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First Place Winner, Prose
: “Night Voices”
by Helen Beecher,
Cloverdale, CA

Winter light is revealing light. Details travel a long distance and cannot be hidden. Stark details sear into memory, as if there will be no more light.

A window. Highest of all, holding still a black woman, pale from fear. She is far from her neighborhood, and winter's darkness is falling around her quickly like a sentence. There will be no transport at this hour, and no forgiveness if she is found on the streets after curfew.

Headlights coming up the curved driveway, pressing just ahead of the music and men's loud voices. They are foolish and foreign, a dangerous combination in her country.

A white woman jumps from the car. She rushes up the stairs to go to the woman, who will not allow her to come near. The men follow and open beers. As if they can unseal what they have sealed by returning late.

They will take the white woman with them -- that will make three. The white woman says they will have to take the black woman, her maid hired for the day by the men, to her mother's house, deep into the township.

The stark, revealing light of their own situation dawns across the men's faces. The two women hurry down the cold steps, thirty one steps away from the men. The black woman senses that the other woman knows what may happen next and acknowledges her courage with a look.

The women share a secret. One day when the white woman was new to Cape Town, and they had insufficient language between them for the other to prevent her, she had taken the black woman to the edge of the township in a borrowed car.

The noon had been brittle with over-bright early winter sunshine; a forced cheerfulness of the one prevented the other from expressing warning of danger.

Saturday night. The pathways are packed, lit only by their headlights, and the dim roadside fires of vendors. The crowd opens smoothly for them to pass; the way is intricate. But she is there to direct them in.

The men are in the front seat. They don't know the way; the black woman shows them with hand gestures. She won't look at them. The only streets are the pathways made by people finding their way to the other people.

In the car, the what next hangs heavy in the air. The men lock their doors casually with their elbows, as if by accident. The humor of this futility does not escape the white woman, but she remains still, framed by the car windows surrounded by slow motion dark bodies.

Near her mother's house, the black woman leaps from the car and runs. She doesn't look back. They turn the car around with difficulty. No one speaks.

The way in flowed toward her house. The way out does not exist. As the car inches forward through the crowds, black hands slowly and silently cover the windows. A feeling of peace settles upon the woman alone in the back seat.

Through cracks, the lights of the main road appear in the distance. The car lows, as if being pulled back into the township by gravity.

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