Agaat (91 page)

Bought A. 24 new crayons & 10 jars of poster paints. This evening learnt to write & draw sheep hen donkey rooster. Good perception especially the shape & position of ears mouth etc. I teach her to mix the colours & to cover the whole page not just in the one corner. She's managing well already but I can still see the backlog.

 

This evening I thought she was sleeping already, she came & showed me a picture of the farm with GROTMODERSDRUF solemnly written at the top. You have wings because you are my angel she says. I had to help with the practising of the wings on a separate sheet. Only Lucifer the rebellious angel has such spindly black wings I say. Jak has a thatch of black hair on his head & thick black eyebrows & two red spots for cheeks, is sitting on the bonnet of a red car with black wheels. She couldn't quite get the little man into the car I had to show her & so there I was X2 with my red dress & patched-up wings & Jak X2 first on top of & then inside his car in front of the Grootmoedersdrift homestead
complete with chimney & gables & green trees & blue mountains & a flower garden full of birds & lambs & butterflies.

 

There are two of me now & two of Jak & one of every living thing but where are you then? I ask. She's inside she says. You're looking for me I'm hiding from you in the fireplace. Shame the poor child can she be altogether happy? I wonder.

This morning A. jumps up & down on hr bed & suddenly manages to produce a whistle. Now she can't stop jumping & the whistle comes more & more regularly great excitement!

New habit of A.'s. She presses her head against me, you always smell so nice she says. Pushes hr head into my jersey drawer when I'm getting dressed & then just now she disappeared into thin air & I search & I search there I find her in my room, half crawled into the bottom shelf & gone to sleep there with hr head on my jerseys. Now I understand why the cupboard is always so untidy. Always find the little red jersey on top & warm from her sleeping on it. What are you doing in my wardrobe? I scold, sorry she says & my heart grows soft, I press her to me. Your body is sweet she whispers in my ear can I also smell like that one day?

Our best thing nowadays is to walk in the veld & learn the names of things. Insects, birds, small reptiles, small mammals, grass varieties, wild flowers, stones. I take Pa's old reference books along in a rucksack & a notebook & a pair of binoculars & her magnifying glass & then we identify things & collect examples. I learn remarkable things myself. A. has a good eye, remembers all marks, sees things that I don't notice, white speckled breast of a lesser kestrel in a tree, pupae in the grass & cocoons hanging from twigs, webs spun between blades of grass, lizard skeletons, droppings of hare & dassie & antelope. The hangings of the fiscal shrike interest her. That's why its name is Johnny Hangman I explain but then of course I had to explain the death penalty & its reasons as well.

 

Showed her a while ago a fossil that Pa picked up way back in the mountains & now she's got a thing about it, is forever picking up rocks & says break it open there's something in it & then upon my word she's
been right three or four times! How do you know? I ask. Some stones are warmer than others she says. Can it be that the child has second sight? Arrived here the other day with a little frog, didn't even know such a thing existed tiny as a match-head, micro-frog according to the amphibians book & today again the loveliest little ivory frog. First had to explain ivory & then how an elephant's tooth made its way to the name of a frog.

 

Mole snake, fruit bat, horse-shoe, tapeworm, finch-grass, drift-sand, smother-crop, cannibal spider, emperor butterfly. Soon discovered compounds don't always work in the same way, sometimes had to think up something to satisfy her.

 

So then I had this bright idea, a fortunate inspiration it was, or not even that, a premonition & I looked under Agate in Pa's old minerals book & there it was! Remarkable! Cloud agate Plume agate Fire agate Eye agate Iris agate Snakeskin agate Moss agate Rainbow agate! Look, I say, all the world is in your name. The things of the world are tied to one another at all points with words I say & we know one thing through the name of another thing & we join the names together. It's a chain & if you move one link then they all move the possibilities are endless.

 

She wants to go & catch that blue butterfly, she says, for hr collection. I say you don't catch it it's holy. She's not scared of butterflies she says they don't bite what is holy. I said I'd think. Full of that kind of question nowadays. Where is heaven, why do people die, where is one's soul attached, why is a thing the thing that it is & not another thing. Heaven is a stone she says out of the blue. Yes I say precious stone walls of jasper & streets of gold. No she says that's not what she means & she shows me the stone with the fossilised fern leaf. That's the soul she says trapped in heaven, I ask you!

 

In the evenings she unpacks all our finds & arranges them by kind. Can't keep up with dishes & bottles boxes bands & scrapbooks & felt squares, pins, thumb tacks, paper clips for all the specimens she wants to display. Remarkably precise & persistent the child, it's exceptional I think. I give her a free hand even though it smells like a witchdoctor's shop there in her little room. Saar & Lietja say she was born with the caul. What an adventure!

This afternoon after lunch A. disappeared into thin air & returned very dirty. Had actually walked to the forest on hr own! I gave hr a good hiding. The tokoloshe will catch you, I said it's no place for little children remember your name is Good. Good, she says crying, one good two goods, goods is loose goods she says crying & and goods are a lot of things that don't have a name & goods are your goods that you have in your suitcase, stolen goods. Not at a loss for words. I tell hr look out you don't talk back at me do you want another hiding? Good is true good is beautiful good is noble.

What all are you writing in your little book? asks Agaat. A story, I say, about a little girl who can whistle already! Can I too? she asks. Here she is now taking the red crayon!

Let's spell properly:

She's speaking good Afrikaans now. Only the infinitive of the verb in combination with preposition creates problems at times. To about laugh, she says, to about cry.

