The girl who smoked
Tracey arrived at
Girls’ High in the wake of her older sister, Chantelle, who was in Grade 11 and
winning prizes, trophies and a place in the provincial debating team for her
ability to write and speak the kind of English examiners croon over. Tracey had
been known as “difficult” at her junior school, a self-fulfilling prophecy
which effectively prejudiced teachers to be on the lookout for a bad attitude or the next naughty prank.
It was said that she smoked.
Tracey’s height and
mop of curly reddish brown hair made her stand out both literally and
metaphorically. She seemed to delight in giving out waves of provocation during
the early morning Assemblies by keeping her head up and her eyes open,
particularly during the singing of the Lord’s Prayer, and winking at anyone
whose eye she caught.
She soon landed in my
office, radiating rebellion and awkwardness.
“Tell me why you’re
here,” I suggested.
“I neighed like a
horse.”
“Where did you neigh?”
“In Mrs Van der Horst’s Afrikaans poetry lesson.”
Elize van der Horst was
at the bottom of life’s scrum. Brought up in a strict Calvinist home, she had
studied at one of the more strait-laced Afrikaans medium universities and then
married Marthinus van der Horst, an outsize former Springbok rugby player who
had become a dominee in charge of the most conservative church in the area.
They had four strapping sons: the eldest three all looked like deep freezes
with heads and walked around with rugby balls under their arms for most of the
year. When asked what they wanted to be, they answered variously, “Lock, scrum
half, flanker.” The youngest son (then aged four) had answered this question
with a pirouette: “I want to be the fairy queen!” He had never lived this down,
so he attended church a lot and sang treble in the choir in spite of his size.
His saving grace was that he was good at shot put.
It appeared that
Tracey had been bored by Eugene Marais’s Winternag
so had reduced the class to a rubble of giggles by a very realistic neigh.
Intent on conveying the stark beauty of the lines,
“So wyd as die Heer se
genade,
Lê die velde in sterlig
en skade”
Mrs Van der Horst had
taken hurt exception to the ruination of her lesson and sent her horsey pupil
packing. I suggested to Tracey that should think about how Mrs Van der Horst
must have felt, especially as it really is a very striking poem (if a little
advanced for Grade 8, I thought privately). Tracey looked both puzzled and
defensive. I asked if she had ever experienced a clear night in the Karoo. She assured me that she had not, nor had she any
intention of doing so.
“What is the most
beautiful scene in nature that you can remember?”
She thought about
this, then said, “The river near where I live on the evening in winter when I stayed
out to watch the sun set.”
“All right,” I said,
“I want you to write a poem about that scene and bring it to me when it’s
finished, at the latest by the end of next week.”
This is the poem she
brought me.
Elemental
reflection
Focal white light relaxes
into manageable colour:
tranquil water
reflects the deep warm orange glow.
Translucent clouds
give way to a grey void.
Below them, reality is
earthed in humped hilly shapes.
Filigreed trees,
carefully delicate, stand motionless.
Their tall sentinel is
lake-mirrored,
slim lifeline touching
the spiky sedge,
mystic connection
linking water, treed
landscape, fiery sky
and all-creating,
all-embracing light.
I read this in front
of her.
“Did you write this
yourself?”
She traced the white
geometrical pattern on my blue carpet with her toe.
“Sort of.”
“What kind of sort of?
More tracing.
“Chantelle’s good at
writing and I’m not.”
“Do you like this
poem?”
“Yes, I love it. The
tall tree is the best: it brings everything together and then it all makes
sense. I’m tall.”
I didn’t think she had
written any of it.
“Good. So now you know
how Mrs Van der Horst felt when you neighed in the middle of her poem. Will you
promise me not to do that again?”
“Yes.” She left, to
the relief of both of us.
I had two doors to my
office, one for the secretaries and formal visitors and the other through a
short passage onto the corridor. Anyone could come to the more private door,
but this was not encouraged for frivolous purposes. About a fortnight after the
neighing incident, there was a knock: I could see through the crack that it was
Tracey.
“Come in.”
“Are you busy?”
I had learnt that the
answer to this question had always to be “No”, regardless of the piles of
waiting reports, newsletters, circulars to be read and the like.
“No. You may come in.”
She stood on the blue
carpet with its white geometrical design. I waited.
“Why didn’t you put me
in detention when I neighed?”
“Because I thought you
had probably been in detention before, and that writing a poem yourself might
show you that it’s better to be polite when other people are telling you about
their poem than making fun of them.”
Silence. “I thought
about our river. Can I tell you about where we live?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s a mobile home
like a big caravan and the bathrooms are far away across the field. There are
dubbeltjies which hurt my feet and bad men in the trees past the bathrooms. We
all live there: my mom, Chantelle, my brother Troy, my mom’s new boyfriend Wayne and me.
