MY BORDERS ARE OF PLEASANT STONES
The Story of Rachel Swart who was
born without arms and legs
Written by herself
“ O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and
not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones
with fair colours and lay thy foundations
with sapphires.
And I will make thy windows of agates and
thy gates of carbuncles and all thy
borders of pleasant stones.”
Isaiah 54: 11-12
Translated from the Original Afrikaans by:
Ursula A. Gross.
1
CHAPTER I
“THE DISCARDED BUNDLE”
On a windy afternoon in August 1923 – it was the 6th day of
the month – my mother, Bettie Cloete, was doing her daily work as
usual. Her baby was not expected for quite some time. My mother
and father were then living in Bredasdorp, the most southerly town
in Africa, about 120 miles from Cape Town. Father had gone to
hunt bontebok on a farm and while he was away mother was staying
with her mother on the old family farm of Nachtwacht.
Grandmother, old ouma Van Dyk, was home and father’s mother,
ouma Cloete, was spending the day with her.
The pregnancy had been a normal one. Mother was strong
and healthy and there was no sign to show that anything was wrong.
She had felt perfectly well on getting up in the morning. Suddenly
she said:
“Ma, I think we had better go and call old Nenna.” Nenna
was the name given to Coloured midwives who in those days still
brought many of us into the world.
“Are you feeling ill, Bettie?” Ouma sounded worried. “All
right, we’ll send for her and there are a few things she can bring
along from the village.”
While a piccanin, one of the Coloured farm-boys ran into the
village as fast as his bandy legs would carry him, the two
grandmothers-to-be put a huge pot of water on the stove and sheets
to warm near the fire.
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Everything was ready when old Nenna arrived. She took off
her patched grey jersey, washed her hands and set to work.
Half an hour passed.
The wrinkles on old Nenna’s face
tightened into a frown.
“Old Nonnie,” she said to my grandmother, “the baby has
turned and I think it’s going to be a breach-birth.” Ouma Van Dyk
stiffened. She had seen many a child make its way into the world but
there were times when the good Lord needed the assistance of
skilled hands. Perhaps there was still time to call a doctor . . . . . . . . .
“The old Nonnie mustn’t worry,” old Nenna said soothingly.
“It will be all right.”
“I think we had better let John know,” ouma Cloete whispered
with a frown. “Let’s find somebody to fetch my son.”
Two hours later the birth began. It was a long and painful
one. The two grandmothers stood by, praying silently. Old Nenna
sweated as she worked. Suddenly the three women held their breath.
“My God ons Vader,” ouma Van Dyk muttered as the child
emerged, almost blue in colour and without arms and legs. By silent
consent the two grandmothers left the room. Ouma Cloete was
badly upset. “We’ve got to find John,” she said over and over again.
The midwife never doubted but that the baby was dead. She
wrapped it in a towel and put it on the bed. As she touched it she
shuddered. Never had she seen a creature with nothing but four
stumps instead of arms and legs.
But the creature was alive and it was I, Rachel.
3
It was from my grandmother Van Dyk that I learnt of the
events of that day and if they sound a little dramatic it is because I
can so well imagine their feelings – the two old women, my
grandmothers, who had seen a great deal of trouble in their own lives
and would have given anything to spare their children this; the old
coloured woman who had merely come on another “job” and found
tragedy instead.
Ouma Van Dyk told me the story simply and
without emotion.
My mother was the oldest of her six children, of whom two
were boys. Oupa Piet van Dyk, my grandfather, owned the farm
Nachtwacht, one of the prettiest in the district with the broad river
running through its green fields and on the horizon the rugged
coastline of the Atlantic. Today wheat and wool have made the
Bredasdorp district the second wealthiest farming area in the Cape.
Bredasdorp itself now has a population of almost 4 000.
The family rarely left the farm. Oupa did not believe in any
modern “nonsies”, as he called it and kept a strict hand over his
family. I think they were all a little afraid of him, especially the girls.
After supper there was Divine service and then straight to bed, even
when the children grew up. Many a young fellow who came to court
the girls had to turn back in frustration when he found the house in
darkness shortly after eight. If they arrived earlier, the girls would
contrive to stay up. Quietly they would gather on the stoep, but if
they wanted to make coffee – and the people in my country love
coffee at any time of the day or night – they would have to step out
into the yard.
4
For in those days the coffee would first have to be ground and the
coffee mill was a noisy affair.
My mother was the quiet one of the family and rarely did
anything that could annoy oupa. As a result she seldom met any
young folk.
The only form of entertainment consisted of the
Jongelingsvereniging, the youth club, which met in the school hall
near the farm. It was here that mother first met the man she was to
marry, a lad with a mop of dark hair and bright blue eyes. He too
came from a farming family and was one of thirteen children. A
question I am often asked is whether my mother and father came
from the same family. They were not even remotely related nor were
there any physical or mental defects in either family.
When they were married they had little but their dreams and
ambitions on which to build. Father tried his hand at all sorts of
things. He carried fruit to the market, he became a barman and he
sold grain. One of his employers sent him to Durban to learn about
farming implements and this knowledge stands him in good stead
now that he is running his own farm. My mother was an expert
dressmaker.
The first child was a fat pink little girl with dark bright eyes.
But my parents joy was to be short lived. I shall simply call her tant
Sannie. She was a friend of the family and her one failing, if you can
call it that was her passion for nice clothes. Her eyes would open
wide when she saw the beautiful taffetas and silks with which mother
loved to work.
5
One morning she was visiting mother and asked to go the
spare bedroom which mother used as a sewing room. “Bettie, let me
hold the baby,” said tant Sannie and put out her hands for the sixmonth-old child who was gurgling happily on its mother’s lap.
Mother began to sort out dress-lengths, talking absentmindedly to her visitor without glancing up. Tant Sannie had put the
child on the windowsill, holding it with one arm. Her eye caught a
particularly beautiful blue crepe and she ran forward. Neither of
them saw the child disappear. When they found her, ten feet below,
she was barely breathing.
She seemed to recover almost immediately and it was not until
two years later that the full effects of the accident became apparent.
Baba, as they called her, would not start to walk. They thought she
was just lazy. By the time she was six it was obvious that not only
her legs but also her brain had been affected.
When she was sixteen she was sent to hospital in Cape Town,
but there was little they could do for her. Baba is thirty-seven today.
She can remember things that happened in the past better than
anyone else in the family but in other respects her mental age is that
of a three-year-old child. She likes to play with dolls and the future
has no meaning for her. That is why we still call her Baba and we all
love her as our baby.
The accident to their first child – born healthy and strong –
but fated never to grow up – hit my parents hard. I think at least for
a time my mother was afraid of falling pregnant again.
6
Baba was almost seven when Mother knew that there was to
be another baby. Mother and Father were an attractive couple, she
with her golden brown hair and beautiful complexion and him with
his deep blue eyes. There was no earthly reason why they should not
have the healthiest and most beautiful baby on earth.
The discarded bundle on the bed began to stir. Old Nenna
picked it up and it cried lustily. She wrapped it in a warm blanket
and rubbed it gently. The piccanin had at last brought the doctor.
When he saw the pathetic whimpering bundle, even he turned pale.
“Mevrou van Dyk,” he said, “if I had been called in for the
confinement I would not have stirred a finger to keep the child
alive.”
I think for the first time my grandmother became aware of the
baby as a human being. Angrily she turned on the doctor.
“Doctor,” she said, “it is not for us to decide. If the Lord
wishes that the child should live, we must not interfere. The Lord
giveth and the Lord taketh away . . . . . . . . “
Ouma van Dyk too has often been asked whether my defect
was hereditary. If there is anything which ouma passed on to her
kind, it was her strength and courage.
Late in the afternoon, they found Father. No one dared to tell him
the truth. The light was beginning to fade when he stood in the
doorway.
“What is it Mother, what has happened?” He was breathing
heavily.
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“Bettie . . . . .. Bettie has given birth,” his mother answered
weakly and patted his arm.
“Already? If I had known I wouldn’t have . . . . . Where is
she? What is it? Why are you all looking so strange? In die naam
van die Here, tell me!”
They told him. Looking straight in his eyes ouma Cloete said, “The
baby has no arms or legs John. It is God’s will my son, it is God’s
will.”
Perhaps it was best that my father fainted. For three days
they kept it from Mother. She was exhausted and mostly slept.
When she asked for her baby they always had excuses ready. Mother
did not have enough milk and they bottle-fed the baby in another
room. When they did bring it to her to breast-feed they wrapped it
up carefully.
The news travelled through the village like wildfire. From far
and wide, with donkey carts and horse wagons, with bicycles and
motorcars they came to stare through the gates. People are curious;
it is their nature. At such times they seem to be oblivious of the
feelings of others. I know what Father must have suffered during
those first three days.
It was through my sister, poor innocent little Baba, that
Mother learnt the truth. I shall never know what happened in that
little room in which ouma Van Dyk, Mother, Baba and I were
closeted together, while outside Father was trying to explain to the
increasing throng of visitors that they could not see the baby.
8
When Mother got up a few days later only those close to her
saw the change. Alone she had fought her battle before her Creator
and today I know that hers was the victory. Already she knew what
awaited her. She would have to give her two helpless children such
as few mothers had ever been called upon to give, more perhaps
than was humanly possible.
But in our world people did not think along abstract lines.
Mother’s great asset was her skill with the needle. She would see to
it that her little ones would be better dressed than any other little
girls. About one thing she was determined: never would she try to
hide her children from the curious and merciless eyes of the world.
CHAPTER II
“RACHEL WILL MAKE A PLAN”
Defiantly and limbless I had made my entry into the world
and for the next few months I announced my intentions to stay in a
loud voice. Mother says that I cried a great deal, probably because
of difficulty in taking food. I had a tiny mouth with a very long
9
upper lip and I was hideously ugly. At birth there was a blood red
mark across my face stretching from one nostril to the mouth. After
four months it disappeared and I began to look a little more human.
Yet I refused to take the breast and had to be put completely on the
bottle.
Ouma Van Dyk was convinced that my mouth too was
deformed and that I would never speak. She was wrong! Already at
the age of nine months I said words like “Mamma”, “Pappa” and
“Baba”. By the end of the first year I could speak whole phrases. A
little later I was singing several verses of nursery rhymes without a
hitch.
My parents were overjoyed.
If their second child was
defective physically, her brightness was certainly making up for it.
Mother spent most of her day making clothes and my basket
always stood near her in the sewing room. It was filled with rattles
and rubber animals, which I managed to push around with my
stumps.
One day, when I was ten months old, Mother looked up
from her work and saw that the basket had toppled over and I had
fallen out. Luckily it was standing on the floor and not on the table
where it usually was. Hastily she picked me up and put me back, but
a few minutes later it fell over again. When it happened for the third
time, Mother began to wonder. Watching me out of the corner of
her eye, she saw how I leant against the side of the basket until it
toppled over. This time she left me to see what I would do next.
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This then, was the first crisis in the life of Rachel. Too
young to shape a thought, the little thing realised nonetheless that
everything she wanted in life she would have to get for herself.
With a great deal of puffing and blowing, I finally brought
myself upright.
Mother was still watching as I continued to struggle. Sitting
on my rump, I began to move from side to side and forward a little
at a time.
I was crawling and walking all at once! And that is the
way in which I still move today if I do not want to use a wheelchair.
My parents had expected nothing like it. They thought that if little
Rachel wanted to move from one place to another they would have
to carry or wheel her all her life. I had solved a problem all by
myself. There was no way of helping me. No little hand by which to
lead me on my first steps. I, and I alone, would have to find a path
through a world made for the normal. My mother’s nickname for
me was “Ou Rachel Planne,” or Rachel the plan maker and ever
since then I have tried to live up to the name.
With those first steps I had unwittingly proved the Biblical
words that my grandmother had used to the doctors.
“The Lord
giveth and the Lord taketh away”. He took part of my body but He
gave me a brain!
Later I even learnt to “run”. This I did by hopping as fast as
I could, still in a sitting posture. It was easy because I was light and I
had an advantage over others – instead of running around tables and
chairs I simply went under the
legs!
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I was a very healthy little girl and got over all the usual
children’s ailments easily. My only serious illness was a series of
boils when I was four. Eight or ten would appear at a time and
when they went there would be a new crop, until I was reduced to
nothing but skin and bones. My parents called in a doctor and with
a good tonic I soon recovered. These boils, strange as it may seem,
were a blessing in disguise.
When I was born, the two stumps of my arms were of
unequal length and I was unable to bend either of them. This made
it difficult for me to eat by myself. I could bring the food as far as
my mouth by holding it between the stumps but then the longer left
stump would get in the way. You may call it ‘luck’ or you may call it
‘fate’ but as a result of the boils the left stump became a little bent so
that the two are now both of almost equal length. Before this
happened, my left stump was considered the stronger because it was
longer and my mother made me use it more than the right one. It is
still very strong today and I use it for all heavy work.
For writing and lifting I use both stumps pressed together.
In my early years, I had a habit of sitting on a chair and banging my
stumps against the table, until everyone became jumpy.
“Liefling,” Mother said one day, after she had watched
patiently for some time. “Darling, whatever are you doing that for?
Does it hurt?” I must have looked surprised. “Why,” I said, “ I am
trying to hammer out a finger.” Today the tips of my stumps are in
fact a little pointed.
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Mother always made a point of praising me when I produced
one of my “planne” but when I was naughty, which happened only
too often, I was punished just like any other child. She kept a pair of
Father’s old braces, which were called “Rooi Oom” (Red Uncle).
Red Uncle and I made various very painful contacts. When I was
five someone gave Baba and me a beautiful sleeping doll with long
blonde hair.
For hours the two of us would sit in Mother’s
workroom and play with it. There were two beds in the room and
under one of them Mother kept her workbox with her fashion books
and paper patterns. Near it was the sewing machine on which lay a
large pair of scissors.
One day I suggested to Baba that we cut the doll’s hair. I
asked her to hold it while I cut.
“We’ll catch it from Mother,” my sister warned.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Mother needn’t know. When we
have cut it we’ll put the doll away and wait till it’s grown again.”
Baba’s eyes opened wide. “Will it grow again?” she wanted to know.
“Of course,” I said, “a doll that can go to sleep must be able
to grow new hair.”
Baba was satisfied and while she held the doll I cut, holding the
scissors between my stumps. The doll looked horrible when we had
finished with it and we quickly stuffed it under one of the mattresses.
For two months every morning Baba went to see if the hair had
grown.
“Rachel,” Mother asked one day, “wherever is that lovely
doll with the yellow hair?”
13
She looked at our guilty faces and then at the bulge in the
mattress. Half crushed, most of the paint gone and with scarcely a
hair on its white pate, the expensive doll presented a sorry sight.
While Mother went to fetch “Red Uncle” I slid under the bed and
landed in the workbasket with my left arm holding a spring of the
mattress.
When Mother came back I had disappeared but something
was whimpering under the bed. There Mother found me hanging
like a bat. She pulled the box out but I hooked a leg into another
spring and there I hung in mid-air. She finally had to pull me out by
my skirt, tired and exhausted. Frightened as I was that day, I now
realise that Mother must have been rather pleased at how I managed
to use a pair of scissors. But I got my punishment.
Another time I cut my own hair. I succeeded by pressing the
scissors against the table and shaking my head until my hair came in
between the two points. This time Father would not let Mother give
me a hiding.
