Ruth's Real Life

The Message by Ruth Everson (This story won the 2010 Woman and Home short story competition.) ‘Would you like to go to China?’ Anne stirred her tea with the usual amount of violence that she reserved for most tasks. ‘You can use your long leave. You’d be gone for eight weeks. My uncle needs someone to teach communications while he’s away in Lagos.’ Nothing in her forty nine years had prepared Ellen for the answer she was about to give. China was a moon journey away from the narrow, East Rand town where she had grown up believing that adventures could be dreamed but never lived. The reply was out before the fear that had made her heart retreat so many times could say no again. There was nothing to lose and when there’s nothing to lose, courage is easier to find. Two years of bending herself into contortionist shapes to fit a dead-end relationship had left her heart heavy and her days full of uncertainty. Ellen felt like a dog, waiting eagerly for a pat on the head...

I Want to Restart the Beat of my Heart What are we waiting for? We stand with our toes in the ocean of our own inspiration but are afraid of the pull of the currents of our hearts. The moments that move my heart seem to happen at the most ordinary times. What my poet’s heart has taught me is to be alive to the possibility of finding the ‘extra’ in the ordinary. On an early morning walk along the Durban beachfront, I came across Bongani and his sand woman. Bongani is a sand sculptor, and amidst the dolphins, a soccer ball and the fearsomely fanged cat that he was working on, stretched a Rubenesque sculpture of a woman. I doubt that Bongani has ever heard of Rubens but like the Master, (famous for his painting of voluptuous women), he had captured in his naïve work a sensuality and grace that ensnared my heart. I want to re-start the beat of my heart The figure was of a bountiful woman, clad only in a thong, lying face down in the sand. Initially, what caught my...