tea is made last. A splash of boiling water into the teapot, swirl it around, pour it out, add four spoons of leaves, pour in the boiling water, carry the pot into the dining room. Don’t forget the tea strainer. Now spoon the porridge into the blue serving bowl, place the lid over it, set it on the table.
Tembi takes a moment to run her eye over the table. Everything in place, nothing forgotten.
While she has been setting out the breakfast, other sounds have been audible from the interior rooms of the house: the gurgle of the cistern as atoilet flushes, a murmur of voices, the heavy tread of the farmer, then a radio voice, in Afrikaans, reading the weather. Tembi takes the little silver bell from the sideboard and extends her arm in the direction of the interior of the house and shakes the bell. Then she retreats to the kitchen.
When she has waited a few moments, and heard the Missus and Baas Ben sitting down to breakfast, Tembi pours herself a glass of tea and slips out the back door, which she leaves ajar so that she will hear if they summon her.
The early sun casts a pool of warm light onto the side of the house, painting the white walls orange like the glow of a flame, and she sits on the kitchen steps in this warmth, holding the warmth of her glass of tea in both hands, and because it is early in the day and because she has risen before the sun and she is tired, she closes her eyes a moment.
The summons sounds into her sleep like the warning blare of a car’s horn on a deserted road, and a voice calls, “Grace!” and Tembi leaps to her feet. The glass of tea drops from her hands and cracks into two pieces on the steps, the dark liquid spreading across the cement steps.
The bell from the dining room rings again, and the voice calls, “Grace?”
Tembi runs into the kitchen, to her mother, for the voice is calling her mother and she expects to see her mother, standing there at the stove as always, but it is Missus Märit who stands there instead.
“Oh, Tembi, it’s you,” Märit says. “Sorry, I forgot Grace wasn’t here today. Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Tembi shakes her head. “I am all right, Missus.”
“You can clear away the breakfast things now.”
“Yes, Missus. I will do that.”
Afterwards, after she has washed the dishes and put them back into the cupboards, and shaken the crumbs from the tablecloth and folded it away, and swept the kitchen floor, Tembi slips out of the kitchen. There on the back steps are the two pieces of her drinking glass, two pieces exactly like each other, for the glass has broken right down the center. Her first impulse is to take the broken glass and throw it away in some unseen place, for she doesn’t want the Missus to know of her carelessness, but instead she fits the two pieces together, so that they are a whole, and sheholds them in her hand, together as a whole, and makes her way back along the path to the kraal.
W HEN DAWN APPEARS in this part of the country it begins with a thin line of deep red along the horizon, like the red coals that lie in the heart of a fire. The sky changes from black to gray. What was unshaped darkness now is revealed as the silhouettes of acacia trees, shrubs, the gentle rise of a koppie. A faint color creeps over the veldt, and the grayness is infused with the tans and the olive greens and the reddish dust that is the color of Africa. The dew that lies on the grass gleams like silver. Birdsong fills the branches of the trees. The sunlight spreads across the veldt like golden honey.
On the road between Kudufontein and Klipspring two feral dogs, thin-shanked, scavenging, scent the body lying in the dust. They scramble across the ditch and circle warily, sniffing at the suitcase and the handbag and the supine figure. One of the dogs, bolder, fastens its teeth around a corner of Grace’s overnight bag and drags it away. The other chases. There is a brief snarling and tussling between the two dogs
Tembi takes a moment to run her eye over the table. Everything in place, nothing forgotten.
While she has been setting out the breakfast, other sounds have been audible from the interior rooms of the house: the gurgle of the cistern as atoilet flushes, a murmur of voices, the heavy tread of the farmer, then a radio voice, in Afrikaans, reading the weather. Tembi takes the little silver bell from the sideboard and extends her arm in the direction of the interior of the house and shakes the bell. Then she retreats to the kitchen.
When she has waited a few moments, and heard the Missus and Baas Ben sitting down to breakfast, Tembi pours herself a glass of tea and slips out the back door, which she leaves ajar so that she will hear if they summon her.
The early sun casts a pool of warm light onto the side of the house, painting the white walls orange like the glow of a flame, and she sits on the kitchen steps in this warmth, holding the warmth of her glass of tea in both hands, and because it is early in the day and because she has risen before the sun and she is tired, she closes her eyes a moment.
The summons sounds into her sleep like the warning blare of a car’s horn on a deserted road, and a voice calls, “Grace!” and Tembi leaps to her feet. The glass of tea drops from her hands and cracks into two pieces on the steps, the dark liquid spreading across the cement steps.
The bell from the dining room rings again, and the voice calls, “Grace?”
Tembi runs into the kitchen, to her mother, for the voice is calling her mother and she expects to see her mother, standing there at the stove as always, but it is Missus Märit who stands there instead.
“Oh, Tembi, it’s you,” Märit says. “Sorry, I forgot Grace wasn’t here today. Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Tembi shakes her head. “I am all right, Missus.”
“You can clear away the breakfast things now.”
“Yes, Missus. I will do that.”
Afterwards, after she has washed the dishes and put them back into the cupboards, and shaken the crumbs from the tablecloth and folded it away, and swept the kitchen floor, Tembi slips out of the kitchen. There on the back steps are the two pieces of her drinking glass, two pieces exactly like each other, for the glass has broken right down the center. Her first impulse is to take the broken glass and throw it away in some unseen place, for she doesn’t want the Missus to know of her carelessness, but instead she fits the two pieces together, so that they are a whole, and sheholds them in her hand, together as a whole, and makes her way back along the path to the kraal.
W HEN DAWN APPEARS in this part of the country it begins with a thin line of deep red along the horizon, like the red coals that lie in the heart of a fire. The sky changes from black to gray. What was unshaped darkness now is revealed as the silhouettes of acacia trees, shrubs, the gentle rise of a koppie. A faint color creeps over the veldt, and the grayness is infused with the tans and the olive greens and the reddish dust that is the color of Africa. The dew that lies on the grass gleams like silver. Birdsong fills the branches of the trees. The sunlight spreads across the veldt like golden honey.
On the road between Kudufontein and Klipspring two feral dogs, thin-shanked, scavenging, scent the body lying in the dust. They scramble across the ditch and circle warily, sniffing at the suitcase and the handbag and the supine figure. One of the dogs, bolder, fastens its teeth around a corner of Grace’s overnight bag and drags it away. The other chases. There is a brief snarling and tussling between the two dogs
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