“I never left South Africa; I left its people.” – Walt Campbell

Malawi is a good man. If this is his real name, I am not sure, as he may have changed it to appease the ignorance of the Umlungu, who find it too bothersome to pronounce his African name. I do know however, that he is indeed from Malawi. He has a bright, honest face, always armed with a smile – a smile so wide that it plumps up his cheeks, supporting huge, observant eyes and framing a large, prominent nose. He also has very dark skin and no longer a young man as his bald head glistens in the African sun, small beads of perspiration rolling down a crinkled forehead and disappearing into his salt and pepper eyebrows. I feel the warmth of the man—a man connected to the earth, at one with his surroundings and who as a gardener, lovingly crafts the soil with his bare hands.

I join Malawi on his lunch break, sitting in the cool shade of our garage at the back of the rented house. Mom always said that if I sat on the cold concrete floor, I would get worms. I went ahead anyway and did end up getting worms, but that was from playing in the sandbox at preschool I later learned. I never did sit on a cold floor again. Our domestic, Ruth (presumably not her real name), prepared a plate of pilchards in tomato sauce from the iconic red-striped Luck Star tin and complemented with thick slices of bread that Mom referred to as doorstops. Malawi uses the same plate and mug for every meal, enamel-coated in sky blue with a black trim. He demonstrates how to mould my bread into a ball with one hand and how to soak up the sauce. I’m too young to drink coffee, but he sneaks me a sip from his mug of Frisco with heaps of sugar and milk. We express agreement by jointly smacking our lips and emitting an aaaaahhh sound while grinning and laughing. When done, he rinses his dishes with the garden hose that Ruth later washes and stores them aside from our own crockery, as instructed by Dad, for fear of catching something from the blacks.

Mum and Dad both work, and Ruth is tasked with fetching me from school and looking after me during the day. We live in the large suburb of Glenhazel in Johannesburg, a mostly Jewish neighbourhood, which I find odd as Dad is always banging on about the Jews. I think much of his propaganda permeated Mom’s brain as she started to follow his lead: ‘the Jews this and the Jews that’. It turns out Dad isn’t much for any religion as he doesn’t like Christians either, and I sensed the whole charitable thing doesn’t sit well with him—love thy neighbour and all that. As a consequence, I have no religion, and Mom is visibly upset by this and tries to get me to attend Sunday school. I attended two classes and thought better of it. I was never confirmed or baptised, and Mom took me to church on her own one day, dipped her finger in holy water, and baptised me herself. I understood others made reference to the Jewish nose, but dad referred to it as a ‘Synagogenschlüssel’ and only much later did I understand what that meant. Having migrated to South Africa from Germany in his early twenties, I’m guessing that few things in life went according to plan, as he is forever angry. Angry with the world, the neighbours, me, Mom, and just about anything else that came into contact with him. Probably also angry with himself. One afternoon, he kicked our pet dog, who was pregnant at the time, all the way to the kitchen door and down the flight of stairs leading to our garden—only because she was under his feet when preparing food. I felt physically ill as I stood in disbelief, sheer bewilderment washing over me. Thankfully she came to no harm, and all the puppies survived. Again, one afternoon, as a passenger in the car with Dad, a small, scruffy dog ran across the road in front of us. In my mind, there was enough time to swerve and avoid hitting it, but he accelerated and ran it over and continued driving. Were it not for my constant pleas and tears, he would not have stopped. It was done with a huff and the slamming of doors, but we put the limp body in the boot of the car with a promise that he would take it to the vet. I doubt this happened and never heard a word about it again. I lived in constant fear of my father, and it was around this time that my empathy for animals escalated beyond people. I remember watching a reel to reel movie with a projector that we hired from the movie rental in town. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and teh ginger cat got caught in the rain. I cried my eyes out and went to bed upset. Mom cradled me to sleep but I think emotions bubbled to the surface and overwhelmed me at that time.

Rumour has it that Dad’s biological father is in fact his uncle on his father’s side. In fact, I could see the likeness from the two occasions I did meet him and I nor Dad looked like my Opi. During the war, Uncle Ludwig would visit my grandmother while Opi was away from home – Opi was a nurse. It could explain a few things, as my grandfather was as calm as ever and hardly uttered a word. In his later years, he sat quietly in a corner, working his way through a crossword in the German magazine Stern. He had very pale skin and was always in a white vest with blue-grey shorts or trousers and black leather slippers with white socks. His grey hair thinned on top and was always neatly combed back -he carried his comb with him wherever he went. I’m sure Mom must have experienced a good side to Dad because I saw the happiness in the old photos of them together. Mom said they met in the heyday of Hillbrow, “when we walked barefoot through the streets with flowers in our hair and between our toes.” Then I came along, and Mom, having already aborted a pregnancy in the past, was determined to keep me even if it meant leaving Dad. But she said he was apparently quite insistent on marrying her in doing the right thing. According to her, he was in a right state when I was born with ginger hair, apparently one of his many pet hates.

