by Shamim Sarif
“Amina, I know you mean well, and I will be careful. I’m not stupid. But life is short, and I don’t want to end it alone and unhappy because I had to live by someone else’s rules and not my own. You of all people should understand that.”
Amina sighed and pushed her hair back from her face. Jacob saw clearly the shadows beneath her eyes.
“Of course I understand,” she said. “But even I have been wondering lately whether it is always worth just doing what you want . . .” She paused as if biting off her sentence, and then added the final words, in a low voice:
“. . . and going after people you shouldn’t really go after. However strongly you feel about them.”
Jacob ran a thoughtful hand over his head and tried to decide what to tell her, because she watched him with such questioning eyes that he knew for certain that she was no longer talking about him.
“It is worth it,” he said finally. “You, more than anyone, my young friend, have taught me that, and I’ll tell you something else.”
Amina waited.
“If you start changing now, I’ll never forgive you.” With that, he stood up and went to open up for the first of the morning’s customers.
So it was that later that morning, Amina found herself sitting in her truck, at the top of the road where Sadru and Farah lived, waiting for any sign of Omar. She knew that he would probably come to Pretoria for business anyway, but she had no way of checking on this, unless she saw him arrive at his brother’s house. Impatiently she sat, humming to herself and watching the street. She saw some women come out of their houses to go shopping, but in general the street was quiet. The children had gone to school, the husbands had left for work, and only the wives and mothers were left, cleaning or cooking or, thought Amina, waiting for their brothers-in-law to visit.
Omar arrived much sooner than she had expected, and she instinctively lowered her shoulders when she saw him, trying to make herself small behind the wheel. She was many yards up the road, though, and he was not looking for her. She watched as he climbed out of the car, but this time he did not leave his jacket in the back seat. Although the day was hot, he reached in and put the coat on, buttoning up the front, and checking his tie.
“Oh no,” said Amina, under her breath. “Why are you all dressed up, young man? Are you planning to break it off? Does this mean you won’t be long?” She stared at him with eyes narrowed, as though waiting for him to respond.
“Dammit.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She knew she could drive quickly, but even if she raced to Delhof, Omar would surely be shortly behind her, and there would not be enough time to tell Miriam the things she wanted to say.
Amina turned on the ignition and pushed the pick-up into reverse.
“Time for plan number two,” she said, and looking over her shoulder she reversed all the way to the end of the street and careered around the corner, pulling up by a group of Coloured boys who were playing cricket on the pavement.
“Hey,” she called as she jumped down from the truck.
A small boy with thin arms and a button nose stood up from his batting stance and regarded her coolly.
“You want to make some money?” she asked him.
“How much?” he replied.
She laughed. “Jesus,” she said. “You’ll go far.”
She reached into her trouser pocket, extracted a shiny coin, and held it out. The boy dropped his bat and came over, only to see her long fingers close over the coin as he reached it.
“What do you want, lady?” he asked in a polite tone. His voice was high and had the strong sing-song accent that Jacob had had when she had first met him. The boy’s family had probably come here from Cape Town. She squatted down and looked up at him.
“Do you know how to let the air out of tyres?” she asked.
The boy looked insulted. “Of course.”
“I mean properly. So they can’t be pumped again?
“Of course, lady.”
“Okay,” she said. “I need you to do it to two tyres, the ones on the road.”
He looked around. “Which car?”
Amina grasped his shoulder and walked him around the corner, pausing to tell his friends, who were following her with widened eyes, to stay where they were.
“There,” she said, pointing far down the road. “The green one. The one in front of the bike.”
“I can see it.”
“Good. Now. Go straight there, undo the caps, and for God’s sake, run like hell all the way back. There’s bound to be some bored old lady watching the street. Okay? You run back.”
“Okay,” he said with some impatience. “Where’s the money?”
“When you get back,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be in my truck around the corner.”
He looked suspicious, but the money was shining in her palm, and so he nodded, and after checking that he was ready, Amina gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder before sending him on his way and retreating back to the corner. The boy ran like a hare, thin legs flying, and in no time he was crouched by the wheels, working at the caps. A few moments later, he was flying back, with the predicted shouts from a neighbour at his back, and Amina was getting into her pick-up and starting the engine. He rounded the corner like a tiny greyhound, to find that the unknown lady was already pulling away. Her arm swung out of the truck as she passed him, and their palms touched for a second to exchange the money, and the boy was left looking in surprise and pleasure at two silver coins in his small hand. When he looked up again, all he could see was a cloud of dust obscuring the distant pick-up as it roared along towards Delhof.
Sam had woken up that morning with a fever and a sore throat, and Miriam had taken one look at the child and had known that he would not be able to go to school. She put him gently back in his bed, made him eat a few spoons of porridge and talked to him for a while. Miriam had been counting through each day of the past week, living with the idea only of getting as far as Tuesday once more, so that again she might live through the torment of waiting and wondering if Amina would come. Now, on the appointed morning, her son was ill, and her attention was almost, but not entirely, diverted to the boy, to watching over his thin, bony frame.
