Two bruises, one borrowed voice

The farmer grabbed my elbow. His hands were the size of dinner plates and the bruise is already purple under the hot water. I keep doing arithmetic I did not ask to learn — whose elbow was whose — and now I have a new sum to balance. Yesterday's bruise is darker. Today's is younger. Both of them mine.

I told him to take his hand off me or I would phone the police. In my father's Afrikaans. I heard myself say it and I knew whose voice it was, and I used it anyway — like picking up a knife from a drawer I swore I had thrown out. I do not know if that makes me strong or just well-trained.

The phone was face-down on the bench. I cooked pasta one-handed because the left arm is stiff and I could not look at the screen again. A screenshot. My plates at the Paarl gate. Nine minutes after I pulled in. No caption. The kettle was singing and I was stirring with my right hand and the only thought in my head was: who was at that gate who was not the farmer.

I stood in the doorway after the shower for a long minute. Towel. Nothing else. Not moving. I was trying to hear whether the bakkie in the driveway was running, or whether the house had that listening quiet it gets when someone is outside who should not be. The bruise was throbbing. The screen was waiting under the lock.