A Blade of Grass (6 page)

A
FTER THE BURIAL
, after the funeral, after the grieving, life must go on.

In the weeks that follow, the small boys must herd the cattle to pasture in the fields. There are the maize crops to attend, the fences to be maintained. In the orchard, where apricots and peaches grow, the farmer must spray the fruit against the depredation of insects. In the vegetable garden, the women must water the soil and pull the weeds. In the chicken coop, the eggs must be collected and brought to the house. And in the dairy, where Tembi usually works with three other girls, the milk must be poured into cans and the butter churned. Life must go on. The dead are buried and the living must labor.

Ben Laurens must work his farm. Märit Laurens must work too, in the house, because there is nobody to cook and clean, to do the work that Grace used to do, for Tembi has not come to the house in the two weeks since the burial.

Nor does Tembi return to her duties in the dairy with the other girls, to the cool shed with its warm sweet smells and the liquid gurgle of milk pouring from the big silver cans, to the thick cream clotting in the tubs and the regular grind of the butter churn. From this she is excused, for she is without parents now. And if at mealtimes she sits silent with her plate, and barely makes answer to the conversation, she is excused, for she is without mother and father now, and mourns, and her life is a question.

Tembi goes to the grave of her mother and lies on her back across the prickly dry grass, gazing up into the faraway sky, where sometimes the trails of jets seem like indecipherable writing on the blue of the sky. Sometimes a bird alights on the ground nearby and scratches in the grass
for insects, not noticing Tembi in her stillness. Sometimes a thin trail of ants tracks across her outstretched arm, where she lies so still, lost in the sky. In the distance cattle low, the windmill turns, the beat of a hammer sounds, voices call, the breeze moves through the willow trees on the riverbanks and life goes on. Underneath her body the earth seems to vibrate softly and steadily with the pulse of life. Tembi thinks of her mother, lying in the bosom of this living thing that is the earth.

When she rises and leaves her mother to the earth, Tembi goes to the secret place behind the koppie, to the dry hard place where the earth does not mourn. Here is refuge.

Here she finds the place in the rocks where the sun falls and warms the earth. Crouching down, she examines the soil, her eyes searching for signs of growth. With the tip of her index finger she tests the moistness of the ground. Although the garden is damp and free of weeds, and no animal has been digging, there is still no sign of any growth.

How many days has it been since she planted her five seeds? How many days has she come with her pail of water to let the thirsty earth drink? She counts the weeks. Already the season is turning from spring to summer. Will anything grow here? Is her desire to make the fruit come up out of the earth a foolish notion, a waste of time, leading only to disappointment?

In secret, Tembi brings a small pail of water from the washhouse and carefully lets the earth drink, so that the soil turns dark and moist, and gives off that scent that rises after the rains. She presses her finger on the soil and it is soft and warm, like a living thing, like the flesh of a body. The small area on the surface of her finger, where it touches the earth, where it touches the living body, is the place that binds her to the earth, that anchors her.

Tembi scoops a little more water into her palm from the pail and lets it trickle onto the soil. And a little more. And again, five times in all. Once for each seed hidden in the embrace of the earth’s body.

Setting the empty pail aside she leans her back against the flat, warm surface of the rock, shuts her eyes, and dozes. The sun moves in its slow eternal arc across the sky, and when the sunlight touches Tembi’s face, she wakes, dazzled by the light, dazzled by the brightness that falls on all living things.

When she opens her eyes to see her garden, to see all living things, Tembi sees also a small lizard motionless on the flat rock not more than two feet from her hand. A tiny green creature no larger than one of her fingers that watches her with its small black eyes, black like river pebbles. The green color down the lizard’s sleek back is green like the shoots of new grass in the spring, and there is a thin dark green, darker like a eucalyptus leaf in mid-summer, down the center of its back. Like a line drawn with a thin paintbrush. The lizard’s belly is pale green, and so are the insides of the legs, and the part under the mouth, where a faint beating pulse quivers. All as green as the grass and the leaves.

The small black eyes are like the pebbles in the river, alert, glistening like jewels, and she knows the lizard watches her. When she blinks, the lizard makes a quick dipping movement of its head, dainty and quick, like a leaf moved by a puff of wind.

A longing comes over Tembi; she wants to stroke her finger across the smooth underside of the mouth, the way one would stroke a cat. She wants to feel the beat of the creature’s heart, the pulse of the secret heartbeat of the earth, the vibration in all living things.

Tembi raises her finger gently, but the lizard flicks its body around—a flash of green, quick as the blink of an eye—and it is gone into a crevice of shadow. Gone into the earth.

