When you are six and Toto is still a baby you both move to Johannesburg with Mama, leaving Gogo behind. It is a place you hate before you see. You cry on the long taxi ride. Quiet sobs that should embarrass you as they do Mama but they don’t. You do not care that people see your tears. Let them see and know that you’d rather be left behind with Gogo; Mama and Toto can go to their Johannesburg.
In her grand pitch Mama claims Johannesburg is a land of opportunity, in its belly is the gold that fattens the white man. But the first time you see Gemstone City, a stampede of shacks crawling up a hill, one on top of the other leaving no yard room, just a thread of narrow paths, you begin to suspect that this Johannesburg is a land of scarcity, not the promised abundance. It seems it was built in a hurry without the pause for thought or the gathering of sufficient material. It looks like the cities you’ve built at play with your friends back in Dundee, out of discarded boxes, beer crates and old sheets. Only it is no play. It is real homes of real people.
Johannesburg is a barren land. There are no rivers cutting through, no wells going deep into the heart of the earth. No fields of green going on and on for days. You begin to wonder if the gold story was just a ploy to get you here. How can a land with no water, save the smelly green mucus of the public toilets embroidering pathways, be pregnant with riches? Sensing your disapproval, Mama says it is only temporary. “A few months to find work then we save for a better place. One with a backyard for you and Toto to play in. One made out of cement and bricks and timber, closer to town”
Mama has turned into a liar, you begin to notice. It is as if she forgot to pack up truth in her suitcase when she left Dundee. You are careful not to build castles on her words like the fool in your Sunday school lesson who built his house on sand. Mama’s words are like sand, many tiny white lies you cannot plant a garden in. After some time it becomes clear that there will be no new house with a backyard for you and Toto to play in. Gemstone is all there is. You can tell by the way Mama calls it home, like she has decided to cement her life here. She has even made friends, Aunt Precious who does hair and Aunt Nolwazi who sells skop at the taxi rank. You hear them when they make plans. Long term plans for years and years and yet you never hear Mama say; “I won’t be here by then. I will be at my new house I have been saving for.”
There is a lot that Mama does not say now, like when you are to go back home. When you ask this her face darkens and her mouth says what you know to be a lie, “Soon.”
You are eight and Toto is two; he does not remember the home you speak of. No recognition registers on his face when you speak of Gogo’s outstretched fields of mealies and dry beans harvested under the watchful September sun that rolled its liquid eyes all over your body, even in places you were ashamed to speak of.
He was too young, you know. He is still too young. Maybe that is why you tell him these things. So he can grow up knowing of home. You tell him of Gogo’s hand inviting yours as you lagged behind trying to walk normal in the pretty white shoes that set your toes on fire. “Those shoes, Toto, hated me. I am sure,” you laugh remembering. When they were not in the business of burning your toes, they swallowed tiny stones from the dusty road to irritate your soles or munched away at the meat behind your feet. Gogo had bought them for you one Christmas. They were so pretty you only wore them to church. Maybe that’s why their familiarity, though cherished, felt impersonal like all Sunday things, the frilly dresses you were getting too big for, the nice-smelling ladies squeezing your cheeks and slipping pieces of chocolate in your hand with hard smiles and stern eyes, the long sermons you had to sit through to be awarded some playtime with your friends. Like all Sunday things they held you tight without intimacy.
You are now twenty and one of the rusted corrugated iron shacks we see as we zoom past the N1 route is yours. But is not home. The man we do not see, Friday, snoring in your bed is also yours. But he too is not home.
We shake our heads. We discuss among ourselves how you do not have to live like this. We do not understand why you have chosen this life. What made you leave home? No one’s root is in the squatter camp. We are all from somewhere. “It’s the hot headed ones. They can’t submit to the authority at home, so they come here.”
“And the sad thing about these people is they breed like crazy. You see that tiny shack? You’d find they have seven li’l ones. Seven! I’m not even exaggerating.”
“To have kids grow in these conditions broe. Imagine!”
You do not hear us scorn at your “choices” but you are of the same sentiment. This place is no place for a child, especially a girl child. So you hold Mango safely in your arms until she complains that you are breaking her back. She does not yet know this New Gemstone may fracture it to dust. It does not like women. It does not want them strong.
It spits in their faces and calls them bitches. This land of broken nights and aborted dreams, a cacophony of violence disrupting sleep. Drunken men beating their women after a night of jol that did not make them jolly. Your hand combing through Mango’s head as if to erase her memories as they form, the same way Mama used to hum so close to your ears you almost did not hear the loud bangs and screams outside.
How are you to prepare her for the world? You wonder. It is beyond you. But you must find a way to arm her, train her, so that each evening she comes back to you whole. How will you explain to her, without burning in shame, the whistles and salivating mouths yelling in the streets for a taste of her cookie? How will you stop uncouth hands popping out of corners to tap her behind or grip firmly at her wrist asking for small talk? You know she better have the wisdom to skillfully negotiate her way out of the small talk before it spoils into something aggressive.
Sometimes, when you are alone you rehearse a speech, cautioning her about the quick shoulder jabs at a busy intersection that leaves one without a wallet. You tell her, “When you hear Vimba, it’s either you trip the tsotsie or get out of the way. Don’t cause traffic.” You haven’t yet figured out how to tell her that if the tsotsie is caught there would be cheering and he would suffer the wrath of the community. Everyone is tired of being poor and robbed. So it is important to ignore as the tsotsi is grounded to mince and left by the side of the road for dogs or cops to find. Otherwise these tsotsies will do as they please.
You do not know how to say any of this so you tell her of Gogo and how she was your home. You tell her of the mealies and the beans, of the rivers you swam in, of the wide dusty roads. On Sundays you drag her to church. As you hurry towards the tolling bell, her hand in yours, you are reminded of Gogo emptying herself in you like waterfall and your spirit like the pool beneath rising to meet her. You call onto her and you are filled with strength that is not yours. “Mango,” you say, “you can build a home in me.” She looks up to you and smiles, not knowing what you mean. One of these days she will grow. E
