SISCA JULIUS

Ausi Told Me by June Bam is concluded with the words It is very, very bitter.

I identify as a professor with specialisation in caricaturisation and stereotyping in lexicography. I do not have a doctorate and I have never published an academic article. But that is irrelevant. If Piers Morgan can identify as a two spirited penguin, then I can be a professor. I know the unlexicalised phrase boer doodmaak (killing a white person) in coloured communities constitutes the highest possible offense a person can commit. A friend of mine casually used it in conversation after a visit to the local abortion clinic. She said, “Die way hulle my getreat het, jy sal sweer ek het boer doodgemaak”. The way they treated her, you would have sworn she killed a white person. I also know the lexicalised phrase ‘n boesmantjie doodslaan (beating a bushman to death) and that it constitutes to chugging down a cold one. Dying is political in South Africa.

When Aryan Kaganof wrote to me about the possibility of a book review, writing or reading for that matter was the last thing on my mind. I was staying in a coffin in someone’s yard. Which does not really bother me because I am quite small. I don’t take up much space. What did bother me was these people’s dogs of war.

The landlady heard about an Afrikaans teacher looking for an affordable flat through her son’s girlfriend who I taught the previous year. We had been communicating via WhatsApp. She didn’t know, shame, that I’m, you know, tanned. It’s not her fault. When you think of an Afrikaans teacher you think of a Mrs du Plessis whose husband is a dominee and who makes pickled fruit for the church bazaar.

She was visibly shocked when I came to collect the keys from her after weeks of speaking- via WhatsApp. “I thought you were an Afrikaaaans teacher?” she said in a very high pitch, stretching the a so far I thought it might snap.

“Auntie, ek is morfologies, semanties, foneties, fonologies, sintakties, leksikaal so Afrikaans soos water nat is” I said to her.

Three hours later. In the shower. In my head. Her dogs were growling at me, so I just stood there smiling. Thinking- I know I’m a Julius, but definitely not the Shakespearean kind – do not let slip the dogs of war! “Ag, moenie worry oor hulle nie. Hulle blaf nie vir ons ousie nie.”

In Kimberley there is a distinct semantic difference between ousie (əƱsie) and ausi (aƱsie). The latter refers to one’s girlfriend and is conversationally accompanied by the gesture of a thumb across first the left nipple then the right nipple. The former, we both knew, refers to the girl, who will be a girl despite her age, who works in her kitchen. The girl who washes her plates and changes her sheets. The usage of the word ousie was for her an assertation of dominance. The dogs do not bark at our ousie. I am the master. If you know your place, I won’t set my dogs loose on you. 

I should have known there and then that I should not be staying there. But I was desperate. I had nowhere else to go. Rent is expensive. And why do I even have to pay rent for occupying a space on God’s earth? I became alive without my consent. One night they thought I wasn’t home. They were drinking and braaiing and singing come on nigger let me take you to the ocean, come on nigger let me take you to the sea. I listened and said nothing.

I spent the next three months looking for a new place to stay. With three moerse dogs barking at me 24/7 and a high-pitched Afrikaans lady saying “Hulle baaaaaait nie” stretching the a out so long I thought I might snap. When I wake up – barking and growling and hulle baaait nie, when I go to the gate – barking and growling and hulle baaaait nie, when I go out the door for a smoke – barking and growling and hulle baaaait nie, when I hang my laundry out to dry – barking and growling and hulle sal rêrig nie baaaait nie, hoor. “Bitch, whether or not they bite, I will poison these motherfuckers who you call your children. I will JM Coetzee Disgrace them here and now. Nou kan hulle nie baaaait hoor,” I yelled at her.

Constantly.

In the shower.

In my head.

Aryan couriered the unopened trauma (which should really come with a label, danger, gevaar, ingozi) to me. I wasn’t home to receive the package so Elongated A signed for me. “What is this?” she asked, holding onto my package for way too long. “It’s a book” I said. “A book?” she asked looking genuinely perturbed. And this is my own bias, I have no way of knowing but I assumed that she assumed it must be drugs. “I have a book club. On Saturdays. You should come sometime.” “And I hold a master’s degree in applied linguistics, congratulations on your book club” I said to her. In the shower. In my head.