“Shame, the poor little thing hasn’t even a hand to rub her
sore bottom,” he would always say. The only time I ever got a
hiding from him was when I disturbed his sacred midday rest, badly
needed because of a stomach ailment. He would lie down every day
after lunch and we all had to be as quiet as mice. That day I was
shouting for Mother who was out in the yard. The servant tried to
shush me and even father called out, but I turned a deaf ear.
Suddenly his door opened and there he stood. I got such a fright
that I fell.
14
Although father rarely punished us, we had the greatest
respect for him and were even a little afraid of him. He was rather
aloof and never played or even spoke much with us. Yet he was one
of the most generous people I have ever known. At that time we
were already fairly comfortable off and father believed in living well.
It was he who saw to it that our large rambling farmhouse had all the
comforts. He always said that money was there to be spent and not
to be piled up in a bank. In order to make money you have to invest
money, not on a gamble but in something concrete like a farm.
One Sunday morning I was sitting on Father’s bed while
Mother was fixing the breakfast. Father was a heavy smoker and
while he dozed his box of cigarettes and matches rested on his chest.
I wondered suddenly whether I would be able to light a match.
Rachel “Planne” never just left matters at wondering. The deed
always followed the thought. Quietly I removed the box, opened it
with my mouth – which has always served me as a very efficient
finger – and took out a match.
Holding it between my teeth, I grasped the box between my
arms. I moved my head with a jerk, rubbing the match against the
box. Immediately it burst into flames. What I had not counted on
was the sharp smell of sulphur and smoke that stung my nostrils. I
dropped the match.
It fell on the sheet and burnt a deep hole
before it went out. I was terrified! Before I could see Father’s
reaction, Mother came in with the breakfast tray. She looked at the
hole in horror.
“John,” she said, “one of these days you are going to burn
15
us out of house and home with your incessant smoking.”
Father
never said a word. He merely smiled. Some time later I renewed my
acquaintance with fire, this time with almost disastrous results. The
maid had just bathed me in a tin tub and had put me on the bed.
Then she went out. On the dressing table was a candle and next to it
a camphor bag. I had often seen Ouma putting out a flame by
pressing it between moistened fingers and I wondered how I could
do the same. I picked up the camphor bag and spat on it, not
knowing that camphor is highly flammable. Hardly had I brought it
near the candle when it caught fire. What was I to do? It must be
dropped into the bath. I threw and missed. It fell on a mat next to
the bed, which immediately began to burn. When the flames began
to lick at the sheets of the bed I screamed. But who was to hear me?
Our house had seventeen rooms. Luckily Baba came in just then.
She screamed so loudly that my parents heard it in the dining room
and came running. They poured the whole bath on the fire before it
was out.
Did I get Mother’s sympathy? Don’t you believe it! As soon
as she had made sure that I was not burnt, she brought out “Rooi
Oom”. I never again played with fire and always kept my distance
from it. Yet I had one or two other narrow escapes. Once a hot
iron fell into a box in which I was sitting and burnt me badly in the
lap. I still sometimes dream about licking flames.
I have also always been afraid of corked bottles and this goes
back to my fourth year when I came across a bottle of ginger beer
behind the door of our dining
room. The native servant had
16
warned me, “My nooi,” he said, “look out for that bottle. The
missus doesn’t want to use it any more because it’s too old and one
of these days it’s going to go off like a cracker.”
That was enough to arouse my curiosity. I liked to crawl into
every corner and touch and look at everything I came across. The
tightly closed bottle behind the door became a challenge. I had to
open it.
With my legs below and my arms above I grasped it and
pulled at the cork with my strong teeth. My dentures have been
made exceptionally strong, for my mouth is still my best hand. My
mouth is my tool and my weapon, in more ways than one. Mother
always teased me about my sharp tongue and I got many a hiding for
answering back. But then my tongue is my only means of selfdefence and has not the Lord provided every creature with a
weapon? Human beings have their hands and their brains and being
deprived of the former I have to use my brains to make up for it.
Other creatures have their natural enemies in the animal
world but humans have to defend themselves only against their own
fellow men. If you are in any way handicapped that is something
that you find out at a very early stage in life.
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CHAPTER III
“ALADDIN AND THE MAGIC LAMP”
My babyhood was happy. In my own way I moved among
familiar faces and step by groping step I learnt how to cope with my
own little world. Each new conquest brought a reward in itself. My
first rude awakening came with my first day at school. It came as a
slap in the face.
18
I knew of course that other children had arms and legs but
up to now I had not really felt “different” in any way. We were now
living some 25 miles away from Bredasdorp in the little village of
Klipdale. There were only a few hundred inhabitants of whom 40 or
50 were white, so that I had few children to play with. My chief
companion was my sister Baba and when we were together it was I
who was the leader, who taught Baba the games and the pranks and
who looked after her. It was often “poor Baba” but never “poor
Rachel”. Mother had taught us both to sew and it was my dolls’
clothes that were the prettier and the neater. I could read a few
simple words and write my name but Baba would never learn. I
thought I was very lucky.
There was a phrase that I was later to hear my mother use
many a time and perhaps it was now that she first said it. Her aim of
course was to save me disappointments but then, as later, the words
would prove a challenge.
“Such things are not for you Rachel,” she would say. School
was one of the things that were considered to be out of my reach.
How was I to get there and back? Who would look after me during
the long hours? No private teachers or schools for the handicapped
existed in the country. I begged and pleaded. There was a tworoomed school only a mile away where one could attend up to the
sixth school year. Father could easily take me in the morning but
how could he fetch me at three? It was harvest time and he was
helping farmers in the district.
His spare time, when he was not
19
too tired, he spent in his own little workshop.
For the first time my temper got the better of me.
“Toemaar, say it! I’m nothing but a burden to you! You
wish I had never been born.”
I would have recalled the words if I could when I saw my mother’s
face.
“All right, Rachel,” was all she said.
“You shall go to
school.” But it was not the little farm school to which I was sent.
Had I gone there, where I knew all the children and could have been
near my parents, I would have been spared the hardest years of my
life. But I do not regret it. Sooner or later I would have had to leave
my shelter and face the world. It was better that it should happen
while I was young. But I wish I had been prepared for what awaited
me. It was decided that I should go to school in Bredasdorp and live
with ouma Cloete. There were still four unmarried daughters in her
house, the youngest of whom was writing her school-leaving
certificate that year.
Today I am very fond of all my aunts, but when I arrived
there, an awkward lonely seven year old, they seemed like a
forbidding rank of adult strangers. The girls were just at the age
where they liked to feel grown up and they did not take kindly to a
child in the house. I immediately fell under the strict discipline of
my grandmother and teenage aunts. Only one of the girls, the
second youngest, occasionally condescended to play with me and at
once I attached myself to her like a chick to the mother hen.
My grandfather did not
take much notice of me but as
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he seemed very like father, always holding himself slightly aloof from
the family, this did not disturb me. Like many of the old generation,
he commanded respect rather than love. Such was the house from
which I went to school. Father deposited me there one Sunday
afternoon and when he left I cried bitterly.
Early on Monday morning, Ouma dressed me in the school
uniform which Mother had made for me and I was loaded onto a
pushcart together with my books. The aunt who still went to school
pushed me along the few hundred yards to the building and into the
corridor. Then she let go of the cart and with an unnecessary
warning to “stay there till I come back” she went into the principal’s
office.
With interest I began to look around at the austere brick walls,
wondering what awaited me behind the closed doors. Soon I would
be learning to read stories all by myself and perhaps in a few weeks
time I could write a letter to Mother.
In the distance there were shouts and laughter.
Soon,
perhaps today even, I would be playing with new friends. Behind my
grandmother’s back I had slipped the new doll Mother had given me
into my pocket. I would show the little girls of my class the dainty
dress I had made for it. I heard a movement behind me. A swift
glace revealed a group of children who had quietly formed a semi
circle around me. They stared at me in silence and I stared back.
A youngster of about ten detached himself from the group
and came close to the pushcart.
Suddenly he burst out laughing.
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“Haai, kêrels!” he cried, slapping his thigh, “look what’s here.” I
held my breath. The other children went on staring wide-eyed. The
boy took another step forward. He raised his arm and slapped me in
the face. “Wê,” he said, “you can’t hit me back!”
The scene was like a nightmare. For weeks afterwards it
would come to me in my sleep – the sea of silent staring faces and a
distorted huge shadow looming, striking. There was a red mark on
my cheek but a deeper mark in my heart.
The door opened and my aunt and the principal came out. The
children scattered and I found sudden relief in tears.
“What, crying already, Rachel?” my aunt asked.
The school principal knew children better. “What happened?” he
asked sternly. I bit my lip and looked at the ground. From a safe
distance the children were watching.
He called to them and
reluctantly they came. He forced them to tell what had happened
only a few minutes before, though it seemed centuries ago to me.
The principal and my aunt exchanged glances. In front of
everyone he gave the boy a good hiding. Then he took me aside.
“Rachel,” he said, “you are a new girl at school and new pupils
always have a hard time at first. The children will get used to you. If
anybody troubles you just come and tell me.”
And then to the children again. “This poor little girl here cannot
defend herself. If I see any of you so much as lay a hand on her he
will get a beating that he will never forget. Now remember that.”
And so my body was safe
but neither the principal nor any
22
of the teachers, however kind, would ever suspect the wounds that
went deeper - for I would never show them. In my babyhood no
one had ever called me “poor Rachel” and now I came to hate pity
more than anything else. I did not want to be felt sorry for. I merely
wanted to be treated like everyone else. And that is why I soon got
on quite well with the children, because for them the word “pity”
does not exist. They would tease me and laugh at me but then they
also teased and laughed at each other and if a dig found its mark I
consoled myself with the thought: “Toemaar, they are only children.”
I was only a child myself but instinctively I knew that the cruelty of
children lacked the sting of an adult’s tactlessness. Even the boy
who had spoilt my first day at school had less intention of hurting
me than of showing off to his friends. A child would stare or point
or even laugh at me but there would be something frank and
straightforward about it. Whereas the adult’s gibe would be veiled
and therefore all the sharper.
All this I could not have put into words at the time but the
feeling was there even in my early years. There is another thing about
children. You can bribe them unashamedly into friendliness. Once I
was in the classroom I had to stay there until my aunt came to fetch
me. I had no means of getting to the cloakroom and only rarely
could the other little girls be bothered to push me along. During tea
and lunch break I had to stay behind while they all went into the
playground. But because of the effect I had on people, friends and
strangers were always giving me
pennies.
23
I used them to buy
sweets and very soon “poor Rachel” became known as a veritable
free tuck shop. I realised well enough that the children were not
giving up their playtime out of love for me, but it served its purpose.
The teachers too took very little notice of me and everything
I learnt at school was only what I myself wanted to learn. Whether
or not I did my homework, learnt to recite the verses, wrote the
dictation or worked out sums, not once did the teacher look at my
work or ask me to recite, with the result that in the end I did more
playing than working. There is no child in the world that can work
without discipline.
I began to lose all interest in school. No one asked why. They just
took it for granted that “poor Rachel” could not be expected to learn
like other children.
Because they felt “sorry” for me, I was passed to the next
class each year.
Out of “pity”, that hated word.
Because the
teachers pitied me they ignored me. Because they pitied me they
never scolded me.
Because they pitied me they never showed me where I had
gone wrong. The result was that I remained pitifully uneducated.
If I was to go through school without learning much, I might at least
become a God-fearing child versed in the text of the Goeie Boek, as
taught at Sunday school.
It was not long before I found out that in the opinion of
some, our Lord Jesus had not included the handicapped when he
said: “Come all ye little ones.” My own parents, like all my people,
were
deeply
religious
and
fortunately the belief ingrained in
24
me, as a child was shaken but not destroyed through my experience
in Bredasdorp.
From my early youth onward I have communed with my
God and had my faith ever deserted me I would indeed have become
“poor Rachel”, instead of “Rachel the Plan Maker” whom God
helped to help herself.
Before I left home it had been vaguely understood that I
should visit my parents on Sundays. My grandmother, however,
insisted that I should attend Sunday school every week. Even when
my parents passed through Bredasdorp in a lorry filled with happy
holiday folk on their way to the beach, I was not allowed to join
them. If I shyly asked my grandmother to let me off “just this
once”, she would give me a look as though I had renounced the
Kingdom of Heaven forever. So I barely saw my parents from the
beginning to the end of term. I was terribly homesick.
And what happened the first time I went to Sunday school?
The teacher, who was the parson’s wife, sent a message to my
grandmother in the early morning asking me to stay away. Her
nerves were in a poor state, she said, and she doubted whether she
could stand the strain of having me in her class. I listened behind a
closed door while grandmother was given the message.
When
grandmother came to my room she asked why I was not ready for
Sunday school. I looked surprised.
“I
thought
I
wasn’t
going,” I said, “God does not
25
want me.” Ouma looked shocked. “Don’t you ever let me hear you
speak like that. Of course you are going. You are joining a class of
older children, because you are not a baby anymore”. I did not
argue.
Later I learnt that a friend of the family’s, who taught the
older children, had insisted on my joining his class. For four years
he taught me. He went out of his way to make it pleasant for me
and every now and again he would stop and explain something to
me. Through him I regained some of the faith I had lost. At the
end of the first year I won a prize for attendance. In all the four
years I missed only one Sunday.
There was always a concert at the end of the year and a huge
Christmas tree in the Church Hall, but I saw it only once in my five
years at Bredasdorp when I asked a girl to push me there in exchange
for a ticket, which she herself could not afford. I would often stand
in front of Ouma’s front door on a hot summer night listening to the
drone of frogs in the clear stream, which ran under a bridge just
across the path and watch other children hurrying past on their way
to some festivity. I would look at their eager faces and listen to their
laughter and my heart would burn to follow them.
And yet I accepted the fact that I was different without
questioning. One of my aunts once read to me the story of Aladdin
and the Magic Lamp. It was in a schoolbook and at the end the
child was asked to write an essay in which he was to tell of his three
dearest wishes. My aunt looked
at me in embarrassment and
26
hurried on to the next story. But it would never have occurred to
me to wish for arms and legs. I had been born without them and
that was all there was to it. I never cursed the day I was born. I
never even expressed to myself the wish that it might have been
otherwise. Had I done so I could not have gone on living.
And so, when the children hurried past, I merely wished that
I could go too. I did not hanker after the impossible. It was after all
not asking for the stars to be taken along. Was I demanding too
much in expecting people to go a little out of their way? Surely not!
It would have been so little trouble for them.
All right then, if nobody was going to push me where I
wanted to go, I would have to find a way of getting about by myself.
Mother had not called me “Rachel Planne-maak” for nothing. The
sit and hop method served its purpose in the house but I could not
venture any further a field in this way.
Walk on my stumps?
Impossible they said. In Ouma’s back yard I found two old enamel
containers.
I put one stump in each of them and I found that they just
fitted. I raised myself upright and took a step forward and then
another. I was walking!
I would practice a little every day but never for long as my
back would get sore after a few minutes from the unaccustomed
upright posture. When we went to the beach during holidays, I
insisted on having white containers and called them my beach shoes.
