Holding Up the Sky (46 page)

Later that day, during my visit with the family doctor, I tried to stifle a smile when he presented me with a pregnancy test kit identical to the one I had used that morning. I know Mum thought the doctor's method would be far more scientific. He did, of course, do a blood test, but the results wouldn't be back for a few days.

When I returned home with a smile from ear to ear, Mum felt confident enough to celebrate. I never told her what method the doctor had used to confirm the pregnancy.

As the months went by, I approached the changes in my body like a second Masters degree, reading everything I could get my hands on to describe my baby's inner life. Having done a medical-type undergraduate degree, I had all the basics of physiology and anatomy but as the months passed, I felt ready to sit an exam on antenatal development.

Mum worried that I was overly focused on the pregnancy. ‘Don't forget you already have a child and she needs your attention too', she cautioned. I was unsure whether Mum was once more trying to protect me from the pain I would feel if I lost the baby or whether I was truly ignoring Mello. I knew two things at that point: firstly, it is my nature to throw myself completely into whatever I do; and secondly, I resented the suggestion that I shouldn't marvel at every moment of the pregnancy simply because I had a child already. I couldn't have articulated it at the time, but part of me resented both Mello and Mum for putting a dampener on the experience of my first pregnancy. I felt that if Mello hadn't been in the picture, Mum wouldn't have been pushing me to moderate my enthusiasm. But given my closeness to both of them, I couldn't allow those thoughts to find expression.

Dad ultimately gave me a target for these emotions when he casually passed a comment without realising the potential impact of his words. After telling me about his magic Friday with Mello, he said, ‘I don't know if I could love another child the way I love Mello'. This could have become a philosophical discussion about the nature of love and the fact that, while it sometimes feels finite, it is not and can be endlessly stretched to include others. But given my current sensitivity and my history of sparring arguments with him, I took exception to his words and let them cut open a wound between us in which all my other emotions could fester. From that moment, I felt doubly protective of the small life I was carrying, determined to protect my baby from the same barbs I felt I had suffered. It was as if invisible lines had been drawn.

In the month before we were due to leave, Dad suggested that Mello should stay in Australia with him as she would not reach her potential if she went back to South Africa with us. I chose to read this as a vote of no confidence in my ability to parent her and lashed out at him. I believed he had come between Mello and me over the course of the year and I blamed him for the distance I now felt between her and me. In fact, it was more likely a result of the jealousy I felt about Mello being the apple of Dad's eye in a way that I had never been, combined with my resentment at being made to feel guilty about being absorbed in my pregnancy. I could not admit this to myself, nor could I feel anger towards my mother whom I loved dearly and never fought with. So Dad bore the brunt of my frustrations then and for years to come whenever I described the impact our time in Australia had had on my relationship with Mello. I believed he had spoilt her and had cast doubt on my own ability to parent her adequately. I believed it was my father's fault that my relationship with Mello now had an edge to it where only love had been. But perhaps ultimately Mum was right, because Mello seemed to be jealous of the baby even before it was born, somehow sensing that a change was to come that would shift her place in the family.

Teboho continued to see the African friends he had made in Sydney, sometimes having the families meet up for lunch but mostly going out at night to African clubs and bands. I was completely robbed of energy in the first four months of my pregnancy, especially having to juggle work, a Masters degree and parenting. So mostly Teboho went off alone on Saturday nights with his friends. Those nights were long and painful for me. Though I did not raise the events of Tasmania with him, perhaps for fear of a return to cruelty, they were large and fresh in my mind on those lonely nights. It felt as if there was a small wild animal inside my heart that was scratching its way out and my whole body was taut in an effort to keep it from breaking free. This pain would visit me again and again in the years ahead, haunting me like the silent approach of a torturer's hands.

When we left Australia in August of 1995, I was five months pregnant. Teboho was excited at the prospect of going home, not only to South Africa but home to Mohlakeng. I was also keen to leave behind an experience that had exposed a side to Teboho I had not seen before. The effervescence and optimism I loved were replaced in part by something I did not recognise and did not like. I suspect his inability to provide for the family had left him feeling emasculated and inadequate. Though he never said anything, I did wonder if he resented me for insisting we come and live in Australia for a time.

As we left, I knew that we would never live here again. I tried to think instead of what lay ahead back in Africa, a life that I had missed almost as much as Teboho had. And while I deeply appreciated Mum and Dad's generosity and hospitality throughout those eighteen months, I also felt I needed to get some space and try to rebuild my relationship with my daughter.

WITH
OUR RETURN TO JO'BURG, I KNEW I WAS ENTERING A PHASE OF MY LIFE THAT WAS MORE ABOUT ARRIVING THAN ABOUT MOVING ON TO WHAT CAME NEXT. AFTER MANY YEARS OF WORKING TOWARDS OUR NEXT GOAL, WE HAD NO OTHER PLANS IN OUR MINDS THAN TO BE IN THIS PLACE, IN MOHLAKENG, 'THE PLACE OF REEDS'.

