Esther loved church. She rose early, washed and took out her clothes and laid them on the table. She loved her special flower dress and her hat and the too-tight navy shoes with their little heels that a mevrou from long back passed on to her.
On Sundays, life had purpose. If there was money she bought a braaisak and made a chicken pot, and if there was nothing she kept flour and yeast from the week and made roosterkoek on the fire to dip in sweet coffee.
Today, like every Sunday, the blanket was tightly pulled over Neville’s head, even though the sun had been up for two hours. Esther opened the window with its new panes of glass and the curtains fluttered in the morning breeze. It would take a while to air the room of stale wine. Neville was awake, she knew that, but he was waiting for her to go so he could pee and drink water and buy a Grandpa from the tuck shop.
“It’s a disgrace there is no church in the new area,” Esther said to Katjie, who was waiting at the kitchen table. “How is it possible there is already a shebeen but no church?”
“It’s business,” she said. “They make more money with a shebeen.”
Bessie and Criszenda were dressed in pink skirts, green shirts and silver slip-ons from Pep. Each one had a little black Bible. The money for the clothes had, again, come from the kerksusters, who collected it from the congregation after making a long and heartfelt plea about Katjie’s situation one Sunday. Throughout their combined speech, Katjie had sat with her head bowed, studying the scars on her hands and trying not to listen.
“What I want to know,” said Katjie, “is how those shebeen-owners got a government house to run a drinking business?”
Esther said nothing. Really, it’s true, she thought. How did they do it? It was another house given to someone not on the waiting list. There were too many now who had come into houses too easily for there not to be something going on.
“And, you know,” Katjie went on, “they are building on to the shebeen. It looks like they are joining it to the house behind and making it bigger. I heard they are going for a second storey so there can be a dance floor.”
Still Esther said nothing. Normally she would be humming under her breath, church music filling her head, but today she was quiet. It must still be this thing with Apie, Katjie thought. Esther had been like this for almost three weeks now, ever since the little boy died.
“It was his mother’s neglect that killed him, not you,” Katjie said.
Esther nodded. “But we knew what she was like. We should have watched out for him.”
Katjie left it then. In the old area they had been uitkyk anties, interfering in everyone’s lives and telling mothers off when their children ran neglected through the streets. The new houses changed that. Their anger with Titty and the lying and cheating and grabbing of houses had made them people who lived next to each other, not neighbours. This house thing had made them look away, and now Apie was dead. Esther blamed herself.
It was an hour’s walk from Rosebank to the Independent Church in the old area and, before the service started at 10 a.m. sharp, all the kerksusters walked through the streets in the same straw hats, floral dresses and uncomfortable shoes, black Bibles in their hands. This was their chance to hear news about people they knew. Babies were born, children moved on. Life changed. Apie had died.
Some of the kerksusters still lived in the old area, but there were three others who had also occupied after Esther and Katjie took houses. It was the old people who had come off second best with Mr Louis’ scheme, Esther thought.
As they reached the church a taped hymn flowed into the street and the mood became formal. They filed in and took their regular spots, whispering and nodding to each other.
“Hallelujah!” shouted Suster Sara to start the service.
“Amen!” echoed Suster Betty.
“Praise Jesus!” answered Suster Lizzie.
They waited for Suster Esther to echo with another “Hallelujah” and when she said nothing they looked at Suster Katjie with questions on their faces. Katjie shrugged and Suster Sara said softly to Suster Betty who was next to her, “They should never have taken those houses.”
Suster Betty nodded. The devil was at work.
The pastor was a middle-aged man with a thick black moustache and a stomach that strained against the buttons of his cotton shirt. He drove an old white Cressida with darkened windows and did his business in Beaufort West. When Esther had once mentioned to Liedjie how hard the pastor worked, Liedjie had raised an eyebrow. Esther, like all the kerksusters, admired him because of his double-storey house – the only one in the lokasie – and his swimming pool, even though it had no water in it.
Liedjie was not in the Independent Church. When she was thirteen, which was before Esther was saved and still told her troubles to a papsak on a Sunday, the pastor had pinched Liedjie’s bottom. After that she was not prepared to “Amen” and “Hallelujah” in a church where pastors pinched your bottom and winked at you and prayed. When Esther started going to church, Liedjie told her what the pastor had done, but Esther laughed.
“Ag, men do that all the time. It means you are a pretty girl. Forgive and forget,” she said.
“But I don’t like him, Ma.” And then she added, “And, anyway, you all sing like donkeys. It’s too hard on the ears to sit through two hours of that every Sunday.”
