The Power of One Read Free

forefinger and thumb would fit. I took to secretly pulling my foreskin and holding it over the tip of my acorn as long as I could in the hope that it would lose elasticity and render me normal. Alas, except for a sore acorn, nothing happened. I was doomed to be a pisshead for the rest of my life.
    The end of the first term finally came. I was to return home for the May holidays: home to Nanny, who would listen to my sadness and sleep on her mat at the foot of my bed so the bogeyman couldn’t get me. I also intended to inquire whether my mother had stopped breaking down so I would be allowed to stay home.
    I rode home joyfully in the dicky seat of Dr. Henny Boshoffs shiny new Chevrolet coupe. Dr. Henny was our district doctor and a local hero who played fly half for the Northern Transvaal rugby team. When the Judge saw who had come to pick me up, he shook me by the hand and promised things would be better next term.
    It was Dr. Henny who had first told me about the nervous breakdown, and he now confirmed that my mother was “coming along nicely” but her nervous breakdown was still with her and she wouldn’t be home just yet.
    Sadly, this put the kibosh on my chances of staying home and never leaving again until I was as old as my granpa, and maybe not even then.
    As we choofed along in the car, with me in the dicky seat open to the wind and the sunshine, I was no longer a rooinek and a pisskop but a great chief. We passed through African villages where squawking chickens, pumping their wings desperately, fled out of the way and yapping kaffir dogs, all ribs and snout and brindle markings, gave chase—although only after my speeding throne had safely passed. As a great chief, I was naturally above such common goings-on. Life was good. I can tell you for certain, life was very good.
    Nanny wept great tears that ran down her cheeks and splashed onto her huge warm breasts. She kept rubbing her large dark hand over my shaved head, moaning and groaning as she held me close. I had expected to do all the crying when I got home, but there was no competing with her.
    It was late summer. The days were filled with song as the field women picked cotton, working their way down the long rows, chatting and singing in perfect harmony while they plucked the fluffy white fiber heads from the sun-blackened cotton bolls.
    Nanny sent a message to Inkosi-Inkosikazi to the effect that we urgently needed to see him on the matter of the child’s night water. The message was put on the drums, and in two days we heard that the great medicine man would call in a fortnight or so on his way to visit Modjadji, the great rain queen.
    The whites of Nanny’s eyes would grow big and her cheeks would puff out as she talked about the greatness of Inkosi-Inkosikazi. “He will dry your bed with one throw of the shinbones of the great white ox,” she promised.
    â€œWill he also grow skin over my acorn?” I demanded to know. She clutched me to her breast, and her answer was lost in the heaving of her belly as she chortled all over me.
    The problem of the night water was much discussed by the field women, who pondered deeply that a matter so slight could bring the great one to visit. “Surely, a grass sleeping mat will dry in the morning sun? This is not a matter of proper concern for the greatest medicine man in Africa.”
    It was all right for them, of course. They didn’t have to go back to the Judge and Mevrou.
    Almost two weeks to the day after we sent him the message, Inkosi-Inkosikazi arrived in his big black Buick. The car was a symbol of his enormous power and wealth, even to the Boers, who despised him as the devil incarnate, yet feared him with the superstition of all ignorant God-fearing men. None were prepared to pit the catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church against this aged black goblin.
    All that day the field women brought gifts of food. By late afternoon a small mountain of kaffir corn and mealies,