Colour Me Yellow - Thuli Nhlapo

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      I hardly ever cry. There are many reasons and occasions that warrant the salty water called tears falling down one’s cheeks, especially for women. It’s as though society expects to see it happen or else one may be labelled as a hard nut to crack, a queen bitch or, even worse, women like me who don’t weep when the right occasion presents itself are said to be trying to be like men – to be tough or something.

      The truth is, I’m an extremely sensitive person. I can’t say the guesswork about my character bothers me, that would be a lie. I’m not a saint but I avoid telling lies at all costs. My reason for avoiding lies is a logical one. If you’ve been lied to about your life by the very people who were supposed to have been honest with you, one thing you avoid as an adult is telling lies.

      What dearest Mother had put me through now as an adult, a grown woman with teenage boys, was enough to send a weaker-minded individual to the nearest mental institution. I swear I can still hear as clearly as on that fateful afternoon of 19 April 2012:

      ‘Well, I didn’t mean to kill you if that’s what you think. I didn’t know the harm was going to be that bad. But we can reverse it – the harm, I mean. You must just learn to forgive. There’s no need to fight back here – I made a mistake and I admit it. The intention was not to kill you.’

      With those words I had dropped the phone. When she called back I mumbled something about my mobile phone’s battery running low. But it wasn’t the mobile phone that was fighting for its life – it was my soul. What she had just admitted was worse than anything else she could possibly have done. The more I replay that telephone conversation in my mind, the more questions beg for an answer.

      Am I such a bad reminder of her past? Was I conceived under such bad conditions that she can’t forgive me? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Mother. I just don’t understand her way of doing things. Did carrying me in her womb embarrass her and her family that much that she’s willing to punish me for as long as I live?

      And until I meet someone who’s been hated so passionately by their biological mother simply because they came out of her womb looking different, or they weren’t expected or for whatever other reason, I will have to learn to meditate, for mine is a simple request: please, dear God, help me not to cry for I’m scared it may take forever to calm down.

      Chapter One

words not sticks can eitherbuild or destroy our future

      What’s it like to be a normal child?

      I must have been seven years old when I realised that no one called me by my name. While some cousins called me by my nickname Tho, my Paternal Grandmother, the mother of the Father I grew up thinking and hoping was my father, called me Mabovana – referring to my light-skinned complexion. There was nothing wrong with that. Mother and I were the only light-skinned members of the family. Others were either a little bit darker or even pitch black. Even though I didn’t mind, because I didn’t understand, I noticed that three of my aunts and the older cousins referred to me as boesman.

      I was already doing grade one – sub-standard A in those days – at Tlo-Tlo Mpho Primary School in Ga-Rankuwa near Pretoria. Apparently, the school was called Siyokhela before the area was incorporated into a Bantustan.

      I was convinced something was terribly wrong with me. My teacher never called anyone nasty names, not even those pupils who wet their pants and gym dresses. Some even soiled themselves, but Ma’am Ncanywa would be very understanding of their little accidents. She was a short, well-nourished Xhosa woman who would send those unfortunate pupils to the bathroom to wash their gym dresses or pants and hang them in the sun, telling them to sit outside while waiting for their school uniforms to dry. But if I dared not wipe my slate properly she would refer to me as ‘this yellow thing’ or say ‘you’re as yellow as a pumpkin’.

      I learned to get everything right the first time to avoid being called yellow. As a result of trying never to be wrong I became very quiet and I never spoke unless I was spoken to. When answering, I would speak as softly as possible to make sure that no one noticed me. I even took up as little space as I could, trying to make myself invisible.

      I might not have known what being ‘yellow’ meant but the way it was said told me it was something bad, something to be ashamed of. I learned very quickly that in order to survive as a yellow thing (and also as a boesman) I must not only do well but I must excel at everything. That, I reasoned, would take attention away from my yellowness and help me stay unnoticed because I was excruciatingly shy.

      To put a smile on my teacher’s face and to prove that the yellow thing wasn’t as bad as she thought, I remember collecting loads of the papers wrapped around Nestlé condensed-milk tins at that time, determined to win a competition draw at our school. Other learners tried hard but I was the best, with the highest number of wrappers. I won the Nestlé competition and the prize was a white T-shirt with the word Nestlé written in bold red across the front. Deep down it felt good to excel. I was awarded the prize in front of all the pupils, even those from the senior grades. They all clapped their hands.

      That taught me one lesson: there’s only one way for you, little yellow girl, silence your critics by always winning.

      Four of my cousins attended the same primary school with me in Ga-Rankuwa. At the time the area belonged to the independent state of Bophuthatswana, hence the mother tongue at school was seTswana. I travelled on the same school bus as my cousins because we lived far from the school in an unknown little place called Tsebe near Klipgat. Our houses were all situated in the same yard, but as soon as home was out of sight we became strangers. I walked behind, remembering not to share a seat in the bus with any of them.

      The boesman issue was getting worse, even though I still didn’t know the meaning of the word. On the days when some of my cousins didn’t have tuck-shop money, they preferred to share other kids’ food rather than eat with me. I concluded that the boesman thing must be contagious. Instead of trying to get closer to my friend Mambu Ellinah Moeti, I made sure to distance myself because I didn’t want to make her sick. In fact, she was also doubtful of being around me, always checking me out and uttering unflattering statements such as: ‘Why do you tie your belt in such a stupid way?’ or ‘Your hair isn’t properly combed’ or ‘The pleats in your gym dress look ugly, like they weren’t pressed with a hot iron.’

      I assumed that I was not only different as a boesman but I was also sick. When nurses came to the school to immunise us the puncture marks on my arm became swollen. In those days inoculation was not administered as a single injection that left no mark like nowadays. We were inoculated with a stamp-like gadget that had to be pushed into your shoulder. It must have made six punctures for that’s what it left on soft sensitive skin. Since my first inoculation became swollen, the nurses were prompted to repeat that stamp-like immunisation more than once. I was sure it was being yellow that made me sick because my cousins’ immunisations didn’t swell. On top of all that, I was given little white tablets by my class teacher. The nurses didn’t say why I had to take them and the teacher didn’t bother to explain. Every time I swallowed them, I felt embarrassed to be a sick yellow boesman thing. Four rings of brown skin with tiny pores are still visible on my right arm to this day as proof that I wasn’t as healthy as the other children, and I assumed it was all because I was yellow and a boesman. The problem was that I didn’t know what it meant to be yellow or a boesman – I only knew it was bad.

      Although I got the answers right in class, I wasn’t good at any school sport and I couldn’t sing and dance like most of my female classmates. I enjoyed the moments spent in the dark watching Bruce Lee movies at a hall in Zone 16 on occasional school trips. To my mind, the way he kicked everyone around placed him among the gods to be worshipped. Maybe that’s the reason I chose karate as a sport later in life – to kick butt for real. Other precious moments in school were the days magicians came to perform for us. We paid five cents to watch. The way those guys managed to produce Kool-Aid out of newspapers and all their other tricks was fascinating. Those were moments that gave my troubled mind a break.

      On Thursdays, most domestic workers were usually given the day off or they knocked off early. So on Thursdays

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