Queen of the Free State: A Memoir

By Jennifer Friedman

The outsider on the inside. The one who watches and listens. The bearer of tales... Growing up Jewish in a small town in the Free State in the '50s and '60s, Jennifer Friedman moves between child and adult, black and white, as Verwoerd's grand apartheid is dividing South Africa. There are midnight escapes, stolen loot and banned comics. Frogs' legs, eisteddfods, icy drives with Grandpa, hideous encounters with bras, terrifying policemen, albino messengers and Pa's beatings. Told with humour and pathos, Friedman's memoir brings to life a strong sense of place, love, rebellion and betrayal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9780624081623

Jennifer Friedman

Jennifer Friedman was born and raised in the Orange Free State in South Africa. She studied at the University of Cape Town, and her Afrikaans poetry has been published in various academic journals such as Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, Wetenskap en Kuns, Standpunte and Buurman, as well as Rooi Rose. She emigrated with her husband and children in 1992 to Sydney, Australia, where she got her pilot's licence. After her husband's death in 1997, Friedman bought her own Grumman Tiger plane, and she enjoys flying to the small outback towns and stations around Australia, often just for a lunch date and wherever the sun is shining. She now lives on the Central Coast of New South Wales with her partner.

Book preview

JENNIFER FRIEDMAN

Queen

of the

Free State

Tafelberg

Ken jy die pad na die hemel toe?

Hoe kom ek daar

en met watter draaie moet ek ry?

(From Heimwee, Jennifer Friedman, Standpunte No. 153)

Tell Me a Story

‘Tell me a story, Ma.’

‘A story? Come here …’

Ma’s sitting in the lounge on the big rocking chair. The sun is pooling on the polished floor and the air is sweet with the smell of orange peels heaped on the coffee table beside her. Ma leans forward, takes my hands and pats the small space beside her.

‘Squeeze in here next to me. I’ll tell you your very own story, shall I?’

Her hands smell of oranges. I wriggle my bottom between her hip and the soft green corduroy armrest. My three-year-old legs are straight on the seat in front of me, my hands on my knees.

Ma pulls me up close. Her mouth is against my hair. I can feel the faint warmth of her breath as she briefly rests her lips on my head. I lean the side of my face against her and rub my cheek against the scratchy wool of her jersey. I can only see the side of her face. I turn, perch on my knees. The toes of my red shoes kick against the armrest behind me. I rest my head in the palms of my hands and look up into her face. She looks down at me, smiling and tender as she tries to smooth the cowlick in my fringe. She puts her hand on my feet.

‘Don’t kick the chair, sweetheart,’ she says. ‘It’ll get dirty … Well,’ she begins, ‘once upon a time in a magical place called the Free State, in the Union of South Africa …’ She pats my arm.

‘I know that, Ma!’ I shout. The red ribbons around my pigtails swing down to my chin.

‘The best place in the world!’ she continues. ‘Well, on a special day – it was a windy day in autumn – a big white stork flew in through the open window of a room where I was waiting for you. It dropped you off right into my arms. Pa and I had been waiting for you for a very long time and we were so happy to see you, especially because you arrived on Our Queen’s birthday.’

Ma’s smile is tight with pride. Ma loves Our Queen.

‘I was so proud my daughter and Her Majesty shared the same birthday,’ she says. ‘I also share something special with Her Highness – look.’ She pats her hair, her fingers shaping the two kiss-curls framing her forehead. Ma likes to wear silk scarves like Our Queen; she pins them to her jerseys with the gold and rose quartz brooch Pa gave her when I was born. Pa gave it to her because he was so happy. Ma’s devoted to Her Majesty, committed to all things royal. That’s why I’ve got the same name – Anne – as Our Queen’s little princess. Jennifer-Anne. That’s my whole name.

Ma’s wearing my favourite tweed skirt, the one with lots of coloured knobbles and bumps and flecks. Ma says Our Queen loves tweed. I rub a fold of her skirt between my fingers. Look deep into the colours. I can see the hills on Grandpa’s farm and blue specks of fountain. Behind the little flecks, willow-green, golden-orange and the hills’ rusty red shift into focus.

‘Your skirt looks just like the veld on Grandpa’s farm, Ma!’

‘Does it? You’re a funny little girl. More?’

‘Yes please, Ma!’

‘Pa came to fetch us in the Studebaker and took us home …’ Ma smiles. Her fingers are stroking my back.

