A gentle drizzle settled in over Main Street. The small drops barely touched the ground, and a thin layer of dust and autumn leaves covered the pavement. Pete walked slowly, tilting his face skywards to feel the watery kisses on his skin. He walked with trepidation, wary of haste, not wanting to get there too early, but he didn’t want to turn around either. If he had stayed home, he could have been paging through the latest CAR magazine right now or listening to tapes, but instead, he was walking in the middle of Main Street – shrouded in the drizzly haze, seemingly without beginning or end, that had settled over the emptiness, an emptiness filled with secrets.
The only sounds were his North Stars treading cautiously on the time-battered paving slabs. In the distance, an Indian mynah called out to a friend, but just as quickly the soft white blanket protecting the town drowned out its call. Just like it did everything else.
Pete stopped. He should have stayed home. Around him dark shadows made the road appear void-like, as if he stood on the edge of a cliff and the wind was begging him not to jump. But his North Stars had other ideas. His eyes followed one “Closed” sign after another, and with each step, the cliff came closer, and the drop seemed higher, until a strained accent called out from the darkness, “Pete ... psst.”
He was here again. It was Sunday afternoon, and he was standing outside the Eating House, hiding in the shadows with a black guy named Petrus. Couldn’t he just step off the cliff and let the misty haze consume him?
“I thought you might not come,” Petrus said.
Pete stared at Petrus’s bare feet. Yellow lines of damp dust formed sagging socks around his ankles. His left leg was sprinkled with spots of white paint, and his hands were covered with scratch marks. It was not difficult to imagine what he had done in the time that Pete had half-heartedly started mowing the lawn, read the first twenty pages of Animal Farm, flipped through the celebrity news in his mom’s magazines, and listened to Alphaville and Foreigner so many times that both tapes got stuck. He’d had to carefully remove the tapes, not to tear the delicate film, and wind them back using a pencil.
“Are we not going?” Petrus was getting anxious.
“Yes, we’re going,” Pete said without intonation. He wiped the drizzle from his forehead and wondered why it felt like he was going to see her for the first time? Did everything change the week before? Was she right: did their visit make it real? And by going back, did it mean that none of them would never escape this thing? This reality would become their reality, like a tape that was trying to play, but the film had fallen off and now it was just spinning, eating the film – destroying it – until there was nothing left?
“Are we doing the right thing?” Petrus asked as they approached the Naidoo and Sons sign. Pete was taken aback. Could he read his mind? Did a witchdoctor give him some concoction that made him clairvoyant? The suspicion evaporated when Petrus started fidgeting with his black curls and then tugged his ear. He wasn’t clairvoyant, Pete thought, he was just nervous, like him.
They walked up to the door and Pete tapped against the window with his fingernail that he really should have trimmed a couple of days ago. He looked at his watch, it had just gone 15:04.
“My mom always says a lady should never be kept waiting,” Sarita said with a mischievous smile and handed them each an ice-cold bottle of Coke.
They both smiled uncomfortably and started drinking.
“So, back to school tomorrow?” she asked.
Without warning, a burp bubbled up in Pete’s throat. “Yup, back to the cage,” he said with great effort.
“How about you, Petrus?”
“Yes, also tomorrow.”
“Where is your school?”
“It’s Jabulani Secondary School, on baas Lubbe’s farm.”
“How far is that from your home?”
“Eish, probably one hour.” Petrus gestured with his hands that it was an approximation.
“Walking?” she asked.
“Walking, running. Both.”
“You run two hours every day and then you go for a run in the afternoons as well?” Pete had to ask; it was just too preposterous to be true.
“Yes, I like it. It makes me fast.”
“Dude, that’s crazy.” Pete shook his head and sipped his Coke, his disbelief quickly turning into awe.
“And you, Pete? Are you at Dundee High?” Sarita asked.
“For my sins, yes. It also takes me an hour to get to school, but on a bus. If I had to run to school, I would have left school a long time ago. I probably would have dropped out in Standard Five and be selling jaffles for a living now,” Pete laughed, but it was funnier for him than the other two. He imagined humour probably didn’t translate well, or perhaps they didn’t know what jaffles were.
“Do you know jaffles?” Pete asked. Neither did.
“It’s very simple. You have these two round plates that you pinch together, almost like a hinged grid.” Instead of the affirming nods he thought his story deserved, he was greeted by two vacant expressions.
“Anyway, it’s basically like mince squashed in between two slices of bread, and you cook it over ... ag, doesn’t matter. One day when my business is up and running, I’ll let you taste. So, where do you go to school, Sarita?”