I put up all the pictures she draws on the walls of her room, two eagle owls on a branch, a red princess with a crown on her head, a bristling black cat on yellow paper. The child amazes me. Looks at me the other day when we were having a picnic under the big old rock fig: Why can a tree only be a tree? Because it's holy I say. What is holy? she asks again. I say everything that's wild everything that's free, everything that
we didn't make ourselves, everything that we can't cling to & tie down. Your soul is holy. Wouldn't she gaze at me: But you caught me & tamed me. So I pressed hr close to me, shame.

Baked a pretty birthday cake with seven candles collected a whole boxful of little reading books from everybody who no longer uses them nicely wrapped in shiny paper & a ribbon but then there was another incident ai, one of the children I invited apparently mocked A. so she locked him in the outside toilet & he bawled the place down. Gave her a terrific hiding more because she refuses to tell me what he's supposed to have said to her that made her lock him up. You tell me everything, you don't have secrets from me I tell her, only good secrets you're allowed that the Lord knows about.

Just saw something that breaks my heart. Heard just now back there in the kitchen the red-chested cuckoo in the front garden but it carries on & on & and I go & look here on the front stoep to see where they're nesting & all the time it was A. standing on the stoep all concentration. Every time he calls she whistles back wheet-wheet-wooee & then she waits until he replies, the little face sheer wonder, she can't believe what's happening. Just left again quietly because I could see it was a very private moment & thus far she hasn't breathed a word of it to me. She goes around with I-have-a-secret written all over her face.

All the drilling every day has not been in vain, A. really coming along so nicely in reading & writing. Saw her today sitting there & spelling out the stories in the Children's Bible, asks me a big word every now & again: Righteousness, compassion, hallucination, ire, damnation, grace. I write them all down, nicely split up in syllables & put them up in her room next to her other lists so that she can absorb them. Have done memorising & summarising exercises and comprehension tests with her a few times. She's not stupid at all, I tend to keep it to the Farmer's Weekly & to farming matters that she knows. Hmmm, says Jak, teach the young idea how to shoot. Sarcastic as always.

A. has the habit of just disappearing. Give her a hiding regularly but she carries on doing it. Had to scold like anything again yesterday. What do
you do when you run off, what kind of mischief do you get up to? I dig she says. I look at the nails, I see the soil. What do you dig! I ask. Little furrows she says. What kind of little furrows? For seed, she says. Then a great light dawned for me about the fennel that's shooting up everywhere in the garden & in the yard & next to the irrigation furrow & the orchard all the way to beyond the dirt road in the dryland I noticed the yellow heads of fennel in flower. You're infesting the place! I say, you're making work for yourself, you'll pull up every last bush! I won't she says they're my plants. Impossible at times the child, wonder how long she's been at it. Yes says Jak, Minister of Fennel one day.

Last night a squabble with Jak again because apparently I'm spending too much time & money on A. Should never have shown him the cloth I bought. Red for a party dress for hr birthday in two weeks' time. He says he doesn't want a cake-gobbling here again it always just leads to unpleasantness & he's tired of answering people's questions about it. He says people ask him if Agaat addresses him as baas or pa or uncle. So now I teach her I'm nooi Milla & Jak is Mr de Wet. But she forgets, she still calls me Même when she's glad or excited, & Jak of course will have nothing but baas.

She remains self-conscious about the little arm. It's too hot in summer for long sleeves but she won't wear short-sleeved dresses & you can't really have the child walk around with just one long sleeve.

Found a solution at last. From fine crochet-cotton crocheted a pretty little jersey to wear over hr dresses, the right-hand sleeve is longer & with a cuff that covers half the little hand. Looks as if she'll wear it like that. White ribbons in the hair as well. I make hr stand in front of the mirror. Now you look just like a snowflake I say.

Crawled into bed with A. again last night & slept till the morning Jak leaves me just like that when he's done & he's not satisfied till I scream he's hurting me as if that will do any good. Woke up in the early morning with A. crept up completely into me when I got up she woke up half-asleep still: I can whistle like the birds do you know? kokkewiet & johnny hangman & dikkop all of them.

Got a bright idea from an old book for A.'s hair. I usually keep it cut short but can't manage the woolly head all that well. So then we sat for hours in the backyard in the shade against the wall & I plaited her hair in little strings flat against the scalp but I couldn't get it regular & in straight lines as in the picture. Must take a lot of practice like basket-weaving. So then the kitchen-girls laughed at the result: Now mies has just got Agaat white & then she tries to turn her into a Transkei kaffir-girl & then A. heard it & ran away when she saw herself in the mirror the fat was really in the fire & I had to undo it all & it took much longer than the plaiting itself because by now everything was properly knotted & it pulled & Agaat screamed like a banshee. A whole palaver. I suppose it's better just to wash it every day with Johnson's baby shampoo at least one knows it's clean.

Went to collect old arithmetic books from the school day before yesterday to work through. She multiplies & divides like anything & recites her tables to 6, not all that far behind the standard twos in town. Have started teaching hr notes & simple scales just for the one hand. The other one's fingers can still not open all that well. We play simple tunes together I play the right hand. Must say I enjoy it tremendously. Jak says teach an ape to play chopsticks today & tomorrow he plays chop-chop with your head.

Took A. up into Luipaardskloof to the bat cave she's very fascinated by a mouse that can fly creepy & smelly the place & the swarms wheeling about our heads A. just wants to stay to look & asks how do they hang how do they sleep why do they squeak like that. Managed with great difficulty to get hold of one. Could show hr nicely the membrane between the spokes & the big ear for receiving the bounced-back squeaking sounds & the pig-like little snout-beak.

Unpacked my old music books & started practising again after all these years, little Bach partitas & the old evergreens that aren't too difficult to play. Liebestraum, Song Without Words, Largo. Gives me quite a new lease on life.