In my bed, I tossed again and stared at the clock – twelve minutes past seven. I wished I owned a radio or a television to keep my mind from going back to yesterday’s conversation with my cousin: finding Joe.
Finally I got out of bed, put on a pair of flip-flops and rushed out of my room, still in my pyjamas. Our small kitchen was deserted, but the smell of toast and rooibos tea lingered. Grandmother and my mother were already in the back yard tending to the vegetable garden, which appeared to be surrendering to the heat. The twins, my younger sisters Nola and Phumi, played with Rex, the family’s toothless pit bull, which we all agreed served no purpose, but decided to keep anyway. Grandmother brought him home three years before, to be the family’s watch dog. However after a terrible hit-and-run car accident he lost all his teeth, and part of his right back leg, so was unable to continue his duties and instead took the job of being a common nuisance. We hadn’t bothered to take down the ‘Beware of Dog’ sign hanging on the front gate, though everybody knew it was fraudulent.
Through the screen door, I yelled something about forgetting a book at Thembi’s and needing to go and pick it up. When I got to her house, Thembi was in the kitchen making porridge for her younger brother, Jabu. I didn’t say a word to her: the befuddled looked on my face must have confirmed that I was indeed considering her idea. She poured me a cup of strong, sweetened black coffee left over by her father.
We sat in silence watching Jabu eat, each deep in own thoughts, pondering the attractiveness of the proposal.
Thembi and I were cousins and best friends. She was only six months older than me. We went to the same school, braided our hair the same patterns, and hated the same people. We even looked alike and were often mistaken for sisters. We were both lanky and almost too thin, with protruding cheekbones and thick lips always drawn in pout – a feature inherited from our grandmother.
But the real reason my cousin and I were inseparable was because, in each other, we found a place to confide, an outlet for our frustrations and insecurities. I was aware of her anger towards her mother and her drinking, how she despised the fighting between her parents, and how she wanted to escape to a place far away one day. She in turn, was the only person I spoke frankly to about Joe, since his name was forbidden at my house.
“You and your cousin should not involve yourselves in adult issues,” my mother warned whenever I let slip what Thembi had said about her parents. Though she never came out and said it, I suspected my mother wished I would make friends with other local children as well.
After Thembi’s brother was done with his food, she shooed him away, and turned to me. “I know what you’re going to say. How are we going to get there? Where will we get the money? What are we going to say to our parents? Well, I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m sure we will.”
“You do know it’s a crazy idea, hey Thembi? We’re only fifteen, in case you’ve forgotten. Remember how long it took for them to even let us travel alone to Edison?”
***
What do you think? Is Thembi’s idea crazy?