Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood(31)
The restaurant closed only because a few people in the neighborhood took it upon themselves to complain. They filed petitions, and the government started looking for ways to shut my dad down. At first the inspectors came and tried to get him on cleanliness and health-code violations. Clearly they had never heard of the Swiss. That failed dismally. Then they decided to go after him by imposing additional and arbitrary restrictions.
“Since you’ve got the license you can keep the restaurant open,” they said, “but you’ll need to have separate toilets for every racial category. You’ll need white toilets, black toilets, colored toilets, and Indian toilets.”
“But then it will be a whole restaurant of nothing but toilets.”
“Well, if you don’t want to do that, your other option is to make it a normal restaurant and only serve whites.”
He closed the restaurant.
After apartheid fell, my father moved from Hillbrow to Yeoville, a formerly quiet, residential neighborhood that had transformed into this vibrant melting pot of black and white and every other hue. Immigrants were pouring in from Nigeria and Ghana and all over the continent, bringing different food and exciting music. Rockey Street was the main strip, and its sidewalks were filled with street vendors and restaurants and bars. It was an explosion of culture.
My dad lived two blocks over from Rockey, on Yeo Street, right next to this incredible park where I loved to go because kids of all races and different countries were running around and playing there. My dad’s house was simple. Nice, but nothing fancy. I feel like my dad had enough money to be comfortable and travel, but he never spent lavishly on things. He’s extremely frugal, the kind of guy who drives the same car for twenty years.
My father and I lived on a schedule. I visited him every Sunday afternoon. Even though apartheid had ended, my mom had made her decision: She didn’t want to get married. So we had our house, and he had his. I’d made a deal with my mom that if I went with her to mixed church and white church in the morning, after that I’d get to skip black church and go to my dad’s, where we’d watch Formula 1 racing instead of casting out demons.
I celebrated my birthday with my dad every year, and we spent Christmas with him as well. I loved Christmas with my dad because my dad celebrated European Christmas. European Christmas was the best Christmas ever. My dad went all out. He had Christmas lights and a Christmas tree. He had fake snow and snow globes and stockings hung by the fireplace and lots of wrapped presents from Santa Claus. African Christmas was a lot more practical. We’d go to church, come home, have a nice meal with good meat and lots of custard and jelly. But there was no tree. You’d get a present, but it was usually just clothes, a new outfit. You might get a toy, but it wasn’t wrapped and it was never from Santa Claus. The whole issue of Santa Claus is a rather contentious one when it comes to African Christmas, a matter of pride. When an African dad buys his kid a present, the last thing he’s going to do is give some fat white man credit for it. African Dad will tell you straight up, “No, no, no. I bought you that.”
Outside of birthdays and special occasions, all we had were our Sunday afternoons. He would cook for me. He’d ask me what I wanted, and I’d always request the exact same meal, a German dish called R?sti, which is basically a pancake made out of potatoes and some sort of meat with a gravy. I’d have that and a bottle of Sprite, and for dessert a plastic container of custard with caramel on top.
A good chunk of those afternoons would pass in silence. My dad didn’t talk much. He was caring and devoted, attentive to detail, always a card on my birthday, always my favorite food and toys when I came for a visit. But at the same time he was a closed book. We’d talk about the food he was making, talk about the F1 racing we’d watched. Every now and then he’d drop a tidbit of information, about a place he’d visited or his steakhouse. But that was it. Being with my dad was like watching a web series. I’d get a few minutes of information a few minutes at a time, then I’d have to wait a week for the next installment.
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When I was thirteen my dad moved to Cape Town, and we lost touch. We’d been losing touch for a while, for a couple of reasons. I was a teenager. I had a whole other world I was dealing with now. Videogames and computers meant more to me than spending time with my parents. Also, my mom had married Abel. He was incensed by the idea of my mom being in contact with her previous love, and she decided it was safer for everyone involved not to test his anger. I went from seeing my dad every Sunday to seeing him every other Sunday, maybe once a month, whenever my mom could sneak me over, same as she’d done back in Hillbrow. We’d gone from living under apartheid to living under another kind of tyranny, that of an abusive, alcoholic man.
At the same time, Yeoville had started to suffer from white flight, neglect, general decline. Most of my dad’s German friends had left for Cape Town. If he wasn’t seeing me, he had no reason to stay, so he left. His leaving wasn’t anything traumatic, because it never registered that we might lose touch and never see each other again. In my mind it was just Dad’s moving to Cape Town for a bit. Whatever.
Then he was gone. I stayed busy living my life, surviving high school, surviving my early twenties, becoming a comedian. My career took off quickly. I got a radio DJ gig and hosted a kids’ adventure reality show on television. I was headlining at clubs all over the country. But even as my life was moving forward, the questions about my dad were always there in the back of my mind, bubbling up to the surface now and then. “I wonder where he is. Does he think about me? Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud of me?” When a parent is absent, you’re left in the lurch of not knowing, and it’s so easy to fill that space with negative thoughts. “They don’t care.” “They’re selfish.” My one saving grace was that my mom never spoke ill of him. She would always compliment him. “You’re good with your money. You get that from your dad.” “You have your dad’s smile.” “You’re clean and tidy like your father.” I never turned to bitterness, because she made sure I knew his absence was because of circumstance and not a lack of love. She always told me the story of her coming home from the hospital and my dad saying, “Where’s my kid? I want that kid in my life.” She’d say to me, “Don’t ever forget: He chose you.” And, ultimately, when I turned twenty-four, it was my mom who made me track him down.