Tandia Read Online Free

out of the only home she had ever known to the dark little corrugated-iron shed in the back yard? In her imagination Tandia could hear the old woman's voice. 'Go on, voetsak! Take your things and get out of my house!' Surely she wouldn't do that? She must give her a chance to find a job first!
    Mrs Patel was an ignorant woman. She couldn't read or write and hadn't taken up Christianity like her husband. Her own religion commanded absolute obedience to Patel, but she had been deeply disturbed by his change of faith. The Patel caste is a religious one. Other castes may change, could change, but not a Patel. It was a hugely offensive thing to have done to his caste. Especially as Patel's religious zeal was shown to be less one of burning faith than of a desire to achieve assimilation into the European genre. Being a Hindu required her to forgive him everything, even sleeping with a black woman. Now, with Patel dead, the shackles of fidelity and obedience were undone; now she was in control.
    From the very beginning Mrs Patel couldn't do anything about the black child her husband had spawned. Natkin Patel wanted his bastard daughter and he seemed to feel an attachment to the plump honey-skinned baby that he'd never felt for his two sons.
    'See,' he said, picking her up, 'the skin is soft like velvet, darker, maybe a little darker, but not so black as a kaffir. I'm telling you, man, this one is lucky, bladdy lucky. Look! Green eyes! An Indian and a kaffir mix and, goodness me, out come green eyes!'
    Patel was a good cut-man in the ring and so fancied himself a bit medically minded. 'How can it be? You mix a black with an Indian; one thing is certain…' he paused for effect, 'all dark eyes, every bugger has dark eyes. Tell me, hey? Where have you seen a green-eyed kaffir or an Indian? I'm telling you, not even so many white people have green eyes.' He absent-mindedly stroked the baby. 'Usually with kaffirs you get gene swamp.'
    'Gene swamp' was Patel's very own expression; he'd invented it to explain why mixed marriages between blacks and whites didn't work. 'The ugliness of the kaffir comes out and nothing good of the white or the Indian is left.' He bounced Tandia on his knee. 'But not this one, hey? I'm telling you something for nothing, except for her hair, which I got to admit is a kaffir's hair, this one is going to be very, very pretty.'
    Mrs Patel said nothing, her humiliation greater than she believed she could bear. Patel wasn't even ashamed! He talked openly to people about his bastard daughter. It wasn't respectful. It wasn't fair. She'd done her job as a good wife and given him two sons to look after his old age and no silly daughters to bleed him dry with wedding dowries, and in return he insulted her name and her race.
    She would suck her dislike for Tandia through her gold teeth. 'Sies, man, how could you love that?' At least she didn't have to have his shame in the house. Tandia lived in the corrugated-iron shed in the back with her kaffir mother. When Tandia was five her mother died quite suddenly. Her death came as somewhat of a surprise to the neighbourhood, for she was a robust and happy woman who performed the task of servant to the Patel household with cheerfulness and energy.
    Nobody knew about the poisoning of Tandia's mother, but then again, everybody knew. The police, of course, treated it just like another dead black person. It happened all the time. Maybe even some money changed hands? Patel was well known in boxing circles, white boxing circles, where the police were very big. He could easily have paid someone not to look too closely.
    Tandia had grown up with the story of her mother's death. It remained street gossip for years, and there was no doubt in her mind that Mrs Patel had been responsible. She held no evidence to prove it, but she knew the woman's hate was big enough.
    The hurt at being hated so much by Mrs Patel had only been bearable when Tandia took it out of herself and turned it