• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Aunt Annie takes his mother’s arm in a wizened grip. ‘I want to leave this place, Vera,’ she says in her hoarse whisper. ‘It is not the place for me.’

His mother pats her hand, tries to soothe her. On the bedside table, a glass of water for her teeth and a Bible.

The ward sister tells them that the broken hip has been set. Aunt Annie will have to spend another month in bed while the bone knits. ‘She’s not young any more, it takes time.’ After that she will have to use a stick.

As an afterthought the sister adds that when Aunt Annie was brought in her toenails were as long and black as bird claws.

His brother, bored, has begun to whine, complaining he is thirsty. His mother stops a nurse and persuades her to fetch a glass of water. Embarrassed, he looks away.

They are sent down the corridor to the social worker’s office. ‘Are you the relatives?’ says the social worker. ‘Can you offer her a home?’

His mother’s lips tighten. She shakes her head.

‘Why can’t she go back to her flat?’ he says to his mother afterwards.

‘She can’t climb the stairs. She can’t get to the shops.’

‘I don’t want her to live with us.’

‘She is not coming to live with us.’

The visiting hour is over, it is time to say goodbye. Tears well up in Aunt Annie’s eyes. She clutches his mother’s arm so tightly that her fingers have to be prised loose.

‘Ek wil huistoe gaan, Vera,’ she whispers – I want to go home.

‘Just a few days more, Aunt Annie, till you can walk again,’ says his mother in her most soothing voice.

He has never seen this side of her before: this treacherousness.

Then it is his turn. Aunt Annie reaches out a hand. Aunt Annie is both his great-aunt and his godmother. In the album there is a photograph of her with a baby in her arms said to be him. She is wearing a black dress down to her ankles and an old-fashioned black hat; in the background is a church. Because she is his godmother Aunt Annie believes she has a special relationship with him. She does not seem to be aware of the disgust he feels for her, wrinkled and ugly in her hospital bed, the disgust he feels for this whole ward full of ugly women. He tries to keep his disgust from showing; his heart burns with shame. He endures the hand on his arm, but he wants to be gone, to be out of this place and never to come back.

‘You are so clever,’ says Aunt Annie in the low, hoarse voice she has had ever since he can remember. ‘You are a big man, your mother depends on you. You must love her and be a support for her and for your little brother too.’

A support for his mother? What nonsense. His mother is like a rock, like a stone column. It is not he who must be a support for her, it is she who must be a support for him! Why is Aunt Annie saying these things anyhow? She is pretending she is going to die when all she has is a broken hip.

He nods, tries to look serious and attentive and obedient while secretly he is only waiting for her to let go of him. She smiles the meaningful smile that is meant to be a sign of the special bond between her and Vera’s firstborn, a bond he does not feel at all, does not acknowledge. Her eyes are flat, pale blue, washed out. She is eighty years old and nearly blind. Even with glasses she cannot read the Bible properly, only hold it on her lap and murmur the words to herself.

She relaxes her grip; he mumbles something and retreats.

His brother’s turn. His brother submits to being kissed. ‘Goodbye, dear Vera,’ croaks Aunt Annie. ‘Mag die Here jou seën, jou en die kinders’ – May the Lord bless you and the children.

It is five o’clock and beginning to get dark. In the unfamiliar bustle of the city rush-hour they catch a train to Rosebank. They are going to spend the night in Aunt Annie’s flat: the prospect fills him with gloom.

Aunt Annie has no fridge. Her larder contains nothing but a few withered apples, a mouldy half-loaf of bread, a jar of fishpaste that his mother does not trust. She sends him out to the Indian shop; they have bread and jam and tea for supper.

The toilet bowl is brown with dirt. His stomach turns when he thinks of the old