I must have looked just like a
penguin waddling along. After a
27
while the enamel began to wear off and the rough surface gave me
ugly blisters. Sometimes I would have to bite my lips hard so as not
to cry out with pain but I was determined that a few blisters would
not spoil my getting about in this way. I doctored them myself,
opening them with a pin and putting on ointment and then I would
line the inner surface of the containers with rolls of paper and off I
would be again on my penguin walk.
Later a boot maker on our village made me similar containers
out of leather stiff enough not to collapse under the strain. I still
remember that he charged me two shillings and six pence a pair.
They usually lasted six months before they wore out. As I grew
bigger and heavier this way of walking became more and more
uncomfortable. My back, accustomed for all these years to a seated
posture, would not stand the strain and I had to give up the penguin
walk. The boots also meant that I had to wear short skirts and as I
became older I saw no point in giving people another reason to
laugh at me.
For six or seven years I had managed to get about in this
way, often for quite a distance at a time, especially if I drove my push
cart in front of me and leaned on it.
In spite of my unhappiness at school, where I was made to
feel a freak, or perhaps because of it, I still found an outlet in
childish pranks. Perhaps I wanted to prove that I could be perfectly
normally naughty. How better could I show it than by playing truant
and running away? One of my
aunts lived on a farm called
28
“Morgenson” (Morning Sun) about four miles from Bredasdorp. It
was a beautiful place with no lack of fresh milk, farm butter and
biltong – those tasty strips of dried game on which one can chew for
hours.
My cousin Hennie was staying with us and early in the
morning I said to him: “It’s much too nice for school today. Why
don’t we go and visit tant Rina, Hennie?”
“How?” he asked briefly.
“Why, we’ll walk! I mean you push me in the cart.”
The vision of fresh coarse bread and farm butter, biltong,
peachkonfyt and coffee with creamy milk, which I conjured up for
him, were too much for Hennie.
“Top,” he said.
He pushed the cart for all he was worth. Hennie was only eight years
old.
“Won’t ouma be angry?” I said, for now I was a little
frightened.
“Agneewat, don’t worry.” It was Hennie now who took the
lead.
Two miles from the farm there was a gate that stopped us.
Hennie could have gone around it, over the iron grills laid to prevent
cattle from moving from one farm to the next, but the pushcart
would have stuck between the grills. Out of nowhere a round-eyed
Native piccanin appeared and opened the gate for us.
“Here you are, my boy,” I said grandly, throwing him one of
the pennies which people were
always giving me.
29
We had a wonderful time at Morgenson. It had taken us two hours
to get there, after leaving at eight, and we had developed quite an
appetite. At about two in the afternoon, while we were sitting and
playing on the cool floor of the stoep, one of my younger aunts
arrived on her bicycle.
“You are to come home at once, Rachel and Hennie,” she
said. “Ouma has kept pudding for you.”
At first I was puzzled. “Ouma only makes pudding on Sundays.”
Then I realized what she meant. “I know that kind of pudding.”
But back we went and Ouma was waiting for the pushcart to arrive
at her gate. Her pudding had very much the same taste as my old
friend, the Red Uncle.
After I had been at school for four years in Breadsdorp,
Ouma moved away to another part of the town and as it would have
been too far for me, Father decided to let me come home and go to
school in Klipdale.
One of the teachers, who knew the family well, offered to
take me every morning by car and bring me back at three in the
afternoon. What is more, he himself supervised my education and
saw to it that I was treated like any other child. I was much happier
during this year and even made some friends. One girl who was a
few years ahead of me looked after me during school hours.
However, it now became obvious that I had learnt next to
nothing in Bredasdorp and I was generally considered stupid since
no one realised that I had to
make up for the lost years.
30
I
shall always regret that I did not start school in Klipdale where
teachers and pupils did not see fit to “pity” and ignore me.
I was now already twelve years old and rapidly developing
into a young woman. My friend who looked after me and on whom
I had come to rely was finishing school at the end of the year.
Mother decided to take me out of school and I never went back
again. Fortunately I had learnt to read and write my home language,
Afrikaans, and a little English and as I was fond of reading I was able
to carry on on my own.
CHAPTER IV
“OF PIGS, PINCERS AND PEGS”
In the years that followed, the days rolled on in aimless succession. I
seemed to be moving in no direction at all and I could not tell why
or to what purpose I was here. It was not that I was bored. There
was always some new skill to learn, some fresh task to master.
Though I was no longer very
interested in playing with dolls, I
31
gook pride in making clothes for them and I seemed to have
developed some of Mother’s talent with the needle.
Often I would take her dress patterns and cut them down to a
smaller size for my dolls. I had to have a large pair of scissors, not
too stiff but very sharp. I would press the left side of the scissors
against my left cheek. The paper or material was held down with a
lightweight so that it could not shift and then I would regulate the
right part of the scissors with my right arm. That is why the scissors
had to be fairly loose – so that they would fall open by themselves
when I pressed the tops together.
Someone also taught me to knit. For this I had to have two
pieces of elastic, one round each arm, through which the needles
were fitted. There also had to be a weight on the wool so that it
would not be too tight or too loose. I would work the needles into
the stitches and with a light movement of my body I would turn the
thread round the needle and pull it through.
But I never cared for knitting, as it did not go fast enough
for me.
Writing was much more fun and I would never tire of it. I
write easily and quickly by grasping the pen between my stumps and
pressing my left arm lightly on the paper to hold it steady. I have to
tear the sheet from the writing pad first and let it slide down as I go
along otherwise I cannot reach the top of the page on the table. I
think I write as quickly as the average person. In those days I already
had
ten
to
twenty
correspondents, boys and girls
32
who had moved away from our village and already a few strangers
who had heard of me and were full of questions. Letter writing was
my favourite way of passing the time. I also liked to go visiting and
naturally my contact with the outside world meant meeting men and
women at their best and at their worst.
The kind and the tactless; the gentle and the cruel. Perhaps
there really is no such division, but at the time people seemed to be
of two sorts – those who accepted me as a human being and those
who stood and stared – or worse.
One family with several children in a neighbouring village
belonged to the former group. They always welcomed me as one of
their own and there was nothing they would not do for me, though
without seeming to put themselves out in any way. I arrived there
on day when a church bazaar was in progress and the father carried
me to the church hall in a wicker chair. He put me down where I
could watch all the fun and I told the children what I wanted to buy.
While they were out of earshot a woman leading a little girl
by the hand came to stand near me. I looked at the child with
sympathy. Small slanting eyes looked ahead blankly from a podgy
swollen face. My heart went out to her. At least I had a good
normal brain.
And then the mother turned around. For a full minute she
looked me up and down. So that everyone could hear she said,
“Look at that poor girl! Her parents must have done something
dreadful to deserve such a misfit.
I suppose they were cousins or
33
perhaps they committed some terrible sin.”
I had a queer feeling in the pit of my stomach and I felt all
colour leave my face. I looked at the woman as though I might will
her to disappear. Then I found my tongue.
“Mevrou,” I said, “I could very well ask you the same
question but thank God I have more sense. Besides, the answer is
obvious. Your daughter has an idiot for a mother.”
She did not say another word and the smiles around me told
me that the people were on my side. But my day had been spoilt.
And I began to wonder – was there any truth in what the woman
had said? Were my parents related or had they tempted God in any
way?
Later, my mother, with her usual calm matter-of-fact
understanding, soon put my mind at rest. She assured me that the
woman was talking nonsense that she and father were certainly both
descended from Adam and Eve but nothing nearer that they knew
of, and as far as any great sin was concerned ……
Well! She did not pretend to be a saint, but neither she nor
father was any worse than anybody else and moreover, I was a
blessing to them. How dared the woman think that I had been
inflicted on them as a punishment!
Not long afterwards I went to a shop in the neighbourhood.
The owner, an old man whom I knew quite well, must have looked
deeply into the bottle that day. He came round the corner to look at
me and laughed raucously.
“Know why she looks like that?” he said, turning to his
34
wife. She tried to shush him but he went on at the top of his voice.
“When her mother was pregnant they were slaughtering a pig on the
farm. The legs were cut off already and there the varkie was hanging
from a peg on the wall. Her mother should never have looked at
that pig!” And there followed another burst of ear splitting drunken
laughter. Again my tongue ran away with me.
“Well, Oom,” I said, looking straight at his red nose, “I’m
darem glad my mother looked at the pig and not at you.” The old
man spluttered and choked.
But again I wondered whether there could be a thread of
truth in what he had said. Perhaps something did upset my mother
while she was carrying me? Once more my parents assured me that
such stories were sheer kaf. In later years I had to hear again and
again speculations as to whether my parents were related and about
the effects of pre-natal influences and other old wives tales, but I
learnt to ignore them.
I have often wondered, though, why it is that people who
are generally kind-hearted, who would not dream of hurting an
animal and who can never resist an appeal to their heart, think
nothing of making a remark which cannot fail to hurt someone
maimed. I believe that they do not at that moment think of you as
another human being but rather as a sideshow attraction like a calf
with two heads.
Or perhaps they think that if your body is not complete your
mind must be affected too and
you cannot possibly understand
35
what they are saying. At any rate I know that they rarely mean to
hurt you deliberately and that has been my great comfort. Then
there are some among the more sophisticated who are convinced
that everyone with a bodily defect must have an “inferiority
complex”. I do not think I ever feel that I am inferior but I do know
that I am sensitive and that I ask only to be treated like others. I
have found too that through the years I have learnt to tell what other
people are feeling.
Whether they are young or old, men or women, friends or
mere acquaintances, I can talk and listen to them with sympathy.
Often, when people want to confide in me they will stop short and
say, “……. but you don’t want to hear about that, you who have so
many troubles of your own.” I try to persuade them, however, that
through learning to conquer my own particular problems I have also
learnt how to cope with those problems that are common to us all.
In 1937 we moved away from Klipdale. At long last my
father had achieved his great ambition. He had acquired a farm of
his own. It was not large for South Africa where no farmer is
satisfied until he no longer sees the smoke from his neighbour’s
chimney and at the beginning it did not pay its way entirely, so that
Father still had to go out and help other farmers as well, but it was
wonderful to live in a house right amid the fields where the wheat
swayed in the wind and the sheep grazed among the bushes.
The
farm
was
just
outside Protem, a village also in
36
the Bredasdorp district but smaller than Klipdale, though there were
many large farms surrounding it.
Klipdale was something of a
thoroughfare but Protem was and still is a dead end. Here the
railway line from the Cape ends and the trains arriving every other
day turn round and go back again. Besides the station there were
only a few houses, two shops, a church hall and a one-man school.
And yet there was plenty of life in Protem.
People here seemed to put more enthusiasm into what they
were doing than anywhere else – whether it was a church-bazaar, a
wedding or just entertaining one’s neighbours on the spur of the
moment. There I nothing beautiful about Protem. It has none of
the sweeping green hills of the Caledon district, the ruggedness of
the coast or the majestic mountain ranges of the Cape Peninsula but
a place is always what its people make it and in Protem I have spent
some of my happiest days.
At first I missed the friends I had made in Klipdale but it did
not take me long to get to know the people of Protem. “Wanneer
kom jy kuier?” – “when are you coming to visit us?” was their
favourite way of greeting you and soon I was paying visits in the
district with one of the servants pushing me along in my wheelchair.
I was now almost sixteen years old but my parents still
thought of me as a little girl and expected me to behave accordingly.
I can well understand their attitude.
The longer I remained a
child the longer I would be
37
happy, they thought, and protected from the demands of an adult
world.
Fortunately I never relied on such protection.
On the
contrary, I had grown up perhaps more quickly than other children
just because I had to rely on my own resources at an early age.
I had no sooner settled down at Protem, than my right arm
began to trouble me. My right stump has always ended in a sharp
point, whereas the left one is rounded. this point now began to ache
almost unbearably. It felt as if the bone was growing too fast for the
skin and threatened to break through. The slightest touch would
make me cry out. Then water would form, the skin erupted and I
would find momentary relief.
My mother took me to the local
doctor and I think it was he who told me that there was an
organisation in Cape Town that had offered to have me fitted with
artificial limbs. I do not remember exactly how the offer reached me
nor am I quite sure which organisation it was – but I think it was the
Red Cross.
My parents were thrilled. “Think of it, Rachel,” they said,
“you’ll be having arms and legs like everybody else.” But already
then the idea did not appeal to me. I had got along quite well all
these years and though I did not know how these contraptions
worked; I had visions of myself as some sort of machine moving at
the press of a button. It was decided that I should go to Cape Town
to be examined by a bone-specialist and one fine summer morning
we packed our clothes on to a lorry and set out for the dusty road to
the city.
38
I had never been to a city before and I stared in wonder at
the tall buildings in Adderley Street, the electric trams, the babble of
English almost foreign to my ears and above all this hubbub, Table
Mountain crowned by a thick white grey edged cloud. Though Cape
Town is no doubt one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it
oppressed and frightened me a little and still does today, but only
because in my mind it is interwoven with the anticipation of doctors
and hospitals and of being torn from my familiar surroundings and
dumped among strangers.
As soon as the bone-specialist saw my arm he decided that
an operation was necessary before artificial limbs could even be
thought of. Then he examined me carefully and also found a sort of
growth on my chest, which had never worried me.
”We’ll have to cut that too,” he said, shaking his head.
My parents were both in the consulting room with me and
throughout the examination they sat in silence.
Every time the doctor said this or that must be cut, they
nodded their heads in unison. I wondered whether they would nod
in the same way if the doctor said my head had to be cut off too. My
eyes were growing bigger and bigger, for I had always been a little
afraid of doctors and this important looking man who announced his
verdict so gravely did not make me feel at ease. I did not mind
about the arm because I was only too anxious to have something
done about it, but the operation on my chest I thought quite
unnecessary.
39
Groote Schuur hospital is situated up against the
mountainside and you drive there along the prettiest road cut out of
the mountain and overlooking the bay. But I was in no mood to
appreciate the scenery. I saw only the bleak while walls of my
private ward and the stiff coldness of the spotless white bed. The
nurses seemed to be always in a hurry, for the hospital had been
open only for a year or two and there was still a desperate shortage
of staff. Most of them came from England or English speaking
homes and could not understand my language. I was desperately
unhappy when my parents left.
Yet the two days spent waiting for the operation passed
pleasantly enough. Somehow, no matter how busy they were, the
nurses always found a spare moment for me and soon we were
chatting away in a curious mixture of Afrikaans, English and sign
language. We had a mock serious conference on what I was to wear
for the great occasion.
The usual garb of those days was useless, since it would
cover me all the way down. In the end they gave me a pair of men’s
pyjamas with rolled up legs and sleeves. I remember giving the
theatre sisters the fright of their lives by leaping on to the trolley
while they were bending over to pick me up.
Of the operation I recall only that several nurses and doctors
had to hold me down when I fought and kicked against the mask.
When I came to I was back in my room with a huge bandage round
my arm and chest.
Both
operations had been done at the
40
same time and both were successful. The wounds had healed and
the bandages were removed in a matter of days, but I had to stay in
bed until the arm was strong enough to be measured for artificial
limbs.
I never had a moment of pain but I was lonely and homesick.
My parents had gone home and were unable to come back to see me,
as harvest time was drawing near and they could not afford to stay
away. There was no one I knew in Cape Town.
The days passed slowly, endlessly.
There seemed to be
nothing to do but sleep. Once I fell asleep on a Friday night and did
not
wake
up
again
until
Monday
afternoon.
