When the Ground Is Hard

by Malla Nunn

  Lottie is worried about me, and I’m touched that she cares enough to warn me away from danger.

  “To the rock and no farther,” I say. It’s an easy promise to make. I will likely never come this way again, and certainly not alone. Lottie is the adventurous one. She lives on a native reserve out past Sisteki. The countryside is her backyard. Yet she somehow gets herself from the sticks to the Manzini bus station at the beginning of every term. That’s how much being at Keziah means to her. Me? I’m a town girl. I prefer cracked pavements, and windows lit from the inside.

  A dull clang breaks the weaverbirds’ song, and we turn from the dividing rock. It’s the lunch bell. We have to get to the dining hall before the head teacher says, “Let us bow our heads,” or we’ll miss lunch. No one gets to eat if they miss grace. Not even Golden Sun winners.

  “Make tracks, Adele.” Lottie runs hard to close the gap between our empty stomachs and food, and, driven by pride alone, I keep up. We climb the steep riverbank and gouge the soil with our fingers to find handholds and pull ourselves up. Red dirt stains our clothes and dusts our hair, but dirt is a short-term problem. If we miss the roast chicken legs and gravy, they’ll be gone forever.

  We make it to the dining hall in time. The big girls are already seated with their meals, and we push into line ahead of the little girls. They don’t complain. Lottie and I get extra-large helpings, and vacant seats magically appear at the table when we turn to find a place.

  Boys follow us with their eyes, and if this was a week ago, I would have happily walked the entire length of the dining hall to soak up the attention.

  Delia smirks at us, and Peaches shakes her head like she’s witnessed a fatal car accident. I see Lottie and me through their eyes: filthy shoes, sunburned faces, and clothes covered in red dust from our expedition. We are a disgrace.

  Old Adele kept herself neat and sweet. New Adele is a mess and doesn’t care. Fighting the fire and eating strawberry-cream biscuits with Lottie by candlelight has changed me. I live in a different country from the pretties now, a country where I hear my own thoughts and share my food, because eating and reading at the same time is wonderful.

  I snag the seat next to Lottie and take a bite of my green beans. Lottie is oblivious to the stares. She falls on her roast chicken with soft mmms and licks her fingers. She’s in heaven, her lips slick with gravy, which she laps up with her tongue.

  Mother roasts a chicken on the maid’s day off, and afterward Rian and I have a cup of sweet tea with a jam biscuit. But I’ll never replicate the pleasure that Lottie finds in eating what I take for granted. She’s got nothing, yet her experience of the world is richer than mine. It makes me jealous and annoyed and grateful, all at the same time.

  Ramona, Beatrice, and the other pet, whose name I can’t remember, sit directly across from us. They ought to know better. Delia, of course, notices their act of treason. She and Sandi are seated five down from us and across the table from Natalie and Peaches. Now, on top of stealing Sandi Cardoza’s necklace and disgracing the female sex with our dirty clothes and flyaway hair, we have also let their pets sit with us. Delia’s attention is so intense that even Lottie feels it.

  “Should we move?” she says through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “No. If we move, we’ll insult the girls who are already here. We have to stay. Might as well make the best of it.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Watch.” I ignore the pets and smile at the younger girl sitting next to me. I ask her name and what does she do at home on a Sunday? Church and then a visit to Grandma? “Lovely. Me too.” That’s a lie, but no harm done. Mother hasn’t been to church since she got pregnant with me, but Nuttie, my small lunch companion, doesn’t know that. Lottie copies me, and soon we know who lives with their mother and father, who loves English and hates math, and who likes ice cream. Everybody, it turns out.

  “We got the sack,” Beatrice blurts out during a lull in the conversation.

  “All of us,” Ramona says.

  “What happened?” I drop my voice low. The pretties are close enough to hear and it’s better to keep any conversation we have about them private. I don’t want to give Delia and the others ammunition to use against the pets later.

  “We took the leaves and the stick to the dorm, and Natalie tried to make a fire,” Beatrice says in a loud whisper. “She tried and tried, and it was funny to see her cheeks puffed out, so we laughed. I mean, you’d have laughed, too, but Natalie didn’t like it. We each got a smack, and then Natalie told us to leave and don’t come back, and it’s a shame, because we had it good and then we spoiled it.”

