Coming home

         The train panted along Chuck-Chuck, Lurch-Chuck, and Lurch-Chuck. Outside the sand was red and coarse; the bushes, grey and leafless. The sun beat down from the colorless sky onto the red sand that stretched on and on flat and forever with the bushes upon it. This was my home. I was coming home after six months at boarding school. I was excited…mommy…daddy…the shop…the farm…Auntie Polly – soon I would be one of them. The door at the end of the passage banged again and again and the wind rushed in and my skirt ballooned up and my hair covered my face. I fought my way down the passage against the hot wind which seemed to cling to every bone in my body. I reached the door, pushed all my weight against it and bang it was shut

              Jehuda's curly hair covered his soft face as he lay fast asleep on the bench beside me. Jehuda was my brother and we both went to boarding schools in Cape Town and now were heading home for our summer vacation. The train lurched slower and panted slower. A sign in big black letters said: "Pitsonderwater". This  means - well with out water. The train stopped next to two red brick houses, one tree and a tin shack house. Suitcases and cardboard boxes were thrown out from the train. There were Joyous shouts as children jumped off the train into the arms of their parents.

-"My word if it isn't little Susie" a friend of my mother's smiled to me with gracious fat eyes "You must be excited to be back." The train shuddered and sighed and we were off again.

      Of course I was excited. Boarding school was awful. I shared a room with Joss and Renee that term – three beds in a neat row, three cupboards, and three hooks behind the door.

-"Home is wonderful," Renee said as she turned her pink laundry bag upside down and all her dirty vests and panties tumbled on the floor in a colorful heap. "I never have to do this nonsense at home."

Joss sat next to her pile and mimicked the crotchety voice of the house mistress: "Count your panties \   Count your Vests \    be sure they're marked \ make a double list." 

I struggled to write my name Susan M. with marking ink, on a delicate blue panty -"The fuss they make." I said. "One would swear we do our laundry once a term and not once a week."

In the far distance I made out the green trees of Lowington, the town nearest our farm and practically my second home. I put my head out of the window and let the warm air blow my hair around.

-"What would you be doing if you were home now, Ren?" Joss asked

-"Exactly what I wanted to do. You know, nobody ever makes me do anything I don't want to. I get up whenever I like. I don't have to iron my own cloths or eat that milky mush we have for breakfast and no one ever rings a bell…" Renee sat quite still, a pink panty in her hand and her eyes were wide open and far away.

-"I think I would go for a swim if I were home now," Joss said. "You know I can go swimming whenever I like at home and nobody tells me how long to long to stay in the water and when it rains we all play scrabble together and my mother always…." She folded a woolen vest, crumbled it up and threw it on the floor.  "Everything sucks!" She said and left the room.

-"Poor girl. It's more than a year now that her mother died and she still can't get used to the idea." Renee said. "We are so far away from it all that we think everything is still the way we left it when we first came to boarding school three years ago…You know," she continued, "when I talk of home sometimes I think my mother and father are still living together in our old house in Spin street. Well Just shows, I am lucky in comparison with Jos."

The train crossed now on the red bridge over the brownish grey water of the river of Lowington. Then there were the white houses of Lowington and the church tower and the clock. Jehuda moved in his sleep.

-"How about you?" asked Renee as we continued sorting out and marking our dirty laundry.

-"Well I don't know." I said. I remembered the last time I came home. Something woke me up in the middle of the night.

-"Isaac, Isaac." I heard my mother call.

-"its 3 o'clock in the morning woman. "My father grumbled

-"Mr. Horn, the bank manager phoned again. He said if we don't pay those bills he'll foreclose on the farm."

My father spent his days in a drunken stupor. My mother toiled her days away in the little store she had opened in the farm to make ends meet.

Then he answered my mother in a strong sober voice that I hardly recognized: "That man is such a bastard. A downright anti-Semite. I suppose we could sell the bull. The wheat will soon be ready for harvest. Tell him to wait for the wheat."

-"Oh Isaac you know the wheat is going to be a disaster. "

-"I don't."

