Holding up the sky, p.50
Holding Up the Sky, page 50
‘But you have friends here. What about Moss and Khumo? What about Beans, Dennis, Daddy, Solly and all the others from church? They are all your friends.’
‘Khumo is my friend, and Moss. But the others are your friends. And most of the people from church need our help in some way. They’re not friends. There’s a difference. I need something more.’
‘What are you saying?’ he said, a thread of fear in his voice.
‘I’m saying that I want us to move closer to Jo’burg. I want some middle ground if this life is going to work for both of us.’
Silence filled the room once more, making the sound of my breathing seem like an intrusion. Finally, in a whisper he said, ‘This is the life I want. It’s here that I was born and it’s where I belong. I don’t want to leave’.
I almost took it all back. Despite everything, I still flinched at the thought of hurting him, of making his life harder than it had already been. I knew that the only time he had not lived here, apart from our brief stint in Australia, was when he had gone away to study in ’Maritzburg. I knew it was his home.
‘I don’t want to make you unhappy. I really don’t. But I’m not sure I can be happy here. It feels like it costs me so much to hang in. I know it’s not what we planned, but I just don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry.’
He slowly got to his feet, leaving me sitting on the edge of our bed. ‘Let me think about it’, he said, as he moved quietly out of the room.
After several weeks of deliberation, Teboho agreed to move. He felt that if it was no more than a thirty minute drive to the township, he could make a compromise and, anxious to move, I agreed. I will always be grateful to him for this decision. It wasn’t what he wanted, but he did it because he loved me. After all we’d been through, after all the distance of the last few years, he still loved me and was willing to give up what he wanted to make me happy. It was no small thing.
We began looking at properties a few weeks later. While the thought of moving closer had me on a high, I soon realised that a thirty minute radius still had us in the West Rand, still with potentially conservative neighbours, still one of the few black families in the area. Despite this, I deeply appreciated Teboho’s willingness to compromise and was determined to find a place that would meet our needs.
We ultimately found a house five minutes away from Westgate, the shopping mall where I had taken Chaba when he was only a few weeks old. The area is perched on the edge of a long escarpment that cuts a line from Krugersdorp through to the Jo’burg ring road, a six-lane concrete highway that circles the city, dividing the inner suburbs from the urban sprawl beyond.
The views from the edge of the escarpment were breathtaking and we managed to find a three-bedroom thatched house on the edge of a swell of hills, set just back from the escarpment itself. The house had two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, dining room and lounge room downstairs and the main bedroom, ensuite and study set inside a large attic area. The upstairs walls were less than waist height, meaning that most of the walls were made up of the sloping thatch of the roof, giving the rooms the smell of the open veld. Behind the house, the land sloped up sharply before fattening out at the very top, from where one could catch panoramic views of the northern suburbs if you were willing to make the climb. In front of the house was a paved courtyard into which the dark creosol beams that supported the thatched roof pierced the ground like spears. In between the beams were a series of planters that were overflowing with annuals, cheering the surroundings like vases of fresh cut flowers. Having braved the steep driveway and the stairs up to the house, arriving in the courtyard was akin to entering a sanctuary. After one visit to the house, I knew this was the fresh start we were looking for.
We put our old house on the market, enrolled Mello in the local primary school and within a few months, were packing up the swing set and all our memories on our way to a new home.
Mama moved with us as she was so much a part of the family that there was never of question of her staying behind in Mohlakeng. However, given we were no longer as accessible as before, visitors only stayed for a short time. The exception was Joseph who would often spend university holidays with us and so stay a little longer. Mama had one of the bedrooms downstairs and the kids shared the other. As I had done for Mello’s room at the old house, I painted a mural around the new bedroom, this time using a circus theme with the stripes of the big tent and carousel ponies. Though the kids shared the room during the day, Chaba slept cuddled up next to Mama most nights, taking his turn for a time as each grandchild had done before him.
Soon we were settled down into a new rhythm with Chaba, now two and keen to mimic his big sister, going to a local nursery school a few mornings a week. Mello was happy at her new primary school, quickly making friends in our street and joining a weekly ballet class at the dance school across the road. Teboho and I both had a much shorter commute to work, meaning we left later and got home sooner. And while I was sure the whole neighbourhood was talking about the new family that had just moved in, mixed marriages still being so rare, there was no open hostility and for that I was grateful.
One of the biggest changes to our family was that we now saw little of my favourite niece Katie. Soon, however, we were to have a new house guest in the form of her older sister Tashia. Tashia and Nooi, Caleb’s two eldest daughters, were close friends and confidantes, both quiet and respectful in the presence of adults, yet they ruled the house with an iron fist when their parents were not at home, organising the younger siblings and the array of visiting cousins in the house at any given time. Since the girls reached puberty, they had been regularly lectured by Caleb and Ousi on the risks of pregnancy and the implications that a moment’s carelessness could have on their lives.
