Go Carefully, My Friend

Stay Well, My Friend a novel of South Africa Jo Simon Copyright © 2011 by Josephine M. Simon Exile is the reproach of beauty in a foreign landscape, vaguely familiar because it echoes remembered beauty. — Dennis Brutus I 1 New York Times Boston Edition Tuesday, March 16, 1963 News Summary United Nations Monday March 15 Debate on sanctions against South Africa continues with a vote expected soon. Judith Brown held the attention of delegates with testimony of her and detention in solitary confinement. Under the Suppression of Communism Act, political prisoners are denied access to family, legal council or a trial for ninety days. David scans the paper drinking his coffee. “Judith is testifying at the United Nations in the debate on sanctions against South Africa.” For a moment their eyes meet. He’s waiting. Gillian cuts banana into Jamie’s cereal, watches him slowly spoon each mouthful. “Can I see the article?” All she says. An impatient hoot signals it’s time for Jamie to go. Laces tied, jacket buttoned, a quick kiss and a hug for David, and he’s out the front door, down the driveway and into the waiting station wagon. David places the newspaper on the table, carefully folded so the article lies exposed. He rests his hands for a moment on her shoulders, “I’m late.” He kisses her cheek, the clean soap smell of his damp hair still there as he leaves. Such a small paragraph to bear such weight, the name stares back at her. She hadn’t thought about Judith in a long time, the memory of those last desperate days in London pushed to some forgotten corner of her brain. The article forces her up the stairs to the attic where her old black steamer trunk stands in a corner under the eaves. Obsolete, abandoned, her hope chest, filing cabinet, filled with things carried across oceans but never unpacked. She lifts the lid, unwraps crisp sheets of tissue from the leather photograph album that shares the top drawer with strings of African beads, a silk shawl, and the gift of an embroidered tablecloth some relative gave her. Her back against the metal trunk, the steady tick of the clock on the landing, the only sound in the quiet house, Gillian turns pages, searches for the group class photo, the beginning of their friendship. In the front row sitting with the smallest girls, the careful pleats of her green serge tunic tailored flat to her childish body over the white shirt, the black and white striped tie of the school uniform. The eager-to-please smile, back straight, legs crossed at the ankles, hair pulled into tight blond braids secured with black bows. Judith stands at the end of the middle row, a tall figure at the edge of the group. Her wild black frizzy hair, bony arms and legs, her uniform tied carelessly at the waist, bunched over her narrow chest, slim hips, her sullen expression, disturbs the symmetry of the class photo, draws attention to her darker skin. Her family came from Portugal, Sephardic Jews, classed as white, although they looked Coloured who took advantage of an initiative by the South African government to relax immigration laws, become less dependent on African labor. The Brown’s lived in a row of semidetached houses, on a dead-end street close to the line of small shops that divided Kensington from the poorer neighborhood of Troyeville. In high school without an assigned classroom, the new girls joined a line outside the gym teacher’s office. Dressed in a brown gym tunic, hair bobbed like a boy, voice pitched low and loud, she barked instructions, directed them in groups of eight, to one of the five houses named after local birds. The model was the British system, where students competed against each other in academics and sports for the coveted silver cup awarded at the end of the school year. Gillian and Judith were both assigned to the house of the Sakabula bird. The image on their house flag the male bird, in mating season, transformed from a dull brown sparrow to the dramatic black bird with a broad band of orange at the bend of its wings and a long black tail of feathers that made it difficult to fly. His tail forced him to lope along the fringe of long grasses where the female built its nests while they waited for the chicks to hatch. The girls in other teams taunted the Sakabula team, made fun of the black bird that couldn’t fly. Saka, Saka, Bula, Bula, Bula Big black bob tail Flip flap flop tail Sa. Sa. Sakabuuuula Gillian dreamed of becoming head prefect, competed in everything, played center forward for the house hockey team, spurred on by the heady drumming of the girls’ shoes against the wooden boards of the stands as they urged their team on. Judith took no part in any of it. Gillian watched the open hostility of the other girls who treated Judith as if she didn’t belong in their school, dismissed her with, "she’s such a slob, such a pain," peeved that someone who looked Coloured could be the brightest girl in the class. The prefects punished her for breaking rules, for the hair she refused to cut or tie back, for never wearing her hat off school grounds, for the crumpled dirty look of her uniform. Her head buried in a book whenever they gathered in groups in the hallways or outside the building, she ignored them all, behaved as if she didn’t notice the antagonism. Their friendship began much later, in a Social Studies class, the day Miss Campbell explained a change in government policy. “Jo’burg is a declared white area. Blacks are here to work. If they don’t have a job and a work permit, they’ll be sent to the reserves under the new Bantu Areas Act,” “Do they have the right to separate families?” Gillian had read an article in the Rand Daily Mail criticizing the new regulations. Slouched at her desk, eyes on the floor, Judith interrupted before Miss Campbell could answer. “And what have they got out there? Sending them to the reserves to starve, that’s what the government’s doing.” The others weren’t even listening, restlessly bored by the discussion. “They’re only kaffirs, what do they know. Let our government do what it has to do. There are too many of them here, anyway.” Her authority undermined in some subtle way, Miss Campbell turned on her heels to erase the blackboard, discussion closed. The subtle sound of crumpled paper broke the silence as Judith tore her returned corrected paper into small strips. She methodically chewed the pieces to pulp, rolled them into spitballs, and flicked them between thumb and forefinger to land on the floor below the teacher’s desk. Chewed, rolled and flicked. Chewed, rolled and flicked. All eyes on the small white arcs of paper that fell below the broad back, waited for Miss Campbell to turn. But the sharp ring of the recess bell shattered the moment. Judith smiled at Gillian, the two of them side by side against the noisy release that signaled the end of class. “Interested in teaching some mine workers to read and write?” Judith asked. Gillian hesitated, aware of Miss Campbell’s puzzled expression as she stared at the small white balls below the blackboard. Gillian wondered how many of the others, putting away their books, heard Judith’s invitation. “It’s a program some university students run. We meet on Saturdays in a schoolhouse next to the Anglican Church in Jeppe, near the mine dumps where the miners work.” Judith’s eyes challenged her as she waited for Gillian’s response. All Gillian knew about African mine workers was peering through the car window, waiting at a traffic light, as the new recruits poured out the train station,