Liedjie’s spiritual home was the Bless Me Jesus, a house church on the far side of the lokasie, now an even further walk from the new area. Sometimes she walked part of the way with Esther and Katjie and then took a path through the shacks. Other times she left before Esther was up, so she could be at the Bless Me Jesus first.
This congregation of young people, in jeans and back-to-front caps, squeezed into their pastor’s lounge, sitting on the only couch or the floor. Liedjie played the pastor’s keyboard, which she had taught herself, and led the singing and the pastor told her that with her good ear for music she was “an instrumental part of Bless Me Jesus”. If someone sang out of tune, she took them aside after the service for a little practice; so everyone sang well, except for the pastor, who was always out of tune, but Liedjie didn’t have the courage to take him aside. For the last two months they had worked on harmonising and the pastor said he thought they should go on a tour to Mossel Bay. She was very proud.
Esther didn’t mind that Liedjie went to her own church. She knew young people found their own way to God and Liedjie was a good girl. Once she thought she should try the Bless Me Jesus, but Liedjie said it was for young people and that her mother wouldn’t like squeezing on to the couch between boys with bad skin. Besides, Liedjie said, the kerksusters were good souls who would miss their fellow suster and the pastor never tried his funny business with anyone else that she heard about.
Jaco didn’t want to go to Bless Me Jesus or with his mother and, for this, Esther blamed Neville. What boy would wake up early for church when he knew his father was muttering and cursing God under his blanket? Esther knew when she was out the door Jaco changed the church channel on the TV to the soapies, or he sat outside with the radio, waiting for his friends, so they could smoke and drink Schweppes Granadilla.
There was also the issue of Klonk’s eye keeping Jaco away from church. When Jaco was nine he had accidentally shot Klonk, Suster Betty’s son, in the eye with a kettie. It had been a big drama because Klonk’s eye was shot right out and there had been screaming and shouting in the street. It was also the reason Esther stopped drinking and was saved. After it was all over and Klonk was taken to hospital in Oom Hekkie’s bakkie, the kerksusters paid her a call.
“Suster Esther,” they said, “Liedjie and Jaco are wild, and we have all had enough.” It was time for her to join them at church and to bury the papsak so she could get the children under control. Esther knew now, even years later, that Jaco still felt bad that Klonk only had one eye. He couldn’t bear facing Suster Betty’s disapproval at church, even though Klonk was one of those who joined him on a Sunday to drink cooldrink while their mothers were praising Jesus.
For Neville, there was no hope. Esther accepted that. He smelled of wine on a Sunday and it would be embarrassing if he came to church. Church made him nervous and he made jokes with the pastor and nobody laughed. It was better if he pretended to sleep. Still, she would have loved a man dressed in a suit with a shiny tie and a Bible at her side on a Sunday. If only Neville could be one of those husbands who set out the chairs for the service and passed the collection bag. If only he could have spoken softly to the pastor about things like packing up the chairs and how much there was in the day’s collection. That would have made her proud. But Neville had never been the church type.
Her own deddie knew Neville would give her a hard life and he warned her she was in for tough times with a man who liked to dop, but she wouldn’t listen. Now, all these years later, it was exactly as Deddie said. Neville was in bed on Sunday morning and the soft-spoken man who helped the pastor was a person who came into her daydreams when she should be praying in church.
She remembered how on those black nights on the farm she would wait for Deddie to blow out the candle. Then, when his breathing slowed, she would climb out the little window to be with Neville and his friends. She would have gone through the door but there was no chance with Deddie. He bolted it and kept the key in the pocket next to his heart. He knew there were boys from Zoar picking the apricots. That year, when the apricot trees were clean and their leaves were blowing along the farm roads, Esther knew she was expecting. With the help of the boer, Deddie made them marry and then he took her to Zoar to be fed by her husband’s parents.
Esther was thinking about all of this, and how it had been a very hard time, as she and Katjie took their places in the pew with the singers near the front. Apie’s funeral had been very small but she was exhausted from sorting out the coffin and the grave and the tea and biscuits afterwards. Titty and Charlie didn’t go to church, which was okay – until you had a baby to bury.
“This house story and Apie dying like that has made me so tired,” she said to Katjie.
“Maybe it is time Titty comes with us to church,” said Katjie.
“Ja,” Esther said, smoothing her dress and touching her hat. “He is buried now, she must get out of bed.”
The pastor walked to the pulpit and slammed his Bible down so hard that all the kerksusters jumped and giggled.
