At the appointed time, my doorbell buzzed, twice. I opened my flat door, checking no one was about, and ran to open the communal door, quietly. Dirinda’s son was waiting on the doorstep. From behind the big door, I gestured him to step inside. Not the usual way to greet your friend’s son, and on first meeting too. But these were strange times.
My flat is on the first floor and I fairly flew back up the stairs, with Natal close behind, shutting my flat door gratefully behind us both.
I gave him a reassuring smile. Then my stomach told me something that might matter to my heart. Natal was beautiful. What would he see when he looked at me? A woman, flushfaced, his mother’s age.
He might judge me for my extra years. I might judge him for his youth. Either way it’s wrong. As for his beauty, (black eyes, red lips and slender nose), it’s a lottery. “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” my grandmother said. Of all the things to pop up into my head – her words must be embossed on my bones.
When my friend Dirinda asked me to hide her son, I could not refuse. Natal depended on me. No wonder my grandmother was appearing centre stage in my mind, to remind me not to fall prey to my seduced eye.
Worried he might think me unfriendly, I turned warm.
“Ah Natal, it’s good to meet you at last,” I said.
Natal followed me down the corridor. Trying to get my bearings, to keep me pinned to ordinary reality, I noted everything. I am not sure how reassuring this was. My bicycle glinted, as if to say: “Things will never be the same again. We may look like your everyday objects but tonight it’s all going to change.”
I hurried to the stove when we reached the kitchen, the cook’s role being a good diversion. Doing something practical, central to life. My wooden spoon stirred the kamut grains bubbling in hot water, and I lifted the lid to the steamed carrots and wild garlic.
“No one saw me when I came in,” said Natal.
We all reach crossroads in our lives. Even if the signposts are well displayed, the names of the destinations legible, nevertheless they can only give an indication of what to expect. We are like tourists, dependent on guide books, which give a sketch – a place’s potted history, where to stay depending on your budget. But it is not until we reach the our chosen destination that we really get a sense of where we are have landed.
But we are not tourists. We cannot simply return to our familiar homes after the excitement of travelling. Once we are on a particular path, we have to stick to it, or take another one. We can spend the rest of our lives looking back to that crossroad, saying: “What would have happened if I had taken the other path?” But really, we will never know.
Natal was 19, the same age I was when I chose not to carry on with my pregnancy.
Tags: Mystery novel