The number of teenage pregnancies in most South African townships is very high. One reason for this is the lack of recreational options for young people. Traditionally, boys start playing soccer in the streets long before they are old enough to play in an official team. While the girls can join netball teams, the sport cannot match the popularity of soccer. But by far the most popular pastime in the townships is to go walking the streets with a group of friends and see who you meet along the way. Given that most families in the township don’t own a car, you are almost guaranteed to meet up with your friends as they, too, have nowhere else to go. It becomes more difficult to contain when the strolling around also happens after dark, which is the usual practice for meeting up with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Parents do not welcome their daughters bringing boys to the house, as it’s seen as disrespectful to them, and this drives relationships out of the home and into the night.
The second reason was surprising to me when it was first explained, in the light of the conservative stance on teenage girls and boyfriends. Given the importance of children in an African marriage, many girls choose to demonstrate their fertility by bearing a child in preparation for a marriage proposal. It should also be said that some girls, like their peers all over the world, may also try to secure the affection of a particularly favoured boy by having his child. Either way, the parents of the boy would be required to pay damages and then continue paying to maintain the child as it grows.
Whatever the reasons, teenage pregnancy is very common and this includes church youth. All of Caleb’s kids attended church youth group, with Tashia and Nooi being the only two of their female peers who were yet to fall pregnant. This is something Caleb was proud of. He hoped that seeing the burden of single parenting by their girlfriends would continue to act as a deterrent to them having unprotected sex, or sex at all, if Caleb had his way.
Teboho and I were aware that both the girls had boyfriends and would find an excuse to slip out to see them on weekends. Teboho had more than one word with them about it, urging caution. AIDS in South Africa is as high as one in four in many areas and young black women are most at risk. Many black men mistrust condoms, sometimes seeing them as a western plot to limit the growth of the black population. From the outside, this sounds quite paranoid. However, with the amount of social engineering that went on during the apartheid years, it would not seem too far fetched for many black South Africans.
To say that Caleb was unhappy when Tashia finally confessed her pregnancy after almost six months would be an understatement. He was so furious that he threatened to kick her out, as often happened in such circumstances. While I understood Caleb’s distress, I also held him partly responsible. Despite his and Ousi’s ground rules on boyfriends, they spent many evening away from home visiting with friends of their own, having a drink or two, leaving the girls to babysit the others on their own. In many ways, it was only a matter of time before someone was caught out, given the lack of parental supervision.
Because of this, and the fact that we knew Caleb’s anger would eventually subside, we offered to have Tashia come and live with us until after the baby was born. I was also keen to have Tashia with us to keep an eye on her nutrition and medical care in the lead-up to the baby. Under normal circumstances, the kids’ diet included more chips and sweets than fruit and vegetables and I was sure Tashia had not deviated from this habit in the first months of her pregnancy, given her still waiflike physique. It was clear that she was also yet to see a doctor. The family agreed to the new arrangement and inside of a week, Tashia was living with us.
Tashia was a beautiful, kind-hearted girl. She resembled a dark-skinned pixie and was as shy as one. Living with her gave me an opportunity to get beneath her usual polite greetings and conversations and get to know her a bit better. She was in a steady relationship with the father of her baby and hoped that having his child would not ruin things between them. We had met him when the parents came to pay damages. I was unsure of the exact amount that had been negotiated, but it was enough to cover the costs of antenatal care, the birth and the baby’s immediate needs. The young man’s family seemed as distressed about the turn of events as Caleb and Ousi. Events such as this could sometimes ruin the chances for the boy to study beyond high school, as he would have to earn money to support his new baby.
Tashia soon found her place in our family routine and seemed to relax around us and open up a little more than she did in Mohlakeng. Her being around when Mello got home after school allowed the two of them to get closer. Despite the pregnancy, I felt that Tashia was a good influence on Mello. Tashia, like all young women her age, had long since taken responsibility for the maintenance of the household: cooking, cleaning, washing. Mello would have taken on a similar role had she stayed with Tshidi and as Teboho and I didn’t want her to stand apart from her peers any more than she already did, we had instigated chores that she was responsible for. Mama also tried to keep her honest in doing these household duties while we were at work. Mello, however, perceived this to be a form of child slavery and was happy to tell anyone who would listen. Tashia’s presence and willingness to do her share made Mello at least slightly more inclined to participate without lodging a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.
It was also good for Tashia to spend more time with her grandmother through the last few months of her pregnancy. Tashia, Mama and I spent many hours in the evening discussing pregnancy, good nutrition, labour and looking after a newborn. However, I should say that Mama never ceased to be amused, and at times horrified, by my candour. I told them that in Australia, you may even put an announcement in the paper to announce the pregnancy and that there was a particular pecking order of who should be told first when it was considered safe to announce. They both looked at me in astonishment at the strange cultural practices of white people.
While Tashia, out of her own fear of the unknown, was willing to take as much information as she could get, Mama had grown up old school, similar to my own mother who also had no idea what was happening to her body until it happened. In fact, when my mother got married, my grandmother was still insisting that babies came out of your belly button. This was quite a concession, however, as she told Mum all through high school that pregnant women were actually sick and babies came from the cabbage patch. Mum had prepared me for womanhood somewhat differently and I was keen to equip Tashia with as much information as possible.
