Ivory From Paradise by David Schmahmann

Author:David Schmahmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

EBEN AND BAPTIE ARE ALMOST THERE, turn ontoWest Street where Mr. Nerpelow, the lawyer, has his offices. Baptie has led him this far, left here, right there, but now she is confused. The street signs are missing, and she cannot be absolutely sure that this is the right corner.

“This is West Street,” she says. “I am sure of it, even though I have not driven here in a car for a very long time. But where are the signs?”

Eben shrugs, waits for her guidance.

“I don’t know,” Baptie says, but this is the building. I am sure. This is the one.”

Eben pulls to the curb and looks up at the tall building. He can trust Mr. Nerpelow, he thinks. The Divin family would not have handed their affairs, everything they have in South Africa, to a man who was not fair and did not know what he was doing.

He finds his heart beating quite hard now, as if he is going in for an exam or standing outside a courtroom where someone’s fate is being decided.

“I have decided something today,” Baptie says, as they sit in the idling car. “I have decided about something I am going to do.”

“What is that?” Eben asks. “What have you decided?”

There is a note of resolution in her voice.

“You know this Baptie rubbish,” she says. “My name. Baptie.”

“That is your English name,” Eben says.

“No,” Baptie says. “It is not my name. My English name is Beauty. My parents called me Beauty. My Zulu name is Ntombifuthi, which means ‘a girl again,’ but my parents called me Beauty in English.”

Eben is confused. His whole life he has heard her called Baptie by the whites, Baptie this and Baptie that, even in the white stores in Gingindlovu.

“It was Beauty,” Baptie says. “But then when Bridget the first born of the Divins, came, she could not say this. She called me Baptie and it was funny, and everyone, the Madame and the Master, they laughed and they called me Baptie, and soon everyone forgot my name was Beauty and called me Baptie. It is the Divin’s name. Before that time, no one called me that.”

“I didn’t know that,” Eben says, looking at her, amazed, and then he adds: “Is this one of your secrets then, mother?”

The look on her face suggests that she thinks his question is very foolish. Her glasses have slid down her nose, are perched at an angle as she looks across at him.

“I have been thinking that I must have my name back,” she says. “My parents called me Beauty in English. That is my name. That is what I have decided.”

“Who will call you Beauty anyhow?” Eben says. “Everyone in Gingindlovu calls you Aunty, or by your Zulu name.”

“I must tell them, the Divins,” Baptie says. “Bridget and her little one, and Danny, and the others in Durban, that my name is Beauty. It is not Baptie. You should not spend your whole life with the name given to you by a baby who cannot speak.

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