Three Strikes of Luck
A story about mental illness in the turbulent times of newly-born democratic South Africa — by Tshepo S. Molebatsi
The place was Daveyton, east of Johannesburg, also known as Vutha (burn). Because it was one of the first black communities to receive electricity at the beginning of democracy. With streetlights, someone fresh out of the crust of the crass decided that the township looked a lot like it was on flames.
Not different from Mr. Shange’s bedroom on the morning of November 21st, 1994. It was lit in purple, the wardrobe doors spread open — clothes unpacked and thrown everywhere on the floor to demonstrate the endless exert of his anxiety disorder. A burden unheard to the uneducated, as his wife oftentimes wondered about his restlessness. That morning, he was worse and even so mindless of the muddle he so often fussed.
His attention had now turned to the trunk of old clothes. His head dunked deep and hurling out clothes to mine some luck. He needed his lucky socks. As he paced up and down, growled with an effort not to wake his wife. Too late! She rose her head almost indignantly from her pillow, to her surprise: the room was lit in purple. For in his hurling and scattering, Mr. Shange covered the lamp with her purple half-slip (undergarment) and thus lit the room with a prismatic purple.
“What’s happening?” she asked, half-asleep. “What’s this on the lamp? Is this my — ”
“Where are my red socks?” Mr. Shange interrupted.
Still sleepy and stupefied in all her senses, she put her split concentration on the purple-beaming lamp. To wear off her lingering desire to sleep, she remained quiet, and Mr. Shange glared as if her response would put to rest, the problems of his hapless morning. Finally, she responded:
“You haven’t worn those in — ”
He interrupted again: “Seventeen years, I know! At our wedding. Where are they?”
“That’s a long time!”
Like a pitiable man with pride, Mr. Shange didn’t have the patience to continue with that futile inquiry. He positioned or rather, besought his glasses to help in tracing the untraceable whereabouts of his socks, and continued to turn the room upside down.
His wife never understood him and would watch him fuss endlessly but as a loving wife, that morning, she got out of the bed and beavered away to put him at ease. Eventually, they found one sock of the pair.
“Where could the other be?” asked Mr. Shange with almost a shrill. “Where is it?”
“It’s somewhere here but — ”
“Eish!”
“Wear any socks!”
His government house was too small to harbour a vibe from one room to another. So Khethiwe, his only child, heard everything. It was whom Mr. Shange had wished to become the first member of the family to live a better life but firstly, she would need education. Hence his worry. He needed luck! Or so he thought. He had an appointment that morning within his firm for an interview that could earn him a promotion as a forklift driver. And he felt the lucky socks befitted the occasion to extend his eligibility because believing, no matter how irrational, had always reserved him in hope against the cataclysm of his anxiety disorder.
Except they struggled to find the second sock. And it wore him off, as he retreated for a glass of water but when he opened his bedroom door, he found his daughter caught statuesquely, in her incertitude to either knock or give them some privacy.
“Khethi! What are you doing here?”
“Is everything okay?”
“Come with me.” He grabbed her by the hand, leaving his wife to the gruelling task of finding the inevitable nothing. Of which she immediately stopped and tiptoed towards the door to eavesdrop. Frankly, she only offered to help in her husband’s need to decree his own luck because his palpable restlessness wasn’t to be ignored.
They sat on a couch, before a playing television which was on to glare some light at those early hours of the morning. Though on mute, it was as if Mr. Shange was parroting a news lady on the morning edition with her words of tribulations regarding the political unrest from the Pan-African Congress on whether or not, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to be held by Desmond Tutu, would hold the water. The intensity of the silent room complemented well the potency of Mr. Shange’s parable:
“No mishap can defeat the gifts of the dead. They’re given with blessings and these are the blessings of the souls that have departed to the shrine of guidance and more importantly, luck.”
Khethiwe was confused but before she could ask for clarity, Mrs. Shange suddenly emerged from behind the door. Firstly apologising for eavesdropping and continued: “should it not go well, I would ask for help from misis¹.”
Like her husband, Mrs. Shange served a menial job as a maid for her boss, Mrs. Smuts. Whom fortunately, was apolitical and treated Mrs. Shange as if she was her equal even before the interim constitution was implemented.
“No, no charity!”
“Charity? What charity?” interjected Khethiwe, heeding uncomfortably on her father’s appearance: he wore his white shirt but unbuttoned, the formal pants but without the socks and roamed barefoot in the house.
“Wait Khethi!” said Mr. Shange, positioning his glasses which were perfectly positioned, and continued to his wife as he stood and hovered over them — readily to prepare for the morning train. “It’s not like she can help, can she?”
“misis is different.”
Indeed she was different. An English woman who married an Afrikaner of the Suid-Afrikaan Polisie² — an agency with a brutal reputation. She was genial and generous and gave them the television and the lamp amongst everything else. Faultless, but there was always a hint of contrition in her endless generosity. But of course, she would help.
“Father, what’s this talk about charity and ancestors?”
Nobody explained. When her father was young, he left the deep rural of Natal for work in a then province of Transvaal, now Gauteng — his grandmother had given him the socks as a gesture of approval that, he may go look for life than to decay old and poor as the rest of the Shange. The socks had always symbolised luck for that, he met the first love of his life — the late Catherine whom borne Khethiwe and got married to his wife, Mrs. Shange, wearing the socks.
“Father, your train leaves soon,” said Khethiwe, still in the dark.
“Eish! …time!” he had a gust of more panic but still held on to the sock with a much grip.
