Midnight Orchids

“Add Title”.

The blank page stared at me. I stared back, staring, but not staring, as I reflected on what this first Chapter would be about and where I would start.

She had asked me to write down my memories of growing up. We had been close once, but time filled the spaces and widened each year. The friendship had taken the form of a comfortable “knowing” that we were there, not always in contact, except maybe for the celebration days when everybody, either out of guilt or nostalgia exchanges “Happy Birthday” or “Merry Christmas” wishes complete with glittering GIFs and emojis someone else designed. Online nostalgia and remembrances.

I felt the tears welling as I stared through the sand-crusted windowpanes still being battered by the storms of the Cape. I felt apprehensive.

Starting this blank page meant reflecting on my Life, what I did with it, how much of it I wasted, the things I had buried to stay sane. The Sunset Years had happened upon me quite suddenly and when I wasn’t looking. Days, months, years, decades ticking away precisely, accurately and methodically, not to be escaped or slowed down. Time marching to a metronome that I did not keep up with. Time was ticking out large numbers which I did not feel or know what these numbers were supposed to mean except in the most traditional sense…Age, old, ageing, dying, death.

Time passed at what felt like the quiet snuffing out of a dim flame, barely noticeable, hardly bringing light and barely casting a shadow, always walking in others.

My Life was conceived during Apartheid, lived during a time of violent struggle and in turn, living a carefully structured existence based on mainly comforting routines meant to keep the brutality of otherness outside, co-existing in social constructs that were as artificial as they were evil.

As South Africans in the 1950s, my family were classified “coloured” by the apartheid government at the time under D F Malan, the first prime minister of the apartheid Republic. Being classified meant being judged against a set of criteria such as skin colour, hair texture, the language spoken. It was a brutal time, with families torn apart because their classification was not clear and would be allocated to different races by virtue of legislation that had no basis in science or human rights.

Your skin colour made you a “race” and if the bureaucrats, whose decisions were based on a “common sense policy”, were unsure, the person was subjected to a pencil test which involved running a pencil through a person’s hair, including children’s hair, and if the pencil did not slide out, the person was not white. The person was however allowed to take the alternative pencil test which involved the person shaking his or her head vigorously. If the pencil fell out, the person passed the test and could be classified coloured. Life based on a pencil. The Pencil People.

As persons classified not-white because of a “common sense policy” and a “pencil”, everything about us was systematically erased. Our families torn apart, our homes taken by force and razed to the ground. And if that wasn’t enough, we were reminded every day that we were not good enough, never good enough.

We couldn’t drink from the same taps, couldn’t sit on the same benches in public gardens, couldn’t use the same swimming pools or tennis courts. We had to enter different parts of a building, usually at the back so that we would not be seen, had to use separate toilets faraway and a long walk. We were forced to go to different schools to receive a different education based on what the commonsense pencil people believed would be necessary for us to learn – like how to sweep and wash up, garden, iron. As young girls, we had to study and write exams on this essentially to become domestic servants. Other schools offered needlework, agriculture and woodwork to people not classified white.

While the struggle continued relentlessly outside of me, an internal struggle continued inside me. The Struggle to be Seen. What did that even mean? To be seen?

I was “seen” by people who were not my family. With them, I felt a deep connection, being recognised and accepted for who I am. Together we were heard, we listened and shared, we acknowledged, supported, and most importantly, we understood.

Together we walked many roads, fallen in ditches and helped each other out of them, sometimes carried when we were too tired to walk. Together we knew that we were safe. There was trust and there were kindnesses and compassion. That was our safety zone that soothed the mental bondage of enervation of being a Woman, a Professional, an Employee, a Mother, living in South Africa, under an apartheid government in a strongly, almost fiercely patriarchal society.

I had not been seen by my family whose sight was blinkered rigidly, ultra-conservatively and narrowly, and whose eyes shone only in the reflection of male family achievements and academic titles, because that meant prestige and respect. Being seen meant a few letters branded after your name and a title, more so if you were male.

I was not and am not an oil painting, being quite plain as looks go, with a shape that showed the Designer had become bored along the way, almost randomly thrown together like an Australian platypus. I still won’t wear dresses or even get into a bathing costume.

When you’ve had your body laid upon by mindless, careless comments, your legs commented on and laughed at for more than 50 years, the relentless, unsolicited commentary from men, partners, husbands, family – you need to exercise, you’re getting fat hey, I’ve never been with a big woman before – then dresses and bathing costumes were not things you ever bought.

I lost myself in seeing and hearing what others said about me, to me, carelessly, cruelly and the subject of their cruel amusement oblivious of the scars they were leaving. I felt unseen and ashamed. I didn’t fit in.

I sent this first draft off to her and ended the email with “See you soon”, but I knew that it would not be soon, if ever. The writing had been cathartic for me, a release, at times tears dropping like rain on a stultifying humid day, and at other times I pounded at the keyboard that helped me to articulate what I could not say out loud.

I realised that I was still looking for my Voice and perhaps she had given me an opportunity to speak, share, connect, relate to others who had been on a similar trajectory, launched from somewhere in the Universe to land here and to learn.

What that learning was to be, some 50 years later, I still don’t know, but some of the mud is clearing and some lotuses are blooming.

 from Conversations: Liberation Notes, Chapter ONE