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The Faces

Rod MacKenzie

I
I never knew your face in infancy.
From the earliest I was slung, froglike
Against your back, a warm stoep on which I slurred
In and out of sleep, drowsing in the jostle
Of the hips. You often spoke to others
Who smelled the same — the soap in linen,
Heated milk in bottles. It was a talk I still
Do not understand, unlike the language
In an infant’s body pressed to yours, or in the deep
Black arms, where a boy grew in the rhythm
Of being picked up and held and put down.
One day our family left forever. From the back
Of the car my hand waved, pale and small.
Your raised arm and smile were soft. And still is.
That day was the first you had a face. It opened,
Because, after the car and voices had disappeared,
You must have wept. I know you did. I wept.

For Timothy
Your cheeks and forehead were a cracked, grooved leather
I only feel 30 years on. At school, aged 64,
You had the ridiculous title of teaboy. That face —
Brittle as a boot trudged through the sole,
Worn and weathered every day — always clinged
To something. The something was inexpressible,
Quieting a Grade 4 schoolboy as he watched you
Smiling while kids swiped sugar from the staff teatray.

And quietened further when your fingers roamed
Over children’s books. You’d help the boys cover them
With paper and sticky tape. All the faces tilted down
Over the job while the leathery cheeks smoothed out
From some remembrance — which also moistened
The eyes, and slowed down the working hands.
You died. A stooped, shuffling presence abruptly gone
In childhood. For years after, you entered my dreams.
You crouched in the night on windowsills
And cupboards, teeth and fists clenched. Your body
Was bloodied and daubed with paint, the face
Thrust forward, now filled with expression.

III
Caked in mud from kleilat fights, we sneaked
Along a wall erected near our homes. The bricks
Smelled of burned paraffin and chickens.
One of us scaled the wall, grinned and gestured
Frantically. We peered over at a woman, massive
Bare breasts a shiny brown and quivering
As a cream was slopped on. The nipples gazed up
At us, impossibly long and pointed. And unbelievable
As the feelings, like icy water splashed
Suddenly against the stomach, tingling
And delicious while we sniggered.
That day you had no face, nothing I could touch.
But mud, squished in the hands and slapped
On the tips of tall, whippy sticks, was no longer
As palpable as the wishes, during those giggles
On the wall, faceless and never spoken.

IV
Langa High, 1989
A hint of tuberculosis films their eyes, roughens coughs.
The children’s cheekbones are a deep brown gloss
Reflecting hours of cold and rain in the doorless
And windowless school prefab. The schoolbooks ebb
With the ink in the homework done in candlelight
Checked today in the lighthouse of textbooks on scriptures
And grammar. The eyes cling to the possibility
Of hope and warmth in my knowledge. Chalk erupts
In waves on the wet blackboard ideas about
‘The love of God’ and ‘subject-verb concordance’.
Concepts never taken home. There, fingers still struggle
For warmth and food. And nothing I’ve learned
Is like the fragrance in young damp bodies,
Sodden shoes and a few raincoats dearly clung to.

For Basil Mamatu. Langa High, 1989
Gunfire outside the staffroom; dull sick thickenings
Against the ears. A merry Guy Fawkes crackle
Absurd while our stomachs and palms liquefy.
For a year we’ve shared a desk, clucked and tisked
At homework not done, slapped hands, thighs
And shoulders at jokes about blacks & boere.
Your eyes disappeared in chocolate folds
That twinkled with tears above the grin. Humour
Became a toyi-toyi; two grown men staggering
And wheezing around a desk cluttered with books,
The remnants of vetkoek and Cornish pasties.

Today there is gunfire. I look into those eyes
And see our fear. The quietness between shots,
Screaming and stampeding deepens the tension
In lips and jaws. We no longer know what’s become
Of our children. You cup your face. Touch
Becomes a way of remembering and the room
Fills with that fragrance in raincoats and children.
Now it’s your face that opens. Hear the weeping.

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