AUNT JOAN

By

Alistair F Gabriel

Yakeen sat at the kitchen table, legs crossed on the steel support bar of a breakfast stool, fingers interlaced, thumbs twiggling and about as patient as an eighteen year old could be, given the circumstances.

His mother, Mrs Jane Atwaru, paced somewhat nervously on the green linoleum floor, from the pantry door to the condiments drawer and then back again.  Without even pausing to look at her son she asked, “Would you like a sandwich? I would like one. What will it be?”

“You asked me that already Ma.  I’m not hungry.”

“Right, right.  Maybe some tea then.  It’s cold out, perhaps a cup of hot coffee?”

“Ma, what’s going on?”

The last time he’d seen her this unsettled was when she had to break the news of the death of their Labrador Lester, who’d been run down by a speeding delivery van.

Ignoring the question, more as if she hadn’t even heard it at all, she crossed over to the counter top and flicked the switch of an electric kettle.  She paused there awhile, took a breath and then sat on the stool across the table from her son.  She then proceeded, with her palms, to remove unseen wrinkles from the chequered tablecloth.

For a while there was nothing to be heard but the soft rumble of the kettle element which to Yakeen, was the same as the sound of light rain falling on their roof-tiles.

Then Mrs Atwaru stopped her fiddling, balled her fingers into two clenched fists and asked, “Yakeen, do you remember your Aunt Joan?”

“Yes Ma. We spend an evening talking about Aunt Joan at least once every winter.”

Mrs Atwaru bit her lower lip, unballed her fists and took another breath.  When this time she spoke, she had to compete with a now much louder kettle element, “No, I don’t mean what you’ve heard us say about her. I- , well guess I’m asking if you have any of your own memories of her.”

Yakeen was six years old when his mum’s sister Joan had died.  Old enough to have some recollection of her but perhaps not old enough to recall too much of detail.

He thought about the question carefully, digging into the reserves of his long term memory.

“Well, I remember some of her visits because she always brought me and Kerwin chocolates.  The really tasty ones with the red wrappers.”

“Lindor,” Mrs Atwaru said, rising from the stool and using the boiling kettle water as an excuse to hide the tears welling up in her eyes.

Coffee mugs clinked and the sugar container rattled as she proceeded to make herself a cup of instant coffee.

When she felt she gained enough of her composure she asked, “Sorry hon’, did you say you were having a cup?”

“No Ma, I’m fine.”

Yakeen was used to his mother behaving this way when the subject was Aunt Joan. He never understood it really and he never thought to ask why.  Peculiar also was how, on just one cold night in winter, when the family were gathered together around the heater in the lounge, the conversation would turn towards memories of Aunt Joan.   His parents would tell stories of her kindness or remember with fondness some of her famous clichés.  They would talk about how she faced hardships with exasperating optimism and how she always made the best of unpleasant circumstances.  It was as if the Atwarus’ wanted their children to always remember who she was, as if they themselves were trying not to forget.  Yet when that night was over, such a night was never to be repeated until the winter of the next year.

This was another of those peculiarities that he often wondered about but never questioned.  Strange though it all may have been, these were not the leading questions in the mind of your everyday teenager.

Mrs Atwaru brought her steaming coffee to the table and sat down again.

“I remember her carrying me,” Yakeen said, as she took her first cautious sip, “I remember she had curly hair.”

“I think you remember her carrying you because she hardly ever did.”

It was amazing how a memory triggered a memory which in turn triggered another.

“You know, I think I remember something else Ma.  She always smelled like new shirts.”

She laughed at that.  Almost with a mouth full of coffee.

Yakeen continued, “When I was little, dad would let me open up his new shirts from the plastic wrapping. I used to like to sniff the fresh cotton before I gave it to him.  I loved how it smelled.  Aunt Joan seemed to have that smell on her all the time.  Did she always wear new clothes when she came to visit?”

“No,” said Mrs Atwaru with another laugh, “she always smelled that way because she worked in a linen factory and her visits were always on a Friday at the end of her shift.”

“Well, that makes sense.”

Mrs Atwaru sipped more coffee, both her hands curled around the mug.

“Ma,” Yakeen began, “if she carried me just the one time, how come I remember it?”

This turned out to be another question that was just simply ignored.

“You know, your Aunt’s Friday visits were like clockwork.  Hifasma Fabrics, like most other factories, closed at one o’clock on a Friday in those years.  There was even a special bus designated to transport factory workers home on Friday afternoons.  Between the hours of one and four, it travelled to almost all the township suburbs.  That bus would pass this way at about two in the afternoon and your Aunt Joan was always on it.  She would get off at the corner of Aintree and Innes Avenue and walk the last few meters to our house.  I often wondered if you’d developed a sixth sense for her arrival.  From before you could even read the dials of a clock, you were out playing in the front yard on Friday afternoons after lunch.  You hardly ever played out front.  You only did in that last year or so of Fridays’ in the period of Aunt Joan’s visits.  Your hideout was the jungle-gym your father built for you out in the backyard.”

