The Keeper of the Kumm. Sylvia Vollenhoven
completely safe.
“My daddy bought me a new motorbike. Do you like it?”
Claudie always insists on bringing along his latest bike. He has many motorbikes, each one a different colour. Whenever his father buys him a new one, he brings it round to show me. We walk on the pavement side by side, Pa Malfent and I, with Claudie riding slowly next to us in the road. His legs, much longer than Pa’s, straddle the long length of rope he calls his bike. Spit sprays out ahead of him as he provides impressive sound effects for his brand new machine that only we can see.
“Let’s go up as far as Morris the butcher, then you two can watch the school kids play on the way back,” says Pa Malfent.
Claudie and I love watching the boys and girls in their turquoise uniforms at Ottery Road Methodist School. They play games so absorbing they don’t even notice us peering through the wire that is the end of their world and the beginning of ours. They can’t see us but we can see them. It’s how different worlds work.
At night I pull up the blankets over my head, even when it’s hot, because it’s difficult for those in the other world to get at me when I create a border.
“Ma, please read me a story,” I ask my grandmother.
“It’s late and I’m tired. Some other time. You have to get to bed.”
“Please Ma. The one about Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Okay, but just once. Not over and over.”
When my grandmother reads me a story, she wraps me in my favourite handmade patchwork blanket and puts me on her lap. I love the feel of the different squares of material. Some are rough cotton. Others are silky soft. When I can’t sleep, I tug at the threads until the cotton unravels. Sometimes Ma doesn’t manage to hold onto both book and blanket and halfway through the story, when I start to fall asleep, I slip slowly off her lap and almost onto the floor. A delicious, dreamy tangle of thread, blanket and story.
She enjoys the books in which all the children have yellow hair and pale skins as much as I do.
Ma, Sophia Petersen, comes from the Swellendam wheat-farming district. Her parents were farm labourers. There were no schools for black and coloured children so she has worked in the kitchens of white people since she was a little girl.
“I used to wait until the madam was sleeping or out with the master. Then I’d sit under the window of the schoolroom for the white farm children and listen. I wanted to read so that I could buy myself a Bible one day.”
I love hearing her stories of how she taught herself to read so well that the mysteries of Revelations proved no problem for her.
Only when Ma tells me stories do I fall asleep easily.
Claudie is the one that makes me feel safe during the day. We don’t attract much attention. But one day the whole street is buzzing with talk of our latest escapade.
When I’m not allowed to leave the house, Claudie goes to the shop for me. If we don’t have money, he fetches a few coins from his parents who live behind a high red brick wall. We hardly ever see them. People say it’s because they are white. I want to impress Claudie that I’m smart like he is, so I supply the money for toffees for a change.
Claudie is as big as the grown-ups but he still talks like a baby. Although we don’t talk much, Claudie and I, our conversations last a long time. The adults ignore him completely. Sometimes we sit side by side in the lane next to my aunt’s house for a long time. Suddenly, quietly, Claudie disappears and no matter how hard I look for him up and down Brentwood Road, I can’t find him until he chooses to come back.
Claudie’s eyes have only two expressions. Most of the time, they laugh at everyone and everything. Occasionally his eyes are empty. That’s when I know he is angry or sad.
“Sylvia, come inside here. I don’t want you playing with that mad man! Where did you get money for toffees?” asks my mother, pointing to the Sunrise and Star sweet wrappers lying on the gravel in the lane where we’re sitting.
Large-eyed, Claudie points at me with a limp index finger, sticky drool making its way down his chin. My mother grabs my right arm, lifts me up off the ground. As I sit astride her bony hip, I feel the anger pumping through her body.
My grandmother has a large leather suitcase that she takes with her when she visits relatives outside the city. My mother loosens one of the thick belts holding the suitcase together. She wraps a piece of it around her right hand. I stand looking at her, not knowing what to expect. I’ve never seen her do this before.
“Look at you, you’re so small and yet so defiant! You’re not even sorry that you stole my money.”
I don’t know what she means but things are not looking good so I start crying.
“What are you crying for? I haven’t even touched you.”
Every sentence sounds angrier than the previous one. She talks constantly as she lashes out with the belt. I hold my thin five-year-old arms across my face. I stop crying because I think my crying is making her even angrier.
“I’ve never seen a child so stubborn!”
A frightened Claudie runs home howling. Children from up and down Brentwood Road gather at the gate, discussing mad Claudie and the child who says her dolls can talk and who stole her mother’s money.
When my grandmother comes home from work, she puts me on her lap and rubs Watkins Mentholatum ointment into the welts on my arms and legs. The sting feels delicious as her hands move gently over my bruised skin. When she’s done, she wraps my patchwork blanket around me and sings a soft song.
Siembamba, Mamma se kindjie
Siembamba, Mamma se kindjie …
The innocent ditty and the way she rocks and sings, rocks and sings seems like an attack on my mother. I fall asleep as the pain and caresses blend in a soothing haze of menthol and crooning.
My mother doesn’t like Claudie. She says he’s a bad influence. I don’t know what that means but Claudie is good at so many games we play and he’s kind. I love him dearly.
“Now he’s teaching you to steal. Who knows what it will be tomorrow?”
“Claudie never took Mommy’s money …”
“Keep quiet. Don’t you backchat me. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. You’re so small and so full of nonsense.”
When Claudie’s with me, the crowd of terrifying people that hovers around melts into the background. They can’t come near me when there’s someone else.
One night I get out of the bed I share with my grandmother and lift up the blankets, which hang almost to the floor. I look into the large spaces between the cases and boxes. They have made this their home. I hear their breathing. I want to jump back onto the bed but I can’t. They are holding me, threatening to suck me into this space. In the middle, there is the carcass of an animal, dripping blood. Gory ribs stick into the bottom of the mattress. Then I hear moaning. It starts softly and becomes louder and louder.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying? What are you doing down there? You should be sleeping.”
My mother and my aunt stand in the doorway looking down at me from a very, very long way up. They start giggling. As I grow more and more frantic, they laugh loudly, holding onto each other. I try to tell them that I can’t move, that I need help to get away. But the words are stuck.
“Get back into bed. When I come back you should be asleep!”
As they walk away, the terror and the darkness pull me apart. I try to scream but nothing comes. Eventually some sounds crawl out of my throat and my grandmother runs over from the big house where she was talking to Auntie Gracie. Humming, she wraps me in my patchwork blanket and promises to stay.
Every morning my grandmother washes me, almost pulls my hair out of my scalp to make