He seems to have had some practice in the art of breaking into cars. She watches, holding her breath as he inserts the wire hanger between the edge of the window and threads it through and down. He fishes down to pull up the lever to open the door. He tries once and misses and then he tries again and misses. Third time lucky, she says to herself and crosses her fingers behind her back.
Amy goes back to the pram and jiggles it the way her mother told her to, but the baby goes on crying increasingly loudly. She peers down at him and sings him the lullaby her mother sings to him, but this doesn’t work either. He doesn’t seem to hear her singing or doesn’t care for the way she sings the lullaby. He cries louder and louder and his face is very pink and he looks angry. Her mother never lets him cry for a minute before she comes rushing to pick him up and give him her breast.
Amy decides she’ll have to pick him up even though her mother told her not to. She doesn’t like to hear the awful screaming noise he is making and nor do the dogs, who are stirring around her nervously and brushing against her legs as though to urge her to do something fast.
She’ll just pick him up very carefully. There is no reason why she would drop him, after all. She carries her big doll, which is not much smaller than her little brother. She thrusts her hands into the pram and scoops him up. She lifts him up quite easily and holds him up with his head over her shoulder the way Mommy does. She knows he cannot yet hold his head up properly. Miraculously, in her arms, he stops crying. She smells his baby smell of powder and urine and something else mixed in between. He feels warm in her arms.
The dogs are still sniffing around her and getting in her way, but the baby is quiet now, and Amy makes her way back into the cool of the tall reeds, the dogs following along. She’ll just take him for a little walk down to the river and put a little water on his face.
Stella tells the young man this doesn’t seem to be working. She looks around her, and thinks she will have to hitch a ride. Surely there is someone at the co-op today whom she knows and would take her back to her house? Or even someone she doesn’t know. A woman would be safer, but at this point she is ready to ask anyone. She knows almost everyone on the farms around here. She has been gone more than an hour now and she is afraid the baby might be awake. He never sleeps for much more than an hour. But now, when she needs them, everyone seems to have left, going back to their farms for lunch.
She sees a man coming down the road in a black pickup truck which looks a little bit like the one Mark had in Cape Town where they first made love. She stands out in the middle of the road and lifts her thumb. He stops, and she looks down into very blue eyes. She’s never seen him before, which is unusual. She is not sure what he is doing here, but he doesn’t look like a criminal to her, though he is not a clean-shaven man. She asks him if he can help her and she explains the situation, exaggerating a bit. Dramatically, she says, “It’s a matter of life or death.” Secretly she hopes the baby might still be fast asleep and Amy probably in the cool of the house having a cup of lemonade to drink, but she wants to make sure.
The man seems to hesitate, looks at his watch. He says he’s in a hurry and he’s not going in that direction. “It won’t take more than five minutes back to my house. Please,” she begs. She sees him glance down at her bare legs, and she hesitates for a moment as he leans across and opens the door. Then she walks around and she gets into his car.
Amy wanders on with the baby quiet in her arms now, and the dogs following as she goes down to the river. It is getting hotter and hotter. It is noon, it says on her watch; she can see if she squints. The baby feels more and more heavy in her arms and he is slipping down gradually. She hitches him up a bit and says the words from the poem about the river. She can hear it in the distance and perhaps the baby can too, because he is quiet.
She steps out into the sudden sunlight of the yellow sandy bank of the Limpopo. “See the grey-green, greasy Limpopo,” she says to her little brother and smiles at him, and it seems to Amy that he smiles back at her. But he is wriggling around now in her arms and he is too heavy for her to hold for much longer, so she puts him down on the sand in the shade of a big brown log, and she sits down next to him and waves a fly away from his face. He seems to like it down by the river as she does herself. Perhaps he, too, likes the sound of the water or the waving of the fever-trees above his head. Or perhaps he just likes lying in the sand. Amy lies back beside him. His very blue eyes are open and he seems to be watching her as Amy gets up and walks away from him. She goes toward the water to just put her toes in. She takes off her sandals and looks back at him and it seems to her that the baby is smiling, but perhaps it is just a shadow from the fever-tree.
The man drives excruciatingly slowly along the strip road. Stella feels called upon to make polite conversation with him, though she is more and more nervous as the time goes by. She asks him if he is new in the area.
He says, “Just passing through,” which seems an odd thing to say. It is not an area that one just passes through. He is not a talkative man, she gathers, which is all right with her. She has no need for conversation. What she wants is to push his foot down on the accelerator and go fast down the road. She says, “I’m so worried my baby might have woken up.”
The man says he doesn’t know much about children as he’s never had any. He says this in the tone of someone who doesn’t care much about children either. He says he doesn’t want to ruin the tires of his car on the strip road.
Finally they are on the stretch of tarmacked road going toward her house, and the man goes a little faster. Stella breathes more easily. She feels a compliment might be appropriate at this point. “This is so kind of you. I really appreciate it. We’ll be there in a minute, now.”
“Time for a quickie, perhaps?” the man says and puts his hand on her leg.
The baby is kicking his legs in the air and whimpering again, so Amy scoops up a little water and carries it over to him in her hands. She pours a little on the top of his head, on his beating soft spot. He seems to like that and turns quiet. She pretends she’s the priest and she is baptising the baby all over again. She says his name solemnly, the same name as her father’s: “Mark, I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” she says as the priest did. She feels very solemn and rather sleepy and she closes her eyes for a minute and remembers the christening.
The whole family had gone to the church in the town for the baptism only a few days after the baby was born. Even her favourite grandmother from Cape Town had come up for the ceremony and wore a hat with flowers in the brim. Her mother had dressed the baby up in the long lace christening gown Amy had worn too, and before her her mother. Everyone had crowded around the font and the priest had poured water on her baby’s head and mumbled the words Amy has remembered. She likes saying these words. Amy goes to get more water from the river to do it all over again. She decides to give her brother a new name, to name him anew with more water.
Stella ignores the man and stares at the road. “Only kidding,” he says, and grins at her, but he still has his hand on her leg. She notices the black hairs on the backs of his thick fingers. “Nice legs,” he says as he strokes. He is driving more and more slowly and her heart is beating so loudly now she feels it must be shaking the car.