His aunt’s Friday visits were often the topic of discussion at what he thought of as annual Aunt Joan night but he’d never heard this before.  Even now at eighteen, he remembered his childhood days playing on the jungle-gym.  Those memories went as far back as when he was four and the year in which his dad had built it.

His only childhood recollections of the front of the house were his mother’s stern warnings to stay as far away from the begonia beds and geranium troughs as possible.

The front of their home was more like a botanical garden with great lawn, a Canada green his dad worked hard to acquire, bordered by a few indigenous wattle trees, punctuated by mums carefully maintained flower beds.  It was more a sort of display to passers-by and the neighbours alike and was off limits as a play area.  Now, hearing for the first time in twelve years of a period he’d spent playing out in the front garden, triggered a few more childhood memories and even as they sprung to mind, his mother confirmed their reality as she continued her remarkable narrative.

“You were usually out there with your blocks or that tinker-toy you liked because as much as I didn’t like to leave you boys out front, I certainly would not have let you play with a ball or those remote control contraptions your father bought every Christmas.  Anyway, at two o’clock or thereabouts, you’d pick your head up when you heard the front gate unlatch and creak open as your aunt Joan entered the garden.”

She took a few more sips of coffee before she continued, “In the first few weeks you would have a sort of blank look on your face when you saw her and you’d continue to play with your toy.  This progressed to a sort of half smile in which you paused to watch her until she climbed the porch steps.  She would kiss you on the cheek, ruffle your hair and then go inside.

“After that, and this time you were much closer to turning six, you would smile broadly when the gate opened, enough to show all the teeth you had and even those you didn’t.  Then you would bound down the footpath to meet her halfway and wrap your arms around the trouser leg of her Hifasma uniform.  She’d hug you in return but she would never pick you up.  Not until … not until that…” but she had to turn away and compose herself before she could finish that sentence. 

Another uncharacteristic display of emotion, observed Yakeen. There were other family members that had passed on more recently than Aunt Joan, like her cousin Chris for instance.  He died a few years back after a long struggle with cancer.  She could talk about Chistopher without getting emotional.  She dealt with Chris’s passing the way she dealt with any of life’s hurdles, with courage and fortitude.  Yakeen was beginning to suspect that Aunt Joan was a hurdle she had not yet climbed.  He also got the feeling that she was trying hard to haul herself over this one and this day, this talk … had everything to do with that.

His thoughts were arrested by the sound of his mother’s voice as she continued, as if she hadn’t even stopped at all, “What your aunt would do instead of carry you up to the house was take you by the hand, always your left so you would be on her right side and she would lead you into the house, never once taking her eyes off you, even as she climbed the porch steps.  It would be long after she’d left that I’d remember to bring your toys in from the deck table.”

Yakeen responded excitedly as more memories were unlocked, “Yes, I remember a bit of that Ma.  When we were all in the lounge together she would give Kerwin and I each a pack of those chocolates.  They were round balls.  I remember them because they were the smoothest, yummiest chocolates I’d ever tasted!”

This brought another pleasant laugh from Mrs Atwaru.  “You know, those were expensive chocolates.  More than a textile factory worker would want to spend on once a week but when your aunt Joan did anything for anybody it was always the best she could do.  In fact it was   one of her mottos. If -”

“If you can’t do your best then don’t do it at all!” finished Yakeen.

This caught Mrs Atwaru a little by surprise.  She blinked twice as if trying to clear a thought the way you’d clear a speck of dust in your eye and then relaxed her tense shoulders.  “I suppose you’ve heard us mention it before.”

“Yes Ma, a good few times.  Along with, a job half done is none begun, Love is stronger than pride, there is no future in the past and my favourite one: if you haven’t loved … you haven’t lived.”

Yet again the threat of tears were visible in the corners of Mrs Atwaru’s eyes and with no boiling kettle as an excuse this time, she had to fight them back on her own although she knew, before too long, it was a battle she would eventually lose.

“Yes, well Yakeen, your father and I always remember her by those words.  They weren’t just words to her either.  They were rules.  She lived by them. Those and many others.  She practiced what she preached and I can tell you, there’s no irony there.”

