unwanted children who belong to Madiba and live in his orphanage so they won’t sniff glue and whore on street corners and upset the foreign investors who come here from overseas. And you’re one of them, you and all the other welfare cases from the home, so pay up, nè?”
Vaselinetjie had never heard the home being described in those terms. The welfare lady who had brought her there had mentioned that it was not an ordinary school hostel, but the word “orphanage” had never been used.
“YOU’RE A LIAR, NAZRENE!” she yelled and jumped up, but a small, nagging voice was speaking inside her.
Could it be true?
She had wondered why this hostel was so different and why the children didn’t go home for weekends like the boarders in Upington. Now she had to find out – from Nazrene of all people – that she and the other children in the home were nothing but discarded trash!
“I said voertsek!” she shouted and kicked the door with all her might. Nazrene and her friends laughed and left, shouting in-
sults.
No wonder everyone had lost patience with her for not knowing what was what! Everything she had heard was suddenly falling into place.
Vaselinetjie began to sob bitterly. So it had never just been a case of being sent to a school with boarding facilities. She had been sent away to an orphanage and her grandparents must have known all along! She doubled over on the toilet and held her stomach as if she wanted to squeeze the pain from her insides, but the ache grew steadily worse.
She understood now that the government looked after them and paid the matrons to check them over for lice and open sores. And if a child had weeping sores that wouldn’t heal, and coughed and kept everyone awake at night, the matrons had to wear rubber gloves. Then the head asked the president for extra money to look after the sick child. Those children had the whispered disease. They carried the ghost on their backs.
The bell announced the end of second break but Vaselinetjie continued to cry in her cubicle. “No, Oumie,” she sobbed, “noooo, I don’t want to stay here!”
For the first time she understood why every child had a social worker. It was their voices she heard on the intercom in the afternoons, summoning the children to their offices on the ground floor.
The social workers filled in forms that said what you were like, whether you were rotten to the core or whether there was still hope for you. They also recorded whether you’d been swearing and whether you were sorry about the language you’d used and who was going to pay for the windows you smashed when you kicked them in a fit of rage.
“It’s all about rands and cents,” the matrons kept telling the children, because that was what the head told them.
And if you’d been doing you-know-what and you had a bun in the oven, the social worker arranged for you to pop it out somewhere else. Then you missed a lot of school and usually failed your grade.
Everything she had learned during the past months was whirling through her mind.
“Don’t be surprised if the social workers cancel their appointments with you. They can’t keep up with the new arrivals. They spend their days on the phone, trying to persuade people to donate soup ingredients and nappies. Or even worse, begging them to take a child or two off our hands for the holidays,” Whiskers had warned them only the week before.
Vaselinetjie’s social worker had sent for her. The only black men that Vaselinetjie had ever come across were the ones that used to sit on the stoep of the off-sales at Keimoes on a Saturday morning. Tswanas. They were seasonal workers, Oupa had told her. Don’t go near them, he’d warned. They don’t speak our language and if you can’t understand someone’s language, you don’t know what he’s thinking.
Vaselinetjie knew Mr Kedibone drove a bright yellow car. The kids liked to look at the picture in the rear window. It was of galloping wild horses and it was very pretty.
“Sit,” motioned the social worker from behind his desk. “Do you remember me? I’m the one who collected your forms from your matron on your first day and took you to meet the head.”
“You’re Mr Verybony.”
The man shook with laughter. He pushed back his chair and rested his head on his knees. He seemed too big for the chair.
“Well, you’ve certainly given me a nice name, but actually it’s Ke-di-bo-ne. Do you know what it means?”
Vaselinetjie shook her head to show that she had no idea, but she managed a smile. His eyes were kind.
“The name tells of someone who has suffered through very, very hard times. Just as you are suffering now. It’s a strong name. We didn’t have time to talk the last time we met. What does your name mean?”
She repeated the story of her dry skin as a baby.
“Well, that’s a nice story too! Your name tells of the love your ouma and oupa have for you. Vaselinetjie, we have to talk about the holidays …”
Vaselinetjie sat motionless while Mr Kedibone spoke. She left his office without a word.
Back in her room she opened her cupboard and ripped off the home-made calendar stuck behind the door. There was only a week and a half left before the holidays would begin, but it wasn’t important any longer.
“Nothing matters any more! I will never, never ever care about anything again!” she screamed, burying her head in her clothes. She sobbed and pummelled her school uniform with her fists. Mr Kedibone had just told her that the government didn’t have the funds to send those children who lived far away home for the holidays. She’d have to stay in.
For the next week Vaseline did nothing but sit on her bed, or on the stairs, or in the public phone booth, reading and rereading her ouma’s letters. She kept all her letters of the past six months in a shoe box at the bottom of her cupboard.
After her conversation with Mr Kedibone she called home almost every day, reversing the charges, until Oupa was forced to tell her it was getting too expensive and it broke Ouma’s heart to hear Vaseline cry and plead on the other end of the phone about something they couldn’t do anything about.
“Oumie’s baby must be strong and stand on both feet,” Ouma sobbed along with Vaseline time and again. But Ouma never said the words Vaseline was longing to hear. That she could come home. That sending her away had been a terrible mistake and that she would never have to return to this awful place.
“We’re going to eat Kentucky,” and “My dad’s going to take us for Wimpy burgers,” the kids who were going home for the holidays boasted. And even though she and the others who had to stay in couldn’t care less about the treats they had in store, they couldn’t help overhearing.
“And check, hey, I’m packing everything, ’cause I’m telling you now: this place is never going to see me again,” one after the other vowed as they filled their suitcases and emptied their cupboards.
Some who were going to foster families would be back long before the holidays were over, and the others would sneer because their placements had failed. But at the moment that possibility was far from their minds.
“At least you escape from the home for a few weeks and you score some new clothes that
