“There’ll be nothing left of your lunch,” he said, rolling closed the top of the brown paper bag. “Anyway, we’d better be going. Don’t want to be late for your first day at school, do we?”
School. It had taken forever for this day to come—but now I wasn’t so sure I wanted it to be here.
We marched on through the park, three of my steps for every one of Michael’s long strides. It was tricky walking fast in my new pinafore; my legs kept getting caught in the thick pleats of material. Madam Rita said the uniform had cost a lot of money—English money was much more expensive than African money—so she’d bought an extra-big size, hoping it would last a very long time. She took up a wide hem, but I was worried her wonky stitches would come undone, and then I’d be walking around school in a long dress that went all the way to the ground.
We arrived at the serious brick building just in time. I’d driven past with Michael once before, but now I was walking through the big, important gates.
“‘Semper Verum,’” Michael said, reading the shiny words off one of the pillars. “‘Always True.’ Remember, Miriam, that—” I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but my mind kept skipping ahead.
As we climbed the deep concrete stairs, a huge bell started to chime. With each peal, the ground shook. Michael cupped his warm hands over my ears, but still every clang hurt.
Then bodies, bags, shorts, and shoes were sweeping past us, separating me from Michael’s safe arms. Before I knew what was happening, I’d been pushed hard up against the rough brick wall opposite.
I screwed up my eyes, trying to block out the hullabaloo.
It didn’t last long. As quickly as the flood of children had started, so it dried up—a short burst of shouting and the banging of doors, and then silence.
I opened one eye, then the other. Michael and I were alone.
“You okay?” he asked, rescuing me.
I nodded.
“That’s my girl,” he said with a wink.
I winked back. Properly. I’d been practicing.
We continued with our journey, turning a corner into a snake-thin corridor with a shiny maroon floor. Rows of satchels hung lopsidedly off hooks—some spilling jumpers and books onto the floor—and frosted-glass doors revealed hazy silhouettes. My nose started to prickle. There was a smell of Domestos in the air. Mme always used Domestos to clean the toilets in Saxonwold.
“Seven . . . eight . . .” Michael counted aloud as we walked past the numbered doors. “Here we are!”
We were outside a door with a small brass number nine nailed lopsidedly to the frame. Inside, children were singing.
Michael tapped on the glass.
Nothing.
“They’re busy,” I said quickly. “Better we go home.”
Michael knocked again, louder this time, and the singing stopped. Then a fuzzy figure was moving toward us. I closed my eyes and held my breath.
The door squeaked open.
“You must be Miriam,” said a strange voice, smelling of bubble gum and air freshener.
I took a quick look. A madam with stiff yellow hair was standing in front of us.
“Welcome,” she said, through a thin pink smile.
It was hard to understand her. Michael told me later that her words were wrapped in a thick Norfolk accent. We had to unwrap each word to understand what she was saying.
She looked just like the doll Madam Rita had bought me at the airport—small white hands, small white feet, and puffy yellow hair. I knew she’d have a small bottom too. You could just tell.
She wore a skirt the color of the sky—an African sky, not an English sky—and a jacket so tight it pushed her bosom right into her neck.
Her legs looked like two bendy spring branches and ended in the highest shoes I’d ever seen. They made a click, clack, click, clack sound when she walked. Later, when I tried on Madam Rita’s only pair of high shoes, the chunky brown ones, they didn’t make the same pointy sound.
The madam had a lot of powder on her face and pink paint on her lips. She smiled very carefully so her long teeth didn’t smudge the color.
I looked at her nose. It was long too, with tiny slits at the end, which wouldn’t easily let in a finger.
“You found us all right?” she asked, in a friendly Norfolk voice.
Before we could reply, she went on. “My name is Mrs. Dee. I’ll be your teacher this year, Miriam. So have you brought a bag with you?”
Michael tilted his body and the green canvas rucksack slid off his shoulder.
“Good. Find a free hook and then come on inside.”