I’m scared of Wayne.
He smokes pot and makes slurping noises at my mom. Sometimes my dad comes to
visit, but he only talks to Chantelle because she’s clever and Troy because
he’s a boy. He never talks to me. He always looks at their reports, but he put
mine down on the counter and his cigarette burnt a hole in the part where it
said Shows some potential. One day I
went with them to the other field where the horses are. The brown horse blew down its nose at Troy and he got a fright
and cried. My dad laughed but it was a fun laugh. I practised neighing when I
went to the bathroom and then I neighed for my dad but he just looked at the chips
in the frying pan and asked Troy
if he would like a vuvuzela.
“I was thinking that I
might like to come and live in the hostel. Then I would have to be good, and I
would be out of Wayne’s
way.”
The hostel was
constantly oversubscribed, mainly by happy, hockey-playing farm girls from the
district. The fees were high and the Hostel Committee were careful in their
selection.
“It costs quite a lot
to be in the hostel.”
“Yes, I know, but
couldn’t I do some extra duties, like putting away the hockey sticks and
staying behind to look after the place when they all go to Socials at the Boys’
School? I haven’t got jeans to wear to the Socials.”
I tried to say no as
kindly as possible, and she went away.
Later that year, it
was announced that Chantelle would be going to the Grahamstown Festival because
she had won a prize in the English Olympiad. When I saw Tracey coming towards
me in the passage, I smiled and made some remark about the family being
pleased. Falling over her words, she told me that she was very proud of
Chantelle and she also wanted to go to Grahamstown. Could she have a lift in
the school bus and then she could stay with a girl that she knew in the
township there?
Again, I tried to give
the inevitable negative answer as gently as possible, but still her face was
crumpled with disappointment as she turned to rejoin the other girls.
Chantelle was placed first
in the Olympiad, and she came up on stage in Assembly to be congratulated and
to receive, in front of the whole school, the big silver cup she had brought
back from Grahamstown. I saw Tracey clapping hard. It was the first time that
someone from the school had won it, and Chantelle’s picture was in the local
newspaper surrounded by the other candidates with congratulatory expressions on
their faces.
During the following
year I heard that Tracey had attempted suicide and was in the nearby hospital.
I went to visit her in ward K8. There were ten patients, mostly older women,
five on each side. At the very end was Tracey with her close friend Wendy who
was dressed in school uniform but without her tie. Both were smoking cigarettes
in a haze of smoke. I stopped to speak to the first patient whose dentures
twinkled in a glass next to her though she was far past any twinkling. Getting
no response, I crossed to the opposite bed where the buxom patient told me
about her internal operation and its build-up in vivid and realistic detail. Fortunately
the exhibits were securely bandaged. I was aware of much hiding of stompies and
fanning of the air at the other end of the ward. Wendy stood up, rather pale,
as I approached. She was another waif, product of a single mother who worked
fourteen hours a day in a café above which the two of them lived.
The conversation was
desultory and stilted, but at least I learnt that the cuts to Tracey’s arm were
superficial and she would be back at school after the weekend. The smoking was
not mentioned.
After a week or two I
called her in. She looked startled when I invited her sit with me in the
comfortable chairs at the coffee table on which lay the school’s history, Achieving Excellence Together, the
school motto. Some introductory patter made her very wary. It was time to get
to the point.
“You and Wendy were
smoking when I came to see you in hospital. You know smoking can be bad for
you, especially while you’re still growing, so schools make it against the
rules. How did you start to smoke?”
She wriggled.
“I wanted to get my
father’s attention.”
“Didn’t you think he
would be cross?”
“Yes, I did think so,
but it had been my twelfth birthday that week and my mother had told him it was
time he came to say hello to his children. He kissed Chantelle and threw a
punch at Troy,
but he missed me out as usual. I tried to be helpful, like making the tea and
passing the biscuits – they had chocolate on them because of my birthday. He
just went on joking and talking to the others, so I took a cigarette out of my
mother’s bag and lit up. He didn’t seem to notice. Then I started coughing and
I went outside. I heard them laughing together inside.”
Her face wobbled a
little, but she regained control.
“And did you go on
smoking from then on?”
“Not all the time, but
a few of us found a room at the back of the old pavilion where we could go at
break and we talked and smoked and I got good at it. The others said I was a
good smoker even if I wasn’t clever like Chantelle.”
I considered my next
move. “There are two things: firstly it is almost certainly bad for you, and
secondly it’s against the school rules. Would you be able to stop it?”
She thought. “I don’t
want to stop. I’d lose my friends. They’d ask why I suddenly wanted to stop.”
“Then how are we going
to solve the problem?”