  Oh, Natalie. Of course she was the one who tried to make fire with a stick. Just like I guessed she would when I sent the pets back to the pretties with the fire-making kit. Natalie’s under the impression that being popular also makes her clever, which she is not.

  “Natalie’s not the boss,” I say. “Wait a day or two and pretend that nothing has changed. They’ll take you back.”

  There’s a limited amount of smart little girls to choose from, and Ramona and her friends are already trained. They’ll be fine.

  Beatrice leans across the table with bright eyes. More news. Any pet worth their salt has the latest gossip memorized and ready to spill.

  “Guess what?” she whispers. “Sandi Cardoza found her necklace. It was hidden in her underwear drawer all along. She put it there before the fire and then forgot about it.”

  Of course . . . The mistake makes perfect sense. Drama is the glue that holds Delia and her circle together. Stolen pets and missing necklaces and envious lower-class students scheming against them out of pure spite and envy: those outside threats are what keep the group together. They live to be offended and, not so long ago, so did I.

  “Well . . .” Lottie gnaws her chicken bone and sucks out the marrow, the way Mother does when Father is in Johannesburg and too far away to witness her country ways. “At least I got my undies back.”

  I laugh. What she said is funny, and, instead of walking over to Delia and pushing her face into her mashed potatoes to get her back for falsely accusing us of stealing, Lottie finishes her lunch.

  20

  The Search

  On Tuesday morning, the graduating girls let us into the front of the bathroom line, and the Elephant and Mrs. Thomas sail past us during the morning inspection. Afterward, a troop of little girls carry our textbooks from classroom to classroom. Boys whisper when we draw near, and even Mr. Newman, the science teacher from Pietermaritzburg who stands too close to check your notes, keeps the sharp end of his ruler away from us.

  The attention is exhilarating and unrelenting. It is tiring too. By morning teatime, I’m exhausted. Being popular is a drain. I want the Golden Sun ceremony over with so Lottie and I can go back to being normal, unremarkable us.

  “Walk to the cattle grids by the chapel?” Lottie asks after Scripture class. Being the center of attention is extra hard for her. She’s used to the freedom of anonymity, and now everyone looks at her all the time.

  We split off from the group of little girls who beg to walk with us to the chapel. The Swazi laborer digging a ditch beyond the cattle grid chants a work song. The sky is enormous and blue, and dotted with clouds. We take in the scent of Mrs. Vincent’s garden: dark earth, cut grass, and, of course, roses. The smell, the sky, Lottie standing beside me, and the rhythm of the workman’s shovel in the dirt . . . I am present in my own skin, full of the world, as if all of it is inside me.

  A car turns off the main road, and the sound of the engine interrupts the peace. It’s Mr. Moses’s white Volkswagen Beetle with the silver rack on the roof for when he goes camping during the holidays. Cars are a rare sight on school roads, and it’s the custom for drivers to smile and wave—or, better yet, beep their horn to greet the students. Mr. Moses does neither. He parks in front of the Vincents’ house, open
s the door, and takes the stairs two at a time, which is against the rules for students. Mr. Moses is in a hurry.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lottie says when Mr. Vincent opens the door and Mr. Moses shakes his head no before Mr. Vincent speaks a word. The men huddle and talk in whispers, and the topic of their conversation comes to me in capital letters.

  My heart drums. “They’re talking about Darnell Parns. He’s been gone a week today.”

  Lottie nibbles her bottom lip. “It might be that Darnell’s father is planting the fields late. He needs Darnell’s help, and that’s why he hasn’t brought Darnell back to school.”

  When the summer rains fall, the Swazi Times prints a “plow now” roster for each region in the country. I’m a city girl but I take notice of what happens around me. For example, Mrs. Button, who grew up in the shadow of the Lebombo Mountains, loves to garden. She plants her corn and melons in September, and Mother throws tomato seeds out of the kitchen window in early November.

