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To the Man Three Behind Me in the QueueCaroline EsterhuizenMy grandmother: living in Lombardy East in the fifties carried my mother's brother - four years old - a couple of miles to the nearest hospital. They had no car and he had “somehow shoved a pencil down his throat and hurt himself badly”. A few cars must have passed her on the road and nobody stopped to offer a lift. “I don't know how she got home. She never told me that part of the story.” To the man, three behind me in the queue, when I, nine years old, was short of two cents: in those spasm moments I stared at the Indifferent Teller, fumbled, and suddenly saving grace passed down the line into my small, relieved palm. Two-Cent Kindnesses are ours to give in café queues. Thank you. Last winter when the Liesbeeck River was bursting its banks, I saw a woman carrying her little girl: no raincoats and a long way to go still. I had driven on – almost too far - but reversed and offered them a lift to the station. They sat holding onto each other tightly, regarding me suspiciously, until I dropped them off with grateful smiles which they carried out into the grey, cold and wet.
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