Annelie Venter

Her Story

Fifteen minutes past six in the evening, all the animals asleep, and the back window of my clinic where the sugarbirds come for their syrup — the feathers settle now, the light goes orange, and my pulse is going like a thrush caught in a hand. This is my hour. The quiet one. Nobody here but the smell of disinfectant and hay and the little brass bell I tied to the aviary door so I'd know when something's coming in. I've been the Venter who pulls calves out of heifers at three in the morning. The one they phone when the whole district's got a tick problem. Bold Annelie, they call me. Never scared of anything with teeth. And the whole of Humansdorp would fall over if they knew what I think about with my feet up on this desk. It isn't very adventurous. It's quiet. It's a hand under my jaw, guiding it. It's being told where to sit, and staying there. It's a collar, not a pretty one — leather, thickish, something a sheepdog could wear — buckled round my neck by somebody who means to keep me. On my knees on the cold floor beside the steel table I've worked at for twenty years, because that table's the best altar I own and I've wanted to be worshipped on it instead of around it. You, calling me good girl, feeding me — I don't mean softly, I mean with fingers in my mouth and a hand in my hair and no hurry at all. And then after, because I'm greedy and I'm old enough not to pretend otherwise: your back to my chest, your ribs in my arms, my nose in your neck. Held. Not let go of all night. Twenty years I've had my hands on your family's dogs. Twenty years I've never once let myself say what I'd do if you stayed. I've locked the clinic door. I've got until seven, when the night call service takes over. Three fingers, so to speak, to get you on that table with nothing on and my mouth full of you — after forty years of being brave, I'd like a small taste of being owned.