Fly Away Home (6 page)

M
onica heard the alarm go off. She opened one eye and saw Zak standing beside her. He put his palm on her cheek.

“It's time,” he said softly.

She groaned. This day had arrived too quickly. She was not ready for it.

“We can't be late,” said Zak. “Sipho's already up.”

She sat up in bed, realizing that every moment spent here was one less moment she could spend with her son before he left.

It took her only ten minutes to shower, pull her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail and then dress in a suitably somber brown skirt, beige sweater and boots. She appeared in the kitchen with a fake smile on her face to bolster Sipho's confidence, which she knew might be flagging.

“Why can't I go to America, too?” asked Mandla.

Sipho poured milk into his cereal. “Because you're too young.”

“I can't have both of you leaving,” said Monica, getting out a frying pan to make bacon and eggs. Sipho could not get on a flight with only cereal in his belly.

“Do you promise we'll go at Christmas?” persisted Mandla.

“Of course,” said Monica.

When the eggs and bacon were ready, Mandla wolfed his down as usual, but Sipho said he wasn't hungry.

“Come on, eat,” she said, feeling for some ridiculous reason that all would be okay if he just ate this plate of bacon and eggs.

He ate slowly, eyeing the clock on the kitchen wall.

“I smell bacon,” said Zak, taking a seat beside Sipho.

Monica put two eggs in the pan for him. She looked at the three of them around the breakfast table, the site of so much banter as well as serious discussion in the morning. It would be a long time before they'd all be together here again. Would Sipho come back the same boy he was now? And would she be the same? Or would she be an expectant mother? So many times in the past she had pictured milestones in the future, and she always had a baby with her, or was pregnant. It had seemed easy, a matter of course. Now it seemed possible that Sipho could return from his time abroad to find her as before, unchanged, not pregnant and with no hope.

“Eat up,” she urged him. “You don't want to miss your flight.”

“Remember to phone us collect when you get to Washington,” said Zak.

“Washington, D.C., Dad,” said Sipho. “Washington is a state in the Northwest.”

Monica was not happy to be reminded of her son having to make a connecting flight all on his own. Zak had told her that Sipho was perfectly capable of finding the gate, and that she was worrying unnecessarily.

“I wonder what kind of car the family will be picking you up in,” said Mandla. “They drive
huge
cars in America.”

“And don't forget to phone us when you arrive at their home in Houston,” said Monica.

“I won't.”

“I'm sure the family will allow you to make one international call. After that you can buy a calling card.” Monica knew that she had gone through this many times before with him, but she could not help herself. She thought of the time she'd said goodbye to her parents when they'd left South Africa for Italy. She'd returned to her car and sobbed for ages. And now, for a few months every summer, they took up residence right here in the studio apartment in the Old Garage. Her father had never admitted that he could not readjust to the winters in Italy after decades of living in South Africa, but her mother had told Monica of his grumbling. Now, for him every year had two summers: one in the northern hemisphere, where he harvested grapes and vegetables in his small garden and went out fishing in a small boat with his brother and cousins; and one in the southern hemisphere, where he fished with his grandsons from shore and tried to teach them Italian, his mother tongue.

“Are there cowboys where Sipho's going?” Mandla asked curiously.

“Of course not,” answered his brother.

“Except when the rodeo comes to town,” said Monica. “Your host mother said it was the highlight of the year.” She hated calling Nancy that, but that's what she would be for the time Sipho was in the United States.

“Let's load up the car now or we'll be late,” said Zak.

It was a ninety-minute drive to the airport in Cape Town. Sipho's airplane would take him first to Johannesburg to pick up more passengers, and then to Dakar, Senegal, where they would land to refuel, but not be permitted to disembark. Twenty-one hours after leaving Cape Town, he would arrive in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, there were many flights from there to Houston, in case he missed his connection.

The boys watched for tortoises on the road to Cape Town, and just after passing the entrance to the nature reserve their vigilance was rewarded with a whole line crossing the road. Zak stopped the car and waited for the stragglers to clear the asphalt.

“Can you imagine if you missed your plane because we had to wait for the tortoises?” he joked.

The West Coast tortoise was a common sighting within the nature reserve, but for some reason the creatures tended to wander outside the boundaries, and the results were often tragic. When he was younger, Sipho would cry when he saw splintered shells scattered across the road.

Mandla was more excitable than usual this morning. Monica wondered if he was anxious about his brother leaving. The boys had never been separated. They'd never expressed the desire to be away from home or each other.

The airport parking lot was full and attendants were directing cars onto a grassy field outside the perimeter fence. Zak lifted Sipho's new hard-shell suitcase out of the trunk, and its wheels sank deep into the mud that remained after an overnight sprinkling of rain. Sipho noticed but did not appear fazed. Grumbling under his breath, Zak carried the suitcase the rest of the way and, once inside the terminal, tried to remove the worst of the mud with tissues. The family joined a long line of passengers that had formed in front of a baggage screening machine.

When it was finally Sipho's turn, Zak heaved the boy's suitcase onto the short conveyor belt and was told by the security staff member to collect it at the other side and then proceed to check-in.

The lady at the check-in office was sympathetic to Monica's pleas to notify the flight attendants that Sipho would be an unaccompanied minor.

“Yes, mam,” she said, “it's stated on his ticket.”

“I just want to make sure that they know,” said Monica defensively.

“I'm fifteen, Mom,” Sipho whispered fiercely.

“Yes, a minor,” she replied, “and unaccompanied.”

