Free The Nature of Blood by Caryl Phillips Page B

had about her shoulders a woollen shawl which she clasped tightly in front of her. I jumped to the ground and, as I did so, she took a step backwards. There was to be distance between the pair of us.
    'Just people,' I said. 'Lots of people.'
     
    I lived for nearly two years in that small apartment, abandoning my books, making daily visits to the high window in the tiny kitchen, and staring at the world which my parents had forbidden me to re-enter. They feared that, should I venture out, they would lose their remaining daughter, and so I was to remain hidden inside. I understood that we were fortunate, that most were living ten or more to an apartment, and that Papa's money, and what little influence Mama still had, had bought us this luxury of space. But still, I was unhappy and frustrated, and sixteen.
    Rosa stayed in the room next to mine, but I had never heard
    a sound through the wall, or, until the afternoon she surprised me in the
    kitchen, caught a glimpse of this mysterious woman. However, during the day,
    when my parents were out, I often heard a man who came regularly to visit
    her. I would sit in my room and listen to him pounding up the communal stairs.
    Then I would hear the front door open, then slam, and then I would listen
    to the hurried patter of his feet as he scampered into Rosa's room. Soon I
    knew how to time my exit so that I would be in the kitchen by the time he
    curled himself around the front door. He would look down the short hallway
    and see me standing on the crate. An unshaven man, with dirty worn clothes,
    he seemed an unlikely visitor. Perhaps three times a week he would simply
    smile at me, and then he would disappear into Rosa's room.
     
    'A friend,' was Rosa's response to my question. 'Just a friend.'
    'But why is your friend not living here with us?'
    Rosa gave me a tired smile.
    'He cannot be with us. He's fighting. In the underground.'
    I looked down at her bony hands, then up again at her anxious face. She could only have been in her mid-twenties, yet she seemed so sad.
    'I see.' I watched as Rosa tried to hide her hands in the folds of her cotton dress.
    But, of course, I didn't really see. Rosa and I would spend
    long afternoons taking turns on the crate, and then Rosa would suddenly step
    down and disappear before Mama and Papa returned. No 'goodbye'. No 'see you
    tomorrow'. She would just turn and leave, as though in her mind an alarm-bell
    was sounding. I would climb back up on to the crate and once more survey the
    streets that were crowded with the desperate and the hungry. With each passing
    day, the women in the street grew to resemble men; by this time, it was often
    difficult to tell the difference. And then, later in the afternoon, I would
    once again step from the crate, drag it back to its familiar place, and return
    to my room and my books, and pull in the door behind me.
     
    The day that Rosa surprised me on the crate, Mama and Papa
    arrived back early and were extremely angry to discover me sitting in the
    kitchen. Papa stormed off into their room, but Mama stayed with me. I explained
    in a low voice about Rosa, and how wonderful but frightened she was, and Mama
    listened patiently. However, I sensed that I should not be discussing Rosa.
    Before my discovery of her (or her discovery of me), Mama and Papa had seemed
    reluctant to answer any of my questions about the young woman in the apartment.
    Was she old or young? Did she own the small apartment that we had been forced
    to move into? Was she pretty or ugly? Did she know that we had had to leave
    nearly everything behind, including Mama's piano? Did she know that we were
    not poor, that I had a sister, that the things we brought with us were merely
    the things that we could carry? Did she know? Mama and Papa always evaded
    my questions with a polite smile. And then they would change the subject.
    And then, in the morning, they would once more go out into the streets to
    find