T
HERE IS ANOTHER PLACE
where Tembi can go, another refuge.

Along the sandy road that borders the farm she walks, past the fences that enclose the fields, to a small plot of land set back from the road, where a small church stands. A church built once by a farmer in the district, when travel to the town was more difficult. But it is a place of worship no longer in use, for there is now a bigger church in Klipspring, where the farmers and their families pray on Sundays, and even the farm workers prefer the outdoor worship led by the Reverend Kumalo of the Living Water Assembly Church.

So the church stands empty of prayers. The building has fallen into disrepair, the roof leaks, and many of the windows are broken, the glass replaced by sheets of scrap wood. But the building is not without use.

On Sundays, on the day when there is no work to be done, some of the children from the neighboring farms come to the church, the children of the workers, but they do not come to worship, for this building is now a school. It is not a proper school, like the one in Klipspring for the white children, a sturdy brick edifice paid for by the government, where there is reading and writing, arithmetic and history. In this school, standing back from the sandy road, there are no set lessons, there is no official curriculum, and there are only a couple of shared textbooks. Attendance by the pupils is intermittent, for it is not required by any government regulation, and what child would not rather play by the riverbanks on a Sunday, when there is no work to be done on the farms? Who would not rather hunt for weaverbird nests in the willows, or find the hive where the bees hide their honey?

But Tembi attends anyway. The teacher is a man called Mr. Simon, who works in the post office in Klipspring as a sorter of parcels in the back room of the post office—a man who has attended three years of high school himself, and is thus considered educated by the workers of the farms.

Mr. Simon is paid by the parents of the children who come to the school on Sundays, and when there are few children his pay is paltry, but still he persists, for he teaches not to be paid but because he is a man with a vision of the future, of a time when it will be necessary for the children of farm workers to be able to read and write.

Tembi attends the school every Sunday. She loves the books Mr. Simon reads from, she loves her own ability to read and to write out the exercises Mr. Simon sets. There are few books in Mr. Simon’s school, but there is the Bible, which he always brings with him, and he reads the stories to Tembi and he explains to her how the words are so beautiful, how they tell of the deepest longings of those who wander in exile.

She loves to hear him talk, for Mr. Simon has traveled in the country, has been to Johannesburg and Cape Town and Durban. He tells Tembi about the ocean, the crashing waves, the smell of salt in the air, the feel of hot beach sand under bare feet. He tells her of the outside world.

On this Sunday, Tembi walks along the road that skirts the farm. From the kraal the wood-smoke scent of cooking fires lingers above the trees, the weaverbirds chatter in the willow trees; from somewhere across the river drifts the haunting refrain of voices singing a hymn.

Here is the old church, the school. A small building with a peaked roof, once painted blue but now bleached by sun and rain and wind. A simple wooden cross still stands aloft on the steeple.

Tembi mounts the steps to the front door and reaches for the handle. Then she sees the chain looped through the door handles, and the iron padlock. The school is locked. But why is the school locked? she wonders. Why lock this door when there is nothing inside to steal? And where is Mr. Simon? She grasps the chain in her hands and pulls it and tugs at the door. Why is the school locked?

Tembi steps down from the little porch and walks around to the side of the building, to one of the windows that still has glass, that is not boarded
up. Rising up on her toes she grasps the windowsill and peers into the building.

This is a church without an altar, or pews, or stained-glass windows. There is the chair where Mr. Simon sits, where the altar once stood, and there is the small blackboard he uses. There is his table, salvaged from a kitchen somewhere. There are the two benches for the pupils. And there are the books that Mr. Simon brings, and in those books are doors that open something in Tembi, and the doors lead to a road down which she can travel, and she knows that at the end of the road is a gift she will one day grasp. She knows this. It is why she is at the school today.

But where is Mr. Simon?

Tembi raps on the window with her knuckles, then after a moment goes around to the front door again. She shakes the chain and pulls at the lock. Their purpose defeats her. Why is the school locked?

As she stands there, a shiver moves across her shoulders, as if someone has touched her, as if she is not alone, and she turns slowly to look.

Within the deep shadows under the trees a man on a horse is watching Tembi. He is dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts and long khaki socks that come up to his knees. On his head he wears a wide slouch hat of the kind favored by older farmers in the district. But he is a young man. The stock of a rifle shows in the scabbard next to his saddle.

He says nothing, sitting very still, watching her, and his horse is very still too, its head held high from the pull of the reins clutched in his hand. A young man, with a scraggly blond beard.

