Dinaane Read online

  DINAANE

  Other titles in the series

  Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women

  Galpa: Short Stories by Women from Bangladesh

  Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women

  Kahani: Short Stories by Pakistani Women

  Katha: Short Stories by Indian Women

  Povídky: Short Stories by Czech Women

  Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women

  Scéalta: Short Stories by Irish Women

  DINAANE

  SHORT STORIES BY SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN

  Edited by

  Maggie Davey

  TELEGRAM

  London Beirut

  Contents

  Maggie Davey, Introduction

  Anne Schuster, In a State of Emergency

  Alexandra Dodd, The Transition

  Colleen Higgs, Looking for Trouble

  Joanne Fedler, A Simple Exchange of Niceties

  Henrietta Rose-Innes, Forensic

  Kirsten Miller, Chance Encounter

  Muthal Naidoo, The Bridge-Playing Rain Queens

  Mary Watson Seoighe, The Lilitree

  Willemien de Villiers, Coming in to Land

  Amanda Gersh, Home Helper

  Makhosazana Xaba, Running

  Biographical Notes

  MAGGIE DAVEY

  Introduction

  The South African short story was invented by Bessie Head or Herman Charles Bosman, or Miriam Tladi or Nadine Gordimer – or in the reclaimed sand of Mitchells Plain, or was it in the dry hinterland, or in exile or ‘back home’, or was it ‘back in the day’, or was it in the throats of the !Xam, or on the wet slasto alongside a pinched swimming pool where the maid slipped or the madam slipped up with the gardener; and then it was between the rounds of buckshot and the sounds of a shot blesbok on a dark farm that called to mind the kicked-up dust of a hundred hooves and the dust-up at Mafeking, of which Solomon Plaatjie wrote in ‘A Black Man’s View of a White Man’s War’, when Winston Churchill was still able to run and when the hamstrung Communists were recalled to Moscow and a sangoma purged an illness from a young girl, whose mother knew another and another?

  Which is to say that a collection of this nature is a snapshot, a moment, of stories that might catch your eye and hold your ear. Moreover, a woman’s moment.

  Muthal Naidoo’s pensioners in ‘The Bridge-Playing Rain Queens’ live in a fertile land, where ancient cycads grow and lend their name to the area – Cycadia. Arcadian and pedestrian at the same time, this wet place is reigned over by the delightful Ordinary Rain Queen, (ORQ). The shifting landscape of these short stories gives way to the dry bureaucratic landscape of Lusaka, just prior to the return of the ANC exiles in the early 1990s. In Makhosazana Xaba’s story, women are preparing themselves for freedom, but getting bogged down in clauses, while the narrator escapes into a fantasy that is both harrowing and homesick and unfree. Some writers have written the landscape from the air – Willemien de Villiers’s character circles over the big hole at Kimberley, waiting to land – and others are back firmly on the ground, as in Mary Watson Seoighe’s ‘The Lilitree’, where a fantastical tree takes root in the Cape. And parkland and park benches and South African suburbia are scenes of difficult decisions, as with Joanne Fedler’s shoplifter woman. Alex Dodd’s teenage girl narrator feels the pull of the powerful Umgeni River as it passes through her neighbourhood, tamed for a short time, as the character’s emotions appear to be. The action in Henrietta Rose-Innes’s ‘Forensic’ unfolds in a park, the scene of a murder, the isolated landscape of sensation and desensitisation. In Kirsten Miller’s ‘Chance Encounter’, the complex story of the drying up of a writer’s inspiration is simply told, the landscape all the time in the shadow of an urban drizzle. Landscape and climate, the political versions of weather, historical or current, apolitical or steeped in dank guilt, are evident throughout. Anne Schuster’s protestor squares up against the apartheid state in a line of Black Sash women, willingly silent, until further layers of inequality silence her found voice. In Amanda Gersh’s ‘Home Helper’, the comic and utterly sad voice of Julie, a girl scout in the comfortable Cape Town suburbs, listing her needs, but then needing her lists to impress her family and the ubiquitous Brown Owl, delivers an impressive turn as the indomitable Baden-Powell – the little scout, as a little scout for the empire.

