My Borders Are of Pleasant Stones

MY BORDERS ARE OF PLEASANT STONES

The Story of Rachel Swart who was

born without arms and legs

Written by herself

“ O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and

not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones

with fair colours and lay thy foundations

with sapphires.

And I will make thy windows of agates and

thy gates of carbuncles and all thy

borders of pleasant stones.”

Isaiah 54: 11-12

Translated from the Original Afrikaans by:

Ursula A. Gross.

CHAPTER I

“THE DISCARDED BUNDLE”

On a windy afternoon in August 1923 – it was the 6th day of the month – my mother, Bettie Cloete, was doing her daily work as usual. Her baby was not expected for quite some time. My mother and father were then living in Bredasdorp, the most southerly town in Africa, about 120 miles from Cape Town. Father had gone to hunt bontebok on a farm and while he was away mother was staying with her mother on the old family farm of Nachtwacht. Grandmother, old ouma Van Dyk, was home and father’s mother, ouma Cloete, was spending the day with her.

The pregnancy had been a normal one. Mother was strong and healthy and there was no sign to show that anything was wrong. She had felt perfectly well on getting up in the morning. Suddenly she said:

“Ma, I think we had better go and call old Nenna.” Nenna was the name given to Coloured midwives who in those days still brought many of us into the world.

“Are you feeling ill, Bettie?” Ouma sounded worried. “All right, we’ll send for her and there are a few things she can bring along from the village.”

While a piccanin, one of the Coloured farm-boys ran into the village as fast as his bandy legs would carry him, the two grandmothers-to-be put a huge pot of water on the stove and sheets to warm near the fire.

Everything was ready when old Nenna arrived. She took off her patched grey jersey, washed her hands and set to work.

Half an hour passed. The wrinkles on old Nenna’s face tightened into a frown.

“Old Nonnie,” she said to my grandmother, “the baby has turned and I think it’s going to be a breach-birth.” Ouma Van Dyk stiffened. She had seen many a child make its way into the world but there were times when the good Lord needed the assistance of skilled hands. Perhaps there was still time to call a doctor ......

“The old Nonnie mustn’t worry,” old Nenna said soothingly. “It will be all right.”

“I think we had better let John know,” ouma Cloete whispered with a frown. “Let’s find somebody to fetch my son.”

Two hours later the birth began. It was a long and painful one. The two grandmothers stood by, praying silently. Old Nenna sweated as she worked. Suddenly the three women held their breath.

“My God ons Vader,” ouma Van Dyk muttered as the child emerged, almost blue in colour and without arms and legs. By silent consent the two grandmothers left the room. Ouma Cloete was badly upset. “We’ve got to find John,” she said over and over again.

The midwife never doubted but that the baby was dead. She wrapped it in a towel and put it on the bed. As she touched it she shuddered. Never had she seen a creature with nothing but four stumps instead of arms and legs.

But the creature was alive and it was I, Rachel.

It was from my grandmother Van Dyk that I learnt of the events of that day and if they sound a little dramatic it is because I can so well imagine their feelings – the two old women, my grandmothers, who had seen a great deal of trouble in their own lives and would have given anything to spare their children this; the old coloured woman who had merely come on another “job” and found tragedy instead. Ouma Van Dyk told me the story simply and without emotion.

My mother was the oldest of her six children, of whom two were boys. Oupa Piet van Dyk, my grandfather, owned the farm Nachtwacht, one of the prettiest in the district with the broad river running through its green fields and on the horizon the rugged coastline of the Atlantic. Today wheat and wool have made the Bredasdorp district the second wealthiest farming area in the Cape. Bredasdorp itself now has a population of almost 4 000.

The family rarely left the farm. Oupa did not believe in any modern “nonsies”, as he called it and kept a strict hand over his family. I think they were all a little afraid of him, especially the girls. After supper there was Divine service and then straight to bed, even when the children grew up. Many a young fellow who came to court the girls had to turn back in frustration when he found the house in darkness shortly after eight. If they arrived earlier, the girls would contrive to stay up. Quietly they would gather on the stoep, but if they wanted to make coffee – and the people in my country love coffee at any time of the day or night – they would have to step out into the yard.