  Lottie lives in the sticks and dreams of one day owning a farm with trees for the birds and fields for the wild animals. She knows explaining Darnell’s disappearance with late planting is wishful thinking.

  “Farmwork for sure,” I say in my “sunny voice,” and pretend that Lottie is right. Late planting is the reason that Darnell’s daddy hasn’t dragged him back to school on his tractor. But my heart’s not in it, and I add, “Maybe . . . um . . .”

  “Maybe what, Adele?” Lottie snaps, and turns on me. “For once in your life, say what’s on your mind instead of what you think other people want to hear. Go on. Try it!”

  Her attack lands a blow, and I hit her back with, “It’s the first week of February, Lottie! The fields are already planted. No way is Mr. Parns so far behind.”

  “Idle speculation, Adele.” She uses her superior vocabulary to put me in my place. “You don’t know anything for sure.”

  “And neither do you, Miss Oxford Dictionary!”

  She leans in with balled fists and glazed blue eyes, spoiling for a fight. We were close, but once we’ve exchanged blows we’ll be enemies, and that’s a shame because all I did was speak my mind when she told me to. My scalp tingles, anticipating a vicious tug by the roots, a favorite Lottie move.

  Instead of brawling, we stand face-to-face, and the heat goes out of the moment. Lottie’s lips quiver, and I understand why she yelled at me. She’s angry because she’s scared that Mr. Moses is talking to Mr. Vincent about Darnell and the news is bad.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I talked out of turn.” Lottie being scared makes me scared, too, so I take back my rash words. “Mr. Parns might be planting his fields late, and I have no idea where Mr. Moses has come from or where he’s been.”

  Lottie accepts my semi-apology with a quick nod, and we stand in awkward silence. Neither one of us knows what to say next.

  “Adele Joubert. Lottie Diamond.” Mrs. Vincent’s voice breaks the quiet, and we turn to face the verandah. “Please tell Mrs. Thomas to gather the senior girls in the quadrangle. Go now. Quickly.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Vincent,” we answer in unison, and hurry in the direction of the cement-brick house guarded by Socks the cat and a dry lavender hedge. On the way, we pass a group of little girls playing pickup sticks in the vacant lot beside the garden sheds, and a group of big girls gossiping in the shade of a jacaranda tree. Delia stares daggers at us, and Peaches loops her arm around Sandi Cardoza’s waist to prove how close they are. The necklace glitters around Sandi’s neck, and I shake my head with a wry smile.

  Their “for show” behavior makes them look silly in my eyes. They are caught up with small dramas: which hair straightener works best, which boy is the most handsome, and how short is too short for a summer skirt? That was me before Lottie’s straight talk about sad mothers and the future. Lottie and I have hit deeper ground, and our being chosen for an urgent mission by Mrs. Vincent feels right.

  “It’s true what you said.” Lottie knocks on Mrs. Thomas’s door. “The planting is done. Darnell should be back by now.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Male and female senior students form a line that stretches from Miss December’s probationary hut to the sports field on the far side of the boys’ dormitories. They stand an arm’s length apart to make a human chain, and wait for Mr. Moses to blow his whistle to start the search.

  “Hurry . . .” Lottie drags me to the far end of the line. On our left is a stand of trees and on our right, a tall boy with sweat patches under his armpits. A whistle blows, and, as instructed, we comb through the land with slow steps and call out, “Darnell. Darnell. Darnell.”

  The trees on our left grow thick, and Lottie edges under the branches and away from the main search party. I catch up to her, annoyed at how easily she is able to pull me off the normal path.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find Darnell.” She weaves through the grove, marking her own course. The call “Darnell, Darnell” grows faint in the distance, and Lottie grunts in annoyance. “He won’t come just because he’s called. He hates school. The noise will make him hide deeper.”

  “What then?”

  “We’re going to search a place I don’t want to go.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Behind a barrier of dried branches is a cave, and inside the cave is a primitive home decorated with bleached animal skulls, and chalk pictures of guns and knives and naked girls with large breasts and unruly pubic hair. “Raise Hell” is written above the pictures, and the air inside the snug space stinks of sweat, wood-fire smoke, and pee.