“Post operative shock”, the doctors called it, but I knew
better. I was bored and longing for home. A whole month passed.
One morning the doctor came and stood beside my bed. He still
had the same grave manner but I liked him better now and knew that
underneath his solemnity there was a heart of gold.
“Rachel,” he said, “any day now we are going to get you your
new arms and legs. Just a little more patience and you’ll be able to
get about almost like anybody else.”
His face fell when I answered. “Ag nee, doctor, I think I’d
rather not have them at all.”
“Why now Rachel, I’m surprised at you. I thought yow were
a brave girl. It will take time to get used to them, of course, but
surely you are not afraid of a little hard work?”
41
He pleaded
for his product of modern science as though he was trying to sell me
a new tractor.
I asked him to pass me my handbag. Out of it I pulled a
piece of fine embroidery on which I had been working before the
operation.
“Look at this, doctor,” I said.
“Would I be able to do
anything like it with those iron hooks – it is hooks or pincers that
I’m getting and not hands, isn’t it? Do you think I’d be able to
embroider with them?”
“Good heavens, girl, you are expecting a bit much, aren’t
you?”
“Oh no, I’m not. I’m not expecting anything. It’s you who
are expecting too much from me.
You want me to give up
everything I’ve struggled to achieve for myself and begin struggling
all over again and then the results won’t be any better or even as
good. You forget that I haven’t had an accident or anything. I was
born like this and I’ve been doing all right. No thanks, doctor.
I hope you won’t be offended, but you can keep your hooks and
pincers.”
“And the legs?”
“Well, that’s another story. I’ll give them a try.”
And so the plans for artificial arms died an early death. I saw
myself in the morning, wanting to sew on a button perhaps, after I
was dressed and having first to be helped in taking off my clothes
again, so that I could detach the arms. I can quite see that they serve
the purpose when someone loses his arms, but if God has created
42
you without them then he teaches you how to do without them.
It was decided, then, that I would get only the legs. The
measurements were taken but I was still not allowed to go home. I
thought I would go mad. Then one day a farmer from our district
came to visit one of his own children in the hospital and he looked
in to see how I was getting on. I could have wept for joy, but
instead I kept my wits about me and decided that here was my
chance. I wanted to ask him to take me home there and then, but
finally thought it better to ask the doctor first. He looked a little
doubtful but gave his consent.
There was a fresh South Easter wind blowing as the car
twisted round the drive and I drank in the fresh air deeply, as though
the chloroform was still imprisoned in my lungs. I felt very pleased
with myself. Once again nobody seemed to have worried much
about me. If Rachel “Planne-maak” had not made a plan again, I
would probably have been in the hospital till doomsday.
My arm felt wonderful and the spot on my chest did not
worry me except for an ugly scar that the operation had left behind.
I arrived back on the farm and settled down to wait for my “legs”.
Many weeks passed and it seemed as though I would be going back
to the pleasant but aimless life I had led before the operation. The
farm was steadily improving and instead of Father going out to help
others he found that he could no longer manage his own work alone.
He spoke about it one Sunday morning at breakfast.
“If only,” he said, “I could find a wide-awake young
43
kérel who is not afraid of work, everything would be fine.”
“But who?” Mother wanted to know. We knew everyone in
the district and it was common knowledge that good hardworking
foremen did not grow on trees. Father would never be satisfied with
slip-shod work.
He never gave himself time to relax and he expected the
same hard work of others. The weeks went by. Harvesting time
came and went, with Father coming home wearier each night. Then
one morning h came back from the village just before lunch. I could
see that he was bursting with news but he waited until we had
finished our first helping of steaming tomato-bredie.
“Well, I think I have found the right man,” he announced. It
was so long since we had discussed the matter that Mother at first
did not know what he was talking about.
“A foreman! He is coming to start work this afternoon.
We’ll have to give him the spare room, don’t you think, Bettie?”
Mother was satisfied. She had been worried about Father.
“Yes,” she said, “he can sleep there until I have fixed up the
out-house. I’m very glad … regtig, very glad … and I hope he will
turn out all right.”
“I know a hard working man when I see one. Piet Swart is
fine. You’ll see.”
And so the shy young man with the gentle eyes and quiet
ways came to join our family. He got on famously with father right
from the beginning. Though he was small and thin, Piet Swart was
all muscle and sinew and he was
never known to shirk work.
44
Soon he became just like one of the family.
Piet spoke very little. When we sat round the table after
supper there would be a far away look in his eyes and I thought he
was scarcely listening to us. Then he would suddenly make some
quiet remark to make me smile or I would say something and catch a
quick response from him and it was like a secret bond between us.
Yet I thought of him only as a brother, nothing more. I was only
sixteen.
It was Piet who brought back the enormous parcel from the
station one morning. Already the entire village knew that Rachel’s
“legs” had arrived. Piet put the parcel on the table and we all stood
around him as he unpacked the parcel and took out two ungainly
stumps, like the legs of a table with feet. But they were only to be
temporary; I was to learn walking and balancing with them before
the real limbs were made.
Those were the hardest and most frustrating days of my life.
No one can say that I did not try. I was determined to make a
success of the legs.
You must remember that I was born without legs; that my
back had become accustomed to a more or less rounded posture;
that I had no hands with which to use a stick or even to steady
myself. I know a number of people who use artificial legs and are
quite happy with them, but nearly all of them use a stick and even if
they do not, they support themselves every now and again against
furniture or walls. My artificial
legs were a failure and because
45
they were the one challenge, which I could not meet, I remember
those days with nothing but dread.
The first time I put them on I felt as though I had swallowed
a stick. I was more helpless than I had ever been in my life. In the
morning my sister Baba would help me put them on, fastening the
wide metal bands around my body and along my hips. Then mother
and father and a servant would help me up. I would catch hold of
the back of a chair with my stumps and push it in front of me all
over the house. If I wanted to sit down, two people had to help me,
since the legs of course did not bend. Within a few days I could
walk around the house by myself but still feeling completely helpless.
If I dropped a handkerchief someone would have to pick it
up for me. You try bending down with straightened knees and
picking up something with your elbows! I was not used to being
tended to in this way.
Sometimes they would have to carry me back to my room, I would
be so sore and exhausted. At night I would cry myself to sleep with
pain and frustration. Once I had to lie down for a week because the
pain in my back was unbearable. And still I went on trying.
One Sunday morning, after I had succeeded in getting some
balance, I decided to risk a “walk” outside. Nobody was near and
gingerly I stepped into the courtyard. Step by step I lurched forward
and all went well for a while. Suddenly the leg caught on a stone and
I lost my balance. There was nothing I could do to stop myself from
falling. With my stumps I was
unable to break the fall as the
46
gravel came up to meet me flat on the face. Desperately I struggled
to right myself. I was about to call for help when I heard a quiet
voice above me.
“Rachel, waarom so haastig – what’s your hurry?”
It was Piet Swart and I felt my face burn with something
more than the cuts it had received as his wiry arms picked me up
lightly and put me on my artificial feet. I could not understand it. I
was embarrassed by the fall, but why should I feel so queer when he
lifted me? I began to talk hurriedly.
“I don’t want to wear those things any more. I’m going to
take them off now and I never want to see them again. They can use
them for firewood for all I care. I’m going to write to the Red Cross
today. I’m going to tell them dankie, but I don’t want these nasty
wooden pegs and I don’t want the real artificial legs either. I’ll just
stay the way the good Lord made me.”
I was very near to tears. Piet said nothing. He only smiled a
little but his eyes were full of sympathy and understanding. Not pity.
Never pity with Piet. The following day I sent off my letter to the
Red Cross, but not quite in the tone in which I had spoken about it
to Piet. I asked them to forgive me and not to think me ungrateful,
but I could not see my way to ever being able to use the artificial
legs. I would rather they gave them to someone else, someone who
could make better use of them. I thought it only fair to let them
know now, before they went to any further expense.
Many people thought I had done wrong, but those who
47
had gone through those frustrating weeks with me knew what I had
suffered and how hard I had tried to make a success of the legs.
They knew, too, that I never gave up easily. Some also thought that
I might harm myself, now that I was grown up, by walking in my old
sitting posture on the cold ground. I cannot help thinking that
nature provides for such contingencies. It gave me no legs but it
gave me a strong constitution and I never caught a chill even when
the ground was wet.
I am glad I had the opportunity of trying to walk on artificial
legs, if only to prove to myself that the old way was best. I have
nothing against modern devices. My present wheelchair is of the
latest design but if I have no one to push me and want to go
somewhere in a hurry, I still use the part nature in my case designed
for that purpose.
CHAPTER V
“ON SHOW”
Very suddenly, almost from one day to the next, my life took
a new and unexpected turn. Form the sensitive retiring country girl
who asked only to be treated like everyone else, Rachel turned
herself into a side show curiosity, allowing herself of he own free will
to be gaped at along with a caravan full of Bushmen and a Native
snake charmer. The events that
ended in this surprising change
48
had their origin in a set of false teeth.
My teeth have always been my greatest aid, especially when
working with the needle. When I sew, I stretch the material over a
flat box open at both ends and press the needle through it with my
arm but I pull it out on the other side with my teeth. I can thread a
needle too and I challenge anyone to a speed contest. It does not
matter how small the eye is but I prefer a long thin needle.
As I always spent a great deal of time in sewing the wear and
tear on my teeth was enormous and they were beginning to show
signs of decay. I knew that I would not be able to continue using
them in this way much longer and if I were to be deprived of the use
of the needle as well as the many other activities for which I used my
teeth as a finder, there would be very little left for me to do.
Desperately I wanted to have all my teeth pulled out and replaced by
a strong set of artificial teeth, but I knew it would cost a lot of
money.
Although Father was doing quite well now, there was never a
great deal to spare for luxuries.
“Ag, our Rachel,” I thought I heard my parents say, “we shall
always have to provide everything for her. She’ll never earn her
living.” Of course they never said so and if I had been honest with
myself I would have had to acknowledge that the thought never even
entered their minds. But I was young and at an age when a girl
wants to feel useful and independent.
One day there was great excitement in our village. “Kalahari
Mac” had arrived. He travelled
around with a big caravan and
49
inside there was a whole little tribe of Bushmen, men, women and
children. The Bushmen are a dying race, living deep in the desert and
feeding on berries and dried locusts and making their clay pots and
tending their eternal holy fires as they have done for thousands of
years. They are funny tiny brown people, quite different from the
big dark Natives who work for us. Their language sounds as though
they are suffering from permanent hiccups.
Kalahari Mac – short for Macdonald – was touring throughout
South Africa with them. We all went to see them and I had a feeling
that they found our ways even stranger than we found theirs. I
heard afterwards that one of them, when asked what he thought of
the White people in one of the towns, said that he could not get over
the hideous “painted women”. Showers of rain would make them
scamper for shelter in a flurry of fear, for in the desert there is only
an occasional drizzle, sometimes not for months or years on end.
I had been sitting with my friends and watching them when
Kalahari Mac approached me. He was a big-bronzed follow with a
humorous twinkle in his eyes and you could see that he loved his
roving life.
“Juffrou Cloete,” he said – and since he knew my name he
had obviously been making enquiries about me – “may I speak to
you alone for a minute?” His manner was frank and polite and I
stayed to listen while my friends withdrew discreetly.
“Juffrou,” he began again, “I am told that you are extremely
clever, that you can peel potatoes
and thread a needle and do
50
beautiful embroidery work.
How would you like to have a
wonderful holiday and see many parts of your own lovely country?”
I did not understand him at first. “You want me to come
with you? But why?”
He did not answer and suddenly I knew what he meant.
“Meneer,” I said, drawing myself to my full height, “I am not
a circus clown. I am just an ordinary girl who happens to have no
arms and legs.”
He pretended not to have heard me.
“Not may girls get a chance like that. You will see dozens of
places and learn many new things. You will travel in a comfortable
caravan and there will be a servant to do nothing but look after your
comforts. My daughter is a qualified nurse and she will see to you if
you are ill. You will have almost nothing to do and I will pay you
£10 a month all found.”
Ten pounds a month! It was a fortune. I would be able to
buy the teeth and have pocket money to spare. Father would not
have to give me a single penny.
I would be earning money
independently and I would fend for myself. But on the other side?
To sit hour after hour showing myself to the type of people I had
always avoided, to listen to their remarks of curiosity and conjecture.
“Foeitog – shame, look at the poor thing” even laughter. It was too
much to ask of me. I turned to Kalahari Mac but he interrupted me
before I had a chance to argue.
“Besides,” he said softly,
“think
51
of
all
the
other
handicapped people who will come to look at you. They will see
how clever you are and there will be new hope for them.”
Kalahari Mac was a good showman. He knew how to attract
crowds; he knew how to convince them that his was the greatest
show if not on earth at least in Blankdorp at that hour; he was a great
talker; he knew how to convince. Kalahari Mac had won me over.
Would I be able to do as well when it came to convincing my
parents?
I did not think of that when I rushed home and shouted:
“I’m going to work, Mammie. I’ve got a job!”
There was sure to be a struggle, I knew, but I was not
prepared for a flat refusal.
“Wat praat jy kind – what are you talking about,” my mother
said. “My daughter shall never become a performing seal.” And
Father added with a snort, “you and the Bushmen! Ha!”
I pleaded with them almost in the words of Mr Mac, as I
later came to call him. “Just this once,” I said, with tears in my eyes.
They held out for several days but when they saw that I seemed to
have staked my future happiness on it, they finally but grudgingly
gave their consent. I was full of excitement. To me it seemed like
another milestone in my struggle to be like other people. I had got a
“job” and I was going to earn my living. This was something I could
do and there were many people in the world that liked their work
even less.
We left in the heat of summer at the beginning of 1939
52
but I refused to take part in the performances in neighbouring
towns. Bredasdorp, Riviersonderend and Napier never saw me as a
“circus star”, but from Caledon and Hermanus – already then a
popular holiday resort for all South Africa in the summer – I held
the stage for an hour, showing people what I could do. The tour
lasted for three months and we performed in 26 different places,
including larger centres like Oudtshoorn and Graaf-Reinet.
What I liked best were the cool evening hours when we
outspanned and camped outside a town, so that the Bushmen could
enjoy a little of their accustomed freedom. We would get a huge fire
going and fry braairibbetjies over it and then Kalahari Mac would
entertain us for hours with stories of his adventures. His son and
daughter and I would listen wide-eyed and sometimes the Native
snake charmer and the two Hottentots who looked after the
Bushmen would join us, sitting on their haunches.
Once I was so frightened at one of Mr Mac’s ghost stories that I
nearly fell into the fire.
The snakes always intrigued me. There were cobras and
harmless mole snakes, puff adders and many others. Mr Mac had
warned us not to go near them but one day when he and his children
were in town, I asked Jonas, the snake charmer to take a picture of
me with two of the snakes.
“Auk, my nonna,” he said, “and what is the baas going to
say?”
“He won’t find out,” I answered.
“Auk, the mole snake – he is all right, but the other one,
53
the boom slang – he is poisonous!”
I insisted and in the end he agreed. Very gingerly he placed
the mole snake on my lap where it immediately curled up and went
to sleep.
