A pot of metals bubbled in the subterranean layers of the earth until it dried out and formed a basin of gold-veined rocks. The rim of the pot became a chain of mountains where the farm stood on the edge of the world. I belonged here, like the roots of wild figs that clung to the crevices – the moon my companion, the Magaliesberg Mountains my home.
Our first house was a stone packing shed near an orchard. Here, a thousand pear trees and a thousand apple trees grew in rows. They needed pruning and watering and weeding – when the fruit was ripe it had to be wrapped in wood wool, packed into boxes and taken to the market. In between, Mom found time to look after the three of us, all less than four years old. Nappies, great piles of them had to be washed in the river. Mom would take a bar of sunlight soap and a washboard, she would rub our nappies until her knuckles turned red.
Our shed had no furniture – suitcases with mattresses on top served as beds and packing boxes became tables. Mom said those were her happiest times – she said Dad was the only person who ever really loved her. She never knew her mother, she has no recollection of what she looked like, what she smelled like, what she sounded like – she was just a shadow in her life, an empty void.
In time we moved to the top of the mountain. Our house was made of bricks and thatch and had a fireplace in the centre of the lounge wall with a window on the one side of it and a bookcase on the other. Six Alsatian dogs slept outside the front door.
My first recollections are simple ones that seem pure wonder to the mind of small girl. I would squat down in the middle of the dusty red road to watch army ants disappear down holes. I loved taking sticks and scribbling across the line. The ants would scatter off in all directions, dropping the white eggs and blades of grass they were carrying. I listened to the wind in the blue gum trees, felt its coolness on my skin as I watched the shadows form jigsaw patterns over the dry earth. I loved the white and pink cosmos flowers that filled the fields in summer, the sparkles from the purple amethyst on the hills. I had a sense of vast open spaces – from the up there I could see the whole world. I could see a train tracks stretch across the horizon – soot puffs pulsed into the sky like smoke signals, to the villages that fell of the earth. I looked down from my cloud-cloaked throne to ploughed fields and pink blossomed orchards, my young life a mixture of fantasy and freedom.
We woke to the sound of cocks crowing as the first light spilled over the hills. The lightning conductor pierced the sky and a heap of dogs disentangled like balls of wool. The farm crawled with ant lines of workers, some going to chicken houses, some to storerooms and some to the abattoir where chickens dangled on a giant hula-hoop conveyer belt, until someone came with a big knife and chopped off their heads. Then they jerked around madly, splattering blood on the walls. Men wearing gumboots and yellow plastic jackets stood below them and ripped off their feathers. Blood and heads and insides – we called them derrums, went into big black drums. The pig farmer came each day to empty them and take them home for his pig’s dinner, that’s what Dad told us. We held our noses until we got to his office; then the tobacco from his pipe was so strong, we couldn’t smell the dead chickens anymore. I’d sit on his chair, swing it from side to side and play with the things on his desk; a round tobacco tin with four squares on it, the spirally, white pipe-cleaners that you could bend into stick men; an adding machine with a roll of paper on top; when you pressed the buttons the machine went tick, tick, tick and the paper came out with lots of numbers on it. I loved playing with the big rubber stamp that you had to squish down onto a black pad that had ink on it, then you could stamp the name of the farm all over the books. I held the handle in the palm of my hand
Stamp
WYVERSTONE POULTRY FARM
Stamp
WYVERSTONE POULTRY FARM
Stamp
WYVERSTONE POULTRY FARM
All over the invoice books, the delivery books, the order books. Dad told us that Wye was the name of a river where his father went for holidays, and this big river ran through a place called Wales that had black mountains and fields full of sheep with curly white fleece.
Pictures with dusty frames hung on the whitewashed walls of his office: one with Dad wearing a flying helmet and a scarf and a jacket that Mom called a Bomber jacket. In another picture he was just a tiny head with lots of other heads in rows. I tried to count them but there were too many and I’d get mixed up. In the middle of the pictures hung a piece of paper with writing on and a big red blob with a ribbon in the middle. It said something like CEDARA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE and LESLEY ALBERT DAVIS – that’s my dad’s name, and DIPLOMA and lots of other words. At Christmas time the office was packed to the ceiling with groceries from Blaauberg store – tins of condensed milk, boxes of matches, cigarettes, biscuits. There were packets of flour and beans and mielie meal. Tins with pictures of pilchards on them and salt packets, each with a little boy sprinkling salt on a chickens tail. We helped to put parcels together, one of each farm worker.
