ECHOES OF FRAGMENTATION, is an autobiographical account of my life(as yet unpublished); the unembellished confessions of a simple man with all mortal failings bared. It is the story of the non-hero The following excerpt is from The Milk Years (already complete), the first book in the trilogy.
MY BIRTH
It was exactly 8.30 when she ultimately decided to rise up. By now the husband had long had his ritual soft porridge and tea, bid her farewell, and left for work. From his stint in the military he went about his morning tasks as if by numbers and at a particular time was already out and on the way to work. So passionate was he about his work he could not even be paid to stay away.
Getting off bed was not an easy affair for her - she was about six months pregnant. Nevertheless, being a tough woman, she deftly erased all thoughts of self-pity from her mind and set about her mission for the day. It was that day that she always looked towards with anticipation and exhilaration. It was her day of release, a day when she forgot all her troubles and pains and headed towards her domain of dreams: eMshishi, eMjiba, Johannesburg maboneng - City of Lights.
They had married over seven years before in Johannesburg. How she wished they had stayed on in Alexandra where they had met and lived for a while before he got this cursed job in the City Council of Benoni and they had to move. It was nice that they now had their own little cosy place with electricity and water unlike in Dark City where there are many families to a single house. But the people here were much coarser and somewhat rural; hardly urbane or debonair like joburgers. She did not like it here and she felt out of place with the women neighbours - they were all out to backbite and say nasty things about each other. And so for her any visit to Johannesburg was the ultimate release and a good opportunity to again breathe her native air.
She took a bus to Benoni Station which was about thirty minutes away: across the bridge over the railway line; through First Street where the Town Council stood and next to it the local clinic; then the industrial complex and on to the station on the border of town.
All in all it took the train about an hour to reach Park Station in Johannesburg. At Boksburg she looked out of the window at the majestic Boksburg - Benoni Hospital building and vowed never to let her children be born there. All the way through Germiston where the train waited for a while and on until Jeppe Station where she alighted; heaved and puffed up and down the steep flight of stairs; then down Betram Street and on to the clinic of our birth, somewhere on the border with Hillbrow.
For all four of us, my father's children, she took this trouble to ensure we were born right. And once I was old enough to comprehend she would say, "You are not like them - you are from Joburg!" Ma does not now remember the name of the clinic of our birth; only that it was a Roman Catholic project with the whole name ending in Sanctuary. She had known the place perchance when one day out on some errand in the city centre and pregnant with her first, her water unexpectedly broke and she was rushed by ambulance there. For the rest of us she put up upon the critical stage of the pregnancies with the Katanes, who acting as the in-laws pampered her to death through the four deliveries.
It is said that I was born on the 17th of April nineteen hundred and fifty eight. Of all my parent's children I was the biggest at birth, which is probably why my father named me Tswagare - by which he may have meant exceptional. The literal meaning is, he-who-stands-out or who-comes-from-within. My mother, as was customary, gave me the other name Crispin, which I somehow misspelled Chrispin throughout high school and has come to be written Crispian in my official documents through some bureaucratic oversight, or perhaps as originally written in the birth certificate. Mother gave us all except one English names; an indication perhaps of her wish for our smooth prosperity in the white world upon that moment of the tightening grip of Apartheid rule over black life especially in the urban areas.
"Hallo piccaninny".
"Haaaa, ptah pteh!" These were my first memorable words, uttered in response to a white shopkeeper's rather condescending salutation. I was still on mother's back. It is said that as an infant I was quite a charmer and everywhere I went elders proffered gifts in appreciation. I have totally no recollection of those times.
My first memories are those of being moved from the warmth of my parents' bedroom, to make way for our last born, the daughter my father named after his beloved mother, Mosedi. It was unbridled trauma, tragedy unmitigated. I cried and cried into the black night without deliverance. My importunate cries did not an inch move Father's resolute heart. Before then I had been the conjuror, undoubted favourite - able at will to manipulate him into bringing any thing I desired. Having now to share a room with my brother was like being thrown into a dungeon. He must have felt the same way upon his relegation at my coming. I can never come to forget the terror of those nights as monsters of all type lurked in all corners, bent on causing me untold harm and getting even with my uncaring father.
One day as my mother was going about her daily chores within earshot of the sleeping infant; she was suddenly jolted into action by the desperate shrieks of the poor thing. The soles of her little feet were all covered in blood and next to her cot, there I stood, red-handed. I had decided only blood could repay her debts and used my fangs to exact revenge.
My other memories of those early days are of terrible illness. I was floating in and out of delirium with all kinds of weird and grisly shapes threatening my fragile existence. My head throbbed constantly with pain and my wet bedding reeked with the sour smell of sweat. Everything was pain - it was pain just to keep my eyes open. My dry mouth tasted foul with the bitter coat of pills. Sleep was the haunt of horrific nightmares. I swayed between life and death.
I also remember upon that time having for the first time to spend the night by myself, away from home. I had been admitted at Boksburg - Benoni Hospital and had to stay over for observation. Forlorn in the gleam of the sanitised and disinfected atmosphere, I cried and cried like a creature given up for adoption. The up-right nurses in their starched white uniforms failed dismally in their compassionate attempt to lift me out of my dark sorrows. It was the longest night of my life.
On the following day I was finally released with the grim diagnosis - German measles. I remember travelling back home long distances on Mother' sturdy back. Then it was the horrid spell in the darkened room where I had to sweat the disease out.
I particularly recall the silhouette of my mother hovering across the doorway and her anxious voice asking a little girl by my side,
"How is he?" It was an angel come to nurse me back to health: Twatwa - first daughter of ous' Naggie and Boet Ben, friends of my mothers.
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