‘Was Marta waiting for me at home, Ma? And Sandy-my-dog and Isak?’

Ma opens her eyes wide. ‘Of course they were, sweetheart – they couldn’t wait for you to arrive.’

Sandy and Willie-Venter, who lives in the sideboard in our dining room, are my best friends. Only Sandy and I can see Willie-Venter. Isak’s my friend too. He works in our garden and he can fix anything. He rolls brown-paper cigarettes and smokes them until they’re flat. Then he throws the soggy ends into Ma’s flowerbeds. I picked one up once and tried to smoke it, but it made me cough. I know Isak’s my friend because he doesn’t mind if I talk to him when he’s working. He told Ma he planted all the flowers in the garden just for me, to welcome me home.

I look down at Sandy lying against the side of the chair. His ears are pricked up, his sleepy eyes half-open. He doesn’t move his head, just swivels his eyes around until they meet mine. I lean down to stroke the smooth dome of his head.

‘You’re my best friend, Sandy-my-dog.’

His stubby tail beats his love for me against the floor.

Marta’s Gift from God

Marta does our housework, the washing and ironing.

‘When you were a little-little baby, M’Pho, I used to pick you up and hold you here …’ She pats her shoulder. ‘Then I would hug you hard, like so!’ She folds me in her arms and holds me close.

‘And then, Marta?’

‘Then I would wrap you tight-tight against my back in my brown-and-yellow blanket …’

Marta would sing and murmur to me on her back, whisper and hum; reach her hand up to pat and comfort me. She held me tightly and stroked my skin.

She never kissed me.

Her voice is tender and bitter.

‘You are my gift from God, M’Pho.’

When I close my eyes, I can still feel the vibrations of her hummed hymns beating through my chest, echoing like a second heartbeat. Like her lullabies, the smell of her smoky neck under her headscarf is coiled inside me forever. She is part of Ma’s story of Me.

My Sotho name is ‘M’Pho’. It means ‘Gift from God’. Marta and Isak gave me my name when I was born. Marta says now Ma’s and Pa’s names are ‘Ma’M’Pho’ and ‘Pa’M’Pho’ forever.

Marta lives in Phomolong location. She says that means ‘Vergenoeg’.

‘Far enough from where, Marta?’ I ask.

‘Far enough from town, M’Pho, from this house. The policemen told us we have to live in Phomolong, far away from our work …’

Every day, Marta’s small feet – feet that have never been on intimate terms with the comfort of shoes – are marbled grey with dust from the long, dry road leading from the township to our house. Under the pale sun in the smoky winter mornings, she is a sad and tender chrysalis enveloped in the cocoon of her Basotho blanket, invisible amid the yawning masses slowly trudging along the long road to start their day’s work.

In summer, she arrives at our back door shining with sweat. Leaning against the flyscreen, she sighs, wipes her hand across her face.

‘We have to walk ten miles to work before the sun comes up, M’Pho. Ten miles back again in the dark night to our houses in Phomolong.’ She sighs. ‘It is too far. That is why it’s called "Vergenoeg".’

‘Oh, Marta!’ I take her hand. ‘Oh, Marta, you must be so tired …’

Marta teaches me to greet the people I meet along the dusty roads.

‘Dumela ntate,’ I say politely. ‘Dumela ousie.’

‘Dumela mosadi,’ they reply.

They lift their hands in greeting; I lift mine in return. We smile at one another.

Everyone speaks Afrikaans in the Free State. Marta scolds me, tells me stories in Afrikaans about the evil tokoloshe that creeps out under unprotected beds at night. She tells Ma to raise my bed on bricks so that the tokoloshe won’t find and catch me in the dark hours before dawn. Ma says, ‘Stop talking nonsense, Marta. You’re scaring the child.’

Marta shakes her head, grumbles to herself. I’m frightened.

‘Will the tokoloshe be waiting to catch me when I have to go to the lavvy in the night, Marta?’

She clicks her tongue.

‘Eh, M’Pho, you must make finished in the lavvy before you get in the bed!’

‘But, Marta, sometimes I just have to go!’

‘Eh-eh, M’Pho!’ Marta shakes her head and looks around to see if Ma’s listening. She sighs. The threat of impending disasters hangs heavily over our heads.

Walls Within Walls

My younger sister is born two weeks before my third birthday. Sister Greeff moves in with the baby to look after her. Every morning she fastens her starched triangle to her hair, pins a small, round watch to her ample chest, and fixes her pale eyes on me.