I only tell you all this because I am a Nama. And we must first get as far as possible off the topic before discussing the gwarra-goed (intestines) of things. Me reading The Trauma was like preparing tea. I first had to be picked, then dried, then boiled, then sifted. So, I will have to tell you the series of traumatic pre-trauma events that had befallen me before knowing what Ausi Told Me. The first was not having a home, the second, having an illness and the third, having sex. I guess you could call it a tril-ogy.

            Tril s.nw. [trille] ook trul (plat) →penis.

            Noun, plural, low, synonym

I hadn’t heard the word ousie in a very long time, especially not coming from a young white woman. Yes, she’s young! Can you believe it? It almost makes it better if the racism comes from older people. I just assume that they don’t mean to be racist they just do not know any better. And I got Covid again. It would be illogical for illness not to precede healing I suppose. This time the Covid was like a coloured man with newly given power. And like Aus Rita used to say, when you give a coloured man power, he gets so drunk off of it he thinks he has to beat his wife. I was coughing and wheezing and shaking and yelping make death proud, sweat dripping, dogs barking and growling, Elongated A yelling moet net nie vir hulle wys jy’s bang nie. All I could think about, besides poisoning the dogs of war, was my mom. My ma the healer. Who gave me wildeals mixed with paprika the first time I had Covid. It’s bitter, but bitter things make you heal.

Then came the business of sex, and I’m assuming it’s the aftereffects of the Covid, I developed a crush on a (much older, white) co-worker. Now you should know that I do not mix business with pleasure. I hardly mix pleasure with pleasure. When one has an episiotomy before having an orgasm it tends to scar you. Both physically and mentally. Nevertheless, I developed a crush because he called me smart and said you impress me miss Julius. So of course the next logical step to take was to bear this man’s children. We also share a birthday with each other and with Malinowski and that must mean something. And also because it gives me great pleasure to be a powerful coloured woman travelling to a geographically proximate locale to study him as the Other.

I confided in my supervisor about this illicit love affair, that is taking place like most of my conversations, in my head. I’m worried about the business of tea. Is he going to make tea for my father? It wouldn’t be appropriate because he’s older than my father and he’s white. He laughed and said that I am worried about tea when I should be worried about other things. Tea is other things! I said to him. Later that evening, in the shower, in my head.

Two days before opening Ausi Told Me, he taught me the word sacrosanct: /’sakrəsaɧ(k)t/●adjective (especially of a principle, place or routine) regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with.

Uncle Baby Love, which is the nomenclature I have bestowed upon my beloved colonizer, refers to his classroom as sacrosanct. We started speaking, my beloved colonizer and I, because I was recently necessitated to teach English. Now I am not afraid of the English language although speaking it gives me heartburn.

I just have no respect for a language that has a g in its alphabet but is too scared to have that g be guttural. A fricative g is not for the weak. It’s for the Afrikaans.

In the sacrosanct Uncle Baby Love took me under his wing. Teaching me finite and non-finite verbs, the difference between acronyms and abbreviations. Which I know, because I hold a master’s degree in applied linguistics. In the sacrosanct Uncle Baby Love teaches me music – Depeche Mode, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Carpenters, whom I all know because I have parents. Who listened to music and also love me. But I pretend not to know any of this because I can see how happy it makes Uncle Baby Love to introduce me to (k)new things.

I am a woman living in South Africa. I know the politics of men is the politics of survival. Play dumb or play dead or be dead.

