Wet cossies, sandy towels, empty food containers, unwrapped Christmas presents, Dad grumbling about the ‘bloody mess’, Mom’s mumbled responses came in late night whisper voice by the flicker of lamplight. There’d be no more meals on green plastic plates or drinks from matching plastic cups; no more hidden biscuit tins to discover and raid, or endless games of Rummy by gaslight; no more braaied fish, caught fresh that day, nor glorious sunrise walks on the beach collecting shells and bits of what the tides had brought in; no wanderings in the dunes, tracking dik-diks.
Simon rolled about in the bunk above, kicking and fighting unseen enemies, the springs in his mattress squeaking and grinding, making it difficult for me to judge the grown-ups’ movements. I shoved upward, hard, with both feet, aiming for where I reckoned his bum was, forcing him to roll over and be quiet for a while. Steven lay mumbling in his sleep on the bed opposite. During the holidays, we shared ‘the kids’ room’ while the grown-ups had a room next door.
I lay willing my parents to hurry up and go to bed, to sleep, so I could escape through the bedroom window one last time to say goodbye to the ocean. There was, at last, a deep silence, but still I waited an excruciatingly long time, trying to pick out even the slightest movement in the house. Nothing. Gingerly I crept out of bed, the mattress springs creaking unbearably loudly, my heart flipped and dropped into my stomach. Freeze. OK.
Carefully lifting the window handle, I pushed the glass wide, to be immediately enveloped by the full-throttle sounds of the ocean roaring and rumbling in the darkness. I could hear it, taste it, smell it—freedom. There was no wind that night, and the black and white checked curtains, shoved easily aside, allowed no more light into the room. There was no moon, no street lighting, just darkness. I dropped into its arms and tiptoed over the grassy verge, which, I knew from experience, was full of dubbeltjies despite Dad’s best efforts to weed them all out. I remembered him stabbing at the hard earth and cursing us for being ‘sodding lazy’ for not helping him—stab, toss, stab, toss, an angry scowl on his face, as though we’d purposefully planted the weeds to ruin his holiday.
I’d often stood a few feet away from him, aching for him to get up, to smile and take me away on an adventure, just the two of us. He’d turn his back on me, saying, ‘Go on, go and make yourself useful, I’m sure your mother can find something for you to do.’ Perhaps he sensed her lurking behind doors to ‘catch me in the act' of sucking up or some similarly heinous crime. I convinced myself he was protecting me from her, and I loved him all the more for it.
Standing on the very southern edge of the continent of Africa, wavelets tickling as they died over my feet, I’d often poured my heart out to that great unfathomable power, the ocean. Alone in the dark that night, I felt drowned by the enormity of the ocean’s restless pounding at the shore, overwhelmed by the majesty of the Milky Way and a gazillion stars strewn across the heavens. I’d made my way to the beach for some sort of communion with nature, and now I found myself shivering in the warm night air, holding my arms tight to myself, afraid to move, afraid of whatever was out there. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye, Ocean. We leave tomorrow, and I don’t want to go.’ I could barely whisper the words, a nameless dread in the pit of my stomach shooting a wave of chills up my spine and making my throat constrict. Suddenly danger seemed everywhere.
I’d tried not to wander too far from the lifeguard chair that loomed up from the beach. Using it as a marker, I glanced toward it, seeking reassurance from familiar daylight things, only to find myself being watched by a man, perched there between heaven and earth, staring down at me. I started, stumbling backward, then rolled to my knees and launched myself homeward as fast as my legs could carry me, stubbing my toes on shells abandoned by the tides. Shock, shame, fear and embarrassment raced through my mind while my feet tried to outrun them all. Who was he? Would he tell on me? Would I find the narrow gap in the scrub marking the pathway I needed to follow to find the road and home? Rather than relief at sighting the gap, anguish exploded out of my mouth in a groan that matched the overflow from my eyes. Rage! How dare the stranger be there? How dare he ruin my last night like that? I lifted my head and half growled, half moaned at the nonexistent moon, stamping my feet where just days before a cobra had slithered across my path. Thoughts of the cobra sobered me a bit, and I broke into a dash for the window, back to bed, back to prison, having tasted freedom for a while, a gorgeously hot, blue-skied and windy freedom; then I closed the window behind me and lay down to take what the darkness would bring.