Tembi recognizes him. He is from the neighboring farm. She thinks he is the son of old Koos van Staden. He sometimes rides his horse across the fields here, galloping through the cattle so that they scatter and the small boys have to round them up again.

He gives a quick kick to the horse’s flanks, and it trots forward across the clearing towards Tembi, and then he pulls on the reins so that the horse halts, obedient to him.

He smiles down at Tembi, but she sees that his eyes are without a smile in them. “Class is dismissed,” he says.

Tembi does not understand his words. The language she understands, yes, for he speaks in Afrikaans, which is the language between the farmers
and the workers everywhere, but it is the meaning of them that she does not understand.

“Where is Mr. Simon?” she asks. This is his school, he will tell her why a chain and padlock bar the entrance.

“Mr. Simon? Who is this Mr. Simon?”

“This is his school. He is the teacher.”

The horse drops its head to nibble at a tuft of grass and the man jerks the reins taut in his hand. The horse throws up its head and shows the whites of its eyes.

“Oh, it’s Mr. Simon’s school.” His lip curls. “And what does this Mr. Simon teach you in his school? Huh? That all this land belongs to you, that it will be yours one day, that you people can drive us off? Hey?”

The horse makes another attempt to nibble at the grass and he yanks the reins hard so that the bridle bites into the horse’s mouth.

“Well, this school is closed. For today and forever. So you can just
voetsak
off.”

Tembi recoils at the word. It is an insult, used only on dogs.

She shakes her head and mumbles, “I will wait for Mr. Simon.”

He kicks at the horse’s flanks, forcing the animal forward, towards Tembi, and the big head of the animal pushes her back against the door. The padlock digs into her back. The young man smiles at Tembi again, but again there is no smile in his eyes.

He leans down from the saddle, close to her. “How old are you,
meidjie?
” He reaches out to touch her breast. Tembi slaps his hand away.

His heels dig in at the horse’s flanks, forcing it towards Tembi, and its hooves scrabble on the steps, plunging down inches from her bare feet. She sees the animal’s big frightened eyes, the whites showing, and she smells the sweet grassy smell of the horse’s breath and the thick smell of its sweat.

“I told you,” the young man hisses down at her from between clenched teeth, “class is dismissed. There is no more school for you here.” The big head of the horse is pressing her against the door, and it turns its head away from her, showing frightened eyes.

Tembi screams. The horse rears back in alarm, almost unseating the rider.

As the man struggles to bring the horse under control, Tembi leaps from the porch, landing with a jarring thud that tumbles her to her knees. Then she is quickly up and running. Without a backward glance she is across the clearing and into the trees.

“You little nigger bitch!” he shouts after her.

Tembi runs between the trees and back to the sandy road, where she pauses, looking right and left. If a car passes, if someone is walking on the road, she can call for help.

Then she hears the thunder of the horse’s hooves drumming on the ground and she runs across the road and down towards the river. The reeds are thick and high along the riverbanks as she plunges into them. Birds scatter, chattering in alarm. The thunder of the horse’s hooves is behind her.

She flings a glance backwards, does not see the rider, and throws herself flat between the tall reeds, flat on the mud.

The horse gallops past, then a moment later charges back. Tembi lies with her cheek pressed against the mud and breathes with shallow gasps through her mouth. The earth stills under her as the reverberations of the horse’s hooves move upriver. And there is no sound, not even the birds.

She breathes hoarsely and begins to raise her head, then freezes as she hears the soft tinkle of a bridle, the soft chink of metal. The deep panting of the horse is very close. Tembi holds her breath. She waits. She hears the breathing of the man. He is waiting too. She closes her eyes and holds her breath and presses herself into the mud, willing the earth to swallow her.

When she can no longer contain her breath, when it feels as if she is under water and will drown if she does not raise her head and suck in the air, when it seems she must rise up and be found, she hears the horse move away, the jangle of the bridle.

A hard voice shouts out, “Class dismissed!” The man laughs harshly.

The horse splashes through the river and scrambles up the opposite bank, and the faint vibration trembles on the earth as it gallops away.

At last Tembi breathes. Her breath comes quickly, becomes a shuddering in her chest and then a sobbing. The tears flow down her cheeks and fall upon the mud.

Who can she tell, who can she turn to for help? Mr. Simon will never come again. The doors of the school will never reopen. The books will remain unread, closed to her. The man on the horse is the law, the iron law of this country, and there is no recourse for her. She must accept her lot; always in this country, this life, she must accept her lot.

She weeps. Tembi weeps for what is taken from her. She weeps for what will never be.