Yakeen could feel the impatient teenager within him rise up with a friendly warning.  He wondered how long he could keep that guy from planning an escape.  It wasn’t that he had much else to do either except for a Tintin comic book he’d been waiting the weekend to get to.  Curious though the afternoon was turning out to be, he wasn’t sure he was completely capable of listening to his mother’s ramblings about an aunt he could barely remember.

“Ma, is there any reason you are telling me all of this now?”

There was a flash of anger in his mother’s watery eyes.  There just for an instant but he’d noticed it all the same.  There had to be more to this than just memories of Aunt Joan.

That Tintin comic would have to wait my impatient young friend.  It would be in your best interest to stay put for just a little while longer.

The fourth time that Mrs Atwaru’s mug of coffee reached her lips; she gulped it down in a single swig and set the mug down rather sloppily in the middle of the table, splashing tiny brown droplets on her wrists and surrounding tablecloth.  Yakeen thought that a few of them may have landed on his forehead.  He felt the initial coldness of the spicules and then nothing as they warmed up to body temperature.  He made no move to wipe his brow.

“More coffee?” asked Mrs Atwaru, not really waiting for a response from him, “I could use another.”  And again she went to the kitchen counter, first placing a palm on the kettle jug to see if the water was still hot enough and then flicking the switch again after deciding that it was not. She stood there a bit, her back to her son and then she turned so suddenly that Yakeen almost slipped off his stool in surprise.

“Your father and I decided that we’d tell you this when you were eighteen.  There’s no right time to say these things but we thought eighteen was a good age. A time when a young man should begin to take control of his life and -”

“Mum, I’ve heard this talk from you guys a million times before.”

And she was over qualifying her statements.  She only did that when she was stalling or lying. Which was it?

“Yes, you’re right Yakeen, this isn’t about that.”

It was obviously very difficult for her to say what she needed to say and as much as his curiosity was aroused, he was also starting to get a little afraid.  Those warning bells were starting to go off in his head.  The ones that signalled the dangerous onset of significant change. He couldn’t understand what more knowledge of a long dead aunt could play in all of it but his mother would soon clear all that up and she would do it her way and in her own time.

Patience again.  A virtue that was as difficult to hold on to as smoke.

He shifted in his stool and made himself as comfortable as possible in a seat designed for short term comfort, and waited.

“For a start,” began Mrs Atwaru, still leaning against the counter-top for support, “we are going to have to tell you about the day your aunt died. It was a Friday.”

Interesting that the death of his aunt occurred on the only day in the week on which she visited them.  Interesting also was her use of the plural pronoun “we” when indeed, she was the only one here to tell the story.

This meant only one thing.  The conversation they were having was no accident.   Not the random happenstance of a kid looking for junk food in the snack cupboard when his mum comes in and starts an exchange of words that would inevitably lead to the subject of aunt Joan.  His dad was probably in on this too.  He was most likely the other half of “we.”  This made sense when you considered that mother was all too good at breaking news, especially of the unsavoury sort.  The afternoon chit-chat had taken a turn for the worse and he was helpless.  There was no means of escape. He would have to simply ride this out.

During the time of these thoughts, Mrs Atwaru had returned to her seat opposite her son.  She was looking at him but not really seeing him.  What she was seeing was beyond the present space and time.  What she was seeing was twelve years old and she recounted all of it that cold winter afternoon.

 “On the day your Aunt Joan died, she came to call on us as she usually did but there was nothing ordinary about that visit.”

“Because she carried me right?”

“Stop interrupting.  Just listen.”

“For one thing she arrived shortly after one o’clock, a good hour before her customary time.  I asked her about it but she made some excuse about the factory closing early on account of the owner’s daughter’s birthday.  She’d worked there close on to ten years and the factory had never closed before simply because it was the boss’s daughter’s birthday.  Aside from that, the fact that she was telling an untruth was written all over her face.  The one thing my sister couldn’t do properly was tell a lie.  Anyway, you were not out on the porch when she arrived because your internal clock told you that there was still an hour before she was due to visit.  You were in the kitchen, struggling to finish up a green beans sandwich I had given you for lunch.  You knew the rules.  You were not allowed to leave the table until every scrap of food was finished.  Years later Lester would get a few lunchtime snacks as a result of your distaste in green vegetables but on that day, Lester was still more than two years in the future, so there you were, gagging through every bite of that second slice.  And then you heard that front gate creak even though the door and every window was closed to keep out the winter chill.  You bolted off the chair and ran out the front door with a mouthful of iron-rich greens so fast that you were still able to meet her halfway down the path.

