Afrika (2 page)

Kim circled her tongue frantically around her mouth trying to locate one tiny glob of moisture. She hoped she wasn't getting sick. Her uncle's cigarette sucked all the air out of the Land Rover.

Riana was taking a long time. Putting her chocolate-smeared fingers to her cheeks as if to cool herself, Kim spoke hurriedly: “Did you know my dad?”

The question slid out as quickly as a snake's tongue. She had had no intention of asking Oom Piet about her father, but she had done it, almost against her own will.

“My father,” she repeated.“Did you know him?”

Oom Piet avoided looking at her by taking off his glasses and polishing them on his sweatshirt. She had caught him off guard, all right, and Kim knew that catching people off guard was the only way to get answers from them. If only he would give her some detail. But instead of responding to her question, he plunked his glasses back on his nose and gestured away from the sea toward the darkness on the other side of the road. “Look. Behind that cliff is our famous Table Mountain. Not a speck of snow on it. Not like your Rockies, hey.”

Kim dug her fingers into the car seat in frustration. It was too late. Her mother and Bliksem were strolling back to the car. The discussion of her father was dead. For now.

“You'll see a better view of it from the cottage,” added her uncle. “Some days clouds form like a tablecloth over its top. They say you can read the weather by it.”

Bliksem leaped into the backseat, swishing his dragon tail this way and that until he got comfortable. “I'm dying of thirst,” Kim said as her mom climbed into the front seat.

“Darling, you had some juice on the plane,” Riana mumbled, her mind obviously still on the ocean.

“My girl,” said Oom Piet, his cigarette between his lips. “Would you like a peppermint?”

“No,” Kim mumbled and pressed herself into the seat. The warm fish-breeze of Bliksem's breath made Kim blink.“No, thank you,” she added grimly.

Oom Piet pulled his vehicle back onto the road. “We're almost there,” he said. “The cottage is small, but cozy. It's Victorian. Over a hundred years old.”

Kim glared at the back of her mother's head. It drove her crazy that Riana would not talk to her about her father. The only detail Riana had revealed was this: he was South African too. As if Kim hadn't put two and two together! Then, the day after Riana had accepted this assignment, she presented Kim with a flimsy notebook that had belonged to her father.“This is the last thing he ever gave me,” Riana had said. “He wanted to be a writer.”

Kim couldn't wait to be alone with the notebook. A few minutes later she was sitting by the lamp in her bedroom, leafing through the scribble. Guess what! The notebook was illegible – written in a language she could not decipher. Eventually, Kim gave up, placed the notebook under her mattress, and tried to forget about it. Yet when she packed for the three-month trip to Africa, Kim put the notebook in her carry-on luggage, not allowing it to be away from her in the belly of the plane.

Riana glanced at Kim through the rearview mirror and then dreamily gazed out the window.

“Where is my father?” Kim mumbled. She mouthed the words into the soft place between her fingers where she could smell the chocolate from the airplane. Of course, no one heard her.

O
utside Kim and Riana's cottage, plant creepers and fig-leaf fingers shimmered in the moonlight. Beside the front door, which Oom Piet unlocked, stood a high white trellis, at the bottom of which were the cut-off wooden stalks of roses.

“Hey, it's dark,” said Kim, shivering.

“Those Victorians knew something all right,” Oom Piet said, as they stepped inside. “Small windows hold the warmth in winter and shut out the hot sun in summer.”

The house was not very big, but the rooms felt spacious because of the high ceilings. The cottage had a roof made of tin and the walls were thick and cream-colored. It reminded Kim of a gingerbread house. In the main room the shelves sagged with the weight of books and shells and carvings of zebras and giraffes. At one end of the room was a cast-iron fireplace with a rectangular chimney. Behind the screen, a fire was burning.

“So, you like it?” asked Piet. The skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

“Yes,” said Kim. A deep sense of relief filled her. After so many hours to get here, and her mother's unnerving reluctance when the plane landed, the small house was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.

