“Mummy says she’s going to wash you right out of my hair.” My half-sister Catherine was looking worried. She had no idea what having me washed out of her hair would feel like, but I could see she didn’t think she was going to like it very much.
Catherine was six. I was twenty-two. I’d moved to Grahamstown and I was living with my father and his new wife and had been for the past three months.
That short-lived career as a journalist was over (I’ll go into the whys and wherefores of that another time) and I’d become a full-time student. It so happened that my father and new step-mother supplemented their income by renting rooms out to students.
So I became one of those students. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
First some background. Grahamstown is a small town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. I don’t know what it’s like these days, but back then, outside of the tranquil jacaranda-lined streets of the prosperous white suburbs, it was desperately poor. The majority of the population lived in shanty towns on the hills, without the benefit of running water, electricity or proper sewage.
And in the town center, where they’d come every day in search of food, everywhere you looked there were children begging for bread. If begging failed, they’d forage in dustbins.
Now I’ve never been partial to the sight of children foraging in dustbins for food. And so I took to feeding them. Word got around and soon I had a following, a small army of children who would wait for me on street corners, or slip through the gate and came down the side of the house to the outbuilding where my room was.
This went down like a lead ballon with Roderick and Step Mamma. You may recall from an earlier post that my new Step-Mamma was just five years older than I was. She was now 27 to my 22, and so I didn’t really consider her my ‘mother.’ And I guess she lacked the maturity to deal with a 22 year old step-daughter who didn’t like her very much.
But aside from the fact that we were effectively contemporaries, she was one scary young woman. Her favourite occupation was having blazing rows with people. Blazing rows really floated her boat. And I’m not talking about stimulating debates, or fierce arguments here (I love a good argument personally) I’m talking about full-on confrontations, swords drawn.
She’d come home from work, glowing with spiteful triumph over some or other row she’d had with some or other unfortunate workmate. “I told her,” she’d say. Or “You should have seen her face when I put her straight.”
It was inevitable that sooner or later all this would be turned in my direction and she’d start feeling the need to put me straight too.
And sure enough, one evening she stormed into my room and issued the following ultimatum:
“If you don’t stop feeding those bloody kaffirs you are out.” (For those who don’t know the word, ‘kaffir’ is a derogatory term used in South Africa to refer to black people, with the same connotations ‘nigger’ carries in the United States.)
The problem was that the ‘bloody kaffirs’ as she called them, were no longer waiting discreetly for me on street corners. They’d taken to knocking on the front door, and asking for Margaret.
“You are endangering my life, and the lives of my husband and my daughter,” she raged on.
I won’t pretend that there weren’t other factors that played into this boil-over. I couldn’t have been easy to have around. There were constant grumblings from all quarters about the state I habitually left the kitchen in. (It was a separate kitchen for the sole use of us student lodgers). The trouble was I simply didn’t notice the mess. To this day I don’t notice mess until it reaches a point where it's growing stuff. I was so bad at this cleaning business one of the other student lodgers moved out. So Roderick and Step-Mamma lost income because of me.
There was something else at play, too. My step mother was, I think, jealous of my relationship with her daughter, my half-sister. For I had never loved another living relative half as dearly as I loved Catherine. In spite of the age difference we just clicked. She’d come running to my room after school and spend the rest of the afternoon with me, until she was called in to the main house for dinner, and she’d go off slowly, with dragging footsteps. My heart would twist into a little knot. How I feared for little Catherine.
All things considered, there wasn’t really a decision to be made.
“Fine, I’ll go.”
“Good riddance,” she said.
And so I packed my belongings into a single suitcase while Catherine watched and told me what ‘Mummy’ had said about the hairwashing. This I gathered was some kind of metaphor for her plans to expunge me from her daughter’s mind and heart.
On that last morning we said our goodbyes, Catherine and I, and I walked to the railway station alone, dragging my suitcase behind me. One of my fellow student-lodgers turned up to say goodbye, but of Roderick, Step-Mamma and my little sister Catherine there was no sign. And I never saw any of them ever again.
My dear M,
I won't pretend to have experienced as tragic a childhood as you. Your father's willingness to let you walk away without ever trying to contact you again proves to me that he was no man of God. My dad may have been harsh and immovable, but he worked like a dog all of his life to provide for his family and he stayed with my mother until his dying day. I've only told you how he treated me wrong and caused much of the divide that came between us, but this week I will tell of a time when my father shocked the hell out of me by coming to my defense and making me proud.
