Nadine Gordimer

A young girl came early in the morning. She had purple-pink painted
lips and nails and she wore white plastic boots, a smart little garment-
factory girl on her way to work. Any neighbourly informers watching the
house would have thought her one of the girl-friends of the son, she looked
exactly the kind of girl they believe the son of our kind of people would be
attracted to. Her long nails and her bangles clicked as she scrabbled for the
note in her bag and gave it to my father. In the midst of the strain and
tension of those moments there was an incongruous aside, in my feelings;
pride in the fact of the unguessed-at commitment of our people to the
struggle, hidden under this cheap appearance. Whites don't know what
they're seeing when they look at us; at her, at the black women from the
country knitting jerseys for sale on the city pavements, at the black combi
drivers taking over the streets, the miners in their NUM T-shirts; at my
sister, Baby, at Aila, my mother. I want to tell them.