Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
‘It’s the potency of black pussy.” She curled her lips around the words as if they were a choice titbit of a particularly delicious morsel. “It’s diminishing.” These words she spat out like a snake spitting poison designed to kill.
I am a fly on the wall and I am viewing a group of high flying sisters at a bonding session and they are bemoaning the fall of a brother into a white woman’s arms. This session has been going for a number of hours and many more Don Pedros and the language has become less polite by the Don Pedro.
My Roman Catholic mission school-educated ears are appalled by such language and my soul can already feel the fires of hell licking my flesh for eternity. As insurance I keep on mumbling a prayer of penance: “Mother of Jesus forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”
Many a subject has had its turn to parade on this stage, from the plight of the rural woman to the present one of why, lately, there are so many black males in relationships with white women. This one was triggered by the arrival of a pretty young black boy with a white, female, older companion.
“Jungle fever,” spat out Thembi, a television presenter and a proud sister of the soil who has paid her dues with the best of them and has won fair and square. She looked at the couple as they unashamedly pawed each other and giggled in banal lovers’ conspiracy in the not-so-discreet restaurant.
“No, no, no. Money!” interjected Denise, a woman of means and ways who seems to single-handedly keep the ethnic haircare industry afloat, judging by the amount of hair straightening cream she uses. “The brothers are lazy. They hate the idea of doing real work and they go to these white women because they get their food and bodies free of charge.”
She gave her assessment as she sucked furiously on her cigarette. “He is probably a writer who has not published a single sentence in his entire life and she keeps that dream alive by dropping pennies into the phony nickelodeon,” she continued.
“Know what surprises me with the brothers?” Thabang, a journalist, took the stage. “They can have the cream of the black crop and they refuse to have that given to them and go for any white bitch who offers it to them.” She looked lustfully at Pretty Black Boy. “Look at him,” she pointed at him with her pretty head, “he can have me at any time. And I look 10 times better than that white hag. But do you think that he will give me a second look?”
Thabang’s brown eyes dilated in mock dramatics as she posed the question to the other sisters.
“No way!” Denise and Thembi uttered in unison. “Even if he were to look at you, we all know what he is interested in. The most romantic thing he will say to you is, ‘Let’s get it on’.”
They momentarily stopped as they viewed the couple next to them, who seemed to be interested only in each other and were not even aware that the sisters had them on their centre stage. They kissed and the women rolled their eyes in unison.
Denise, her voice murderous, said: “The next thing you will have is the tiny pitterpatter of feet, blue eyes and blond hair calling you auntie on account of the brother’s preference for chicken.”
“I know why the brothers prefer chicken to us,” chipped in Thembi, who had ordered her umpteenth Don Pedro and given the waiter specific instructions that it come in a clean glass and not a smudged one like the previous order. “They don’t have to maintain these relationships. Black love is still potent. The problem is that we still expect to be treated well and taken seriously.”
She paused a bit as she looked at her drink which had by now arrived, “Pretty Young Black Thing over there is probably an estranged husband and he hasn’t gotten around to letting Auntie Whitey know about the baby in the township. Keeps on telling her that he will introduce her to his family when the violence in the townships has died down. What violence? She doesn’t know that we have stopped slaughtering each other, so she buys it.”
“Do you think that he has met her family though?” mused Denise and, answering her own question, “Naa, probably not. He’s such a self-hating nigger he would not want to insult them by giving them a black potential son-in
“Listen here,” interjected Thembi, “these brothers are brilliant at hiding their skins. They grow dreadlocks so that they can flick their hair back like white folk do. He probably met them at a masked whitey ball. He went there dressed as Othello and they complimented him on the authenticity of his disguise.”
At this time, having grown tired of perching on that wall, I thought that it would be a good time to stretch my wings and perhaps go over to pretty boy and listen to their conversation to hear their side of the story as well. Had she met his parents? Is there any truth to the Othello story?
I never got to do that for as I was buzzing away in between the four ladies, Nthabiseng, a hygiene fanatic, struck out at me, uttering something about a filthy fly. How rude some people can get.