“That’s enough, nonna, that’s fine,” Jonas said, but I insisted
on having the boom slang as well. Its poison sac had been tapped
recently, but nevertheless it was not harmless. I was not usually
foolhardy, but these sleek creatures fascinated me and I always
wanted to stroke them. Jonas hung the snake over my arm. It
pushed its ugly little head forward until it almost brushed my face
and I sat stiffly with a forced smile on my face while Jonas took the
picture. The photograph was a mere blur but I had had my wish and
Jonas was henceforth a respectful admirer of my courage.
And so our journey continued. It was not very hard work.
Every day for an hour I allowed myself to be gaped at by the
curious throng. Before when people stared at me I was always
tempted to answer back sharply. Now I looked at it as part of my
work for which I was being paid. I remembered how the Bushmen
found the people who looked at them, stranger than the audience
found the Bushmen. So I stared back and saw many things to amuse
me. Only once my tongue ran away with me.
“Why don’t they put her in a museum?” an old tannie wanted
to know. “Do you think they should stuff me?” I asked sweetly and
she almost fainted. Perhaps she thought I was stuffed already, as she
was obviously startled at hearing
my voice.
54
Another woman gave me something to think about.
“Shame,” she said, “she’s got a nice face and such lovely hair.” Just
that day I had read an article in a magazine, one of many from
various lands that Mr. Mac kept in his caravan. It said that a woman
should always play up her best features and tone down those not so
good so that people would be so busy looking at your pretty face or
slender hips and not notice your stout legs for instance. I was very
impressed. Nobody had remarked on my face and hair before but
the mirror told me that they were not altogether unattractive.
That evening I washed my hair and brushed it until it shone.
While still wet I put in a few slides and made a wave. Then I
borrowed a lipstick from Mr. Mac’s daughter and put on just a very
little. Mr Mac was always very forthright. He took one look at me
and said heartily; “You look d… pretty, Rachel.”
I knew then that it was all right. Whether I imagined it I do
not know but it seemed to me that afterwards there were fewer
“shames” and “foeitogs” from the audience’s lips when they saw me
for the first time.
I know there are some people who will think me vain.
“What does she think she is; does she imagine anyone will look at
her?” I can hear them say. But I suggest that these people take
stock of themselves. Are they completely satisfied with themselves
and is there nothing they can improve upon, not only in their
personal appearance but also in their homes, their families? If you
are very poor and cannot afford
a beautiful mansion, is there
55
anything wrong in trying to make your little attic as attractive as you
can?
It is not that I want people to look at my face rather than at
my body. I want them to look at me as a person and I want to
convince them that I am not an outcast, someone staggering under
an unbearable cross. I am satisfied with my lot – God and my
parents are my witnesses – and there is no reason why I should look
pale and unhappy. I do not want people to think I am unhappy and
so find me uninteresting or repulsive. Sometimes I forget that I am
any different from the normal and I want others to forget it too.
The tour lasted for three months. I made many friends along
the way, people who were neither too proud nor too shy to speak to
me. One day an elderly man came to me after a performance and
said,
“Lady, I’d like to have a little chat with you. I can see you won’t turn
your back on me.”
“How do you see that?” I asked.
“Well,” he answered, “one can see it in your face that you
understand people.”
We had a very pleasant talk.
Something else happened to me on that trip. The shining
hair and the suspicion of paint on my lips was only an outward sign.
I discovered that I was a woman and there were young men who
seemed to think so too.
On a farm the relationship between
opposite sexes is learnt early and
there was always a wedding or a
56
christening in the neighbourhood to talk about. One day when I was
only eleven, I had said quite casually to Mother. “I wonder what my
future husband will look like?”
Mother almost dropped the tray she was carrying but she
pulled herself together. “Ag Rachel,” she said, “you mustn’t talk of
such things. Your are much too young.” She tried to change the
subject, but sensitive as I was I noticed that her voice sounded
unnatural.
“I will marry one day and have children, won’t I Mammie?” I
asked her sharply.
At first she did not answer. Then she made me sit down next to her
on the sofa and talked to me very seriously.
“Rachel, I want to ask you today never, never to speak of
such things again. You know that you cannot marry. You must not
even think about it. And it is quite, quite impossible that you will
have children.”
“But why, Mammie, why?”
She answered slowly and emphatically, “Such things are not for your,
Rachel.”
Not for me. Now, as seventeen, I must not dream about love. I
must talk and joke with the young men and when they looked at me
in a certain way I must turn my eyes away. I was different. Such
things were not for me. I must not think about it. never… quite
impossible …
It was August 1939. Men at street corners in the villages
through which we passed began
to talk of war. They talked of
57
ultimatums, of Poland, soldiers advancing – it meant nothing to me.
And the voice of the Prime Minister, General Hertzog, over the
radio announcing that South Africa was at war. Still it did not make
sense. Something happening 6 000 miles away.
But Mr. Mac was excited. He decided almost in the middle
of a performance to pack up and dismiss the company. He would
leave immediately. The Bushmen would go back to their desert and
continue to pluck their berries and build their fires while the White
men threw bombs at each other. Jonas would gather up his snakes,
less poisonous than the murderous temper of men. And Rachel?
Rachel would just go back to her father’s farm and live there as
though she had never left it.
A chapter of my life had come to an end. I was never again
to show myself for money but I have not regretted those three
months. They had come at a time when I was changing from a child
into a woman. For the child in me they were a glorious holiday and
for the woman in me they had broadened my outlook and given me
many new things to think about.
58
CHAPTER VI
“FIRST LOVE”
Life seemed very dull at home now and I also missed having
my own money with which to do as I pleased. I did a great deal of
embroidery and when I tired of it I even tried my hand at painting
on material. A friend of my mother’s encouraged me and kept me
supplied with paints and brushes. I made many doilies and tea
cloths, which I sold to friends and I could hardly keep up with the
orders that were coming in. I worked by means of a piece of elastic
round my left arm through
which I placed the brush. But
59
though I now had my long awaited artificial teeth – a particularly
strong set which our dentist made for me – my eyes were beginning
to feel the strain of all this fine work and I had to take it easy for a
while.
After my trip with Mr Mac I had to deal with an enormous
amount of correspondence. Everywhere I had met people who kept
their promise to write to me and letters were coming in at the rate of
ten or twelve a day. Eventually I could not even afford the writing
pads to reply to them all.
I looked almost desperately for something to keep me busy,
something to prevent me from thinking too much, but the trip with
Mr Mac had unsettled me.
At this critical moment a man stepped into my life. He was a
young farmer with dark curly hair and bright grey eyes.
We met while I was spending a weekend with friends. Our
friends may have exchanged significant and pitying glances when
they saw us talking together in a corner but I noticed nothing. No
man had ever looked at me before in the way he did. We talked of
nothing in particular and it came almost as a shock to me when he
said just before I left,
“Can I come and see you, Rachel?”
I remembered my
mother’s words.
“Nee, please no,” I said hastily, and he seemed to
understand.
“But I may write to
you?”
60
Reluctantly I agreed. I did not want to lose him. He was only a
friend, I tried to assure myself. Nothing except pleasant talks had
passed between us.
I tried to forget the way he had looked at me. Only a friend.
There could be no harm in exchanging letters. But I did not tell my
mother. And so we corresponded for several weeks. I had to give
up many of my other correspondents to afford enough paper for
writing to him. My parents noticed nothing. They were used to
seeing the postman arrive with most of the mail addressed to Rachel.
They did not look close enough to see that now the handwriting was
always the same. They did not see me waiting in the passage from
the time the train hooted in the distance until the postman’s knock.
They did not know what was going on inside me.
Had they
suspected, they would have been surprised at the letters we
exchanged.
They were formal and a little stilted and they spoke no words
of love. Only in every one of them he begged me to let us meet again
and I always promised that I would make a plan.
Finally I saw my chance. An old friend of the family’s was
going to the young man’s village for the weekend and asked one of
my younger sisters and me to come along. The first evening, after
supper, before the rest of the crowd joined us, my young man shyly
told me that he loved me. My mind soared. Could it really be true
that a strong good looking young man with all the world before him,
instead of turning away in horror or pity, was looking at me with
eyes of love?
Could someone
really desire me as a woman, as a
61
wife? Understand me and share my love and sorrow? My mother
had been wrong.. Oh, she was wrong!
But something held me back.
It was mainly the furtive
nature of our love, the knowledge that I was acting behind my
parents’ back. Up to now I had always told mother everything and I
knew that I could not go on like this.
I was also afraid that
something might go wrong. I could not believe that such happiness
might really be mine.
I left with mixed feelings – half in happiness and half in fear.
I had given no promises. The months went by and we continued to
write to each other. One weekend when my parents were away and
only my sisters and the farm manager Piet Swart were at home, it so
happened that my young man was coming to our village. Again I
was afraid. Would he feel the same about me?
Was it right that he should come while my parents were
away? I forgot all my fears when he arrived. We were deliriously
happy. Several time I caught myself staring into the mirror. How
could he possibly love me? Only when I was with him was I
reassured.
“Rachel,” he said to me on the last day, “I can’t stand this
much longer. We are doing nothing wrong. Why can’t we speak to
your parents? Let me wait until they arrive and I’ll talk to your
father.”
“No, please, I want to tell them myself,” I answered.
He said nothing but from the
way he looked at me I knew that
62
I must speak to my parents soon. Perhaps he would not wait for me.
The thought terrified me. At that moment I thought I was in love.
Why not? Would any man ever look at me like that again? Mother
said I would never marry, but here was a man who wanted me,
Rachel, without arms and legs as his wife.
“I shall tell them tonight after you are gone,” I said quietly
and he left satisfied.
So that I would have no chance to change my mind, I
determined to tell mother as soon as I could speak to her alone. It
was not until bedtime that father went for a stroll and I found
mother in the bedroom. I told her everything – how I had first met
him, of our months of correspondence, of his love and tenderness
and how I hated myself for keeping it secret all this time – and lastly
that he had asked me to marry him.
Mother listened to me in silence but I knew she was very unhappy.
When I had finished at last, she said,
“Het jy hom life, Rachel, do you love him?”
When I said “yes” a little too quickly she looked at me sharply.
Father came in then and I hurried out of the room with some
excuse. It was not until late the next day that mother and I had a
chance to speak again.
“Rachel,” mother said, “you want my answer but it is hard
for me to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’”.
I waited expectantly.
Then she
continued very quietly, without looking at me:
“I had always hoped that you would be able to do without
63
that part of life. It isn’t everything!” Her voice trailed off.
“Do without it!” I said vehemently, “Isn’t there enough I
have done without? Have I ever complained? Oh, Mother! I want
to marry, I want to be loved!” I was crying in her arms like a little
child.
“You must fight against it, you must Rachel. God will give
your strength.” She stroked my hair tenderly but I moved away. For
the first time Mother and I did not understand each other, or so at
least it seemed to me.
“Very well then,” she said shortly. “You must speak to
father.”
I wanted to protest. Father would understand me even less. Men
did not know how a young girl felt. Or did they? Father had also
once gone courting.
“Mammie, I shall trust in God. I’ll speak to father right
away. It’s the waiting that’s driving me mad.”
Mother smiled and patted my shoulder. I now knew that she
had only my happiness at heart. But I must convince her that I
could love and marry like any other woman. I spoke to father a few
days later. I needed all my courage, for Father had never been easy
to approach and none of us was used to discussing personal matters
with him. I blurted out my story nervously and waited for his
reaction. He was surprisingly calm.
“My kind,” he said, “I knew it would happen sooner or later,
64
though like your mother I hoped that it would not come to pass. Let
us meet your young man.”
After that the young man often came to the house but I was
too shy to ask what my parents thought of him. He was very quiet
and I was sure they would find nothing wrong with him. He was not
rich but he had his own little plot of ground on which he farmed
modestly. Money – except where it concerned my independence –
meant nothing to me, nor was it very important to my family.
Gradually I realised that they were not happy about us. All Mother
said was:
“Rachel, he is very different from you, isn’t he?”
I made excuses for him. It would not do, I said, if two people both
bubbled over all the time. I did not convince them and perhaps they
knew that I was trying to convince myself. As yet I would not admit
it to myself. Two whole years went by. We had decided to marry
when I came of age.
At the beginning of the month of my 21st birthday I woke up
one morning with a feverish headache. Mother made me stay in bed
and wanted to call in the doctor, but I knew there was nothing
physically wrong with me. I tried to ward off the thoughts that were
chasing each other painfully in my head, but it was of no use.
The time had come to take myself to task and to think
seriously about the future. Was I really in love with this young man?
I thought I was, but why could I not always respond to his feelings?
What was the matter with me? Was I incapable of love? Or was he
not the right man? For the first
time I faced my doubts and I
65
knew that there should not be any such doubts if I were really in
love. On the other side where was the realisation of my dreams – to
marry, to be loved, to live like a normal woman. But was I being
honest with myself and with the man who sincerely loved me? Was I
not merely trying to prove that my mother had been wrong when
she said that love was not for me? The truth had to be faced. I was
not in love. I had never been in love.
To tell my fiancé that I could not marry him was one of the
hardest moments of my life and I do not like to dwell on it. I
wanted to tell him what he had meant to me and that I still wanted
him as a friend. I tried to be as gentle as I could. I think I
succeeded, for although I married six years later and he three years
after that, we are still friends today and occasionally write to each
another.
When we parted on that day he asked me to write to him.
It had been a great blow to him but he took it quietly. I did
not realise until then just how much he loved me and the knowledge
made me sad but also proud. I have never regretted those years of
friendship. I had been confused and unhappy at times, but he had
opened a path for me and had given me a better understanding of
life and of myself.
Our engagement had also made my parents realise that I
could take my full place in the world and although they never
thought that he was the right man for me they must have been
relieved at the thought that I
would one day be cared for.
66
Like every young girl I had grown a little away from my parents
during my engagement.
Being less demonstrative than others and having always
concealed my feelings, they did not really know what was going on in
my mind. One of the things that worried me now that I was again
dependent on myself was the fact that I had no money of my own
and no means of earning it. I longed to be independent financially,
instead of being a permanent strain on my father’s purse. It was not
that he did not give me money gladly, but how can a man always
know the many wants of a young girl? I hated having to ask him
continually. But whom else could I ask?
It came to me that the Government provided for people like
myself. In fact, my father had tried to obtain a disability allowance
for my sister Baba, who had had no schooling at all and was
completely helpless mentally, but he had not been successful.
Where he had failed I would succeed. I entered into a lengthy
correspondence with the magistrate of Bredasdorp and went to see
him personally. I had to be examined by several doctors – as though
my disability was not obvious – and in the end I won. I did not tell
my parents anything until the first cheque of seventeen pounds
arrived. When I showed it to them proudly, my mother said:
“Rachel, jy is ‘n towenaar – you are a wizard.”
I had made a solemn oath before I set the official machines rolling,
that should I be successful, I would regularly allot a tithe to the
church. I did this from 1942 till
67
I married in 1949 and the
pension stopped. I never had to ask my father for another penny.
At just about this time we moved away from Protem to a
farm my father had rented 12 miles away from Bredasdorp. The
name of the farm was “Nooitgedacht” which means something like
“Who would have thought it?” I much preferred the old place.
Nooitgedacht was situated several miles away from the main road,
without a telephone and far from a post office. We went to town for
our mail and to shop once or twice a week usually Fridays and
Mondays when we fetched and brought the younger children to and
from school. We stayed at Nooitgedacht for six years.