It was the same school year when I was suspended for 'suspicion of smoking,' for smoking pot behind the boy's room. In spite of the psychologist I was sent to, the beating I received for coming home stoned, and the gigantic hole that nearly became my grave, I continued to pursue getting stoned out of my mind. Pot was still the drug of choice, but as most who cross the line into illicit drug usage do, I also moved on to the 'hard stuff'.
Amphetamines, LSD, mescaline, and nearly any other street-drug that you could name, (with the exception of crack and heroin - crack hadn't been invented yet and heroin was still a big-city problem) could be found in the hallways of our high school. I tried them all. They were much more expensive and harder to find than pot, which probably saved me in many ways, because their lure was immense. Smoking weed made my world less hostile; it mellowed out the emotions and I really didn't care anymore that I had become a lying, cheating, conniving little shit who would steal a dollar out of his cash-strapped mother's purse to buy a joint. However, when I took a hit of LSD, I became another person. I didn't care that that person was even more of an ass than the pot-smoking me, as long as I didn't have to be me for a few hours, it was all worthwhile.
So, what does that have to do with my father? Nothing, really, but it does lay some ground-work for the next time I got suspended for drugs. My father eventually joins the story, so be patient. I'm a writer and I will get there when I get there!
Anyway, there was a girl in my class, (whom I'll call 'Mandy' for the lack of a name worthy of remembrance) who became a supplier of many of the new drugs that I had developed a craving for. She had an older sister who was out of school. Good ole’ big-sis seized upon my generation’s growing thirst to 'turn on and tune out' by supplying Mandy with enough recreational poison to fry the brains of an entire city block. She had such a thriving business that she took to taking orders and then doling them out every morning, like a cashier behind the counter of a very busy deli: "Let's see... you had the mescaline with a side of LSD... would you like a joint to go with that? They're on sale right now."
Needless to say, this drew a lot of unwanted attention from prying eyes and she was soon led away in handcuffs. And then the bomb dropped. Mandy was not only the most prolific dealer in the school, she was also the most organized. She had records that were the envy of most accountants. Mandy and her big sis went to jail. Everyone on her list got suspended. Those who had bought from her that day and had already paid for and received their orders were suspended for the rest of the year. Those like me, who had either bought from her in the past or hadn’t received their order, were suspended for a month.
I don’t remember how many kids were on her list, but it was a lot. Nearly 100, if I had to guess. I suppose that might have been why I didn’t get a beating or have to dig anymore holes. I was no longer the biggest embarrassment in the neighborhood. Mandy lived less than a mile down the road. It was probably her fault that I got caught up in drugs. Or maybe it was because my dad could keep a closer eye on me while I was at home. It was only school where I seemed to get into trouble. Whatever the reason, my only punishment was to spend the month at home, away from my friends and the drugs, which was truly enough.
At the end of our suspension period, all those who had been caught on the list were to go before the school board for questioning. I had no idea what this meant; had I a clue, I might have run away and joined the circus. To this day, my heart begins to thump inside my chest and my breathing becomes shallow just from the remembrance of that night. It scarred me for life.
We drove to the school on a cold and snowy night. My father was already in a foul mood because they hadn’t called off the inquisition because of the weather. The parking lot was full, so we had to park a good ways from the door, which didn’t help his disposition a bit. They were taking one druggie and their parents at a time, so we had to wait for our turn – another mood killer. By the time they called my name, my father was ready to bite nails and spit bullets. I was afraid of his wrath more than any silly school board… silly me.
They led us into a room with a large table that had the entire school board seated around it. We were made to sit at the head of the table. We had bright lights on us, but the lighting was such around the table that you could barely make out a face from the board members. I’m sure this was done on purpose. They didn’t want us to see the faces of the people who were about to make a spectacle of us.
The principle introduced me as one of three who had been caught up in the only two drug scandals in the history of ROVA High School (the other two of my friends who got caught smoking behind the boy’s room were on Mandy’s list too). After that auspicious introduction, he opened the floor to questioning. What happened next I can only give a general feel about. The questions were so outrageous and accusatory that I can’t remember a single one. They wouldn’t even give me time to form an intelligent answer, which I’m not sure I could have done anyway. They just kept firing question after hate filled question, ignoring that I hadn’t said a word. The lighting, and the fact that I had so many adults around me, filled with so much malice, made me close down and shut off.
At that moment, I believe that I experienced what it feels like to be a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. I was frozen in fear and couldn’t speak a word. My father stood up and yelled, “Enough! Can’t you see you’ve scared the kid to death! You’ve had your fun. We’re leaving.” No one said a word as we stood up and walked out. It was the only time in my teens that I was actually proud of my father.
On a side note: I survived being one of the three boys who were part of the first drug scandals in ROVA High School history and I even passed all of my classes that year. Something neither of my boy’s room smoking buddies can say. Of course, my father never mentioned that he was proud of that fact. I was a druggie after all.