I peeked through the gap between her and the door. There were lots of who’s-she eyes inside. I wished we could go home.
“Quiet, class!” the teacher shouted, swiveling around. Then she was taking my hand. Her fingers felt like brittle twigs. “Now, Miriam, say good-bye to . . .” Mrs. Dee looked at Michael, then at me, then back at Michael. She swallowed, red washing up over her bosom, neck, and face and seeping into her hair. I thought she was going to explode, just like the plums Mme used to cook.
“Her father,” Michael said, patting me on the shoulder. He smiled at me. I made my mouth smile back. “Pick you up at four.”
Then the door had closed behind me and I was standing in a room filled with rows of wooden desks. Behind each desk sat two children. They all had white skin and a few had Milo-brown speckles on their faces.
At the front of the classroom was a dusty blackboard with yellow writing across it. Someone had written the letter P over and over again, from one end of the board to the other.
P for pin, P for pot, P for pan . . .
“Everyone, this is Miriam,” said the teacher. “She’s going to be joining us. Miriam has come all the way from Africa.”
The class let out a whooping gasp, then the children started whispering and pointing. I felt like a hyena-lion—cowardly brave.
“Is that why you’re so tanned?” a skinny boy with custard-colored hair and a speckled face blurted out.
Everyone laughed.
“That is quite enough, Kent Alsop! Now let’s give Miriam our special new-pupil welcome.”
“W-e-l-c-o-m-e, M-i-r-i-a-m,” they sang, all their eyes stuck on me.
“You’ll be sitting next to Emily,” said the teacher, pointing toward a podgy girl with hair tied into two curly bunches beside her face, just like the ears of a spaniel dog. The girl quickly circled her arms around her pencil and eraser.
“Yes, Madam,” I said, sitting down in the empty chair.
The whole class burst out laughing.
“Enough!” the teacher shouted, banging the blackboard duster on her desk and sending puffs of yellow chalk dust into the air.
“You can call me Mrs. Dee, Miriam.”
It was getting very complicated trying to remember who to call what. In Africa it was much easier. A white person was either a master or a madam.
The morning passed quickly. I could do everything Mrs. Dee told us to do; Rita had taught it to me already. I kept waiting for the exciting things to happen, but they never did. School just wasn’t as much fun as I’d thought it was going to be.
Once, when I’d traveled north with Mme to see my makhulu, I’d gone to my brothers’ school for a day. It had been the best day ever.
“Three times two is six. Four times two is eight. Five times two is te-e-en,” the schoolchildren had recited as the teacher, Mudedekadzi Mafela, tapped her ruler on the desk in time to the beat.
Mudedekadzi was very different from Mrs. Dee, her shiny black face hidden behind large spectacles held together with pieces of Elastoplast.
The day I visited, she was wearing a yellow blouse the color of frangipani, and a gray skirt clung to her thighs and bottom. Mme said Mudedekadzi had probably not used Sta-Soft in her wash.
She had a big bosom and an even bigger bottom, nothing like Mrs. Dee’s. She wore high shoes too, but I think these were a necessity. She was the only teacher at the school and also the school principal, so the heels gave her the necessary height and importance. She didn’t wear them easily, though, her feet leaking out of every weak point in the leather as she waddled from side to side.
“Veerry good, class! Now again. What is twooo times twooo?”
“Four!” we shouted in triumphant unison.
Mudedekadzi’s serious face broke into a wide grin, which showed off her white teeth. She tapped a broken cup on her desk with her pencil, announcing the end of morning lessons, and then the class was spilling out into the sunshine. I followed my brothers—Christian, Nelson, and Alfred—into the clearing. Nelson had a soccer ball tucked under his arm.
Despite their different ages, my brothers all took their lessons together in the same classroom. The school consisted of only one room. Master Davis had set it up for the children and grandchildren of the laborers on his farm, and because my makhulu worked for him, my brothers were allowed to attend. Mme said they were lucky they didn’t have to walk all the way into town for their lessons, like some of the other black children. The journey was almost two hours on foot, and that was just one way.
