Ouma sat at the head of the table, in the place she’d occupied ever since her husband had died a couple of years ago. A chill was coming up from the slate floor, like the presence of the house added to our own. There were burn marks and scratches and stains in the wood, a whole history of damage. We ate in silence, our iron spoons dashing the plates, and I kept my gaze fixed downwards, on the surface of the table in front of me. We sat in the dining room, my grandmother, mother, myself. It gave me a small shock when I turned to see my mother watching me from the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. Then I sat on the bed, staring out the window, to where the last of the sunlight was fading. I sorted and stashed my clothes into drawers and pushed them carefully closed. But for some reason the orderly routine, as well as the friction of fingers on cloth, was comforting to me. I unpacked my clothes, though it wasn’t necessary to do so: we were leaving again the next day. I had always slept here, since I was a small boy, in the days and days I’d stayed on this farm, when my mother still loved my father. I was given the room in the attic, where the roof sloped down. They embraced cautiously, with tender hostility, in the wash of light from the car. It was two years since I’d last been here. Diminutive, dour, she was wearing the same soiled apron I remembered from every previous visit. The headlights picked out the house, the garage, the silent, patient figure in front.
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