“In those ugly grey buildings at the end of Main Street, Dannhauser Secondary School,” she said with a little sigh.
“Oh yeah, I know exactly where it is. I’ve heard that that school only goes up to Standard Eight, no Standard Nine or matric. Is that true?” Pete asked.
“Yes, unfortunately. I’ll have to go to a new school next year. There is a decent school in Ladysmith that my dad likes, or perhaps they’ll send me to Durban. We’ll see,” she said.
“So, leaving Dannhauser?” Pete asked. Unexpected angst flowed through him, like there was something very precious entwined within that moment, something he couldn’t place, but that felt like it was slipping through his fingers.
“Isn’t there an Indian school in Dundee?” he asked before she could answer.
“There is, but we don’t have any family there, so it will be Ladysmith or Durban. We have lots of family in both of those,” she said and tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Can’t you take a bus?”
“There are no school buses for Indians. Apparently, public transport to Dundee is also very expensive.”
“That sucks!” Pete said, much louder than he should have. “I mean, that’s bad, for you, and your parents, right?”
“I guess.” She meandered away with her hands tucked behind her back and stared at some of the latest Bollywood videos.
“Maybe it’s a good thing. We all want to leave Dannhauser eventually, don’t we? I will just get my opportunity sooner,” she said after a pause.
“My father says this town is the best place in the world. He says in cities you only find two things: hunger and trouble,” Petrus said.
“So don’t you want to leave?” she asked.
“Well, maybe one day to run the Comrades marathon,” Petrus smiled shyly. “I don’t know if there is anything out there for me.”
Sarita turned away from the videos to face Petrus. “Aren’t you curious?”
“Yes, but—” Petrus tugged his ear again. “Eish, here I have a name, my father has a name, and my mother has a name. There in the city ... I’ll just be another black farm boy. I don’t think—” Petrus stopped and took a short breath, the kind that doesn’t even make it to your lungs.
“If you can get matric, you’ll do well out there,” Pete said. “Not many blacks, um, black people, have matric. You’ll stand out. Our maid’s son finished matric last year and he got a job at the mine straight away. A good job.”
“Eish, I don’t know. I like the farm, and one day I’d love to have my own cattle, lots of them, but ... sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live here in town, in a nice house, with a TV. Just for a little while.” Petrus looked up at the ceiling and slipped his hands into his pockets. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no place for us in town. My father says you shouldn’t dream dreams that can hurt you.” He jolted suddenly, as if he had just been woken up. “Besides, I have to leave school after Standard Eight, to work on the farm full time.”
“Why can’t you just finish matric?” Pete asked.
“There is too much work on the farm. Baas Gerrit said he would pay for my books and uniform until Standard Eight, but then I have to work for him full time. He said it’s important to learn about reading and writing, but the rest is just book stuff.”
“He probably knows once you have matric you could get work any-where. I think he’s blocking your progress because he’s worried you might leave,” Pete said, rather upset by the idea.
“Aikona, he’s a good man; there’s just a lot of work on the farm and my father also said that all this school business doesn’t speak as loud as real work.”
“What if you made him a deal?” Sarita interjected. Both guys turned to her in surprise.
“Deal?” Petrus dared ask.
“Yes, a deal. You could say to him: if he supports you through to matric, then he will benefit because you will be able to take on bigger and more challenging roles to ease his workload. In return, you will pledge to work back the extra years he helped you. So, if you include Standard Eight, that means you will guarantee to work for him for at least three years after matric.”
Petrus pondered her words. He turned to Pete as if to ask for help, but Pete nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know if baas Gerrit—” Petrus started.
“You will never know unless you ask. What have you got to lose?” Sarita said. Pete continued nodding to convince Petrus, all the while thinking that it was quite clear that Sarita was the daughter of a businessman.
“Eish, I’ll try. He’s a difficult man, but I really want matric.”
“You must. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll end up in the same position you’re in now,” she said. Petrus answered with a perturbed but agreeable moan, scratched his hair a little and focused all his attention on the last few drops of Coke in his bottle.
“Are you going to become a politician, Sarita?” Pete asked with a grin. He watched her face closely, how it lit up every time she thought of a new idea. There was a joy in her that was lightyears away from the pain of the week before. But he knew it was still there, and that this was merely a temporary escape. What devils haunted her thoughts, he wondered, hidden behind the soft, impossibly smooth skin around her eyes? Did she cry quietly into her pillow at night, hoping that no one would hear?
