Fiela's Child (Fiela se Kind)

In this brief chapter, a child named Benjamin reflects on his status in his family, and in his house. He compares himself to a lamb whose mother does not want it and will not feed it, requiring the lamb’s owners to feed it by hand. There are other children in the house, Dawid, Tollie, Kittie, and Emmie, and he says they are all treated well. It is unclear at this point what his relationship to the people he calls his parents actually is. Benjamin reveals that he and his family live in Long Kloof, a stretch of land “between the mountains” (10). His mother says they live on the better side of the mountains. “The only trouble was that the stupid Laghaans also lived on that side,” thinks Benjamin (10). 

Fiela watches as her children return from a bartering session. They have an ostrich in tow. She thinks about how much money she will make breeding this new hen with her male ostrich, Kicker. A new swell of peddlers and vendors in the Kloof have made ostrich feathers a valuable commodity, because Americans want the feathers for hats and shawls. She discusses her plans with her husband, Selling. After her children, Benjamin and Dawid, put the hen in its enclosure, Fiela sees two white men in black suits approaching. They are census workers, there to count the family members. She is filled with fear, although she and Selling have no choice but to answer their questions, which are presented with great condescension and racism towards the family. She’s glad that Benjamin left immediately to go check on his boats.

After giving them the names of her five children, she is relieved. They have been entered in the government books, and if the men will just leave now she can stop worrying about Benjamin. Then Benjamin appears in the doorway. The workers are astonished because he is white. Fiela tells them that Benjamin is her “hand-child,” and that she found him where his mother had left him on her porch, nine years prior. One of the men remembers that a child went missing into the forest nine years earlier. They question Benjamin, but he can’t remember how he arrived at Fiela’s house. The men leave, saying they will go the following day to Knysna where the missing child disappeared from, and will ask questions they believe will disprove Fiela’s story about Benjamin. 

Three months pass and winter begins. Each day Fiela watches the road. Selling tells her that the government men will not return, but she doesn’t feel reassured. Then it is time to take the ostriches to pasture, which makes her nervous. Pollie, the hen, is incorrigible and has a mean streak. When they eventually let her out of her enclosure, Fiela is worried that she will run away, or take flight, and they will lose their investment.

After four months of putting the ostriches together in the pasture, Kicker has still not taken the hen. Fiela is impatient for them to breed so she can start profiting from their babies. Selling tells her that it will happen when it is supposed to happen. At the end of the chapter, the children tell Fiela that Pollie is dancing. This means she is either pregnant or happy, which will both lead to ostrich chicks. Fiela is relieved about the success with the ostriches and about Benjamin’s continued safety.