Little white girl Hillbrow

A red haired woman sat next to me on the bus last Tuesday. She
smelled of stale cigarette smoke in a way that only well-groomed woman
who live alone do. Suddenly I am seven. My father holds out my
hand.
"Doesn't she have beautiful hands?" he asks.
"Yes." she says.
"And lovely nails?" he asks.
"We'll only know that once she's old enough to grow them." she
says.
I wonder where Penny is now.

Penny lived in the same building as my father in Hillbrow, when
Hillbrow was still safe. When the streets were buzzing with nightlife,
and the high rise buildings were filled with young couples, or single
gay men, or divorced women. My father would fetch us every second
Sunday and take us to Penny's for lunch. She would make white spaghetti
that separated glibly into single strands, and serve it in clean, flat,
white bowls with a polished silver fork and spoon. She had long, salmon
pink nails and wore a diamond ring on one of her plump fingers. She
smoked white satin tipped cigarettes and often asked, "How is your
mother?"

On Sunday afternoons, my father would take us to Caf? Vi?n to watch the
movie they projected onto a sheet in the smoky lounge, while he played
Backgammon on the balcony. Penny never came to Caf? Vi?n, but when we
returned she would say, "Don't tell your mother."

Penny once gave me a photograph of her son. "This is my son Jimmy," she
said, "He has a daughter your age." I thought that strange, she seemed
no older than my own mother.

Penny worked in a men's hairdresser, buffing and polishing the nails of
clients who wore expensive suits and smoked cigars and creamed their
hair. I discovered this when we stopped by one day, my father and I, on
a rare occasion it wasn't Sunday.
"I've stopped smoking," she said "down to five a day. My doctor tells
me it's the same as a non-smoker. Your mother doesn't smoke, does she?"
she asked.

One Sunday my father came to get us. "Are we going to see Penny?" I
asked.
"No." he said.
I still wonder, sometimes, where she is now.
The last time I drove past Hillbrow I thought of my father. The
Hillbrow of my childhood no longer exists. Clothing hangs from the
every balcony. Broken windows decorate the face of every high rise.
Junkies lounge around smoking crack in passages where once my child's
shoes squeaked on the polished linoleum. Nigerian drug lord ply their
trade from Ponte, once famous for being Johannesburg's only round
building, now notorious with jumpers.

The last time I saw my father I was sixteen. Hillbrow had just been
declared South Africa's first multi racial area. We sat in the small
bachelor flat he had lived in since Penny. Neither of us had anything
to say. He gave me fifty Rand and I kissed him goodbye.
Sometimes I wonder where he is now.