My name is Vaselinetjie. Anoeschka von Meck
while the welfare lady knocked on the front door.
After a long wait they heard a click, a dim porch light came on and they heard someone sliding the bolts on the inside.
“Is it a new arrival?” a voice asked through a chink in the door. “If so, go round the back and knock on the first door you see.” The voice didn’t wait for a reply and without another word the door was shut in their faces.
“Come!” The welfare lady led the way on clicking heels. Vaselinetjie could hear that she was annoyed.
The lady knocked on a door behind a safety gate. It took quite a while before someone arrived to let them in. While the lady was completing forms, Vaselinetjie looked around. Through the window she could see a quad, and rooms leading off it. A small redheaded boy was sitting behind a curtain at a window on the first floor. It looked as if he was crying. When he saw her, he stopped and waved, wiping his nose on the curtain.
The welfare lady had finished completing the forms and turned to her. “Now don’t let me hear any bad things about you, all right?” She seemed in a hurry to leave and gave Vaselinetjie a brief pat on the back. The hostel lady opened a door that led into a passage and pushed the safety gate aside for Vaselinetjie to enter. She heard whispers in the dark.
“Lights out, lights out!” the lady called as they walked down the passage, Vaselinetjie lugging her heavy suitcase behind her. The lady had hair on her upper lip and chin – too creepy for words. Vaselinetjie noticed that her slippers were worn and shapeless and that her heels were rough and cracked. She was munching away at a toasted sandwich and licking her fingers, with Vaselinetjie’s admission forms clasped under one arm.
“There are several units in the building, but they all look alike. We call them houses and they all have different names. Each house has its own matron who looks after the children in that house. All the front doors open into a long passage at the centre of the building,” the lady explained over her shoulder, chewing on the last crust.
At the door of the fourth room she motioned for Vaselinetjie to enter. She remained in the doorway just long enough to make sure that Vaselinetjie found an empty bed.
“I said lights out!” She looked past Vaselinetjie at the inquisitive faces peeking out from under bedding everywhere.
Vaselinetjie wanted to shut her eyes tightly and scream and scream until she woke from the nightmare. Each bed stood a metre away from the next and had a locker and a tall, narrow clothes cupboard. Some of the cupboards had no doors.
The lady flicked off the light and her footsteps receded down the passage.
“Don’t worry about her. Actually you’re lucky to be in this house. She’s one of the nicest matrons,” a voice whispered from the neighbouring bed.
Vaselinetjie couldn’t make out the face of the speaker and she was too afraid to answer. Hurriedly she took her nightie from her suitcase and put it on under the duvet without making a sound.
Where was Ouma Kitta to tuck her in? Where was her own big, soft bed with the colourful bedspread and the springs that creaked when she flopped down on it? This mattress was so thin that she could feel the spaces between the wooden slats of the bed.
She wanted to pee and she wanted to cry but she was afraid to move and afraid that someone might hear her sniffling. She buried her head in her pillow and tried to hold back her fear and her sobs.
2
The next morning Vaselinetjie was startled awake by the noise of fifteen girls living together in cramped quarters. A crazy hullabaloo of voices talking and laughing and shouting from room to room. In the midst of this chaos the matron was trying to hurry everyone along.
A scrawny girl with badly cut mousy hair that reminded Vaselinetjie of a toilet brush was standing at the bed next to hers. Her front teeth were broken stumps, stained brown. Vaselinetjie quickly averted her eyes when the girl looked in her direction.
Two coloured girls had opened Vaselinetjie’s suitcase and were rifling through the contents. “Leave my stuff!” She jumped from under her duvet and made a grab for her belongings.
“Aikona.” One of the girls was holding an item of clothing out of her reach. “All this has to go to the laundry first, and then you can label it and put it away.” She laughed. “Were you born in a pharmacy?” She showed the other girl the name on the tags Ouma Kitta had sewn neatly into the back of each item. “You’ll have to unpick all these, here you get only a number.”
A tall white girl with the longest black braid Vaselinetjie had ever seen entered the room. She yanked open the doors of all the cupboards and started tossing out clothes. She peered under the beds. Under the pillow on the bed next to Vaselinetjie’s she found a pair of panties, a dirty pair of school socks and a one-legged doll.
The girl picked up the doll and with one determined movement twisted off its head. “Just as I thought,” she said when something fell out. “You’re gated for the afternoon, Albie!” she said sternly.
Vaselinetjie watched as the child with the toilet brush hair fell down as if she had been shot in the head. Her fists hammered on the floor and her legs thrashed as if she was trying to swim. The other girls laughed but Vaselinetjie stared at her, shocked. She had never seen a grown child carry on like this.
“Why haven’t you made your bed yet?” The girl with the braid turned to Vaselinetjie, who was so panic-stricken that she was speechless. She had very seldom yet spoken to a white girl and it made her especially nervous to realise that this girl was a senior. Vaseline could tell because she was taller than the rest and the bees had already stung her on her boobies. Her name was Kitcat, Vaselinetjie guessed, for Albie was cursing her at the top of her voice.
“Are you just going to pee in your pants, or can you actually talk?” Kitcat stepped forward and Vaselinetjie ducked instinctively. Then she saw the roll-on deodorant in Kitcat’s hand. “Is this yours?”
Vaselinetjie nodded. “Uh, ’s mine, ja. Was last in my case mos.” She recognised the deodorant. Rose-scented with a pink cap. Brand-new. Ouma Kitta had bought it for her, together with some Johnson’s Baby Powder and body lotion.
Everyone stopped to look at her. Even Albie stopped screaming and stared.
“If you’re white like me, why do you talk like a coloured?” Kitcat asked, and the others squealed with laughter.
Vaselinetjie felt her face burning. What if the white children beat her up? “I was mos maar born like this, so bleek,” she mumbled.
Would it be the same here as at her old school, where she had always been accused of lying? Nausea rose in her throat. Maybe the matron had not been able to see properly in the dark the night before and put her in the wrong room.
There was a loud crack as Albie keeled over and struck her head on the floor. “Noooooo!” she shrieked, the veins in her neck bulging. “I’m not going to tidy up my cupboard if there’s a houtkop in my room!”
“Oh, shut up, Albie. I’d rather take a hottie any day than a cry-baby and a thief,” the girl on Vaselinetjie’s other side said in a flat tone, as if she was bored. Vaselinetjie recognised last night’s voice in the dark. The girl had a pale complexion and white-blonde hair, tied on top of her head to form a fountain.
“My name is Killer,” she introduced herself above the racket, closing the padlock on her cupboard with a click and kicking the shoes in front of Albie’s bed out of her way. “I set my stepfather’s clothes on fire with a lighter when he was drunk. He had to get a skin graft. Now I’m not allowed to go home, but it’s okay.”
Vaselinetjie couldn’t make out from her tone of voice whether Killer was friendly, hostile or sad. In fact, she seemed quite proud of what she had done.
In an effort to avoid conversation Vaselinetjie began to make her bed. At the same time she was afraid that the others might pick a fight if she tried to keep quiet and did not speak.
“…