Tandia (3 page)

From the very beginning Mrs Patel couldn't do anything about the black child her husband had spawned. Natkin Patel wanted his bastard daughter and he seemed to feel an attachment to the plump honey-skinned baby that he'd never felt for his two sons.

'See,' he said, picking her up, 'the skin is soft like velvet, darker, maybe a little darker, but not so black as a kaffir. I'm telling you, man, this one is lucky, bladdy lucky. Look! Green eyes! An Indian and a kaffir mix and, goodness me, out come green eyes!'

Patel was a good cut-man in the ring and so fancied himself a bit medically minded. 'How can it be? You mix a black with an Indian; one thing is certain…' he paused for effect, 'all dark eyes, every bugger has dark eyes. Tell me, hey? Where have you seen a green-eyed kaffir or an Indian? I'm telling you, not even so many white people have green eyes.' He absent-mindedly stroked the baby. 'Usually with kaffirs you get gene swamp.'

'Gene swamp' was Patel's very own expression; he'd invented it to explain why mixed marriages between blacks and whites didn't work. 'The ugliness of the kaffir comes out and nothing good of the white or the Indian is left.' He bounced Tandia on his knee. 'But not this one, hey? I'm telling you something for nothing, except for her hair, which I got to admit is a kaffir's hair, this one is going to be very, very pretty.'

Mrs Patel said nothing, her humiliation greater than she believed she could bear. Patel wasn't even ashamed! He talked openly to people about his bastard daughter. It wasn't respectful. It wasn't fair. She'd done her job as a good wife and given him two sons to look after his old age and no silly daughters to bleed him dry with wedding dowries, and in return he insulted her name and her race.

She would suck her dislike for Tandia through her gold teeth. 'Sies, man, how could you love that?' At least she didn't have to have his shame in the house. Tandia lived in the corrugated-iron shed in the back with her kaffir mother. When Tandia was five her mother died quite suddenly. Her death came as somewhat of a surprise to the neighbourhood, for she was a robust and happy woman who performed the task of servant to the Patel household with cheerfulness and energy.

Nobody knew about the poisoning of Tandia's mother, but then again, everybody knew. The police, of course, treated it just like another dead black person. It happened all the time. Maybe even some money changed hands? Patel was well known in boxing circles, white boxing circles, where the police were very big. He could easily have paid someone not to look too closely.

Tandia had grown up with the story of her mother's death. It remained street gossip for years, and there was no doubt in her mind that Mrs Patel had been responsible. She held no evidence to prove it, but she knew the woman's hate was big enough.

The hurt at being hated so much by Mrs Patel had only been bearable when Tandia took it out of herself and turned it inside out, turned Mrs Patel into an ignorant but honest and jealous woman who had been cheated by her husband. Deep in thought, Tandia was unaware of the two men creeping up behind her in the cemetery. She sensed their presence too late. Her left arm was grabbed from behind and twisted painfully behind her back.'Don't struggle, kaffir, or I break your bladdy arm, you hear?'

She felt the cold metal of the handcuff as it snapped around her wrist. Her free arm was pulled behind her and the second metal bracelet snapped onto it. She didn't scream at first, her shock was too great. But then it came, the pitch so high its beginning was silent, a rasp of cold air pulled into her epiglottis. The scream cut across the misty, dewsoaked cemetery; it may even have reached half a mile away to where the cement-block houses of the new Indian township began. But it had no second breath, no second pull of fright. A hard hand slammed across her mouth, the signet ring striking her front teeth. Her head pushed downwards, they raced towards the headstone, the force of the man propelling her impossible to resist. Instinctively she brought her shoulder around to take the brunt of the crash as her slim body slammed into the cold marble cross.

The grip on her mouth and neck loosened and then her attacker released her altogether. Her knees buckled and she started to fall. A hand grabbed the chain connecting her handcuffs and broke her fall, allowing her to sink to her knees. She didn't feel the metal band being loosened from her left wrist and was barely conscious of her arms being brought around the base of the cross and of the handcuff snapping around her wrist again. Her attacker stood directly behind her, working purposefully.

'That's right, kaffir, in the doggy position, you people like that, hey?' He gave two sharp barks, 'Woof woof!' Tandia heard a short laugh and for the first time became aware that a second man was present. The cotton shift she was wearing was bunched and a hand pulled at her bloomers. It was the feeling of the elastic pulling over her thighs that brought her back to her senses. She kicked out with her left foot and connected with the squatting policeman's thigh, knocking him over.

