It was the snapping that made Katjie look up. Her eyes were watering and she wiped a hand over her face, lifting her spectacles and dropping them again on to her nose like she always did when she was uncertain. Her feet were in a towel on a hot-water bottle and she shuffled them around to find her slippers. She stabbed the needle into the half-stitched head of the ragdoll and, holding on to the table, stood up. “Nee, nee, nee, nee,” she muttered, snatching at the cup on the table and pushing her false teeth into her mouth.
Bessie, her youngest granddaughter, was on the bed, playing with the doll’s body, her thumb in her mouth. Criszenda, the older one, was sleeping, curled in a tight pink ball at her sister’s feet. Shireen was on the other side of the curtain, on the floor, snoring softly. She had come in an hour ago and woken Katjie and Bessie, falling against the table and laughing, making the shack smell of drink and sex. Katjie had steered her behind the curtain and promised her coffee to keep quiet. But straight away she was asleep on the newspaper laid out for her and her mother covered her with a grey blanket.
Now Katjie scuttled across the yard to the back door and knocked.
“Hello, hello!” she called. “Oom Krisjan, maak oop, maak oop … the electricity is shorting!”
The house was silent and she knocked harder, stopping to put her ear to the door to hear if anyone was coming. The last time she had run into the house and switched off the mains herself but Oom Krisjan had shouted at her so now she was afraid.
The unhurried scraping of slippers as Oom Krisjan came to the door made Katjie rub her hands and bounce on the step. The old man was dressed in his brown winter pyjamas and blue slippers and, before he could swear, she said, “Vinnig, quick, switch off the mains, the electricity is shorting.”
“You blerrie people,” he said, turning slowly. “This is the last time, today I am cutting the wires.”
When she was sure he was going to the mains she ran back to see if the sparking had stopped. As she opened the door the smell hit her and, through the smoke, she saw a flame crawling along the nylon curtain-divider.
“Liewe Jesus! Shireen, Shireen, get up! The curtain is burning!”
Bessie was coughing and the old lady grabbed the child’s arm and pulled her out.
“Kom, Criszenda, Shireen!” she shouted. “Come, come out!”
Criszenda uncurled and crawled across the bed. Katjie pushed her out and she fell into the yard, gasping in the cold morning air.
“Shireen, Shireen!”
The fire dropped like slime on to the grey blanket and still Shireen did not stir.
“Mammie is drunk!” Criszenda shouted. Bessie yelped like a puppy and her young voice made those sleeping in the neighbouring shacks open their eyes. The children stood in the corner of the yard watching, their bodies shaking with cold and terror.
The fire was everywhere now and black smoke swelled and surged into the dawn. Katjie could hear Shireen coughing, but when she went back inside the flames came at her like a man with a sjambok and she stepped back.
“Kom, Shireen, kom, the hok is burning! O Liewe Jesus, help us.”
With a slow creaking, the corrugated-iron walls folded. Katjie grabbed at the collapsing structure, trying to keep it upright as the red-hot walls seared off the skin on her hands.
“Shireen, Shireen! Help her!” Hands grabbed Katjie and pulled her frail body away from the heat.
Dust and smoke swirled across the yard and flames leaped into the sky. Bare-chested men in boxers ran with buckets of water, throwing them on to the fire, and women, their hair in stockings and their gowns pulled tight over their breasts, shouted at the children to keep back. Neighbours from the shacks nearby carried their own furniture and clothes into the street. If one place went, then next door could go too. Keeping the fire in one yard was the big job now.
“Shireen, Shireen.”
Further up the hill, in a red sand yard, Esther was in her shack making coffee. At daybreak she liked to sit outside, on the wooden bankie Deddie had made for her when she still lived on the farm. He always said she liked the morning because she was a plaasmeid and till the day she died she would be up to see the sunrise. Neville said it was nothing to do with being a farm girl; she was just blerrie dom, stupid to get out of a warm bed on a cold morning. Thinking about her deddie’s words made Esther smile. It was time he came to town to stay with them. Her ma had been dead two years already and the old man needed someone to make him proper food and wash his shirt. It would be wonderful to have him join her outside for coffee before the lokasie woke up.