“When I heard the kitchen chair squealing across the linoleum tiles and the front door opening, I went over to the window to see what all the fuss was about.  Sure enough, there was your aunt, an hour early and looking not at all herself.  And there you were, clinging to her right trouser leg as usual.  Well, you can imagine my surprise when I saw her scoop you into her arms, kiss you fully on the mouth then adjust you comfortably on her right hip before carrying you all the way to the front door.  Fortunately, in your haste to get out you had left it wide open so she didn’t have to figure out how she was going to turn the handle with a handbag in one hand and the other full of six year old boy.”

At this point, Mrs Atwaru discontinued the intriguing tale in order to make a second cup of Nescafe instant.  All through the mundane process of making the beverage, both mother and son remained silent in a mutual sort of time-out, like the drinks break at a cricket game.  The game may have been temporarily suspended but the mind continued to deliberate.  It gave mother a chance to gather her thoughts and son the opportunity to process the events a little at a time instead of in one huge intimidating mass.

When Mrs Atwaru had returned to her stool she felt a little more relaxed, calm, collected.  Perhaps it was the caffeine kicking in, perhaps it was part of her ability but whatever it was, she was able to resume the narrative with renewed confidence and more likely to unfold events as systematically as she had planned, if such a word was even applicable in this circumstance.

“As I was saying Yakeen,” she began again, somewhat more matter-of-factly, “there were a myriad of things wrong about your aunt’s stopover that day.  There was the time, the fact that she carried you and then a whole host of little things.  There were no chocolates for the first time since she started that tradition.  You hardly seemed to notice but your brother Kerwin was sorely disappointed.  He kept looking at Joan’s bag, wondering when she was going to bring them out but she never did and he remembered his manners. He never asked, well least not until she started to say goodbye.  Of course where she sat was all wrong too.  I don’t think you’ll recall the living room couch we had back then but it was a foam packed three seater with the extreme right end half sunken in on account of it being the most popular.  Your aunt Joan always sat in the middle with you on her right and Kerwin on her left but on that particular Friday she sat on the sunken seat with Kerwin on her left but this time she had you on her lap.  These things caught me off guard you must understand.  Anyone looking in from the outside wouldn’t notice a single thing amiss but for me, that afternoon was ominous and I could not shake the foreboding feeling that crept slowly over me as the bizarre events of that afternoon began to unfold.”

A sip, a swallow, a stare into Yakeen’s eyes at a moment more than twelve years before the present one.

“For me, amongst all the oddities of that day, the one that stood out the strongest, enough to fill my heart with cold fear was the look on her face.  It was a face she had never ever worn in the thirty-four years she had been my sister.  That was a face of sorrow, of deep emotional dilemma.  Trauma of soul.   I’d seen that face many times before on television.  On rape victims, woman grappling with the untimely loss of loved ones, accident victims, faces that have seen years of spousal abuse, worn out, lost, covered in a fog of pain.  These were not emotions that I thought were even possible in Joan’s world.  Living the life of a cheerful optimist she seemed never in need of comfort and was instead always the comforter … to us, her family, friends, almost everyone she crossed paths with.  And so I was confused, helpless and verbally paralysed.  I had no idea what to say.  I had no words because I had never needed them before.  She seemed content to just sit there, with you in her lap, one arm around your waist and the other on Kerwin’s shoulder.  When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer I asked her what was wrong and if everything was okay to which she replied ‘it isn’t now but it will be’ and that was a typical Joan response and yet one that did little to ease my fraying nerves.”

At this point in Mrs Atwaru’s recount of past events Yakeen noticed that she seemed to have transformed from someone telling a story into someone reliving it and as she continued to speak she became less and less apart of this reality, the  now world, and more a part of a former reality, the then world.

“Joan you’d tell me if you were in any trouble won’t you?”

No reply.

“Please Joan.  You’re scaring me.  What’s happened?”

No reply.  Just a forlorn sorrowful face staring back and then a brief smile as she looked to Yakeen and then to Kerwin.

More painful silence.  I wanted to grab her and shake her till her bones rattled.

Then I was screaming and shouting profanities and all manner of curses at my stubborn sister.  At first I couldn’t believe I had cursed in front of my children but then I realised that I hadn’t.  Those screams were only in my head.

I had to get out of that room.  I thought at first that I just needed to catch my breath and try and figure the whole thing out but the truth was I just didn’t want to be in the same room with-

Who are you and what have you done with my sister?

-Joan.

“I’ll get some tea on sis.”

“Coffee.”

This time I was not even surprised that she asked for a beverage that she had, not even once, consumed in my home.

I rose, walked to the kitchen and turned in the doorframe, “How do you take it?”

“Anyway you’d like to make it,” she replied and with a nod I simply turned and well, made my escape was how I saw it.

