653289528350

Things like that happened a lot. I was bullied all the time. The incident at the mulberry
tree was probably the worst of them. Late one afternoon I was playing by myself like I always
did, running around the neighborhood. This group of five or six colored boys was up the
street picking berries off the mulberry tree and eating them. I went over and started picking
some to take home for myself. The boys were a few years older than me, around twelve or
thirteen. They didn’t talk to me, and I didn’t talk to them. They were speaking to one another
in Afrikaans, and I could understand what they were saying. Then one of them, this kid who
was the ringleader of the group, walked over. “Mag ek jou moerbeie sien?” “Can I see your
mulberries?” My first thought, again, was, Oh, cool. I made a friend. I held up my hand and
showed him my mulberries. Then he knocked them out of my hand and smushed them into
the ground. The other kids started laughing. I stood there and looked at him a moment. By
that point I’d developed thick skin. I was used to being bullied. I shrugged it off and went
back to picking berries.
Clearly not getting the reaction he wanted, this kid started cursing me out. “Fok weg, jou
onnosele Boesman!” “Get the fuck out of here! Go away, you stupid Bushie! Bushman!” I
ignored him and went on about my business. Then I felt a splat! on the back of my head. He’d
hit me with a mulberry. It wasn’t painful, just startling. I turned to look at him and, splat!, he
hit me again, right in my face.
Then, in a split second, before I could even react, all of these kids started pelting me with
berries, pelting the shit out of me. Some of the berries weren’t ripe, and they stung like rocks.
I tried to cover my face with my hands, but there was a barrage coming at me from all sides.
They were laughing and pelting me and calling me names. “Bushie! Bushman!” I was
terrified. Just the suddenness of it, I didn’t know what to do. I started crying, and I ran. I ran
for my life, all the way back down the road to our house.
When I ran inside I looked like I’d been beaten to a pulp because I was bawling my eyes
out and was covered in red-purple berry juice. My mother looked at me, horrified.
“What happened?”
In between sobs I told her the story. “These kids…the mulberry tree…they threw berries
at me…” When I finished, she burst out laughing. “It’s not funny!” I said.
“No, no, Trevor,” she said. “I’m not laughing because it’s funny. I’m laughing out of
relief. I thought you’d been beaten up. I thought this was blood. I’m laughing because it’s
only berry juice.”
My mom thought everything was funny. There was no subject too dark or too painful for
her to tackle with humor. “Look on the bright side,” she said, laughing and pointing to the
half of me covered in dark berry juice. “Now you really are half black and half white.”
“It’s not funny!”
“Trevor, you’re okay,” she said. “Go and wash up. You’re not hurt. You’re hurt
emotionally. But you’re not hurt.”
Half an hour later, Abel showed up. At that point Abel was still my mom’s boyfriend. He
wasn’t trying to be my father or even a stepfather, really. He was more like a big brother than
anything. He’d joke around with me, have fun. I didn’t know him that well, but one thing I
did know about him was that he had a temper. Very charming when he wanted to be,
incredibly funny, but fuck he could be mean. He’d grown up in the homelands, where you had