On cold days like this, she warmed her hands around the mug and her breath and cigarette smoke and the steam from the mug mingled into a cloud around her. In her drinking days the children had brought coffee they begged from next door to wake her up. She thought about Katjie’s problem with Shireen and felt sorry for the younger woman.
This morning there was new snow on the mountains and the cold made her ears burn and her nose run. Neville was up now, watching the Bible reading on television while he washed in their bucket. He would have preferred music so he could swing his hips while he washed but the only option was a kids’ puppet show on TV1 and, besides, the church stuff made Esther happy.
And then shouting came like a hurtling rock over the fences and drowned out the calm voice of the pastor on the TV.
“Something’s going on,” Esther said.
“Close the door, a man can turn into an ice block with you blerrie meide in this house,” he muttered.
“But Neville, there’s people running and something burning.”
“Ma, what is it?” Liedjie called. She was under a duvet on the bottom of a bunk bed pushed against the back wall of the shack.
Neville dragged a chair to the doorway and climed up to see through the patchwork of adjoining yards. “O hel, it’s Katjie’s hok,” he said.
He leaped down and pulled on his shoes, not bothering with socks or a shirt.
“Jaco, Jaco, wake up. O hel, O hel,” he mumbled and for once Esther didn’t reprimand him. “The whole thing is on fire, Esther,” he said, running to the gate.
Jaco stumbled out, rubbing his eyes. When the teenager saw the smoke and his father running down the road, he leaped over the fence and sprinted towards the fire.
All the while Esther said nothing. She stood, holding her mug and her cigarette, watching the smoke pour into the clear Karoo sky.
“Antie Esther, what’s happening?” Titty, the girl in the next yard, shouted. She had crawled out of the pipe where she slept with her boyfriend Charlie and their baby Apie and was still on her hands and knees.
Titty’s voice jolted Esther and she put down her mug. She pinched out her cigarette and dropped it into the pocket of her dressing gown.
“It’s a hok, a hok is burning!” she called as she opened the gate and ran into the street, pushing through people who were coming to look.
O Liewe Jesus.
By the time Esther reached Oom Krisjan’s gate, Liedjie had caught up with her. They found Katjie and the girls alone in a corner of the yard. Liedjie pulled the children into her, and they stood unmoving, like the stiff-limbed dolls their ouma bought them from Pep.
Katjie was burned. Her arms hung at her sides and when Esther reached out to take her hands, she pulled back.
“O Jitte tog, Esther. I tried to get her out, but the hok came down so fast. My child.”
Esther put her hand on the old lady’s shoulders and pushed her gently towards the street. The crowd made way as they walked up the road, the girls barefoot, in thin nighties, trailing behind.
Liedjie lit the gas to boil water for sweet tea. The old lady’s hands were raw and black and her body was shaking.
“It’s the shock,” Esther said and Liedjie fetched her still-warm duvet and draped it over Katjie’s shoulders. Esther emptied out Neville’s washing water and filled the bucket at the backyard tap. When it was half full she positioned it between Katjie’s knees, pushing her forward so that she sat with her hands in the water.
Criszenda’s eyes were wide and her teeth were chattering. Bessie sucked her thumb and leaned into Liedjie for warmth as the young woman wiped the soot off her face. Liedjie saw she was clutching the body of a rag doll.
“Where’s your dolly’s head?” she asked her.
“With Mammie, in the hok.”
“Can I make her another head?”
“Nee, Ouma made it already.”
The child climbed into Esther and Neville’s bed next to her sister. Criszenda wrapped her arms around her and Liedjie bent over them and kissed their faces. Outside the shouting carried on, and now sirens screamed.
And then Liedjie, in a strong clear voice, started to sing, first low and slowly building so that the words filled her heart.
Where I would forever abide;
Under His wings, yes, under His wings;
I’m resting in Jesus, under His wings.
Women from the shacks came, one by one, into the yard, singing the words over and over as Katjie sat, with her hands in the water, listening, her shoulders moving back and forth, keeping time. In the bed, Bessie slept and Criszenda cried. When Neville came back, his face and clothes black, he looked at Esther and Liedjie and then at Katjie in a way that the women knew they had found Shireen.