Blue (33 page)

“Inali, please. Just let them go,” Delah begged, weeping, “please.”

“Nobody else in this world knows about any of this, you know that, right? If I let your daughters go, and anyone finds out, I’ll immediately know it was you,” Inali said. “And if anyone finds out, I will come for you. And your family. Nobody knows what I am capable of. I have friends in high places. Remember that.”

“I’ll remember, Inali. Just let them go,” Delah said. “Inali, I know you. It isn’t like you to hurt anyone. Inali, this isn’t you. You aren’t a bad man.”

“I know I’m not,” Inali said, hanging up the phone. He picked Tabitha up and threw her into the closet, knocking her unconscious too as her head hit the back wall.

C h a p t e r 
31

Anytha woke up and pulled off the cloth that was tied around her face. The bright light around her made her pounding headache worse, so she closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again. She let her arms fall to her sides and she felt the curvature of the seat around her thighs. She knew she was sitting in the bucket seat of a vehicle. She slowly began blinking and opening her eyes, looking at the gray ceiling of tfhe car. Her head pounded with pain, and even blinking made her feel like her forehead was being hit with a hammer.

Her eyes adjusted, and she began trying to move her back and her head. She had been left in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, the seat reclined all the way back. All she could see around her was the dusty terrain of the desert as a sharp wind blew over the ground, stirring up the sand. As her mind cleared, she remember the last memory she had—jumping on Inali’s back and screaming—and she closed her eyes, remembering being thrown to the ground. After a few moments, she mustered enough strength to sit up in the seat and turned her neck to look in the back seat, where she saw a pair of white, lifeless legs bent at the knees.

Tabitha. Anytha turned around quickly and immediately pulled the lever beside the front seat to bring the front seat into an upright position. As she turned around quickly, she felt a rush of bruising pain running across her forehead, and she let her torso fall between the two front seats. She twisted around to see Tabitha, still in her pajamas, lying motionless in the back seat. Frantically, she reached her hand down, placed two fingers on Tabitha’s neck, and felt the warmth of her body and the pulsing of the blood through her veins. Anytha sighed in relief and let herself sink back onto her knees in the passenger seat. She stared at Tabitha as she slept.

Tabitha had a bloody spot on the back of her head; traces of the blood had run down the side of her face, but she was alive. Anytha sat for a moment just staring at her features, seeing the similarities between the two of them. Aside from her pale skin, she looked exactly as Anytha had always pictured a sister of hers might look. But now she lay with her eyes closed and her hair dyed, and it was hard to even see any affliction at all.

Anytha figured that whatever Inali had used to knock her out the first time, he had used again on them both and driven them out into the desert, probably to let them die. She looked at the ignition in the car and saw a key inside, with a metal key ring attached to it. She reached over and turned the key, and the engine of the car came roaring to life. Anytha then opened the passenger door and jumped out of the car, hoping to see the tire marks from which direction they might have come, but the wind had blown them all away. She jumped back in the driver’s seat of the car, shifted gears, and started driving in the opposite direction that the car had been pointed, hoping to find a road that might lead her home. Or to a hospital.

She drove as quickly as she could considering the terrain, but the further she drove, the more discouraged she became. Yet she continued, knowing that Inali would have never brought her somewhere where she could easily be found. It was obvious that he just wanted to be rid of her, but killing her just seemed too dangerous. For once, Anytha was thankful that he cared so much about his reputation.

Anytha heard whimpering in the back seat and turned around to see Tabitha beginning to stir.

“Tabitha. Tabitha, don’t get up too fast. You’re safe,” Anytha said, pointing the rearview mirror down so that she could see Tabitha moving. “You’ve taken a pretty nasty hit to the back of the head, but you’re okay. Just stay lying down if you can’t sit up right now.”

Anytha drove a little further, trying her hardest to take the bumps in the terrain slowly, so as not to aggravate Tabitha’s head pain any more than she imagined it already must be. A few minutes later, Tabitha sat up in the middle of the back seat, holding her forehead in her hands.

“You okay?” Anytha asked.

“Yeah. I will be,” Tabitha answered.

“We’ve been driving for about an hour, and we still haven’t hit a road yet,” Anytha said. “He left us out in the middle of nowhere. But at least we have a car.”

Tabitha leaned forward and put her head in her hands, letting out a small moan.

“If you don’t want to talk, I totally understand. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. But the last thing I remember was you throwing his phone across the room and screaming for help,” Anytha said. “And then I got knocked out. Do you know what happened?”

“It was your mother. On the phone. It was your mother,” Tabitha said, picking her head up. “Well, our mother, I guess.”

“Tabitha, I’m so sorry. I want you to know that I never even knew you existed. I would have come to visit you every month. I begged my parents for a sibling my entire life,” Anytha said, as her eyes filled up with tears. “I promise you. If I would have known, I would have been there in a minute.”