‘You stay away from that pram, girlie,’ she hisses. ‘Don’t you touch the baby.’

Ma and I are sitting outside on the steps in the back garden.

‘Remember Uncle Sam and Aunty Anita and your cousins?’ Ma asks. ‘You haven’t seen them for a long time – we’re going to take you to visit them.’

I look up at her. She’s smiling.

‘Can Sandy come too, Ma?’

‘No, love, Sandy doesn’t like being in the car. He can stay at home with Marta and Isak.’

‘I don’t want to go without Sandy, Ma. He doesn’t want me to go without him.’

Ma stops smiling.

‘Is she also going to come?’ I point at the baby, asleep in my old pram in the shade of the syringa tree.

‘Of course she is. But you’re going to stay with Uncle Sam and Aunty Anita and she’s going to stay with Granny and Grandpa MJ …’

‘I don’t want to! I want to stay here with Sandy and you and Pa …’

‘You won’t be staying with them for long, sweetheart – Pa and I are just going to take a short holiday; before you know it, we’ll all be together, back home again.’

I cry and stamp my feet. Ma puts her hands on her hips.

‘Stop that nonsense at once!’

I cry some more when I say goodbye to Sandy. I hug him. Kiss his head. He licks my face.

‘Stop kissing that dog,’ Pa says. ‘He’ll give you worms.’

I love Sandy.

‘He hasn’t got worms, Pa!’

I lift the soft flap of Sandy’s ear, whisper into the waxy, curly snail inside.

‘Don’t forget to say goodnight to Willie-Venter in the sideboard, Sandy-my-dog.’

Pa folds himself behind the Studebaker’s steering wheel. He pokes his head forward, shifts around and pushes back against his seat. I can feel the bulge of his back against my outstretched feet.

‘Stop kicking the back of my seat,’ he growls.

I fold my arms. My legs are straight out in front of me.

‘My legs are too short to kick your seat, Pa. I’m only three, you know.’

The car’s tyres whisper over the tarred road. Sweet-grass bends and whips along the verges. Secrets hum through the telephone wires and bump against the porcelain bobbins that tie them to the orderly lines of tall poles connecting town to town and village to village, some branching off along dusty farm roads to link rusting corrugated-iron roofs to gossiping party lines. A long-legged secretary bird swoops in front of the car and lands in the middle of the road. Ma’s sitting next to Pa with the baby on her lap. Ma’s head keeps dropping on her chest, jerking back again as she struggles to stay awake. My sister is fast asleep, her face turning pink in the warmth of the car.

Pa turns around to see whether I’m awake.

‘Look! See the secretary bird?’

‘Secretary bird? That’s not a secretary bird, Pa. That’s the stork that brings the babies.’

I look at his reflection in the rearview mirror, his wavy hair blowing in the wind from his open window.

‘Don’t you remember, Pa? Ma told me it brought me, then it went back to fetch her.’

I nod in the direction of the sleeping baby. Pa starts laughing. ‘It did too, Pa!’

I’m sitting in the middle of the car on the edge of my seat, my hands folded over the back of the long bench in front of me. I stamp my foot on the floor. Around us, the land is vast and flat. The fields are swept full of mealie leaves, dry and rustling in the faint breath of wind brushing itself up against them. Pa stops laughing.

‘Yes, Pa,’ I say, nodding. ‘I saw it, the secretary bird.’

If I stretch my chin right up, I can rest it on the back of the long seat in front of me. I stare out at the narrow national road stretching to that never-reached, gleaming puddle of water where the end of the world meets the sky. I start jumping up and down on the back seat. If I jump really high, I can see the top of my head in Pa’s rearview mirror.

‘Stop that! You’re irritating me,’ he says.

Ma wakes up when she hears his voice. She looks down at my sister, still asleep in her arms, and half turns towards me.

‘You okay, love? Do you need to stop for a wee-wee?’

Pa groans.

‘Are you sure you need to go?’ His eyes in the mirror glare at me. I look at the back of Ma’s head. Her black curls are shining. I don’t like it when Pa gets cross. Ma turns around to look at me.

I nod.

‘Find somewhere to stop,’ she tells him.

