KIN

My mother would dream about me, pushing my sister on the swing in our backyard. My sister’s laugh would echo in my mother’s heart. My dreams were different. I ran to the window, my heart pulsating. I saw my fathers’ Toyota Cressida, a pickle green. My father got out of the car and opened the gate. It was a beautiful day, the sun shone through the leaves of the trees in our front yard. I heard birds chirping and the gate opening, the wire sticking past the bottom scratched on the paved surface of our drive way. What would my little sister look like? As a kid I didn’t entirely understand pregnancy and what having siblings could mean in one’s life. All I knew was that I was excited to meet her. My dad scratched the gearbox, when one doesn’t push the clutch in deep enough, that sound always embarrasses you, yet he was unfazed. The car slowly pulled into the driveway and stopped, the engine humming, and then at the turn of a key silence struck. I was a tired, I hadn’t slept well; I dreamt about a black horse the night before. I was on his back trotting through fields of dry grass, typical of the Highveld. Suddenly he stepped to the side and reared up, something had crossed the road. He began to gallop. I was hanging onto the saddle having lost my balance. I pulled on his reigns in an attempt to stop him but to no avail. My father walked around the car to help my mother get out. I stood looking through the window as the two of them walked to the door. My mother was carrying a balloon, one of those you find in the hospital kiosks. I heard the key turn, the door opened and I saw them standing there, but they seemed different. “Mommy!” I shouted as I ran to hug her. “Easy there” my father said while holding me back, “Mommy is still very sore…” I hugged her gently and then hugged my father. He picked me up, “Hello monkey-poo” he said with a half-hearted smile - I hated that name. Confusion took hold as my sister was nowhere to be seen. We went to the kitchen, where my gran was waiting with a pot of tea. “You must be tired after the drive?” “Very tired mom” my dad replied. My dad was an ex-boxer and had a very short temper, yet he was kind and thoughtful, gentle towards the people he loved. He always called gran ‘mom’ even though she was his in-law. They began to speak about doctors and traffic in the city. Our small town was peaceful, we had five traffic lights and one could walk through the town in Twenty minutes. The city intrigued me, I loved traffic, sitting on the backseat of the car and watching strangers, in their own cars, pass me by. I loved imagining what their separate lives were like. Slowly the room filled with silence and a shadow fell upon us, something was wrong. “Mommy, where is my sister?”. They all exchanged glances, my mother turned to me and took the balloon. “Mommy didn’t have a baby love.” “But your tummy was so big!” My mother’s eyes began to tear up, her green eyes, changed to a sea blue. My eyes are the same when I cry. She took the balloon, heart shaped, silver, with ‘I love you’ in glossy red. She held it by a red ribbon as it floated above her. “I didn’t have a baby, when they cut me open they found out that it was just this balloon so I brought it back for you.” I remember giggling, a ‘balloon’ my five year old self had absolutely no idea. Marriage is not the easiest endeavour, it can often be the greatest weight that one bares in their entire life, and a miscarriage will test you to the end of your tether. Heartbroken, my mother found solace in the dream of what could have been, but my father seemed withdrawn. Men and women handle pain in separate ways and truly do seem to come from separate planets. I could however feel their pain, in the creeks of our pine floors as my father walked in from work. Heavy steps, as if the weight he carried in his heart, was physically manifest upon his shoulders. I could feel it, when my mother held me to find comfort in the child she still had. But most of all, I could feel it when I walked down our dark passage at night, the white walls seemed grey and the door to our lounge ajar, looked like the entrance to darkness, a hole left inside our home. We do not choose who we fall in love with, but we do choose who we stay with, while many people confuse attachment with commitment, my parents did not. Their commitment to one another pulled them through, as the days turned into years. Eventually all seemed well in our tiny world of four. In school, I was withdrawn. I never got along with kids my own age. We had a beautiful primary school in our town, brown and orange colours all around, with tiny classrooms and separate playgrounds for boys and girls. In the centre of our school was an open courtyard, with a hexagonal pond below an old large bell that was once used at the start and end of the school day. Across from it was a library, I loved the library and the silence, yet I never read any books. In a separate room were shelves with children’s books for us younger kids. The main room was layered from wall to wall with shelves. Books new and old with various coloured covers, multiple fonts for the titles. I was a popular child with the teacher’s. My parents were held in high esteem, so much so that my parents were approached by one of the teachers, a student from china had enrolled in our school as his parents had moved to South Africa for work. His family lived quite far out of town and needed lodging for their son during the school week. My parents were asked if they would be able to accommodate the young boy. “Eugene, how would you feel if we let another boy from your school stay here?” My mother asked over dinner, haddock in white sauce, peas and mashed potato, the dish I hated most on our weekly ‘eating roster’. “Why?” Who could possibly need to stay with us I thought to myself, “You know that new Chinese boy in your school?” “You want him to stay with us?” I asked. “His parents live very far out of town, and so he needs a place to sleep over during the week.” My mother continued to explain his situation and that his parents were coming over that weekend to meet us. She explained I would have to share my room, my toys, my bath, but that even though he would be like a brother I was still their little boy. The last part was unnecessary, I was confident about being their little boy. I lay in bed that night, I had seen the boy before, and he was queer and quiet. My parents told me to think about it and tell them if I would be okay with it. I realised I was intrigued by the thought of getting to know him. My room was quite large, it had an inbuilt white cupboard, a little green bookshelf, two single beds and two bedside cabinets, pale blue. I looked across to the empty bed next to me and wondered what it would be like to share my room with another boy. I looked up at the ceiling and felt a warm sensation flow through me. It would be kind to share with him and I wanted to be a kind person. The next morning before leaving for school I told my parents that I had decided we should let him stay with us. We were all