Page 125 - The Mending Season

hood. Every once in a while, a woman would stop one o fthem on the street and ask how Tshidiso was doing at the White school and how they could send their children there.When their child no longer spent all her days in the lemon tree and they were seen in church, it looked like the neighbours were finally beginning to rest their minds about the goings-on at 4Mabele Street.I wait for my father, sitting on our stoep, thinking about all the questions I will ask him. I anticipate the thrill of him telling me stories that will take me to the place where he lives. On Radio Metro, Brenda Fassie is singing “Life is Going On”, it s such a classic. She reminds me of the times I used to sit on the floor while my mother braided my hair. Now I brush back my straight and oily relaxer. It has been four years since I first started at Ascension Convent. You would not believe that it was segregated at any time if you saw it now. There are classes now that have more Indian, Black and Coloured girls than White girls.Soon we will be having South Africa’s first democratic elec­ tions. Again there is a feeling ofuncertainty in the air. In the townships, people predict overnight changes while in town they warn of more riots, more calamities.“Civil war,”the White people are still saying, but “freedom” is what they say in the townships.I live in both worlds. Sometimes I bring a bit ofone world to the other, which heightens peoples excitement or fear depending on who I’m speaking to. IfI tell the aunts that peo­ ple in town say Blacks will revolt, it makes them that much more hopeful, because it means they are not the only ones anticipating change. And if I tell some teachers about what they are saying in the township, it intensifies their worry.125