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Bridget Pitt

Next Full Moon We’ll Release Juno

Long before we released Clarence on the Plains of Camdeboo, it was well known in Oupoort that Jonah was soft in the head.

It was also well known that anyone who had a problem with that could sort it out with me. Jonah sometimes made me want to run up the koppie behind the Ouport and scream so loud that all the boulders would roll down the hill and bury the whole damn town. But he was my cousin and I had to keep him safe.

Jonah was always different. Ouma Saartjie said it was because he was born just as the blood-red midsummer Karoo moon was rising on one side of Oupoort, while the angry orange sun dipped below the ragged-toothed mountains on the other side.

Auntie Jenna said we shouldn’t question God’s creations.

If he hadn’t been different, I might have been jealous of him. Not only did he snatch my place as the youngest cousin, but, as our relatives never tired of remarking, he also “looked like an angel.” Oh, how those aunties would babble on about his green eyes, his curly hair bronzed with gold, his “tawny” skin…. Any kid who “looked white” was admired (and also despised) in our neighbourhood, although Jonah didn’t look white so much as like a whole new breed of human, whereas I was just your standard issue Karoo laaitie.

But when the aunties tried to cuddle him, Jonah would go rigid and silent, as if listening for instructions from a distant planet on how to manage a life-threatening situation. And they would put him down, puzzled and a little afraid. When I saw that, I understood that Jonah needed someone to stand between him and the world. It seemed that he’d rather be squeezed by a python than hugged by an auntie, and I soon learnt to put myself in the path of relatives bearing down on him.