We had borrowed a little money and bought some land across the road from Mohlakeng itself. The land had the foundations of a house already on it, though I could not say what stopped the previous owners from continuing. The white people who had lived in the area and were wealthy enough to move to a better place were selling up as the change in the country brought about an expansion of townships like Mohlakeng. Those who could afford no better, or refused to be moved, stayed on and had to cope with the changing social landscape. Some were bitter about it and others tried to ignore it, but change came creeping slowly towards them like the rising tide, powerful, inevitable and life altering.

Our new neighbours fell into the ‘ignore it' category as we, and others families from Mohlakeng, bought land and sometimes houses. The plots were quite large, giving the area a semi-rural feel and appealing to large, black, extended families and those who wished to grow crops of mealies and the like. I later found out that this area was also home to the most conservative wing of South African Afrikaaner politics: one of our not too distant neighbours was caught harbouring a man who had slaughtered a number of black people in the name of his political party. After learning this I made sure I locked the doors at night, but slept no better.

In the first month after our arrival, we stayed with Moss and Khumo. Their house was now one of the largest in the township as they had added a second storey extension in our absence. It stood out against the rest of the dusty street with its two rows of identical township houses, placed one next to the other like a row of a child's Matchbox cars. As when I had visited in the past, Boggie gladly surrendered his room and joined his parents in theirs. Teboho and I shared our room with Mello, putting her on a mattress on the floor. My old friend Papi, Moss's father, was still well and occupying the bedroom next door. He was delighted to have me back, particularly in my pregnant state, and regularly broke with tradition by referring to it. He seemed fascinated by the concept of a mixed-raced child and was waiting anxiously for its birth.

Teboho had immediately applied for work when we returned and was snapped up into a good job at the South African Council of Churches, as the National Coordinator for their Human Rights Program. I think it may have reaffirmed his sense of worth as the old Teboho soon resurfaced and took centre stage once more. Mohlakeng was over an hour's drive away from the city. Fortunately, Khumo was also working at the Council of Churches, so Moss dropped the two of them off in the city on the way to his office a few blocks away. Back in Mohlakeng, I set about looking for a preschool for Mello, investigating local builders and seeing if I could find a house for us to rent while we built.

I was surprised that there were so few places to rent in the area, severely limiting our options. Ultimately, the only house I could find was through approaching a local bank to ask about repossession sales. It was in a suburb not too far from Mohlakeng that the bank was willing to rent a small house on a month by month basis, on the condition that we make it available for viewing by potential buyers with a few hours notice. I took down the address and found the suburb on the map. It was on the southwest side of Randfontein and only a short drive to Moss and Khumo's; it looked fine to me on paper. I bundled Mello into the car and set out to find it.

Like many towns outside the main city sprawl, Randfontein had a number of satellite suburbs that were scattered across the veld, like drops of mercury on a stone table. Each suburb was its own little enclave, joined to another only by a connecting road that crossed the expanse of veld that lay between. From the main road that joined Mohlakeng to Randfontein, I headed west to reach this house in the small suburb of Finsbury.

I pulled up in front of what was essentially a vacant lot with no fencing and no garden, just tufts of spiky grass and dirt. The tiny house stood there like a lost child. I took a deep breath before opening the car door, knowing that it was either this or impose on Moss and Khumo for months. I was also aware that Karen, my Melbourne friend who was with me when the first stirrings of pregnancy made themselves known, was coming over for a visit in a few weeks and it was not fair to ask Khumo to house her as well. With all that in mind, I climbed out of the car and opened the back door for Mello. Hand in hand we went up to the front door, the bank having given me a key to inspect the property. The house was a simple box shape: two bedrooms, one bathroom, lounge and kitchen. I entered the house through the kitchen door and in two steps was in the lounge. The rest of the tour was equally brief but given it was this or nothing, I told Mello this would be our new home for the next few months. At least she was excited.

Two weeks later, we were settled in. My daily routine started with taking Teboho across to Moss and Khumo's house in the morning for him to catch a lift to work. Mello and I then returned to Finsbury for breakfast before driving the twenty minutes to Krugersdorp where Mello was now enrolled in preschool in the same mining complex where Mama and Bophundlovu had lived many years before. After dropping Mello, I would head back to Moss and Khumo's house, put on a load of washing and make a few phone calls, as there was no phone in our Finsbury house. We had organised the builders to start in a few weeks and were hoping that enough of our own house would be built to allow us to move in before Christmas, when the baby was due. Once the phone calls were made and any grocery shopping done, I would return to the house for lunch and a short nap before driving back to Krugersdorp to fetch Mello. To save me the drive, Moss would drop Teboho home in the evenings.

Karen arrived when I was seven months pregnant. She planned to spend three weeks with us as well as going on a camping trip in Kruger National Park. There is nothing like the face of an old friend to raise your spirits and I was delighted to see Karen come through the arrival gates at the airport. I knew that her natural pragmatism and good humour would help me get through the current instability I was feeling. Now that I was pregnant, my capacity to go with the flow was much reduced. I was also having a few problems with Mello and hoping that Karen's close connection with her would help. My daughter and I were yet to recapture the closeness we'd had before our time in Australia, with Mello's behaviour and my response to it only driving us further apart.

I wrote several letters home to Mum regarding Mello's struggles to settle back into South Africa.

