The Honey Jar
and so the boy tormented them, day after day, those workers on the hot African farm, until they wouldn’t bring his tea and biscuits anymore, hands trembling at the thought of him — that pale cruel child with his secret games.
sometimes he’d slide it up his sleeve, where it tickled and crawled against his skin, alive and secret. other times he’d drop it into the empty teapot and wait for the kitchen staff to lift the lid — those jumpy souls already fearing what might leap out — and then the screams ripping through the air, the women fainting dead away on the stone floor.
the house-boy, a quiet man from Mozambique with sad eyes, would come and calm them after, murmuring that he’d speak to the child, set him straight. but he never did. fear held him back — fear of another sharp telling-off from the white boy’s father.
he kept it in an old honey jar, the yellow lid punched full of air holes, lined with sticks and dry hay, on the table in the sun. he’d tap the glass to see if his little friend still moved, still lived. once a week he fed it a locust, legs like razors, dropped in alive — and starved it between times until it grew vicious, banging the glass in rage. nights, he’d flick the light on and off, on and off, watching it stir, making it snappy and angry and full of need.
he relished how the workers feared it — how they stacked bricks under each bed leg at dusk, raising the beds high against the night. that amused him. it went on for months, until the houseboy packed up and moved to another farm, far away.
years later he came back and found the child grown — no longer a boy but a broken young man, right arm gone clean off, face drooping heavy to one side, skin turned yellow as old paper, silent forever, no tongue for words, no cheek for smiles.
they’d found him on the kitchen floor, arched over in agony while his father worked the distant fields and his mother bent over the laundry. an argument with the kitchen boy, the jar smashed sudden on the tiles — and his little friend, free at last into the shadows.
it came back that night.
a sting in its tail,
a slip under the covers,
and an axe to grind.
