Missing

Missing

Tsitsi struggled to concentrate on her work. The dream she had, haunted her past lunch time. What was missing? What had she been overlooking? Who was missing? What was her subconscious bringing to her attention?

Out of the blue the name of a long forgotten aunt came up. She didn’t have a single photograph of this aunt to put into her memory album. When she tried to obtain one from other family members, she was rebuked. Nobody wanted to be reminded of her.

Ariadne went missing that same week. Tsitsi was in tears: her cat with the green eyes no longer jumped onto the table in the kitchen to investigate if some tasty morsel wasn’t accidentally left in her bowl. No soft brush against her legs in the passage. The spot in the sun on the bed remained empty. Tsitsi’s heart had a hole in it.

Aunt Cathy was a teacher. Her long term boyfriend ended their relationship and she went dancing with another teacher. She was pregnant after their very first date. Uncle Brent was not in love and did not want to marry her, as was culturally expected of him in the late nineteen forties. To avoid an even bigger scandal, they were married in a hurry.

Uncle Brent qualified as a dentist while Aunty Cathy worked as a teacher to support them. He eventually had his own practice and his own secretary and was a respected man in the community. His secretaries would become younger as Aunty Cathy became older and redder in the face. He worked long hours, so he claimed, to service the teeth of important people.

As far as Tsitsi can remember, there was no cousin. She was sure of that. The details were blurred by the mists of time and were certainly never openly discussed. Perhaps Uncle Brent forced her to have an abortion, and it was called a miscarriage? What Tsitsi did remember was that Aunty Cathy had bottles of whiskey hidden in the most unlikely places in her house. Once Tsitsi went in search of a towel and found a bottle hidden in the linen cupboard. Another time there was a full half jack concealed in a saucepan in the kitchen.

Tsitsi cried often the following day. She had a feeling that her tears were for more that her beloved cat. It must be so hard to live with a man that never loved you, she kept thinking. Aunty Cathy probably loved Uncle Brent, otherwise she would not have been hurt so much or put up with the humiliation for so long. She filled her emptiness with food and dulled her pain with whiskey and soda.

The accident happened on a Sunday afternoon in the late nineteen seventies, when apartheid was in full force. It was discussed in hushed hissing voices by the few people who were privy to what had happened. There was a serious division as to what had to be done, anger even.

The abuse of power came to pass. Uncle Brent called on an influential client who obliterated all records of the accident. The dent in Aunty Cathy’s car was fixed without question.

Tsitsi was sad. Ariadne was still missing. What made matters worse for her was that she was now crying for the family of the black man that was killed by Aunty Cathy thirty odd years ago. Somewhere in South Africa there is a mother who will never know what happened to her son. Perhaps he had a wife and children. He was an unknown name on the long list of missing people. His destiny was to meet Aunty Cathy on a quiet and otherwise deserted road one Sunday afternoon, long ago.

Aunty Cathy died within a year. She could not bear her miserable life any longer. Uncle Brent did not grieve for long. He remarried before the clods of earth on Aunty Cathy's grave were dry.

Ariadne was rescued by a gardener after three days cornered up a tree by a neighbour’s vicious dogs. She was cold, wet and hungry. She returned as the new queen of the household, and the Jack Russell had to abdicate with one green flash of her eyes. If only Aunty Cathy could have been queen of her own life . . . .

Tsitsi felt that she needed to go to the police and tell this story. It would be the right thing to do. Perhaps insist on restitution of some sort. Then she realized that she could not because she had no name and no date.

Tsitsi started to question the details of the accident for the first time. She knows that humans are capable of doing strange things without knowing. Who actually saw the body of the black man? Was there ever a body? Perhaps the dent on Aunty Cathy’s car was caused by a tree that she ran into. She was so intoxicated that she could not remember at all what had happened. She was told repeatedly, no doubt, that she had killed a man. She believed it. However, one is innocent until proven guilty,