In the kitchen, as I retrieved coffee mugs and condiments, I began to consider the possibility that the woman I had left alone with my boys was not my sister Joan at all.  Perhaps I’d watched too many science fiction movies with Rajeen because I started to think about concepts like cloning or bodysnatching and cyborgs.  The woman in there looked like Joan, spoke in Joan’s voice and really that seemed just about it?  It (subconsciously I had already begun to think of it as a thing) did not behave at all like Joan.  Didn’t make any of Joan’s usual choices, didn’t do anything that Joan normally did on a Friday visit.

I almost called the police but when the receiver was in my hand I wondered what I was going to say.

“There’s a woman in my home that looks and talks like my sister but I don’t think it’s her, could you maybe send an officer to check it out?”

Instead I dialled my husband’s number but it rang until the switchboard operator picked up.  I hung up in the middle of her “Good morning, Telkom City Planning Department. How can I help you?” routine.

Cellular phones had been in the South African market for a few years but Raj and I decided that we wouldn’t bother with them until it was absolutely necessary.  When I returned the receiver to the cradle I decided that absolutely necessary had arrived and made up my mind to call the MTN network first thing Monday morning.

I returned to the lounge with coffee, half expecting to see an empty sofa and an open door but all my kinfolk were present and accounted for.  Joan was still where I’d left her, on the sofa and Yakeen seemed content to just sit in her lap but Kerwin had become bored and was on the carpet removing the wheels of a plastic tipper truck.

The shrill ring of the kitchen telephone brought Mrs Atwaru out of her narrative reverie.  In spite of her slipping into the past to almost reliving events, Yakeen listened raptly to the story unfolding, recalling none of it save for the vague memory of being carried by his aunt Joan.

Mrs Atwaru picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.  The conversation was curt, at least from her end and she spoke brusquely but he had an idea that the call was from his father.  He waited patiently until she was done and returned to her seat.  She began to smooth the tablecloth with her palms again.

“Well?” he asked when his patience wore down to the stub of a pencil.

She looked up at him.  “You’re a good boy Yakeen.  A good boy.”

“Now who’s the clone?”

“Hey!”

“Okay Ma, I’m sorry.  It’s just when you started this I was annoyed because I just wanted to be in my room with my music and a … and a book but now I need to know.  I need to know what happened and I know there’s a reason you’re telling me all this this but I have no idea what that could be?”

“I told you that already honey.  The reason is simple enough. It was a promise that I … that we made.”

“What, you and dad?”

Again she fought against the onslaught of tears … and won.

“Let me finish this okay?”

“Please do Ma. I need to know, was it really aunt Joan came to visit that day?”

“Oh Ja!  It was really her!”

“Well, what happened after you brought in the coffee?”

“Well not too much actually.  She left shortly afterward but it was that … her leaving, that was the toughest part of that day for me.”

“How so?”

“After I had brought in the coffee I tried again to communicate with her …”

“Well sis, are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

“In due course Janey.  In due course.  Understanding comes only to those who are ready to receive it.”

I had no idea what she meant by that, well I had some idea but I was more charmed by the fact that she’d called me Janey.  A name only my sister Joan called me by and one that I’d last heard when we were school girls.  Since then it had only been “sis” or just plain “Jane.”

“What are you talking about Joan?” I asked, in response to her Zen thought.

For an answer she merely shifted you off her lap and onto the sofa next to her.  You surprised me that day Yakeen.  If it was just Joan I would have put it all down to something that had happened in her life that she was just being mysterious about.  If not for you, I may not have, well that would have been much later on but yes … I may not have pushed the issue.   Anyway, your behaviour was just as unusual as hers.  You were clingy.  You never broke contact with her until she handed you over to me at the door.  Even there on the sofa, you had your head buried under her arm and your hand as far round her waist as you could get it.  It was as if you knew … you know … that it was the last time that you were ever going to see her.

Really I had no idea what to do or say.  Observing the two of you I knew that something really extraordinary was happening but it wasn’t anything I could fathom at the time … only later and so I just sat there, perhaps waiting for understanding to dawn on me as my sisters Zen thought suggested.

“I can’t stay too long,” she said, after a short silence.

I merely nodded.

“I needed to see the children, and you of course.”

“Of course.”

My eyes screamed for her to tell me more but my mouth remained unmoving.

“I love you Janey. I really do.”

Those words had me burst into tears.  I sat there on a worn out old sofa and balled my eyes out because my heart knew something that my mind had not or was refusing to register.  That Joan had come to say goodbye.  Something had happened that resulted in her having to leave us, leave town, go someplace else … start a new life away from this one.

These considerations were all in my heart but my mouth denied any of them voice.

