Читать книгу My name is Vaselinetjie - Anoeschka von Meck - Страница 4

She’d hoped it would be over by the time the sun came up.

She’d hoped for a full moon, so that she could find her way in the dark.

She’d hoped to die before sunrise.

Towards evening she’d felt it was time.

The time she had been fearing.

When at last her body would be rid of its secret.

She’d finished her homework and pretended to want an early night. In her room she’d taken out the bag she’d hidden at the bottom of her wardrobe a while before. She’d locked her bedroom door and climbed through the window.

No one would suspect a thing.

No one would come looking for her.

Who cared anyway?

During the past few months the other people in the house had become used to her doing her own thing. Refusing to speak. Bursting into tears and sulking and taking fright for no reason at all. Being up first in the mornings and leaving the bathroom smelling of vomit.

If anyone suspected she might be in trouble, no one cared enough to ask.

She was alone.

Some distance from the house the pain grabbed hold of her. It was far worse than she had imagined. She bit into the towel she’d brought along, but after a while she couldn’t stifle her screams any more.

She had to carry on: Someone might hear her moaning and screaming.

If only she could reach the first koppie.

At first she kept walking – she was heading for the outskirts of town, for the wall that surrounded the cemetery. No one ever went there. She knew exactly w here to go. Like a cat that had searched out a safe place in a dark corner to have her litter.

It was completely dark now: a few times she stumbled and nearly twisted her ankle, and a few times the pain made her sink to the ground, loose stones biting into her knees.

In the distance she could see the orange glow of a few late fires in the township. She tried to stifle her panting breath as she listened for the approach of voices.

It was the longest, most terrifying night of her life.

At first light she no longer cared. About what was happening to her, about bleeding to death. She was too tired.

She hadn’t quite made it to the koppie. A few metres away she’d collapsed under a shrub that had taken root among the rocks.

Sometime during the morning she stopped moaning and lay inert, the blood on her clothing and legs drying in the sun.