Ray, Marilyn and I walked down our mountain each morning to the bus stop on the corner of Dr. Eidelman’s farm. The winter, so cold that the river froze over and frost covered the farmlands, orchards in the valley, and scraggly patches in between with blackjacks that had little claws at the end that stuck to our clothes, our satchels, our hair. The sharp stones in the road hurt our bare feet, so we walked along the middle where ribbons of grass grew, trying to avoid the devil thorns. We watched the school bus chuck up dust as it came over the horizon, past Mountain Lodge. We could hear the children shouting out of the windows,
‘rooineke, rooineke’
Marilyn and I clung to the back of Ray’s shorts as we climbed the bus stairs. We sat together tightly until we reached Magaliesburg Laer Skool, then we ran the gauntlet to our classrooms, under a shower of stones.
I remember when Ray and Marilyn decided to race each other. I didn’t want to be left behind so I ran as fast as I could, sharp gravel sticking into the heels of my feet, puffs of red dust, tumbling face first, my satchel opening, an apple rolling ahead of me down the steep hill. The taste of blood in my mouth, blood caked with dust over my eyes, getting onto the bus and the Afrikaans children being nice to me, just that once. Dad and Mom coming to school in the old van: fetching me from the sick room and taking me home. That was the first time I felt like a real person with a real life, not just the one inside my head, with moon-friends and sun-dragons and star-riders. That was the first time I had a distinct sense of being me and I felt warm, as though lying on our new carpet in front of the fire, the dogs around me, one cat asleep on a chair, one on a pile of books under the table, shoes tossed around, one sock here, one sock there. The budgie asleep – a foot tucked under its wing.
It didn’t really matter if we missed the bus or if we hid in the long grass until the bus drove by. We would play until the bus came back again, then we would walk home as usual.
All day long we played. Swinging from willow branches over the river, scooping up mud from the banks to make clay oxen with Temba and Sipho and little girls with round tummies and pointy belly buttons. We poked prickly pears with sharp sticks – rubbed stones over them to get rid of the prickles, then we broke them open and ate the soft flesh with bumpy pips inside. We picked granadillas from among white star flowers with purple dangly parts in the middle. Pomegranates – their skins so hard that we bashed them against rocks. They would split open and hundreds of shiny pips flew out and we would gather them up, toss them into our mouths and feel the soft membranes burst.
Then it all changed. We heard Dad and Mom whispering, we heard Mom talking on the phone to Mrs. Haywood, then to Mrs Lothrope – talk about the English children being bullied, being picked on by the teachers, being set apart. Mom bought blue and white striped blazers with badges on the front pockets. She bought white shirts, blue skirts and grey trousers for Ray. She bought three pairs of black lace-up shoes, a pile of grey socks, a cap for Ray and white panama hats for Mal and I. they had blue and white striped ribbons around the brim and badges the same as the ones on our blazers.
Dad and Mom got up at four to pack the chickens, weigh them, and sort them into boxes. Arthur waited in the van with green letters on the back. They packed the boxes with chickens wrapped in plastic bags, one on top of the other, and left a little space for us. Sometimes the van was so full that we had to sit on top of the boxes. The chickens would stick to the plastic and they looked like our lips when we pushed them against the back window. Arthur would collect other children from the village, the English ones, and take us to St. Peter and Paul’s in Krugersdorp. We had never seen nuns before. And the chapel – it had statues of a man with thorns in his head and blood coming out. He had nails in his hands and feet with blood coming out there too. A lady in a blue dress held a baby with a gold ring above its head.
Those days were one big whirlwind, getting up in the morning and waiting my turn to use the bathroom. I remember staring at the dark green door, crossing my legs and holding tight so I wouldn’t wet myself. I could hear the gas geyser hissing and wheezing, the sound of toothbrushes and gargling and spitting into the basin. Just as the door opened someone else would push in before me and I had to wait another agonizing few minutes before my turn. I could never find socks that matched or clean panties. Our clothes were jumbled up in one big heap. Ray and Marilyn had to make our breakfast and prepare our lunchboxes. They made piles of peanut butter and golden syrup sandwiches. I hated those sandwiches. By the time I got to eat them they were soggy with syrup dripped out of them, down my fingers and onto my dress. When Arthur hooted outside we knew we had to hurry. There was no time to tie shoelaces, no time to knot our ties or fasten our gym belts. We had to grab our things and run as chickens had to be delivered. I don’t know how long Arthur drove us to school and collected us in the afternoons. One day her rode over the bridge near Skeerpoort and died, and Neil and Marsh and Robin didn’t have a father anymore. Their uncle Yoskie came to live with them to do Arthur’s job.