-"If only you would have given it sufficient water instead of…"

-"Alright. Alright. Coetzee was interested in the bull."

-"A pity. It's a good bull."

-"So what should we do? Sell the tractor? Than there won't be any wheat harvest at all?"

-"If only you had taken care of the wheat. Then we would have money to return Mr. Horn."

-" Nag. Nag. Nag. Why do you see only black?

Then I heard him snoring again and the night became black.

                                                           ***

The train gave a triumphant whistle and halted in the station. I woke Jehuda up. "Look," I said," daddy's come out to meet us." He wore an old brown jacket, a cigarette between his fingers. He half smiled and waved. I took my suitcase of the railing and helped Jehuda and met my father at the door. He helped us with the luggage and pressed a dry kiss onto my lips and patted Jehuda on the shoulder. He turned to Mans, the colored boy, and asked him to take the parcels to the car.

-"The train was late. Why didn't you take the earlier one?" he asked

-"I couldn't get onto it. It goes farther along to South West and they don't stop in Lowington."

-"O.K." he said as we approached the lorry. "We'll make a stop at Aunt Polly's but just for a moment because I am already running late."

Daddy drove through the wide streets of Lowington. People were standing outside of their houses with Victorian facades. It was Sunday afternoon. I rushed into Aunt Polly's house shattering the quiet with "Hello everyone."

-"Welcome." Aunt Polly shouted and came limping from the kitchen. "My How have you grown!" She kissed me and Jehuda. "How have you been? How is Mervyn's baby? "

-"They gave me permission in the boarding school to go and see him in the hospital." I said

-"Oh that’s considerate of them?

-"and how's Sheila?"

-"She let me hold the baby. It's such a little small creature. "

-" Ach, all babies look the same." said my father. "Any how, we have to be off."

-"Won't you stay for some tea?"  asked Aunt Polly.

  -"The train was anyhow late. And I have to go through Kriel before we get home."

   We got into the lorry. Jehuda and I sat in front next to daddy and Mans in the back. Before long we were speeding 70 miles an hour on the black road that writhed through the red sand and grey bushes.

-"Did you meet Aunt Esther?" asked my father.

-"I phoned her. I didn't manage to see her."

-"of course."

-"Oh daddy, you know she lives twenty miles from the boarding school, and we only get one weekend, and one Sunday off a term."

-"Nah, your like your mother. Only excuses!"

He drove on silently while my eyes accustomed to the familiar surroundings.  After about forty minutes I saw on my left grey huts rising out of the sand. We sped by a coffee colored boy who stared vacantly at the road. The air smelled of a strong scent of Lucerne as my fathered stopped the lorry before a wagon piled with newly cut Lucerne.  My father stepped out of the car and approached a white man who stood next to the wagons

-"Hey Kriel. I see your Lucerne harvest has been good. You remember you owe me a hundred pounds."

-"Oh knock off" said Kriel, "can't you see I'm working?"

-"So when you going to give us the money."

-"Come on the weekend and we'll see what we can do."

-But its a hundred pounds for renting that land."

."Don't worry. Now let me do my job."

Father stepped back into the car started the car  and got back to the road.

-"You rented the land?"

-"Only half of it.  We had to sell the tractor to return Mr. Horn the loan so I am working only with the bull. Back to the olden days."

-"Can I ride on the bull?" asked Jehuda.

My father laughed. "It's not that sort of bull. But we can do with another hand in the field."

After a while we turned off the tar road onto the dirt track. The car rattled and grunted over the white stones. On either side the bushes were larger but still grey and the sun set in the distance. Before us stretched the green river and the farm and below us in the valley lay the shop. It just had been painted and glared white. Next to it stood a large old thorn tree and then the house. My father stopped the lorry and we all got off. Next to the shop stood a crowd of colored people. The thorn tree spread its massive branches. Its knotted roots dug it firmly into the soil. A blue lizard slid along a brown stump root and I laughed. Yes I was at home. I thought of Renee. No, not a great achievement, yet home.

-"Susan!" I looked up. It was my mother. She was calling me.