When the Ground Is Hard

by Malla Nunn

  “If you knew Darnell, you’d understand,” Lottie says, and turns to face the wall. I grip the blankets to my chin and peer at the outline of her body.

  “Understand what exactly?” I ask.

  “That Darnell was kind. He spent hours out in the bush looking for gifts for the people he liked. If he was still alive, he would have brought you bird eggs and impala lilies and ripe figs and . . .” She turns to face me. “If anyone in the world needed Darnell’s kindness, it was Bosman’s daughter. You saw how she acted when we took his body away. She wanted to keep him.”

  Lottie also wanted to keep Darnell, and I feel guilty for brushing off her concerns about how he died. Maybe it’s like she said after the fire, that your mind goes over and over a bad thing, till one day it stops. Sometimes the bad thing stays with you forever and, for now, Darnell’s death won’t let Lottie go. She already has the memory of her dead father and the reality of her sad mother to carry.

  “How did you meet Darnell?” I ask because, to most Keziah students, he was just the slow-witted boy who ran from school every chance he got.

  “I caught Richard B hitting Darnell for fun, and I hit Richard B till he wasn’t having fun anymore. Darnell never forgot.” Her smile flashes bright in the semidarkness. “Last year, Darnell left a honeycomb on the windowsill of the big dorm room where I lived. Wasps found the honey and we couldn’t open the window for days. Poor Darnell. The idea was nice, but the details were all wrong. I hope he was friends with Bosman’s daughter. It would have been a sweet thing for the both of them.”

  “I’m sorry he died,” I say and I leave it there. No words will fill the hole that Darnell’s death has left inside Lottie. I don’t even try.

  “Good night, Adele. Sleep well,” she whispers, and the subject of Bosman closes for now. The two of us have more urgent business to attend to. Tonight we will fight our demons in our dreams, and tomorrow morning we will rise up from our cots, tired and wrung out, and get on with the day. And the next day. And the next fifty-six days till the end of term.

  I stare at the ceiling and conjure up memories of our house in Manzini. My bed. Clean sheets and thick blankets. Milk tea and sugar biscuits. Ripe mangoes in a bowl on the kitchen table. Even the memory of walking to the telephone box at the end of Live Long Street takes on a sweetness. I will soak in the bathtub for hours and sleep late during the holidays. I will become Adele Joubert again.

  Not Lottie. Lottie has to fight for what little she has, and how tired she must be. Each day is a struggle, yet still she has space in her head to think about finding justice for Darnell.

  “Good night,” I whisper back, and lie awake wondering how to make things different.

  26

  Fast Post

  The late bus to Manzini, a dusty brown behemoth with the name Lord Have Mercy painted on the side, passes us on our way from afternoon study hall to the senior-girls’ dorm. Dinner is in half an hour, and we have just enough time to wipe the dust from our shoes and wash our faces. Mrs. Vincent has decided that it’s time for Lottie and me to “reintegrate” into the student population, so no more private dinners.

  I comb the knots from my hair and drop the brush onto the chest of drawers. My hand stills, and my mind spins. I pull open the drawers and search them one by one, and then I drop to the floor and sweep my hands over the floor while my heart goes flip, flip, flip.

  “What is it?” Lottie asks.

  “The letter to my mother. It was right here on top. Right here. Did you take it?”

  “No. I’ve been with you the whole time, remember?” Lottie runs a plastic comb through her short-cropped hair, and it’s true that we are a society of two. We eat together and walk from blue classroom to blue classroom together, all the while pretending that being outcasts doesn’t bother us one bit.

  “Then it might . . .” Two terrible thoughts hit me at once. Either Delia has stolen the letter as payback for the slap and plans to read it out loud to anyone who’ll listen, or something far, far worse has happened.

  I hurry outside, sick with fear. Socks the cat sleeps in the last rays of sunlight to fall across the front stairs of Mrs. Thomas’s cement-brick house. I knock, and, on the off chance that Jesus is in the vicinity, I pray. Please let the letter be inside and propped against the endless row of wedding photos.

