Miriam's Song by Mark Mathabane, Miriam Mathabane, Chapter One

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Miriam's Song - Chapter One

It's very hot and stuffy inside the small classroom. It is toward the end of January, the middle of summer in South Africa. The classroom, which has few windows and no air-conditioning, is packed with over one hundred six- and seven-year-olds in their first year of school. Many are bawling and sniffling after being whipped. Others are screaming and want to go home to their mothers. Still others are chanting at the top of their small lungs a song about fingernails.

I try to chant the song but I can’t. My heart is thumping against my ribs. My wide forehead is beaded with sweat. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my dry mouth. Tears prick the corner of my bulging eyes as I stare at my Sub-A instructor. She’s a tall, lean woman with a harried look on her dark face. We are required to address her as Mistress. Male instructors are addressed as Teachers. The Mistress is wielding a thick ruler as she gives us a tongue-lashing about the importance of trimming our fingernails. It’s about eight-thirty. We’ve just entered the classroom following morning assembly in the dusty courtyard.

I long to flee the classroom. But my bare feet are stuck to the corner in which I’m cowering with my friends Brenda, Penelope, Margaret, Baiki and Dlayani. They too are terrified. Everyone in the classroom is terrified of the Mistress when she’s armed with the thick ruler. There’s a larger group of pupils cowering in the opposite corner. We are like cattle afraid of being branded.

I anxiously watch the Mistress as she barks each frightened pupil’s name, which means that that pupil has to come forward and have his or her fingernails inspected to see if they are too long or have any dirt under them.

I pray that the Mistress not call my name. I know I’m in trouble. Mama forgot to borrow a fingernail clipper from our neighbor last night to trim my long and dirty fingernails. The reason she forgot is because she and Papa were fighting again, over money. Watching the Mistress I can already feel the pain felt by the pupils I hear howling and shrieking about me as in a madhouse after being whipped.

After nearly half an hour the Mistress finally calls my name. I’m one of the handful of pupils left to be inspected. I start to cry.

"Stop crying!" she barks. "Let me see your fingernails."

I gingerly step forward. I never take my eyes off the thick ruler in the Mistress’s right hand. I stop about two feet from the Mistress and thrust my small hands tentatively forward. My fingers are bunched together with the fingertips facing up as is required during fingernails inspection. I’m trembling in anticipation of the sting of the thick ruler.

The Mistress stoops and takes one look at my fingernails. She says sternly, "They’re long and dirty. Now stop whining and sing the song."

I sing-sob the fingernails song. The Mistress slowly raises the thick ruler -- which seems the size of a club -- high up in the air and prepares to rap my fingertips:

Nitsema minwala yikoma

(I should trim my fingernails short)

Anitwi

(I didn’t listen)

Before I even finish singing "I didn’t listen" the Mistress whacks my fingertips hard with the edge the thick ruler. The blow hurts like nothing in the world as my nails dig deep into their cuticles. I howl with pain. I wish Mama would come and take me away from this horrible place called school. I wish she’d come and explain to the Mistress that it’s not my fault that she and Papa fought and that he drove her away from the house before she could borrow the nail clipper from the neighbor to trim my fingernails.

"Didn't I tell you last week to trim your fingernails?" the Mistress says sternly.

"You did, Mistress," I sob. Marimila, mucus, streams down my flaring nostrils and mingle with the warm tears. I’m recovering from a cold. Without a handkerchief, I use my long shirtsleeve to wipe the tears and mucus.

The Mistress is furious. She whacks me on the forehead. The blow raises a welt and I cry even harder.

"Your shirt-sleeve is not a handkerchief!" the Mistress bellows, glaring at me.
"Where’s your handkerchief?"

"I don’t have one, Mistress."

Tears are now gushing down my cheeks and soaking my raggedy black gym-dress. I wish the Mistress would understand that Mama can’t afford to buy me a handkerchief, just as she can’t afford to buy me primers and pay my school-fees on time. Papa says his hard-earned money shouldn’t be wasted on school things when it’s needed to keep us alive.

I wish Mama had remembered to rip a piece from her old dress as she’d promised and made me a handkerchief. But she forgot because she and Papa fought and she had to flee to Granny’s place. I wish I could tell the Mistress this but I don’t. I’m ashamed to tell people that my parents are always fighting.

The Mistress barks Brenda’s name. Brenda is already crying as she goes to the front of the class. She also gets whacked for having long, dirty fingernails. Dlayani, whose Shangaan name means "Kill me" is lucky; her fingernail are neatly trimmed. She escapes being whacked. So does Penelope and Baiki.

