Free My Son's Story by Nadine Gordimer Page B

me:—What can we do for her?—
    The slight emphasis on ‘we’ gave away, all at once, that my mother knew about my father. That she knew—without knowing how—I knew. She discounted him—couldn’t count on him, couldn’t call on Sonny, now, wherever he was, even if he were to be hidden from her only round the corner, he was too far away. I understood. What could we do for my sister: a family that ours had become? And at the same moment it came to both of us: what Baby’s ‘deep unhappiness’ that the doctor diagnosed was about.
    So Baby knew, too. It was just that she managed differently what she knew. The hip, hyped style she flaunted on street
corners (out of sight of my mother; I saw her), the flip and vulgar way she—brought up in the sound of my mother’s quiet voice and the poetry of my father’s Shakespeare—talked; the emotional outbursts over trifles, that my mother put down to the strain of having had my father in detention and on trial during the time when her menstrual cycle was being established; her manner of distancing herself from the childhood she and I had in common—all these were her attempts to manage.
    When she had said to me, D’you expect him to be moping around like you?—was she trying to defend my father? Did she think, then, I didn’t know, and probably would find out? Good god. Had she, all this time, been taking his part against my mother? As I tried to shield my mother against him? Female against female. Male against male. So what could we have done for her. To stop her cutting her wrists when she couldn’t manage.
    What could my mother have done for her.
    What could I, her own brother, have done for her.
    What a family he made of us.
    Poor Tom’s a-cold.

And now joy came often. After prison, where there was nothing to please the senses, where there was not even enough light to read and study by, came this bounty. It flowed from such slight stimulation. They met again for the first time at a house meeting. It was called a debriefing; those who had been inside related their experiences in resisting interrogation, intimidation, solitude, for the benefit of those who might sometime find themselves inside, and for individuals and organizations who sought the best means of supporting those on trial, of which there were many. She sat there with her knees broad apart under one of her long skirts, balancing on her lap the briefcase that served as a table for the notebook. She wrote earnestly. While others spoke, while Sonny spoke. When he paused, her gaze flashed up, narrow-blue, the blonde eyelashes met at the outer corners of her eyes as the lids pleated in a slight smile of encouragement.
    Joy.
    Hannah met Sonny for coffee, for further discussion. It was
possible—to take one’s dark face into a coffee bar. And with a white woman companion; to pull out her chair for her and sit opposite her. It had been possible for some time, although, coming from a small town where such barriers fell more slowly if at all, and after two years in a segregated prison, Sonny still had a strange feeling: that he was not really there, a commonplace meeting of this kind was not happening to him. Then they drank coffee and she smoked and said, through the wraiths that undulated between them, he hadn’t changed. In two years.
    â€”You look very well. Fine. I thought that at the meeting.—
    Her approval was sun on his face. He closed his eyes a moment as he smiled.—Alia was ready to feed me up. But as you can see …I put on weight inside. But not fat, really? I’ve never exercised so regularly in my life! Never had the time, before.—
    â€”You look so much better than you did when I saw you in prison.—
    â€”Ah well …detention is terrible. Much worse than a sentence, where you’re sure when the end will come, even if it’s years ahead—you know as well as I do.—
    â€”Not