Going Back to Say Goodbye. Kenneth de Kok

a feather, bluish-green, so it must have belonged to Freddie, my budgie, who died right above me on my pillow one afternoon, his thin legs sticking up in the air. He’d been sick for two days, sort of sitting on the bottom of his cage. I had the same feeling now. No hope that things would ever get back to normal.

      I wondered which kid I had hit. It wasn’t Brenda Wheeler or her sister, or Yolande. I can hardly remember most girls’ names, even the ones in my class. Maybe she was just visiting in the hols. Maybe her parents were rushing now from some other town to see her before she died or before they had to operate or something. Maybe I’d blinded her. I was crying, but quietly.

      Someone opened my door. Mom said, “Anybody home?” I heard her walk down the passage. She asked Ingrid if she’d seen me. Ingrid said she’d heard me come in, but didn’t know where I was. My mother said, “Where does that boy get to?”

      I lay dead still.

      A car came up the drive. It was my dad; I knew the sound. A little later I heard him say, “Jean, I’m home.” Now I knew William was putting the teapot on the tray with the cup and milk and sugar and a plate of Marie biscuits or maybe a rusk. Dad would sit in his chair and smoke and read The Star and have cup after cup of tea. Then he’d go into the garden and walk everywhere, looking at everything, seeing if there was something to moan about. He’d even notice if I broke a small branch or stepped in a flowerbed.

      When the phone started ringing he’d start yelling, I knew it.

      The phone rang. Mom answered. She listened and spoke a bit. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then she hung up. It was quiet again.

      I must have dozed off because the phone woke me. She spoke again. She hung up and phoned someone. I couldn’t stand it any more and got out from under the bed. I sat by my table and opened all my schoolbooks. I stared through the lace curtains into the garden and wished I was some other kid.

      I heard my mom come down the passage. She stopped at my door and said, “Oh, there you are. Have you said hello to your father?” And then she walked away.

      We had a normal dinner. I kept quiet. I ate the terrible cold mashed pumpkin without saying a thing. Mom and Dad spoke to each other most of the time. Dad said, “I’m going to turn in early tonight. I’m clapped out. Thank God it’s the weekend.” And that was that. Nothing happened.

      Nothing happened the next day either. Every minute took an hour. Ingrid acted normal and I nearly made up my mind to tell her what had happened. The whole day I waited for the trouble to begin. All the stuff that was bound to be coming. Then I thought, maybe everyone’s waiting for Monday. I wanted to phone Dessington but didn’t; his mom or dad would answer and start shouting at me.

      On Sunday I was beginning to think I’d imagined everything, but at the end of lunch, Dad, with a sort of empty look on his face, the sort of face a person makes when they are trying not to smile, asked, “Going to Peter’s this afternoon?” I said, “No. I can’t, it’s Sunday.”

      “Oh,” he said. “I forgot.” But I knew they knew something.

      A few weeks later when I was in the garden with my cattie, he said, “Careful where you point that thing.” And that was that.

      I stayed away from Dessington. He didn’t phone or visit either. Later he told me that they took the girl to the dentist but there was nothing but a tiny chip. He said the girl’s parents phoned his parents and his parents phoned mine. He wanted to know if I’d got strapped. I said he was a girlie girl and a tattletale.

      I can’t figure it out. Seeing as no one was badly hurt, Dad and Mom must have decided to let me off. The only thing is this: maybe my dad wants me to be rougher or something. Maybe he doesn’t want to discourage me.