EPONYM

Prior to the election of 1994 Emma’s life was rather simple. Early in the morning and soon after the township’s roosters announced the breaking of dawn she would leave the dwelling between a thousand other shacks and walk into the woods where the night left twigs and branches for her to collect.

The dryer the twigs the faster the stack of corncobs ignites. Once the small black pot sizzles and shakes, the aroma of cooked maize fills the enclosed compound. This wakes the two toddlers whom now crawl out from under the blankets and stretch - being lost in dreamland for the better part of the night left them hungry.

After cleaning the bowls and washing their faces the toddlers impatiently wait for Emma to button her uniform and taking up her purse. This is the sign for them to run over to grandma’s place where they can milk the boerbok, collect eggs from the hen and play with their peer for the rest of the day.

Every morning, except for Sundays, the growing line with singing women coming from the shacks, colors the snaking dirt road with native songs as they walk towards the nearby town. On south and north end, facing away from each other are the two churches. The character of north-end is a more conservative one for whites only, while the south-end church upholds a missionary and outreach spirit. At this church Emma, together with many other black women, attends reading and writing classes for adults every other Wednesday afternoon.

One after the other char drops out of the line and goes to the backdoor from where she gains access to start cleaning the house. For the past ten years Emma has to walk the furthest, almost leaving the monumental trees and green lawns behind, for her char-family lives east on two-and-a-half acres on the outskirts of the town.

Emma chars for Baas, the three children and Missies, who drives her own Mercedes, goes to the hairdresser once a week and wears clothes that Emma are not allowed to iron - those has to be flatten to dry on silk sheets in the laundry room.  The most impressive for Emma is the water that runs by simply opening a tap. She tried to explain this miracle a couple of times to her mother, but the latter is used to coupon water in a pail and resists changes that are considered detrimental to trusted ancestral ways. White people never collect wood to keep their houses warm, nor do they know the pleasure of hard rubbing clothes while sharing wisdom and sunshine at the water stream.

The next best thing to opening a tap for Emma is to press her finger on the switch against the wall for light to appear in the ceiling and another switch to boil water in a kettle or to run the dishwasher. Missies is very upright and Emma learns at her hand how to lay a table with knives, forks and crystal glasses for guests, how to prepare food, make proper English tea with cucumber sandwiches without crust and to serve this on a silver tray. When the high-heeled, diamond and pearly guests leave, Emma has to hand-wash the gold-rimmed cups and saucers with dust-pink roses, before putting them back into the display cabinet.

On the last day of every month Emma gets to sit on the backseat of the car and goes with Missies to the grocery store where Missies buys a box full of produce for her to take home. This is on top of her monthly pay. Joy to behold when Emma’s toddlers spot her coming down the dirt road, balancing the box on her head!

During the last month of 1993, things changed rapidly and instead of leaving her children at the mother’s place, Emma and her entire family, together with all other locals from the township are summoned to head to the local court applying for identity documents.

In the days to follow most locals have trouble to decide on which day they were born, don’t know the addresses of their property and need assistance to fill out official forms. The camera brings relieve and after smiling with or without teeth, they later get to see their faces on little pieces of shining paper.  Trays of food provided by the ANC offered solace and brightened the daunting, dragged out efforts of the locals to explain their simple existence to officials.

With her newly gained identity, Emma looks at the world differently. She is now a citizen belonging to the larger world. Many ANC representatives visit the township and promise a land of milk and honey for those who vote for the party; the underlying threat in case of betrayal argue to the contrary. As the word spreads the township buzzes with tasty bits of gossip and speculation on the white people’s future – finally the wheel turned and white bosses will reap the bitter fruit of Apartheid, while brick houses and running water are in the future of the oppressed.

Emma means to ask Missies about driving a car, but Missies seems to be defeated, not getting out of her pajamas and not going to the hairdresser. Rather than hosting guests, Missies does endless amounts of paperwork and Emma cannot help but to be astounded by the effortless way in which Missies writes. For Emma writing is still a Wednesday-afternoon challenge that she has to overcome before moving her family into the brick house.

Emma questions Missies’ ability to collect wood from the woods, carrying produce on her head or walking the distance to char for her family. She has her doubts and her fears – it is like a double-edged spear that cuts both ways - Emma’s main concern Missies’s aptitude and her not being able to drive the Mercedes.

Soon after the locals received their identity documents back, the 1994 election takes place and Nelson Mandela, released from prison in 1990 becomes first black president. The nation celebrates, cows get slaughtered and freedom is at hand.

In the months to come locals wait patiently for the Promised Land, but while waiting townships seem to be cursed and many people fall ill. Some say the illness is Wouter Basson’s; or an infiltrating virus implanted by Apartheid, or an illness that comes by night. Others believe bewitchment is at play and xenophobic behavior by the sounds of gunfire becomes the rule. The illness doesn’t show mercy; neither do the dark forces and brooding distrust that unsettle the locals’ minds.