  ANNE SCHUSTER

  In a State of Emergency

  I read the notice on the back of my placard. Things I can and cannot do. What to do if approached by the police. What to do and say if arrested. Instructions and advice from my organisation in terms of the dictates of this 1987 state of emergency. Protests must be single. Protests must be silent – refuse to speak to anyone who approaches you. All very organised and within the law. But really only my white skin protects me. And my white confidence.

  I stand in position on the pavement, holding my placard up to the on-coming early-morning rush hour traffic. It reads: ‘TO END VIOLENCE, STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE’. I look into each car as it passes. Most people glance at the sign ... what is it? ... what is she? ... then they look away quickly, and deliberately stare hard at something far ahead in the road. It’s a new feeling for me and, I realise, quite a freedom. All these men unable to look at me. All these men I can look in the face without getting a leer in return. Even the aggressive hand-signs and shouts are far easier to receive than my regular daily dose of leers. A crazy thought for women who find the strain of being a constant on-display sex object getting them down – take a break, walk around with a political placard and have a leer-free day! The women also mostly look away. There are a few who smile, hoot and give a thumbs-up sign. Gives me a full five-minute lift. And the odd black salute. An acknowledgement. To be allowed into the struggle. I’m embarrassed at how much pleasure it gives me. Yes, lady, white lady, your standing there is part of the struggle for justice and might well help to end violence.

  It’s the first time I’m standing here, in Kalk Bay, my home territory. I usually stand in Muizenberg. Almost like a foreign town there. They don’t know me. Here I know everyone. They all know me. Already two of my regular early-morning swimming acquaintances have passed me with a surprised good morning and a knowing look at each other. They are locals – women from the little residential hotel, who float in their bathing caps in the middle of the tidal pool and shout the daily gossip to each other every morning. Somehow I always seem to get them at the beginning or end of my swim.

  And here comes that violator of personal space – a round old man in a red bathrobe and slippers. Wherever I happen to sit on the rocks around the tidal pool, he takes off his bathrobe and slippers right next to me and engages in discussions about the coldness of the water today and whether it will be warmer tomorrow and how did I find it today? He is walking towards me now. I can see he intends saying something to me. Last time I saw a woman approach me with that look, she told me how stupid I looked and she wished I would stop a bullet. I was so surprised. I wonder if he will be rude or try to have an argument. I’m glad I’m not allowed to answer. But – he smiles – ‘Keep up the good work.’ I feel as if I’ve just been handed a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare by the headmaster at a school prize-giving.

  Oh dear. Here staggers one of the local drunks. He looks bad today, teetering on the edge of the pavement holding on to his life and the telephone pole. He looks like he constantly wants to cross the road, standing as if the end of the pavement is a tightrope. His arms swing wildly and then luckily his knees buckle and he sits heavily in the gutter just as a stream of cars goes by. I hope one of his buddies comes along soon and helps him. I’d hate to be standing here struggling for justice while he staggers across the road and gets knocked down by a truck.

  I think he has seen me. Probably
recognises me as the reliable soft touch for his ‘ten cents, madam’. Yes, he does seem to be making his way indirectly towards me. Well, he can see I have no money on me. He weaves right up to me. Another violator of personal space. He breathes in my face, and on my early morning stomach! I step back. He reads my placard aloud to himself. Halfway through, his knees buckle again and he sits on the pavement and continues.

  ‘To end vi- vi- violence ... ssssstruggle for ...’.

  He looks at me. I look away.

  ‘Jus- jus- justice ...’, he says sitting on the ground. He reads it again to himself, weaving through the words. Then he staggers to his feet and looks in my face.

  ‘Wasshit mean? Hey, lady? Wasshit mean?’

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ I mutter through closed teeth, staring at the oncoming traffic.

  ‘Hey? Hey Wassat lady?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to speak to you,’ I say in a firm undertone and adjust my sign.

  ‘It meanssh that? lady? It meanssh you mussent sspeak to me? Why? I’m not drrrunk. Haven’t had anything to dddrink today. Is it from the Bible, lady? I know the Bible. I know G-God. I love God. Does G-God say you mussent sspeak to me?’

