"Blue Pencils: A SCSM Anthology" is a collaborative literary work edited by Charlie Wilson, Laura Aspin, Leslie Sextius, Katie Wood, Lyle Skains, and Eben Muse. This anthology presents a diverse collection of short stories and prose. The anthology showcases a rich tapestry of voices exploring themes of gender equality, social justice, and women's empowerment. Naomi-Natalie’s heartfelt and thought-provoking short story ‘Love’ is a beautifully woven tale told through the eyes of the protagonist, Adiela. ‘Love’ focuses on Adiela and her interracial family in South Africa during the apartheid, offering a unique insight into the complexities of love, racial & societal dynamics and the enduring hope for equality. Available on Amazon for purchase for Kindle.

Paperback Published On: 24/05/2017

The first story my father ever told me was the one of Mildred and Richard Loving. In fact, it was perhaps the only story my father ever truly told me. He saw no point in fairy tales. In fact, he loathed them with a passion.

“What good are tales of fairies?” he would ask.

“What lessons of life can a beanstalk teach you?”

 Every storytime was a battle of wills, one which seemed to ultimately begin and end the same way, every bedtime.

When I was six years old, our evenings were usually spent in the “big house.” After working all day at his accountancy firm, my father would come home. My father’s return signified the start of our family evening rituals, the first being the act of sharing our days over dinner. Once we were done and the table was cleared, we fractured apart.

My father would retire to the lounge, and my younger sister, Amahle, and I never hesitated in following him. We knew our routine, just like everybody else. My father would sit us on his lap, and he made certain we watched the news with him. He made sure we engaged and understood the images we were seeing. He refused to let us look away.

 My older twin brothers, Machiel and Mandela, however, flat-out refused to participate, and my father rarely pushed for them to, the way he did with my sister and me. Instead, he tolerated their loud “vroom vrooms” as they raced their cars along the coarse, carpeted floors, relatively unbothered. The only exception was when they complained about the friction of the carpet and asked to be allowed to play in the hallway nearest to the front door. That was a hot-button trigger for my father, which never failed to leave him so incensed he’d snatch away their toys, sometimes for weeks at a time. Then and only then did my brothers join us.

Machiel and Mandela ended up making that same misguided error a total of seven times, only to receive the exact same unyielding punishment. My brothers apparently needed those seven times to help them understand that even a hindered racing car experience was better than no racing car experience at all.

Every evening, my father would sit tutting and snarling at the television screen like an angry bear being prodded. I often wondered why my father chose to watch the upsetting images he watched, especially when they seemed to cause him such perpetual turmoil. He was stuck, caught in a self-imposed cause and effect cycle he was incapable of breaking.

Eventually, my sister would tire and drift off into an easy slumber, slumped in a protective hold against my father’s chest. My father and I would continue to watch alone. Angry faces throwing angry bottles of fire.

Angry uniforms dragging angry rags across broken cement.

Each evening, I would watch the bloodied images shown to me. Each was almost an exact carbon copy of the day before, but I always made sure to never flinch away.

“Look at them, Adiela, watch them fight. Idiots! All of them! Never be an idiot, Adiela. Never hate. Hatred is for fools. Never be a fool, Adiela,” he’d say.

“No, baba,” I’d respond diligently, a response that always seemed to calm him of at least some of his frustrations.

Once her errands were complete, my mother usually gravitated her way back into our orbit with the intention of carrying Amahle to bed, and every evening without fail, my father would thwart her plans, choosing instead to seize her and tug her down to nestle with us.

I watched the way my mother rolled her eyes, always noticing the way her warm amusement ignited behind them. With practiced ease, my mother would adjust herself so as not to squash Amahle, before allowing her head to rest against my father’s free shoulder.

Whenever I observed my father, it was usually just as he was leaning forward to press reverent kisses onto my mother’s forehead, displaying tenderness he never allowed the outside world to witness. He’d pause against her sometimes, as if in silent prayer, seeming to silently ask her for something. Perhaps, pleading for her to make him lighter.

My mother’s knack for easing my father’s burdens was rivalled by no other. She could steady all his fears and manage to know his every need before he seemed to have even formed the thought.

It was as though, with every inhalation of my mother’s scent, the tension burning through my father’s body receded. The stiff anger that’d gathered in his chest, as we’d watched brutalisation after senseless brutalisation, dissipated and seeped out of his body like liquid marrow.

Then, for no longer than twenty minutes or so, there would be utter stillness. My brothers left their cars abandoned and made the choice instead to rest against my mother’s knees. I’d lay my palm against my mother’s cheek, seeking the same calm as my father. Together, we basked in the still peace of dusk.

Eventually, my father would move me from his lap onto my mother’s. He would ease out of his nook and make his way to the small house in the rear grounds. His routine was important to him. He’d make sure all the lights in the small house were turned on, so our way was illuminated. Then he’d return, and after a brief retreat upstairs, he would come back dressed in his nightclothes, ready to meet us at the back door. He always carried me and my sister during our nighttime treks, waiting as my mother and brothers locked the rear glass doors.