Many funerals are to follow and one after the next cattle is slaughtered merely to pay respect to the fallen, but also prove to the ancestors that the deceased was well beloved.  Later, and by the lack of more cows, orphans collect money and food from door to door.

Despite of the elders’ pressure to stay away from work and attend the funerals, Emma and a few other chars refuse this and guard their char jobs with their lives. One Wednesday local women’s dedication to write is interrupted by a visiting team of nurses who informs them on the widespread, communicable virus, called HIV/Aids. The women leave with condoms, to pull over as per demonstration, the broomsticks at home. This method is said to protect women from being infected with the virus when having intercourse with different men. Emma doesn’t need condoms, for she has not seen the father of her children since she fell pregnant with the second one. Night after night she hopes for the father to after making enough money on the mines return, for she wants to send her children to school and this is not a moderately priced endeavor. Making enough money to provide a decent life for his family seems to take the father of her children forever.

After the endless paperwork is done, Missies gets dressed, puts the documents in large brown envelopes and mails them at the Post Office while Emma waits in the Mercedes. Thereafter she buys Emma's groceries for the month to come.

The next day Baas brings empty boxes and puts them randomly in every room. This complicates Emma’s routine and unsettles her thinking for she will not be able to refurnish the home on her modest income.

For the days to come Missies empties closets and cupboards like a raging bull and Emma helps with putting some of the items in black garbage bags and some in the boxes. Missies wants Emma to bring another char to share the workload, but not willing to place her future house in jeopardy, she offers many excuses and works the speed of lightning.

The garbage bags with clothing that Missies gives Emma to take home every other day, are clouded with a nasty disposition of suspicious eyes and one unfortunate evening a gang of delinquents attacks and leaves Emma for dead in the woods.

Back from the land of the death, beaten and battered Emma shows up at Missies’s house late the next morning.  After phoning the Baas, Missies helps Emma into the back of the car and drives her to the clinic. Emma and Missies walk passed the other black patients in the area farthest from the front and when they enter the room, Emma cannot believe her eyes. Baas is the doctor and when he shows sympathy and understanding, a flood of tears brings out into the open her heart-brokenness. The nurse disinfects and Baas sutures the gaping wounds while asking about the stabbing and the possibility of being raped. Baas gives her needle, does some blood work and sends her home with painkillers.

Indebted by the medical care, Emma returns to her char job and starts wrapping the fine pieces in the display cabinet. She dreads the thought that Missies obviously has no idea what her shack looks like, especially after the housebreaking that followed after her being left in the woods. The gangsters raided her house and left it vandalized. While wrapping the rosy cups a lovely idea crosses Emma’s mind – Missies must feel at home once she comes to the shack and therefore she puts a set of the rose cup, saucer and side plate into her purse. This is solely to welcome Missies and her family into the shack when the time comes.

On the coldest day of winter Emma walks like every other day to her char job, but as she nearer the brick house she sees a huge truck and black people carrying furniture and boxes to a large container inside the truck. She hides behind the tree while shivering and tears starts running down her cheeks. How can Missies take all the furniture with if the ANC wants Emma to live in the house? When Emma sees the board with SOLD in red in front of the house, she storms Missies who rants and rages in return.

“What about my house?” yells Emma.

“Because of your people we have to fly the country. Did I enforce Apartheid? No, I inherited it, like you,” screams Missies. “What’s going to happen to us? Don’t you think we worked hard to build our future in this country? Do you think I know what’s going to happen to us in a foreign country, removed from everything we love? But we do it for the sake of our children…”

“What about my house?” repeats Emma.

Baas comes in between, Missies turns around and waves the keys of the Mercedes. “I’m going to fetch the children.”

Baas hands Emma a thick envelope.

“Emma, inside is two-thousand Rand and a letter of reference. Go to the bank and ask them to open an account. You don’t want to be robbed, do you?”

Emma puts the envelope in her brazier and buttons her blouse, her eyes fixed on the house. After a while she turns around and walks to the township where a funeral takes place. Instinctively she joins the group of mourners, looks at the many fresh graves and her soul becomes weak. At this funeral she grasps the concept that everything will eventually turn into a tombstone.

In 1994 the ill and the healthy voted for the ending of an era, bearing a vision for perfection in the near future, with taps for running water and to have heat by the touch of a switch. Emma buried her mother, still lives with her sons in one of the many dwellings in the absence of a husband and has to gather wood before daybreak to start the fire. 


The cup with dust-pink roses and golden rim on the rack remains an untouched eponym for the two women who both wanted to live in the brick house on the outskirt of the town.