Omar looked in at the child’s door before leaving for Pretoria.
“He doesn’t look so sick,” he commented.
Miriam was sitting by Sam’s bed and had put her hand to his forehead for the tenth time that morning.
“He’s burning,” she said. She had become used, in the last seven days, to using only as many words as were entirely necessary for basic communication with her husband. Even to say “He has a fever” or “His forehead is burning,” felt to her to be one or two words too many.
Omar had done nothing wrong in the past seven days. On the contrary, he had seemed overly aware of her, and as considerate as she imagined he was able. He had tried to show her some affection, had not lost his temper more than once or twice, had even caught himself when issuing her with orders, but the truth was, the change in his behaviour made little difference to Miriam now because she no longer much cared.
She had never before swung between such extremes of happiness and despair in the space of one week, one day, or even one hour. In a week of mind-crowding confusion, she had searched for something that she could do regularly, something that could give her a basis of routine separate from those she had built around her husband and children. So she had gotten into a habit of reading a chapter or two from her old box of books, and she read with a sense of escapism that was familiar to her from her schooldays, but also with great care and attention, as if the subtle meter and the words themselves might somehow be holding a sign for her.
She was already absorbed in her reading this morning as she watched the shop, before Omar had even left. He stopped on his way out and looked at his wife, unused to seeing her seated at this time of the day, and wishing inwardly for the reassurance of her usual busyness and continual movement.
“I�
�m going,” he said, and beneath its deep tone, his voice held that familiar plea for attention that now irritated her as she looked up from her book.
“Okay,” she said. And then she remembered that it was Tuesday, and she looked back at him.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, too nonchalantly, but he looked pleased, as though he had been waiting for this opportunity to surprise her.
“No,” he said, with a half-smile. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”
She had not responded with the gratitude that he had hoped to see, and so he had only turned and left, and she had watched him go, wishing that for once he would not be hurrying back.
At about two o’clock that afternoon, just as it began to rain, Amina Harjan came roaring through the main street of Delhof, with the fleeting thought that every time she passed this place it looked less and less like a town, and more and more like a few buildings strung together along a strip of dirt. The rapid movement of her truck brought to the few ramshackle stores and houses as much excitement as they had seen for a while—probably since her last visit—and she tooted her horn at a group of ragged-looking children and they stood in a row with some solemnity and waved to her as she passed. She smiled, but only briefly, for her stomach was churning—she had not eaten yet today, except for a biscuit with her tea for breakfast. She took a deep breath and began humming a tune to stop herself from thinking, and she was still humming when she pulled up outside the shop.
Miriam had been waiting for her but, at the critical moment, she found that her thoughts were away from Amina. There were three people waiting to be served in the shop when the girl walked in, and Amina found herself having to hold back the first breathless sentences she had willed herself to speak immediately in case she should lose her nerve later. Miriam saw her at once, and Amina smiled to notice that she blushed and avoided looking at her any more while she went back to serving her customers. The room had darkened under the rain, and Amina watched as Miriam switched on a lamp, so that she could better see the roll of material she was cutting. Her angular hands grasped the cutting shears a little awkwardly, but the line she cut was straight and smooth, and the waiting customer looked satisfied.
The tableau continued, Amina watching as each person was served, and money was exchanged along with some pleasantries and news. Robert helped on one side of the counter, and within ten minutes the shop had emptied again.
“Hello,” said Miriam, clearing her throat. “You look very thoughtful.”
Amina smiled and glanced out of the window. “I was just thinking, we always seem to meet when it’s raining. Or often when it’s raining, anyway.”
“Yes,” said Miriam. She hesitated. “These dark, rainy afternoons remind me of you now.”
Amina looked at Robert and said hello, and Miriam read the meaning of her look and took off her apron.
“Robert, mind the shop please.”
“Yes, madam.”
“And the baby.”
“Yes, madam.”
Amina had not noticed the cradle, tucked behind the counter, as though the child too were keeping watch over the shop with her mother.
“Amina, will you come up with me? Sam is sick in bed. I want to check on him.”
Amina’s eyebrows raised—she had not expected to find a sick child at home with them. She wished she had brought a toy, or a book or something for the boy. She liked him, and had noticed that despite being the eldest, he was always overshadowed by his talkative sister. Amina followed Miriam’s light steps up the stairs, her eyes focused on the back of her slim ankles, and at the top they stopped abruptly at the open door to her son’s room. They waited and listened, one behind the other, Amina’s lean frame watching over Miriam’s shoulder. The child was asleep, and Amina’s eyes went to Miriam’s face as she watched her son, and then the girl looked down, frowning slightly. She stepped back from the door, silently, and Miriam turned to her, pulling the door of Sam’s room closed behind her.
The movement brought her close to Amina, and the girl did not step back. Instead, she just waited, her eyes fixed on Miriam’s; a few faint lines of concern lay feathered across her forehead. Her hand moved to her hair and then back again. The gesture was an awkward one, and Miriam knew the girl was extremely nervous.
