Ubaba by Bianca Butler

Senior Short Story Entry

Inspired by Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country

The woman was not so young, but young for one who had already borne three children. She was young for one whose children could not only run and jump, but who could already strive and fight and reason. She was young for one who had married twice, and this was a thing the white man frowned upon.
The daughter was quiet. Her dark, gentle eyes smiled at what they saw, yet something in them seemed to seek deeper. Her body was small and seemly, and while her mother saw this, it was all she saw, for she never wondered at what her daughter might be thinking, or the questions she might be asking as she grew. The two small boys were bold and restless, as if Tixo had bestowed on them spirit surpassing that of so many others in their circumstance.
The ikaya was small and crowded, as were the streets, the towns, and, far in the distance, the great cities also. The floors were scarcely more than sand, or mud when the heavens opened their eyes and cried a triumphant deluge. The furniture was old but reliable, and yet the visiting white man would still turn up his nose in disdain if he looked upon it. There was no glass in the windows, but this was not so bad, because it permitted a cooling breeze on the days when the Alexandra sun set the ground on fire. The neighbours were noisy, and their babies cried throughout the night, but this too was not so bad, because it meant the Zulu people still survived.

The night was still and heavy when the mother brought the man home.
“This is your ubaba,” she told her children, with the familiar laugh of liquor in her voice. “Welcome him, my children.”
“Sawubona,” three hesitant voices chorused. In the white man’s tongue it meant ‘hello’, but the children did not know it. “Sawubona, Ubaba.”
The daughter bit her lip. She fought the temptation to cry the words that echoed in her mind: This man is not my ubaba. My ubaba is gone. I am not this man’s child. She yearned to scream and shout, insist that she would accept no father but her own. Yet she restrained herself, for such a thing is not lightly done.

* * * * *

The days were long and weary. Even the cool of night seemed too exhausted to meet those who awaited it daily: the young and the old; the strong and the ailing; the angry and the permissive.
The mother made a humble meal, which was wealth to a poor black child. She pushed the sweaty locks back from her bloodshot eyes. “Come!” her gravely voice called to the children, and to the man that was not their ubaba. The sons came first, grubby and distracted, their bony fingers grasping for the meal that would not satisfy a white man’s boy. The man came next, his dark eyes swimming and sparkling. He went to the mother, holding her ample frame wildly, in a way the sons had never before seen a woman held.
“Isithandwa sami,” he whispered thickly. In the white man’s tongue it meant ‘my love’, but the children did not know it. The mother laughed, yet it was a laugh laced with madness and not with joy. The kiss they shared was ablaze with the vile stench of liquor, and the sons looked dumbly on.
The daughter came then. She stood silently at the ramshackle door, her heart beating shallowly in her chest. She had never before seen a woman held the way the man held her mother, and she too looked dumbly on. She shivered, but it was not coldness she felt. The man drew back from the embrace and turned his eyes upon the daughter. He smiled at her without kindness, without the look of love with which her own ubaba had looked upon her. The daughter shrunk away, perplexed by the odd pounding of her heart and the sudden sweat that beaded her unwashed brow. She clutched the doorframe tightly, unable to tear her gaze from the man’s peculiar smile.
The mother followed the man’s gaze and turned to look on the daughter. “Come,” she repeated, motioning to the steaming pot of stew. The daughter did not know her own steps as she shuffled into the room, automatically taking the bowl of food given her. As she took her seat at the splintered table, she felt her face burning. The gaze of her mother’s husband bore into her thin, gaunt back, so much that she could feel it.
“Should we say a prayer?” the smaller boy asked when all five were gathered at the table. The mother and her husband laughed, with the laugh that meant they had taken drink. Then the man spoke words the children did not understand, and the mother laughed again. The daughter reached her shaking hand beneath the table and caught her brother’s hand in its grasp. She squeezed it tight and spoke a prayer that none could hear: May Tixo bless this that we are given, and protect that which we already have.

* * * * *

The daughter’s possessions were few and meagre, but this was not so bad, for it meant they could be carried more easily in one worn bag. The night was strangely cool and biting, but for this the girl was grateful, for it meant the man would not be easily woken.
Tears burned in the daughter’s eyes as she looked upon the two small boys, odd tears that she did not understand. The boys were fast asleep and dreaming, each warmer for the huddling presence of the other at their back. The daughter looked once more about the ikaya, at its simple furnishings and its cluttered space. She was cheered to hear the man snoring, glad that he should not know of her flight. One final look on the woman that had mothered her was the daughter’s last goodbye, and as she slipped out through the door she remained alone and undetected.
As her small, bare feet made their way through the streets of dirt and broken glass, she felt her heart beat strangely, quickened with fear and uncertainty. “But it will not be so bad,” she told herself, in a voice little so that none may hear, “for I know a man younger than my mother’s husband, who lives in Sophiatown. I will go to him. It will not be so bad.”

* * * * *

The streets in Sophiatown were scarcely less cluttered than those in her hometown, and these were still littered with shards of coloured glass. The new neighbours were noisy too, and their babies cried throughout the night. But the ikaya she lived in now was slightly bigger, and some of the windows had glass panes, and the man who called the daughter isithandwa sami, was kind and strong. In this ikaya she could hang her own simple curtains in the cooling breeze, and make humble meals that only two had to share, so both were better fed. And though the man who called her isithandwa sami held her wildly, she knew it was not bad because her mother was held in the same way.
No longer did she feel the scalding gaze of her mother’s husband on her, and no longer did she have to speak to Tixo in her mind alone. Yet sometimes tears came to her eyes when she remembered the two small boys, who slept back to back in an ikaya that seemed to her to be all the world away.
In the great cities the white man discussed the problems of the black townships, of the poor communities like those in Sophiatown. And there would be trouble in Sophiatown, they said, trouble indeed. Trouble for those with young, and for those with old, and for those whose husbands were strong enough for labour, for indeed the mines demanded more workers; workers who must leave behind a wife and home for the sake of the greater good.
Oh yes, there would be trouble in Sophiatown, crowed those who spoke in the white man’s tongue. But the daughter did not know it.