Half Good

South African, Rita Kindervarten is an old lady. She finds herself half way across the road on the central median strip looking at Billy back on the footpath. Billy helped her, but he got distracted and left her halfway across the street, when his mobile phone rang.

“I’ve got to take this.” He retreats back to the first side of the road, when the other side of the road is blocked with oncoming traffic.

Billy repeats back what the person on the other end of the phone is saying, as if he can’t quite believe what he is hearing, the effect was the entire conversation, had a touch of the macabre’s about it, as though Billy was answering himself but without really listening. 

Billy was standing in front of a shop window, Rita can see that he thought he looked pretty good in his three button cream sixties suite, as he looked at his reflection in the glass. He did, in his thin black tie and his pointy black shoes.

“I can’t wait for this nonsense,” Rita mutters to herself.

Rita is trying to cross the other half of the busy street on her own. Cars rush passed, and Rita is shaking, as she tries to judge their speed. Rita's macular degeneration makes it almost impossible for her to see the approaching cars.

Rita is going to be killed.

Billy realises what he has done. “Gotta go.” He flips his phone shut, and he dashes across to the middle of the road and takes Rita's arm. “Steady on old girl.”  Just as Rita is about to step in front of on-coming traffic.

"Rita, I am so sorry," says Billy.

"Eets not the ind of the wurld, Beelly," says Rita.

"I shouldnta done what I done, Rita," says Billy. "It's the voices, Rita, it’s the voices." He holds up his phone.

"Never mynd Beelly, yr ere now," says Rita. "Let's geet across."

"On the count of three, Rita."

"Roytio, Beelly," says Rita. "On zee count of thhree."

Billy takes Rita by the arm and escorts her to the far side of the road. Across three lanes, in between cars flashing passed them on either side. "Immaculate Degenerate, or not, Rita. Immaculate Degenerate, or not."

"Yes, Beelly," says Rita. "Yes, Beelly."

"Run!" says Billy. A truck approaches them in the far lane.

Rita Screams.

Billy drags her to the footpath just in time.

"You're moi 'ero, Beelly. You're moi 'ero."

"That was close, Rita. That was close."

Rita clasps her hands to her forehead. "I felt zee vind, Beelly. Zee Vind from the car passing su cluse."

"You nearly felt more than that." Billy laughs.

Rita laughs. "Don't say eet, Beelly. Don't say eet."

It reminded them of home, the windy back blocks, those tumbleweed streets of where they’d come from, the hills out the back of Bolago. As kids, Billy and his mates used to hide in Rita’s garden. They would scramble about being up to no good, and sometimes Rita would hear them. 

“Is there somebody there,” she would call out. “Or is it ze wind?’

It was long after Rita’s husband had passed and Billy could hear the sadness in Rita’s voice. As his mates scrambled and scattered in fear of being seen, Billy would take one last look at the woman in the single globe lit back door, as if the pool of that single globe was the tapestry that was left of her life. He’d call out as softly as the wind, “It is only ze vind.” Before he’d scatter through the garden as quiet as a mouse.

“Er.” Rita’s voice would herumph. It would be the last thing Billy heard, as he dashed under the second story growth of Rita’s vast garden. The resignation of loneliness. It gave him a chill.

Years later, Carmel, Billy’s mother’, died and it was her funeral. Rita was the tiny figure sitting quietly down the back. Afterwards, Rita plucked up the courage to say something to Billy. Billy’s mum, Carmel, had been the first local to be kind to Rita, after she immigrated to Bolago. She approached Billy and told him what a wonderful woman his mother was.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

 “You’re the woman from the veranda,” Billy says, as though thinking out aloud.

“Your one of the boys who used to call to me from my garden.”

“I thought you were mad.” Billy picked up a sandwich from the plate.

“I thought I was going mad,” says Rita. “We’d been married for 30 years.” She scooped a sausage roll deep down into the tomato sauce that it looked as though it dripped blood as she bought it to her mouth.

“Do you still miss him?” asks Billy.

“Ivery day, Beelly, ivery day.”

“How long has it been?” asks Billy.

“Fifteen yars, Beelly. Fifteen yars.”

Billy misses his mum. Rita never had any children. They stay close.

One night, a couple of years after Carmel’s death, after a huge batch of eggnog made by Billy’s sister, Amanda, Billy told Rita the story of what he and his mates used to hide in her garden.

“It was late, we were bored,” says Billy.

“Well, eet vas a small town, Beelly, a small town. Not much for kids to do in a small town."

“We used to hang around the arcade, Saturday night playing games, hanging out.”

“Not much goin’ on in a small town on a Saturdee night.”

“We play games until old Joe would kick us out and shut up shop. I think it was 11pm.”

“I’d bee vatching teevee, Beelly, till late, I no longer had any reason to go to bed.”

“We’d walk home down Donaldson’s Road. We’d cut across the creek which ran along the back of your yard.”

Miryveather Creeek,  Beelly, Miryveather Creeek.”

“Your house sat up high…”

“Yeees, it vas a good view in ze day tyme from my veranda.”

“It was a game to us.”

“My husband Elliot had not long died, the greef didn’t leave me for a number of years,” says Rita. “It vas an ard von zat. Greef Beelly, ze greef.”

“I found that out with my mum dying,” says Billy. “It never really fully goes.”

“But vhy my hise, Beelly, vhy me?”

“It was just on the way, Rita. That’s all it was.”

“You’d make those noises, Beelly, those noises you boys made.”

“I know, we thought it was funny,” says Billy. “We were bored and young, a dangerous combination.”

“It vas unkind.”

“You were the lady with the funny way of talking, with the accent…”

“Ze accent, Beelly, get it right.”

“Ze accent, Reeta, ze accent.”

Rita laughs. “Oh Billy you are so funny. Zat is supposed to be me.”

“Zat is you, old gyrl.”

Rita laughs. "Don't say eet, Beelly. Don't say eet."

“It vasn’t just ze vind, Mrs Kindervarten.”

“Oh Beelly.”

“I’m glad I got to know you,” says Billy. “I’m glad you forgave me.”

“Me too Beelly, me too,” says Rita. “A friendship shared in death.”

The cars begin to rush again on the lane they’d just crossed.

“Don’t say it, Beelly, don’t say it.” Rita giggles.

Billy laughs nervously. "It vas zee vind, Mrs Kindervarten? "It vas ze vind?"

"It was zee vind, Beelly," asks Rita. "Ze vind?"

"Yes, Mrs Kindervarten. Ze Vind."

"Er," says Rita. She shrugs.

"Zee vind," says Billy.

"Ve made eet," says Rita. "That is all that matters, Beelly."