“That day when we met at the fence to talk about Oom Sarel; we got into so many things. She hadn’t known how many times I had been through it, and what it had done to me. And I didn’t know she had experienced that grief herself. It was part of what brought us together, I think.”
One evening, Tante Hannah took down her “honeymoon” stitchery and removed it from the frame. With a small knife, she undid the knots and pulled out much of the scene of her imagined life, which had proved to be so very far from reality.
“I’ll leave the children in the front,” she said. “Because we can say they are you and Willem now.” She stitched a new scene over the top on the same cloth, the home simpler and smaller. But the pattern of the old stitch marks showed in a shadowy outline. It always would, and I think it was important to her that it did.
She gave me a fresh cloth in case I wanted to start a piece of my own, but I did not, not yet. I wanted to spend time with her mastering the stitches first.
WE WORKED UNTIL COLLAPSE most days as we planted and hoed, and tore down parts of the house and barn that were beyond salvaging. Moeder outlasted us all.
As we worked, we fretted over our men. We had still not heard word of them, and our worries were the only thing that grew quickly on the farm. Nature had overtaken the land and was reluctant to turn it back, slamming us in succession with stormclouds of locusts and then a severe drought. It would be many growing seasons before things were right, and the losses from that time would never be recouped completely. Not only had plants died, but no seeds had been planted, no seedlings sprouted. As I heard from other families in our region, it seemed that nearly three years of war had had a similar effect on all our lives. Half a generation had perished; another half was unborn.
I found myself looking forward to the farm work, even the most tiring, and was eager to get to it in the mornings. And I surprised myself by taking pleasure in the simple act of working alongside Moeder, shoulder to shoulder. At times we’d race. When I looked at the farm, and what we accomplished each day working it, I felt even more a part of it all.
Restlessness gripped me more than fatigue some evenings, and I walked as far as I could in one direction, trying to tear down even the memory of boundaries. A breeze tickled the hairs of my neck on one evening walk, and when I looked up I could see a horse shuffling at a speed slower than a man would walk. I asked myself whether it was my imagination again.
I turned in that direction and then ran faster than I thought I could. And the figure did not disappear; it was Schalk. His clothes were ripped and patched and hanging loose. Slumped in the saddle, his hat pulled low, he looked like an old man, but I could see the still-wispy beard clinging to his jawline. His pony did not even twitch its ears as I raced at them.
“We didn’t know about you,” I said. “We had no word.”
“Ma? Willem? Cee-Cee?”
“Moeder and Willem . . . not Cee-Cee.”
“No.” He slumped on the horse’s neck. “When?”
“September. Vader?”
“Yes . . . not Oupa.”
“We heard. But Vader’s fine?”
“He’s unhurt.”
I hugged his leg harder and could feel that some lean muscle still protected his bones. He had made it through. He put his hand on my head and petted my hair. He dismounted the strange little horse I did not recognize, and we held each other without a word until the horse nudged Schalk with its muzzle.
I told him Oom Sarel was gone, too. He stared hard, reading my face. Sharing had always been so easy between us, but like everything else, that would take time to rebuild. He led the horse by its bridle, and we took many strides before he said, “Later.”
His skin was covered in sores. He saw me examining him.
“From having no salt, they say,” he explained. He wore a burlap mealie sack over his shirt as a jacket.
“When is Vader coming home?” I asked.
“Later,” he said again.
“What?”
“Let me say it once, when we’re all together,” he said. “Lettie . . . I don’t think I want to do it more than once.”
“You said he’s all right.”
“He is.”
“And Tuma captured?”
“Ja . . . he was with the after-riders watching horses, and a unit got behind us and took everything . . . almost a year ago . . . nothing since . . . work camp, probably.”
“We’re at Tante Hannah’s now . . .”
“Everyone?”
“Um-hmm.”
“With Tante Hannah? Moeder, too?”
“It’s good.”
“Let’s go there.”
The saddle slipped as he tried to remount. He had to tighten the cinch on the withered pony. He pulled himself up and then took my arm and swung me up behind him. The knots of the horse’s spine dug at me with each slow step. I felt guilty to be its burden and thought of getting down, but it was so good to be close to Schalk that I could not bring myself to pull away. I leaned in tighter, the rough burlap on my cheek, my fingers laced against the ladder of his ribs.
“Ma,” I shouted as we neared, and I swung down from the horse to announce Schalk’s return.
Willem appeared first, then Moeder. They held him in a bundle.
“Come inside,” Tante Hannah said from the door, and she gathered him in.
Moeder looked past us, toward the trail. But she did not ask the question. Schalk waited until we quieted.
“They brought us in to turn over our weapons and sign the oath . . .”
Moeder shook her head and turned away.
“It said that we had to agree to acknowledge the terms of the surrender and become British subjects,” he said. “Surrendering wasn’t enough. . . . We had to sign that we would be British subjects . . . an oath. Vader stood right behind me. . . . I signed it. . . . He shook my hand. . . . He said he could not. By then I had no choice.”
“He’s not coming home?” Willem asked.
“In time. . . . I’m not sure when.”
“Where is he?” Willem asked.
“He said he thought some men would try to regroup in Madagascar.”
“Madagascar?” I was stunned. “Why would he not come home to us?”
“Is he going to try to come back and fight?” Willem asked. “Can he keep the war going?”
Schalk raised his hands as a shield against more questions. But I had so many. What about Moeder? What about us?
“What did he say? At least tell us that,” I said.
“He said that Moeder would understand.”
She understood. We all knew she did. She probably expected it. That might have been why she said that the war wasn’t completely over. But I did not understand. Not then. I thought it was foolish of Vader then. And I still thought it was foolish when he returned a year later, having gained nothing from his pride. But I was so happy to see him that I did not complain. Neither did Moeder.
BINA WAS BENT OVER, clearing weeds from the garden spot, when we got home from Tante Hannah’s one morning. She was half her size, and her shoulders sloped; her robes were threadbare and dun. She worked slowly and had to use her hands on her knees to rise to standing. But it was her; we heard her singing almost as soon as we saw her.
“Bina,” I shouted.
“Peace,” she said.
“Peace,” I answered. “I’ve been so worried.”
“You knew I would come back to you,” she said. “Come here, child.”
She hugged me.