The girl who smoked

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.