The Keeper of the Kumm. Sylvia Vollenhoven
way he repeats “Thank-you-dankie” as if it’s one word, over and over:
“Thank-you-dankie …”
I love the sound his clipping machine makes as he punches a hole in the ticket so that we can’t use it again. The ticket with the hole makes me feel proud. I’ve been somewhere important.
When we finally get back to Brentwood Road, my mother puts me to bed in the shack at the back of Auntie Gracie’s house and goes to the Vollenhovens’ garage with Freddie. I’m glad I don’t have to go and live with Mal Chrisjan, the swearing Maggie and dronk Sybil, singing “Blue Moon” in the ‘wedding’ Chevy.
Our relatives, spread out on the Cape Flats and in Swellendam, hardly ever come to us in Wynberg. When we visit them, they ask endless questions about the people of Brentwood Road. Mama Donaldson, Ma’s sister in Athlone, takes out her best tea cups from the display cabinet in the lounge and chases me out of the kitchen.
Wynberg teaches me much about Cape Town class and status but it is a very long time before I am able to give voice to these unspoken lessons.
White parks and pressure cookers
The spirit of the sea and the blue mystery of the mountains hold her hand. Together they wait.
The Davids family of Privet Villa are warm and comforting people. Auntie Gracie and her daughters comb my hair and let me sit on their laps, even when I’m almost too big for it. Uncle Willy, Auntie Gracie’s husband, works long hours but if I wait for him, especially in the summer evenings, at the low stone wall on the corner of the school in Ottery Road, he stops his huge black bicycle. He gets off so that I can sit on the saddle, perched high above the road. Then he gently wheels his cycle down towards the house, pretending that I’m fully in charge.
At the Vollenhovens’ house, Shalom, I feel only discomfort and strangeness. Nobody touches anybody here. I imagine my mother must feel out of place too and that she will come back to us so that we can hug her when the stew-mountain gobblers spit her out.
My grandmother and I now live in servants’ quarters at the home of the Sonneveld family. The name of the house, Alma, perches above the driveway gate in curly pink wrought-iron lettering.
At Alma it is even more cold and forbidding than at Shalom. When the Sonnevelds are out and Ma is done with her cleaning up, it looks like nobody lives in the large rooms with the dark wooden floors.
Ma likes people to call her a ‘cook general’ and says she is ‘nobody’s servant’. Our cement-floored room has a separate entrance to the main house and is very different to the rickety shack at Privet Villa.
Ma says a ‘sleep-in cook general’ for foreign people is the best job in Cape Town.
“Jy weet waar jy staan met ’n boer. Straightforward mense, maar hulle betaal nie. Die Engelse is agterbaks en die Jode is suinig.”
Her thumbnail sketches of Cape Town’s white people become my own rough guide. I am young but I understand that we are a level above the women in the neighbourhood who work for problematic South African madams.
Ma always sings hymns when she works. Sometimes when she sings or talks about God she cries.
“Die liefde van Jesus is wonderbaar, wonderbaar, prys sy naam …”
She’s singing and crying, looking out of the window. So I cry too.
“My gemoed slaan so vol van die Here se genade,” she tells me.
But a summons from the madam has the ability to change Ma’s mood in an instant.
“Sofie,” calls Mrs Sonneveld from the kitchen steps across the yard, “Alma has some old clothes for Sylvia. Alma, go and show Sylvia the box.”
Alma, the Sonneveld’s only child, is a bit older than me and much taller. She takes me by the hand into the yard to a small cardboard box full of clothes. The clothes smell like her blonde hair.
“They’re too small for me. My mamma says they will fit you. My pappa bought this one in Amsterdam.”
Alma is pulling outfits out of the box and holding up dresses, blouses, underwear, bonnets and socks. The Sonneveld family arrived in South Africa recently. Alma has shoes that look like wooden boats. Some of the clothes look strange. A blue felt outfit has a bright orange pattern and a pointy hat that makes me look like a goblin.
“Don’t worry,” says Ma with her usual insight, “I’ll make it smaller for you.”
Later, when we are alone in the room, she says;
“Ma kan sien jy hou nie van die mense se Hollandse klere nie. Toe maar, ek sal vir haar sê jy gaan dit naweke dra as ons huistoe gaan. Ons mag arm wees maar ons dra nie wit mense se ou klere nie.”
Whenever I look at the box of undisturbed Dutch clothes under the small bed we share in the servant’s quarters, I feel proud and very close to my granny. A while later Mrs Sonneveld buys me a brand new outfit, just like her daughter’s. Nobody says anything ever again about the old clothes.
Ma works in the house cooking and cleaning till late at night. Sometimes Alma plays with me but most of the time I’m alone in the garden with my toys. I miss Claudie more than anyone else in Brentwood Road.
“Come inside and stop talking to yourself so much. Here, get onto this chair and help me with the washing up. Try not to get yourself so wet this time.”
“I’m talking to my dolls,” I say.
We don’t have a bathroom and we are not allowed to use those in the house. Ma fills a big zinc bath with water she has boiled in the kitchen and we wash late at night when no one can see us out in the yard.
“I want to brush my teeth with Sylvia!”
Because I use the garden tap in the mornings and Alma likes the big white splashes I make on the neat green lawn, she refuses to use the bathroom inside. We spit white toothpaste pictures onto the green lawn.
Sometimes when Mr Sonneveld is at work and Alma goes out with her mother, my granny and I take turns washing in their huge bathroom.
“When you see them coming, run to tell me.”
I stand watch while my granny washes and she does the same for me. One day she is washing my hair when we hear Mrs Sonneveld’s car pulling into the driveway.
“Tel op jou borsel. Maak gou! Vat alles agter toe.”
My dress is soaked with water from my thick hair streaming down my back but we manage to clear all the evidence from the bathroom before Mrs Sonneveld calls my granny to help her carry the groceries.
“Sylvia, Penny is going to take us to the park,” says Alma.
Penny is the nanny who looks after the girl next door. She walks us down from the Sonneveld house in Woodley Road to the nearby Basil Road Park a few streets away. She puts us all on a row of swings and pushes us one by one until everyone is flying high and screaming nervously.
Basil Road Park is full of Plumstead’s white children and nannies who come from Wynberg. The nannies are almost all dark-skinned like me and Ma. The fair-skinned coloureds of Wynberg don’t work for white people.
I love the bright red and yellow swings on their green poles. The roundabout makes me throw up so we keep away from that. When we’re done with the swings, we take turns on the seesaw with the wooden seats and horse-head handles.
“Come on, Sylvia, follow Alma and Lucy to the top,” says Penny, standing next to the jungle gym.
I pull myself up one level and then, looking down, I see a group of boys behind Penny.
“Alma plays with kaffirs. Alma plays with kaffirs.”
Penny turns around waving her hand at them threateningly. I can see Penny is nervous. She is about 12 years old and the boys are big. A woman who has been sitting on one of the park benches comes over.