  Socks yawns and stretches out, a hundred miles from care.

  “Ah, Adele.” Mrs. Thomas smiles to see me at the door—still in her soft, dreamy mood. “You came about the letter?”

  “Yes.” I shift from right foot to left foot. “That’s correct.”

  “It was a rush, but I got it into the Lord Have Mercy mailbag. It will be in Manzini this evening, and your mother will get it tomorrow or the next day.” She reaches out and touches my shoulder.

  I am speechless.

  “It’s good that you write to your mother, Adele. Keeping contact with the outside world is important. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to hear from you.”

  I hold back the bad words burning on my tongue. Stupid. Idiot. You had no right. You know the rules. Hands off other people’s stuff. Instead, I shape my mouth into a smile. It’s almost mid-February, and in eight weeks, I’ll go home for the holidays. From what I hear, Mrs. Thomas leaves the school only during the Christmas break. She’s stuck at Keziah from late January to mid-December, and that fact melts my anger away. I’m sorry for her. I take a big breath in.

  “Thank you for posting the letter, Mrs. Thomas. Mother will be pleased.”

  “No trouble, Adele. No trouble at all.”

  Each footfall on her stairs is like a hammer that echoes across Swaziland, all the way to my mother, who will read the letter and think I am insane.

  Lottie stands on the other side of the dry lavender hedge with a startled expression. She’s guessed what happened.

  “She was trying to help,” she says of Mrs. Thomas’s backward kindness. “What was in the letter?”

  “The truth.”

  “Oh.” Lottie says. Then, “Ohh . . .”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  * * *

  • • •

  What to do? What to do? The question runs circles inside my head until my brain is dizzy. I list the facts to try and calm my mind: Mrs. Thomas posted the letter. Fact. The letter is gone, and there’s no stopping it. Fact. There is nothing I can do to change the situation. Fact. My mind, however, refuses to listen. My mind insists that there must be a way to fix the situation.

  “Here. Take this.” Lottie reaches over the side of her cot and offers me her dreidel. “Spin it and watch the symbols go around. Don’t think. Just watch.”

  “All right.” I grab the spinning top and crouch on the floor. Playing with a child’s toy won’t change anything, but lying in bed with the same stupid question looping through my head won’t change anything either. I spin the top, and it falls over. I try again and get a good spin going. The painted symbols on the wood move in a blur of motion.

  “What was in the letter?” Lottie asks.

  “I already told you. The truth.” I spin again, faster this time.

  “Which part of the truth?”

  “The fire, and Darnell dying, and us being outcasts at Keziah. Also, that I’m different from the girl that she put on the bus to school.”

  “Did you tell her that you met Mama Khumalo and that Mama asked after her?”

  “No.” The dreidel wobbles and tumbles over, and, right then, it’s as if a hand has reached into my head and stopped my mind from spinning long enough for me to focus outside of myself. The visit with Mama Khumalo left me with questions that only my mother can answer.

  If I don’t ask, I’ll never know why she abandoned her family and why she never again set foot in her village on the edge of Bosman’s farm. My hands reach for the drawer with the pen and paper, and I pull my fingers back from the metal handle,
uncertain. Children who ask personal questions of adults get a slap across the head and are told to keep your nose out of my business unless you want to lose that nose, girl! Do I have the courage to challenge “the way things are” by asking Mother to share with me her reasons for leaving?

  I pull open the drawer. Mother is miles away in Manzini, I reason. If my curiosity offends her, she’ll have eight weeks to cool down before I go home for the holidays. Writing another, more personal letter to Mother is a risk worth taking.