For in those days the coffee would first have to be ground and the coffee mill was a noisy affair.

My mother was the quiet one of the family and rarely did anything that could annoy oupa. As a result she seldom met any young folk. The only form of entertainment consisted of the Jongelingsvereniging, the youth club, which met in the school hall near the farm. It was here that mother first met the man she was to marry, a lad with a mop of dark hair and bright blue eyes. He too came from a farming family and was one of thirteen children. A question I am often asked is whether my mother and father came from the same family. They were not even remotely related nor were there any physical or mental defects in either family.

When they were married they had little but their dreams and ambitions on which to build. Father tried his hand at all sorts of things. He carried fruit to the market, he became a barman and he sold grain. One of his employers sent him to Durban to learn about farming implements and this knowledge stands him in good stead now that he is running his own farm. My mother was an expert dressmaker.

The first child was a fat pink little girl with dark bright eyes. But my parents joy was to be short lived. I shall simply call her tant Sannie. She was a friend of the family and her one failing, if you can call it that was her passion for nice clothes. Her eyes would open wide when she saw the beautiful taffetas and silks with which mother loved to work.

One morning she was visiting mother and asked to go the spare bedroom which mother used as a sewing room. “Bettie, let me hold the baby,” said tant Sannie and put out her hands for the six-month-old child who was gurgling happily on its mother’s lap.

Mother began to sort out dress-lengths, talking absent-mindedly to her visitor without glancing up. Tant Sannie had put the child on the windowsill, holding it with one arm. Her eye caught a particularly beautiful blue crepe and she ran forward. Neither of them saw the child disappear. When they found her, ten feet below, she was barely breathing.

She seemed to recover almost immediately and it was not until two years later that the full effects of the accident became apparent. Baba, as they called her, would not start to walk. They thought she was just lazy. By the time she was six it was obvious that not only her legs but also her brain had been affected.

When she was sixteen she was sent to hospital in Cape Town, but there was little they could do for her. Baba is thirty-seven today. She can remember things that happened in the past better than anyone else in the family but in other respects her mental age is that of a three-year-old child. She likes to play with dolls and the future has no meaning for her. That is why we still call her Baba and we all love her as our baby.

The accident to their first child – born healthy and strong – but fated never to grow up – hit my parents hard. I think at least for a time my mother was afraid of falling pregnant again.

Baba was almost seven when Mother knew that there was to be another baby. Mother and Father were an attractive couple, she with her golden brown hair and beautiful complexion and him with his deep blue eyes. There was no earthly reason why they should not have the healthiest and most beautiful baby on earth.

The discarded bundle on the bed began to stir. Old Nenna picked it up and it cried lustily. She wrapped it in a warm blanket and rubbed it gently. The piccanin had at last brought the doctor. When he saw the pathetic whimpering bundle, even he turned pale.

“Mevrou van Dyk,” he said, “if I had been called in for the confinement I would not have stirred a finger to keep the child alive.”

I think for the first time my grandmother became aware of the baby as a human being. Angrily she turned on the doctor.

“Doctor,” she said, “it is not for us to decide. If the Lord wishes that the child should live, we must not interfere. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away ...... “

Ouma van Dyk too has often been asked whether my defect was hereditary. If there is anything which ouma passed on to her kind, it was her strength and courage.

Late in the afternoon, they found Father. No one dared to tell him the truth. The light was beginning to fade when he stood in the doorway.

“What is it Mother, what has happened?” He was breathing heavily.

“Bettie ...... Bettie has given birth,” his mother answered weakly and patted his arm.

“Already? If I had known I wouldn’t have . . .. . Where is she? What is it? Why are you all looking so strange? In die naam van die Here, tell me!”

They told him. Looking straight in his eyes ouma Cloete said, “The baby has no arms or legs John. It is God’s will my son, it is God’s will.”

Perhaps it was best that my father fainted. For three days they kept it from Mother. She was exhausted and mostly slept. When she asked for her baby they always had excuses ready. Mother did not have enough milk and they bottle-fed the baby in another room. When they did bring it to her to breast-feed they wrapped it up carefully.

