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Vaselined hand of a midwife forced its way into the channel, trying to turn the baby, so that its head should come to the fore instead. A hundred razor-blades were cutting the very depth of Niki’s being. Making incisions that bled profusely and throbbed with a pain that she believed would be etched in her memory forever. She moaned and wailed. The midwives softly admonished her: a true woman accepted her lot with bravado. A true woman hid her pain inside her chest and presented an unflinching face to the world. It was a disgrace for any woman to yell like that at the agony of bringing a new life to the world. Even more shameful in a second confinement.
    She was tired of pushing. Yet they egged her on. They cajoled and threatened. They mocked and ridiculed. They burnt herbs near the bed, and filled the room with incense. Until the baby turned around. After many hours. After one whole day and one whole night. Just when she thought she was giving up on her life and the baby’s, the baby’s head mercifully erupted like red molten lava onto the midwives’ exhausted hands.
    Big eyes in the sky saw Niki’s relief. The midwives heard her sigh and joined with their own unison of sighs. The struggle was over. The baby uttered one good yelp. They cut the umbilical cord and clamped the piece that hung from the baby’s stomach with a clothes peg. Niki fell into a deep sleep, while the midwives buried the placenta in the ash heap at the back of the shack.
    She owed her body a dream-free slumber.
    When she woke up, they showed her a beautiful baby girl. A flood of love overwhelmed her. She wanted to hold her tightly against her breasts. And to protect her fiercely against anyone who would dare question her reason for existing. The midwives said the baby looked like a porcelain doll. They jokingly called her Popi, another word for “doll”. And that became her name.
    When we finally got to see Popi, we were not in the least taken aback that she looked almost like a white woman’s baby. Themidwives who attended to Niki were not astonished either. Of late they had been helping quite a few black women from Mahlatswetsa Location and the neighbouring farms, who had been giving birth to almost white babies. Or to “coloured” babies, as they were called. As if they were polychromatic. Or as if everyone else in Mahlatswetsa was transparent. Some barn women were already cuddling their own coloured offspring, while others’ stomachs were expanding by the day. It was a bursting of forbidden sluices that we were all talking about in Excelsior.
    After the baby had been cleaned and wrapped in a soft white blanket, she slept peacefully in her mother’s arms. The baby was obviously exhausted after the long struggle. The midwives snickered and whispered among themselves that she shared features with Tjaart Cronje. She had Tjaart’s eyes. She had Tjaart’s fingers. She had Tjaart’s ears. She had Tjaart’s nose. She had Tjaart’s rosy cheeks.
    Niki heard every word, for she was not asleep after all. She had just closed her eyes, enjoying the softness of the baby’s body against hers, careful not to hold her too tightly against her breast, lest she squeezed all life out of her tiny body. She wondered how the midwives had suddenly gained such great expertise on the shape of Tjaart’s body parts. Her child had nothing of Tjaart’s, she convinced herself. The midwives were seeing what they wanted to see. Their ill-gotten knowledge of barn escapades made them reinvent her beautiful baby in the image of Tjaart Cronje.
    The image of Tjaart Cronje began to haunt her restful state. It transformed itself into a daymare. Tjaart Cronje. All of seven years old, yet his crush on Niki had persisted. Exacerbated by her naked body that continued to loom large upon the floor scale of his imagination. Exacerbated even more by her big round belly.
    Madam Cornelia had continued to use her