After another short silence she stood, in spite of the sobs that emanated from a visibly distraught sister, ruffled your hair the way she did when you first started to wait on the porch for her and said, “It’s time for me to go.”

You grabbed her around her right trouser leg, hung on tight and asked, “Do you have to?”

In reply she said five words that confirmed all the foreboding thoughts swimming in my head, ripping the last thread of sanity I had to hang on to.

“It’s not up to me.”

I broke down again, but this time running into her arms, weeping into her shoulder, staining her white Hifasma shirt with salty tears, you still clinging to her leg and Kerwin, still with his truck, oblivious to all of the drama taking place around him.

It might have been seconds, it might have been minutes, my sense of time was impaired but when we pulled apart, her last act of affection was a gentle squeeze of my shoulders with the words, “I’m sorry.”  Words I didn’t understand nor question.  The time for questions had long since passed.

She walked to the door with you still hugging her leg and Kerwin finally realising that something much more than boring conversation was going on.  He dropped his tipper truck, turned to face the front door and he asked, “No chocolates?”

It brought the closest thing to shame I’d seen on Joan’s face that afternoon, amidst all the sorrow and forlornness.

She broke eye contact with Kerwin to bend and pick you up, hug you tightly and kiss you on the cheek.  Then she handed you over to me in much the same way you hand over something you just borrowed from somebody.  Finally she turned, crossed the threshold of our front door and walked down the footpath and out the front gate without once ever turning back.

I stood there long after she was out of sight and I might have been there a long time if you hadn’t started crying.

I put you down on the carpet next to your brother and sat between the two of you, pulling you both up close and I said, “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.  It’ll be okay” but really, I was talking to myself.

“Ma, are you saying that Aunt Joan knew she was going to … you know … die that day?”

Once again he was treated with a silence that said he will get an answer when the time was right.

Answers come to those who are ready to receive them.

This was his modified version of one of Aunt Joan’s clichés.

“So what happened after she left,” he asked.  “I mean did you just sit there and wait with us till there was news …”

“No, I didn’t.  When you had stopped crying and I managed to get you into one of your Disney puzzles I called Aunt Joan’s home.  She normally went directly home after a Friday visit and she lived in Northdale which was only a ten minute ride by car but perhaps half-an-hour by bus considering all the stops and the indirect route.  I called first at about two, since she had left us at close on to one-thirty and thereafter every half hour till about four o’clock but the phone just rang and rang and nobody ever picked up.  I don’t think I really expected her to either but it just seemed like the sensible thing to do.  Remember, other than the way she behaved I had just seen my sister alive and well and from the way in which she said her goodbye’s – more of the permanent sort – I was of the opinion that she was planning some kind of getaway.  She was a spinster in her late thirties; I did have to consider the possibility that there was a man involved somehow. In fact I had convinced myself of it.  It was a call from your father at four o’clock that eliminated all likelihood that she’d eloped with some man.

“At four o’clock it was time for me to make my fifth attempt to contact your aunt.  The phone rang as I moved toward it.  It was your father …”

“Hey honey.”

“Rajeen.”

“The kids okay?”

“Fine.  What’s going on?”

He called home many times during a working week but his opening lines were always “Whats up babe?” never “Hey honey.”  And he never asked if the kids were okay, it was always “What are the kids up to.”

Subtle differences but when you’re married a good few years and you’re paying attention you can tune into little intricacies that are otherwise non-existent to the untrained senses.  We were, after all, creatures of habit and when we break habit, it’s enough to set off a few warning bells.  And warning bells were all I heard after his first two words.

“Are the kids in the room with you?”

“No, they’re both in Yakeen’s room. But Raj I need to tell you-“

“No.  Take the phone over to the couch and sit down.”

“Raj I tried to call you-“

“Jane please!”

She did as she was told.  Rajeen had bad news. Her gut told her it was about Joan.  How much worse could this day get really?

“Hello Raj?”

“Are you sitting down?”

The hand holding the receiver had begun to tremble.  I didn’t realize how bad that got until it started to knock against my earlobe.

“I don’t know how much time we’ve got. The boys are with the racing car set.  You know they start to fight if they’re left alone with it too long.”

Either he didn’t take my meaning or he thought the conversation wasn’t likely to take that long.

“Listen honey I was planning to tell you this when I got home today but it looks like things are going to take a bit longer than expected.  And I don’t want you to hear this from somebody else.  I’ve held out as long as I could but it might even end up on the six o’clock news.”

“What the hell are you talking about Raj.  You work in an office. You’re the head of City Planning; you can leave any damn well time you please.”