We never saw Dad and Mom in the mornings, they were still working on the farm.. We never saw them when we got home from school either – they were still working. We only saw them when the sun began to set in streaks of blood orange, We sat under a Syringa tree, dogs on our laps with flies worrying their ears, biting them until drops of blood formed on the ends. There were six of us kids now. After me came Alan, we called him Al, then Lesley, Les, then Steven, baby Steve. We were lucky to still have him. He got meningitis and the Doctor told Mom that he was going to die. Mom sat with him in the hospital for days, holding his hand, stroking his forehead, talking to him – a guardian angel watching over him. He woke up one morning, looked into her eyes and baby Steve got better. Only his leg went a little wonky, but that’s okay, he walks with a limp.
‘That makes him different, special’ Mom said.
We sang to the piano accordion, Dad’s fingers fanning the keys and pushing little black buttons on the side. His arms moved in and out as the accordion folded like the bellows used to blow air on the fire. We sang ‘Catch a falling star’ and ‘Run Rabbit’ and songs we heard on the wireless.
‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run
Don’t give the farmer his gun, gun, gun’
or something like that.
‘Aw please Dad, play ‘Catch a falling star,’ we whined
‘please, please, please’
and Steve would say ‘ta, ta, ta,’ and point to the sky.
Dad would pick the accordion up from his chair, put the straps over his shoulders and play like mad
‘Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day.’
We’d shout our lungs out and I got little tickles in the back of my throat that made me cough, and I had to stop singing. Afterwards Dad gave us strings of black liquorish and we chewed them while he filled his pipe. I remember the way he stuffed crinkly bits of tobacco into the bowl, pushed it down with his thumb, lit it with a match, puffed until little sparks glowed and smoke sprouted out. He sucked the stem, little sucks that made the tobacco glow – I can still smell it. When he had enough, he held his thumb over the bowl to put it out, tap the stale tobacco out on the heel of his shoe.
We lay on our backs and watched the stars swimming.
‘Hey look, there’s a shooting star, quick, quick, make a wish.’
We all shut our eyes tight and made a wish. I wished I had a pencil with a troll on top, the same one Dorothy had, or pocket money to buy sweets every day, not just once a week but every day. I’d buy a thick slab of creamy toffee and buttermilk toffees that were square and Sugus in different flavours that I’d put into my mouth all at once – orange, strawberry, pineapple, lemon, to make my tongue tingle. I collected sweet papers, especially the shiny ones: Peppermint Crisp, Crunchy and Chocolate Éclair papers. I smoothed them out and kept them in a biscuit tin and swap them for ones I didn’t have, or for marbles for my brothers, or charms. We loved playing charms. We’d draw a circle in the dusty playground, take five paces back, kneel down and flick a charm into the ring. The one that got her charm closest to the middle had to lick her thumb, push it hard against the charms in the circle and pick them up. If you didn’t drop them, the charms were yours. The girls played charms and the boys played marbles.
We were always outdoors. The whole farm was our playground, the dogs our nursemaids. We spent our time sliding down the slopes of the mountain on pieces of corrugated iron, over aloes and sugar bushes and smashing into trees. We balanced on water pipes suspended between deep gullies like tightrope walkers and cracked open anthills to find snakes, grass snakes, mole snakes, house snakes. We played in fields of cosmos, a maze of pink heads that we got lost in and made clay oxen on the banks of the river with the picanins. We explored caves and walked along the low stonewalls of Iron Age People. What battles were fought in these old settlements? Only the ancestors of the aloes that grow between the stones know; their roots soaked up the bloodstains of a vanished tribe, turning their flowers crimson.
We rode wild horses, bare backed and bridle less, Ray ran behind, scrunching newspaper that made them bolt, we hung onto their necks for dear life, clamped our legs around their bellies. Once I did fall off and Les’s horse ran over me, its hooves missing my body, my arms, my head, treading on my middle finger. I lost my nail and tore my new jeans. I cried, not because it hurt. I looked down and saw the rip in my knee; it was the first time I had something new of my own. Usually, I got Marilyn’s hand me downs. Now I had a big hole in my new jeans, not a tear, a hole that looked like the rats had eaten through the blue denim. I got up and kicked the ground and held my tummy and cried.
We lit dry tufts of grass, let them burn for a while then stamped them out. A wind came up and fanned our tuft until it raged over the lands, consuming everything in its way. It jumped fire brakes, gobbling up the Sorgenfrei’s trees outside their nursery, the McRae’s tomato vines and the Bezuidenhout’s maize fields. Strands of soot rose above the farmlands, swirling in the air. Afterwards we found blackened tortoise shells and the skeletons of rock rabbits and field mice, splayed open like the bare hulls of overturned boats. We never set tufts of grass alight again.