“I could go on doing
it, but not at school.”
“Then I wouldn’t need
to punish you, but it would still be bad for you.”
We continue to talk,
but it was clear that stopping was not an option for her. I suggested that I
should talk to her mother. She assured me that her mother wouldn’t come to the
school. She herself smoked and didn’t care if her children did, and she might
meet the mothers from the Ladies’ Group who seemed to buy new clothes at
expensive boutiques in the mall every week.
In the end, we reached
a bargain. She and Wendy wouldn’t smoke at school or in school uniform or out
in the open for all to see. They would think about stopping (I didn’t believe
that they really would) and we would let bygones be bygones, but if there was a
next time then there might have to be a Disciplinary Hearing.
The school year
continued with its recurring pattern of sports day, the swimming gala, the play
festival, the choir festival, exams, endless hockey matches, more exams, the
Matric Dance and then Prize Giving and the realisation that the matrics were
now about the enter the real world, ready or not. Chantelle duly won the
English prize, the Debating prize and the Priscilla Leamington-Black prize for
Outstanding Cultural Contribution. Tracey passed into Grade Ten with
indifferent marks and the comment, “With even a little effort, Tracey would do
better in most subjects. She shows potential but she is sadly lacking in
application.”
During the first term
on a still hot day when the scent of the pink roses suffused the coffee table
corner, shuffling sounds filled the tiny passage to the outside corridor. At my
“Come in,” five girls led by Tracey and including Wendy filed in, forming a
half circle around my desk. This was clearly a deputation of some importance.
Tracey was the
spokesperson. “The girls in our class are spreading rumours that we are
sleeping with our boyfriends. We want to ask you to come to our classroom and
speak to the class and tell them not to spread these rumours.”
I regarded them for a
moment. “Are you sleeping with your boyfriends?”
Indignant rustles
filled the room, and sweaty bodies overpowered the scent of the roses.
Tracey again: “No, of
course not! We wouldn’t do that!”
I wasn’t sure that
they wouldn’t, but I replied, “Then there’s no problem. When there are rumours,
they always fizzle out if there is no foundation for them and then those who
are spreading them will turn their attention to something else.”
This had the effect of
a favourite fielder dropping a catch. Tracey spoke again. “But please won’t you
come anyway and tell the class not to talk about us?”
I said, “Well, imagine
what would happen if I did. Maybe some people would believe me more than they
believe you, but every girl in the class would tell her mother, her sister, her
brother and lots of other people that I had come to class specially to make
this announcement. The next day some of the mothers would be having their hair
done at Martha’s Salon and they would describe what had happened with some
added details of their own. Then the whole salon would be discussing whether
you slept with your boyfriends or not. It would be like an atom bomb, and the
fallout would go on for at least the rest of the year, if not forever. Even the
men might make fun of the whole thing when they were drinking their beers
during Saturday’s Derby Day, and the boys would practise their wolf whistles
when they saw you and probably shout some rude remarks. I really think it would
be better if the five of you stopped talking about it. Just turn away when the
others start gossiping, and make sure that there is no foundation for what they
think is happening.”
Eventually, they saw
the wisdom of this and withdrew.
The next day Tracey
reappeared. She came in and asked to close the door. My stomach gave the same
lurch as when an adult started the conversation by saying, “I don’t want to
upset you, but …” Was she going to ask me about religion, politics or for
further advice about their private lives? She opened with,
“Can I ask you a
question?” My trepidation grew, but I agreed.
“How old are you? My
friends say you are in your late thirties and I say you are in your early
thirties, so we need to know.”
I was in fact
forty-two. “Tracey, that’s a question we don’t usually ask people. When you are
middle-aged you don’t like answering it. When you are a child and when you are
old, you don’t mind. So as I’m middle-aged, I’m not going to tell you now, but
I promise that on the day you write your last matric exam in two years’ time,
if you come and ask me, I’ll tell you then.”
She didn’t come on
that day, two years from then, although I waited for her.
The Horse Show was one
of my favourite activities of the third term. It was held on a farm twenty
minutes out of town in a big field where the farmer had set up jumps and a
dressage circle for his own children who had soon been joined by the
neighbours’ children. Although it was an inter-school event, it lacked the
cut-throat features of other sports where to win was all, and every one helped
everyone else. The horses and ponies were well known, and if one was missing
there were sincere expressions of sympathy and offers of help.
It also made a
pleasant day out, and the short drive in the cool morning settled left-over
worries from the week. The dew winked from the bushes, and the birds were
fluffing their feathers on the telephone wires.
