Finalist & Honourable Mention in the Reading Writers Competition

First a Door, Then a Window

(http://www.readingwriters.com/con_results.htm)

The sun rose, spreading its warming rays across the African Veldt. Dikeledi felt she had waited so long for this day; it felt like no one else had a claim to it as much as she did. As she stretched her arms outward, her hand brushed against her younger brother who lay sleeping soundly beside her in the one room thatched hut.

Lesedi, just ten years old was four years younger than her. Every morning, she would fetch water for their baths, make his breakfast – corn bread and hot cocoa – walk him to the village school run by the nuns of The Sacred Heart, come back home and sweep, wash and dust and then go off to the farm. This morning was no different except that she couldn’t hide the excitement from her voice.

“What are you so happy about Dike?” Lesedi used the short form of her name with fondness.

“Nothing”.

Although firm and stern, her voice had a ring to it and Lesedi was no fool. He continued to press, dancing around her, tugging at the well-worn housedress she wore whenever she was doing chores around the house.

“Tell me please?” he whined.

“No, I won’t. And you know why? Because even I don’t know what father meant when he said I was to be there before the sun reaches its highest point in the sky”.

“Is father coming home? Is that it? Oh Dike please tell me!”

Dikeledi raised one hand and spanked him gently on his bottom. He jumped and laughed, took his notebook and the pencil case made out of alligator skin and crinkled his face like a spoilt child. This, he certainly was not, and as such, the sulk disappeared just as quickly at it had arrived.

“I won’t find out what it is until you’re gone…so let’s go!”

They skipped along the untarred road, stopping to say hello to everyone they met on the way. Such was the life in these parts; every older man was your uncle and every older woman was your aunt. They heard the school bell when they were just two hundred meters from the school and the shrill ring shocked Lesedi from his leisurely walk. He ran the rest of the way while waving frantically to Dikeledi who stood silently watching him. How like their father he looked! She prayed that the disease that had so cruelly taken their mother from them four years ago would spare their father. Sometimes, hearing all the stories from the other girls in the village filled her with so much dread. Working in the city was killing their parents and Dikeledi was beginning to wonder why her father would make that choice when there was so much work on the cashew farms in their small but friendly town.

She walked back home in a pensive mood. Not many people were about at this time of the day and she hastened to finish her chores so she could go to the address that had been given her. As soon as she finished cleaning out the coop where the three chickens they kept for eggs lived, she took the big bucket she had used to fetch water at dawn and proceeded to wash her fore arms and her legs with the liter or so left after her morning bath.

“Hello?” said a voice that was neither Bantu nor Afrikaans.

She froze, wondering what kind of stranger this was.

“Hello?”

She instinctively used her hands to pat her dress down, and then she walked confidently out to the living room area and slowly opened the creaky wooden door. There standing before her, was a white man, about six feet tall with a wide brimmed hat and a small briefcase. He didn’t look much older than her, and he was smiling, reaching out with his right hand.

“Good morning Sir”, she said shyly. “Can I offer you a drink of cold water and chair to rest your tired legs?”

“Why yes – thank you. I am sorry to barge in on you like this, I don’t usually do this – heck, I wouldn’t do this back home in Texas! My name is Terry”.

He laughed and she looked at his eyes. They were deep blue and they danced.  She wondered where Texas was – must be far away – but thought she’d much rather look at him than ask him. Somehow, she managed to fetch some water to give to him, without spilling the water. He thanked her for the water and apologized once again for barging in unannounced and then he was gone.

¥¥¥¥¥

Dikeledi arrived at 110 Bushman Road at midday and entered the building with the sign that read “Connect With The World – Learn How To Use Windows”.

“Good afternoon Sir”, she boldly said to the first man in business attire she met. She proceeded to show him the instructions she’d been given by her father and he pointed towards a room labeled 2B.

She bumped into a man as she entered the room. Murmuring an apology, matched in equal intensity by his, she raised her head to see Terry, the Texan intruder! He laughed and her knees felt weak again. He shook her hand and led her to the front of a room with a row of box like machines all making a whirring sound. He sat beside her, as if they were the only ones in the room, and while she breathed in his foreign scent, he cradled something in his hand he kept calling a mouse and clicked and clicked and clicked. His fingers looked so strong, so gentle.

“This is a window…and each time you open it, you see something new”, he explained smiling.

¥¥¥¥¥

Lesedi sprinted home that evening and found a dreamy Dikeledi.

“I learned to open windows today”.

“That was it?” he asked incredulously.

“And doors too”

She patted his head fondly. Wild dogs howled in the distance, just as the sun went down.

The End