Mello's behaviour was deeply troubling to me. Despite doing everything I could to help her adjust, she seemed determined to prove herself better than the rest of the family, the rest of the community. Perhaps she no longer felt special, something I should have had more sympathy for.

Being heavily pregnant, my reserves were low and her belligerence was sending me over the edge. Each night, after she was finally asleep, I found myself rehashing the events of the day and panicking about how to resolve the dilemma. It was so bad at one point that I was beginning to get cramps and had some leakage of fluid. At the next antenatal check-up, the sister confirmed that my stress levels were not helping, but there was no major cause for alarm with the baby as these kinds of small ruptures of the membrane usually heal over. Truth be told, I think I also resented Mello during that period for putting me under such stress that it was affecting the baby; any sympathy I had for her iced over. So it was with great relief that Karen was now here to weave her magic with Mello, as I had often seen her do when we were living in Australia. In fact, there was something so special between them, something I could not give, that Mello to this day refers to Karen as her ‘second mother'.

On Karen's first day, we went across to the plot where the building was about to begin. With the foundations laid and a steel frame construction, the house would go up quickly. I wanted to be moved in by Christmas which was just over two months away, so it would be an aggressive plan. At that point, I would have been willing to live in a warehouse as long as it was ours. After taking a good look around, we returned to the Finsbury house for lunch. As we sat at the kitchen table eating sandwiches, there was a knock at the door. The property was not fenced and our visitor had walked right up to the open door, giving us a start. He was from Mohlakeng and looking for work.

‘Can I do your garden for you, Madam?'

‘But there is no garden', Karen replied, holding back a giggle, ‘only dirt and weeds.'

‘Then I can pull up those weeds, Madam?'

Karen had to look away at this point, not wanting to laugh openly, so I told the man to wait and I would give him some money for lunch as we really didn't need a gardener. This was Karen's first experience of the peculiarities of South Africa, but there were more to come.

The next morning, I left Karen, Mello and Katie–who had come home with Teboho the night before to spend a few days with us–in Finsbury while I went to Moss and Khumo's to do a load of washing. Karen thought she would take the girls to a park she had seen a few blocks away. While it only consisted of a few swings in a vacant lot, it potentially provided more entertainment than staying at home or coming with me. So she locked up the house and headed off down the road with a girl on each side, all hand in hand. Karen noticed that she was attracting attention as the occupants of passing cars turned to look at the little trio. The interest was not only in the fact that they were together but also in the fact that Karen was obviously looking after them, as if she was the maid and the girls the children of her employer. Karen began to feel uncomfortable, but did not wish to be deterred by other people's reactions. Then she noticed one man who was so astonished by what he saw that he turned his head to watch them, and kept it turned as he drove on down the road and right into the back of a parked car. At this point Karen thought better of challenging stereotypes and turned the girls on their heels and ran home, not wanting to be around for the explosion of anger that would undoubtedly follow.

In Karen's first week with us, I was already seeing an improvement in Mello. Karen had made Mello her project and was spending hours playing with her, reading books and taking her out. I could not have been more grateful. When she left for her camping trip to Kruger National Park, I hoped that Mello would not relapse. For my part, I had promised to give Mello more attention, keeping the visits of the cousins to a minimum so as not to divide my time between them. I had come to realise that when the cousins were visiting, I favoured them over Mello because they had so little and Mello had so much. I wanted Mello to be a generous host–but she was just trying to hold on to what she felt she had lost.

Since our return, we had been attending antenatal classes and having regular check-ups at the hospital we had chosen for the birth. I discovered that South Africa had quite a high ratio of caesarean sections to natural births in the white community and was determined to make my own choices about the birth, as it had been a low risk pregnancy. We found a hospital in Jo'burg called Marymount that had a birthing unit as well as a labour ward. The birthing unit was staffed by midwives only, but if there were any complications with the birth, the obstetricians were down the other end of the corridor. They also had water birth facilities which I was interested in exploring for pain relief during the labour.

On my first visit to the hospital, I met Mona who was the head of the Active Birth Unit and also editor of one of the country's popular baby magazines. Each time we went for a check-up, we met with one of the midwives on the team–there were four of them–as we did not know who would be on duty on the day and didn't want to be attended by a stranger. I was very comfortable with all the midwives, though it was Sue who would ultimately deliver the baby.

All the check-ups had gone well, though I had only put on 6 kilograms in the pregnancy thus far. The midwife assured us that the baby was a good size and was unaffected, though I could do with a little less stress in my life. I bit my lip at the thought of building a house and moving in, all in the next two months.

Despite all the activity that was going on around me, I still took time out to enjoy being pregnant. While the first few months had been grim with morning sickness, from sixteen weeks onwards it had been a joy. The first few flutters had now turned into nightly festivals of movement. Karen, Teboho and I would sit on the couch and watch a foot roll across my belly, touch a little hand as it tentatively explored the boundaries of its world. I was in awe of the life inside, amazed that this was happening to me. While I knew it was the stuff of life and that women all over the world were falling pregnant each day, it still seemed like a miracle to me, a fragile balance of hope and loss, and one that I did not take for granted.