The speeding telephone poles slow down. The tyres crunch on the stony verge, throwing up sprays of dust and pebbles. Ma leans across the seat and opens the back door for me. The sweet, prickly fragrance of dried mealies and dust, and the deep, hot smell of cracked earth fill the world around me. Small purple flowers spread their heads. Khaki weeds lean across towards me, slyly hooking their blackjack seeds into my socks. A line of ants weaves between small pebbles. The veld rustles and whispers around me.

‘Hurry up!’ Pa calls from the car. ‘What are you doing out there? Come on, get a move on!’

Sitting on my heels, my hands on my knees, I watch the dry ground suck up the warm froth. Tiny grains of red sand cling together in an irregular, damp patch. I shift my feet, trying to distribute the flow more evenly. The instep of my shoe gets in the way and a wet dribble marks the dusty leather. Ma opens her door.

‘Come on, love, hurry up! We’ve still got a long way to go!’

Still squatting, I squint up into the sun. Then I stand up and pull my broekies to my waist. Slowly I draw the toe of my shoe through the moist ground. Small clots of red mud stick to its sole. I climb back into the car, and before Ma slams the door shut, I look back and see my footprints in the dust.

On and on we drive across the pale plains of the Free State until we reach the small town where Uncle Sam and Aunty Anita live. I don’t want to get out of the car. Pa’s tired. His big hand reaches in, grabs my arm, and pulls me outside. I stand next to the car, crying.

‘D’you want a smack? Behave yourself – you’re not a baby! What are your cousins going to think?’

I twist away from him and run across the lawn. Ma’s standing at the bottom of the stoep, saying hello to everyone. I throw my arms around her legs and won’t let go.

She puts her arm around my shoulders.

‘Look,’ she whispers. ‘Look who’s here!’

I move my head away from her leg. She’s pointing at someone behind me. I turn around and see Granny Bobbeh. She’s smiling and stretching her arms out to me.

‘Granny Bobbeh’s come specially to look after you.’

Ma’s voice sounds high and strange. She and Pa kiss me goodbye. They climb back into the Studebaker. Ma holds my sister in her arms and they drive away without me.

Granny Bobbeh tries to comfort me, but she can’t fill the space Ma and Pa left behind when they drove away. She fusses and clucks, presses me to her heart, whispers in my ear. She pulls me onto her lap and folds me against her smell of apples. She croons, promises Ma and Pa will come back soon. I don’t believe her. Days and nights and more days pass.

Sometimes Aunty Anita gets a headache. She lies in a dark room all day, her eyes closed tight against the pain.

‘It’s just a headache,’ she says. ‘It’s just a bad headache.’

No one knows, but inside her head something grows and grows and, when she dies – too young, too soon – she leaves my cousins all alone, and Granny Bobbeh has to be their mother.

I want Ma. Quietly I open the closed bedroom door.

‘Ma?’ I whisper. ‘Ma? Where are you, Ma?’

In the dusty light filtering through from the passage, red and green jewels gleam across the straps of my aunt’s high-heeled cork sandals lying abandoned on the floor. I’ve never seen such gorgeous shoes, the way the coloured stones glow and wink.

Ma’s nowhere to be found. I cry all night. Mope all day. Refuse to eat.

‘I want my Ma!’ I wail.

Granny Bobbeh folds me in her arms. ‘Soon …’ she promises.

I whimper against her sweet smell. I don’t believe her.

Two weeks later, Pa and Ma with my baby sister on her lap come back to fetch me in the Studebaker.

I’m afraid they’ll leave me again.

I refuse to speak for half of a long year and I start to build walls within walls; bulwarks against loss and abandonment. Deep, wide ditches to hide in.

Birthday Party in the Drakensberg

‘It’ll be your birthday soon …’ Ma closes the oven door. The hot, sugary smell of biscuits drifts into the kitchen. ‘Pa and I think it would be lovely to go away on holiday before you start school next year.’

‘Is she also going to come with us?’

Ma shakes her head.

‘Your sister’s going to stay with Granny and Grandpa MJ again, so it’ll be just the three of us. We’ll have a lovely time climbing in the mountains. You can learn to ride a horse there – wouldn’t you like that?’

Our bedroom in the mountains is in a round hut. Ma says it’s called a rondavel. Just the three of us, like it used to be. The sun shines on my head. The tops of the mountains look like a dragon’s teeth. That’s how they got their name, the ‘Dragon Mountains’. Pa says they’re much higher than the Grootberg on Grandpa and Uncle Leslie’s farm.

