish’, I figured it was best to keep a low profile by hiding out around the back of the house in my usual wait-for-it spot in the vegetable garden. I used a piece of guttering that ran along the wall as a seat, listening and anxiously anticipating ‘whatever’.
That afternoon Simon found me, an ice-cream cone dripping
