Dreaming of Light by Jayne Bauling

Author:Jayne Bauling
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780624056263
Publisher: Tafelberg
Published: 2012-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

My first few days out of the mine, I go wandering around wherever my feet or a thought in my head lead me. I pull fresh air into my lungs as if I’m eating it, drinking it. My eyes stop hurting and I can look up at the sky. At the end of the winter dryness, with summer rain a month or two away, there are no clouds to spoil its polished blue. I like the sun on my face, although I would also welcome clouds and a mist-rain to remind me of home.

I stay away from places where there might be people. Clumps of long, pale grass brush against my arms and legs. I pull small new leaves off bushes and other plants to crush in my fingers so I can breathe in their green smell.

I try not to think about the boys in the shed. Papa Mavuso is right. I’m too soft. I need to get tougher, train myself to be so hard that there’s not a crack or a slit for a soft thought to sneak in.

Some days I stay in the Barberton mountainlands. Others I roam further, towards what they call Wild Frontier country. I have been this way before – both exploring and passing through the second time I went home, when I crossed the border a short way along from the Jeppes Reef/Matsamo post.

One day I cut through some veld to join the R38 where it runs between Barberton and Kaapmuiden, and begin walking along it. I’ve tried the R40 before, the other times Papa hasn’t let me go home, but it’s too busy, full of traffic. I’m not looking for a lift. There are no fences on either side of this road, so if a car does come, I dive into the bush. I’m not going anywhere either. I know I’ll turn back, but for now it’s good to pretend this freedom is real and that I’m walking towards a new life somewhere, beyond the distant N4. I know all these roads because I asked Katekani to get me a map from the tourism and information centre in Barberton last time I wasn’t allowed to go home. I can’t remember why I wanted it. Maybe there was still some small part of a boy a bit like Taiba left inside me, stupidly dreaming of escape. He’s gone now, that boy.

The next time I came out of the mine, Katekani said she had found the map in my room and that she still had it if I wanted it. I haven’t needed it. I remember the roads.

The R38 would be a good road to use if you were up to nothing good, busy with something you didn’t want anyone to know about. It’s wild and lonely. Off to my right as I head north is true Wild Frontier country, that odd-shaped stretch of untamed land wedged between Swaziland, Mozambique and the N4 where it heads for the Lebombo/Ressano Garcia border post.

You could dispose of anything in the bush.

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