thrilled and couldn’t wait to meet him and his parents. My mother went and bought new towels and face cloths, she had each of them embroidered with my initials and his. We prepared the house, we rearranged my wardrobe, shorts on one pile, denims on another, t-shirts folded and packed according to their colours. We cleared space for his clothes. We marked my toys and made sure he would have space for his. Then we waited in anticipation for the weekend. That Saturday afternoon I ran to the window, my heart pulsating. I saw an old Nissan single cab, a faded white and rusted at parts where the paint had previously chipped off. They came to work on a farm outside of town and the crudeness of the vehicle was a testament to the harshness of farm life. My father went out to meet them. It was a beautiful day, the sun shone through the leaves of the trees in our front yard. I heard birds chirping but did not hear the sound of wire scratching on the paved surface of our drive way. They decided to get out of the car and walk in - the wire only scratched when the gate was opened wide. The similarity to the day I waited to see my sister was almost perfect. This time however, I knew what he looked like and I had a better understanding of what having another child in the house would be like. His father was a tall and lanky man. He wore a blue checked short-sleeved shirt with denims. His shoes looked expensive, and he had black belt on, the buckle was unusual to me. He noticed me looking at it, so he removed it and twisted the buckle around revealing the brown side of it. “You can choose to wear a black or brown belt whenever you like” he said. He didn’t have the stereotypical accent one expects with Chinese people, in fact he was well spoken. “Nifty” my father remarked after seeing the belt. His mother was much shorter than he was, very shapely, and incredibly attractive. Dequan, was an average looking boy, he wore shorts, a t-shirt and sneaks. We greeted one another with a nod of the head. We sat in our lounge to discuss the arrangements and get to know each other. Dequan’s father drank black coffee, his mother had tea. Dequan and I drank soda. My mother took Dequan’s mother to show her our room, the towels, cupboard, shelves and everything else she worked so hard at, to get ready for his arrival. My father and his father sat and discussed China, politics, history, geography and cultural differences. My father was a well-read man, people often referred to him as a walking encyclopaedia, mom always teasingly said his head was just filled with useless facts. Dequan and I went out to meet my grandmother in the flat in our backyard. I then introduced him to our dogs and showed him all the places I played. We didn’t speak much; he was still learning English. He and I were similar; we both weren’t into rough play and getting too dirty. We preferred toys, making things, imaginary games and watching T.V. We had a wondrous backyard; there were two massive oak trees, a swimming pool, a large lawn and various trees along the walls. Right at the back of the yard was a little ‘forest’. When I was born my mother planted a group of trees together so that I would have a special place to play outside. In the far left corner was a cordoned off area, that once had a compost heap behind a fence. It was eventually overgrown with weeds and plants. The fence was covered by a creeper so dense that one could not see through it, whenever I was naughty, I would hide away there so as not to be caught. My mother and I named it the “secret garden” after the Movie. Dequan and his family left that afternoon. They would bring him back the next day with all his baggage and everything he needed for school. We sat around our dinner table that evening, mutton chops, baked potatoes and sweet corn with a Greek salad on the side – My favourite meal of the weekly eating ‘roster’. I will never forget going to bed that night, a life changing experience was around the corner and I couldn’t wait. I woke up late the following day to find Dequan sitting on the edge of his bed watching me. I stayed silent. “Hello…” he said. “Hello…” I replied. “Come…” he stood up and motioned with his hand for me to follow him. He led me into the lounge where my parents and his were sitting. The coffee table was filled with parcels, “Morning Monkey-poo!” my father said. I walked over to greet his parents. “Look what Dequan’s family brought us.” Asian people always practice good manners and so they had brought us gifts as a token of their appreciation. My father had gotten the same nifty belt that Dequan’s father wore. My mother got studded socks that were meant to be more comfortable and ‘massage’ one while walking. My grandmother got ankle high stockings. I was given a ‘space case’ it had two separate compartments, one for pens and pencils with an inbuilt pencil sharpener. The other side came with markers to write on, and a sponge to wipe off, an acrylic surface, nifty. After they left mom and I went to unpack Dequan’s bags. We were amazed at how many baby blue colours he had with cartoon images of cats and dogs all childlike and innocent. Different to my clothes with Slogans, skateboarding themes, rock and roll and graffiti like images, all very “western”. Dequan settled in. We ate dinner, Mince and spaghetti, my second favourite dish on our weekly eating ‘roster’. We asked him a few questions, but the language barrier took a while to break through. He had a massive appetite - he ate fast and went for seconds, then thirds. I admit I was jealous that he was eating more than I was. I was always the one who ate the leftovers. So I proceeded to dish up seconds and thirds with him. We ate as fast as we could, as if it was a competition. My parents were amused. After dinner we both got our separately marked towels and went to the bathroom. My mother let the bath water in, she checked its temperature and left, closing the bathroom door behind her. I had never bathed with other people and it was an awkward and strange experience for me, so I stood frozen, unsure of how to handle the situation. Dequan Immediately undressed and jumped into the bath, I followed shortly after. I made sure I grabbed the bar of soap first and began to wash my body. I put it down and he grabbed it. He scrubbed his body then used the soap to wash his hair. Stunned I reached for the shampoo and used it to wash mine. He stopped, looked at the bar of soap then at the shampoo, “Oh!” He exclaimed then rinsed his hair and rewashed it with the shampoo. After our bath we went to our bedroom. I started getting dressed and climbed into bed. Dequan stood there naked, looking around him. My mother came into the room, “What’s wrong Dequan?” He held his head between the palms of his hands and exclaimed “No pyjamas!” My mother giggled and went to his bedside table and opened the second drawer to show him that we had packed his pyjamas there. He sighed with relief and promptly got dressed and into bed. We both got goodnight hugs and kisses and we took our separate journeys to dream land.