I can hear the wind at night, twisting through the high, stony peaks. The room smells sweet from the grass on the roof. Ma says it’s called ‘thatch’. Geckos lie motionless against the white-washed walls. In the day, the sky is bright. The sun shines on the rocks, bounces off the windows of the hotel and the little, round huts clustered around it. Pa wears shorts and sandals, smokes his pipe on the steps outside. Sometimes he just likes to hold it in his hand, the cold bowl cupped in his big palm. Ma wears frilly sundresses with big pockets and white sandals with platforms and straps. At night she wears a dress of glittery silver, like a spider’s silk. She looks like a fairy queen. She tucks me into bed and they go to the hotel to dance. Anna makes our beds in the rondavel in the mornings. At night, she sits wrapped in a blanket on the cement step outside the door, promising to keep me safe.

In the mornings, they take me to the stables. I’m learning to ride on Bessie. ‘She’s very patient with children and beginners,’ says the groom, Johannes. ‘No, madam, sir – your little girl will be fine – we’ll look after her!’

Bessie’s coat is brown. She shines like Pa’s shoes after Isak’s polished them. She’s got long bristles on the sides of her pink nose. Her mane is black; it looks soft but it isn’t, not really. When she walks, the saddle on her back creaks. I like the sound; I think it’s talking to us. I go for long walks on Bessie. Johannes holds the reins. We plod through the high grass under thorn trees, along the paths around the rondavels and the hotel, my head nodding and bobbing along with Bessie’s, the saddle creaking, the long blade of grass in Johannes’s mouth getting shorter and shorter. Ma and Pa are walking in the mountains.

Ma buys me a necklace of little red and white daisies. It’s made of tiny beads. Each daisy has a small yellow bead in its centre. Each one is perfect. She fastens it around my neck.

‘It’s so beautiful, Ma – I’m never going to take it off!’

My fingers keep reaching, searching for it.

Before we left home, Ma baked and iced my birthday cake. She put it in a big cake tin and, when we arrived at the rondavel, she slid it under Pa’s bed to keep it safe. The legs of the iron bedsteads stand flat on the cement floor. Marta wouldn’t like that.

‘Can’t I just have a little look, Ma? Just a quick, little one, then you can close the tin and I won’t look again?’

‘No, you can’t. I want it to be a surprise for you on your birthday – promise me you won’t open the tin?’

‘But won’t the tokoloshe steal it, Ma?’

‘Don’t talk rubbish, there’s no such thing as a tokoloshe,’ Ma says. ‘Your birthday cake is going to be a surprise. Don’t touch that cake tin until I say you can!’

I spend hours dreaming about my fifth birthday cake. I’ve had a Humpty-Dumpty cake and a frog-fishing-on-a-green-cake, with a hole in the middle for a pond. I’ve had a tortoise cake, and a birthday cake with two fat red mushroom candles in the middle. I can’t wait to see what this one will look like.

Ma says I’m too young to walk around alone. She’s afraid I’ll get lost.

‘In case we’re not back in time for lunch,’ Ma says to the head groom at the stables, ‘would you send someone to walk Jennifer back to our rondavel after her riding lesson?’

I’ve made friends with all the children at the stables. They shout and jump up and down – everyone wants to walk back with me.

Their faces are dusty. Some of them have little white streams of dried snot under their noses and sleepy-sand in the corners of their eyes. Their teeth are square and white. Knots of grass and small twigs are stuck in their hair like tiny tinktinkie nests, and their clothes are all the same colour – dirty-dark and greasy and trailing a thick, unrestrained smell of smoke, of feet and earth and wildness behind them. The girls touch my long hair, tie and untie the bows of my ribbons. Stroke the small tortoises on my shirt. Their fingers leave streaks of dirt. I don’t care – they’re my friends.

We speak Afrikaans. When I forget, they look at each other, their faces blank. They shake their heads.

‘Eh-eh. Praat Afrikaans, kleinmies!’

Ma says I must speak Afrikaans all the time so that I’ll be ready for school next year. Marta and Isak always talk to me in Afrikaans – it’s easy; I know how it sounds.

I’m going to offer my visitors tea and cake like Ma does.

‘Who wants cake?’ I shout. ‘My birthday cake’s in a big tin under my Pa’s bed.’

My friends are clapping and laughing, crowding around the open door. They won’t come inside.

‘No, you must come in! Wait – I’m just going to fetch the tin …’

I slide under Pa’s bed. Balls of fluff, dry leaves and grass have banked up in the dark corners.