“Leave the sock,” said Mrs. Shange, “your lunch-box is ready.”
He fixed himself, wore different socks and grabbed his lunch-box and dashed.
THE FIRST STROKE OF LUCK
Mr. Shange arrived at the Vutha train station a minute before the train could depart. Panting endlessly with his eyes protruded for an empty seat to catch a breath. They were all taken, which riled his illusion that without his lucky socks, he was doomed. As he became further restless and held tight to his lunch-box with his right hand, hugged the pole in the aisle so the rowdy passengers couldn’t push him, and used the left hand to press his old brown suitcase against his chest. It bagged every document he felt might work on his advantage, and the train departed with the anti-apartheid song.
Asimbonanga,
asimbonanga uMandela thina laph’ekhona laph’hleli khona asimbonanga
asimbonanga uMandela thina laph’eshoni laph’eshoni khona
Though the apartheid system had been abolished, but in the essence of an egalitarian persistence against the aftermath of apartheid, people sang struggle songs on a morning train. Also because when black people come together, they want to sing. But that morning, the songs went on without Mr. Shange’s rumble to amplify the bass. Willingly, he took part only on the din sound of the running train, that which seemed to had blended well with the wool-gathering of his daughter’s future, until the intermittent, resounding blow of the train when it crossed below the bridges, would come to interrupt him and abruptly bring him back to reality where he had to endure the babel of the bible recitals once the struggle songs had dried out. That and the gossipmongers on their ill-intentioned talks that never seemed to separate angels from sinners then finally, the political discussions of which too, went on without Mr. Shange’s penchant to contend.
THE SECOND STROKE OF LUCK
The train had arrived at Germiston: Mr. Shange’s destination, without a delay. He sighed with relief to finally breathe the fresh air. Loved that he wasn’t travelling to work on his marred overall, instead, on his formal wear. And that gave him a panache on his walk, as he walked out of the train station — ostensibly, mingling with the haves of the city, he too fitting as part of the high class until reality did, just as the train coaches classified people on their racial classes: the first class for whites and coloureds with a lighter complexion (who were always at the exception of exclusion), then the economical class for blacks. Reality restated that in verbatim because as the crowd exited the train station and dispersed into the city, it did so in a fashion that suggested the whites belonged to where one found offices, the coloureds to the gentrified sites and blacks to the dirt, where Mr. Shange’s waste management firm resided.
With the wane of a harsh political regime, things hadn’t changed that much. But at least the streets were lenient and free of the polisie. Mr. Shange observed greatly on his fellow black countrymen — walking behind and before him — almost all wearing hats — striding forward to upward mobility. Their walk had an impact of a chant — purposeful, as they disappeared at every corner where men were needed for hard labour.
Finally, he arrived for his interview and his firm didn’t have a reception. So he waited in a passageway which comprised of four doors: the boss’s office opposite the emergency room and the storage room opposite the canteen. Having to make a way for his colleagues who either needed to get inside the canteen or storage. Mr. Shange was reminded of a train, where he had to make a way at every stop for the train to gush out passengers and swallow in even more to engulf the aisle with an overwhelming sultry. Suddenly, he heard the voice from behind:
“I’m not my brother you can just wait for like I owe you,” said Diederik. A typical Afrikaner in khaki. He held on to a pile of papers in his right hand and tried to unlock the door with his left hand and struggled. His eyes were rigid on Mr. Shange, whilst he Mr. Shange looked at the stubborn door and made hand gestures that pleaded and repeated: “allow me to help with the door!” but Diederik wasn’t interested. As he asked on Mr. Shange’s formal wear: “What’s this?” In all tough interview questions Mr. Shange had anticipated, he couldn’t have foreseen the one he was rather barraged, but the door finally opened and came to his rescue.
THE THIRD STROKE OF LUCK
Diederik wasn’t the firm owner. Kobus was. The brother and a very apolitical man. And from his sickbed, gave an instruction to his racist of a brother that it benefitted the firm to fill the vacancy with someone internal — and eligible. And that was Mr. Shange. He had operated the forklift whenever he was delegated to do so, but before he could share his gratitude or any word really, Diederik interrupted:
“You’ll need a forklift certificate. It’ll be arranged. Now I need you on the street keeping the city clean.” Mr. Shange stood still on the chair, with a well-maintained posture of a summoned pupil in a principal’s office. He didn’t know how to protest the call. He was on his formal wear and wasn’t expecting to work on that day. “Find something to wear in the storeroom or not…I don’t care.”
Joyous and relieved, he nodded gratefully and excused himself. Then he stopped on a passageway. Pulled out a red sock. Because like a madman, Mr. Shange had pocketed that one sock they found for he believed wholeheartedly, that without the presence of luck: he was doomed.
- Misis: Translating as Mrs, itís an expression of reverence towards a woman who is considered superior, even when she is not married. I.e. black people towards a white woman.
2. Suid-Afrikaan Polisie: Translating as South African Police. The English term would bastardize the reputation of the agency. For they were the stalwarts and devils of the apartheid regime.
Having catapulted with a chance from a small-town the mentality of amounting to nothing, Tshepo S. Molebatsi grew up in Zeerust: a small town in the North-West province of South Africa. It was where he was once told through the minutiae of small talks, that he could write and so in those small moments of pleasantries, something was planted into his head and later became complete after he moved to Daveyton, east of Johannesburg. Where he’s based as an aspiring novelist. Published his short stories with Grey Thoughts. And never could separate his aspirations from his penchant to activism — political and otherwise liberal.