  He wails and sits again on the pavement half crying, half singing some hymn-like song. He has a good voice but with the sobs he sounds like someone dying tragically in an Italian opera. With a final wail his head hits the pavement. He seems to have passed out. Oh, please let him not have passed out.

  I have a horrified realisation of what this scene looks like to the oncoming cars. A poor tattered black man lying sprawled out, looking dead, at the feet of a white lady with a sign saying, ‘To end violence, struggle for justice’. Oh no. How can I hold on to the seriousness of it all when this is so bizarre? Oh thank goodness, he has started moaning again and now struggles to his knees. He starts to read my sign again.

  ‘Go away,’ I say fiercely. ‘Please go away.’

  ‘I – I can rread. I’m not sstupid. I’m ssstill learning.’ He sings full throat ... ‘I’m learning to love yeuoooo ... learning to love yeuoooo ...’ His face slobbers towards me.

  ‘Wotssa notice mean, lady?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  He stares expectantly.

  ‘The police,’ I say meaningfully.

  He looks shocked.

  ‘The police will come.’

  He looks hurt.

  ‘B-but I wasshn’t bothering you, lady, juss asked you a quession, and I’m not drrrunk. Please don’t call the p-police, lady. I know you, lady, you know me, you won’t call the p-police, lady?’ He looks pleadingly at me.

  And I know what I’m going to do. I tell myself I have to. I look at him and say with the white-madam voice I have somewhere at the back of my cupboard, ‘No, no, I won’t call the police if you go away right now. Right now.’

  ‘OK, OK, Madam, OK, I’m going. M-meaning no harm, madam, I’m g-going.’ His voice is hurt and offended. He staggers away down the road, while I struggle on for justice.

  ALEXANDRA DODD

  The Transition

  The end of Eden began in a dream. It was dark and hot. I was fourteen years old and it was December. I can always remember the geometry of that house, but never the details. I can’t remember the view, or if there was a window in the room.

  There was a time when home was a place with an address. All the post arrived there, and the telephone number stayed the same for so long I thought it would never change. I still remember that number: 843-005.

  Trees abounded in the suburb where we lived, giant and generous avocado trees; jacarandas with juicy purple petals that squelched under car tyres in the spring. Our house was on the top of a hill, just north of the city, which I could see hugging the shoreline in a great sleepy curve from my bedroom window.

  But there were no trees here. This was not my bedroom. This was not my bed. I don’t remember the view from the window. I remember only that my body was lying in tune with the river in that bed on the south side of the house, closest to the Umgeni River. The only remarkable thing about that house was that it was close to the bird park. My aunt and uncle had rented it as an interim measure in a time of financial need, which they were praying would be temporary. It’s amazing how long temporary can be. My aunt’s hair turned grey in that house.

  I see the room from above, like a bird – like one of the big grey hadedas that flocked about the banks of the muddy, red Umgeni. Big, hulking African birds they were. Sometimes, when I was alone in the house, I would have conversations with those strange-shaped birds with their big bodies and their long thin beaks. Not many things could make me laugh when I was fourteen. But the hadedas could – just by being there. So awkward and ancient and out of place – like they’d been left behind by the dodos and the dinosaurs.

  ‘Ha-de-dah,’ they’d call out in plaintive ribbons of sound.

  ‘Ha-de-dahhhhh,’ I’d yell back to them, extended ribs straining against the tight bodice of my new school uniform.

  ‘Ha-de-dahhhh,’ they’d reply, loud and wild. ‘We’re still here. We’re still here.’

  In the room was the bed in which I had the dream. It was a single bed with brass knobs and a white cotton cover intricately embroidered with petite flower patterns – ‘broderie anglaise’ they called it in domestic science – pretty and remote now, from a polyester world. My head lay to the east, nearest to the sea – the big, warm, wavy Indian Ocean. I remember the alignment. My body lay on the same longitude as the river, which flows from high up in the Drakensberg Mountains – the holy heights of the ancient green mountains of Zululand to the sea and beyond.