“We rescued this cottage from ruin about twelve years ago,” he said. “We usually rent it to tourists. But it's winter. You still thirsty?”

“Yes,” said Kim as she left the fireplace and followed her uncle through the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the living room.

“How about that?” said Piet, opening the fridge. “Guava juice.” He handed Kim a Tetra Pak.

“Buy a donkey,” answered Kim.
Baie dankie
was “thank you very much” in Afrikaans, one of the few expressions she had mastered as a child.

Piet and Riana exchanged smiles as Kim sucked up the thick, unfamiliar juice. Then Riana unloaded her coat, purse, and the contents of her sling bag onto the middle of the wobbly, wooden kitchen table.

“The cottage is perfect,” said Kim and her mother at the same time. Amazing. They both agreed, for once.

Oom Piet looked relieved. “The garden is huge,” he said. “For a large part of the year there are lemons on that tree and the wild fennel grows as high as your head.”

Kim moved to the back of the kitchen. Piet showed her how the garden door opened – in half, upper and lower – like a stable door. Then he unlocked a set of burglar bars outside it. In the garden ferns and fig trees glistened in the moonlight and shivered all the way back to the neighbor's wall. Kim blinked her tired eyes. They were playing tricks on her. She thought she saw a flat-roofed shack in the far corner of the yard.

Oom Piet took a gum packet out of his pocket and, after offering some to Kim and Riana, folded a stick into his mouth. “When must I tell Pa you'll be coming to the farm?” he asked, relocking the bars.

“I don't know,” Riana said quickly. She had refused the gum and was shifting through her stuff on the table.

Chewing, Uncle Piet said, “I could fetch you and Kim next weekend.”

Riana looked tense. This was definitely not a conversation she wanted to have, but Piet pushed on. “Come now, Riana,” he said. “There's always the weekend following.”

Riana inhaled sharply. “No, Piet, I have to work.” Oom Piet chewed in silence, then fumbled for his cigarettes, but thankfully did not take one out. Kim continued to stare out into the yard. Not only was there a shack at the bottom of the garden, but a light flickered inside it – an unsteady light like
that of a candle. The shadow of a figure moved past the window. “Who's that?” Kim asked.

“That's Lettie,” her uncle said. He turned to Riana.“You remember Lettie from the farm. When I bought this cottage I asked her to move down to take care of it. She agreed. She said her children could get a better education in Cape Town.”

Riana's mouth opened and her eyes lit up. “Lettie Bandla?” she gasped.

Uncle Piet nodded.
“Ja.
Her boy is around Kim's age. He stays with her on school nights. Must I ask her to come up to make tea?”

He went to exit the back door, but Riana's words froze him in his tracks. Her pleasure at hearing Lettie's name had totally disappeared. “No, I can't!” she snapped. “I don't want a maid.”

Kim's uncle was surprised at Riana's mood change. “Riana, you are tired,” he reasoned. “Let's have some tea.”

“Rubbish! I am not tired,” her mother shouted. “This is why I left South Africa. This is why I had to get away. You never understood how much I hated it all!”

“Calm down, woman.” Piet's face was red. He jammed another gum stick into his mouth. “Where in the world are there no haves and have-nots? So, you don't have poor in Canada?”

Kim chewed on her straw. Since Oom Piet had opened the half-door a wild, damp, midnight smell filled the kitchen.

“You used to be very fond of Lettie,” her uncle said. “What must I do? She comes with the house.”

Riana pressed her lips together. “You make it sound like she's a piece of furniture.”

Uncle Piet snorted,
“Ag
man, stop. She relies on this job. She takes care of the renters.”

Suddenly he turned and looked at Kim. “I'll show you to your bedroom,” he said, picking up her suitcase and motioning for her to follow. Kim wanted to hear more of what they were saying, but reluctantly she followed Oom Piet out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hall. The floor seemed to sway under her feet. How many hours – days even – had it been since she had put her head down on a bed?