'Fok! The black bitch has dirtied my uniform!' He reached out and, grabbing her ankle, jerked her leg straight. With her knees no longer supporting her, Tandia crashed onto her stomach. Straddling her the policeman pulled her bloomers down. Then he brought his hands under her hips and jerked her back to her former kneeling position. He was a strong man, but now he panted slightly from the effort and- he spoke in short, sharp bursts. 'You dirty my nice clean uniform, hey. I got to teach you some manners, man. Kicking with your dirty kaffir feet. That's not nice, you hear!'

Tandia heard the click of his belt buckle. 'Don't move.

You hear? Stay jus' like that.' His voice was steadier now, more confident. She heard the second man laugh. 'Take your boots off, man, your trousers won't go over your boots,
domkop!'
The man behind her gave a grunt, then another as the second boot came away; then came his voice again, light, almost flippant. 'First you got. to learn not to kick your betters!' She felt the sting of the leather belt even before her mind registered its sound on her buttocks. The belt came down twice more, each lash followed by a grunt from the policeman. Tandia screamed; the pain was terrible. 'Coming, ready or not!' She felt his hands on either side of her thighs pull her back up, then a brutal thrust and a sharp pain. She gasped and let out another scream. The policeman slipped one hand around her waist holding her hard against him and clamped the other over her mouth. His grip was too tight for her to bite his fleshy, nicotine-smelling palm.

'Jesus, a virgin! The-black-bitch-is-a-fucking-virgin!' The repeated force of the body slamming into her was synchronised with his voice. She fought for breath, snorting through her nostrils. Nothing else mattered, not the pain, nothing; he was suffocating her and she was fighting to get enough air to stay alive.

Suddenly, the hand over her mouth relaxed and the grotesque presence dismounted. Tandia remained very still. Panting, but very still, her eyes tightly closed. She was aware, for the first time, of the taste of blood in her mouth. It was the only thing that seemed real. She held on to it.

The salty, normal taste of blood kept her from passing out. Would they kill her? Not if she didn't look. Not if they knew she hadn't seen their faces. Tandia, who had so often wondered whether her life was worth anything, suddenly knew she wanted to live.

'Hey, Geldenhuis? Cmon, your turn. Nice tight pussy. A very recent virgin. Guaranteed only one owner!'

'Don't use my name in front of the kaffir girl! I don't fuck kaffirs.'

There was a moment's pause. 'Ja, is that so? How come then, you always like to watch?'

'Cmon, hurry up, jong, it's already half past six. We got to report.' Nervous anger strained the second man's voice. 'We only came to pay our respects to old Patel!'

The policeman who had raped her was breathing less heavily now, aware perhaps that he had upset his superior.

He changed the subject. 'What's going to happen about your title fight with Gideon Mandoma now Patel's dead?'

Geldenhuis didn't answer.
'Kom! Maak gou, jong!
It's nearly bladdy sunrise!'

Tandia felt the sudden downward pressure of a boot in the small of her back. 'Nice one! Her black arse looks like a hot cross bun.' She lay absolutely still, the gravel chips cut into her stomach and her arms pulled painfully as the handcuffs looped around the cross held her rigid. Her shift remained bunched above her waist. Tandia kept her eyes tightly shut even after she heard the soft click of the key and felt the handcuffs removed from her wrists and her ankles. She lay there as though dead, not a muscle moving. Inside her head she screamed,
'Please God, don't let them kill me!'

Tandia felt the sudden downward pressure of the boot again, this time on the base of her neck. 'Don't open your eyes, kaffir, not for a long time, not for ten minutes, you hear?' It was the voice of the second man, the one called Geldenhuis. The pressure increased and her head was pushed into the ground. 'Hey! You! Kaffir! I asked you, do you hear?'

'Yes,
baas
,'
she sobbed.

The boot twisted into her neck, sending a sharp stab of pain down her spine.
'la dankie, baas!'
the voice demanded. She felt his hand tug at her shift and pull it down over her thighs.

'Yes, thank you, baas,' Tandia whimpered.

'You report this you dead meat!'

Tandia lay there for a long time. The sun came up and took the morning cold away but she kept her eyes shut. She was a kaffir, that at least had been decided.

Tandia opened one eye. It focussed on a willy wagtail sitting on a half-fallen tombstone ten feet from where she lay. Cut into the pocked cement tombstone she read the words, 'Dearly beloved', but the remainder of the writing on the lopsided tombstone was covered with dry lichen.

