Daria's day

Family pressure micro: Stellenbosch morning, she has not driven to her father's stoep but her mother's sister Tannie Mia calls from a number she has not used in six years and leaves a voicemail saying the cousin Pieter Viviers named in his third complaint is the same cousin who drove her to her first varsity lecture, Tannie Mia's voice cracks on the word cousin and she ends with 'don't come to the house this weekend, your father is not alone.' Blood: the bite wound on her forearm has been weeping through every bandage she has put on it this week and the inside of the red bag is streaked pink. Threat and crime: when she stops at the Stellenbosch fuel station to clean the bag, the patient man with the silver watch is parked at the pump in front of her and a Cape cobra is sunning itself on the concrete island between the two bakkies, hood flat, six feet from her door — and a Polaroid of Tannie Mia's front gate falls out of his window when he rolls it down. She reverses out without fuelling, decision: she is going to drive to the Tankwa in the morning and not tell anyone where she is going.