Life in the suburbs is one of consistency and pattern. During the week, like clockwork, parents drop their kids off at school, and later in the afternoon, Ruth and the other nannies emerge from behind the high walls and gates of their masters’ properties to meet the children at the school gate. On the way back, if I was tired and didn’t feel like walking anymore, Ruth carried me on her back, and we strolled back home with the sound of her high-pitched voice filling the air. Sometimes she hummed or sang, and I feel most comfortable and secure at this time. In the summer months, we greet the other nannies who sit under the shade of a tree lounging like pastel-coloured marshmallows in their standard-issue pink, blue and green uniforms. I am amazed and can’t quite comprehend how they all know each other, as it is physically impossible for an entire village or community of nannies to transplant themselves into our suburb. Dad joked that they could be plotting against us and we wouldn’t even know it, but I soon came to know the African tradition of greeting others and how one knows another, or indeed, one that knows another who knows another from their homeland. The homelands after all, are huge in geography but small in community, something that the colonialists never understood when carving up the continent between themselves. During the week, Ruth stays in a small room at the end of our property, next to Dad’s newly cultivated vegetable garden. On one side of the garden runs a wall where a loquat tree leans, and Koos, my friend and neighbour, and I sit in the tree eating the bright yellow fruit until our stomachs ached. Sometimes we would head across the road where a mulberry tree grows on an abandoned plot and do the same, arriving home later in the day covered in purple stains.

On the weekends, Ruth joins the throng of nannies making their way to the minibus taxi rank, bags in hand and towering parcels balanced on their heads. The journey for them is arduous and sometimes quite treacherous. It is around Easter in particular, where there is often news of an accident involving a minibus, largely due to the lack of regulation and overloading where 20 or so people are killed. It was very sad and we all shake our heads briefly at the TV knowing this happens very year. And then we go about our lives again. Baggage is stacked sky high, and all manner of items are attached in any way possible. I have no idea as to where Ruth lives and never even thought to ask, yet we sit together every day, sharing our lunch or doing my homework in her room, enjoying her company while she shuffles around. Her bed is propped up on bricks, and she explains that it is because of the Tokoloshe, which I understood to be a version of the boogeyman but it is some kind of water nymph-like creature that drags you away in the night to a world beyond ours. It was from that moment that I became aware of the monsters under my bed. To exacerbate this fear, at some point, my folks had bought me a big poster of a bushbaby sitting on a branch in a tree. The humungous eyes lit up when the lights went out and this really didn’t help. It was also around this time that I developed terrible growing pains in my legs and was a frequent bed-wetter much to Dad’s frustration. Despite Mom having to go to work in the morning, she is there, changing the sheets or massaging my legs in the early hours, helping me get back to sleep.

A youth’s adventure is their curiosity, and being particularly curious one afternoon, I explored what a match can do to long dry grass. Skipping to the end of our garden, with a box of matches in hand, I set about lighting small patches through the rusty chain-link fencing that cordoned off the back of the property. Lighting it, blowing it out and lighting it again what could possibly go wrong? As is the nature of one who has yet to learn boundaries, I let the grass burn for longer periods and then suddenly blowing out the flames no longer works, now serving to fuel them. In hindsight, I should have had a bucket of water as backup. I stand slack-jawed, watching the billowing bright orange flames engulf the backyard, plumes of smoke spitting black ash into the sky. My face reflects the flickering hue and I’m astounded at how quickly the fire spreads. An overwhelming panic sets in, and I turn and run to the house, tears streaming down my face, screaming with no coherence. It was all a blur and the fire trucks seemingly arrive out of nowhere, setting about the task of rolling out the hoses, hooking them up to the engines, and dampening the fire. A couple of hours later, it is under control and left to simmer while the firemen pack up their equipment. It has been a huge ordeal, both mentally and physically and I know that I will be getting a beating tonight. The familiar words, “fetch me a stick”, rang in my ears. I sulk for days with my pride hurting more than my bottom.

In my mind, this is possibly the worst thing I have done as a child, apart from stealing sweets from the local store and money from Malawi’s jacket pocket. One day, when he arrived for work, he removed his grey overcoat that proudly displayed the dark green ribbon and chrome metal star of the ZCC on the lapel and carefully hung it up in the garage. It was the end of the week, and I saw dad hand over a green ten-rand note with Malawi pocketing it. I took that money and ran next door to my friend Koos, and it’s fair to say that he wasn’t immediately convinced that I had found it, but we spent it anyway on loads of sweets. I knew my dad would find them, so we hid them in Koos’ bedroom. What happened thereafter? I don’t recollect, but I seem to have a faint memory of me apologising to Malawi. The beatings for my transgressions were physically and mentally exhausting, depending on my dad’s mood, and often unjustified. It became a blur after a while, and I eventually overcame the intensity. Once, by simply burying a small plastic torch, I pretended it to be buried treasure that subsequently disappeared. I received a beating, both verbally and physically, that I will never forget. These are the last memories I have of us as a family, and there is a hidden sense of discomfort and tension between my parents. One morning, mom and I were sorting out the laundry, and we found lipstick on dad’s collar. At this point, I realised what dad was up to when he had already invited me along to a social event with his girlfriend and her niece and nephew just weeks earlier, and I told mom. A man who didn’t have the courage to speak up for himself played us, and despite him and his girlfriend vacationing with supposed friends, people whom she believed to be friends said nothing. Therefore, the courts asked me, at 7 or 8 years old, which parent I would like to continue to live with. The memory will remain with me forever—that blue cotton, short-sleeve work shirt with lapels and chest pockets, red lipstick on the right collar. It was a pivotal moment in my childhood, as I had to make a decision that would shape my future. The image of that shirt serves as a reminder of the difficult choices I had to make at such a young age.