“Please baby. Just remain calm. I’ll explain.  I’ve known you for ten years and the last thing I’d think you were was weak. So here it is.  There’s been an accident…”

“Raj please!”

That line. That damned line.  Nobody ever wanted to hear news that began with that line.  I don’t know how I kept the phone to my ears.  It felt like a snake in my hand, I wanted to fling it but that sort of thing happened only in the movies.  It wasn’t over at the opening lines because a real person would be compelled to listen.  Compelled because you still clung to a sliver of hope that you were wrong and it wasn’t what you thought it was.  You had to be sure.

Raj on the other end, “Hon’ you still there?”

“Yes.”

Tears were already flowing from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks and onto my blouse.  This was why he had to make sure the kids were in another room.  He didn’t want them to see me like this. 

“Your sister Joan.   A freak accident.  Some truck driver lost control of his trailer, crossed the barrier and … collided with the vehicle Joan was travelling in.  Paramedics said she and the driver would have died instantly, they would have felt no pain.”

“Oh Raj. Oh Raj it’s almost as if she knew but how could she?”  I was totally dumbfounded.  Confused.  Could she really have predicted her own death?

“Raj, are you sure that it’s her?”

“That’s part of why I’m kinda held up here.  I was the first person they called because they found a Telkom card in her purse, one of my business cards.  I had to do a preliminary identification but it can only be confirmed by a next of kin.  Your parents are driving down from Durban as we speak and I may have to wait for them here.”

“Raj, you don’t understand.  She knew she was going to die somehow, when she left here she was on foot, I don’t know how -”

“Jane what are you saying, that she was there at home? That she came to visit?”

“Yes, like she always does on Friday, only much earlier but I could tell something was wrong. It was written all over her face Raj.  I was afraid she was going to run off.  After she left she must have taken a lift or something … Raj?  Raj, are you there?”

It was so quiet that I thought the line went dead, then:

“Yes hon’, listen, just sit there and wait for me okay?  I’m coming over there.”

“No, I can do this,” I said, just about managing to pull myself together.  There are some disasters that you think you could never survive but when they do strike, you realise that there are more important things than just survival.  When you’re a mother, you think of your children first, your husband, your family.  Self is always last.  I needed to hold it together for you boys, especially you Yakeen because of the attachment you had formed with her. So, even though the tears never stopped rolling and my heart felt ripped from inside me, I told Raj to wait for mum and dad. “I don’t want them to be alone when they get there Raj.  Dad might have a heart attack when he sees her.  Maybe I ought to come out there.”

“No. No.  What about the kids. I think you need to stay put.  Like I said, maybe I need to be home right now.”

“Goodness knows Raj I’d rather you be here than anywhere else right now but I have to think of my parents.  It’s too late to call them.  You have to wait for them.  I’ll be okay.  Somehow I think she prepared me for this.”

“How’s that?”

“Well she came over today but I think it was to say goodbye.  She behaved the way someone does when they’re preparing to take a long trip but never return home.  She came earlier than usual, stayed a few minutes and left on foot at about one-thirty.  She must have taken a lift with somebody and then it … I tried to call her but she never made it home.”

There was that deathly silence again. Then:

“Jane? What time did you say she left you?”

“One-thirty.”

“What time did she get there?”

“I don’t know.  Just after one.”

A pause.

“Jane?  That can’t be.  Jane honey I don’t think you’re handling this. Please, just stay put, I’m coming home.”

“Raj, just tell me what do you mean by ‘that can’t be’.”

“Well, the times. Are you sure you got the times right?”

“Yes, I’m sure.  Yakeen was struggling with his green-beans again. I always give him his lunch at one o’clock on the dot. This time wasn’t any different.  She came a few minutes after.”

“That impossible Jane.  It’s -”

“What, are you saying I imagined a visit from my sister? Imagined her carrying my son? Asking for coffee?”

“No, I-. The police called me about an hour ago.  She was traveling with her boss Mr Hugh’s to see a client.  I wanted to get home to break the news to you but the police interviewed me and then there was a delay at the city morgue and … Jane … the accident happened at twelve-thirty.”

And that’s when, just like it happens in the movies, I let the phone slip from my hand, tumble to the carpet and I began to shake uncontrollably.  That’s how uncle Bob from next door found me.  Your father had the good sense to call him and tell him to go check on me.  And just in time too because you’d already taken about three blows to the face from your little brother when you refused to put his car back on the track and like the good boy you are you would have sustained quite a few more because you never did and still haven’t broken the first rule of brotherhood that I taught you: Never ever hurt your little brother.

It was not ten minutes later that Mr Rajeen Atwaru walked into the kitchen to find his wife sitting alone at the kitchen table, her head bowed over a cold mug of Nescafe.  He put a hand tenderly to her shoulder an asked, “Where is he?”