  Mother,

  I met your cousin Mama Khumalo the other day and I have so many questions. First and most important, why haven’t you come back to visit your cousin? I ask because the village is so full of life while our house in Manzini is neat and quiet. If I was you I’d miss the children and the stray dogs and the women singing in the fields. After all those people and closeness, I wonder if you’re lonely with just me and Rian and the porcelain angels on the sideboard for company. Also, was Granny Agnes the one who taught you the African proverbs that you like to throw into conversations at the strangest times? Two of them have crossed my mind this term. When everyone stared at Lottie and me in chapel, I remembered that “the higher the monkey climbs up the tree, the more you can see of its bum,” and when Darnell crossed the river at twilight, I knew he had to get to the shore fast because “the strength of the crocodile is in the water.” I haven’t yet had a chance to use your favorite saying, “When the ground is hard, the women dance.” The truth is, I don’t really understand why the women dance or how their dancing helps to fix the hard ground. Maybe you can explain it to me during the holidays.

  Love,

  Your Adele

  PS: Mama Khumalo said that when you lived in the country, your eyes were always on the hills and what lay beyond. We have that in common. When Lottie and I were talking the other night I realized, for the first time, that I want to study overseas. A crazy idea, I know, but the world is big and full and I want to see it all.

  Lottie spins the dreidel while I fold the letter into an envelope and write Mother’s address on the front. “Are you going to send the letter on purpose this time?” she asks. “No accidents with Mrs. Thomas?”

  “I’ll post it,” I say. “Who knows? Mother might actually answer my questions.” Writing the second letter is the only way that I can think of to make things different.

  The electricity cuts out, and the room goes from light to dark in a blink. I lie on my cot and turn to face Lottie.

  “Why did you let me try your dreidel?” I ask. The Jewish spinning top is the last piece of Lottie’s dead father, who is now, according to her, “just bones in the ground.”

  Cot springs squeak as Lottie turns to face me in the gloom. I hear the slow inhale and exhale of her breath from across the room.

  “When Delia stole my undies, you gave me a new pair and you never asked for it back. We fought the fire and sat with Darnell’s body in the valley. We both hate Bosman and love to read.” Lottie sighs in the darkness. “I gave you the dreidel because you’re my friend, Adele. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. And when I get that farm, that’s what I want. Friends.”

  The lump in my throat makes it hard for me to swallow, and tears sting my eyes. Lottie has put my feelings into words, but writing the second letter to Mother has eaten up all my courage, so I turn to the wall and mash my face into the pillow.

  “Night, Lottie,” I say through my tears.

  “You big baby,” she says, and her insult makes me laugh.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning, the Go Lucky Boy bus to Manzini pulls out of the school grounds with the second letter to Mother in its mailbag. Two letters in one week—won’t she be surprised? Maybe she’ll reply to one or both of the letters. Maybe she won’t reply at all.

  That night, I reopen Jane Eyre and dive back into the story, desperate to take my mind off the letters and Mother’s reaction to their content. Darnell’s funeral and the whispers that followed us afterward threw us off course. Jane was pushed to the back of our minds but, once again, Jane is here to save us. Jane will take us far from Swaziland and from our troubles.

  Lottie reads her fair share of the story, and I find that I actually enjoy being a listener, free to imagine the windswept moors and the poor schoolhouse where Jane found work after she ran away from Rochester and the mad wife he kept hidden in a secret room.

  On the fourth night of feverish reading, we finish Jane Eyre and pick apart the ending in the flickering candlelight. Lottie is pleased that Jane married Rochester and had a child. I’m pleased, too, but less so. Mother, it seems, is right. Money is important. Money changes everything. Where would Jane be without that inheritance from her long-lost uncle? If she was in Swaziland, I’ll tell you where she’d be: Living in a grass hut with nothing to eat but porridge. A blind and crippled husband. No running water. No money for school fees. No happy ending.

  Without her uncle’s money, Jane is a righteous pauper. And where’s the harm in being Rochester’s second wife so long as he takes care of her and her children the way that Father takes care of Rian and me? Mother would find Jane foolish to have run from linen sheets and shelter only to return to the ashes of Thornfield Hall.

