Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona

Author:Sindiwe Magona [Magona, Sindiwe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0997-0
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 1998-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

8

Three children have come from my womb. Three claim me as mother. Three. But now, since your daughter’s unfortunate death, I have been called mother to so many more: Mother of the beast. Mother of the serpent. The puffadder’s mother. There are those who even go as far as calling me Satan’s mother.

I know. With a mother’s pierced heart, I know. All these names refer to but one of my children. He who was first upon my nipple. He who came unbid; bringing a harvest of shame to my father’s house. Bitter tears to a mother’s proud heart.

The journey back to Cape Town was strained, awkward and agonising, most of the time. It was filled with uneasy silences as the hired car rattled along the long, deserted dusty by-roads. We were avoiding the main roads and thoroughfares, the driver said, because of fear of harassment from the Traffic Cops, ‘Who will stop a car driven by a black man as a matter of course.’

The driver, sure-handed on the wheel, was a taciturn man, quite content to hum along with the tune crackling from the car radio. Making the speech about the Traffic Cops was the most animated I’d seen him. Once the strategy of which roads to take and why had been decided upon, I rarely heard a word from him except, ‘Thank you!’ when Mama gave him something to eat or, ‘Excuse me!’ when Nature called and he had to stop the car by the side of the road and lean close to it or go into a nearby thicket.

‘Look at that!’

The shout woke me up. With a start, I saw that I must have dozed off.

‘D’you see that!’

What was all this screaming about? Without appearing too interested, I looked out the window. Nothing. Cows bent lazily over the grass. Hundreds of them . . . but still . . . cows were nothing over which to get all excited.

‘Can you believe that all these cattle belong to one boer? We have been driving, for over an hour, through ONE farm? The man owns half the Transkei, doesn’t he?’

Surprise, surprise, surprise! The man of little words had suddenly become quite loquacious. On and on he ranted, Mama supplying the occasional ‘Mmhh-mh!’ The driver (whose name I didn’t get to know throughout the trip, Mama referring to him as Mntuwenkosi, Man of the Lord, which means nothing) went on about how the boers arrived in the country, long ago, with not one animal between them.

‘Stole them from us. STOLE everything from us. Where do you get to buy a farm such as this one . . . for a copper bangle?’

‘Mmmhh-mh! Mmhh-mmmhhh!’

Bumpity-bump-bump-bump went the long, cavernous car; the driver’s thin frame hunched over the wheel. Mama huddled against the opposite door, and I sat somewhere behind them but in such a way that I wasn’t so much behind the driver that I was kitty corner to Mama, and thus in her direct line of vision should she turn around. At the same time, I had no wish to be directly behind her.

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