It must have been the sound of midnight that woke me. The house without my mother felt unguarded. It seemed her presence warded off a fury of demons. I sat upright in my clean girl’s bed, trying to feel the pulse of the night. I slipped my feet over the side of the bed and listened.The darkness is covered by a haze that makes the still corners move.
I knew that my mother had not returned.The wild child with snot streaming from his nose and eyes, he had her still. I sat at the lounge window, watching the sea, hating the wild child. He had come after supper, his little body panting like a steam engine. He ran up the hill in the rain, he had run all the way from the settlement. He sobbed, buried his head in my mother’s trousers.
“Please, please, asseblief, please,” his broken voice scratched.
Wishing so very hard that he hadn’t come, I watched the boy cry until my mother barked, “Evelyn, get out of here.”
I prayed that the wild child would leave: go back to your plague, I screamed silently. It was too late. He had brought his plague with him. It wandered about our house and muffled my warnings. So she did not hear me, and let the child take her away.
Her trousers soiled with tears and mucus, she rushed into her bedroom, where I was watching one of those endless sitcoms about silly teenagers. She grabbed her car keys.
“Don’t wait up for me.”
I would not have waited for her. Even now, in the dark hour, I was not waiting for her.
I must have stayed at the window for at least an hour. I saw the sea roar-smash-roar against the rocks. I saw the stillness of the midnight road, the white line running on towards the mountain. The road was empty; but then I saw two people walking up the hill. They walked slowly and closely in their midnight world. The walk was a stagger. They fell pleasantly against each other. I saw them walk towards the house and only then did I see who they were.
When Jessica and my father entered the house, quietly and with the guilty grace of burglars, they were glowing from the wind and walking and waves and the wildness of the night’s beauty. The haze inherent in the darkness was centred around them. I looked on with envy, for I too wished to walk the empty night with them.
Jessica let out a startled sound when she saw me curled up on the window-sill. “Look at you,” she fussed, “hanging around dark windows like a sad little ghost.”
Her face was close to mine and her breathing deep.
“Have you been watching for your mother? Has she come home yet?”
I shook my head. I had not been waiting for my mother.
She held my hands in her cold, cold fingers. “Your hands are freezing,” she said.
“You need some Milo. How long have you been sitting here? Long? Your father and I went to see if your mother was coming home. I wish she’d phone, but then they probably don’t have one. I really don’t understand why Annette involves herself in other people’s business. But I suppose you should count your blessings. When we were small, your mother and me, all we had to play with was scrap metal.”
Jessica chattered on, repeating the stories I had heard so many times. My mother came home while I was clutching my Milo. I was playing the mournful ghost, the sick patient, and all the while glowing in the attention of both my father and Jessica. Jessica was chattering brightly, so bright that she made the darkness her own while I huddled in its shadows. My father was silent, his eyes as dark as night. Jessica’s words tripped out of her mouth and drew circles around us.
Then Annette stepped into our enchanted circle. She asked for tea. As Jessica made the tea her words stumbled then stopped. My father went to bed, taking my hand as he left the kitchen. I did not want to go to bed. I wanted to be in the kitchen with just my father and Jessica and me.
This is an extract from Jungfrau, for which Mary Watson won the 2006 Caine Prize last week. It appears in Watson’s collection of short stories, Moss (Kwela Books, 2004)