The Past Recedes - John Frusicante
My sister Juniper was coming home for some time. She was away studying at the University of Witswaterand or WITs as some called it. She had really wanted to go to the school, they had the best program for medicine or something and she had wanted to study, but everyone knew that she just wanted to get away from Cape Town.
She rarely came home, so when she did it was quite an event. To me anyways, my parents didn't mind too much.
I hadn't told her about my break up. She knew about Terence and just about everything we'd done, except for the fact that we had broken up. I didn't really want to tell her, not over the phone anyways, she'd never had understood anyways.
Cheating wasn't as big an issue for her as it was for me. She would have made me take him back, but that wasn't what I wanted.
I didn't know much about June's course, but I knew that she had wanted to work with people. Either a psychologist or a physiatrist, I could never remember.
For all I knew she could have wanted to be a medical doctor.
Because she lived all the way in Johannesburg, she rarely came home. Some holidays she just stayed there, I guess she wasn't too fond of us.
I couldn't imagine why, we were amazing people.
I guess you don't know what you got till it's gone. Funnily enough, she used to say that a lot. She always said the weirdest of things, but it was part of her charm.
She was scheduled to come at 2pm, and she unlike the rest of us was never tardy. She didn't believe in the concept of 'African time', she was prompt.
So that's exactly when she arrived, wearing a floral spring dress. She'd always liked flowers and floral patterns; from the days of her childhood till now, she'd wear floral clothing.
Our mother was a florist. Her name was Florence; we thought that that was why she felt like she was born to be a florist. She'd always loved flowers too. She named my sister and I after some of her favourite flowers. Not her favourites though, otherwise she'd be named Protea and I'd be named Forget-Me-Not.
Not exactly the best names for people.
She mainly wore them to impress my mother in the beginning, but I guessed they kind of grew on her. About 60% of her wardrobe was just floral colours and patterns. It's actually kind of cool. She had every pattern imaginable in that closet of hers.
Apart from her dress, she was also wearing wedges and sunglasses, which she promptly took off upon getting inside. Wearing sunglasses in doors in shady.
"Jasmine, look at you, you've actually grown." She exclaimed welcoming me into her arms. Of course she was surprised I'd grown. By my age she'd stopped growing so she assumed that that would be the case for me, but that's what she thought.
"And you," I started, "You look so radiant and happy. Are you sure you're not pregnant?" Because if you are then it would appear that everyone around me was getting pregnant. Who next my mother? My grandmother? Myself?
"Oh believe me, I am not pregnant. This oven," she said while roughly rubbing her belly, "is closed. Maybe it'll be ready in a couple of years, but as for now no buns are being prepared."
"How's Tristan?" I asked out of the blue.
Tristan was her boyfriend. They were on and off, kind of. Whenever they were off though, he was off with a different chick, but not that she just stayed single and waited around for him, but she wasn't nearly as active as he was from what I heard.
