sixteen, his pencil, the watch

His cousin. The one who called me little D. The one who held me on his knee at braais until I was too long for it and kept doing it because he thought it was funny. That cousin is now texting strangers where I am on the N1. That cousin has a phone in his pocket and my father's silence in his ear and I was driving south with a red bag in the back and a gravid female who does not know the world outside her weave is full of men who will sell you for reasons they do not have to explain to themselves.

My father wrote my name in pencil. On a page I have not opened in twelve years. I read it tonight in the bathroom because the light there is good for tape and I needed the mirror anyway. His handwriting has not changed. He still dots his i's like small circles. He still crosses his t's too high. He still wrote Daria with the D too big and the rest too small, like the name was something he was trying to fit onto the page and could not quite manage.

I do not know what the page says in full. I read the grid reference. I read my name. I put it back.

Fifteen became sixteen somewhere between the kitchen and the bed. I know because I am not counting.