Piet opened a door and set her suitcase inside it. “My girl, keep the burglar bars locked across your window,” he instructed her. Then he left the room and closed the door behind him.

Kim heard the low rumble of voices. Riana and Oom Piet were now speaking Afrikaans, but Kim could predict the conversation. She knew her mother hated master-servant, as she called it. It was the way she summed up her old life in South Africa.
Kim herself didn't know how she felt about the fact that a boy and his mother were living in their yard. She was reeling with fatigue and not able to make sense of it. Her throat was burning and she was sure she was getting sick. She inspected the room that would be her home for the next three months.

The first thing she saw were bunk beds with leopard print bedspreads. All her life Kim had dreamed about having bunk beds. She had begged her mother to buy them rather than the prissy white-and-gold girl's bed she acquired when her mother got a promotion last year. “What were you thinking?” Kim had demanded when her mother began to spread the frilly pink bedspread on the new bed the very day after her promotion. “Sugar and spice and everything nice,” she had sung sarcastically.

“Do you mind?” Riana asked as her goofy gaudy glasses slid down her nose.

“What about bunk beds?” Kim had demanded.

“You do not have a sister so bunk beds are impractical.” Case closed.

The reality was, Kim loved the idea of a sister as much as she loved the idea of bunk beds. Someone to gab with late at night. Someone to pillow fight into submission each morning. Someone to share feelings and secrets with. Her mother had never come right out and said it, but Kim knew that
Riana had no intention of marrying or having any more babies.

On the wall beside the beds hung a square mirror with a border of polished stones. Kim barely recognized herself. Her tired eyes were sunk into her skull like dark pools of tar. Whose eyes were those? Certainly not her mom's watery blue eyes.

“Can I at least see a photo?” she had once asked her mother. “You must have packed one photo of him.”

“I left South Africa in a hurry,” Riana told her. It was just like Riana not to have taken the right things with her.

Below the mirror, in the middle of a small table, were half a dozen short-stemmed flowers in a glass jar. A ribbon was wrapped and carefully tied around the belly of the jar. She wondered: Had the woman in the garden started the fire in the fireplace and left the flowers?

Kim unpacked her carry-on. At the bottom of the bag was her father's thin notebook. Taking it with her, she scrambled up the wooden ladder to the top bunk.

Outside, the wind groaned and howled. No doubt whatsoever – a storm was coming. The Cape of Good Hope had the most famous storms in the world. Kim had read about how gale winds and
waves ripped huge ships apart and then bashed the cargo and survivors against the rocks. Arrow-carrying herdsmen and night animals met anyone who was “lucky” enough to reach the shore alive.

Suddenly she heard a noise out in the garden. She edged over and leaned closer to the window. She could see the shack clearly from this angle. It was hardly bigger than a garden shed and was painted white with a wooden door that swung out in two pieces. The top half was open and a tall boy stood in the doorway. In the darkness she could barely make out his features, but he appeared to be looking up at the house. A moment later he moved farther back into the room.

Kim wrapped the leopard print bedspread around herself. Her eyes were so heavy she could barely keep them open. The voices in the other room had died down. Her uncle, who had left Bliksem alone in the Land Rover, would have to return soon to the farm.

Kim placed her pillow at the small of her back and collapsed into it, her father's notebook on her lap. She blinked her tired eyes trying to focus on the lettering that was on the inside of the back cover. She angled the notebook so it caught the light from the moon. There it was.
Afrika, Afrika, Afrika
was scribbled over and over.

Her spirits lifted. All these years her mother could keep secrets because they were in Canada – where no one knew their story where there were no relatives, no one to question anything. But that was no longer the case.

She shivered and pulled the leopard cloth tighter around her shoulders. She was now in the same country likely the same city as her father. She had never been this close to him. Surely it was only a matter of time before they would meet.