Once there, Tracey
came up to me. “The jumps are pretty well ready, but Moonrise, Jasper’s horse,
started to eat one of them so Mr Hartley had to send for more brush. We’ve got
a good chance in Dressage with Katie on her new pony. It’s a grey called Lily
after her grandmother who rode in the Grand National. She nearly won it.” National Velvet, perhaps? It appeared
that Tracey would be jumping on a borrowed mount called Takemehome.
Mothers appeared in
tweeds, twin sets and pearls. The first event was the Ride Past, the horses
beautifully groomed with plaited manes and appropriate combed patterns on their
flanks. Tracey looked remarkably regal on Takemehome, sitting with backbone
stiff and straight and doing all the right things with the reins.
The day progressed in
a muddle of gaits and cadences, foals and fillies, yearlings and stallions,
jodhpurs and saddles. Takemehome seemed to me rather skittish, but I knew better
than to originate any remarks. I occasionally repeated what the person behind
me had said if I was quick enough. Once the rounds began, both horses and riders
were earnest and usually elegant. Some horses knocked off top bars or sometimes
crashed into the whole jump, sending timbers and riders flying. Tracey
continued and just before the last round which would decide the event, she
glanced at me before gearing herself up for the start.
She won the event, and
when the red rosette was pinned on Takemehome I found myself longing for a
happy life for this girl who had been up against short odds most of her life.
After the Prize Giving, she materialised at my side, leading Takemehome.
“Did you see me win?”
“Yes, if course. I was
very proud of you.”
“Well, it was mainly
Takemehome. I wish I could – take him home – he’s such a special horse. Now
could I have a reward?”
This was too much of a
leading question. “What kind of reward?”
“Would you mount
Takemehome and let me take your picture? You don’t have to ride him, only sit
there.”
She didn’t know what
she was asking. At twenty I sat on a horse on a Tea Estate in the Pungwe
Valley, lifted up rather carefully and lengthily by a most attractive bachelor
worker, but once up, I had had no idea what to do, so had to get down rather lumpily.
The bachelor melted away to feed his pet python, having invited me to come with
him, so I lost him forever. It had been necessary to disappoint Tracey so often
before: wasn’t this something I could do? Quite a big ask, though.
“How would it work?”
“We’ll go over to the
slatted fence where there’s a stile for you to climb up. Then just put your leg
over and sit up straight.” It sounded easy enough. However, I hadn’t bargained
on the rest of the riding team and their well-made-up mothers also being there.
Trying not to look their way, I did as instructed and put on my best Queen
Mother look, wishing I had acquired some of the Royal Family’s expertise with
horses. Dismounting was a hit-and-miss affair, but Tracey kindly held my arm
and all was well. The audience clapped politely, and I was told I was a
“sport”.
The Geography teacher
was in the habit of using the analogy of blossoming flowers in her report
comments. She was Tracey’s class teacher in her last year, and at the end of
the first term, the report read, “Tracey has blossomed into a fine young woman
and her schoolwork has improved. If this continues, she should achieve a
university pass.”
I was working in my
office on preparations for the Governing Body Elections, marvelling yet again
at the number and detail of the bureaucratic regulations, when a confident
knock announced Tracey’s arrival. We sat at the coffee table as had become our
habit.
“Did you read my
report?”
“Yes,” (along with the
other six hundred).
“I remembered that you
told me after a hockey match that I could make something of life but I would
have to want to. I want to go to university to become an actuary. Can I do it?”
“How much do you want
to?”
“Lots and lots.”
Unwilling to be a wet
blanket once again by pointing out obvious obstacles such as expense,
single-mindedness, academic acceptance and the like, I assured her that she
could if this was really her heart’s desire, referring to years of Shows
potential report remarks. In my mind I went through my list of town people
who might help, always kindly and anonymously. Tracey strode away encouraged,
her reddish wavy hair catching the morning sun.
After she left school,
I heard no more of her for twenty years. I could not go to her class Reunion,
but I heard that she had been disappointed and had left a contact number in Durban for me. I happened
to be going there shortly afterwards, so we made an appointment to have dinner
together. She chose a well-known restaurant used by ambitious professionals.
We met, sat down at
our corner table and she lit a cigarette. She told me about her university
career and that that she was now indeed an actuary with a top firm, highly
thought of with a salary to match. She also had a daughter who bore my name.
“What a coincidence!
Did you know that that is my name?”
“Yes of course: I
named her after you. You believed in me and when you should have been cross,
you taught me something instead. I could easily have wasted my life, but I
couldn’t let you down. Once you said to me, ‘You are a clever girl but luckily you
are also thoughtful. Think about what you really want and then set out to
achieve it.’ So in the end I did.”
The founders who gave
the school the motto Achieving Excellence
Together might have been thinking of more conventional successes that
Tracey’s, but for me, her form of excellence is uniquely satisfying.