I kept busy with a little embroidery and the painting of
materials, but there was not really enough room for painting in our
new home. There were now five of us in the family, four girls and a
boy. We sisters slept in the same room, a large one but full of
furniture for four growing girls.
All four younger children were completely healthy, and there
was scarcely a moment’s sickness in the house. We were a noisy
bunch and all got along well together. Today we have scattered, but
when we get together in our parents’ home you would think that we
were still in our teens.
My youngest sister was ten and I almost 22 when my mother
was expecting another baby, a real afterthought or laatlammetjie
(literally – late little lamb) as we call it. We were all pleased and
excited. I helped to sew an outfit for the little one and some of the
68
garments turned out so well that no one would believe they were not
bought ready made.
Up to this time I had never helped much around the house.
Mother was always very busy and thought she could get things done
much quicker without our inexpert help. But now she had to go to
Bredasdorp for the confinement, for the days of the old “Nennas”
were something of the past and it therefore fell on me to take charge
of the house.
Mother was very dubious but she had no choice. We had
two servants but they knew nothing of cooking and baking or how
to organise their work and Father always insisted on having meals on
time.
Mother had a good collection of recipes, many of them
handed down for generations, which I studied carefully.
The first week it was very much a case of trial and error but
by the second week I sent Mother one of her own specialities.
A delicious melktert – a puff pastry tart filled with a mixture
of milk boiled with butter and cinnamon to which moistened flour
and then egg yolks and sugar and lastly beaten egg whites have been
added.
Later I also sent her a jar of waat-lemoen konfyt, the
crystallised white outer layer just below the skin of the watermelon.
Everybody was amazed.
The day we expected Mother back with the new baby girl,
the maid and I had a real spring-cleaning. I enjoyed every minute of
it and when everything was spotless by two o’clock, I had a
69
feeling of deep satisfaction. It might almost have been my own
house. Mother’s doubts changed to admiration. It was a relief for
her not to have to worry about other things while nursing the baby
and she now entrusted me with the running of the whole house. I
even helped with the baby. Later I prepared her food and fed her
with a spoon. When she was only a few months old Mother would
go shopping for the day and leave the baby entirely to my care
without a worry in the world. When the little girl started to talk she
call me “Mammie.”
Mother had said that I could never marry, yet a man had
asked me to be his wife; Mother had also said that I could never
hope to have a child, yet here I was looking after a baby as though it
were my own. But I was not really happy. The man had not been
the right one after all and the baby –well, it wasn’t mine. My desire
for a child was so strong that it frightened me and I fought against it,
but it remained my one dream.
There was no harm in building castles in the air, I told
myself. But would it always remain a dream? Perhaps one day…
70
CHAPTER VII
“PIET SWART”
Love – or what I took for love – had come into my life and
gone again, never, so it seemed, to return. During the first few
months, I felt lost. I had plenty of friends, both men and women,
but I missed that special comradeship and the feeling that I belonged
to someone and some belonged
71
to me.
As the years went by I began to wonder whether I had not
perhaps played with love the first time and in retribution it was now
eluding me. And yet I was afraid to give my heart away, fearing that
my dreams might get the better of me and that I would perhaps have
to go through all the agony of doubt again.
Among my correspondents was a man living 700 miles away.
He wrote to me regularly and one day he took a train especially to
come and visit me. Four months later he cam back but although he
was very pleasant and I liked him as a friend, I asked him not to
come again. His letters soon became less frequent and then stopped
altogether. Although I had enjoyed the correspondence and liked his
company, I felt relieved.
And all this time love had been waiting for me, watching and
biding its time on my very doorstep. For nine years Piet Swart had
been Father’s right hand. Always quiet and reserved, he did his work
steadily and without any fuss.
Father was known to be quick tempered but Piet Swart never
gave him occasion for a single sharp word. They made a splendid
team.
All of us liked Piet. He was always willing to help and
nothing was ever too much for him. He would make toys for the
younger children, run messages for mother and guess sour needs
before we even thought of them ourselves. Thus, when he gradually
seemed a little more attentive towards me and there were special
little
presents
for
me
at Christmas time and on my
72
birthday and even without any occasion at all, no one noticed
anything out of the ordinary. But as time went on, my own manner
towards him changed.
The more attentive he became the less
inclined I felt to be pleasant. I was quite at a loss to explain it.
We had always teased each other but now, when he made a
joking remark about some casual man friend, my temper would flare
up and I would answer him sharply or turn away abruptly with a
remark like “that’s none of your business.” Then we would not talk
to each other for hours. This went on for many months and because
I could not understand it, it made me confused and miserable.
Often I would find Piet looking at me in a strange way. “He hates
me,” I thought, “why can’t I be nicer to him? Why does everything
he says provoke me? We never used to be like that.” My parents
and sisters noticed nothing and I never spoke to them about it.
Then one night, after another of our strange quarrels when I
had ignored Piet completely for two whole days, Father came home
from work and said:
“You can have the lorry tonight, children. Piet, you drive
them down to the bioskoop. There is a good film on with Clark
Gable.”
After supper Piet took the car keys and the others followed him. I
remained seated at the table.
“Wat makeer – what’s the matter, Rachel?” Mother looked
worried. “Don’t you feel well?” We did not attend the cinema often
and it was quite an occasion which none of us like to miss. I could
not think of a good excuse and
so I went along to the car. Piet
73
politely helped me in and I sat next to him stiffly. The others were
chatting and laughing in the back, but Piet and I sat in silence.
Suddenly he spoke:
“I’m glad you came, Rachel,” he said quietly, so quietly that I
was not sure if he had really spoken. I looked at him in surprise, but
his eyes were fixed on the road ahead. He sounded the hooter
vehemently as a dassie was caught in the beam of light, scampering
wildly in our path. Almost before the sound died away he said:
“See that we are alone for a minute tonight. I’ve got to talk
to you.”
I might have said to him: “What on earth do you want to
speak to me about, Piet?” and looked at him coldly. Piet would
probably have answered, “oh nothing” and would have continued to
work conscientiously on the farm without another word between us
for the rest of his life. But I knew what he meant. In a flood of
recognition, understanding came to me.
There was no need to deceive myself any longer. I knew
what Piet wanted to say. I knew why I had been getting all those
special presents and why we were always stupidly quarrelling.
Now I could be honest with myself. I need no longer be afraid that I
would be hurt, that Piet whose heart had room for all the world, was
merely sorry for me. Before I could answer the car had arrived in
town and we all piled out in front of the cinema.
I did not take in much of the picture that night. Piet loved
me and wanted to marry me. He
told me so while the others went
74
for a cup of coffee after the show. But I was not yet ready for him.
Whatever I had felt in the depth of my heart during the past few
months, outwardly I still considered Piet as part of the family, the
boy who had always been there.
I felt confused and my old fears beset me. I told him that I
needed time, that I could give no promises. Piet did not answer. It
was a strained and silent drive home.
A few days later Piet announced that he was leaving. Father
was dumbfounded. He told us about it at supper that evening.
“You can’t get anything out of that kêrel. I asked him if he
wasn’t happy here. Nee, he said, he had never been so happy in his
life. I asked him if he wanted a raise. Oh no, it wasn’t that. He had
far more money than he knew what to do with. Well, what as it
then? “Ek moet weg”, he had to go, that’s all he kept saying. I
suppose there’s a girl in it somewhere.”
Luckily the light of the lamp did not reach to my corner and
no one saw me blush.
“Well,” Father continued, “we’ll never get anyone like old
Piet again. We’ll miss him.”
That was an understatement. Every one of us felt as though
a part of us was missing. “Where’s Piet,” “let Piet do it,” “Piet will
help you,” was continually on the tip of our tongue during those first
few weeks after his departure. The house seemed empty without
Piet who had always been so
quiet. And I, who missed him
75
most of all, could blame only myself.
Piet did not go far. Circumstances had not given him much
opportunity for an education, but he was quick on the up-take and
always keen to learn something new. He took a job as a clerk in a
store in Protem and within a short time his employer put him in
charge. He often came to visit the family. When he did, he neither
avoided me nor did he speak of love. Only once he said:
“Rachel, if ever you change your mind..” And I replied,
“Give me a little while yet, Piet.” It must have been the way I said it
that cleared the air. After that we were the same friends as before,
sharing our jokes and happy in each other’s company. There were
no more quarrels. Piet’s visits became more frequent and gradually
my parents began to suspect the reason for Piet’s departure. They
said nothing but I could feel mother looking at us thoughtfully while
father would make a point of saying how much he missed Piet in my
presence. I felt that they approved.
Piet and I had known each other for fifteen years. There was
ten years difference between us but sometimes I felt as though I
were the older of the two. Piet has never mixed much with girls and
had never had a regular girlfriend. I think I had more knowledge of
his sex than he of mine, and one of the main reasons why I am glad
that I had not lived in enforced seclusion is that it enabled me finally
to love the most wonderful man in the world.
A year went by and our family moved once again, this time
right away from Bredasdorp into
the Swellendam district.
76
Our
farm was called “Crodini”, a Bushman word meaning bitter honey.
It was a beautiful place with a tall Cape farmstead surrounded by
gnarled old trees, which cast a fancy pattern on the whitewashed
walls.
The previous owner told us that parts of the house were more than
a hundred years old. Some of the beams were made of the famous
fine grained dark stinkwood and one of the heavy doors still had
hinges made of wood instead of metal. Like in all the old houses,
the front door was built in two parts, so that you could look out of
the top art to see who was coming before opening the bottom to let
them in. It would cost thousands of pounds to build a house like
that today. My family still lives there and although Father has had to
rebuild many parts, he has left all the historic features intact. Amid
its expanding surroundings, the house looks like a solid piece out of
the past.
We all worked hard for the removal, for when a farmer
moves it is like a minor migration. Back and forth went the lorry,
until everything was in its place.
Even the electric light was ripped out and set up again in the
new house. One thing that consoled us in our labours was the
thought that we would not ever have to move again, for at last we
had found the kind of place we had always dreamt of and it was
entirely own.
The farm was mostly agricultural with many morgens under
cultivation, but there was also plenty of grazing ground for sheep.
My father, no longer so young,
now set about to teach my
77
brother how to farm and if he continues to show the same energy
and patience as Father did, he should take the farm a long way.
I naturally did not see Piet as often as before but whenever
he could he came to see us and we now even had a telephone.
I had always longed to travel by train but as Father had two
lorries and a car there had not been much opportunity. When a
correspondent of mine, a girl who lived in Jansenville near the
industrial seaport of Port Elizabeth, invited me to stay with her. I
jumped at the chance. Piet was not very thrilled at the idea nor were
mother and father keen on this new adventure, but I was determined
to go. I studied the timetables and found out that there was a direct
line from Swellendam to Port Elizabeth and that I need not change
trains. At six o’clock on a Saturday afternoon I left Swellendam after
a royal send-off by my parents. It seemed to me as though I was
embarking on a journey to the end of the earth instead of a mere 500
miles. It soon grew dark and there was not much to see.
A pity, as the Garden Route through wooded hills and along
snow capped mountains, is one of the prettiest in the country. The
train staff treated me like a queen. They insisted on making up a bed
for me but I was much too excited to sleep. The next morning I got
off at a siding where I was met by car. My friend’s father was a road
inspector. Within half an hour it seemed to me as though I had
known the whole family all my life.
I had come to stay for
two weeks but it was a month
78
before I left them. Jansenville, as a village, did not have much to
commend it. It seemed to be under permanent drought. But there
was nothing dry about the people. Not only my friends but also the
whole village took me to their hearts and gave me the time of my
life.
Piet wrote me only one letter while I was away but that letter
made me decide to return immediately. The month away from him
had made me finally realise how much I loved him. My friends saw
my face change as I read the letter and when they asked whether I
had had bad news from home I could not contain myself.
“Oh no,” I said, “the very best news in the world.” I did not
want to give my secret away but when they saw me radiant with
happiness they pressed me to share it with them and I told them all.
When I left them a day or two later my cases were loaded with food
and wedding presents!
Piet was at the station when I returned. Our reunion and the
next few days seemed to pass in a kind of delirium. Everyone
pretended not to notice but the time had come to tell my parents
officially.
This time I was not afraid. I knew that they both liked and
trusted Piet. We told them together. Again my Father said that he
had thought I would always remain with them, but if there was one
person to whom he would give me gladly, it was to Piet Swart.
“I know you, my son,” he said to Piet, “and you know my
daughter. God seën julle – God bless you both.”
We became engaged on the 10 July 1947. Since I could
79
not wear an engagement ring, Piet bought me a pair of golden
earrings with his name engraved on them. I gave him a signet ring
inscribed with my name.
My family and our friends were happy with us but as usual
there were those who could not even let this occasion pass without
some vigorous tongue wagging. Nobody dared to say anything to us,
but mother had to answer so many questions that even she, the most
gentle of women, lost her temper.
Some people went so far as to tell her that she must stop the
marriage. Others suggested that my fiancé must be abnormal. I
thought I had grown accustomed to stares and whispers, yet at a
time when I should have received only congratulations and
friendliness, I could not help feeling hurt. But I had steeled myself
for all these years and once again I found comfort in the thought
that either these people did not know they were hurting me, or if
they did, they were not worth worrying about. With Piet at my side,
I soon found it easy to turn a deaf ear to the unfeeling and to rejoice
in my happiness together with my true friends.
CHAPTER VIII
“THE PLACE OF REST”
There is an Afrikaans song which begins “Wanneer kom ons
troudag, Gertjie?” – when will the wedding be and after two years of
waiting I was afraid that people
were beginning to hum it when
80
they saw us. Right from the beginning I had hated the prospect of a
long engagement but the chief difficulty lay in finding a house. I
discarded the idea of living in a hotel or furnished room even for a
short period as unromantic. It had to be a home for us even if it
meant struggling and scraping together every penny. I had to have a
house or there would be no wedding!
In the village where Piet worked there were very few houses.
Protem was not really a village yet but just a collection of homes for
the owners of the shops and stores and the managers of the grain
store. It seemed hopeless to try and find anything.
Two miles away from Protem, Albert Myburgh, one of the
biggest farmers of the district and its delegate to the Provincial
council, had built a house for one of the grain store managers. One
day this house fell vacant. I knew Mr Myburgh very well and saw
that here was our chance. Full of excitement I told my family that I
was immediately going out to see him.
“Ag nee, wat, Rachel,” my mother said, “how can you go and
live so far away from everybody?
No neighbours to come in and help you quickly if you are ill,
nobody to talk to when Piet is at work. No you had better knock
that idea out of your head – you and your plans!”
Piet agreed with her and foolishly I allowed them to talk me
out of it. A few days later I thought that there could be no harm at
least in looking at the place, but by then the Bredasdorp Co81
operative had taken it for their store man.
I was bitterly
disappointed.
Another long wait. Then I heard that the store man had
moved out because his wife did not like living away from the village.
This time I did not ask anybody. Without telling even Piet I went to
see Mr Myburgh and he immediately offered me the house at a very
reasonable rental. It was my turn now to talk Piet into it and he
soon succumbed to my “sales talk.” The very next day we set the
date for the wedding – the 12 July 1949.
Never before or afterwards had I worked so hard. During
the two years of my engagement, mother and I had been sewing for
my trousseau but there were many things left to be done – curtains
for instance which depended on the type of window they were to fit.
The men folk kept well out of the way of flying pins and needles.
