Free You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town by Zoë Wicomb

cloak. He bellows like a bull preparing to storm the empty chairs.
    â€˜Ladies and gentlemen, let those of us who abhor violence, those of us who have a vision beyond darkness and savagery, weep today for the tragic death of our Prime Minister . . .’
    He is speaking to her . . . Ladies and gentlemen . . . that includes her, Tamieta, and what can be wrong with that? Why should she not be called a lady? She who hasalways conducted herself according to God’s word? Whose lips have never parted for a drop of liquor or the whorish cigarette? And who has worked dutifully all her life? Yes, it is only right that she should be called a lady. And fancy it coming from the rector. Unless he hasn’t seen her, or doesn’t see her as part of the gathering. Does the group of strangers backed by the dark-suited Theology students form a bulwark, an edifice before which she must lower her eyes? How could she, Tamieta Snewe, with her slow heavy thighs scale such heights?
    â€˜. . . these empty chairs are a sign of the barbarism, the immense task that lies ahead of the educator . . .’
    Should she move closer to the front? As his anger gives way to grief, she can no longer hear what he says. In Tamieta’s ears the red locusts rattle among the mealies on the farm and the dry-throated wind croaks a heart-broken tale of treachery through the cracks of the door. She must wait, simply wait for these people to finish. Never, not even on a Sunday afternoon, has she known time to drag its feet so sluggishly. If she could pull out of her plastic bag a starched cap and apron and whip round smilingly after the last amen with a tray of coffee, perhaps then she could sit through the service in comfort. And the hot shame creeps up from her chest to the crown of her head. The straw hat pinned to the mattress of hair released from its braids for the occasion (for she certainly does not wear a doekie to church like a country woman) smoulders with shame for such a starched cap long since left behind.
    So many years since the young Mieta carried water from the well, the zinc bucket balanced on her head, her slender neck taut and not a drop, never a drop of water spilled. Then she rolled her doekie into a wreath to fit the bottom of the bucket and protect her head from its cutting edge. Sothey swaggered back, the girls in the evening light when the sun melted orange in an indigo sky, laughing, jostling each other, heads held high and never a hand needed to steady the buckets.
    If only there were other women working on the campus she would have known, someone would have told her. As for that godless boy, Charlie, he knew all right, even betrayed himself with all that nonsense about the carnival while she sniffed for his treachery in quite the wrong direction. Of course he knew all along that she would be the only person there. And at this moment as he stands in Hanover Street with the pink and green satins flowing through his fingers, he sniggers at the thought of her, a country woman, sitting alone amongst white people, foolishly singing hymns. And he’ll run triumphant fingers through his silky hair – but that is precisely when the Jewish draper will say, ‘Hey you, I don’t want Brylcreem on my materials, hey. I think you’d better go now.’ And that will teach Charlie; that will show him that hair isn’t everything in the world.
    The words of the hymn do not leave her mouth. A thin sound escapes her parted lips but the words remain printed in a book, written in uneven letters on her school slate. Will the wind turn and toss her trembling hum southward into the ear of the dominee who will look up sternly and thunder, ‘Sing up aia, sing up’?
    Oh, how her throat grows wind-dry as the strips of biltong beef hung out on the farm in the evening breeze. The longing for a large mug of coffee tugs at her palate. Coffee with a generous spoonful of condensed milk, thick and sweet to give her strength. How