by Jana Louise Smit

Created on: September 01, 2010

My niece was standing next to me. There was a thick silence that I didn’t know how to bridge. I was torn inside, wanting to help her but not knowing how to explain to this pretty five-year-old why daddy had hurt her. Why he hurt her pets. I couldn’t look into her eyes for long; they were old and sad eyes, so I instead stuck my spoon into the flower bed and started to dig holes. This odd way of using a pudding spoon must’ve fascinated her because she silently hunched down and watched my activities with a burning intensity. I mean burning. She had learned to hide her feelings and opinions out of fear for evoking her father’s wrath. Instead of learning to communicate her feelings normally, she radiated them through her eyes, her gaze, and her face. It was safer that way.

She watched me plant the pumpkin seeds one by one, far too many for such a small bed and even though I knew the baby plants would never really prosper, and I planted away. It was better than trying to talk to the gaunt child next to me, who in any case just smiled sadly and never really carried a conversation. A fault she must’ve inherited from me. Like she inherited my name.

I silently showed her how to fill up the holes and thump the poor pumpkin seeds into place and this she dutifully did. She could’ve gotten up and left at any time to go and watch T.V or play computer games but instead she chose to follow me while I hacked the garden with my pudding spoon and trying to be a gardener while all I was doing was to ruin the place. She seemed almost stuck to me as she followed me from flower bed to flower bed.

Like me, she abhors being touched. I don’t blame her for it, but the reasons behind that dislike still kills me and that is things a child should never go through. She helped me to plant the seeds and while doing this, several times we touched accidentally and she would withdraw her hand in a pathetic and apologetic way, as if it was somehow her fault. God, I just wanted to hug her. Take her away. But realities and my own failings make me do nothing. I didn’t know how to heal this delicate bloom.

We walked across the garden, the child still trailing behind me. I noticed the sun was setting and the event splashed the clouds around with such golden and red veins that I stopped to look and got so absorbed that I forgot my niece until she unexpectedly took my hand. It jarred me back to her, like a bolt. I couldn’t believe this battered, touch-aversed

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