  I cup my palm over my mouth to stop from gagging. The cave disgusts and fascinates me. Boys, in greater number than Darnell Parns, found this hideaway and furnished it with a long log to sit on and a dug-out fire pit filled with ash and the bones of tiny birds. A stack of canned food and a metal can opener rest against a wall, no doubt stolen from boys like Rian, who are too small or weak to defend themselves.

  “No Darnell.” I slowly circle the cave, drawn to the rude pictures and the damp section of wall where boys pee. It really is foul, and we ought to leave immediately. “Did he tell you about his place?”

  “The boys who use this cave buy their home-brewed beer from Mama Khumalo. I followed them one day, just to see where they’d end up. They disappeared into the hillside and I knew, for sure, that there was a cave hidden somewhere.”

  “You were right,” I say and step around a pile of bloody chicken feathers. What the boys did to the chicken, I do not want to know.

  “Look here.” Lottie wanders over to a hand-drawn map on the back wall. Father says that maps help us make sense of the world. They tell us where we are and which direction to go in to find what we’re looking for. If you’re lost, a map can save your life.

  “That’s Keziah.” I recognize the square shapes that represent the chapel, the classrooms, and the girls’ and boys’ dormitories. Trees drawn with stuck-out branches mark the orchard and the bush that grows down to the river.

  “And that’s Mama Khumalo’s hut,” Lottie says. Of course, she knows what lies beyond the school boundaries better than I do.

  “What do these mean?” A dozen white crosses are scattered across the map at odd intervals and make no sense to me. Lottie tilts her head and squints. She overlays her mental map of the lazy river bends and the blue distant hills and, after a moment, her eyes go bright.

  “I get it. The white crosses are food.” She jabs a mark near Mama Khumalo’s hut. “That’s a fig tree, and these baby crosses here are a stand of bananas right on the border of Bosman’s farm. The fruit is still green, but in a few weeks it’ll be good to eat.”

  “And the red line around the bananas?”

  “A warning,” she says. “Bosman. He has guns, and his three sons have guns, like I told you. It’s better to stay away from him and his farm.�
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  “Oh . . .” Hunger makes people do strange things. One day, one of the poor boys who helped set up the cave might ignore the red warning lines and risk an encounter with Bosman and his sons to grab a handful of ripe bananas. “Let’s go.”

  I hurry to the entrance, ashamed to remember tiny Eoin Colfey, with his shaved head and snotty nose. Eoin, Alan Brownlow, Janice Pistorius, and Melody Pine come from the Fairview Orphanage, a long concrete building with a tin roof weighed down by bricks and car tires. Mr. and Mrs. Vincent raise money from overseas to cover the cost of their education, because Fairview orphans have no parents to pay their school fees and no parents who wish to claim them. No-fee students get smaller portions of food. Their stomachs are always empty, and that’s not how things should be. I wish there was a way to make things different.

  “Follow me.” Lottie ducks through the low entrance and stands awhile to breathe the clean air. The cave is on a high ridge, and far below it is the river. A line of girls and boys wades through the water, calling out, “Darnell, Darnell” in flat voices; the novelty of searching for him is already starting to wear off. Soon, one of the bad boys—Lazy-Eye Matthew or Richard D, who lives with his uncle in Manzini and rides his rusted-out bicycle from one end of town to the other with a slingshot stuck in the waistband of his shorts—one of them will change Darnell to Dumbbell or Bumsmell, and the others will laugh.

  “Should we catch up with them?” I block the entrance to the cave with the dried branches.

  Lottie says, “There’s one more place that Darnell might be.”

  Of course there is.

  21

  The Village

  A group of grass huts sits in a stony field, and stray goats wander across our path. Lottie is sure-footed and confident where I am nervous and slow. As we approach the native compound, my bravery deserts me. We walk up a slope into the sun, and the silhouettes of ramshackle huts rise against the sky. A tall boy lopes across the path. A dog follows him, stops, turns to bark at us, then trots away. It was a mistake to accompany Lottie on her personal search for Darnell, but I will not give in to fear. I realize something about me is different since the fire.