Stargazer. Jan van Tonder

hose. Gladys stopped in her tracks. All of a sudden the water spurted and the hose began to swing to and fro. Gladys screamed and dropped the bucket. Before I could shut off the water, Ma was standing in the back door.

      I got a hiding, of course. Ma was furious. “There could have been boiling water in that bucket – what then?”

      “She never fetches boiling water, Ma.”

      “Never mind. She’s a grown-up. If you want to scare someone, try someone your own size.”

      I didn’t say so to Ma, but no one I knew – not Joepie or Hein or anyone else – would’ve got such a good fright as Gladys did that evening. Some day soon, I promised myself, I’d scare her right out from under her bath water again.

      Luckily it was Ma who dealt out the punishment that day. She’d get angry and grab a strip of wood from a tomato box and deliver a few smart whacks and it would be over and done with. Not Pa. He gripped your hands behind your back and used his other hand to wallop you on the thighs. There are few things harder than the hand of an operator, and Pa’s hand was almost as hard as the plaster cast on my arm. That was why I was sitting in the bathroom, after all. Not because of Pa’s conscience – because of the cast.

      People had a way of noticing the cast and wanting to know why it was there.

      “Hello, Timus, and that cast?”

      Not how are you, I’m well, thank you. No, it was always: And that cast? Or: Did you break your arm? Or: Must be quite hot under that cast, Timus. Why wouldn’t it be? Durban was hot enough as it was. And from the sweat and the bath water the cotton wool under the cast gave off a stench about as bad as the whaling station.

      Braam said I should say no, there’s nothing wrong, I just felt like not being able to scratch my arm where it itches, so I had the cast put on. But it was easy for him to talk. He wasn’t going to be stuck with this thing on his arm at Mara and Rykie’s party.

      Mara and Rykie would soon be turning twenty-one. They’re twins. Mara wanted a party. It was all she went on about. Rykie wasn’t so keen. The trouble was, Rykie was pregnant. It was a terrible thing in our home, Rykie with a bun in the oven. At first Pa acted as if she no longer existed. No one dared mention her name to him. Then the girls said, well, if we can’t talk about it, we’ll just have to laugh about it.

      “Just imagine: the birthday girl at her twenty-first with a huge stomach,” Rykie complained whenever the party was mentioned.

      It made me feel better about my arm. At least I wouldn’t be the only one with something no one could miss.

      Anyway, there weren’t going to be any girls at the party. Only Mara and Rykie’s pals and boyfriends and so on. Probably Joon as well. Pa said even if Joon had the humblest of jobs, he, Abram Rademan, would allow a daughter of his to marry him any day, for Joon was a godfearing young man with a gift for leading people back to the straight and narrow.

      Joon was a callman. He saw to it that everyone was awake in time for his shift. He had a book wedged in the carrier of his bike with everyone’s names: firemen, drivers, shunters, ticket examiners, wheel tappers. He knew the time each person had to report for work. After knocking and waking someone, he would hand him the book through the bedroom window. Then that person had to sign next to his name. That way, no one who was late or missed his shift could blame Joon for not letting him know it was time to go to work.

      Ma said if callmen didn’t do their work, the entire SA Railways and Harbours would come to a standstill. But the Railways had nothing to fear – not as long as Joon was our callman.

      Joon was Aunt Rosie’s son. Aunt Rosie went up and down the streets all day long, picking up stones. She put them in a bag that hung from her shoulder. Sometimes people made fun of her in passing: “Pick ’em up, Auntie, pick ’em up,” they’d say. Ma scolded if she heard me doing this. Her guess was that Aunt Rosie picked up those stones so that people wouldn’t throw them at each other. But no one really knew why she did it. And even if you asked her, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. Aunt Rosie was a mute.

      Sometimes I wished I couldn’t speak, then my mouth wouldn’t get me into so much trouble. After all, I wouldn’t have been waiting here in the bathroom if I’d kept my mouth shut.

      Anyway, Aunt Rosie was Joon’s mother and Joon was cock-eyed. He didn’t just have a squint like other people. No, he had to tilt his head right back to see where he was going. That was why people who didn’t like him called him Stargazer. I wondered how he was going to dance at the party without stepping on the girls’ toes.

      Then again, it was still not certain there would be any dancing at all, because Pa said not under his roof. He said you could be young in a decent way, without dancing. Mara said in that case she’d been young in a decent way long enough. “One of these days I’ll be old, like you, Pappie, and then I won’t feel like dancing any more either, and then it’ll be easy for me to say it’s a sin too.”

      She was cross with Rykie as well, because she wouldn’t help her stand up to Pa about the dancing.

      “As if he’ll listen to us,” Rykie grumbled.

      “It doesn’t matter. We must support each other!”

      “It’s different for me, Mara. A pregnant woman can’t twist and rock ’n roll, you know. I’ll look ridiculous.”

      “Now you’re a woman all of a sudden. Hmph! It’s not only the party, Rykie. What about all the rules in this house? Why is it that even though the two of us have finished school, if a boy comes to call, he has to leave by ten? I could die of embarrassment.”

      I’d feel the same if it was me. At ten sharp Pa would call out: “Bedtime!” And five minutes later he’d be standing in the door of the sitting room in his pyjamas, waiting for the boyfriend to leave by the front door. There wasn’t even time for a goodnight kiss.

      “If we stick together, we have a chance,” Mara said.

      Rykie put her hand on her heart. “I’m never going to kiss a boy or let anyone near me again anyway, that’s a promise.”

      “Now I have to suffer because you bloodywell . . .”

      “Ah-ta-ta-ta-ta!” Ma warned and I couldn’t hear the rest. Mara’s face was red. Rykie began to cry.

      Long after the girls had made up, Mara was still angry with Pa. And he was like a thundercloud, no matter how hard Ma tried to keep the peace. Fortunately someone phoned just then to say Oupa Chris had died, and Mara’s party was forgotten for the moment. But then it was my turn to sulk. They wouldn’t take me along to the funeral because it was during the school term.

      When Oupa was still alive, we used to visit him and Ouma Makkie on the farm every year. In Ladismith in the Klein-Karoo. While Ma was baking for the train journey, she’d always say she wished for just once in her life she could go on a real holiday, not a visit to family. But to me the farm was the best place in the world and the journey by train to get there was just as good. It took three days and three nights. The best part was the sound of the 16E locomotive of the Orange Express at night. Bongolo, they called him, which means donkey. Gladys said it’s actually imbongolo. But the 16E didn’t sound like a donkey at all. There was no other locomotive with a beat like that. On the second evening we’d stop at Kimberley, where Tannie Toeks and Oom Neels lived. Tannie Toeks was Ma’s sister. She wore fancy clothes and her hair was always nicely done. Tannie Toeks was an educated woman. She and Oom Neels always came to the station with all kinds of nice things to eat, and they’d stand talking to us at the window of our compartment. When the train left, Ma would wipe her eyes.

      Erika and Martina, my other twin sisters who were still at school, were lucky. One of them was allowed to go to the funeral, and they could choose which one themselves, as long as there wasn’t a fight, Pa said. The one who went along could catch up her school work from the other one when she returned. But later Pa changed his mind: Erika had to go, because she and Sarel were madly in love and that wasn’t a good thing. Mara and Bella and Rykie stayed behind because they had to work and,