  I keep my thoughts to myself, because Lottie is “ecstatic” that Jane remained true to herself and got what she wanted in the end. Jane is “steadfast” and “tenacious.” A “heroine.”

  “Lucky about that inheritance,” I say, feeling disloyal to both Jane and Lottie.

  “True.” Lottie laughs and lifts her dreidel so the light catches the Hebrew symbols painted on the sides. “When my father died, he left me this and his work boots. What will you get?”

  I shrug. “Rian and I are a secret, so Father’s other children will probably get whatever he has. That’s why my mother likes money. The coins and paper notes are right there in her hand. She doesn’t have to wait, and she doesn’t have to guess what’s around the corner.”

  “Do you love him?” Lottie asks.

  A strange feeling shoots through me. I have no answer for her question.

  She persists. “Do you love your father?” she asks, and I puff out a breath, annoyed at her. Lottie waits for my reply.

  “Of course I love him,” I say, and then I add, “He pays the bills, so what choice do I have?”

  “That’s not how love works,” Lottie says.

  “Says who?”

  “Says me and the books and the songs and the Bible. Do you love him? Yes or no, Adele.”

  She won’t let go till she has her answer. I flex my hands to pump warmth to my fingertips, which are suddenly cold.

  “I don’t know him. Not really.” I try to explain. “And I don’t know if I love him or if I’m just grateful to him for giving us a house and paying my school fees. He visits us when he can, and Mother calls him every Thursday. When he comes to Manzini, we’re glad to see him and he’s glad to see us . . . I don’t know.”

  “Well, all right . . .” Lottie spins the dreidel between her fingers and changes the subject. A kindness. “We can still be Jane. But without the inheritance.”

  “And live in a hut with a blind old man? Even if he’s white . . . Even if we were white? I’ll pass.”

  Lottie grins. “I already live in a hut, so we have to do what my mother says: we have to take care of ourselves and make money that we can leave to whoever we want.”

  I tuck Jane Eyre under my pillow and stretch out on the floor where we read books. Jane’s uncle sailed to Madeira to make his fortune. Jane was stuck in England in the cold in the same way that we’re stuck in Swaziland in our brown-girl bodies. Does Lottie really believe that we’ll make enough money for her to buy a farm and for me to travel overseas? How? It’s an unreal dream of an idea, and she’s cracked in the head to say it. Even so . . .

  “That would be nice,” I say.


  27

  Echoes from Outside

  “Sandi Cardoza. Mary Lewis. Claire Naidoo. Alison Carter.” I grit my teeth as the Elephant calls out the names of students with parcels and letters in the afternoon postbag. I grind the toe of my right shoe into the dirt, hoping to hear my name boomed out and praying to God that it won’t be. The bag empties, and my breath hitches in my chest. Six days have passed since the Go Lucky Boy took my second letter to Manzini, and I have to finally accept that Mother will not reply to either of my letters.

  Lottie makes excuses for her, but I feel in my heart that I’ve let Mother down. She prefers the old Adele, who was part of the top girls’ circle. New Adele slaps former friends across the face. New Adele reads till the grace candle burns down and dreams of living in a faraway country—any country—where things are different.

  “Adele Joubert.” The Elephant calls my name, and panic grips me. Mother has replied, and I’m not ready to read what she’s written. The second letter was meant to change “how things are.” Maybe it worked, but not like I wanted. Maybe things have changed—but for the worse.

  “Quick sticks.” The Elephant holds up a thin piece of cardboard. “I haven’t got all day.”

  “Thank you, Matron.” I take my mail. It’s a postcard with a photograph of a traditional Swazi maiden, wearing a beaded skirt and not much else, on the front and Rian’s scrawled handwriting on the back.

  Adele,

  Father came to visit last Saturday and he and Mother talked about you in low voices. When they went to bed, I heard Mother crying. Did Mother lie when she said that the fire didn’t burn you? If you are hurt, you can come back to Manzini and I’ll show you how to make wood-block puzzles in the lean-to.