I lost my mother in 1976 when I was not yet six. She was an accountant at a supermarket along one of the main roads in Pietermaritzburg. We lived on the ground floor at the back of the front street in the coloured area. Auntie Daphne owned the house, and we lived in the downstairs flat. We had moved there some three years previously from Windhoek, and I really enjoyed the greenery compared to the dust of Khomasdal and Windhoek. My father, William, worked at the Natal Times newspaper and was often gone for long periods because he was still an apprentice and had to go to Cape Town for training for up to four weeks at a time.
I remember walking with my mother and siblings, Arlene and Gerhard, through the veld that separated our house from the shop where she worked part-time as a bookkeeper. She was a teacher at the local primary school, teaching piano. The shop was located on the main road leading to Durban.
One day, I convinced my sister that we should go to the shop and buy sweets. I had picked up a half a cent, and instead of giving it to mother—I mean, who else would have dropped it in our house?—I kept it because I wanted to buy sweets. She agreed, so she and I set off to the shop, being very scared of the veld. We got there and bought some sweets. We ate them all on our way home.
That night, my mother asked if we had gone to the shop. I, of course, lied and said no. She said she had seen me, and I got a hiding for the lying and the stealing of the half a cent.
I had made sure she was not in the shop, so I wondered who could have told her—or was she just all-seeing?
Not too long afterwards, I was playing around her desk at the office when one of my toys fell on the floor under the desk, and I crawled to fetch it. Then I noticed behind her desk was a one-way mirror; she could see into the whole shop.
Then I knew: she was not all-seeing, but she had seen me.
