Have The Conversation

On Thursday, I was invited to discuss my poem Black and White with 90 Grade 7s. The poem is about my second mother, Johanna Rapule. At the end of the talk, the girls asked a number of questions about the poem but there is one that has haunted me ever since.

‘What would you say to Johanna if you could speak to her again?’

The easy answer would be to tell her that I loved her. The real answer would be the deep regret that, although she knew my hopes and my dreams, I never knew hers. Growing up in apartheid South Africa, it seemed normal to have Johanna living in the tiny khaya at the bottom of the garden. It was normal to have her cook and clean and iron. I was five; my world was shaped by adults.

As I grew up, visionary teachers, like Maureen O’ Gara, awakened me to the injustice that kept Johanna in her place. As a student, I protested and waved placards. We ran from the police down the streets of Benoni. We wrote angry poems, smoked furiously and drank too much wine.

Then I would go home and toss my dirty clothes in the laundry for Johanna to wash. I was a superb example of the naive hypocrisy of youth.

Johanna lived in that tiny room for over thirty years. She refused to leave the back yard, afraid of the brutal world beyond. She never ventured into town or went to visit relatives. She left only twice. After my mother died, I think she knew her life would have to change. She went to see her family in Thokoza. On her second visit, she had a stroke and died amongst strangers.  

What would I say to her now? I don’t know. I would hope that I would see her, that I would be able to look into those beautiful eyes and see to the heart of who she was. I would want to cup my hands and hold her tears as she so often did for me. I would listen to her story instead of always telling mine.

There are many conversations with people that I love that have slipped away. I will never sit in the same room again as my mother, my brothers Paul and Michael and so many who deserved better.

But there are other conversations still waiting to be had. 

Are there any that you need to start?

Black and White

For Johanna

I was fatly five

When Johanna ascended her throne

In the khayadom of our backyard.

Raised on bricks she banished

The tokoloshe from my childhood

And as I grew sleek –

She grated and peeled her years away.

On 25 cms of black and white she watched

The gloss of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’,

Moroka Swallows flew through goalless Saturdays.

She lined her cupboard with columns of print,

Black and white news of a world beyond.

Growing smaller in the flowered overall,

She washed and folded her years away.

She held my tears in the cracks of her hands,

She beamed my triumph through the gaps in her grin,

Hers was the voice that called me from play.

Joanna. Johanna. I cannot spell your name.

I don’t know where they buried your smile.

But in the black and white backyard of my days,

The tokoloshe cavorts unrestrained.

Ruth Everson

(A tokoloshe is a little creature that is believed to attack people while they are sleeping. Putting your bed on bricks will keep you safe as he is too short to climb onto the bed.)