The news travelled through the village like wildfire. From far and wide, with donkey carts and horse wagons, with bicycles and motorcars they came to stare through the gates. People are curious; it is their nature. At such times they seem to be oblivious of the feelings of others. I know what Father must have suffered during those first three days.

It was through my sister, poor innocent little Baba, that Mother learnt the truth. I shall never know what happened in that little room in which ouma Van Dyk, Mother, Baba and I were closeted together, while outside Father was trying to explain to the increasing throng of visitors that they could not see the baby.

When Mother got up a few days later only those close to her saw the change. Alone she had fought her battle before her Creator and today I know that hers was the victory. Already she knew what awaited her. She would have to give her two helpless children such as few mothers had ever been called upon to give, more perhaps than was humanly possible.

But in our world people did not think along abstract lines. Mother’s great asset was her skill with the needle. She would see to it that her little ones would be better dressed than any other little girls. About one thing she was determined: never would she try to hide her children from the curious and merciless eyes of the world.

CHAPTER II

“RACHEL WILL MAKE A PLAN”

Defiantly and limbless I had made my entry into the world and for the next few months I announced my intentions to stay in a loud voice. Mother says that I cried a great deal, probably because of difficulty in taking food. I had a tiny mouth with a very long upper lip and I was hideously ugly. At birth there was a blood red mark across my face stretching from one nostril to the mouth. After four months it disappeared and I began to look a little more human. Yet I refused to take the breast and had to be put completely on the bottle.

Ouma Van Dyk was convinced that my mouth too was deformed and that I would never speak. She was wrong! Already at the age of nine months I said words like “Mamma”, “Pappa” and “Baba”. By the end of the first year I could speak whole phrases. A little later I was singing several verses of nursery rhymes without a hitch. My parents were overjoyed. If their second child was defective physically, her brightness was certainly making up for it.

Mother spent most of her day making clothes and my basket always stood near her in the sewing room. It was filled with rattles and rubber animals, which I managed to push around with my stumps.

One day, when I was ten months old, Mother looked up from her work and saw that the basket had toppled over and I had fallen out. Luckily it was standing on the floor and not on the table where it usually was. Hastily she picked me up and put me back, but a few minutes later it fell over again. When it happened for the third time, Mother began to wonder. Watching me out of the corner of her eye, she saw how I leant against the side of the basket until it toppled over. This time she left me to see what I would do next.

This then, was the first crisis in the life of Rachel. Too young to shape a thought, the little thing realised nonetheless that everything she wanted in life she would have to get for herself.

With a great deal of puffing and blowing, I finally brought myself upright.

Mother was still watching as I continued to struggle. Sitting on my rump, I began to move from side to side and forward a little at a time. I was crawling and walking all at once! And that is the way in which I still move today if I do not want to use a wheelchair. My parents had expected nothing like it. They thought that if little Rachel wanted to move from one place to another they would have to carry or wheel her all her life. I had solved a problem all by myself. There was no way of helping me. No little hand by which to lead me on my first steps. I, and I alone, would have to find a path through a world made for the normal. My mother’s nickname for me was “Ou Rachel Planne,” or Rachel the plan maker and ever since then I have tried to live up to the name.

With those first steps I had unwittingly proved the Biblical words that my grandmother had used to the doctors. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”. He took part of my body but He gave me a brain!

Later I even learnt to “run”. This I did by hopping as fast as I could, still in a sitting posture. It was easy because I was light and I had an advantage over others – instead of running around tables and chairs I simply went under the legs!

I was a very healthy little girl and got over all the usual children’s ailments easily. My only serious illness was a series of boils when I was four. Eight or ten would appear at a time and when they went there would be a new crop, until I was reduced to nothing but skin and bones. My parents called in a doctor and with a good tonic I soon recovered. These boils, strange as it may seem, were a blessing in disguise.

When I was born, the two stumps of my arms were of unequal length and I was unable to bend either of them. This made it difficult for me to eat by myself. I could bring the food as far as my mouth by holding it between the stumps but then the longer left stump would get in the way. You may call it ‘luck’ or you may call it ‘fate’ but as a result of the boils the left stump became a little bent so that the two are now both of almost equal length. Before this happened, my left stump was considered the stronger because it was longer and my mother made me use it more than the right one. It is still very strong today and I use it for all heavy work.