Together, the six of us would make our way to our tiny nighttime abode. 

The small house was too insignificant a space for any real type of living. It consisted of two bedrooms, a small toilet, and a closet-sized room that housed a basic gas cooktop and a sink. We couldn’t run. We couldn’t play. It was just enough to sleep in. My father never gave any reason as to why we slept in the small house instead of the big one, and we knew not to enquire. The forbiddances of the question went unspoken; it was an implicit boundary we knew not to push.

Truthfully, I liked the big house; it reminded me of the castles in my books, vast and beautiful.

Once my father left for work in the mornings, we ran through the large space like wild boar. We raided the four bedrooms and their en-suites for hidden treasures. We held dances in each of the three reception rooms and played punch-chase in a kitchen so immense that myself, Amahle, Machiel, and Mandela could chase one another and not get in my mother’s way while she cooked.

“Quiet, I’m starting,” my father would say.

“Can you tell us a fairy tale tonight, baba?” I’d ask.

His replies were always lightning-quick. “Was I not about to do so?”

“No,” I’d huff. “You were going to tell us of Richard and Mildred again.”

My father would frown at me then, an action my mother revealed years later was a cover to stop himself from grinning at my belligerence.

“I tell you of Mildred and Richard because there is no better tale out there. You should know stories of love and justice. There is no better story than ones of triumph, Adiela.”

“Mama, please? Tell baba, no more Richard and Mildred,” I’d whine to my mother whenever I felt myself losing.

“Ana, speak to your child,” my father would puff.

My mother would only laugh and reply, “What can I tell her? She has her father’s strong will.” That never failed to make my father smile, until, of course, he remembered I was present.

“I either tell you of Mildred and Richard, or I tell you nothing. What is your choice, Adiela?” To my credit, I knew when all was lost. I never pushed further, but I always sent a thunderous scowl, communicating my distaste of his terms. Even at the age of six, my sense of pride was strong.

“Do you see your child, Anatswanashe? Do you see how she watches me? Just as fierce as you. Your cub bears your image.” Whenever my father likened me to my mother, he’d beam, a gesture my mother always returned.

“I see it. Now tell your tale. Young children need their rest,” my mother would sigh while brushing curls from my brothers’ brows.

“Fine, fine,” my father would grumble. “Thank God I have two sons; otherwise, I would be lost to these women.”

“Baba, tell me of Richard and Mildred, but tell me as a fairy tale,” I’d try.

“Fine, fine,” he’d concede, eventually tired of the rigmarole. “There was once a King and Queen from two separate societies—”

“Like Romeo and Juliet!” I’d grin at his frown.

“Ana, speak to your child.”

And so, my father would regale us all with the tale of Mildred, a Queen with dark skin like my mother, and Richard, a King with pale skin like my father. He told us how theirs was a story of forbidden love in the faraway kingdom. Then, of their supreme battle, a skirmish that changed their kingdom’s history. He told us how they’d fought until they could live together in their kingdom as one, having been exiled with their children. Their children, who looked like us.

After the story was complete and our eyes were heavy, I’d hear my mother whisper, “Let them rest, Mattheu.”

She would always make her way around the bed, pressing gentle kisses on our foreheads before whispering an almost-silent “Goodnight, my loves” as she joined my father by the door.

South Africa in the eighties held a strong resemblance to the American South in the sixties. Equality was not a word Johannesburg knew; it didn’t truly exist—a fitting irony, as nor—in any tangible sense—did we.

When my mother went to the market, she went alone or with my brothers, who were blessed to be darker than my sister and me. People didn’t necessarily look at them and see their illegality. They didn’t see my mother’s crime.

Despite my brothers being closer to my mother’s skin tone, they were still at least two shades lighter, so my father refused to risk them attending institutional schooling. Every fear of my father’s revolved around us being taken or hurt.

My father understood well enough that his privilege would mean the consequences for our family would fall heaviest on my mother. He insisted we were all homeschooled by a sweet-natured, liberal-minded retiree named Walter, a man my parents trusted not to inform on us.

I was three years old the first time the strangeness of my existence had confronted me. I had been attempting to climb the steps to my father’s office in the attic, an activity both of my parents had expressly forbade me to do. But, being the stubborn child I was, I’d refused to heed their warnings. One day, of course—perhaps inevitably—I’d lost my footing and fell awkwardly from the seventh rung and broken my leg in an instant.

My father had been beside himself when my mother had told him she would need to take me to the hospital. He’d understood that the moment an officer had seen me and my mother in a car we shouldn’t have been able to afford, my mother would likely have been arrested and I would have been taken away.

The solution in the end had been to leave my seven-year-old brothers at home with my one-year-old sister, under the strictest of instructions not to move from the pantry. My mother had set up a layer of pillows and blankets for them in there.

The pantry had been the most soundproofed room of both residences. It was also the only room without windows, so the lights from inside would not be seen and my baby sister’s inevitable screams wouldn’t have been heard and reported to the authorities.

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