“Me?” she pointed to herself in shock. “No, thank you. I don’t like politics, or maybe I don’t like politicians? Either way, no, definitely not. Heaven knows how they can sleep at night. To lie for a living takes a very special kind of messed-up human being ... if you could call them that.” She rolled her eyes at Pete as though he had gone mad and this was the most outrageous thing she had ever heard. Petrus laughed as she pulled all sorts of comical faces.
“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Petrus asked. Pete was startled. He had been so lost in her eyes that he’d completely forgotten that Petrus was standing right next to him.
“I wish I knew,” she said, followed by a nervous giggle. “When I was young, I dreamed of being anything from an astronaut to a nature conservationist.” She turned her face and smiled, slightly embarrassed.
“And now?” Pete asked.
She turned to face him and searched his eyes as if expecting to find the answers there. Then she fidgeted with one of the buttons on her shirt. “I think it’s our ... duty to make the world a better place in some way. But what does that actually mean? Should I become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher? I don’t know any more. And then I watch the news and I listen to my parents go on and on and it all starts to feel so incredibly ...” She looked up, but not at them. “It feels so big, you know? They keep telling me that we can’t fix it any more. It’s too broken. In pieces. Does that make sense?”
“But you don’t feel the same way?” Pete asked.
She drew a deep breath and held it for a few counts before she exhaled slowly. “I believe in hope.” She smiled and shook her head. “I’m burdened with eternal optimism,” she said and fluttered her eyelashes while raising her hands apologetically. This made the others laugh.
“One thing I do know, I don’t want to be like my mom,” she said.
“How come?” Pete asked.
“I just don’t think ... it doesn’t look like she’s happy. Like she’s living inside a dark cloud or something. I sometimes wonder if she had dreams, you know, when she was young, to be something ... else?”
“Like an astronaut?” Pete asked, and Petrus giggled.
“Maybe? I just wonder if she let go of her dreams, or if she still dreams? She never talks about things like that. She married young, then I came along, the rest ...” She waved the words away as if they were inconsequential. “I’m babbling.”
“Was it an arranged marriage?” Pete asked.
She nodded.
“I have to be honest, I don’t get the whole arranged-marriage thing,” Pete said.
“You and me both. I swear I’ll run away if my dad had to pick someone for me.” The way she said it prompted a burst of laughter from the others.
“And children?” Petrus asked. “Do you think you’d want to have children?”
“Probably? One day. I’m much too young to think about things like that. How about you?”
“Only if they are nothing like my little brother. Eish, he does whatever he wants. My parents do nothing. My sisters say it’s because he’s the youngest, and all the youngest ones are always spoiled.”
“Hey!” Pete cut him off. “I’m the youngest.”
Petrus puckered his mouth and whispered “sorry”, which made Sarita laugh.
When her laughter subsided, she said, “I must say, spoiled or not, I wouldn’t have minded having a brother or sister.”
“You haven’t seen my brother,” Petrus said, big-eyed.
Her eyes glanced up at the wall clock and her smile disappeared. Both boys knew what that meant.
Before Pete realised what was happening, she had walked to well within his rather large personal space. It felt as though another person had climbed inside his skin, and he twitched and squirmed, trying hard not to show it. She smelled like furniture polish and a spring flower Pete couldn’t place. From this close, he could see that the flawlessness of her complexion wasn’t just in his mind. Her lips looked like the icing on his mom’s coffee cake, and just as sweet, curling into her dimples.
“You guys are so cool. I cannot express how much I appreciate this.” Her gaze dropped to the floor. Pete wondered if Indians could blush.
“We’ll see you soon,” Pete said, his voice croaky all of a sudden.
“Promise?” she asked, her eyes pleading.
“It’s not easy, but—” Petrus started.
“—we’ll make a plan,” Pete completed his sentence.
“I can’t next week, but really, any Sunday after that.” She looked Petrus in the eyes for a long time, almost long enough to make Pete wonder if she had forgotten that he was there too. Her eyes finally broke away from Petrus, her head almost automatically dropping as if eye contact was somehow a heinous crime, before, just for a stolen moment, she quickly glanced up at Pete with a smile that he knew meant something, something important, but he couldn’t decipher it. His stomach bounced up and down like a yo-yo.
Pete and Petrus walked back to Main Street. The drizzle had been replaced by a light rain shower, and the white clouds had turned to a dark grey.
“You running this week?” Petrus asked.
“I’ll have to see. We have our first league game – rugby – this Saturday, so I suspect training might be brutal.”
“Oh.”
“Right, I suppose I’ll see you when I see you? Good luck with Uncle Gerrit,” Pete said, turning left. The breeze had picked up and the rain sprayed against his face. Over his shoulder he heard a soft “thanks” followed by the sound of bare feet running on damp concrete.