Tabitha crawled over the middle console of the car, and sat down in the front seat, grabbing Anytha’s hand.

“The second I saw you jump on Inali’s back, I knew you must have never known about me,” Tabitha said. “You saved my life. You have absolutely no reason to apologize.”

“After I passed out, did he?” Anytha said, stuttering. “Did he—”

“No,” Tabitha interrupted, “no, he didn’t. He wanted me to want it too. He wanted me to want him too. Stealing it just wouldn’t have given him the same satisfaction.”

“I believe that,” Anytha said, turning to Tabitha. “He hated keeping me in that closet, it was eating away at his conscience. Every time he came to bring me food, he would go almost as far as to apologize for keeping me there. He would threaten to kill me, and then still try to convince me that he was a good man. I honestly believe that he doesn’t have any trouble sleeping at night. His conscience is clear. Somehow, he truly believes that everything that he does, he’s doing for the good of the women involved. In his mind, he’s the hero of his own story. He knows that rape is wrong, but to him, growing in power and wealth from the blood of unborn babies isn’t. I can’t wait to see him behind bars. He might not think he kidnapped anyone, but I would like to see what the courts decide about that.”

“Anytha, after you passed out, he said that if he decided to let us go, and the police found out, he would know that it was us that told them,” Tabitha warned. “I think you should just be careful about what you say to anyone about Inali, until we can figure everything out.”

Anytha swallowed hard considering Tabitha’s words. She was right. To see Inali behind bars would mean proving his wrong-doing to the police. To those in power. To those that were already seduced by his lies. She felt the terrain underneath the wheels of the car beginning to smooth, and she saw in the distance what looked like a small strip of black pavement. She sped up and came to an empty road, so she pulled onto the pavement. She sped up again, looking over at Tabitha and grinning. They continued along the road for what seemed like another hour until they started seeing signs for Upington. They passed a few houses and saw the sign for a bed and breakfast on the side of the road, and Anytha pulled into the driveway.

“Stay here, I’m going to go get some directions,” Anytha said, getting out of the car and walking up the quaint, white steps of the home and through the carved, wooden front door.

“Excuse me, but could you tell me how far I am from Pretoria?” Anytha asked an elderly woman sitting in a chair in the foyer.

“Honey, you’re over 800 kilometers from there,” the woman said.

“Oh. Okay. Would you mind if I use your phone in a minute?” Anytha asked.

“No, that’s fine,” the woman said to her.

“Thanks. I’ll be right back,” Anytha said, walking back out to the car and getting in.

“Well, we’re over eight hours away from Pretoria, but I wanted to ask you what you wanted to do before I called anyone. Where do you want to go? Do you want to go somewhere where we can be alone for a few days? Do you want to go to the hospital? Are you ready to go to Pretoria and meet our parents? I don’t want to move too quickly. It’s all up to you. I want to be sensitive to you,” Anytha asked Tabitha resisting the urge to grab her hand—not knowing if it would be too soon for that kind of intimacy.

“Tabitha?” Anytha asked again. “I know that meeting our parents may not be what you want to do right now, so we don’t have to go back to Pretoria. We can go back to my apartment near my school too, but we don’t have any money. So, if you’re not ready to meet our parents, that’s fine with me, but I have to call them and tell them that we’re okay. I just want to be sensitive to whatever you’re thinking would be best right now.”

“I’m okay,” Tabitha said, staring out the window, seemingly in awe. “Whatever you think is best.”

“Tabitha, are you okay?” Anytha asked, her hand pausing a bit before she gave in and gently patted Tabitha’s arm.

“Yeah. I’ve just never seen anything like this place before. It’s just—nice to see a house that’s not surrounded by barbed wire and concrete walls. This place is just so—” Tabitha said, pausing and putting her hand on Anytha’s, “cute. I mean, everything about it is perfect. I mean, look at that tree. I’ve never seen a tree like that before. It’s so perfect. Perfect in every way.”

Anytha looked in the direction that Tabitha was staring and saw a pretty, young Jacaranda tree planted in front of the home; its leaves were green and the buds had all fallen for the season. It was encircled in a pretty wall of bricks, and its roots were surrounded with rich, dark mulch.

“Jacarandas are my favorite too,” Anytha said, turning her hand over and squeezing Tabitha’s hand gently and smiling. “Just wait until you see them in October.”

Every year in late spring, the city of Pretoria, South Africa, becomes covered with blue and purple flowers as its estimated 60,000-70,000 Jacaranda trees begin to bloom.

The Termination of Pregnancy Act was signed into law on November 22, 1995 in Pretoria, South Africa, and enacted on February 1, 1996.

Since the enactment of this law, the average number of abortions performed in South Africa is estimated to be between 60,000-70,000 per year.

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