Miriam watched her. “You didn’t come today to give me a driving lesson, did you?” she said.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. What did you come for?”
For the briefest moment, Amina’s eyes, when they came up to meet Miriam’s, contained that flash of mischievous suggestion that Miriam recognised so well from her early exchanges with the girl.
“To see you,” she replied, her eyes intent again. “And to talk to you. I have to tell you something.”
Miriam felt her heart moving down her body until it came to rest somewhere near the base of her stomach. So, she thought, is this how it ends, before it even begins? She pointed to the open door of her own bedroom, and Amina went in, and waited awkwardly for Miriam to follow. She came in behind her and sat on her bed and waited.
Amina cleared her throat and then rolled up her shirt sleeves, as though preparing to take part in a fight. Miriam watched the slender, tanned arms slowly revealed, and then looked expectantly up at Amina. The girl took a breath.
“When I kissed you the other day,” she began, “I did it because I could not stop myself anymore.”
Miriam felt her face flush, and Amina smiled slightly again, that roguish smile that somehow reassured Miriam, because it was familiar. Then she bit her lip and studied her shoes, and then leaned on the dresser next to her with such ostentatious casualness that she looked completely ill at ease. Miriam touched the bedspread.
“Do you want to sit down?” she asked.
Amina looked relieved and took her place beside Miriam. She said something else then, but Miriam did not hear. She was conscious of nothing except the bare arm of the girl that was lying so very close to her own arm. They were not touching, except for the outer fold of Amina’s shirt which barely brushed against Miriam’s shoulder, but she could feel the warmth of Amina’s skin and when the girl moved slightly, she felt her own arm shiver under the touch of the light down on Amina’s.
“Did you hear me?”
Miriam looked up, startled, waiting.
“I love you,” repeated Amina. Miriam found she couldn’t breathe, but her face must have remained expectant, because Amina continued, her tone earnest and desperate:
“I’ve tried and tried, Miriam, I really have, to forget you, and not think about you, and not be in love with you, but I can’t help it. I can’t. And I know you feel the same. Or similar,” she added, qualifying her presumption.
“I don’t,” Miriam said, in a small voice. “How can I? It’s not right. I am married, and you are a girl.”
“Yes, you do. I know it. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
Miriam said nothing, just looked down at her hands. She could hear the pattering rain, and Amina’s voice, the voice she now spent all her days longing to hear, speaking gently above it, and she could feel the heat from her body, and she could smell the fresh scent of her neck and hair. She wanted to look at her, but she could not make herself look up, could not raise her head to find those eyes and that mouth only an inch away from hers.
“I should never have let you come,” Miriam said, so quietly that Amina had to lean even closer to hear her.
“Miriam,” Amina said, ignoring the last comment.
There was no response from the bowed head beside her.
“Miriam?”
“Yes.”
“Miriam, look at me.”
Miriam looked.
“I have to ask you something.” Miriam’s head fell again, but this time, Amina caught her with a finger beneath her chin, and turned the reluctant face towards hers again. She put her head back slightly and studied Miriam from a slight distance, her eyes narrowed a little, and interested.
“Come on.
Let me ask you something. Do you love me?”
There was no reply.
“Whose is the first face that appears before you when you wake in the morning?”
Amina’s.
“Who is the last person you think about before you sleep at night?”
Amina.
“Miriam, do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“I wish you would say something,” Amina sighed, and Miriam realised that her reply had been so whispered that the girl had not even heard it. “Anything. Even tell me to go away.” She ran her hand across her eyes, which carried a frown.
“I said . . . yes,” repeated Miriam, and Amina stared at her and Miriam felt the months of pent up fear and tension pooling up inside her, and felt the hot tears come streaming down her face. Amina put an arm around her and pulled her back onto the bed where she lay holding her, stroking her head, waiting, feeling the tears fall wet against her neck.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.” They lay like this for a few minutes, until Miriam laughed.
Amina turned her head, and smiled
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Just . . . I’m happy here with you.”
“Then stay with me all the time.”
Miriam looked into the girl’s eyes, hopeful and sincere, and so young, and she felt her logical mind return. Abruptly, she sat up, and edged forward so that she was sitting on the corner of the bed.
“I can’t, Amina. I can’t even stay with you for a day. Or an hour.”
“Why not?”
“Do you really have to ask?” said Miriam, her voice full of desperation.
Amina stood up, and looked down at her. She turned with deliberation and walked up and down the room, looking back at Miriam, and at the bed where she sat. Her husband’s bed. On the dresser was a new photograph of the whole family, evidently taken just after Salma was born. She made herself stop and examine it. Omar stood behind the chair in which his wife sat with the baby. He looked handsome, if cold, and his jacket and tie were immaculately straight. Miriam was looking away from the camera, at her new baby, and Sam and Alisha stood on one side of her, their father’s hand resting firmly on his son’s shoulder.