We originally intended being married at the pasturage and to
invite only the family and intimate friends but for various reasons we
later decided that the wedding should take place in my parents’
home. It seemed a lot of trouble to have the banns called in
Swellendam as well as Bredasdorp and so we agreed to marry by
special licence. When we told mother she looked very doubtful.
“And I suppose you’ll just sign the register before a
magistrate if you are going to be so modern,” she said.
“I would not feel properly married unless I had the
dominee’s blessing.”
I arranged everything myself because I was afraid that something
might go wrong if I left it to
others. Although I was so busy,
82
I thought that the day would never come. And when it finally
dawned, chilly but bright and cloudless, I could not believe that the
time had come. The wedding was to take place at four in the
afternoon. At two o’clock I was still busy putting the finishing
touches to the decorations.
Mother, who was equally occupied in
the kitchen, came into the living room to find me giving the furniture
a final dusting and re-arranging the flowers for the hundredth time.
She was horrified.
“Rachel, aren’t you ever going to get dressed? I can see the
dominee and Piet and all the guests will be waiting for you.”
She hurried me to my room and started to fuss around me.
“No, please, Mammie,” I said, “let me do it myself. I’ll call you
when I want help.”
First I enjoyed a hot bath and then I put my clothes out
neatly on my bed. But as I started to dress I began to feel a little
nervous. When I put the frock on I found that for the first time in
my life I had lost weight.
I always said it would take dynamite to shake off any of my
fat. My sisters had teased me: “Rachel, if you are going to get thin
merely preparing for your wedding, you’ll disappear altogether once
you have to keep house.”
At half past three I called mother. All my sisters came in
after her. I felt very self-conscious and when they said nothing I was
ready to cry. “Well?” I ventured.
“Rachel,” mother said and she
83
could barely speak, “you look . . . you look beautiful.”
At once my sisters shouted their assent and I knew they all meant it.
In a flood of relief I burst out laughing. “The way you all stared at
me, I thought Piet might disown me,” I said. My dress was a simple
navy blue one which mother had made, with a little white frill round
the neck that I had added myself. I wore a bunch of artificial daisies
on my shoulder. My hat was navy too with white brimming and a
navy veil over my face and down to my shoulders.
At ten to four I made my way to the sitting room.
As I
came down the passage I started back in surprise. We had sent out
no invitations and expected only the family, our good friends and a
few acquaintances. There was hardly room to move in the sitting
room and the guests even overflowed into the passage. Our friends
were all there and some faces I did not even recognise. They had
come from far and wide, old and young, relations and friends, about
fifty people in all. Mother must have suspected what would happen,
for there was enough food and drink for all.
The old grandfather clock in the passage struck four. The
shuffling and hum of voices stopped as the dominee entered
solemnly and behind him, dressed in a dark striped suit, came Piet.
If he was nervous he did not show it and when his eyes caught mine
and he smiled at me, I at once felt perfectly calm and at ease.
The ceremony went off smoothly. When dominee, in his
deep slow voice, came to the
part in the service where the
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bride places “her right hand in that of her betrothed”, Piet grasped
my right arm and instead of placing a ring on my finger he lifted the
veil and kissed me gently full on the mouth. Then we went to sign
the register.
I have often heard people talk of how they felt after their
own wedding ceremony. They say that they were filled with a sense
of deep happiness, that they saw nothing and nobody except their
beloved and that they felt themselves carried on a cloud of bliss
straight to heaven.
I don’t believe them. There is far too much noise and excitement for
any kind of feeling at all except relief that it is all over. My own
immediate reaction to the married state was one of almost painful
hunger. For the first time in three weeks I wanted to eat and I
thought with longing of all the delicious southappies and soetkoekies
that mother had prepared. But the time to feast had not yet arrived.
A barrage of newspaper photographers who had come all the way
from Cape Town insisted on taking pictures from every angle.
When they were finally satisfied we all went into the dining
room and there was thunderous applause when I cut the wedding
cake with a large knife that father had specially shaped for me.
I have no clear recollection of the rest of the afternoon.
Everything suddenly seemed unreal. Was all this really happening to
me, Rachel? Could there really be someone who loved me and had
waited for me until this, the
crowning day? For me, Rachel,
85
without arms and legs? My deepest prayers had been answered. I
would not be going through life as an alleenloper – as one who walks
alone.
Never again would I be lonely or spend my days in
purposeless self-centred pursuit of nothing. God had been good to
me. It was Piet who brought me back to earth.
“For goodness sake, Rachel, are you going to stare at your
plate all day? I thought you said you were hungry?”
We laughed together as though at some secret joke that we
alone shared and the guests watched us and smiled. They all seemed
to be enjoying themselves. People came and went and our table of
presents grew to an enormous pile. The biggest present, however,
came to us a week before our wedding and could not have been
better timed.
Although I had never mentioned it to Piet, there was one
thing that had been worrying me for months. Piet was still working
in the store and his salary was not a large one. Money meant nothing
to Piet and he always seemed to have enough over to buy presents
for everyone.
But would both of us be able to manage? There were things I
could not do without. However adept I was in looking after myself
and no matter how used I would get to the housework, I would still
need a servant. I did not want to become a burden to my husband.
Exactly seven days before the wedding, Piet came and told
me that he had a surprise for me. I could not imagine what it was.
“Here you are,” he said,
“my salary. Count it.” I took the
86
envelope and Piet watched smiling without attempting to help me. It
was to exactly half again of the usual amount.
“A bonus?” I asked.
“No,” he said casually, “a new job.”
In his usual quiet and unassuming way, Piet had applied for and got a
job on the Railways. I cannot be blamed for thinking that heaven
had taken a hand in shaping my future. It seemed like a sign that our
marriage was to be blessed in every way and up to now that sign has
not proved wrong!
The new job was to take effect immediately and Piet’s former
boss was kind enough to let him go without notice. But it meant
that there was to be no honeymoon.
“Later,” Piet said, “we’ll make up for it.”
We had to spend the first two weeks with my parents, as the house
was not quite ready. During those two weeks I looked forward with
longing to my new home but at the same time I steeled myself for all
the hard work of moving in and making it ship shape. I saw myself
scrubbing floors, dusting and washing.
Piet was away at work when my mother and brother brought
me to the house early one morning. When I opened the front door I
could hardly believe my eyes. The floors glistened, the furniture
sparkled and the windows shone as though fairies had been at work.
The fairies, I learnt, were personified in our landlord’s wife, Mrs
Myburgh, who had prepared everything as a surprise. Of course
there was still plenty of work to
be done.
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My mother and brother helped me to unpack and by the time
Piet arrived everything was ready. I made him go outside with me
again and carry me over the threshold. The house was everything I
could wish for, as though it had been specially built for me. There
were two bedrooms, a sitting room, dining room, entrance hall,
kitchen and bathroom. Outside, there was a room for the servant, a
storeroom and garage. Piet’s greatest joy was the little garden where
he could be able to potter around to his heart’s content. We called
the house “Rusoord” – “Place of Rest.”
CHAPTER IX
“THE BREAKING OF THE WAVES”
They say the way to a man’s heart is by way of his stomach
but I think there are also quite a number of deviations and I learned
to travel them all.
I enjoyed
housekeeping from the very
88
beginning. There were some who said that my husband would
probably starve to death, for how could a woman without arms feed
him? Piet got his meals three times a day on time to the very minute.
Others again were sure that I would never be able to handle
servants – “you know what they are, getting cheekier by the day and
they’ll never listen to anyone who can’t chase them up and down the
house.” I never had any need to chase them nor did I ever have to
raise my voice. They knew what I expected of them and what to
expect of me and we worked like a team. It was my duty to treat
them well and their duty to carry out their daily work.
understood each other.
We
I had one general maid and a young
coloured girl whose mother had died, leaving her husband with a
brood of eight daughters. He was only too glad to have me look after
her and soon she became my rights hand.
There are some women who look upon their appearance as
bait with which to catch their man and once married they no longer
take the care of themselves that they should. I think there is nothing
more repulsive than a housewife who neglects herself.
I have always tried to look after my clothes and I insist on the same
neatness in my husband.
One thing that worried me was my hair. As a child I had no
difficulty in dressing it myself. I took pride in a straight parting and
combed out the fringe each morning. But when I grew older it was
not so easy to dress it in any sort of style and I usually enlisted the
aid of my mother or sisters. One morning Piet said to me:
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“What’s the matter with your hair, Rachel? It used to look so
pretty.”
We understand each other so well that I never need to be
embarrassed. I told him my difficulties.
“Come here,” he said, “let me try.”
I laughed.
“A fine job you’ll make of it!”
But I sat still and
submitted to his big rough hands. When I looked in the mirror, I
was astonished.
“Piet, jong, you ought to have become a hairdresser. At any
rate, I am your client for life.”
Since that day Piet has done my hair every morning but if
anyone thinks my husband became my personal handmaid they are
very much mistaken. Mother claims that I was always the neatest of
her children. Even as a baby I rarely had a dirty face or a running
nose and I always managed to eat without spilling. Then as now I
used an ordinary metal spoon and fork, the handles of which were
bent into the shape of an arc so that they fit over my arm. Father
made them for me when I was still quite small.
People are usually embarrassed when I come to them for
meals. I can se that they are wondering whether they ought to hold
the cup of tea for me or if the servant should perhaps stand behind
me and ladle out the soup from my plate spoon by spoon. I set them
at ease soon enough by telling them that I need no help whatsoever.
Mother was never afraid to let me handle her best tea service and
today when the maid is off I
often wash the dishes myself.
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Up to now I have broken only a single glass, not because I dropped
it from between my arms but because I accidentally brushed it off
the table while swatting a fly. I break fewer things than other people
because I am more careful.
The only time I become nervous is when people jump up to
help me pick up a cup or glass. I know that they mean well but there
is nothing more disconcerting that unsolicited help. I saw a film once
in which a young man wounded in the war and deprived of his arms
managed quite well with his hooks until he went home and was
overcome by the panicky concern of his family.
After that he
dropped everything.
If ever you meet someone handicapped it is best simply to
say, “Look, if I can help you just say the word,” and believe me, he
will gratefully ask for your help when he needs it. That is the way we
like it. In the same way a blind person does not like to be clutched at
or a deaf person shouted at. They prefer to say, “please help me
across the road” or “please talk a little louder.” Such at least has been
my experience.
I am never shy to ask anyone for help and it never makes me
feel small or inferior, for don’t we all need one another’s help at
some time or other?
Annie may be no good at sewing and so she asks Sannie to
help her gather in her skirt. Jannie may be a poor letter writer and so
he asks a friend to help him apply for a job. Then why should I
mind asking people to help me
climb a high step or reach a high
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shelf or fasten my skirt? I have never yet come across anyone who
has refused to help. In my opinion an invalid who is ashamed to ask
lacks confidence, personality and will power, three qualities that have
nothing to do with his affliction and which he would surely also lack
if he were normal.
There is only one way to fight against this – force yourself to
ask for help and in time it will come easily. I do not mean that you
should give up trying to do things for yourself but merely that you
recognise and admit the impossible. I always remember the words of
my grandmother: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” He
took my limbs but He gave me a tongue and a brain. How we make
use of what the good Lord gives us is our own look out!
Life was full and time passed quickly. Winter came to an
end, our garden began to sprout and blossom and then grew dry
again with the summer heat. I intended spending a quiet Christmas
at home, but my husband insisted that I go down to the sea with the
family as I had done every year before I married.
He could not spare the time away from work but he
promised to come down over weekends by whatever transport he
could find. I agreed because I love the sea. I would spend as long as
two hours bathing without feeling tired or cold. I cannot swim of
course, but I manage to enjoy myself splashing around. Twice I very
nearly drowned.
The first time when I
was still very small, I was playing
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on a sandbank on the edge of the water when a huge breaker swept
over my head and knocked me over. There is a strong backwash
along our coasts and I was pulled out to sea. Fortunately mother
saw me. She rushed into the water, clothes and all, and dragged me
out.
The second time was more serious and happened quite a few
years lager. I have been playing in the stocky wet sand and it had got
into my costume, into my hair and all over my face. Mother was
sitting near with a friend and when she saw what I looked like, she
told the servant to take me into the water and wash the sand off.
The servant held me for a while and then for some reason she let go.
Perhaps a wave had frightened her or perhaps she did not know that
the water was so deep.
At any rate, she turned her back on me for a minute and
when she looked again I had disappeared. She took fright and
instead of looking for me she rushed towards the shore shouting for
help. Fortunately a big coloured woman was standing near and saw
one of my legs come up. She dragged my out and brought me back
unconscious to my unsuspecting mother.
Luckily, too, my mother’s friend had had some training as a
nurse and immediately applied artificial respiration. They worked on
me for two hours until, with a gush of water, I came to.
My experience did not put me off and I still enjoy splashing
about but since then I have always used a rubber ring or an old car
tyre. The only part I do not like
is dressing and undressing. It is
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bad enough to have to do it every morning and evening, but once I
am in my costume the water always beckons.
As far back as I can remember we had always spent three
weeks of the summer on the southernmost point of Africa at Cape
Agulhas. In the early days there was merely the stretch of beach and
behind it a wilderness of shrubs where snakes sidled lazily from bush
to bush. We would put up our tent under a tree and spend our days
in and out of the water, collecting firewood for our food, or just
lying in the sun.
At night the only light other than the twinkling stars came
ghostily from the circling beam of the lighthouse. The only other
building was the one in which the lighthouse keeper and his family
lived. We would get together on the beach, hot even in our light
clothes in spite of a strong southerly wind and group around a
roaring fire. While father turned juicy pieces of boerewors over the
grill, we would listen to the stories of the lighthouse keeper who
often came to join us for a little while, leaving his wife in charge.
He would tell of wrecks and rescues, stories reaching far into
the distant past of sailing ships and Portuguese explorers which had
been handed down from generation to generation and we would
listen spellbound and start at the slightest noise.
Now all this was gone. Instead of the vast empty stretches,
there was a large hotel, two shops and quite a number of modern
summerhouses. My father had bought a plot with a little cottage
where the family went each year.
But the sea still beat in timeless
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rhythm against the ancient rocks and there were places where you
could get away from the holidaymakers and listen to each angry roar,
followed by a silence so complete that you waited for the next with
throbbing heart. Here, with the sun seeping into my skin and the
waves breaking and shuddering in my ears, my life’s great dream
took an ever-stronger hold on me.
Before I married, mother had said to me again, “Rachel, I
don’t know what your plans are, but please, you must never think of
having a baby.” When I said nothing, she looked at me sharply and
said almost pleadingly, “You don’t know what it will mean.” It was
the old tune of “those things are not for your Rachel” and it still had
the power to provoke me to its challenge. When mother saw the
look on my face she turned away almost as though she were afraid.
She never brought up the subject again and I never spoke of it to
anyone. Except of course to Piet. My husband and I, as I have said,
needed few words between us to understand each other. All he
asked was whether I really thought that I could do it and all I replied
was, “Yes, Piet.” Shortly after the summer holidays I knew that my
greatest dream was to be fulfilled.
CHAPTER X
“COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS”
I cannot remember ever having felt better than I did during my
pregnancy. I slept well and ate
well and never knew a moment’s
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sickness. I felt gay and light hearted and looked forward to the
arrival of my baby with eagerness. There was so much to do. I
moved around as usual without any difficulty and even in my
seventh month I was scrubbing floors for exercise. Life had never
seemed brighter.