The willy's tail was going up and down, regular as a metronome. A tiny breeze caught and ruffled the white feathers on its breast. It cocked its head slightly and looked at her without curiosity. Then it flew away and rested on the temporary wooden cross on Patel's grave. But it didn't stay long; its tail only went up and down three or four times before it took off again. Maybe because of the incense? Can birds smell? Tandia didn't know.

All the tears, the bitter child tears were over. The white man had decided for her. She was a stinking black kaffir who had had her buttocks parted by a white man's hands. Tandia's world crumbled. The small amount of self esteem she had harvested out of her childhood had come from her efforts at school. Now, with Patel dead, there would be no more school. She had been crushed, she was suddenly no better than the lowest black person. A stinking, dirty kaffir!

Tandia lay very still and let the hate come in. Let the hate spread, enter her salty, blood-rinsed mouth and creep down her dry throat and into her chest and down, down, down, to congeal in her stomach so that she thought for a moment she would vomit. She gulped, but she held the hate down. She held it until it spread throughout her whole body. And then, only then, when she knew it would never leave her, Tandia allowed herself to weep again.

This time it was a cry that started on the surface like a child crying and then burned deeper and deeper so that it ended up a whimper, hardly a cry at all. It was only then, when the crying was leached out of her, that the fear came, it rose up in her breast until she could contain it no longer. 'Patel!' she screamed. 'Why did you have to die!' At almost sixteen, life as a kaffir had begun for Tandia.

Tandia arrived back at Booth Street before Mrs Patel had risen. She moved painfully over to the yard tap and washed the red cemetery clay from her feet and legs. Then she filled a four-gallon paraffin tin bucket and carried it into the shed where she poured the cold water into a large white enamel basin. She undressed slowly, pulling the cotton shift carefully over her bruised body. With a cloth she rinsed in the bucket she wiped as much of the blood away as she could see before she squatted in the basin to bathe. The skin around her wrists had been rubbed away and in some places the handcuffs had cut deeply into the flesh so that each time she put her hands into the basin the water around her wrists stained pink. The cruel welts made by the policeman's belt still burned her buttocks and when she wiped tenderly over them there was blood on the cloth, although whether from the welts "or from the other place you couldn't be certain.

Up to this moment Tandia's life had been a dichotomy, a two-person affair. She would return home from school and take off her white blouse and gym frock, her short white socks and shiny black shoes, and change into a servant's cotton shift and blue beret. Then she'd wash' and hang out her school uniform to dry; later, before she went to bed, she would starch and iron it when she did Patel's shirts. This personal task completed, she would change from a bright little Indian schoolgirl into the Patels' black servant. It was an emotional journey Tandia made every day of her life and one which she walked with a terrible loneliness.

As a child she had cried the loneliness out of her system as she lay in the dark on a coil mattress in the hot shed. She could remember thinking that even the rats that scurried across the corrugated-iron roof above her head had mothers and fathers. She only had Patel whom she was allowed to call Patel, and not 'baas', like a kaffir, but not daddy either, like a proper daughter.

Her bath completed, Tandia wrapped her towel around her torso and dragged the basin which was almost two feet in diameter to the doorway, tipping its contents into the dusty back yard. The water splashed, runneled and rushed for a few feet before being sucked into the dry earth. Moments later only a damp stain showed where it had been, and that too would soon disappear, baked dry in the hot mid-October sun.

Tandia returned the basin to its place under her iron cot, and she applied a damp cloth to her swollen eyes and mouth. Then she dressed slowly, not only because of the pain but also because she sensed that the ritual of changing from servant to schoolgirl, a moment which every school morning of her life she had cherished, might be coming to an end. Her blouse crackled with the starch, just the way Patel's shirts did, and the freshly washed and ironed gym frock fell neatly on her trim body. Her back hurt as she bent down to put on her white socks and tie the laces of her brightly polished shoes. She would say nothing of her early morning graveside visit to say goodbye to Patel. If she told the old woman anything it would only give her yet another reason to throw her onto the street. 'Please God, let her tell me I can stay,' Tandia prayed. 'I'll do anything, anything she says. Just let me stay and finish school next year.'

Just as she did every day Tandia crossed the yard and climbed the steps onto the stoep and entered the kitchen to make breakfast. The old woman was sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas. She was wearing her deep purple sari, always a bad sign; purple was a colour that made Mrs Patel very cranky. Shelling peas was Tandia's work and her heart sank.

'Good morning Mrs Patel,' she said brightly as she reached behind the door for the apron she wore to protect her school uniform. Then she crossed the kitchen, tying the apron as she walked toward the stove to fetch the kettle for morning cha.