Mudedekadzi and the children built the classroom themselves. Master Davis put up the money, and the children the muscles. The building stood in a forest clearing surrounded by sweet-smelling pines. The walls of the school were plastered with red clay, and the roof was made from sheets of rippled iron.
At break we lined up in front of Mudedekadzi, who stood guard over a tall urn the farmer’s truck had delivered that morning. As I was a visitor, I was treated like a very important person and invited to stand at the front of the queue to receive the first mug of milk. It was warm and creamy and tasted much sweeter than the milk Mme would buy from the shop in Johannesburg. I had to drink it down quickly, though, because the child next in line was waiting for the mug.
When we’d all drunk our share, it was time to play. Everyone, from seven-year-old piccanins to fifteen-year-old boys with hair on their faces and girls with ripening bosoms, spread out over the grass. Even I was allowed on the pitch. Four boys hauled a pair of logs into goalpost positions while the rest of the class was divided into two teams—Leopards versus Lions. I was a Lion.
Mudedekadzi blew her whistle and the game began. Soon the ball was being headed and shuffled, dribbled and passed, and goals were shot to howls of delight.
At halftime the Lions were behind by one goal.
Then it was Christian taking control of the ball. He darted across the field, dodging his opponents, and just as the goalie rushed him, he kicked. What a kick! The ball shot past the keeper, through the posts, and into the surrounding trees. We screamed with delight—the score was even.
But just as he booted the ball, the seam of my brother’s shorts split. Our cries of celebration turned to screeches of laughter as Christian stood in the middle of the clearing with a gaping hole in his gray school shorts. You could see right through to his red underpants. Even Mudedekadzi had to hold her sides to stop her bosom from bursting out of her blouse.
Then she was clanging her wedding ring against a tin mug to announce the end of break time. It was time to gather in the shade of the trees for a song.
I sat down on the pine-needle carpet with the others as Mudedekadzi taught us the latest song from the public health nurse.
“Just one teaspoon of sugar, a pinch of salt, four cups of water, and see what you got. You got a re-hy-dration solution, a re-hy-dration solution. Yes, you got a re-hy-dration solution to keep you safe from the trots!”
“Miriam?”
I looked up. It was Mrs. Dee, not Mudedekadzi Mafela . . . I was back in England.
After number skills, we had a lesson from the Bible, some handwriting practice, and then a story on the mat. Mrs. Dee was in the middle of reading us a story when the bell announcing “elevenses” rang. She stopped immediately, right in the middle of a sentence. I never got to find out what happened to the sailor on the sinking boat, because the door was flung open and everyone began pushing and shoving to get out. I followed. All the doors into the corridor were open, just like an Advent calendar on Christmas morning, and children were tumbling out. I was bumped down some stairs, along a passage, and across a courtyard. It was fun being part of this loud, bustling craziness.
Then we were outside and a cold wind was carving the long worm of children into smaller groups, until I was the only one left.
I looked around the playground. There were no trees, no grass, no goals—just a coal-colored fence, two benches, and an old purple jungle gym missing a crossbar at the back. At one end of the yard a group of boys knelt on the concrete, rolling marbles along a track. Beside the water fountain, three girls took turns hopping over a piece of taut elastic. Some other children sat in a circle eating their snacks. Nobody looked my way.
Spying a short flight of stairs hidden around the back of the school building, I ran over to it and sat down on the top step, tucking myself right up against the small trapdoor at the top. The concrete was cold and the chill crept quickly through my stockings and pinafore to start hollowing out my bones.
Two girls strolled past.
“Hello,” I said, giving my best smile.
They giggled and walked on, one telling the other in a loud whisper that I’d called Mrs. Dee a madam.
Even though I wasn’t hungry, I fumbled with the brown packet Michael had given me. I’d make myself eat like everyone else. I unwrapped the sandwich—two slices of white bread smeared with butter, peanut butter, and honey. I didn’t understand why Michael always put butter and peanut butter on bread. Two butters just didn’t make sense. I was about to take my first bite when the sandwich flew out of my hand and landed on the bottom step.
