Telling a web free story

It is early afternoon in the small one street town only 50kms from the bustling metropolitan city of Johannesburg. There are neither exciting or stimulating views nor scenery. The warm autumn day in the early part of April is as a promise of a dull, dry winter to come. The year is 1950. The incessant droning of Harvard aircraft from the airfield close to the hospital is the only real sign of life. The free flying aircraft in the skies overhead in abandoned flight are in total contradiction and in obvious oblivion to the drama unfolding in the hospital on the ground below. A young woman stands looking out of a first floor window on the scene below. The breeze flutters the curtains that conceal her from the event playing out in the car park below. A nursing sister is assisting a couple to load a newly
born infant into the back seat of their large, two tone brown Chevrolet car. She observes the dark, handsome man in his sport blazer and the elegantly dressed young woman, obviously both excited by the bundle wrapped in white blankets which they are carefully placing in a travel crib on the back seat of the car. Her fingers gently massage the scar in her abdomen where only a few weeks prior to this scene the bundle being loaded in the car had occupied a significant space.

As she leans back closing her eyes a single tear trickles down her cheek. Her jaw twitches as she clenches her teeth together resolving to push the secret that she had harboured for months deeper into her being. It is over, it is past, all the secrecy, unexpected guilt and concealment of her condition is past - free at last to regain her original life - to reintegrate into her family and her society as if nothing had happened - she mouths a silent prayer:

“God look after my boy”

She shrugs off the emotion that is trying to overwhelm her as she begins to pack her clothes into the suitcase – it’s time to go. The nurse that accompanied the couple loading the baby into the car embraces her in a final farewell as she walks out into the autumn sunlight. It is over - she can embrace the beginning of a new life - for her nine months has flown past - she is eager to pick up where she left off. For the bundle in the car it is another beginning.

Roger

COMMENTS:

A moving piece of “Flash Fiction”. I like the contrast between the outer and inner worlds: life goes on as usual in “the bustling metropolitan city”, whilst a young woman faces a hidden struggle behind “the curtains that conceal her”. I sense that, although “she is eager to pick up where she left off”, she will never enjoy “free flying … abandoned flight” again, and I feel for her and the son who will always wonder about her. – ERNA

This is a moving and engaging description. I am anxious to hear more. Is it a case of an unwanted pregnancy? Will she keep the baby? Has her family accepted that she has had a baby or is she handing it over for adoption? Tell me the next episode....please! - MANDY

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