'Where you think you going, hey?' Mrs Patel did not look up as she spoke so she didn't see Tandia replace the kettle and, turning from the stove, lower her head and clasp her hands in fear. Nor did she wait for Tandia's reply. She had rehearsed her speech a dozen times and she wanted it to come out just the way she had thought it. 'You think we got money for school now that Mr Patel is dead, you think that?'

She looked up for the first time, her eyes shining with malice. 'You mad, you hear! You nothing but a stinking kaffir. Go! Get out of my house. You got one hour, then you out. Get out of that school uniform, it's mine now, you hear?' She paused, sucking air through her gold teeth. 'You a dirty kaffir going to an Indian school. You who is not even a Hindu!' Her body juddered at the ecstasy of the moment for which she had waited so long. 'What do you think the mothers of the Indian girls think of me, hey? "That Mrs Patel from Booth Street,'" she mimicked, "'she sends her husband's kaffir bastard to a good Indian school!'" She paused to catch her breath. 'I waited a long time, now it's my turn!' Rising from the kitchen chair she pointed to the kitchen door. 'Get out of my house, kaffir!' Lifting the white enamel colander from the table she hurled it at Tandia. The colander hit Tandia's shoulder and fell to the cement floor, clattering amongst the bouncing, scattering, gleefully escaping peas.

Tandia looked up at the old woman. The blow from the dish hadn't hurt her, but somehow its impact had strengthened her nerve, so that she now stood her ground. Yesterday she would have fled in tears. But a lot had happened since yesterday. She had grown up and learned the true meaning of hate. Not the soulful badly-done-by kind of hate she had nursed in childhood nor the deep resentment she felt for the old lady, but a new kind which burned inside her guts so fiercely it felt as though it was stripping away the lining of her stomach. She had also learned the power of a naked threat. The power contained in the voice of a policeman called Geldenhuis when he said, 'You report this and you dead meat!'

Tandia looked up at the old woman, with the new hate and the power she now borrowed from the memory of the policeman's voice. Her voice was even and she spoke slowly. 'One day I am going to get even, I don't care how long it takes.' She paused. 'For my mother and for me also. I swear it on my mother's grave!' She pointed at Mrs Patel. 'You better pray to Arthie Paraschatie to protect you, because one day, sure as God, I'm coming back to get you!' At the mention of Arthie Paraschatie, the Hindu Mother of God, Mrs Patel drew back. 'My sons will beat you, you hear! Do not come back to this house. You stay away, or I call the police!'

Tandia picked up the colander and, taking it by the handles she placed it upside down over the old lady's head and patted it twice. 'Goodbye, you old witch! Good riddance to bad rubbish!' Whereupon she turned and walked from the kitchen.

No sooner had she got to the back yard than her newly gained courage collapsed. She thought of rushing back to ask forgiveness from the old woman, beg a little time, a few days to get a pass and find somewhere she could live. But she knew it was useless; even this would be denied her by the triumphant old bitch. She wiped her tears and entered the shed and pulled the large enamel basin out from under the cot.

Tandia knew enough to realise that her life, despite Mrs Patel, despite the loneliness, had been a fortunate one by the standards of a great many Indian and coloured families and almost all the urban black ones. Natkin Patel had been, by Durban Indian standards, a wealthy man and he had used his wealth and position to give her a chance in life.

She had expected Mrs Patel to send her packing and after Patel's funeral she'd worked out a plan. She had five pounds exactly, an amount that had taken her nearly ten years to save. She would take the bus to Clairwood; blacks as well as Indians lived there. At Clairwood or perhaps Jacobs, she would find a nice clean black family with whom she could board. Her five pounds would buy her food and board for six weeks and leave enough over for train fares so she could go in to town to look for a job. She would be" sure to find a job of some sort in that time. She could clean, cook - Indian food anyway - wash and iron and work a sewing machine, so she could work as a housemaid or she might even get a job as a junior clerk or a sales assistant in an Indian shop in Victoria Street. She spoke both Tamil and Hindi as well as Zulu and, of course, Afrikaans and English, so that should help a lot. Before she had fallen asleep the night before, Tandia had decided that she wasn't entirely helpless and that when she got settled she'd complete her matriculation at night school or by correspondence school.

