Free Moffie by Andre Carl van der Merwe

responsibility to catch it; clear as a huge, red finger pointing at my inability. It travels in the air for the first half of its journey, and then hits the firm beach, still damp from where the tide has pulled back from this canvas to paint my shame on.
    Everybody in the two teams and all the spectators, the entire tennis club, all the people we mix with, all my parents’ friends, are looking at me. The ball seems to gain speed as it charges down at me.
    On this windy, Sunday-morning, sand-in-the-eyes ‘field,’ the captain has placed me where he knows the ball is most unlikely to go. Now, in horror and disbelief, I watch it streak towards me on the hard sand of the receding tide, smooth but for a bump created by a shell exactly in the path of the ball, which causes it to change direction ever so slightly and bounce. In the noise of dense disappointment and amused delight from the other team, I think I can hear my mother shout, ‘Watch the ball, Nicky!’
    Beyond the beach, like a huge horseshoe, the Hottentots Holland Mountains sweep all the way from Gordon’s Bay to Helderberg. White Southeaster clouds are being pushed over Sir Lowry’s Pass in huge, God-sized handfuls. But my world is the size of one ball.
    The ball streaks past me. Angry and ashamed I fly up and run after it. By the time I stop it, the ball has exhausted all its mocking energy. And all the while the two batsmen are running back and forth between the wickets. Those who aren’t shouting are counting, and I can feel my parents’ shame.
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    There is that fragment of a moment when I know I’ve pushed him too far, that tiniest of a split second when it’s too late. He loses control and I am going to get a hiding. My hands go limp and the spoon drops onto the plate. It overbalances because I haven’t placed it deep enough, and it falls, spilling ice cream and chocolate sauce on the tablecloth.
    Some part of my brain probably notices this, but it is now occupied with protecting my body. My father flies off his seat and grabs me in a terrible fury.
    I have refused to eat my dessert with a spoon and a fork. He said it’s good manners and I said it made no sense. He said it’s not for me to have an opinion; I have to obey him without question. I picked up the spoon and brought it to my mouth without touching the fork.
    Now nothing else, it seems to me, exists in this man I call father, but to hurt me. Gripping a handful of shoulder and shirt and then neck and hair, he drags me to the bathroom, like a dog picked up by the surplus skin on its neck. I am pleading, begging and crying, gripped by fear, not only of the pain, but also of his anger that seems to have no bounds.
    It doesn’t really relate to the fork and spoon; it is his frustration that drives him.
    Like when I wouldn’t jump off that rock. All the other boys, the sons of his tennis-playing friends, did. And then, to make matters worse, even my younger sister climbed up and not only did she jump, but she dived into the cold, root-dyed mountain water.
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    Behind the bathroom door hangs a thick plaited rope and below it the birthday calendar, but whenever I sit on the toilet it is not the calendar I look at. I see only the instrument of punishment that is mainly used on me.
    The bathroom smells of Handy Andy and the sick-sweet artificial blossoms of the air-freshener. Were it not for the picture on the can, one would never guess that it’s intended to wrap and package the smell of farts into bouquets of spring meadows.
    He unhooks the rope. The blows start. It’s a whole big thing, the noise of my screaming and the sharp cracks of the rope catching my bare legs. He lashes out at me with large figure of eight swoops, until I am lying in a foetal position with my hands over my ears and face.
    My mother is pleading and shouting at him. ‘Why don’t you just shoot him, Peet, if you want to murder your own