Free Holding Up the Sky by Sandy Blackburn-Wright

first dose of tablets but had not been able to make her way back. The food and blankets were a blessing, she told us, as George was still in the grip of winter where temperatures would regularly drop below freezing. We also took the two grandsons with us when we visited other homes nearby, allowing their grandmother an opportunity to sleep.
    Msizi and I visited another home where the grandmother was ill, though I was not sure with what. Her son showed us into a small annex that was her room, so we could sit and visit her. Hearing a noise, a cry, Msizi asked the old woman if there was a baby in the house. She said there was and pulled back the crusty blankets to reveal a tiny baby, just waking, in the crook of her arm. Apparently the mother of this household was also working as a maid for a white family in Cape Town, having returned to work as soon as the baby was born. Msizi and I exchanged glances and I took the baby from the old woman, wondering if it would catch whatever illness the grandmother was harbouring. Responding to the cries, the son reappeared with a bottle for the baby. It was as filthy as the blankets in which the old woman slept. Ignoring my urge to run and sterilise the bottle, I fed the squawking infant. We agreed to leave some blankets and clean clothes for the grandmother and promised to return.
    As we walked away, Msizi told me that the family would not give the blankets and clothes to the old woman.
    I turned on him, horrified. ‘Why not?’
    â€˜They will reason that she doesn’t need them the most, as she is old and dying’, he explained.
    Not believing that anyone could be so callous, I promised myself I would go back the next day.
    The next morning I arrived alone. I knocked on the door and the son answered. We greeted each other and he asked me inside. I asked after his family’s health and he told me they were all well. I then gave him the baby formula I had brought and asked if I could visit his mother. As I poked my head into the tiny annex, the old woman was awake and beckoned for me to enter. ‘Molo’, I said, Hello, how are you? She assured me she was well, though she did not look it. She was wearing the same clothes as the previous day and her bedclothes smelled as if they were still soiled. I quickly scouted the room for the items we had left but they were nowhere to be seen. Reluctantly, I realised that Msizi had been right. I asked her, in a combination of gestures and English words as I spoke no Xhosa, whether she had eaten yet. As she had not, I went to the kitchen to see what I could find. Her son was sitting at the small metal kitchen table with a visiting neighbour. After yet more greetings, I was told there was no porridge, the common breakfast staple, but only leftover pap from the night before. He scraped the contents from the bottom of a pot into a plastic bowl and handed it to me. I thanked him and returned to the annex. Then, sitting next to the old woman, I helped her to eat what little food there was. While pap is quite a bland meal, it is preferred by many as it comfortably fills the stomach, chasing hunger away for many hours. I suspected it would be so with her as well. Before I left, I asked the son for the woollen stockings I had brought the day before, very aware that I was crossing a line with him. He disappeared into another room while I stood awkwardly in the kitchen with the neighbour. After a few minutes he returned with the stockings. I told him that his mother’s legs were cold and that I was going to put the stockings on her before I left.
    Once out the door, I went to look for Msizi, outraged. ‘How could he?’ I demanded.
    â€˜You don’t understand’, he replied.
    I knew I didn’t. I had no idea what it was like not to be able feed and clothe your family and to have to choose between them. I did not know how the son felt having his wife working so far from home, earning only a few rand, or dollars, a day,