I looked up.
Three boys from my class, including the custard-haired boy, were standing at the bottom of the stairs, grinning. One had a catapult in his hand.
“What’s the matter, Africa girl, got butterfingers?”
I edged down the steps and reached for my sandwich, but the boy’s shoe beat me to it. He dug his heel into the soft white bread and swiveled it from side to side, mushing it into a gluggy pulp. My eyes started to burn.
“Don’t cry, nigger girl. Just go home.” He turned to the other two boys. “My dad says blacks have smaller brains. He says they cause all the fuckin’ problems in England.”
One of the other boys made a gurgling sound and a blob of bubbly spit landed at my feet.
“Got any gobstoppers?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what gobstoppers were, but I wished I had some. Maybe then they’d want to be my friends.
“Too bad. See you ’round, gollywog.”
I didn’t cry; my tears were too scared to come out. But my stockings felt warm. I looked down. There was a wet patch spreading on the concrete beneath me.
CHAPTER NINE
April 1961
Miriam
Over the term, I worked hard to make myself invisible. Sometimes I succeeded, managing to escape the taunts and teases for an entire day. But more often than not, I arrived home with a broken school bag, a bloodied shin, or maybe a ripped exercise book. With passing weeks, my uniform grew bigger, my shoulders pointier, and my days more wretched.
During school hours I was too busy dodging danger to think about anything else, but at night there was room in my head for my fears to grow. Like weeds, they spread over my mind, tangling up my thoughts and blocking out the light. And when I fell asleep, the badness simply followed, inviting scary shadows and monsters into my dreams.
I noticed Madam Rita and Michael had stopped mentioning Mme. Whenever I tried to remind them, they suddenly remembered something they had to do or somewhere they had to be. Soon I started to for
get what Mme sounded like, what she looked and smelled like. I used to be able to smell her on my rag doll, Tendani, and every night I’d go off to sleep breathing in her special Mme scent. But after a while I’d sucked it all off, and Tendani just smelled like everything else—of England.
This England was different from the place in Michael’s stories. We didn’t even get to visit the queen. I didn’t want to see her anymore, anyway. Everything was different from how it used to be. The sun was always hiding, the buildings were old and crumbly, and church was very serious.
We moved house and left behind the dark, dusty one with drooping eyes and a thin, angry mouth, but after we moved, Mme felt even farther away. I began to wonder if she’d ever been real or whether she was just some pretend person in my head. Sometimes I’d see her shadow in my dreams, but I knew dreams weren’t real.
The new house was much nicer than the old one. It had two levels, with windows that popped right out of the roof, like the headlights on a sports car, and a windy staircase with a balustrade you could slide down when no one was looking.
Because it was farther from school, Michael no longer walked to meet me each afternoon; I had to catch a bus home. I hated that—being locked into the small, smelly school bus for ten more minutes with just my tormentors for company.
At home, a note under the mat meant I had to go next door to Mrs. McKiddie’s house until Michael came to collect me. I didn’t like going next door. Mrs. McKiddie kept the curtains drawn, even during the day, and her house always smelled of haddock. She had a horrible cat called Queenie and a blue budgie called Mr. Churchill. Queenie would scratch me if I got too near her, and I wasn’t allowed to take Mr. Churchill out of his cage, even though his wings had been clipped. So I was always happy when I didn’t find a note under the mat; it meant Michael was home, probably bent over his desk, working. Then we’d share afternoon tea together, holed up in his cozy study.
Madam Rita usually arrived home after dark, the smell of dead people wound around her like a scarf. Her job was to cut up people who’d died, in order to find out what made them die. I didn’t like knowing that. I didn’t like the smell of dead people either. Madam Rita told me it was just the smell of the special bath the dead people had been put into to stop them from rotting. After she told me that, I didn’t have any more baths; I showered instead.
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