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A Childhood Made Up. Brent Meersman
Читать онлайн.Название A Childhood Made Up
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780624089407
Автор произведения Brent Meersman
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
‘Be a good boy and work hard at school. I hear you are an excellent student,’ said the kind German. He gave Willy a piece of chocolate and removed his name from the sterilisation list.
It was the first time anyone had ever told Willy he was excellent at anything.
Willy was a tall, lanky boy who won diving medals at school, but this was nothing to his father, the boxing champion who had triumphed over the Walloons. When Willy came home with 90% for an exam, Bopa would say, ‘You got 10% wrong! Again!’ When he got 98%, Bopa would say, ‘See – you’re not perfect.’ He’d been top of his class but in the end he had only a primary school certificate to show for it.
Now he was back, and he discovered that the Belgium he’d returned to was highly qualification conscious and competitive. Belgians chose their subjects and careers at an early age and were set on a path; one didn’t chop and change. There were a lot of skilled people about and Willy had been away for twenty years. It wasn’t going to be easy to get a promotion; he didn’t know anyone. At least in South Africa he had been better off than most of the population just because he was white. His pale skin had been more than half his qualification, pink harelip and all. But he had liquidated everything to get our family to Belgium. We were stuck. And now, his wife had collapsed in bed with migraines. He decided he’d better have a beer.
Late one afternoon, my mother slumped in a chair. Years later she would describe the onset of a migraine to me, how it was usually triggered after tiny white lights started flashing, then formed yellow zig-zag lines. On this occasion, in Antwerp, she said, she could see my little face through the lights, but she struggled to focus her eyes. She couldn’t get up. She panicked. She thought she might be having a stroke and was about to drop dead in front of her child. She was shivering. I watched her crawl across the floor to get to the bed. I didn’t cry.
She kept repeating to me, ‘I’ll be all right, I’ll be all right,’ but at the same time she was thinking, ‘The poor darlings are still too young to be without a mother. Why did I have to die in Belgium?’
The lights had grown into a big interrogation lamp in her head that winced on and off. Someone was trying to strangle her. She knew who. Her legs were trembling, even as they were stretched out on the bed. Her palms had started sweating. What had she done wrong this time? Why was this happening to her?
I clung to my mommy’s forehead. There was no phone in the apartment to call my father, and I didn’t know any of our neighbours.
Shirley tried to stay calm. Her eyes closed. She coughed and a jet of pain shot through her head. The headache part of the migraine had struck, and she knew it wouldn’t release her for hours.
Willy found her in bed when he got home. I was sitting beside her. Paul-Henri was missing; he hadn’t been collected from school. Hopefully, the school had called my grandparents because they had a phone. Now Willy felt horribly guilty for coming back so late. He’d stopped for a beer on the way; one became three. Understandable, since he had a lot of problems that needed thinking about. He was going to miss Belgium and beer and television, but it had become obvious to him that somehow he had to get us all back to Cape Town. What a disaster. He’d failed again. But there was no way he was going to let Boma and Bopa get hold of his children. His wife was ill and there was no life for him without Shirley. He loved her so much. Who else would want him? Yes, he did get approaches from other women, but none of them actually wanted him. Shirley had a gift, an extraordinary talent. He was committed to both of them – her and her talent. Shirley was the mother of his children. She had to get better.
‘I love you,’ he said and took her hand. ‘I love you, and we are going home. I don’t know how, but somehow I’ll make it happen. I promise.’
The migraine was barely fading when she smelled the beer. Her husband was holding her hand. She wanted to speak. She wanted to tell him the kids hadn’t been fed or bathed but the big interrogation lamp in her head stopped her getting the words out. Then she realised Paul-Henri wasn’t there and fear gripped her by the throat. She saw the grandparents had arrived. They were after her children. The Catholics are always after the children. She was terrified she was going to lose her kids, the way her firstborn had been taken away from her years before. Now they had come for Paul and Brent. They were standing at the back of the room with their arms folded – Boma in blue bloomers, Bopa in his black trench-coat and hat, both of them with their bottom lips jutting out. Her soul was invisible to them; only the mould into which they wished to press her and bake her was of any importance to them. What was it they wanted her to say? She started shouting and screaming at Willy. ‘Tell them to get out! They are not touching my children. Get out! Get out!’ But nobody in the room appeared to hear her.
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