The door flew open and there was Beatrice, the sharp end of a tight group of girls looking at me.
And there I was, pants down, holding myself up on the toilet seat on straight arms because I wasn’t quite big enough to sit with my feet flat on the floor.
My legs were too short to kick the door closed from a sitting position. I was too shocked in any case to move. So there I sat while Beatrice and her gang laughed at me having a wee.
It’s a mystery how bullies choose their victims. I suppose, in this case, the new girl was an easy target. No allies yet. No sense of self in the strange environment.
The early part of primary school was a fog of bewilderment about being mocked by Beatrice and the gang. What had I done? What was wrong with me?
The latter part of primary school was getting a lift to school with Beatrice and her older sister Patricia in her father’s big old fancy Ford which, I think, was from the 1930’s. In the deep back seat, I marvelled at the gleaming wood and steel of the trimmings. The Colemans lived down the road from us and an arrangement had been made that I would walk to them on school mornings. I always went in at the kitchen door and Mrs Coleman, who was a nurse, would be making French toast. I’d never heard of French toast. It seemed very la-di-da, like anything with the word ‘French’ in front of it.
I sat in the living room reading while the family ate. One day, Mrs Coleman asked me if I wanted some French toast. I said yes, please. The eggy saltiness, the buttery crunch of that crust, the sweetness of the tomato sauce were a revelation.
Mostly, I remember silence. No one spoke much. Not at breakfast. Not in the car. No jokey dad commentary, no fussing by the mother the way I’d come to expect English-speaking children’s mothers to fuss. Maybe everything was dampened under a blanket of my own tension. I wanted to reveal nothing. I wanted no soft flesh exposed for Beatrice to send a barb into later at school.
Maybe our parents didn’t know that Beatrice hated me. We were probably forced into awkward morning tolerance by expediency.
The high school I was sent to was within walking distance of our house. Beatrice was a ballet dancer and went to the art school which, for all I knew, was on the moon.
High school felt vast. My exposure to the mean girls was diminished by dilution. I found my friends and no one was mean to me.
Halfway through high school, Beatrice came back. She was tall and straight as a ruler. Her thigh muscles were columns of sinew and strength. The belt of her short grey gym slip had been adjusted because of the narrowness of her waist. The buttons on the chest strained over her impressive breasts.
She no longer frightened me, even though I was from frump town and she was, objectively speaking, a stunning specimen of human grace. We didn’t become friends, per se, but we walked home together often enough that there was a softening. We roller-skated together a few times. Beatrice walked to my house in her bikini one day, the little triangles covering nipples but not much else and causing my father to say to my mother, in outrage, that a girl walking around like that was looking for trouble.
Beatrice had become quieter since art school. She didn’t have boyfriends or go out partying that I knew. She didn’t have a gang anymore. There was no drama around her. I can’t remember where she fitted in at school. We were friendly, but it felt more like physical proximity than real connection.
Her parents divorced and she stayed on in the house with her father and sister, while her mother left. I don’t know how this made her feel.
In the last year of school, Beatrice and I were standing on the balcony outside the Afrikaans classrooms. It was 16 June 1986. Beatrice said she was worried because it was the tenth anniversary of the Soweto Uprising. I had no idea what the Soweto Uprising was. Beatrice told me what she knew from her mother.
When you look at the Wikipedia history of South Africa for June of 1986, almost every line has the word ‘bomb’ or ‘exploded’ in it. Except for 12 June, when the government declared a state of emergency.
I knew nothing.
I’ve gone over this ‘nothing’ a hundred thousand times in my adult life, but every explanation seems like an excuse. I was a child. No one told me things. I grew up in an apolitical, irreligious, mixed-nationality household. Unlike other whites, we had no servants and I never spoke to black people. What I’d seen and what I knew, were scraps that made no sense in the same way that it made no sense to weed the garden when I couldn’t tell the difference between plants and weeds. I accepted all the things that made no sense because I was a child and one day (I think I thought), I’d be an adult and all things would make sense.
In the newsroom, years later, in a general conversation, one of my black colleagues said, ‘When white people say they didn’t know about apartheid, I don’t know what they mean. How could they not know?’ He spoke gently and shook his head a little.
I said nothing. I felt like someone had kicked the door of the toilet stall open and all I could do was freeze and wait.
In the year after school, Beatrice went alone to Sunnypark shopping centre to the top of the tall building that towered over it, and jumped out of a window.
When I went to the funeral, Patricia, who was about three years older than Beatrice, was at the church door. She told me Beatrice had jumped feet first so her neck had been broken. Her face was unharmed. She was still beautiful. Patricia hugged me and said, of Beatrice, ‘Silly girl.’ She blew her nose and moved on to the next person coming in at the doors.
I don’t remember speaking to the Coleman parents, each there with their new partners.
The other day, I found an old autograph book amongst old papers and things. I thought it was mine, but it was Beatrice’s. I don’t know why I have it.
Someone wrote a Limerick for her:
There was a young lady Bea Coleman Who worried about becoming a fat man. She danced on her feet And never did eat So she'll never be fat man but Coleman.
I don’t know if this was true and if Beatrice restricted her eating or worried about ‘becoming a fat man’, though I did sometimes think back then that maybe she couldn’t dance anymore because ballet dancers were only allowed bee stings on their chests.
Every year, when Youth Day rolls around on 16 June to commemorate the day black students said ‘No thanks’, at great expense to their safety, to having to learn the language of the oppressor, I think about the terrible dawning of awareness.
I think about not knowing things.
Beatrice always called me Schimmies.
In her autograph book, in handwriting trying to be grown up, it says: ‘You’ve been a great friend (and enemy)…Thanx. Lots of love, Schimmies.
Quick things
Hello all the new subscribers!
Thank you all the paid subscribers who got bounced by administrative nonsense and came back into this exchange waving your credit card and friendly encouragement. If you haven’t had a chance to reactivate your payment, here’s the link to the subscriptions page:
Birthday guerrilla writing: I’m so glad so many of you are keen. I can’t accommodate more people without renting space. If anyone wanted to come and write with me, but can’t at the end of this month, mail me and I’ll put your name on a waiting list for if I decide to do this again later in the year.
Those of you wanting to come to my birthday writing session, I’ll mail you separately with details soon.
I’m sorry you were bullied, even if there was a later redemption of sorts. That kind of pain and shame can take a lifetime to overcome and people who haven’t experienced it frequently underestimate the impact, making it feel even worse. Thank you for shining a light on the complexity of bullies and our relationships with them.