A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto Read Free Book Online Page A

shall pass.
    Grace stands with Tembi next to the gate, where the driveway to the house meets the dust road that winds through the veldt and past the other farms until it eventually meets the paved road to Klipspring. From here Grace will walk to Klipspring, and there she will take a bus to Postberg, and there she will take another bus to Rooifontein, and from there she will walk to visit her sick cousin Sofia in the hospital.
    Because it is a long distance to walk to Klipspring, and because the bus to Postberg leaves early in the day from outside the station, she must leave here while the darkness of night still lingers, before the morning light touches the sky.
    Grace carries her handbag, the good black one, and a small overnight case. She wears her Sunday coat and hat, her going-to-church clothes. But her feet are bare, her shoes placed neatly in the top of her suitcase. She walks barefoot because it is easier to walk these dusty roads unencumbered by shoes, because she wants her shoes to remain free of dust until she reaches the town limits of Klipspring, where she will put them on, and straighten her hat and brush down her coat and present to the world the image of the respectable, employed woman that she is, not some wanderer come in from the countryside.
    Tembi shivers slightly in the predawn chill, standing close to Grace. “Mother, I want to visit Sofia in Rooifontein and see her baby.” There is apleading in her voice, a child’s tone that she has not used in many years, the yearning of a child to be taken along on a trip, to participate in the adventure of leaving home.
    Grace shakes her head sharply. “You must stay here and work in the farmhouse. I told Missus Märit that you will help her with the cooking and cleaning.”
    “Why can’t Missus Märit clean her own house and cook her own food?”
    “Don’t talk this way, my daughter. My work is in that house, and now I must go away and you must do that work for me. You must keep my position there for me. If you don’t, they will find someone else.”
    Grace has worries other than what Tembi desires at this moment. She worries about her cousin Sofia, about the small child, about there being no husband, about what happens if Sofia has to stay in the hospital. She worries about the long walk in the darkness, and whether she will miss the bus. She worries about the money she will spend on bus fares and medicines. She wants to hurry now, to be on her way, to allay her anxiety.
    But she is also glad to linger here a moment, glad that Tembi has risen with her and walked down to the gate with her, and carried her bag this short distance.
    The sand underfoot smells damp from the dew that falls in the night and there is a faint aroma of wood smoke in the air even though it is too early for any cooking fires to have started.
    Tembi shivers, shifts Grace’s suitcase to her other hand and hunches her shoulders, for she has only pulled on her thin cotton dress before coming out.
    Grace looks at her kindly, with the affection of a mother for her daughter. “You should have stayed in bed longer, my piccanin. Or at least have put on a pullover.” She rubs her hand briskly across her daughter’s shoulders. “And why are you so thin? All that porridge I feed you, you should be as plump as a heifer, but you are like a gazelle instead.”
    “I am strong now, Mother.” Tembi says this as a statement of fact, as if there is no question of her being otherwise.
    Grace smiles in the darkness. “Yes, you are. You are strong. I know this.”
    “When will I see my father?” Tembi suddenly says.
    “Father visits later in the year. When the mines give him his holidays. You know that, Tembi.”
    “Why must my father always stay in the mines?” There is still something childish in her tone, the belligerent insistence of a child demanding answers.
    “Why? My daughter, you ask me that?” Grace shakes her head. “So that you can have food for your breakfast. So that you have a