Catherine was six. I was twenty-two. I’d moved to Grahamstown and I was living with my father and his new wife and had been for the past three months.
That short-lived career as a journalist was over (I’ll go into the whys and wherefores of that another time) and I’d become a full-time student. It so happened that my father and new step-mother supplemented their income by renting rooms out to students.
So I became one of those students. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
First some background. Grahamstown is a small town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. I don’t know what it’s like these days, but back then, outside of the tranquil jacaranda-lined streets of the prosperous white suburbs, it was desperately poor. The majority of the population lived in shanty towns on the hills, without the benefit of running water, electricity or proper sewage.
And in the town center, where they’d come every day in search of food, everywhere you looked there were children begging for bread. If begging failed, they’d forage in dustbins.
Now I’ve never been partial to the sight of children foraging in dustbins for food. And so I took to feeding them. Word got around and soon I had a following, a small army of children who would wait for me on street corners, or slip through the gate and came down the side of the house to the outbuilding where my room was.
This went down like a lead ballon with Roderick and Step Mamma. You may recall from an earlier post that my new Step-Mamma was just five years older than I was. She was now 27 to my 22, and so I didn’t really consider her my ‘mother.’ And I guess she lacked the maturity to deal with a 22 year old step-daughter who didn’t like her very much.
But aside from the fact that we were effectively contemporaries, she was one scary young woman. Her favourite occupation was having blazing rows with people. Blazing rows really floated her boat. And I’m not talking about stimulating debates, or fierce arguments here (I love a good argument personally) I’m talking about full-on confrontations, swords drawn.
She’d come home from work, glowing with spiteful triumph over some or other row she’d had with some or other unfortunate workmate. “I told her,” she’d say. Or “You should have seen her face when I put her straight.”
It was inevitable that sooner or later all this would be turned in my direction and she’d start feeling the need to put me straight too.
And sure enough, one evening she stormed into my room and issued the following ultimatum:
“If you don’t stop feeding those bloody kaffirs you are out.” (For those who don’t know the word, ‘kaffir’ is a derogatory term used in South Africa to refer to black people, with the same connotations ‘nigger’ carries in the United States.)
The problem was that the ‘bloody kaffirs’ as she called them, were no longer waiting discreetly for me on street corners. They’d taken to knocking on the front door, and asking for Margaret.
“You are endangering my life, and the lives of my husband and my daughter,” she raged on.
I won’t pretend that there weren’t other factors that played into this boil-over. I couldn’t have been easy to have around. There were constant grumblings from all quarters about the state I habitually left the kitchen in. (It was a separate kitchen for the sole use of us student lodgers). The trouble was I simply didn’t notice the mess. To this day I don’t notice mess until it reaches a point where it's growing stuff. I was so bad at this cleaning business one of the other student lodgers moved out. So Roderick and Step-Mamma lost income because of me.
There was something else at play, too. My step mother was, I think, jealous of my relationship with her daughter, my half-sister. For I had never loved another living relative half as dearly as I loved Catherine. In spite of the age difference we just clicked. She’d come running to my room after school and spend the rest of the afternoon with me, until she was called in to the main house for dinner, and she’d go off slowly, with dragging footsteps. My heart would twist into a little knot. How I feared for little Catherine.
All things considered, there wasn’t really a decision to be made.
“Fine, I’ll go.”
“Good riddance,” she said.
And so I packed my belongings into a single suitcase while Catherine watched and told me what ‘Mummy’ had said about the hairwashing. This I gathered was some kind of metaphor for her plans to expunge me from her daughter’s mind and heart.
On that last morning we said our goodbyes, Catherine and I, and I walked to the railway station alone, dragging my suitcase behind me. One of my fellow student-lodgers turned up to say goodbye, but of Roderick, Step-Mamma and my little sister Catherine there was no sign. And I never saw any of them ever again.
My dear M,
I won't pretend to have experienced as tragic a childhood as you. Your father's willingness to let you walk away without ever trying to contact you again proves to me that he was no man of God. My dad may have been harsh and immovable, but he worked like a dog all of his life to provide for his family and he stayed with my mother until his dying day. I've only told you how he treated me wrong and caused much of the divide that came between us, but this week I will tell of a time when my father shocked the hell out of me by coming to my defense and making me proud.
It was the same school year when I was suspended for 'suspicion of smoking,' for smoking pot behind the boy's room. In spite of the psychologist I was sent to, the beating I received for coming home stoned, and the gigantic hole that nearly became my grave, I continued to pursue getting stoned out of my mind. Pot was still the drug of choice, but as most who cross the line into illicit drug usage do, I also moved on to the 'hard stuff'.
