Welcome to Our Hillbrow: A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa

Refilwe

Hillbrow: The Map 81 Refilwe R efilwe would not have known the story of Piet’s death. Nor that he was in love with Liz, Lerato’s mother, mainly because their love relationship was cut short before Piet could blunder, could let out the secret affair for people of Tiragalong to pass along, with their ever-wagging tongues, to his wife in the village. All Refilwe knew was that Lerato was a Johannesburger. But that did not stop her from speculating the rest. What she decided to share with Tiragalong were her suspicions that Lerato was not just a Johannesburger, in the way that people born in the city could be said to be Johannesburgers. She was far worse than these; she had the blood of Makwerekwere Refilwe 81 82 Welcome To Our Hillbrow running in her veins. Her mother was one of these women who could not say no to any drop of semen found flowing aimlessly in the streets. So she had courted a stranger’s sperm, as it flew its way round the streets of our Hillbrow. Refilwe was not a woman of vulgar words. The daughters and sons of Tiragalong were the ones who rephrased her story in such terms. By the time her version gained momentum, there was no one to contradict it. Lerato had already followed the Bone of her Heart into the Dark Chamber. Your body and hers were buried under six feet of our country. It was true to say, Refents̆e, that Refilwe loved you deeply. When she learnt that you had staged your drama from the twentieth floor of your building, her heart broke and bled. The blood mixed with the sorrowful floods of tears that gushed out her eyes. It was a cruel loss for her, the loss of the future Bone of her Heart. She had not given up on the idea that one day you would be tired of these Johannesburg women, that your thoughts would then turn back to your home girl. She knew, like all Tiragalong, that there was always a return to the ruins; only to the womb was there no return. Also, Tiragalong had a saying that those who had smelled at each other’s bottoms never really separated. So Refilwe always had hope. Until, that is, you crushed it with your emotional adventurousness, letting your heart plunge into a pool of love with a Johannesburger. Your suicide crushed Refilwe’s hope for good, and the blood and tears of sorrow that gushed from the pieces almost drowned her heart. Hillbrow: The Map 83 It was true, of course, that Lerato’s heart also drowned in such floods of sorrow. If Lerato’s heart could be said to be more grieved than Refilwe’s, it was only because the former saw her assisting role in the drama all too clearly. Refilwe’s grief was without that crippling sense of guilt. She had done nothing to assist your death. Had she not tried, in fact, to save you from your raging emotional storms of infatuation with the Johannesburg woman? The fragments of the story that Sammy had, earlier, come to circulate in Tiragalong made a lot of sense to her. What else did you, Refents̆e, child of Tiragalong and Hillbrow, expect from such a woman? Refilwe also wondered about Sammy’s moral behaviour. Running after your love with similar blindness. But Sammy was peripheral to her concerns. Her sore heart came back again and again to you and what she termed your emotional naïveté; to your revealing conduct towards her on the day that you had visited her for a home-made, nourishing meal in her bachelor flat at Vickers Place. You had arrived on time at Refilwe’s flat. You were generally a very punctual person. You had left the office early on that day, because you wanted to see Lerato before you went to Refilwe’s. You wanted to drink from what Stimela called Fountains of Love – quench your emotional thirst, so that other honeyed waters would not seduce you. You needed the strengthening that Lerato’s kisses were capable of providing to your all-too-human heart. So you were confident that you were strong when Refilwe opened the door of her flat to Refilwe 84 Welcome To Our Hillbrow you; even so, at the back of your mind was the nagging thought that you were very...