I do have a moerse crush on Uncle Baby Love but Uncle Baby Love is a gentleman and subsequently rather slow. I am but flesh and a lady can only drop her handkerchief so many times before perceived a fool. So, I had a one-night stand to attempt to wash out what this colonizer incited in me. I don’t know if I’m allowed to speak about these things but if we’re going to talk about identity and gender and politics, we have to talk about sex. Please don’t tell my mom. Sy gaan my slaan. And more pressing, please do not tell my dad. I don’t mind breaking male hearts but his is the only heart I truly do not want to break.

I am not all too eloquent in the social etiquette of one-night stands. But I did it for the plot. I found a new flat, affordable, spacious and dogless – a perfect place to do something I had never done before. I failed miserably. Firstly, because he wouldn’t go home and stayed for two nights. I thought a one-night stand was self-explanatory. Secondly, because I failed miserably in the linguistics of it. I consider myself a studious woman. If I had known I would be asked difficult questions about the patriarchy and the place and ownership of female genitalia, I would have studied!

We’re in the act, I’m bent over like a dog. He taps me on the shoulder. I look back and notice that he distinctly resembles a praying mantis. He asks “who’s your daddy?” I almost faint. I did not know that it’s customary for the penile party to enquire who fathered the vaginal party. I didn’t think naming Franklin Robert Steven in this context would be apt but Praying Mantis seemed to be serious. So, I said my daddy’s name. I don’t have to tell you that the concupiscence dissipated instantaneously. Furthermore, the issue of ownership surfaced. He enquired, in a feeble attempt to remedy his previous question and in more colloquial language, whom my genitalia belonged to. I thought she simply belonged to me. At best, to no one.

Now I was ready, fully equipped to go on the harrowing journey that is Ausi Told Me. It is a book I found so difficult to read. Because Rondevlei is Diskobolos where I grew up and that is home. And is Beaconsfield where I stay now. And is Wynhoek where my mother stays. And is probably so many other places I have never heard of. And Ausi Aliema is Ausi June who gifted me with the illness of this heartache. And Ausi June is Aus Anthea who is my mother, the healer. Ausi Told Me is dassiepis, the master of masters, which leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

I understand that South Africans will always lead political lives. Especially coloured people because we have been othered so much by so many. We’ve been fucked so much we do not know our children’s fathers. We’ve had our teeth pulled out, our tongues cut off, we’ve been shorn like sheep. I can’t speak for all of us, but I am tired of being resilient. I don’t always want to think about it. I want to sit at Tafel Lager Stadium with a Windhoek draught and watch rugby. And I don’t want to be stunted by the realisation that the dehumanisation of my people has been so normalised that we sit and beat a bushman to death and watch the Griquas play the Sharks or the Lions or the Blue Bulls. And no one says anything.

Ausi is the world’s memory. Without it men would be dogs. Ausi is an excavation of the histories and memories and stories and falsifications and stereotyping and caricaturisation and assault on the blameless coloured vagina. I found it to be an ode to the coloured vagina. 

I’m sitting in my new flat – my sacrosanct. I have finished Ausi Told Me and I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know what I am going to write or how I am going to write it. Nothing I write will fully word the trauma of reading it. And I am nursing a broken heart. Because Uncle Baby Love has ghosted me. I don’t know if Praying Mantis said anything to him but my messages remain unanswered. Depeche, archaic, the dispatch of a message, to dispatch, or rid oneself of… My name is Julius and the name is eponymously associated with betrayal, this I know, but et tu Baby Love? I am not new to the yoke of unrequited love. I am in love with a language that says things like Die Kaap is weer Hollands. The Cape is Dutch again. All is well in the world. All is as it should be. Uncle Baby Love se poes. Die colonizers se poes. Afrikaans se poes. Almal se poes. But even that, in my beloved Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal is racial, gendered and political and reduces my people to a caricature.

Poes s.nw. [poese] (obseen) vroulike skaamdele; vulva:∆ Iewers hoor hy twee bergies wat baklei, en “jou ma se poes” skree (Emile Joubert)

Noun, obscene, female shameful parts; vulva:∆ From somewhere he hears two mountain dwellers fighting and yelling…
Ek is bitter, ek is very, very bitter.