“I have to get the water to my family,” I said, walking on.
“I’m sure I told you about her . . . haven’t I?”
He stepped alongside me.
“We were seeing each other for half a year before I left,” he said. “I’m worried she’ll tire of waiting.”
Shame.
“I told her she should go and complain to the minister of war. If she yells at him the way she has at me sometimes, they’ll probably call the whole thing off and bring everybody home.”
Wonderful, his girlfriend is connected to government officials. “Does she know him?”
“That was in jest,” he said. “She works at the Provincial Laundries with a hundred other girls. She stirs steaming pots all day. She comes home exhausted. She wears an apron like yours, and it gets stained from bleach every day.”
“Must look a fright.”
“But she cleans up. Takes forever . . . all the skirts and layers of things . . . like the queen . . . rest in peace. She wraps her hair up around on top of her head and holds it up with a hundred pins.”
“What color?”
“Color?”
“Hair.”
“Brown, shiny brown . . . and thick. It goes to her waist when she lets it down.”
“Do they wear kappies?”
“The bonnets like yours? When it’s sunny . . . so not much. They wear hats . . . some with feathers and flowers, the size of a platter. She asked me to pick up some ostrich feathers and bring them home. I’ve got a bundle of them for her, and porcupine quills—they were everywhere out there—and some shells from a beach near where we landed.”
“You’re taking much of our country back to her.”
“That will have to do until I pick up some diamonds,” he said. “I thought about sending my chocolate back to her, but I needed it more than she did.”
The last time he’d said he considered sending it home to his mother. That proved he was a liar and couldn’t be trusted.
“I mentioned you in a letter to Betty.”
“Oh . . .”
“Told her that you are a little Boer girl reading Dickens—she sent me the book—and that you’re trying to learn things about us and the war because you want to be a writer.”
“Little girl?”
“Right . . . about twelve, right? . . . That’s what I told her.”
“Twelve?”
“Right . . . and you remind me of my little sister, Annie . . . she’s eleven.”
Little sister? Twelve?
“I’m fourteen,” I said, raising my voice without intending to.
I walked away resolved never to speak to him again. When I neared the tent, Moeder was out in front looking for me.
“Put the buckets down,” she said. “What took so long?”
“Long line,” I said.
“Willem, get out here,” she said toward the tent. She pulled him to her side. “Lettie, have you been bothered by any guards?”
“Me? No. What is it?”
“A guard swept up Willem and took him in for questioning,” she said.
“I said nothing to them,” Willem said.
“What did they want?”
“They asked him if he was plotting against the British,” Moeder said.
“He’s nine, Ma,” I said.
“I know. . . . Has anyone talked to you? Followed you? Asked you about our family?”
“No, Ma, nobody.” I squinted sincerely, hoping to mask the lie.
“Lettie, be careful,” she said. “Trust no one. For some reason they think we’re up to something. . . . They thought Willem was making plans to kill guards.”
23
June 1900, Venter Farm
I demanded privacy when I stripped down to bathe at home. I convinced myself I was more womanly each time. Maybe I didn’t look it, but I felt it. And I worried about even taking time to consider the matter after Oupa Gideon had planted in me the gift of guilt. In a sermon not long before the men left, he railed against the sin of pride. “All is vanity and a striving after the wind,” he said. I was only curious about my growth, and I had never heard curiosity listed among the many sins on his list.
Moeder voiced her “amen” the evening of that sermon but then took me to her room and showed me how she held her silver hand mirror with one hand and shaped her hair with the brush in the other hand. The brush set had belonged to her mother, who taught her to pinch her cheeks for color and to brush her hair in certain ways. Moeder taught me those things that night. She unpinned her hair, still spiraled from the day in braided coils, it fell thick past her shoulders. She swayed so that it fell to one side where she could brush it. I memorized the move and tried it when she handed me the brush and mirror.
“Taking care of yourself is merely tending God’s gifts, and it honors him when you are at your best,” Moeder said. That would also be my interpretation from that moment forward, and as much as we appreciated the Gospel that Oupa preached to us, Moeder and I shared the belief that he knew nothing of women.
I could see that the work and chores in the field had made me stronger, with veins branching just beneath the skin of my leaner hands. My face was no longer as round and childlike. Bina noticed. She told me one day that my face was starting to tell a different story. She smiled and said she needed to start singing a different kind of song for me. The song was lively, and she slapped her hands on a woven basket to add a rhythm. I liked it.
This night was cold, and when I pulled the pelt quilt up so that the fur warmed my chin, I seemed to melt into sleep more than fall into it. And in my dream, Oupa came to get me and pressed his finger to my lips again so I would not alarm anyone. I smiled. His finger smelled of his tobacco and of dirt and campfire. He whispered, “We’re home.”
Fighting through a depth of sleep, I forced open my eyes. It really was Oupa.
“Go wake your mother. I don’t want to frighten her.”
“Oup—” I started to shout in excitement, but he stopped me.
I opened her door and whispered. She awoke at once.
“They’re home.”
“I didn’t hear . . .”
“We sneaked in, Susanna,” Oupa said as she entered the still-dark parlor.
“Light a lamp,” she said.
“Just one . . . in the kitchen,” he said.
“Where’s Matthys . . . with the horses?”
“Not here,” he said.
“What?”
“No . . . be calm. . . . He’s fine,” Oupa said. “He went with another unit. We were told we could break off for a day.”
“I thought you stayed together.”
“He helped plan a mission and they needed him,” Schalk said, squeezing in the front door and closing it quietly. “He wouldn’t let me go with him. I tried.”
“Could he have come home?” Moeder asked. “I need to tell him—”
“They needed him,” Oupa said. “They follow him. . . . They don’t follow just anybody.”
“But I—” Moeder started.
“Settle, woman,” Oupa said. “This is important. . . . He’s important. . . . If it wasn’t, he’d be here.”
“Did Sarel go?”
“They didn’t need him. Do you have supplies ready? We can’t stay.”
“Bags are there,” she said, tilting her head toward the false wall. “But smaller.”
“Did Tuma go with him, at least?” she asked.
“No, went straight home.”