As we lived so far from medical help it was decided that I
should go and live with my parents on the farm Crodini. I went
there about a month before the baby was due. I was still as active as
ever, often driving about the neighbourhood with my family and
even visiting my own home occasionally. One morning I woke up
early and knew that the time was very near. It was the 26 September
1950.
I felt fine. A qualified midwife was called in and arrived
almost immediately. After she had examined me I thought that she
looked at me a little strangely but she said nothing and went out to
speak to mother. When she came back into the room she said
casually that she was quickly going to see a few patients in town and
would be back in good time. This seemed even stranger to me as I
felt that I would need her very soon. My husband and my father
drove her to the village.
Was everybody going to desert me? My mother comforted
me and told me that it was best not to be fussed over just before
labour began.
Piet and father brought the nurse back at noon. My husband
looked pale and I thought that perhaps he was going through the
usual father’s birth pangs. He
came to sit on my bed and held
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my hand. I laughed happily and said, “Just think of it, liefling, in a
few hours time we shall be parents.”
I shall never forget the look on his face. I can read Piet like a
book and although he immediately controlled himself and smiled at
me, I now knew that something was wrong. But what could it be? I
felt periodic waves of pain but surely that was natural?
Angrily I called for the nurse. We knew each other well and
I did not have to mince my words. “Look here,” I said, “I’m not a
baby. Don’t you think I have learnt to cope with trouble? If there is
something wrong please tell me.”
“Yes Rachel,” she answered, “I think it is better that you
should know. I didn’t want to frighten you at first, that’s why I went
into town to talk to the doctor rather than phone him from here.
But now I am going to tell you and I know you will be brave. It isn’t
going to be an easy birth. You are too narrowly built. The doctor
will probably have to use instruments and perhaps even operate –
what they call a Caesarean operation.
You won’t feel anything
though – you’ll be ‘under’.”
Only for a moment did an ice-cold hand seem to grip my
heart. Then I said, “All right, I’m ready.”
The nurse patted my
hand. I think the others around me were more nervous than I was.
I have always wondered how I managed to stay so calm, but perhaps
I knew instinctively that my self-control was a form of sacrifice to
the unborn child. If I became
frightened and rigid it would
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make it all the harder for the baby to fight it’s way into the world.
And so I merely closed my eyes and prayed.
I thought that the doctor would come to Crodini but the
nurse told me, “I said an operation, man.
What do you think
hospitals are for?” “Goedmaar,” I said, “let’s go to town then and
get it over with.” “Oh no,” she answered. “Swellendam clinic will
be just a stage to break the journey. Doctor wants to take you right
to Worcester.” I shrugged. After all, I had always been keen on
travelling.
Doctor arrived at four and he and the nurse took me to
Swellendam. Darkness had fallen by the time we arrived. Doctor
gave me a sleeping draught and left but the nurse stayed with me. At
two in the morning I awoke with a start and told the nurse that I
thought the baby was about to come. She laughed and told me to
relax but she telephoned the doctor who arrived shortly afterwards.
The lights of Swellendam threw grey blue beams across the
street and there were no stars as we set off once more on our trek.
The old 18th century town with its main street broad enough
for a span of sixteen oxen to turn in, was silent, but just as we drew
out of the town limits the church clock boomed four o’clock. I was
very drowsy and quite comfortable on the back seat of the car. Of
the rest of the journey I have only very vague recollections. The trip
seemed never ending but after
two hours we arrived at the
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Worchester hospital. Within minutes I was undressed and wheeled
into the operating theatre.
At nine o’clock in the morning my son was born.
He
weighed nine pounds and three ounces!
While I was still in the cloudy never-never land of ether
fumes my husband and my parents were sitting in the car outside the
hospital waiting, waiting.
At eleven o’clock I recovered consciousness.
A sea of
confused smiling faces sorted themselves out into the familiar ones
of the nurse and my family. They looked happy. Everything must
be all right. But I glanced around and could not find what I was
looking for.
“My baba?” I said, “Where is my baba?”
“Here you are, right next to you,” the nurse said. “It’s a boy
and what a pragtige kerel, a really lovely little chap?’
I looked and groped but my eyes closed and my arm
slackened. I was drifting off again.
People have often asked me about the birth of my child. “It
must have been a terrible time for you,” they said.
The first time I answered innocently, “Ag nee, not too bad.
We all have to go through it some time or other. Lots of women
have Caesareans.
“But the worry,” they said, “The fear that . . . . . “ and they
would stop significantly.
Perhaps
you
do
not
believe me but I swear before
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heaven that the idea of anything being wrong with my child
physically never entered my mind. These questioners were the same
people who had once thought that my parents must be related or
were being punished for a misdeed. I knew that my child would be
whole and healthy.
When people asked me whether I had wanted a girl or a boy
I told them that although we did not really mind, my husband and I
had actually both been hoping for a little girl. “Oh yes,” they would
answer, “we can quite understand that. A girl would be a real
support to you and would be able to assist you for most of your
life.” I thought I had learnt through the years to control my temper,
but his I found a little too much.
To think that people would imagine I wanted a child merely
for the purpose of acting as my nursemaid and companion. Why
must people always read a different meaning into the words of the
handicapped? What expectant mother would look forward to her
baby a future servant to her? Well really!
I came to once again and all my family were around me.
If I had not felt so weak I would have flung my arms around
them, I was so happy and proud. The baby was lying in the room
with me, a special favour because, as Sister put it, I had been “so
good and brave.” Everything went well. I felt fine and the baby
looked well and healthy. Doctor said to me later:
Mevrou, your son never
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even gave us a chance to do any
of the usual things for him. He had hardly made his entrance into
the world when he set up such a din in the operating theatre that we
almost jumped out of our skin. Within three minutes he had done
everything expected of a baby.”
He was a big fellow, clean and rosy, with blue eyes and not a
hair on his head. I thought he was beautiful.
We decided to call
him Johan.
It was not long before I was alone again. My parents had to
get back to the farm and my husband was expected at work. He had
taken his annual leave in time to be with me for the confinement but
the baby was a little late and his holiday was almost over.
Johan was treated like a king. I do not know how much
attention the other babies had at the hospital because the staff was
always standing in admiration around my baby’s cot.
Even the
patients would come to look at him and the doctors and their wives
were constant visitors. Presents, cheques, flowers and telegrams
arrived every minute of the day, not only from friends but also from
total strangers in all parts of the country. I found out later that they
had read about Johan’s birth in the papers.
When presently, letters began to arrive from as far away as
Europe, I learnt that our picture had appeared even in foreign
papers. I did not welcome the publicity but I did not mind it either.
All that mattered was that Johan was well and that he was mine!
My son was a lucky boy in every way. So it has been from
the day he was born and so I
think it will always be.
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I do not know whether I shall ever quite get used to the idea
that I really have a child, for I regard him as a dream fulfilled for
which I had waited and prayed for half my life. He is a gift from
God given into my custody and as such I shall always look upon
him.
I should have been in hospital for 15 days but I recovered so
quickly and longed so deeply to be with my own people, that the
doctor told me I could go home on the twelfth day, provided that I
look dafter myself and spent at least another eight days in bed. I did
stay with mother for a week but I could not bear to remain in bed.
The day after my arrival at Crodini I made my way to mother’s
sewing room and there I stayed talking for hours. Three weeks later
I had forgotten that I was ever in hospital except for a well-healed
six-inch operation scar.
For four months I breast fed the baby. Then I put him on
the bottle and he took the change without any trouble at all. Johan
has always been an exceptionally healthy child, never very fat, but
then the chubby babies are not always the healthiest.
Shortly before Johan was born, things in my house started
disappearing. I waited until I had sufficient proof that the culprit
was my servant but even then I hesitated to get rid of her just at a
time when I needed her most. It would not be easy to find a reliable
girl to replace her. But before I had even time to make enquiries,
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word spread through the Coloured community that I was looking for
a bediende.
The grapevine works quickly and spreads wide. If you have a
reputation for being hard or stingy, no girl within a radius of a
hundred miles will come to work for you. One morning an elderly
Coloured man named Flores brought me his shy dark eyed daughter
Maria. It did not matter how much I paid her, he said, but I must
see to it that she did not get into bad company.
Maria, always quiet and willing, stayed with me for many
years. The was no need to watch her. Maria’s great passion in life
was babies. She devoted herself to Johan like a second mother and
though tasks like sterilising bottles must have been quite strange to
her, there was nothing she would not learn and nothing was too
much for her if it concerned the baby. I almost had to stop her from
spoiling Johan. Today Maria probably has her own brood of black
eyed krul haired children but she ill hardly give them more of herself
than she gave to my Johan.
At the age of five months, Johan began to sit up. At nine
months he was crawling but a few months later he was still only
crawling.
The gossips immediately began to say that he would never
walk, that there was probably something wrong with his spine. But I
knew that he was slow because children take their cues from their
mothers and Johan had no example to encourage him to walk. I
asked my husband to spend
time during the weekends in
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teaching him and three weeks after his first birthday, Johan took his
first steps. After that there was no stopping him. I sometimes feel
myself getting out of breath by merely watching him.
Johan is two years old today and I am proud of him. When
people came to visit me and admired the clothes I had sewn for him
and how clean and tidy he looked, my heart glowed. When I took
him to my mother-in-law for the first time and tears of joy rolled
down her cheeks and she put her arms around me, I almost burst
with pride. But I was prouder still that he grew into an unspoilt
independent youngster, for I saw the danger in time – a danger of
which no one, not even the gossips, would have warned me.
Often I have seen children born to their parents late in life,
or children who have survived some dangerous illness, smothered
and choked with love.
Such parents, like myself, regard their
children as a longed for gift from heaven, but they never quite allow
them to reach the ground. Perhaps they are afraid that they will
sprout wings and fly away from them. Johan, I was determined,
must learnt o walk his own way among men and that has always been
my main aim in bringing him up.
Not that Johan did not receive enough love, but I have
always tried to keep a balance. Johan must learn not only to take but
also to give; he must learn to trust and also to obey and he must
learn to suffer pain and never to hurt any living thing.
To bring up a child is
mainly a matter of getting to
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know him. You must know what to expect from him and he must
always be quite clear as to what he may expect from you. I never
promise Johan anything that I cannot fulfil and if it is punishment
that I have threatened I know that I must not relent. In my own
childhood I suffered under the tactlessness of others and though I
know that I cannot protect my child against the world, I feel that if I
know what goes on in his mind I can help him to protect himself.
Johan will not have to contend with my handicaps but there
is a similarity between an invalid and a child – both are often alone in
a world made for the normal on the one hand and adults on the
other. Perhaps that is why my son and I understand each other so
well.
Johan does not realise consciously as yet that his mother is
different from others. He brings me his little toys to fix as a matter
of course and his proudest possession is a scrapbook I made for him
out of storybooks and picture magazines. He loves to sit on my lap
and learn little songs and verses. But there is a natural gentleness in
him when he plays with me. He never pulls me about or makes me
chase after him. I know now that children are not really naturally
cruel.
They are only afraid of the unfamiliar and to hide their fear
they lash out at the unfortunate victim. Perhaps it is the same with
adults!
Johan is afraid of nothing.
frighten him with tokkelosse for
I never allowed anyone to
ghosts. I want him to find out
105
for himself what material things may hurt him. Once I let him touch
a stove – it was not very hot, of course, and I knew that I need never
worry again that he would come too near and burn himself. He
loves water and we often play about together in a huge tub in the
garden.
When Johan is ill, which happens very rarely, I do not
pamper him, because I do not want him to look upon illness as a
refuge or as a means of gaining attention as so many children do. I
always encourage him to do everything for himself. Often I let him
do small tasks for me and he must always look after his own things.
He knows that he is responsible for clearing away his toys. During
the day he can do with them what he likes but at bedtime they must
all be packed away. Once he left a bucket and spade outside. The
next morning Piet asked him where they were. Johan ran to the spot
and found them gone. “You didn’t want them anymore,” Piet said,
“so I gave them to the servant for her children.” Johan never left
anything lying about again.
What he wants to be one day when he grows up I shall leave
entirely to him. Perhaps he will be a farmer like his grandfather or
skilful with his hands like his father.
When my husband fixes a lorry, Johan is right there under it
with him, using an imaginary screwdriver. Or he might want to go
further a field and see the world. I would like him to travel. My own
little taste of travelling with Kalahari Mac and my trip to Port
Elizabeth helped me, I think, to
widen my view beyond the
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confines of our fence. Perhaps Johan will even cross the ocean one
day and gain experience in other lands.
All parents want to give their children the best, but how can
they ever be sure that it really is the best? As long as Johan is happy
I shall be satisfied. I do not worry about his future but I shall see to
it that he had a good education; for both Piet and I feel that there is
a lot we missed. Above all, I want him to develop his own character
and personality so that he may never have to contend with shyness,
my own great enemy in my early years.
I would still like to have a daughter, though everyone tries to
dissuade me after the first difficult birth. When a boy grows up he
is, after all, the companion of his father and cannot be expected to
take an interest in the female domain. When I think of how lekker
we girls would chat with mother, I still long for the same intimate
companionship. But if I am not to be blessed for a second time, it
will not make me unhappy.
Now that I have come to the end of the story of my life, I
am faced with the question – why did I go to all the trouble to put
down my thoughts and experiences on paper? “Rachel,” Piet would
say when he saw me, evening after evening when Johan was in bed,
with a pen between my arms, “Rachel, you’ll spoil your eyes.” Am I
such an important person, I Rachel Swart, in a village somewhere in
Africa that people will want to read about me? Have I wished to
convince my readers – and myself – that I too can be happy and lead
a normal life in spite of my handicap? Has it been an uitdaging,
another challenge?
I do not
know. But the writing of my
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story has given me satisfaction and I want to share my experiences
with those, perhaps sitting lonely and forgotten in some corner of
the world, who are also suffering under some handicap.
Through the years I have received many letters.
My
marriage, the birth of my child, gave, I think, fresh confidence to
many. If I have helped, even the tiniest fraction, to give courage to
others, then I feel that I have not written this story in vain.
Is it possible for a human being to be entirely and completely
happy, to want nothing more and to have all his greatest hopes and
dreams fulfilled? All of us have our little troubles. There are days
when we feel depressed or unhappy, sometimes for no particular
reason at all, and perhaps sometimes because we do not take the
time to stand still and count our blessings.
My greatest blessing is my happy marriage and my son.
These two events have been the fulfilment of all my dreams. Both
my parents are still alive and in good health. I have four sisters and a
strong, good-looking brother and we are all good friends. What
more could anyone wish for?
Sometimes my mind goes back to the days of my childhood.
I remember my first morning at school when the children
laughed at me; I hear mother saying, “those things are not for you.”
One must not forget. One must remember the past no matter how
unpleasant, but one must look at it in the light of one’s present
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happiness. Those days are gone but they contributed to the making
of what one is today.
I am satisfied with my lot. God gave me the health, the will
power and the courage with which to face life and I am grateful. If I
were asked to choose between what I am and what might have been
if I had been born different, my choice would fall on my present
happiness in spite of everything. Rather a happy Rachel without
arms and legs . . .
There is nothing I miss in life. I know no bitterness. From
my earliest days I have always told myself to “count my blessings”
and I have found this a fountain of strength.
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