kagablog

Die nag van die Agies.

“Onthou jy my naeltjie?”

Gertjie tried to ignore this, “..eN EK, hou hom in die dak want hy’s baie groot want”.

The night-sky was agasp with crickets, louder and louder. They were sitting on the stoep. He could sense the tension basking behind them, behind the doors, inside the farmhouse.

“Dis Stront man, dit moet stop. Sy’s my suster.” “Nou goed Gerhard. Praat jy met hom. Verduidelik dit aan hom. Deeglik.” There was a strange light in Mom’s eyes, like anger but softer. The next day they drove back to Oom Boet’s farm.

“Kom, Ma se ek’s ‘n Nuuskierige Agie..”, San-Marie grabbed his hand, still demonstrating it’s half of how the Dassie eats Tok-Tokkies and fights with the cat in his roof; and off they plunged into the crickety black. Throbbing throbbing. His feet smashed through stones and the stars pulsed brightly and then she stopped. “Ek is lief vir jou Sannie.” He had whispered this into her quiet, sleeping ear one afternoon. But San-Marie wasn’t sleeping yet; and the soft, tugging fabric of childen dreams had echoes of Gertjie, of Gertjie running and jumping (so high!) and bringing her thrashing, gleaming fish with dead shiny eyes and idiot-mouths; and so his words trickled into this playscape as she slid into the humming colours.

She was standing just ahead of him, moonlit, head demurely bowed (hands working). Then she spun around with bright face. “Jy’t nie die dassie gevang nie Dommie! Ek het gekyk.” “Hy bly in ons dak, ek moes hom wegsteek in die kar.” Gertjie’s face was burning. But he wasn’t angry – she wasn’t accusing. She stepped that little step toward him that inflicts the logic of Newton’s Gravity with vulgar distortions. The crickets softly, carefully removed their song from the sky (except for one last teeny crick; some kid who wasn’t yet hip to the rhythms and rules), and left on tip-toe.

It was just Sannie and Gertjie now; presexual and so tall and self-conscious and hungry they could explode; and the silence like a loud black sky. “Wys vir my jou naeltjie, Gertjie. My ma se as jy ‘n babatjie is is jou naeltjie ‘n toutjie na jou mamma.” All Gertjie heard was that fresh legend ‘naeltjie’, and the only slightly less mysterious, ‘babatjie’. And her mouth in the moonshine and her eyes looking down.

Then she picked up his shirt and he held it up with giant, numb hands and she lifted up her dress and she looked him brightly in the eyes. And they stood like so for several minutes with their tummies staring and their navels on pink fire. Then she smiled and they ran wildly back, Gert quiet like a secret.

They squished gasping through the door into the yellow pool of the kitchen. “San-Marie, dis tyd om in die bed te klim. Gaan saam met jou ma.”, Oom Boet said blandly. Gertjie’s mom hugged Tannie San for a long time, while the men stood there in their awkward universes. Then she led Gertjie to the car. Over his bobbing shoulder Gertjie saw San-Marie’s pretty hand waving. And her small, defiant smile.

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