I dream that someday you may read this and tell me where I’ve gone wrong, so we might enjoy the irony of the imagined and the real grating against each other. In the absence of your own version, I know there must be another, a competing one, which I may yet choose to summon. I speak, of course, of the boy. I know that his is not my story to tell. There are gaps in my knowledge of your final days, but in the story of the boy I have no source upon which to rely other than your own partial account. The boy, perhaps, will tell his own story, in a way that I cannot.
There are days when I think I should have filed whatever it was that one was supposed to file at the time — a statement, a ‘Victim’s Statement’, ‘Human Rights Violations Statement’, whatever the Truth and Reconciliation Commission requested — but I could not come to think of myself as a ‘Victim’ in the way that others were victims. You were a victim, but I knew you were not a ‘Victim’. Anyway, I do not like this word, victim, with all of its Latinate baggage. We were not sacrificial, and there was nothing about what happened to us that had anything to do with the supernatural. What would I have achieved by making my statement, apart from hoping that some shady and predictable character from the old government might admit what had happened to you? I did not, I still do not, need the meagre money the government would have settled on me in an official capacity. Let them spend it on those who have genuine need, and so much more besides. I did not need to see my or your name on that list of Official Victims. Your brother did not push for it — neither did your father — so what good would it have done? What is good for us anyway? I need to find something good. I need at least to imagine what might have happened, to begin to chart a way through the little I know.
So I bring you back to the crossroads, where the journey must have begun, more than a dozen other people standing in hazy sanctuaries of flickering orange light around you, shifting at your arrival. Perhaps you nodded to the woman nearest you, and the woman smiled once but then turned away in embarrassment or fear for what you might represent — the threat you might pose simply by being there among them, standing alone in the dark. A white woman like you would not be waiting at the crossroads on the old forest road, not in the middle of the night, at the height of summer, on foot, rubber-soled shoes on the sweating asphalt, two sticky chemical substances that merge into each other if you stand still long enough. Even the children knew instinctively to beware. Women like you did not go on foot after dark, not in those days, not even today — especially not today. How mad you must have appeared, come rolling down the mountain in your backpacker’s disguise. (Should I have tried to stop you? If you had said, Mother, I won’t do it for your sake, would I have said Don’t do it, my darling or would I have said, No, you must do it, for the sake of us all? Can I speak of the greater good in the same breath as I summon the nature of your act?)
You would have had supplies because you were always so well prepared: water in a thermos, and Safari Dates, your favourite snack as a child. I can see you sip and chew, alternate between water and fruit, pausing to take steady breaths, to calm yourself as I calm myself, counting heartbeats and willing them to strike a less persistent time. These were old movements, ones you learned from me, which I learned from my mother and she learned from hers. And if there had been only men about at the crossroads, you would not have stopped. You would have kept yourself going for safety, not out of panic but out of caution, always seeing what might come next.
It would have been deepest night, past two, but your plan would have been clear, the car would be coming, you would recognize it, knowing by the dip and rise of its lights that it was meant for you. The plan would have been to spirit you back, somewhere you could not be found, hiding until they stopped looking so intently and then over the border to Botswana or Lesotho, and then more remote exile. But perhaps the traffic was too sparse, or something happened and your associate, the driver, was apprehended — one of the ones rounded up and detained until they ceased to exist.
The time appointed for the rendezvous passed. You checked your watch, knew enough not to wait until dawn would expose you, and began looking for the right kind of alternative. Drivers knew stories of hijackings and ambushes. Only the impecunious travelled without fear. With nothing there was nothing to lose but life.
After ten minutes a truck approached, and you edged out on to the pavement, thumb erect, hair vivid in the dark. The truck dipped its lights and slowed to an idle next to you, its gears clunking. The driver was a man, and beside him sat a dog and a young boy.
This man, I imagine him always eating — the kind of brute whose appetite for food reflects his appetite for consumption in general, for consuming everything it might be possible to put into his mouth, an appetite out of all control, that regards moderation not just as a foreign idea, but as an enemy concept: to moderate is to limit his experience of the world. So when the truck pulls over to meet you, Laura, I imagine this man covered in the detritus of a meal, food staining his clothes, while the boy is left to starve.
I see you at the truck, trying to play the role of whore to get a lift, knowing you would be capable of anything to get where you needed to go. It was a game you sometimes played with your brother: the little flirt, the sexually precocious younger child, teasing him, poking fun at his small adolescent prick in the pool, your premature development intimidating. You were before your time in all things. Don’t get stroppy with me, Laura! I would bark, watching as you waited until the last moment to pack, to shower for school, and then sulk when I pushed you. (How can I call you wilful, whom I miss most?) I can see you there now, at night, amongst those people, hiking up your skirt — no, not a skirt — opening the top button on your shirt or knotting it at the waist to expose your midriff, an ivory sash in the darkness, talking your way into that truck.
‘Where you heading?’ the man asked, leaning out through an opened window. He had leathery skin and wiry hair; his upper arms sagged where they emerged from his sleeveless shirt, and at the armholes his pale chest flashed.
Perhaps you shook your head or came up with a plausible story. Or perhaps you simply told the truth.
‘To Ladybrand.’
‘I’m going to Port Elizabeth. I’ll take you that far. Hop in.’
Climbing up into the cab, you flinched at the smell of urine and dog. The boy scooted closer to the dog and the driver, making room for you.
‘I’m Bernard,’ the man said, ‘and this is Sam.’
In your last letter to me, and in the last of the notebooks you bequeathed me, you recount your time with Bernard and the boy, the boy called Sam. Would you have given your real name? I don’t think so. You would have given a name to suit the moment, a name under which to travel, to draw attention or not — to draw attention away, perhaps, from what really mattered.
‘I’m Lamia,’ you said.
‘Funny name for a girl,’ said Bernard. ‘This is Tiger.’
‘Funny name for a dog.’
‘He bites like a tiger.’ Bernard put the truck back into gear, accelerating through the intersection. ‘I’m driving through the night. Tomorrow morning I’ll stop at a picnic place, sleep all day, then get going again. That suit you?’
‘I might want to carry on.’
‘You sleep now if you want.’
‘Thank you for stopping.’
‘Pleasure. When I saw you standing alone back there, I said to Sam, Christ man, that girly looks like she needs a lift.’
You were no girl, not by then, but that’s what a man like him would have seen, a girl alone and stranded, even a girl playing the whore.