down on the bed. It may not look natural, but face down was how she liked to be: she got into the habit at the hospital where she was born; they programmed her to do it from birth. âIt brings up the wind and is comfortable for Baby,â they said. Not only that. At the moment it showed off her plastic pants to best advantage. They had an extravagant rosette on the seat, made up of different-coloured ruffs of pastel plastic. I had bought them the day before at the Baby Bar in the local chemist. I awaited delighted reactions complacently.
âOh, how sweet. Oh, arenât they fun. You do look after her so beautifully, my dear. I will say that.â
Terrible vistas opened up of what she wouldnât say. We both have this problem of what to call each other. She has settled for âMy Dearâ. I have settled for nothing.
âDo go through and make yourself some coffee, if you want. There should be some nice biscuits in the tin.â
I wentâthere was still a quarter of an hour before the bus to town passed the top of the road, and I was starving. The coffee made, biscuit tin placed under one arm, I returned to the bedroom.
âMy dear. Couldnât you find a plate? Iâm sure you could if you looked.â
There wasnât much time left now. The rest of the conversation was obscured by the biscuit cramming my mouth. It kept getting stuck and the coffee wouldnât make it go down.
âYouâd better go. Youâll miss your bus. Iâd hate you to do that on my account.â
âGoodbye.â
I kissed her cheek as she expected, and patted the baby on its plastic rosette.
âIâll try not to be late.â
âDonât worry, my dear. You know how I love to have her all to myself. You cut along now and enjoy yourself.â
I cut, and quickly. My left sandal strap snapped as I ran up the street to the main road. Just in time: I could see the bus approaching at high speed. It pulled up; the pneumatic doors folded back. I climbed up the steps, paid the driver, and fell into the nearest seat. I wound down the window and threw the other sandal out. Barefoot and free. You couldnât pile it on too thick on Thursdays.
From town I took another bus, a country-bound bus, square and slow. Full of mailbags and chicken crates, it went out through the surrounding bush townships in the early morning and came back in the late evening. The driver was young and greasy. I thought he must be English. He wore his hair in a beautifully oiled duckâs tail; it must have left dreadful marks on his pillow or wherever he kept his head. He wore a purple suit and blue suede shoes. A large Japanese transistor radio balanced on top of his dashboard. It crashed against the windscreen at every hole in the road and was never quite on the station, but gave a pleasant blurred effect with occasional blasts of static. That bus had atmosphere. Today it also had a team of lady bowlers, who were off to an away match at a country ground. They were arranged two-by-two along one side of the bus, exchanging pleasantries and egg sandwiches, their starched white dresses and uniform hats giving off static of their own. Their bright enamel club badges glittered and flashed victoriously in the sun; their stringy brown calves rippled healthily above sterile white socks. The bus had a clinical air this morning; in contrast the driver looked dirtier than ever. The newspapers and loaves of sliced white bread in their waxy red-and-white wrappings were loaded into the back.
We moved off, creaky and overloaded, crawling through the suburbs to where the thin stream of weatherboard houses trickled out into a pool of rusting car bodies, rotting mattresses and ragged-edged beer cans. The telegraph poles continued, pulling themselves out of the tangled mess of the town into a taut straight line and marching purposefully ahead from horizon to horizon, ignoring geography and natural obstacles and playing tricks
Yvette Hines, Monique Lamont