“Open the door to the devil and he will walk in,” he shouted.
Spit sprayed and Esther settled to listen. She thought about the devil and shebeens and houses and Mr Louis and his smell crept into her thoughts.
“Only you can stop the devil,” the pastor sprayed.
They were occupiers. Occupying was illegal and she wondered if this meant the door had been opened to the devil. Nothing had happened. They had painted the inside of the house, but nobody had arrived and threatened them or told them to get out. Today, as the pastor shouted, she knew it was coming. The pain in her stomach was back and she thought it must be from Apie’s dying. They all wanted a matchbox, but when you jumped the queue and played games then things went wrong. Titty and the other young people who had bought houses were wrong. They should have waited, like she and Katjie had waited all these years. It wasn’t Esther and Katjie who had opened the door to the devil. They hadn’t jumped the queue and done wat ook al. But they hadn’t closed the door either. They had opened it a bit wider and made sure that the devil had plenty of room to walk through.
“O Liewe Jesus, forgive me,” she prayed.
Katjie looked at Esther and saw tears streaming over her cheeks. From her bag she dug a ball of crumpled toilet paper and Esther took it and dabbed at her face and wiped it across her nose.
She had smacked the boy. When he came to the occupied house begging for bread, she hit him and shouted, “Huis toe!” as if to a dog. And, like a dog, he looked at her with confused black eyes and then turned and, with his little head down, crossed back over the veld. When she looked later she could see the shape of him in Titty’s doorway and she knew, as small as he was, he had been watching her.
“Close the door to the devil and his drugs and alcohol and fornication and gambling and let Jesus come into your life.” The pastor’s voice was so soft now that Esther turned her head to hear him better. The kerksusters chorused “Amen” and “Hallelujah” and everyone stood to sing.
Two hours later the service ended and they poured through the single church door into the dusty churchyard. The morning was bright and the reflection from the white walls blinded Esther as she moved towards the gate and into the street.
There was tea and biscuits and the kerksusters stood in a huddle talking.
“How can a person still be in their pyjamas now?” Suster Sara was looking at three teenage girls in their nighties ambling past the church gate eating ice lollies.
With pursed lips the kerksusters turned as one to look and one of the girls stuck out her bright red tongue at them.
“I don’t think they own clothes,” said Suster Betty.
“Well, they have pyjamas,” answered Suster Lizzie.
The kerksusters turned back to each other and, dipping their biscuits in their tea, they talked about Titty and how she needed to pull up her socks.
Esther closed her eyes. In her mind she heard Jaco singing “Jou Dakskroef”, about girls in nighties with curlers in their hair walking the streets. Jaco always said that when he found someone she must be a girl who would wash and dress when she woke up. He didn’t want a dakskroef for a girlfriend. On another day Esther would have told the kerksusters about the song, but today tears were closer than laughter.
“No tea today, Suster Esther?”
“Not for me today, Suster Sara,” Esther called back. “It has been a difficult time.”
“Amen, Suster. May the Lord give you strength.”
Esther didn’t greet the pastor. Today she didn’t feel good enough. She wanted to be with Neville, who didn’t care about putting on a show and being a good person. It got too much sometimes, she thought, living up to God and the kerksusters’ high standards. What she wanted today was to crawl into bed and pull the blanket over her head and grunt at anyone who spoke to her. She allowed herself to think about having a slukkie of wine but she pulled herself up. Now that would be letting the devil in the door and pulling up a chair and making him a cup of tea in her best china cup.
Katjie and the little girls ran after her.
“Wait, Esther, aren’t we having a cup of tea? Wait,” Katjie called. “Please, Esther, let’s have a cup of tea.”
The straw-hatted kerksusters watched them go.
“It’s all been too much,” said Suster Betty.
“It’s what is going on with those houses. It’s wrong the way they have been snatching and grabbing up on that hillside, and they are kerksusters on top of it. The Lord sees,” said Suster Sara.
“We must have faith and trust all will be well,” said Suster Lizzie, pouring tea into the rows of teacups.
“Hallelujah,” they chorused. Suster Sara put four biscuits in a saucer and, with a smile, took it to the pastor who was talking to her suit-and-tie husband about packing up the chairs and how much there was in the day’s collection.
Suster Lizzie said to Suster Betty, “It’s her husband. Neville. She made a very bad choice with that one. You know, my husband was telling me that he lies all day in bed and only gets up to go to the shebeen for a dop.”
They all shook their heads and dipped their biscuits and smiled at the pastor.