• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Mum’s world becomes increasingly the world she sees in the reflection of the window at night when the lights are humming, high and low in tune to the throb of the generator, and Roger Whittaker is playing on the record player. Mum’s towel slips lower over her full-of-milk breasts. I hear her crying in the bathroom when she’s squeezing them empty. Milk for no one, down the plug. Her towel hangs open at her bottom, where her thighs are blood-smeared from the tail end of childbirth. She seems to be grieving for the loss of this new baby in every way a body can grieve; with her mind (which is unhinged) and her body (which is alarming and leaking).

While Mum sways damply in the insect, hot-singing night, crooning with Roger, “Ahm gonna leave ole London town,” Dad sits in the corner, under the lightbulb, ducking the moths and rose beetles that come in search of the light. He reads to himself, eyebrows raised in distant absorption, and smokes quietly. He is stretching a brandy and Coke into the night, sipping at it as if it were a delicate treat, although it has long since gone warm and flat. The dogs lie flattened on the concrete floor, their ears pressed to their heads, eyebrows anxiously raised.

That night I go into Vanessa’s room after the generator has been switched off.

“Van.”

“Ja?”

“Are you awake?”

She doesn’t answer.

“What do you think?”

She still doesn’t answer.

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

“You’re asking stupid questions.”

I grope my way to the end of her bed and lower myself next to the rising, bony hump of her feet.

“What do you think about Mum?”

“What about Mum?”

“Well . . .”

Silence.

“Don’t you think?”

Vanessa sighs and turns over. She’s fourteen now. I can feel the suddenly heavier, womanly shift of her. The bed sags under her newfound weight. She smells different, too—not dusty and metallic and sharp like puppy pee, but soft and secret and of tea and her new deodorant which comes in a white bottle with a blue label and which I covet. It’s called Shield. She says, “If Mum and Dad catch you out of bed you’ll be in the dwang.”

“They won’t catch me.”

Vanessa knows I’m right. She says, “I’m trying to sleep. You’re bugging me.”

Suddenly, surprisingly, I’m crying; mewing my sadness. Vanessa sits up and puts her arms awkwardly over me. “It’s okay, hey.”

“What’s going on, man?”

Vanessa rocks me. “Shhhh.”

“Why is everyone so crazy?”

“It’s not everyone.”

“It feels like it.”

Vanessa says, “If you promise to go to sleep, I’ll make a plan, okay?”

I sniff and wipe my nose on the back of my arm.

“Sis, man. I’ve told you about that.”

“I don’t have any bog roll.”

“Well get some. Blow your nose. Then go to bed.”

The next morning when I wake up, later than usual, with the sun eight o’clock high and hot in the dust-flung pale sky, Vanessa is already dressed. She has been arranging for the family’s healing; she has collected our fishing rods and hats and has packed a cardboard box with reels, fishing line, boiled eggs, beer, brandy, a cheap bottle of red wine, a loaf of bread, biltong, thin-skinned and bitter wild bananas, oranges.

“I’ve made a plan to go to the dam,” she announces at breakfast. “Let’s go fishing for catfish.”

Dad looks up from his porridge, surprised.

“I really think we should go fishing.”

“Mum hates fishing,” I say. “She isn’t even up yet.” Mum is having tea in her room.

Vanessa glares at me and then stares at Dad intently. “We need to go for a picnic.”

Dad says, “I have work. . . .”

“And we’ll take our fishing rods so you don’t get bored.”

Dad looks as though he’s about to protest further. He opens his mouth to speak but Vanessa gets up, pushes her hair out of her eyes, and says, “I’ve packed the lunch. I’ll go and get Mum.” She cocks her head. “Why don’t we ask that visitor chappy to come along?”

There is a young law student from South Africa staying on the ranch. His grandfather had been one of the original homesteaders of Devuli Ranch. Vanessa and I have been watching him hungrily through the binoculars since he