children no longer came over to the Phalas to play, and it was clear Sandra was in some spell of unbreakable loneliness. The swimming pool was now covered with a green net. Lulama was not happy about this because she enjoyed swimming with her children. Ousie Maria gave the swimming pool a wide berth. Lulama saw Ousie Maria, slender in the waist and broad in the shoulders, walk round it to get to her little cottage in the yard. Lulama knew that Mohapi was still superstitious about the cat’s death but he was not talking to his wife about it . . .
One day, Mbuso and Buhle came home from school complaining that the message “Cat Killers” had been written on their desks. “Nobody wants to talk to us. Even the teachers are being mean,” Buhle cried.
When Lulama and Mohapi had made the decision to send their children to a nearly all-white school, they had been worried that Buhle and Mbuso might be isolated, but everything had been fine – until now. Lulama had never imagined that the death of a cat would open up a chasm between her children and their white friends. She hoped that the fuss over Bonaparte’s death would blow over soon.
But then a letter arrived from the headmaster, Mr Steyn himself. He informed Lulama and Mohapi that a few parents had lodged a formal complaint with the school saying that their children were afraid of the “cat killers”. They threatened to withdraw their kids if the alleged “cat killers” did not leave the school with immediate effect. The principal and the school governing body were requested to convene an urgent meeting. At the meeting, which the Phalas had deliberately not attended, the parents were agreed that the “cat killers” must go. Mr Steyn asked Mohapi and Lulama to come see him urgently the next day.
“You’ll have to go alone,” Mohapi said when he arrived home and Lulama told him about the headmaster’s summons.
“Why?”
“Because I will be busy organising workers to come and erase the nasty graffiti on our wall outside. Go see for yourself.”
Lulama raced out. Someone had used red paint to scrawl on their wall:
DEVIL WORSHIPPERS, SATANIST CAT KILLERS
CAT KILLING KAFFIRS
Inside the school premises, Lulama tried to walk tall between the blocks of classrooms to the headmaster’s office. She could feel five hundred pairs of eyes silently trained on her. Some of the kids put their hands over their eyes to avoid the sight of her.
Inside the office, the headmaster made Lulama stand for a while before acknowledging her presence. He was scribbling notes on a pad, a cigarette in his mouth. His eyes were screwed up to avoid the smoke as it spiralled past his face. With a wave of a hand he showed her the chair to sit. She interpreted this as a sign to keep her distance. It was clear that the headmaster didn’t want to shake her hand. He had twinkling eyes, a beaked nose and a slightly open mouth. Some little twitches at the corners of his mouth made it difficult for her to determine whether he was smiling or just plain nervous.
“How could you accuse my children of killing a cat?” Lulama blurted out. “They would never do such a thing.”
“So who killed the poor cat? Everyone in the school is pointing the finger at Mbuso and Buhle.”
“How I am I supposed to know who killed the damn cat? Maybe you should do a postmortem. Maybe curiosity killed the cat, who knows? Maybe it’s damn old age. Maybe it was bitten by poisonous insects. How am I supposed to know?” She clicked her tongue. “This school smells of racism.”
“Look, all we are saying is that your children are causing distress to other children. Your boy even beat up another boy the other day.”
Lulama frowned and narrowed her eyes. The headmaster peered at her intently through his thick spectacles. He was a red-cheeked, round-faced man with bright green eyes. His short dark-brown hair was silvering at the temples. His moustache was meticulously groomed after the manner of Joseph Stalin. The office smelt of his strong cigarette. A tide of anger rose in Lulama and gave her strength.
“If that boy was teasing my children about something they didn’t do, what do you expect? How many times do they have to tell you that they were here at school when the damn cat drowned in our swimming pool?” Her voice rose until she shouted, “Why are you only concerned about the distress of the other kids, and not my kids who saw a dead cat in our swimming pool? If my kids are discriminated against again by this damn school I will have to refer the matter to the Department of Education and the MEC. I will lodge a complaint about the racism that my children are facing in this bloody school.”
“Some people say you people poisoned the cat and killed it.”
“What? Who said that? Why didn’t we do that some years ago when the dreadful cat attacked our domestic worker?” she asked with the accent that made her roll her tongue, like they do in the suburban schools. “How can the status of the fucking cat be on par with that of my kids?”
Lulama and Mr Steyn parted the way they met, without pleasantries. She drove out of the school grounds, the car jerking forward and stalling as her foot slid off the clutch. A white couple was driving in through the school gate. The man, who was driving, immediately put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and they shook their heads in unison. Their hatred for her was difficult to hide. With a face like that you cannot run away from racism in South Africa, she thought as she passed them.
A few days later, with the situation still not improved at school, Lulama decided to work from home. She wanted to go over to the Moerdyks’ house to try to talk to Sandra. They had not spoken since the day Bonaparte died.
Inside the Moerdyks’ big yard was a well-pruned peach tree and several other flowering trees that perfumed the air. Flowers had been laid under the sneezewood tree at the spot where Bonaparte was buried. All Lulama wanted was to know whether Sandra’s children were responsible for spreading the rumour that her own kids were cat killers. That was all. She was tired of seeing white people drive past and spit at her house in hate. Even the joggers, cyclists and schoolchildren spat on her lawn, their faces distorted with disgust.
The door to the Moerdyks’ kitchen was open, but she knocked anyway, just to be polite. Sandra stared, her eyes nearly popping out. The knife she was using to slice a lemon slipped on the skin of the fruit and cut into her thumb.
“Damn it!” she yelped and sucked at her thumb. Auntie Nurse was busy putting clothes in the washing machine.
“Come in,” said Sandra, holding her thumb under running water from the cold tap.
She looked nauseous.
“How are you doing?” asked Lulama.
“I’m fine,” Sandra replied, bowing her head over a steaming cup of tea with lemon.
“Well, I haven’t seen you since the death of Napoleon.”
“His name was Bonaparte.”
“I’m sorry, I meant to say Bonaparte.”
“Well, I was expecting you guys to come to his funeral as good neighbours,” Sandra said, pushing her hair back from her face. “But it’s okay. I guess you were busy with more serious stuff.”
“I was caught up with some work.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, unable to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “I also didn’t see you at the school governing body meeting.”
“I