Some of us liked cooking in the kitchen, while Jack, our housekeeper, chased us with the flyswatter or the fish slice, or flicked us with the end of a dishcloth. We got our revenge by tying grass into knots across his path home. He’d trip, black pots full of chicken legs and heads and derrums, spewed onto the ground like fat tok tokkie beetles, squashed under our takkies. We learnt years later, that he was the local witchdoctor who planted bottles of medicine in the forks of trees next to the chicken houses. We found the chicks dead one morning, lying in yellow heaps with their wings spread out like fallen angels.
The plates on the enamel gas stove were always burning. Little blue flames with red tips hissed until a pot boiled over, then they splattered and spat like sparklers. Tins of sardines bubbled on top of the plates, lids rolled down with silver keys sticking out at the sides. We made pancakes with cinnamon sugar and toffee that broke our teeth, and we had to go to Dr. Evans. We cut thick slices of brown bread and spread them with Moms peach jam, or tinned melon and ginger preserve. Jugs of Koolaid went down fast with the six of us, the ice blocks didn’t even have time to melt. Saturday was moms day in the kitchen. She baked the entire day: it was a ritual we all loved. Shortcake with almonds on the top, pineapple cream cakes, orange cakes with bits of peel in the icing. She made oat crunchies, doughnuts and trays of fudge that were left on the windowsill to cool[JB1] . The smell of vanilla, oranges and toffee filled the house. We squabbled over who got to lick the bowls. Black fingers with half moon dirt under our nails scooped up lumps of mixture, sending sparks of ecstasy onto our taste buds right down to the bottom of our stomachs.
For Guy Fawkes, Dad bought boxes and boxes of fireworks, crackers and Catherine wheels and rockets that shot into the sky and exploded and little stars would come tumbling down. We held our sparklers out to be lit; only Ray was allowed to light them because he was big. The sparks crackled and jumped around our hands, but they didn’t burn us, even if they landed on our fingers. I thought that was magic. Those nights reminded me of the scary storms that crashed around us on late summer afternoons. The thunder would rumble over the mountain ranges, getting closer and closer. Each time it rumbled we counted until the lightning struck, BOOM-BOOM, one, two, three, four, ZIG ZAGGY FLASHES, and the storm was only four miles away. The lightning speared the dolomite rocks and it looked like when the generator went on and the whole farm lit up. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM and the dogs would hide under the big double bed in Mom and Dad’s room and the six of us would hide under the eiderdown.
In my imagination I saw my mother as a princess going to a ball. She wore a green taffeta skirt and black lace top. On her wrist she wore an emerald green bracelet – one that Great Granny Davis had posted to her from England. We had never seen her dressed up before. Her hair was in curls around her face, she wore lipstick; rouge on her cheeks, eye shadow the colour of her eyes. That was my introduction to things feminine. I can still remember the smell of her perfume – roses, yes it smelled like the roses outside her bedroom window. I couldn’t wait for the buds to open so I could smell them. I held the petals in the palm of my hand, closed my eyes and took a great whiff of air. Immediately, the manure smell of the farm disappeared and the sweet scent of roses filled my head. That smell always reminds me of Mom – I can still see her holding a cut crystal perfume bottle up to her neck and pushing a pump and the perfume showering behind her ears. She dabbed some on the back of her wrists and behind her knees before rolling flesh coloured stockings up her legs and clipping them onto a suspender belt. Mom adjusted the mirrors on her dressing table so she could see the back of her hair. She bent close to the mirrors, turned her head from side to side, smoothed down a curl here, a wisp of hair there. Then she sprayed sticky lacquer onto her hair so it stayed in place. The fumes tickled my nose and made me sneeze. Mom and Dad were going to dinner at Thatchstone Inn; the only time I remember them going out together at night. We all got bunged into the back of car, the six of us with our blankets and cushions, kicking and fighting and screaming. Mom and Dad had to come to check up on us every now and then and we each got a clip on the ear for misbehaving. I lay in the back of our Chevy looking at the stars and imagined Mom and Dad dancing together. I could hear the music, laughter, soft voices.