  How warm and slightly wet I felt beneath the hot covers. Hot breath and damp nape of neck in the quiet, humid darkness. And that awful aching feeling between my fourteen-year-old thighs – an adolescent ache for all the beyond that lay on the other side of the sea, far, far away. Under the inconstant rhythms of the straggling late night traffic on Umgeni Road, the broken exhaust pipes and sudden angry accelerations, I imagined the flow of the river and beneath it, the constant low hum of earth. I remember what it was like to lie in that bed and dream. Umgeni. Hadeda. ‘Lala kahle, umfaan. Tula baba, tulantwana. Tula baba, tulantwana.’ Even while dreaming that dream, I knew it was coming true.

  I dreamed that my mother was dead and speaking to me from the grave. She looked like herself, but also like a child. In the dream I was hysterical with loss, so empty that not even gravity could hold me. My body kept rising up to the ceiling. And I kept screaming and crying and railing against the injustice of destiny. Begging for somebody to pull me down again. But my screams didn’t seem to reach my mother or affect her. She was present, but gone. She just stood there smiling neutrally, as if she was beyond the tragedy of her own death.

  When I awoke I tried to forget the dream. It was summer in Durban and I was staying with my aunt and uncle while my parents were away in London on holiday. All the girls in my new standard seven class at Girl’s College were in a frenzy about who to take to the end-of-term party. One afternoon, I was sitting in the lounge agonising with my aunt about what I was going to wear, when the phone rang. My aunt answered.

  ‘How’s London?’ But then after a while, her tone seemed to change slightly. ‘Oh, I see ...’. And then she suddenly she seemed jolly again. ‘Right. Okay, fine. No problem. Right, I’ll pass you on to her then ... It’s your father on the phone. He’s got some news for you.’ I took the receiver.

  ‘Hello, Dad. How’s it going over there?’

  ‘Hello, my darling. How are you doing? How did your exams go?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. We haven’t got our marks back. How’s London?’

  ‘I can’t even describe how beautiful it is. It’s even more fabulous than we could have dreamed of. And yesterday, it snowed! You wouldn’t believe how brilliant everything looks in the snow.’

  ‘How’s Mummy?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Can I speak to her?’

  ‘Not r
ight now. She’s just taken a walk to the shops. But listen, I’ve got a surprise for you guys. We’ve decided that we want you two to join us for Christmas.’

  ‘I thought you’d be home by then.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s just so beautiful here, we thought we could have our first white Christmas together as a family. So as soon as school is over, you and James are going to be flying over to London to join us.’

  ‘Wow, I don’t know what to say. London!’

  ‘Make sure you bring lots of jerseys. It’s freezing here.’

  Christmas in London. Nothing strange about that, I kept telling myself. Snow and holly and mistletoe. I tried to recall these things from story books and movies. Famous Five and Secret Seven. Yorkshire pudding, mince pies, scarves and mittens. But outside the Umgeni was thick and muddy, the water running feebly down the centre of the riverbed, leaving the banks exposed and red against the golf course’s mowed plains of green grass. It was a still, humid Thursday afternoon and I had nobody to take to the end-of-term dance. My friend, Helen, was starting to volunteer her coolly aloof older brothers. Nothing felt right.

  The dance came and went like a fever, and one day in mid-December my brother and I were dropped off at Louis Botha International Airport. Nothing international about it in those days. We waved goodbye and were ushered through the gate at departures by an air hostess wearing a blue-and-orange scarf and stuck smile fixed with pink lipstick.

  I sucked on a nauseating lime-flavoured Lifesaver for take-off, sticking my tongue through the absence in the centre until it stung with tiny cuts. The whole way through the safety instructions mime I tried to ignore a creeping nausea accompanied by the thought of being aloft and unable to get down from somewhere vast and empty. What would happen if my father was alone in the arrivals hall when we came through the gate? What if my mother wasn’t there? That would be a bad sign. I tried to think of something else. I put on my airline socks with their sleek flying springbok logos and focused on the choice between Chicken à la King and Beef Curry and Rice written in gold cursive on the menu card.