The Year of Facing Fire. Helena Kriel

the finches are squabbling over the leftover bread from lunch and the dogs are at our feet, waiting for inevitable scraps.

      “They called security and a guard came,” Evan says.

      “He didn’t know what to make of us,” my mother says. “Ev looking like Rasputin and me standing next to him under the umbrella, holding a book of psalms. We said: What are we doing wrong? We’re just praying.” And meanwhile the wedding going on inside the circus tent.

      “I peeped inside and I saw Lexi walking around the fire with her sari tied to her husband. I realised we were making no difference, so I said to Ev: The ceremony is proceeding, let’s leave, and we went down to the beach. It was full of huge, black women swimming in their broekies and bras. So Ev and I dumped our clothes on the sand and also went into the sea in our underwear. And some man groped me. I felt these arms around my legs, and there were waves crashing over us, so I pinched him hard and managed to swim away.”

      “I suppose there must be a reason for it all happening this way,” I say. “Lexi in India and in a temple and all that.”

      “I don’t see any purpose in it,” my mother says.

      “We’re finished if we don’t believe life has a purpose,” Evan says.

      I feed the dogs the scraps of leftovers.

      “That’s enough,” my mother says. “They’ll get fat.”

      “They’re already fat.”

      “Well, I don’t want them getting fatter.”

      I continue feeding them.

      “No one listens to me!” my mother says. “That’s the bloody problem with all of it. So now Lexi’s in India and married and there are fat dogs.”

      I feed them the last of the bread. “They’re not so fat.”

      “Certain things are unknowable,” Evan says on his way to the couch. “Certain things are just impenetrable.”

      My mother takes the rest of the bread out for the birds to get it away from the dogs.

      “Now the birds are going to get fat,” I say.

      “They’ll fly it off,” my mother says. “There’s no such thing as a fat bird.” She sprinkles the bread across the bird tray. The finches flutter to higher branches in the old peach tree to watch from a safe distance, mottled orange heads poking over sinewy black branches like blossoms making their way out of old bark.

      My mother lapses, staring into the garden. And Ross lapses, lying on the floor with his feet on the dogs and a book on fifteenth-century witch hunts, and Evan is lapsing into sleep on the couch with David Copperfield, which he’s reading for the third time, and I lapse, looking at the finches regrouped around the Sabbath bread, framing the square feeding tray like little bird soldiers. And so the afternoon takes us into night.

      In the evening, three stars will signal that the Sabbath is over. I stand outside with Ross, side by side on the slope that leads onto the sea of emerald grass. We search the black sky.

      “So, when you heading back to LA?” he asks.

      I hesitate. “I’m not going for a while.”

      “Haven’t you got work to do? Don’t you have to hand in your script and all that?”

      “I can do it from here. Joys of the writer’s life.”

      He regards me. I can see this doesn’t satisfy him; he’s too clever for that.

      “I want to be around till Ev is stable.” This is vague enough, but gives him some information.

      Ross shakes his head. “Ev is on medication, so what’s the problem? TB’s not such a big deal. I’m confused.”

      “Ugh, you know …” I taper off.

      We continue to search for stars over the long, slanting roof of the house towards where the thorn tree emerges, a giant dark green coral making the long shape of the house look like a submerged ship. Ross points and, yes, two diamond chips hang in the dark there, tiny fish in a big black sea. The Sabbath is over. We go back inside. Evan and my mother are sitting in the almost dark, as though in the submerged ship, surrounded by dark ocean.

      “No stars yet,” I say, keeping with the family tradition.

      “Well, let’s have some sherry while we wait.” My mother pours four glasses and we sit and sip, surrounded by black water, waiting for the Sabbath to end, though we all know it’s over and the sea-sky is now completely salted.