Next the Mistress inspects our hair to see if it’s clean and neatly combed. A lot of children have lice and dandruff. For the hair inspection the class sings the hair song:

Hikama misisi,

(We should comb our hair)

Yisaseka

(So it can look beautiful)

Ahitwi

(We didn’t listen)

Fortunately my nappy hair is washed and neatly combed. I escape the dual punishment of being whacked on the head with the thick ruler, and then having my hair combed by the Mistress using a steel comb, which is very painful and makes one feel that one’s nappy hair is being plucked by the root.

****

It is evening. I'm sitting on the kitchen floor in front of a cozy fire from a red-hot mbawula, brazier, watching Mama cook dinner. I have no toys to play with so I often watch Mama do chores. Our house, which overlooks a gulley called a donga is in yard number 47 on Thirteenth Avenue. It has two small rooms, three small windows with several broken panes and no running water, electricity or indoor toilet.

At night the kitchen is used as a bedroom, and I and my three sisters and two brothers sleep there. My brothers sleep on a single bed in one corner, and my sisters and I sleep on pieces of cardboard on the bare cement floor.

"Miriam," Mama turns to me and says. "Take this food to your father."

She hands me a big plate to give to Papa, who is sitting impatiently at the kitchen table. As head of the household Papa gets served first, and during meals he sits alone at the table. Mama and us children sit on the bare cement floor, which has been polished a shiny red. As I set the plate heaped with vuswa, our staple of porridge made from ground corn meal, and marumbu, cooked chicken intestine, Papa looks at me. Something catches his eye.

"Khade hafa (Come here)," he says in Venda. There is gentleness in his usually authoritarian voice, which reassures me that I’ve done nothing wrong and will not be chastised.

I obey.

"Let me take a look at your forehead." he says.

I lower it toward him. He pulls the flickering candle closer.

"What happened to it?" he asks as his fingers gently feel the welt on my forehead. I wince because it's tender and still hurts.

"The Mistress beat me at school," I say in a contrite voice, thinking that I deserved being punished by the Mistress because I’d done wrong.

"Beat you – what for?"

"For not trimming my fingernails."

Mom and Dad in Alexandra

Papa is furious. She glares at Mama, who is kneeling beside the brazier, dishing out dinner for my younger sisters, Linah, Diana and me. My four older siblings -- Johannes, George, Florah and Maria -- are still outside playing.

"Didn’t I tell you not to send my children to that bloody Shangaan School?" Papa bellows. "Look at what they’ve done to the poor child."

"There’s no school for Vendas in Alexandra to send her to," Mama says, almost apologetically. She knows that Papa is opposed to our attending a school where the medium of instruction is Shangaan, my mother’s language, and not Venda, his language. He believes that it will make us less Venda.

"And what kind of school is it that beats up children for not trimming their fingernails?" Papa demands.

Mama doesn’t answer. I remember that when I showed her the welt on my forehead and told her what had happened, I’d noticed tears in her eyes, even as she said, "Don’t worry, child, as long as you’re learning something it’s worth it." There was nothing Mama could do, short of withdrawing me from school. Black schools had to abide by the strict discipline rules set by the Department of Bantu Education. And corporal punishment was high on the list of those rules.

But Papa doesn’t care a damn about the Department of Bantu Education’s rules. He turns to me and says, "Tomorrow I’ll accompany you to school and teach that bloody Mistress a lesson. I’ll donder her (whip her good)."

Papa must have spoken impulsively, for Mama smiles and says, "You forget that tomorrow is Friday. You can’t miss work or you’ll be fired. And what good will beating up the Mistress do if the children can’t eat and we are evicted?"

Papa scowls. He digs deep into the right pocket of his overalls and fishes out a two cents coin. "Here, buy yourself some sweets (candy)."

"Ndi ya livuha (Thank you)," I say gratefully, curtseying.

Papa gently pats me on the back of the head. He tells me that I’m a good girl. I know that part of the reason he’s pleased is that I always speak Venda in his presence, unlike my older siblings, who often speak Shangaan.

As Linah, Diana and I crowd around a common plate heaped with vuswa and another with marumbu, and eating with the right hand because it is taboo to use the left to eat, I’m already dreaming of what I’m going to do with my two cents. I’m going to buy hebelungu, a subsidized lunch offered to schoolchildren by the Catholic Church. It consisted of two slices of brown bread smeared with peanut butter, and a mug of skimmed milk. Next to fish & chips, there’s nothing I find more delicious. Also hebelungu is filling, and with food scarce at home because Papa only makes R10 a week as a menial laborer, and most of the money is used for bus fare, for bribing the police and for paying rent for our two-room shack, it helps to have at least one filling meal a day.

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This site was last edited on
June 22, 2008 04:10 AM Hit Counter

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