To GL. 8’46”. We miss you terribly.

It was a dark and stormy night...the cliché made a perfect fit as Mother, teeth gritted and eyes clamped to the streaming windscreen, guided the Renault down the sodden road alongside the Sewerage Farm in the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg. This was 1964, and a Highveld storm dumped gallons of water on to the land in an attempt to make up for months of drought. The country was deep in the sewerage of Apartheid and our little haven of white privilege, encapsulated in the new motor car, despite the storm felt safe dry and warm.

            Mother, let’s face the truth, was a terrible driver. Her list of minor accidents kept the insurance company and dad’s best friend, the insurance salesman Morrie very busy. But we kids – me in the passenger seat and brother and sister bickering behind – took accidents as a part of life. We thought everybody had them.

            And so, when the windscreen entered the car in shreds, Mother applying brakes, shrieking, we probably did not panic. We were getting wet now which wasn’t good. And the journey to see Granny Francis might be aborted. Which was good. But everything would be all right. It always was.

            Mother opened her door and, shaking, shivering, terrified went out to see what we had hit. Curious, we went out into the rain to see for ourselves.

            On the side of the road a bicycle, very bent. And lying next to it a black man, very bloody.

            “Oh God oh God oh God!” Mother said as we all stood around the horrific scene. A tableau in the rain.

            “Mommy!” I said. “Is he dead?”

She found herself somewhere inside herself. Felt his pulse.             “Thank God Thank God Thank God” she said. Then, “We have to find a telephone! Call an ambulance!”

            “A telephone!” I said. “Where?” No mobiles in 1964.

            “The Greek shop! It’s on the corner! Go see if it’s open! Here – “ she gave me some pennies for the call box in the store. “Phone the ambulance! Take the umbrella from the car!” And, to my great relief, she sank to her knees in the pouring rain to inspect the victim and help if possible. Brother and sister, I seem to remember, went back to the car to bicker some more.

            I was fifteen years old when this happened. I had been thoroughly brainwashed by my liberal, anti-Apartheid family. I firmly believed in equal rights for the blacks of South Africa and the world. I still do. I was filled with the importance of my mission and the conviction that this was a great opportunity to save a Black life. How thrilling! At last a chance to be a hero.

            Every teenage boy dreams of that.

            I reached the store. To my delight and relief there was a light on, and Costas let me use the shop phone. “Dial 999” he said and went back to his accounts.

            It took about five rings before the call was answered.                     

The same spoken message in English and Afrikaans.            

“Emergency. Please explain what is your emergency.” The voice was male, very thick, heavily Afrikaans-accented, and bored.

            “We had an accident,” I said. “We hit a bicycle. The man is badly injured.”

            “I see,” he said. “Please calm down. I have to take the details. Wait. I will get a pen.”

            A pen.

            “All right now sir, perhaps you can give me your name. and the location of the accident.”

            I did. “Please hurry!” I added.

            “I have to take the details. So tell me, were you driving?”

            “No, my mother was.”

            “Is she hurt?”

            “No.” I said. “Just the man we hit.”

            Pause while he wrote it down.

            Then “so we have one casualty. White or black?”

“He’s a black man. Quite elderly. Please send an ambulance!”

            “Black man quite elderly” he said, writing it down. “I see.”

            “How long for the ambulance?”

            “Let me see….” pause. “About two hours. Plus minus.”

            “Two hours!” I said. “He could be dead!”

            “Nothing I can do young man. He shouldn’t ride his bike in the rain and darkness. Black against black you see. No guilt for your mommy there.”

            Being an adolescent with a keen sense of justice and no understanding of how to deal with an insane system, I asked “if he was white how long for an ambulance?”

            “Let me see.” Pause. “Twenty max. You should have said he was white.”

            “What?!”

            “They would have probably taken him you see. Too late now!”

            “What!!! Can’t you say – “

            “Ag don’t be silly little boy. You have to understand how it works in this country -“

            “You’re a fucking – you’re a fucking idiot!” I slammed the phone down and ran back to the car, weeping.

            The rain was easing up at last, and I could see Mother and the victim in the headlights of the Renault. His head was on her lap. Brother Barry loomed over them, holding an umbrella high in a tired hand. Thunder rolled.

            They were having a conversation when I arrived. He apologising, probably. She reassuring, definitely.

            “Johnny!” she said as she saw me, “Ambulance coming? What’s wrong?”

            “I don’t know!” I said, hardly able to speak.

            “What do you mean you don’t know?’ She said, alarmed. Her face, washed by the rain, looked horribly pale. Her eyes rimmed with smudged black.

            “I don’t know! The man said two hours!”

            “Two hours! You idiot!”

            “Please do not worry Madam”, the man said from her lap, “My brother can come.”

            “And how exactly will you inform your brother to come and get you? Don’t be ridiculous Daniel. This is Daniel, this is my son Johnny.”

            “Baasie,” the old man tried to nod in my direction.

            “So”, Mother continued, “Did you tell them this man is badly injured?”

            “Yes. Then I – I – I swore at him.”

            “You what????”

            “I’m sorry Mommy. He was so rude. He wanted to know if the injured is white or black.”

            “Oh God,” Mother said. “I hate those idiots.”

            “Please leave me here Madam. The ambulance will come. You mustn’t worry about me.”

            At this point exit my sister Annie from the car. “Mommy!” she shrieked, “I’m cold and I’m wet! Can’t we go home now?”

            “For God’s sake!” Mother said. “This is an emergency, can’t you see?”

            “But I’m cold! I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m hungry!” My dear five-year-old sister protested.

            “Yeh and what about me?” Barry interjected. “And Granny will be worried. She was making supper.”

            “Shut the FUCK up!” Mother may have said at this stage, or she may not. My memory has smudged in this area.

            But what I do remember is: Daniel was helped into the car where the passenger seat was lain horizontal, and we three kids were crammed into the tiny space behind. My formidable mother then drove all the way to Baragwanath hospital without a windscreen, warm wet wind winding about us, Daniel bravely protesting the whole way. And when we got there, Mother made sure he was treated speedily and well. He had a broken leg, I remember.

            I will never forget the sight of the new Renault, when we returned to it from Casualty. No windscreen, the front seats spattered with glass like diamonds, blood all over the passenger seat.

Mother was certainly a formidable woman for whom every life mattered. A member of the Black Sash, she had protested boldly against Apartheid on many occasions and suffered for it. She taught me never to accept injustice. The South African Police in the days of Apartheid wrote the manual on murdering, torturing, arresting at whim members of the black population. Mother now lies in her bed in San Diego, her mind eroded to a shadow by Alzheimer’s. Brother has become a doctor and has made incredible advances in Rheumatology. Sister became a lecturer in Black Languages at University and has been fighting injustice ever since. This was only one of the so many lessons Mother taught us – that black lives matter. As to Daniel? I know that he received a new bicycle, several hundred rand and died not long after. I wish I knew more.

A note on FORMAT, especially for my dear writing mentees who are encouraged (as are you) to comment on this story either in the Jon Elkon’s Writers and Readers Group on Facebook or here: NEVER use double-spacing between paragraphs, as well as indentation, as you will see WordPress has done to the story above when I copied and pasted from Word. Indentation should be used for fiction, except for section breaks. Obviously when submitting for publication, the whole thing should be double-spaced and justified. (The latter is arguable).