Lyndall Henning
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An extract from African Rainbow
It was late spring and all the fruit trees in our garden had been blossoming for weeks. I was high in the branches of the apricot tree, doing confetti-girl duty in a worn blue-and-white polka-dot summer dress. Lying on my stomach across the branch like a leopard, I examined the blossoms that were now beginning to go light brown and crispy round the edges from the new summer sunshine. There were thousands of them – delicate white and exploding from the branches of the huge tree to fall in drifts against its grey-brown trunk.
Below me stood my three sisters. Gwynnifer and Seanan were arguing over who got to be the bridesmaid and who had to be the priest, while Derryn stood between them, examining a fat Shongololo she held in one hand. The millipede’s large, black body shone in the dappled sunlight, its hundreds of tiny, hair-like red legs tucked away as it curled into a self-protective circle.
Derryn was dressed in the now-scruffy bride’s dress Nana had made for her last birthday. She peered out from underneath the veil, which perched on her messy brown hair and hung crookedly over one ear. He bare feet rested in the new pale-green summer grass that was just beginning to poke through the dusty winter yellow.
By now Seanan and Gwynnifer seemed to have reached an agreement because Gwynnifer was bossily arranging the two little ones into suitably church-like positions. Tandy, our tiny terrier mongrel scampered black and white through the fallen petals with her tennis ball as my sisters began singing the entrance hymn: “Dah, Dah dah-dah! Dah, dah dah-dah…!”
“Now, Lyndall!” Gwynnifer called up, waving to me. I grabbed the branches around me and began shaking them, sending thousands of confetti-like petals down on them like white rain while we all shrieked with laughter.
CRACK!
Our laughter died instantly at the unmistakable sound of a gunshot from over the spiked front wall of our garden. The confetti petals still fluttered down, settling on the frozen forms of my sisters beneath the tree. We were silent, our hearts hammering, our ears straining towards the sound. I heard a dull thump as something was dropped onto the hot tarmac on the side of the road, then the sound of the car I hadn’t realised was there, driving away. Next, I heard the quick lilting voices of the beggars who lived on the pavement outside speaking to one another in Tswana.
“Mom says we should always run when we hear a gunshot nearby,” Seanan said, popping her thumb into her mouth.
I climbed down from the apricot tree and followed my sisters over to the big golden-brick wall that backed onto the road.
“Do you think you could give me a hand up?” I asked Gwynnifer.
“I might be able to,” she said, “if you will do it for me after.”
I clambered monkey-like up the wall and clung onto the tall, sharp spikes at the top, levering myself up so I could peer through them to the road below while balancing on Gwynnifer’s shoulders. Just visible between the two eucalyptus trees outside our house, the beggars crowded round something in the road. They seemed to be arguing. It was a while before one of them moved and I caught a glimpse of the crumpled body lying sprawled on the tarmac. I wondered if it was dead. I thought I saw a splash of blood, though it might have been a mirage from the sun. Shivery heat as Derryn called it.
My nose was filled with a sharp, metallic smell, though I didn’t know if this was from the weird stomach-churning fear that hadn’t quite reached my brain yet, or from the mirage blood that shimmered on the road.
“Hey!” Gwynnifer called up. “My shoulders are dying! What’s going on?”