Go Away Birds by Michelle Edwards

Author:Michelle Edwards [Michelle Edwards]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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When the shadows of the trees are so long that they stretch across the back lawn, and most of the heat has been sapped out of the day, I walk around the lake towards the avocado orchards on the border of Di’s farm. Walking along the fence near the gate means wading through the warm fug of ripe bananas in the sun.

It’s this rotting smell that has always put me off bananas. We only ever got the bruised ones growing up.

“But the brown’s the best bit!” Another Lola memory, her long fingers twisting the top off the banana I’m holding.

My grandfather planted these trees because it fitted in with his ideas of living on a working farm, and the fruit gets bought wholesale by the co-op in town. Lola used to talk about the “banana money” paying for our school stationery at the beginning of every year.

Bunches of them as big as my torso are sweating in their blue plastic sheaths hanging off the trees. The bags protect the fruit from the cunning vervet monkeys chattering in the treetops.

The gate between Di’s farm and ours has had an upgrade: it’s now a tall turnstile operated by a scanner with a small flashing green light, unlocked, as Di promised.

My legs remember the way from the gate to the farmhouse, which is lucky because the orchards have changed since I was last here. The differences between Coucal Farm and The Pines are stark, especially since they’re only separated by about an inch. Here, the avocado trees are universally painted white on one side, sunscreen to shield them from the midday heat, and there’s no dead growth to be seen, no grass growing between the rows, no fallen fruit or leaves on the ground beneath the trees.

A tractor emerges from one of the rows in front of me. It’s carrying two farmworkers in identical green overalls. The one in the passenger seat is holding a clipboard. They catch sight of me and wave, and I wonder what the protocol is for leaving access gates open. I can’t imagine living on a farm that operates like a corporate machine.

Unlike The Pines, Coucal Farm’s cottages are workers’ housing. They’ve also had an upgrade. I count eight brightly painted houses as I walk past, with big windows and tied-back curtains, pansies in flowerbeds in front of each one, and through open kitchen doors, I see bright, white-tiled interiors. The last time I was on Coucal Farm was probably at the end of Matric, before I left for chef school, when the workers’ homes still had outhouses.

The lawn that functioned as a cricket oval for all the years of our childhood is still there, now covered in children’s paraphernalia: three bikes, rubber balls in varying states of deflation, naked plastic dolls, a wooden toy gun and an assortment of plastic buckets and spades strewn from one end to the next. The dam to the right of the house is not wide but looks deep, the water still and black in the shadows of the trees.

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