Tandia Read Free Page B

with him while he had been alive. But overnight, as she lay in her iron cot in the shed, his death had built a bridge, a place to cross so that she could reach him. In death Patel became the father he had never been in life.
    Earlier, as she made her way to the cemetery, she had even tried using the various words for father in her mind. She'd tried the three conventional versions, throwing back her head and saying them out loud, testing them out on the stars in the pre-dawn sky. 'Father!' It sounded awfully posh. Patel was definitely not a 'Father'. 'Dad?' Could she ever have a relationship as casual as such a marvellous, warm, taken-for-granted word? She tried the third, 'Daddy'. She liked it best because it was so patently a contradiction of the relationship she had had with Patel. Except for when she was very small, when she would sit on his knee and he would absently stroke her tiny shoulder and talk to people about her green eyes. At that time the word had been possible and now that Patel was dead she wanted it returned to her.
    But Natkin Patel the small printing shop owner, first-class Indian person, illegitimate curry sausage user, policeman's friend, who was well known in white circles, was still too soon buried for any of these names to work very well.
    Tandia's final image of Patel was him sitting on the steps of the back stoep not even acknowledging her as she handed him the boots she'd carefully polished. But she knew time and several visits to the cemetery would soften the hard edges of the reality. She would now have someone to whom she could talk, with whom she could share her loneliness, and onto whom she could focus her abundant but unrequited love.
    The curious invention of making Patel alive now that he was dead so pleased Tandia that she had momentarily postponed the fear she felt at the prospect of being thrown out on the street when she returned home at sunrise. But now that fear returned. H, as she had decided, she would use Patel's graveside for really important conversations, none was more important than the one she brought with her on this first cold dawn morning.
    Tandia finally came to grips with the thing on her mind. The thing she wakened to every day of her life as long as she could remember. The thing she never said aloud, but was now going to ask Patel here in the Indian cemetery with the dew clouding the cellophane wrappings around the Easter lilies and with the pungent smell of the incense filling the air.
    In the Indian Christian cemetery there was plenty of room between the graves for patches of grass, dandelion and blackjack to grow. Not many Indians died Christians, so you could pick and choose your spot. Mrs Patel chose a lot about fifteen feet from a grave which boasted a six-foot marble cross and belonged to T. W. Nepul, who had been a wealthy merchant and important spokesman for the Durban Indian community. It was said also that he had been a personal friend of General Smuts. She liked the idea of her own husband being close to a bit of gratuitous wealth and prestige. If a person could pick any spot in the graveyard, as Patel himself would have said, 'Dammit, man, it doesn't do any harm to be always with the best people.'
    'What am I?' Tandia began. 'Am I Indian? Or am I a kaffir?' She talked directly to the mound of earth at her feet.
    'Please, Patel, what will I do now, you must tell me, please?' She paused as though waiting for him to answer; then she continued. 'Do you think because I'm mixed race I'm a coloured? I don't want to be a coloured. Also, not a black person. Patel, can I please be an Indian when I grow up? Mrs Patel doesn't like me, When she throws me out and I have to get a passbook from the police, can I tell them I am your daughter, that I'm an Indian girl?'
    With Patel's death Tandia knew things were going to be very difficult for her. When she got back to the house in Booth Street she expected no mercy from Mrs Patel. Would she simply send her packing? Kick her