When her white mother met an 88-year-old coloured lady at a traffic light, the story of Jean Barker’s childhood home changed forever It's windy. My mom sees a frail-looking older woman crossing the street, near the Blue Route Mall in Tokai. Just like she always taught me, Ma crosses with her. She says cars are less likely to drive over two people. When they reach the island in the middle of the road, the woman turns to my mother, and points to Rose Avenue: "You won't believe this but I used to live in that road.""So did I," my mother replies. Over coffee at the shopping centre, and later at Auntie Violet's flat in Retreat, Violet James tells the true, conveniently-somehow-forgotten, story of my childhood street in Kirstenhof, Cape Town.story_article_left1"We had a lot of friends there, and there was only a sand road," Auntie Violet says. She lived there with her mother Sarah and father Harry and her sisters Rachel, Henrietta, Sally, Ellen and Sybil, and brother Neville. Violet never knew her grandpas. "My mother's father was a Boer and my father's father was a Scotsman," she says.Her father, a builder by trade, built the family two big houses on what would become Rose Avenue. He was also a musician, and taught his children to play. They had an organ and a piano, and her father played violin and mandolin. When they were little, Violet's dad schooled the kids in reading and writing. He was a good teacher, like many in the family. "But for money, he was a builder."When they were big enough, the James kids went to the Dutch Reformed Church school up the road.In those times, children worked hard. "Every morning first thing we do is clean out the stove and pack the wood for the new fire and it must be so that the one piece of newspaper is sticking out so that later the fire will start with only one match.Then we had to prepare the vegetables for supper. My mother would bring what we needed from the garden. She grew all our food. There was long lines of mielies, carrots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peas, sweet potatoes, pumpkins and fruit trees with every kind of fruit. Then, my sister would run to the butcher and buy the piece of meat for the day. Then the house must be cleaned and only then we can go to school."In the afternoon, the kids washed their school clothes, and started dinner. "And then we were supposed to stay inside the house practising the piano and doing our homework."block_quotes_startMr James bought a plot of land at Langevlei, near Retreat Station. He was too old to build a house himself. He had to ask another man to do it block_quotes_endAuntie Violet was once caught out, playing in the street, when she was supposed to be practising piano. Another child shouted a warning: "'Hey! Your father's here!' I didn't look - I just ran inside. I went to go sit straight away at the piano and I started playing, and my father came in and laughed: 'Look at the sand between your fingers! Wooooh!'"In the winter, the sandy street became a river. When she and her sisters left for school on rainy days, Violet's Ma would say: "Now put your shoes in your suitcases!""We'd wade through the water to school on Tokai Road, dry between our toes with a face cloth, and put on our shoes. Also when it rained, Sir [the male teacher] who lived in our road would carry Miss [the female teacher] on his back through the water to school. Every morning!" laughs Auntie Violet. "And the children would carry Miss's case, and Sir's case."Auntie Violet remembers her elder sister: "She was so clever that after exams, every quarter, the principal asked the whole school at assembly: 'Who's the cleverest child in school?' and everybody shouted 'Rachel James!'"Years later, the council tarred the road, so it needed to be named. "The council told my father they wanted to name the street James Street, after him, because he had built three houses there. And he said 'No, call it Rose Avenue,' because he named the first house he built there Roseleigh, '... and call it not street but avenue' because it's so short."full_story_image_vleft1One day soon after, a young white man came to the door and said: "Who's the owner of the house?" Harry James said he was."The man said: 'I've got to tell you this, that you people must move away from here because this area is going to be for whites only.' My father asked him: 'Who said so?' and the man said: 'The state sent me. They said so.'""I didn't build this for the state to take away. I built these houses for my children. Not for some white person that I don't even know," Mr James told the man."The second time the man came, my father said to him: 'Just get off my premises. Get off my premises!' My mother said: 'Don't be rude to the gentleman. You must have patience man.' The man replied: 'Next time I come I won't be alone, and I'm gonna bring a gun with.' My Pa told him: 'You can bring the whole army if you like but I am not moving.'"block_quotes_start He died two days before his birthday, when he was 77, but he was 78 when he was buried, having been robbed of the home he built, on the street he named block_quotes_endBut when the man came again, he was not alone and he did have a gun. "Listen here," Auntie Violet's father said. "I'm not going to move from this house until I have another house built for my family."Mr James bought a plot of land at Langevlei, near Retreat Station. He was too old to build a house himself. He had to ask another man to do it."Before we had finished packing up, the white people came in with their furniture already."Violet's father told this white family, the Punts, to whom he'd been forced to "sell" both houses for R6,000: "You people must excuse me, because why? I'm still busy burning this other stuff." Some things wouldn't fit in the new house. Mr. James burned them in a hole in the back garden. "We were very sad. So we walked out, and my father turned back and looked. And then he got in the truck."story_article_right2The new house was cold and damp. Violet and her sister Rachel were sick all the time. "I can't sleep in this house," Mr James told his daughters. He spoke less and less. "I think he was thinking about Rose Avenue, all the time."He died two days before his birthday, when he was 77, but he was 78 when he was buried," having been robbed of the home he built, on the street he named.In 1977, my family rented a wood and iron cottage in Rose Avenue. We would have been nearly neighbours with Violet and her family. We stayed for three years that seemed - to me - drenched in perfect afternoon sun.Until now, because now I wonder if the rusted toy truck I found while digging for treasure in the garden was left behind by a coloured child who was hurrying to pack, while a white family waited with a moving van in the street.•Aunty Violet (now 88) applied for land restitution in 1994. She hasn't heard from the government in two years, and suspects they're just waiting for her to die. The houses Mr James built sold recently, for R2-million...