Chapter Three
An ocean of sunflowers turned their faces to the west, their backs to the khaki colored veld. The landscape was barren and coarse, loomed over by electric pylon monsters that must have needed their long legs to march across a world as flat and stretched-out as the Orange Free State. In the distance, a shimmering pink on the horizon swooped into the sky, a wave that rose and settled and rose again. ‘Flamingos,’—from Dad. ‘They’ll be gone soon, migratory birds.’ I couldn’t have dreamed that such swooping, swirling, ballet dancing birds existed. I tried to collect the images in my mind—yellow, pink, blue and white—to capture some of the beauty for myself. But the enchantment passed in a moment; the day-long journey ended with a right turn at a sign reading ‘Welcome to Welkom’ (‘Welcome to Welcome’), a ridiculous name for a town.
Welcome to the unknown; welcome to the heat and dust; welcome to a new house, a new school, new people; welcome to the same family in a different hell. Welcome. I would rather have stayed in the moving car, chewing up the miles to the comforting drone of the VW engine. ‘What a shit-hole!’ from Steven. A snarl from Dad, grinding through a gear change, flashing Steven a look in the rear-view mirror, ‘You watch your filthy mouth, young man! Can’t you teach your son some respect?’—this to Mom. ‘Spoiled brat! He should be grateful I’ve got a job that provides for him. He’d do well to start learning about responsibility instead of take, take, take. Who just took him on holidays, and bought him a surfboard—wasn’t that me? And paid for the petrol you used running him around all day because he can’t entertain himself for one minute!’ Dad fired the words over my head at Mom.
‘Big deal!’ came from Steven, while Mom turned her whole upper body to face Dad. ‘I’ll pay back every penny you spent on my son, you miserable, selfish man. Look around you; who would choose to live in a dump like this? But we have to, don’t we? Because you’re a wimp who’ll do whatever the company says! A real man would stand up for his family, put them first!’ Mom threw herself back into her seat and turned her face to the window, her shoulders shaking as though from sobs.
Red in the face, Dad set his jaw so hard that I could hear his teeth grind. I felt bad for him; he believed that no-one appreciated him or anything he did for us. I wanted to shout, ‘I do! I’m so grateful for the holiday, for the ice-creams after the beach, the Wimpy toasties dripping with cheese, and the Fun Fair in Port Elizabeth, where I got to go on the Big Wheel and toss balls into clowns’ mouths! I’m grateful for the freedom, and most of all for having you so close by all the time.’ But I didn’t dare say a word. Mom was muttering to herself, just loud enough to be heard, but she may as well have been shouting for the tension I felt, sitting between her and Dad on her big red vanity bag lodged between the two front seats of the Kombi. Welkom was rushing at me through the windscreen, the ocean so far away it may as well have not existed.
The drive here from Paradise Beach had been an awful journey, with none of the happy expectations our outward holiday trip had offered. I’d had to vomit. I’d endured the usual lecture before the journey began: ‘Do not vomit in the car.’ ‘Yes, Daddy.’ ‘If you feel ill, ask for the car to be pulled over and vomit in the bushes where no-one can see you.’ ‘Yes, Daddy.’ But how to judge when the queasiness was going to erupt like a volcano? I wasn’t able to. Despite having been on guard the whole time, hand on the window latch in case, boom! Tomato sauce crisps splattered grotesquely over me, over a box of purple plums, the seat, the floor. I’d only eaten the chips because Dad had bought them for us and I didn't want to make him feel bad; I hated tomato sauce chips.
‘For God’s sake!’ Dad yelled, swerving onto the gravel kerb and screeching the brakes hard enough to make us all lurch forward. All eyes were on