Lilly was a Bedwetter

Lilly was a bedwetter. Her mother never complained. She would change
Lilly's drenched sheets and run her a bath when she woke in the middle
of the night, wet and crying. By Lilly's bedtime the day was still
reeling from the African heat. The noises outside her window were
saturated with the shrill drone of cicadas. The sound was a restless
one. On Saturday mornings the insects signalled a day of childish joy
in the Natal sunshine. Plans were short, shoes were abandoned.
Paperthorns couldn't keep Lilly away from suburban adventures. By the
time that bedtime arrived restlessness was something outside of her.
The humming wall pushed her into her house and under her covers. The
noises locked Lilly into the fears of a white African child.

In the mornings the dirty sheets would be handed to one of the Zulu
women who came to work for the Van Heerden's. On these mornings Lilly
would not go near the kitchen. She would creep along the darkened
passages, where the curtains had already been drawn to lock out the
heat. She would slide down the terracotta staircases and out into the
garden. She couldn't stand the tooth sucking disapproval of these large
matriarchs.

During Lilly's short 7 years of life the Van Heerden household had seen
22 such black women come and go. They would appear in the morning by
walking up the steep tarred driveway, wearing heavy jumpers in the
oppressive humidity. They would tilt their heads and call her mother
'Medem', and her mother would smile and speak slowly and loudly in
return. They mostly ignored Lilly with the kind of open hostility that
drove her away. She feared these angry people that inhabited her home.
They haunted her dreams at night. She would wake up in the wet sheets
that they would have to wash. She was driven out of her room by their
door slamming and furniture scraping. Their eyes always followed her
darkly when she walked away from their stares. Fortunately these women
that never lasted long. Their tolerance for instructions had many
limits. They would disappear from the Van Heerden's white walled
fortress, throwing their sharp foreign words at the electric gate
before it shut them out and into the world beyond.

A month ago Sophie had arrived on the doorstep. She grinned at Lilly
when she finally arrived at the top of the long driveway. Lilly had
seen her approaching from the veranda and thought she would never be
able to get her large body any further than the Aloe Vera bushes
halfway up. She caught her breath at the top for what seemed like five
minutes. She rubbed her face from her clammy forehead down to her chin
repeatedly before Lilly's mother met her at the door. Sophie smiled
broadly at her mother before she thrust her hand out for Lilly's mother
to shake. Mrs Van Heerden was astonished by this large smiling woman.
There had never been any of this cheerful confidence in the other
resentful women who had worked for her. She had often felt as if she
was doing them a disfavour by hiring them. Her long, manicured fingers
slowly fingered her pearl bead necklace while she listed to Sophie's
animated account of her bus ride from town. With the briefest sideways
glances, Lilly's mother noticed that her daughter had moved into full
view of this stranger, and had not taken the usual position behind her
calico skirt. She had often wondered if there was something she had
done to make Lilly so afraid of black people, but this sight cheered
her into allowing this happy person into her home.

A month had gone by and Lilly was drawing at the kitchen table. A high
pitched Zulu soap opera resounded from the radio at other end of the
kitchen, where Sophie was working through the ironing. This daily
ritual of warm camaraderie between Lilly and Sophie had begun within
three days of Sophie arriving for her first day of work. Each day
Lilly's fascination with this woman was rewarded by sophie's cheerful
conversation. She began to teach Lilly Zulu words, and Lilly held them
in her mouth like sweets before she released them into the warmth of
Sophie's laughter and applause. Yebo. Ngiyabonga. Sawubona.
Now they had settled into a wordless contentment with each other.
Occasionally Sophie would waddle across the kitchen to cluck over
Lilly's drawings and pat her head, and Lilly would slide out of her
booth at the breakfast nook to help Sophie fold the bed covers when she
called to her. But for most of the day they would coexist on either
side of the kitchen, occasionally exchanging words in a mixture of Zulu
and English. By the time Sophie had disappeared down the driveway for
the evening Lilly had filled half her drawing book with a thick, waxy
film of pink and brown people and blue, southern skies.

That night the cicadas sang so loudly that they kept Lilly from her
sleep. It was a different kind of restlessness that made her twist and
writhe instead of lying still and silent. Lilly got out of bed and
slipped her feet into her slippers. She padded through the quiet, dark
kitchen and unlocked the back door, sliding all the bolts out of place
and turning the key in the lock. The back garden was lit by the moon,
enough for her to see the trunk of the big tree in front of her. There
she found one of the noisy cicadas, clinging to a knot in the bark. It
looked so small and alone. At this vicinity its screech sounded
disjointed and separate. When she moved away from the tree the insect's
call settled back into the hum of the garden. Lilly Van Heerden stood
listening in the moonlight for a minute, understanding these familiar
African noises for the first time, and finding space to breathe amongst
them.