1
She is made up of
however many bones there are in a
human skeleton & a badly crushed
waxpaper mouth & skin as thin and
baggy as an old T-shirt. She has two
blue eyes. One is flesh&blood, the
other handblown glass.
2
Names mean nothing to her anymore.
She keeps her hands in her lap like two
bald veinous animals. She is knackered
through&through to her bone marrow
from all the godawful hours of waiting.
3
I take her right hand and hold it.
Your hands are
cold,
she says.
I have bad
circulation, I say.
Her smile droops between its pegs.
Cold hands, warm
heart,
she says.
She peers at me with her live eye.
Who are you? she
says.
4
I am your
granddaughter, I say.
Hah, she says. What are you doing here?
She waits. Her skin drags from her bones.
I’ve come to visit
you,
I say. I’ve come all
the way from South
Africa to see you here.
She frowns. She bloats her cheeks, blows.
If you’ve come
from South Africa, she says,
then where am I?
5
She asks this question without confusion or
emotion, as if it is a philosophical problem.
But her point flays my voice good and wide.
You are in Canada, I say
at last. You are in
Canada now, Goma. She
shivers. That is a
shame, she
says. Ja. That is a real shame.
I belong in South
Africa.
Grief kneels in her eyes.
6
Are you tired, I
ask. She lifts her eyelids
and looks at me. Well
yes, she says. Yes,
of course I’m
tired.
She works her lips.
You see, she
says, the older people get,
the tireder they
get. They become tired
of living. They
become tired of waiting.
7
I lean and kiss her bloodshot cheek. Goodbye, I say.
It’s been
wonderful seeing you. She
is 92 years old.
I will not see her again. I press her hand, restore it
to its mate. Her dead eye
rolls and flares. Blue fury
fills the room. She demands,
Why do you all of
a sudden like me so much?
This question is the heirloom she bequeaths me.
8
A good question. A question worth devoting
some time to. Afterall, she doesn't know me.
I do not know her. She is right to suspect my
solicitude. But I choose to misunderstand her.
Because you are my
grandmother, I answer.
These are the barren last words I bestow on
the woman who bore and raised my father.
Kharys Ateh Laue is a South African writer whose short
fiction has appeared in Cleaver Magazine,
Jalada, Brittle Paper, New Contrast,
Itch, and Pif Magazine. In 2017, her short story “Plums” was longlisted for
the Short Story Day Africa Prize. Her academic work, which focuses on the
depiction of race, gender, and animals in South African fiction, has been
published in English Studies in Africa,
Scrutiny2, and the Journal of Literary Studies. She
currently lives in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.