I couldn’t wait to wake up in the mornings, I had butterflies in my tummy just thinking about what I was going to do that day: on special days they fluttered so fast that they made my tummy tickle. Treasure hunts: Granny made paper trails in the garden, under the trees, through the flowerbeds, around the rockery. We found crayons and colouring books and packets of sweets hidden along the trail. The days when Dad would take us for a flip in his plane and fly over the farm, tip his wings to Mom standing on the lawn. I closed my eyes and imagined being on a sky road to the moon. He used to fly so low we thought he would touch the spike on top of the lightning conductor – leaves blew off the plain tree and ‘itchy powder’ balls burst into the air. Sometimes he did somersaults and his plane would spin like Alan’s top. Mom said he wanted to be a sign writer, writing special messages in the sky with smoke. On clear evenings we watched sputniks track the Milky Way and Dad told us America was going to send a rocket to the moon. These images flow seamlessly through my mind, each drifting into the other in one long, warm and lingering dream.
Other times are just a blur behind my eyes, like a swallow flying past a window – one glimpse that’s all, then gone. The shambok behind the kitchen door. – I remember it being there but I don’t remember what it looked like, what it felt like against my flesh – if it was ever used against my flesh? But I do remember the morning Dad and Mom came back from packing chickens. Jack our houseboy hadn’t arrived. The breakfast plates were still on the table, jars of peanut butter and honey and apricot jam were left open, flies sitting on the rims – the sticky yellow fly paper hanging from the rafters turned black with them. Half eaten bowls of cornflakes, rice crispies – an open tin of sardines lying in oil, milk spilt on the table, butter coated with crumbs, a half chewed apple going brown around the bitemarks. Dad walked towards the kitchen door. I just remember Marilyn and Ray screaming – I ran towards Dad and tucked my head between his knees. I squeezed my eyes shut, I held my hands to my ears but I heard the whip, it sounded like the wind, but he didn’t hit me, I held onto his legs as tight as I could – he didn’t hit me. I hugged him and hugged him and he didn’t hit me. That was the only time I remember the shambok being used. There may have been other times but they were swallow blurred black blobs in front of the windowpanes.
Dad began to get blackouts. His face would go grey, his eyes glassy – he couldn’t talk. In the beginning they didn’t last very long. Once he went to lie down – he lay on top of the floral eiderdown, resting his head on two fat feather pillows, ones that Mom filled, then opened again to wash, then refilled. They were made from blue and white mattress ticking – similar to the butcher’s apron, but the stripes were thinner. Dad lay there without moving, we thought he was dead. Mom ran to the liquor cabinet and poured a tot of brandy, a big tot. She lifted his head and poured the stuff down his throat, she shook him, she shouted. We ran away. All six of us, we just ran away. We ran to Judy, the farm manager’s wife. She was in her house sewing curtains.
There were other times – the time he was practicing for a boat race on the Vaal river and he didn’t come back. Marilyn and I waited for him at the boat club. It began to get dark. Someone took us to a nearby hospital. Dad was lying on a bed under white sheets. He had a bandage around his head, All he could say was “I am so sorry that I didn’t come back to fetch your girls, I am so sorry”.
I remember his thirty seventh birthday. We were sitting around the pool at Granny and Grandpa’s house. Dad had been in hospital for tests and he was in his dressing gown. He sat quietly smoking his pipe and watching the smaller kids swimming. He got up and started walking towards the pool. I walked towards him. His sunglasses fell out of his pocket onto the lawn. I will never forget that moment. Dad bent down to pick them up. I stretched my hand towards his glasses, I still remember them – they were ray bans. Dad said they were excellent for flying. As our hands met he lifted his head and looked into my eyes. It was during that instant of our eyes meeting that I knew he was going to die. Nothing was said, but the way he looked at me, I just knew.
The next morning Dad called me into the bedroom. He hugged me as tight as he could, pulled back and looked into my eyes. He said “You must take care of your mother, please take care of your mother”.
I remember running towards the truck, Yoskie sat waiting to take us to school. I turned back, I saw Dad standing at the kitchen door. He lifted his hand to wave. I waved back “Goodbye Dad, Goodbye Dad”…
I don’t even remember Mom telling us Dad died, but I knew, I knew for sure when I opened the front door at four o’clock in the morning, the light was just a line over the top of the mountains and the dogs put their tails between their legs and walked away from me. All five Alsatians, walked towards the line of light. They didn’t jump up and scratch the green stable doors, the ones where I last saw Dad, waving goodbye as we ran towards the truck which took us to school. They didn’t jump up and lick my face, almost knocking me over, they just walked away and I heard the phone ringing… …
It was the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes day. The year was nineteen sixty three.
That day there were no more songs, no more liquorish, no more stories under the stars, no more wishes and no more trips on sky roads. The accordion stopped playing and the Syringa branches that held up our sky became too heavy and the sky fell down.
I wanted to push my hands in my belly and rip it open, tear my flesh, pull out the stones, the broken glass, the thorns.
When I hear thunder roll over the mountains, it drums in my ear
Remember
Remember
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