My Son's Story by Nadine Gordimer Read Free Book Online Page A

brought up. Where we’re supposed to live and die. The place where they confine us. Zoo. Leper colony. Asylum. It’s humiliating to take from them, Aila. Let them have it.—
    Her questions were never objections; they were the practical consequence of acceptance. She did not oppose the move. She was careful to present it to their children as something exciting and desirable. And the children were ready to quit with heartlessness their friends, their school, the four walls and small yard where they had played. Baby had the teenager’s longing for the life she imagined existed in the city; Will cared only about taking the dog along. To Johannesburg, Johannesburg! Nobody asked exactly where. The husband, the father, was taking care of that.
    When he knew where they were going to live the slither of the commuter train over the rails, taking him home from the warehouse, raced his bravado excitement, but as he walked
the familiar streets each night, back to the old house, through the greasy paper litter outside the fish and chips shop, past the liquor store with its iron bars and attendant drunk beggars, past the funeral parlour where the great shining black car stood always ready to take the poor grandly on a last ride, past his old school with its broken windows and the graffiti of freedom that still had not come—as he deserted this, he realized that a certain shelter was being given up, for the family. Shabby, degrading shelter—but nevertheless. He himself had the strength of a mission to arm him; his family—Aila—it would be different for them. So he calmed his euphoria before he told her. And it was not in front of the children.
    â€”We’re going to move in among whites. It’s a tactic decided upon, and I’m one who’s volunteered. If you agree.—
    She smiled indulgently, disbelieving. The committee had debated many tactics of resistance that did not come to anything. —What are you talking about. Tell me. How?—
    â€”It’s been done already. It’ll be in one of the southern suburbs, of course, not where well-off whites live. Working-class Afrikaners want to move up in the world and they’ll sell for a high price.—
    â€”We can’t afford to buy anything! In Johannesburg! Where will we get the money?—
    â€”The money’s being put up for us. We’ll pay off a rent, same as we do here.—
    â€”But it’s illegal, how can you own a house in a white place?—
    â€”That’s the idea. We don’t accept their segregation, we’ve had enough of telling them, we’re showing them.—
    â€”Us?—A pause.—So that’s the idea.—
    It was the nearest she came to challenging a committee’s presumption in directing her family’s life.
    â€”It’s a really nice house. Three bedrooms, a sitting-room,
another room we can use for your sewing and my books—imagine! I’ll be able to have a desk. We’ll do up the kitchen, I’ll build you a breakfast nook. And there’s a big yard. A huge old apricot tree. Will can make a tree-house.—
    Aila was inclining her head at each feature, as if marking off a list. She stopped when he did, looking at him with her black liquid gaze, appreciatively. Aila understood everything, even the things he didn’t intend to bring up all at once; he could keep nothing from her, her quiet absorbed his subsumed half-thoughts, hesitations, disguising or dissembling facial expressions, and fitted together the missing sense. Because she said little herself, she did not depend on words for the supply of information from others. It was as if she had been there when he had been walking home from the station through the dreary streets and he had spoken aloud about their degradation as also some kind of shelter. Aila said:—Afrikaner neighbours.—
    â€”Oh kids quickly get together. Dirty knees all look the same colour, hey. He’ll make