“Up in his room.” she said, not bothering to get up or look at him.  She stayed as she was, head low, fingers curled round the mug.

Mr Atwaru moved to a position directly behind his wife, placed his thin bony fingers on her shoulders and began to massage them gently.

She straightened up at his touch and let the tension slide away as his fingers carefully removed the knots in her tight muscles.  When she felt relaxed, less uptight, she turned to him and still not rising from the stool said, “I can’t do it Raj.”

“I know,” he said, taking her hand, slowly helping her up and off the stool and pulling her toward him.  He was a small man and not much taller than her but when she rested her head on his shoulders with his arms around her she always felt safe and at peace.

“I did everything the way we planned.  Timed it right until it was time for you to come home.  When you called earlier I think he knew it was you.  I told him everything about the day she died but after that I couldn’t keep him here.  He went upstairs just a few minutes ago and I let him. I just-”

He hugged her tightly and said the only words he could, “I know.”

“Jane, if you told him everything the way we said we would, you’ve done more than I ever could even with a million attempts.  How did he take it?”

Having gleaned the support from him that she needed, she pulled away and leaned against the counter-top in much the same way as she had earlier that afternoon.

“He took it like an eighteen old boy who’d just been told a ghost story.  He was thrilled.  He believed it or perhaps he believes that I believed it.  But he didn’t cross examine me and I’m sure that’s because of all the emotions I could not contain while talking to him.  Maybe we should just leave it at that.”

“Jane, he’s a smart boy.  He’s not just going to believe you’ve told him a true life ghost story just for the hec of it or because of some promise.”

“It’s not just that.  He was there remember.  He was a part of it.  That’s why we told him.”

“You know, if I were him I could almost believe that except I can imagine how you told the story.  There would have been plenty of clues for the average Joe to figure out that it was more than just an old yarn and if I know you well enough Jane, your emotional investment in the description of events would raise the eyebrows of the most average of Joe’s.”

“You’re right of course.  I know that but it doesn’t make this any easier.”

Mr Atwaru positioned himself next to her, also leaning on the counter but when he put his hands on the counter-top for support, he put his left one over her right.  “Then there’s … her.”

“Yes … there’s her.”

“You seem so sure that she’ll stop once he knows.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s just that.  I think she wants to be forgiven.  I see it in her eyes.  She walks through here on the second Friday of July Raj, every year like clockwork and she says nothing.  I don’t know if she can say anything.  Who knows the rules to these things?  But she sits on the extreme right seat of the lounge suite even though it’s not the same old sunken one.  And she’ll stare at that picture of him on the television stand, the one we took on his sixth birthday, you know, where he was blowing out the candles while you were holding him over his birthday cake. She would stare at it with those eyes Raj.  Those were eyes of regret if ever I saw any.  She wouldn’t even acknowledge me.  There was no evidence that she even knew I was there.  When she was done, when I think she just couldn’t bear to look anymore, she would walk out the door, just the same as all those years ago and then I would sit there on the sofa and wait for the click of the gate latch and the creak of the hinges but they never came.”

Husband and wife stood that way a little while longer, at least until twilight replaced late afternoon, bringing with it the first icy chill of winter breeze and the ticking of the kitchen clock was suddenly audible in the cold silence.  Mr Atwaru looked up at it.  It was a clock in the shape of a frying pan that hung on a wall hook by its long handle and was oddly enough, a wedding gift from Joan and because she believed in only possessions of the best quality, unlike many of their other wedding gifts, this one was still working nineteen years later.

5.45pm, it said.

Mr Atwaru broke the silence, “If we leave him there long enough he’ll start piecing it together.  Especially if you told him about how he used to wait for her on the porch way before he could tell what time it was.  I think something, some inexplicable connection was obvious to him when he was four years old, too young to understand it but by the time he was six, in his heart I think he knew.  If we know our son, that knowledge will return and we’re not there to cushion the shock, well … that’s no place I want to go right now.  We’ve got enough of an uphill just trying to regain his confidence in us and yet somehow I can’t help but wonder if that would even be possible.  Some damage would remain I’m sure.”

“You see what’s going through your mind right now?  That’s what I was brooding about when you first arrived.  That we’d made a huge mistake, that there would be no way back from this but … it’s too late now. A job well done is none begun.”  She laughed, adding one of her sister’s clichés as an afterthought.

Her husband took her hand in his, gently shifting her support from the counter-top to his own body, lovingly kissed her on the corner of her mouth and said, “Come on love.  Let’s go upstairs and find our son.  It’s time we told him who his real mother was.”