The Keeper of the Kumm. Sylvia Vollenhoven
This park is only for white children. Take her out of here.”
None of what the woman is saying makes sense but it’s clear that she’s not on our side. Penny lifts me off the jungle gym.
“Come, we’re going home.”
At the Sonneveld house in Woodley Road I run down the driveway hoping to find my granny and an explanation.
“Ma, Ma there are big boys in the park. They say …”
Ma comes out of the kitchen, holding a large spoon.
“Shush, stop shouting. Calm down. What’s wrong?”
“Penny, you tell her.”
I have no words for what just happened.
“Auntie, daai boere jongens wat so moeilikheid maak het lelike goed vir Alma geskree. Toe kom ’n vrou, ek ken haar nie. Ek dink sy gaan hulle stop, maar sy sê toe die park is net vir wit mense.”
My grandmother is a placid woman whose passion is reserved for her religious pursuits. I have never seen such an angry expression on her face. I look up. But before she can respond a loud explosion comes from the kitchen.
The white walls and ceiling of the Sonneveld kitchen are sprayed with green pea soup. It’s my grandmother’s introduction to the hazards of pressure cookers.
“These things always happen in threes,” says my Granny and tells Penny about almost being caught in the bathroom that morning. “Now those hooligans, and I’ll probably get sacked for that kitchen mess.”
Ma finishes cooking the supper but she is very quiet.
“I explained to you so many times how it works, Sofie.”
Mrs Sonneveld is the only adult who calls my grandmother by her first name. It sounds naked on its own like that. To everyone else she is “Auntie Sofie” or “Mrs Petersen” and “Sister” to her siblings and her Seventh-day Adventist congregation.
Mrs Sonneveld is angry. Her face is red and she shouts about taking money from Ma’s pay for things to be fixed. Ma slowly unties the strings of her white apron. She folds it and hangs it over one of the kitchen chairs.
“I’m going to my room, Madam. I won’t be long. When I come back, I’ll clean the kitchen and finish your supper.”
As she walks across the yard to our room, Mrs Sonneveld is still shouting.
“Come back here! Who told you you could leave? You’ll have to explain to the master!”
After a while she follows Ma across the garden. Her fine white shoes tread carefully around the garden hose and rubbish bins. She walks as if she’s never been to this part of the property before. She pulls open the door but when she sees Ma kneeling next to the bed with her head on her folded hands, she walks back to the kitchen mumbling.
When we settle down to life with the Sonnevelds in Plumstead, my world becomes our separate entrance, the kitchen at Alma and weekends that are all too brief in Brentwood Road or at church.
There is a dream that comes to comfort me often. I am walking along the Wynberg streets and I come across a group of huge, very pink beings. They don’t look like humans but yet they are familiar. It seems as if they are waiting for me to come along.
When they pick me up a glow of pure pleasure spreads like liquid laughter through me. One by one they hold me up to the sun that shines warmly on my already glowing skin. It becomes so bright that it dazzles me awake. It always takes a while for the delicious sensation of the touch of the huge pink entities and the warm sunlight to subside. And when the feeling fades, I feel so sad I want to cry.
“I dreamed about sitting with angels in the sunshine on the stoep of Mr Brey’s shop in Ottery Road. They picked me up and we played. The angels rocked me one by one. Then they showed me how to fly. I miss my mummy and Auntie Gracie. Can we go back?” I tell Ma tearfully in the morning.
“Die Here het vir jou gestuur. Die Bybel sê die Here sal met die klein kinders praat sodat ons kan hoor,” says my grandmother, picking me up and holding me very, very tightly.
She always makes me tell her every detail of my dreams, especially the ones with the pink angels. Sometimes I dream about Jesus but she won’t allow me to talk about this.
“Moet vir niemand hiervan sê nie. Mense verstaan nie altyd dié goed so mooi nie.”
I don’t know what she means but it feels good to sink into her Cuticura soap and 4711 Eau de Cologne warmth while she sings her favourite chorus.
Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine …
The world of the Vollenhovens or white parks and pressure cookers is very far away when we are together like this. Even when I am away from my grandmother I can still smell and feel her close by, still hear her singing.
My grandmother Sophia Petersen is my centre of belonging.
Becoming the Springbok’s Eyes
A Bushman’s letters are inside our flesh
These letters talk
They quiver and tap
They move
They make our bodies move
A dream is that which deceives
It cheats
The !gwe6 is that which speaks truly
It is the kumm that stirs, taps and quivers
– //Kabbo, Bleek-Lloyd Archive
Those early experiences with my grandmother and my dreams opened me up to a magical world. Sometimes I tried hard to shut these doors of perception but I never quite succeeded. The insistent instincts that drew me into the archive where //Kabbo’s story was kept were honed by Ma’s way of talking up a Christian storm while surreptitiously keeping Bushman mysticism alive.
When I begin to delve into //Kabbo’s life his stories become like beacons illuminating my journey. Minute details of my life stand out clearly and I see the connection between my experiences and stories he told. Recalling my grandmother’s lessons about the world of spirit and her loving interest in my dreams, I come across a note written by 19th-century researcher Lucy Lloyd. It gives me an insight into the damaging barriers we erect between different aspects of ourselves. Separateness that my grandmother simply did not allow.
On the verso page of //Kabbo’s story about Bushman presentiments and how these feelings are like ‘letters’ that make your flesh quiver, Lloyd writes:
“This is about a curious idea that the Bushmen say that they feel in their bodies that certain things are going to happen; there is a kind of knocking, beating in their flesh which tells them things. Some of the Bushmen understand and listen to these teachings, others are stupid and do not understand their meaning; and disobey them, and get into trouble, such as being killed by a lion. The beatings tell those who understand them which way they are not to go and which arrow they had better not use and warn them when many people are coming to the house in a wagon and when they can find a person of whom they are in search and which way they shall go to seek him successfully. These beatings are the Bushmen’s ‘letters’ (!gwe) they tell me.”
There were only about 85 years between //Kabbo’s patient storytelling in a Victorian drawing room in Mowbray and my grandmother pumping me for details of my dreams in the servant’s quarters of a Plumstead house. A short spell in human history and not enough time to lose these valuable things completely. And some things are never lost. Like the message in his Becoming the Springbok’s Eyes story poem that Lloyd recorded and that I make sense of in this way:
We carry our letters, our stories in our bodies
Our stories talk, they quiver, they tap
Our letters make our bodies move
Our