Zak put an arm around her shoulders in the same way that Monica's father did whenever her mother was upset. It was strange how one's parents' habitual gestures became one's own. Sometimes she was horrified to find herself commenting on Zak's driving, just as her mother always did with her father, but that was the extent of the similarities between herself and her mother. Mirinda Brunetti was in a class of her own, one that Monica had never aspired to join. The older woman was well-dressed, her graying hair was regularly restored to its former flaxen glory, and, to anyone who didn't know her well, she was completely unaware that she was no longer the femme fatale she had once been when she'd left her small Karoo desert town to become a model in Johannesburg. Her daughter's lack of interest in haute couture had always irritated her, but after years of fruitless cajoling, Mirinda had given up. In private, Zak told Monica that he preferred Monica's natural look to her mother's manufactured one.

The ticket agent leaned over the counter and fastened a colored paper bracelet around Sipho's wrist, identifying him, in large letters, as an unaccompanied minor.

“Happy now, Mom?” he asked with a wry grin.

They stepped aside through the crush of departing passengers and their families, and found a quiet corner to say their final goodbyes. Zak had warned Monica not to prolong this parting or Sipho would be upset. He was right, of course, but it would take considerable effort on her part.

“Take care of yourself,” she told Sipho, before wrapping her arms around him.

Despite the change in his voice, he was still a young boy. Well, outwardly anyway; he had always seemed wise and mature beyond his years.

“I'll miss you, Mom,” he whispered in her ear.

“We'll see you soon,” she whispered back.

It was Zak's turn to hug him next. “Goodbye, Sipho,” he said in a voice full of emotion. “We're here for you, so phone anytime.”

Mandla and Sipho's goodbye was awkward since they were not used to hugging each other. Sipho looked genuinely sad about leaving his brother, but Mandla pulled away, smiling and talking about his own trip to the United States at Christmas. His sibling's absence would sink in over the next few days, Monica suspected.

Sipho, always a worrier, did not want to go to the boarding area at the last minute, and so, although they could have spent more time together, the family escorted him to the security checkpoint through which only travelers could proceed.

Monica stole one more hug before he joined the throng showing passports to a uniformed security guard. Sipho turned around and waved once. Monica fought back her tears.

Zak put an arm around her shoulders and Mandla took her hand. “It's only four months,” she murmured. But it was not only the time, it was the distance, too, and the fact that Sipho was going to another country. In his luggage was a collection of his favorite books on African animals and marine life, as well as a photo of his family and one of his late mother, Ella. How would her son cope in a new place, where these things were of no importance to anyone but himself? He would truly be alone.

Mandla wanted to watch Sipho's plane take off, but since that wouldn't happen for at least an hour, Zak suggested they watch another plane instead.

“It's not the same,” said Mandla, accepting the deal.

Despite his grumbling, he was thrilled by the sight of a massive airliner leaving the ground, and all the way back to the car he complained about the unfairness of Sipho going to America and not him.

“Aren't you a little young to think about leaving us?” asked Monica, expecting him to give his usual sheepish smile before hugging her and promising her his undying love.

“I suppose so,” he said, carefully weighing his answer. “But I might have to go one day.”

She shot Zak a tearful look, but he was engrossed in rifling through his pockets for the parking ticket. If she had been alone, she would have locked herself in the car to sob her eyes out, just as she'd done the day her parents had left South Africa.

Monica and Zak were both quiet on the return journey. Zak knew better than to try to cheer her up by telling her that four months would pass quickly, that Sipho would adjust, that he was a resilient boy. But Mandla could not bear the silence and filled it with his chatter. Nothing escaped a comment from him—other cars, shacks built close to the freeway, people trying to cross the highway on foot. And when they turned onto the road that led north to Lady Helen, he attempted, without much success, to recall the names of the birds he spotted, the plants Sipho had identified for them on countless other trips, the insects that spattered against the windshield.

Monica and Zak dropped him off at school just as recess was ending, which caused him to groan in disappointment.

Zak then drove to Monica's office on Main Street.

“Will you be okay?” he asked tenderly.

She nodded. “I'll be busy, which is good.”

“Do you want to come to the hospital for lunch?”

She patted his hand. “You've missed your morning rounds. You'll need the time to catch up. Really, I'll be fine.”

He kissed her and waited until she had opened the front door to the newspaper office before driving off.

 

Monica had wondered how long it would take Mandla to feel his brother's absence, and was surprised when he started moping around the house after only three days. Sipho had called from Washington, D.C., to tell them that his flight had been uneventful, and then he'd called again from his host family's home to say that he'd been met on time and made to feel welcome. Their family car, he'd told Mandla, was an enormous sport utility vehicle with three rows of seats.

Mandla asked Monica to rent a movie filmed in Houston so that he could see where his brother was living, but she couldn't think of any. She showed him pictures on the Internet instead.

Francina reported to Monica on Monday evening, after Sipho's first weekend away, that Mandla had begged Zukisa to play games with him, and although Zukisa had taken as much time from her homework as she could spare, it hadn't been enough for Mandla.

“He's like a fisherman without a boat,” observed Francina.

 

Ivy called again to tell Monica that it was too late to start her treatment this month, but if she collected her medication soon could start giving herself shots next month. Monica managed to put the nurse off by saying she needed to discuss matters with her husband, although she couldn't seem to force herself to broach the subject with Zak. And Zak never mentioned it, either. It was as though they'd lost the road they were following, but neither of them had the courage to admit it.