But now, back in the tin shed, a terrible fear struck her and Tandia started to cry again. She had used the last scrap of her courage in the kitchen with the old lady; she had no more left as she began to pack her things into the basin. Her stomach churned and she realised she hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day when the old lady had locked the house up to go to the funeral and removed the key from its usual hiding place under a loose brick in the back wall. Tandia packed her school books first, then leaving one cotton shift on the bed she rolled the other two up and placed them in the basin. Mrs Patel hadn't said anything about shoes so, technically, she was entitled to take them. She left them on but removed her blouse, gym frock and school beret and hung them together with her spare blouse on a wire hanger which she then hung on a nail protruding from one of the two wooden roof beams a foot above her head.

It didn't take long to pack away the fifteen years of her life. She had accumulated almost nothing of personal value other than a few trinkets, ribbons and bits and pieces which were all contained in a biscuit tin. The last thing she packed was a small kewpie doll someone had given Patel for her when she was a small child. The paintwork on its face had almost totally rubbed off and only a suggestion remained of the doll's large, wide-open painted blue eyes and red bow lips. She'd named the doll Apple Sammy, although she'd long since forgotten why she'd given it a boy's name or even such a silly one. The worn but much loved little doll had rested on her bed for as long as she could remember and now she hugged it briefly, wrapped it carefully in the third cotton shift and put it into the basin. She now set the basin into the centre of a square of cheesecloth and, in the African style, drew the corners over the top and knotted them.

Tandia, an African of very recent persuasion, did not know how to hoist the basin onto her head and walk away, straight-backed and proud with her hips and arms swinging free. She managed to carry the basin out of the shed into the yard where she set it down. It was much too heavy to continue to carry in her arms, and she quickly decided she would have to fashion a head cloth and rest the basin on it, keeping it steady by holding on to either side.

Tandia returned to the shed to fetch the blue servant's beret for this purpose.' As she entered she was struck by the sight of her gym frock and blouse and her school beret hanging from the hook. Through her teary eyes it looked as though she herself was hanging from the nail. The shock she felt caused her hiccups to stop and a surge of anger overcame her. She reached out and lifted the kerosene lamp from the shelf above her iron bed and, removing the fluted glass from the kerosene bowl, she unscrewed the wick and sprinkled methylated spirits over her school uniform. The duality of her life was over.

Tandia carried the paraffin-soaked gym frock, blouse and school beret out into the yard and hung them from the clothes line. Lighting the end of the paraffin-soaked wick from the lamp, she set her school uniform alight. She waited long enough to make sure the flame from the wick had caught; then, on a sudden impulse, she retrieved her school beret and replaced it on the burning hanger with her blue servant's one. Quickly she pulled the paraffin-splashed beret over her hair. Then crouching down on her haunches with her back held straight she carefully lifted the basin onto her head and rising slowly to a standing position walked out of the back gate without looking back.

Tandia had only gone a few yards down the alley when she heard the old woman screaming blue murder. 'Fire! Fire! My house is on fire! Come quick, she's burning down my house! Somebody, come quick!'

'See ya later alligator!' Tandia shouted back to her. She knew the washing line was well away from anything and that there was no possible chance of the house or anything else other than her past life catching alight, and for "a moment she enjoyed the old woman's distress. But suddenly that petty victory tasted bitter in her mouth and she knew she had made a devastating mistake.

The bus stop was no more than haH a mile from Booth Street but it took Tandia almost fifteen minutes to approach it. The large enamel basin was balanced precariously on her head and her neck and back hurt but she was too concerned with getting it to the bus stop to let the pain intrude. A hundred yards from the deserted stop she saw the -bus approaching. Tandia started to trot awkwardly towards it but soon realised that she would be unable to cover the distance in time. She stopped and freed one hand from the rim of the basin to signal the Indian driver to stop. Running late for school, she'd done the same thing a hundred times before and she recognised the driver as someone who had often stopped for her. But now he looked blankly back at the young black girl with a large basin on her head and the big Leyland bus roared past her in a cloud of dust.

Dismayed, Tandia turned suddenly in the direction of the departing bus and the basin slipped and toppled to the road. Her books and belongings broke through the cheesecloth covering and scattered across the roadway. A
bakkie
following closely behind the bus caught the biscuit tin with all her precious bits and pieces and squashed it flat under its rear tyre; another wheel caught two of her textbooks. The driver gave a short impatient honk on his horn and accelerated away.

Tandia was too spent for tears. She began to gather her things together. It seemed impossible to her that it was only just approaching nine o'clock in the morning. She was beyond thinking rationally, simply holding on to the single idea that she must take the bus to Clairwood and find somewhere to stay.