Stones for My Father by Trilby Kent Page A

through her head. I longed to be so composed, so dignified, to measure my words so carefully, to speak with such grace. Marieta was her mother’s rock. She supported Agnes with hands that were at once gentle and strong, and I struggled to imagine ever mustering the courage to do the same for Ma.
    “The nurses were going to classify her as an idiot,” Agnes was saying. Her nose was red and her voice trembled, but her eyes were cold with fury. “Just because they couldn’t understand her words. Antjie was delirious; of course she wasn’t making sense. But to suggest that she isn’t mentally fit —”
    “They know she is fit, Ma,” soothed Marieta. “We told them she is. They were only trying to make excuses.”
    “Cruel excuses! My Antjie used to write poetry; she could paint like a dream —”
    “When will she be released?” asked my mother.
    “They wouldn’t say. They asked if we wanted her to be photographed, in case she dies …”
    Ma struggled to conceal her surprise. “Photographed?”
    “As a memento. A keepsake. For her father.”
    The tea was brewed; there were only three cups. I wandered out into the sunshine, taking a moment to let my eyes adjust to the glare. A bowlegged man was staggering down the gangway outside our tent, a long laneway that cut all the way from one end of the camp to the other. Some of the women had named it Steyn Street, after the Free State president. With one hand the bowlegged man hauled a stuffed gunnysack along the path; the other brandished a pair of ladies’ bloomers at passersby.
    “That’s Errol Joubert,” said a woman sitting outside the tent opposite ours. She smiled up at me from beneath her cotton bonnet, running a tip of thread across her tongue before poking it through the eye of a sewing needle. “A right
skollie
, if ever there was one. Never trust a man with eyes like a shore bug, my girl. You’ll see him trying to sell the darkness of Egypt next — anything for a twist of tobacco or a few drops of
dop
.”
    “Is he a
hensopper?
” I asked in a low voice.
    The woman’s smile spread across her freckled face. I guessed that she was younger than my mother, but older than Marieta.
    “He’ll tell you that he fought alongside Theron himself just three weeks ago,” she said. “The truth is anyone’s guess.”
    “I can’t picture him with Danie Theron.” Everyone knew that Lord Roberts had described the heroic young scout as “the chief thorn in the side of the British.”
    “A few days ago, I’ll bet you couldn’t picture a place like this,” she replied.
    “We knew there were camps,” I told her, not to be taken for a fool. “We just didn’t know it would be …”
    “Hell?” The woman set her sewing aside and beckoned me forward. “Are you the girl with the little brothers?” I nodded. “You mind your Ma takes care of the baby,” she said. “Do you have milk?”
    “A bit.”
    “Good.” She reached into a tin obscured by the folds of her skirt and withdrew a corner of bread. Her hands were long and thin. “Here, take this.” She waved it at me as I stared incredulously at the first piece of solid food I’d seen since arriving at the camp. “Go on. It’s real. A bit stale, I’ll admit. My sister died last week, but I’m still collecting her rations. Get your brother to bring me fresh kindling in a day or so, and I’ll see to it that you don’t starve.” The smile faded as I reached out for the bread. “They took her to hospital this morning, is that right? The Biljon girl?”
    “That’s right.”
    “God have mercy.”
    Her name was Annie Steenkamp. The next day, after bringing her a bundle of kindling scraps we’d collected from the periphery, reaching our skinny arms through the barbed wire to grab at twigs and bracken just beyondour prison, she gave us an apple that she had found among the slops behind the officers’ mess.
    An apple!
    It was small and shriveled, but Gert and I couldn’t have been more