Amphetamines, LSD, mescaline, and nearly any other street-drug that you could name, (with the exception of crack and heroin - crack hadn't been invented yet and heroin was still a big-city problem) could be found in the hallways of our high school. I tried them all. They were much more expensive and harder to find than pot, which probably saved me in many ways, because their lure was immense. Smoking weed made my world less hostile; it mellowed out the emotions and I really didn't care anymore that I had become a lying, cheating, conniving little shit who would steal a dollar out of his cash-strapped mother's purse to buy a joint. However, when I took a hit of LSD, I became another person. I didn't care that that person was even more of an ass than the pot-smoking me, as long as I didn't have to be me for a few hours, it was all worthwhile.
So, what does that have to do with my father? Nothing, really, but it does lay some ground-work for the next time I got suspended for drugs. My father eventually joins the story, so be patient. I'm a writer and I will get there when I get there!
Anyway, there was a girl in my class, (whom I'll call 'Mandy' for the lack of a name worthy of remembrance) who became a supplier of many of the new drugs that I had developed a craving for. She had an older sister who was out of school. Good ole’ big-sis seized upon my generation’s growing thirst to 'turn on and tune out' by supplying Mandy with enough recreational poison to fry the brains of an entire city block. She had such a thriving business that she took to taking orders and then doling them out every morning, like a cashier behind the counter of a very busy deli: "Let's see... you had the mescaline with a side of LSD... would you like a joint to go with that? They're on sale right now."
Needless to say, this drew a lot of unwanted attention from prying eyes and she was soon led away in handcuffs. And then the bomb dropped. Mandy was not only the most prolific dealer in the school, she was also the most organized. She had records that were the envy of most accountants. Mandy and her big sis went to jail. Everyone on her list got suspended. Those who had bought from her that day and had already paid for and received their orders were suspended for the rest of the year. Those like me, who had either bought from her in the past or hadn’t received their order, were suspended for a month.
I don’t remember how many kids were on her list, but it was a lot. Nearly 100, if I had to guess. I suppose that might have been why I didn’t get a beating or have to dig anymore holes. I was no longer the biggest embarrassment in the neighborhood. Mandy lived less than a mile down the road. It was probably her fault that I got caught up in drugs. Or maybe it was because my dad could keep a closer eye on me while I was at home. It was only school where I seemed to get into trouble. Whatever the reason, my only punishment was to spend the month at home, away from my friends and the drugs, which was truly enough.
At the end of our suspension period, all those who had been caught on the list were to go before the school board for questioning. I had no idea what this meant; had I a clue, I might have run away and joined the circus. To this day, my heart begins to thump inside my chest and my breathing becomes shallow just from the remembrance of that night. It scarred me for life.
We drove to the school on a cold and snowy night. My father was already in a foul mood because they hadn’t called off the inquisition because of the weather. The parking lot was full, so we had to park a good ways from the door, which didn’t help his disposition a bit. They were taking one druggie and their parents at a time, so we had to wait for our turn – another mood killer. By the time they called my name, my father was ready to bite nails and spit bullets. I was afraid of his wrath more than any silly school board… silly me.
They led us into a room with a large table that had the entire school board seated around it. We were made to sit at the head of the table. We had bright lights on us, but the lighting was such around the table that you could barely make out a face from the board members. I’m sure this was done on purpose. They didn’t want us to see the faces of the people who were about to make a spectacle of us.
The principle introduced me as one of three who had been caught up in the only two drug scandals in the history of ROVA High School (the other two of my friends who got caught smoking behind the boy’s room were on Mandy’s list too). After that auspicious introduction, he opened the floor to questioning. What happened next I can only give a general feel about. The questions were so outrageous and accusatory that I can’t remember a single one. They wouldn’t even give me time to form an intelligent answer, which I’m not sure I could have done anyway. They just kept firing question after hate filled question, ignoring that I hadn’t said a word. The lighting, and the fact that I had so many adults around me, filled with so much malice, made me close down and shut off.
At that moment, I believe that I experienced what it feels like to be a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. I was frozen in fear and couldn’t speak a word. My father stood up and yelled, “Enough! Can’t you see you’ve scared the kid to death! You’ve had your fun. We’re leaving.” No one said a word as we stood up and walked out. It was the only time in my teens that I was actually proud of my father.
On a side note: I survived being one of the three boys who were part of the first drug scandals in ROVA High School history and I even passed all of my classes that year. Something neither of my boy’s room smoking buddies can say. Of course, my father never mentioned that he was proud of that fact. I was a druggie after all.