After about six weeks with us, Tashia was looking healthy and beginning to put on some weight. I think her fear and concealment had kept her weight dangerously low. She had hidden the pregnancy so well up until that point that even her mother had no idea. Mama was now taking Tashia to the local clinic for regular check-ups and all was progressing well.
As Caleb had no insurance that would cover the costs of the birth, Tashia was to have the baby at a local government hospital. A hospital that served a nearby coloured community was chosen. I hadn’t heard good things about this hospital, or any other government hospital for that matter. It was really only private hospitals in South Africa that could boast first class care. I remembered Nonsi, from my home in Caluza all those years before, talking about her training as a nurse. She had chosen nursing because it was the only professional option outside teaching open to young black women at the time. She admitted to having no calling or even interest in caring for the sick. Her training communicated the same laissez faire style she seemed to have developed, with her supervisors telling her that it was fine to simply check a patient’s temperature every second day and then average it out on the chart. It didn’t fill me with confidence for Tashia’s care.
To my delight, Tashia asked me to come with her when it was time and support her at the birth. The rest of the family was happy with this arrangement. The concept of a birth partner was not a common one, neither was having the father of the baby there. I’m not sure why she thought to ask; I was just glad that she did, knowing what I did of the hospital system.
When Mama woke me in the middle of the night several weeks later, I was ready to pack Tashia up and get her to the hospital. She had been having contractions for about four hours and had said nothing. Ultimately, she became quite frightened by the intensity of it all and woke Mama who was sleeping in the next room. The three of us sat in the lounge room and began to time the contractions but given Tashia’s distress, I thought it best just to take her to the hospital and see what pain relief we could get for her there.
It took about twenty-five minutes to drive to the hospital and during that time, Tashia’s pain seemed to have worsened. Once we arrived, I took care of the paperwork while they took care of Tashia. Hospitals are often, by their very nature, soulless institutions. However, this hospital was particularly so. The corridors seemed dark and dingy, both patients and visitors looking drawn and hopeless.
They had taken Tashia through to the labour ward where she sat surrounded by seven other black or coloured women in various stages of labour, all of whom were much older than Tashia and all of whom were on their own. My presence, as usual, was creating a bit of a stir. However, this time it wasn’t only the colour of my skin drawing unwanted attention. Some of the other women did have family floating about, but none appeared to be sitting with them and talking them through contractions. At this stage, Tashia was looking like a deer caught in the headlights, her eyes wide and pleading. While I knew we still had a long way to go, she clearly thought death was imminent.
Over the hours to come, nursing staff came and went, checking on the progress of the various women in the ward. Some left to move on and deliver, others remained with us, still having more work to do. Tashia herself was progressing very slowly. It was hard to judge the actual strength of the contractions as she had clung to my hand and cried through each contraction since we arrived. However, things changed by late afternoon. By about five o’clock she seemed to have lost all control. She virtually crawled onto my lap to be held as the pain swept over her. She sobbed with each wave, leaving my shoulder wet from her tears. It was hard not to see her for what she was–a child who was terrified of what was still to come.
I asked the nurses once more for some pain relief for her, but continued to be told she had to wait until the doctor came to check her. She was now not progressing and I suspected they wanted to review options. By ten o’clock that evening, the doctor had been and agreed that if she still failed to progress, they would do a caesarean section. Tashia had been in labour for twenty-four hours.
At five the following morning, we were entering the operating theatre. They had taken some convincing, but given I was her aunt they let me come with her. I stripped down and put on the hospital greens and was soon waiting with Tashia in theatre as the contractions kept rolling in. She was back in my arms, exhausted with the labour, hysterical with pain. I told her she only had one or two more contractions before she was finished, as the anaesthetist was preparing the epidural. The greatest difficulty at that point was to extract her from my arms so he could do the procedure. But once that was done, the operation was extremely fast. Within five minutes of the first cut, the baby was out and being held up for Tashia and me to see–a boy. Tashia didn’t tell me until much later, but when she looked at her son all she saw were white spots from looking into the theatre lights, so she thought he was albino–not an easy life for a child in Africa. She was so horrified by what she saw that she hardly spoke for hours.
After showing us the baby, the nurses took him across the room to be checked and then down to intensive care for six hours, as was routine. I felt that Tashia needed to have the baby with her. Given the trauma of the whole event, I was concerned about bonding. I repeatedly asked for the baby to be brought to her and was repeatedly told that this was procedure. When they finally brought the baby through and gave him to Tashia, she had managed some sleep and I had been home for a shower and change of clothes and brought Mama and Teboho back with me. When Tashia saw her son, she burst into tears. I asked her what was the matter and she told me about the white spots. I assured her that the baby was perfectly normal as I lifted him into her cautious arms. Despite the joy and relief of that moment, she lay back on her pillow and told me she was never having sex again. I was sure Caleb would be relieved to hear that.
