Since I’d turned ten and insisted I was old enough to walk home with friends, Beauty didn’t fetch me at the school gates anymore. Instead, she’d meet us in the park in the afternoon to hand over my lunch and take my school case home while Morrie and I caught up for an hour or two before we headed inside.
“She had to go out today, so she gave me the sandwiches this morning.”
“Where did she go?”
“Don’t know.”
“Not much of a detective then, are you?”
“I couldn’t follow her. I had to go to school,” I protested.
“Yes, but you could’ve just asked her.”
“I did, but she was vague about it.”
“Do you think it has to do with Nomsa?”
“Not sure. Maybe.”
We finished our lunches, and I pulled one of my Secret Seven books out just as Morrie took his camera from his bag.
“I saw a dead rat over there that I want to take a picture of,” he said as he slung the camera around his neck and started climbing down.
I didn’t even bother replying. Nothing I said could encourage Morrie to take photos of flowers or sunsets or anything even remotely pretty. Half an hour later, I checked my Mickey Mouse watch and saw it was time to head home. I gathered my things up, and climbed down to join Morrie who was standing waiting for me. As I dropped down, I noticed that my school bag was gone from the place I’d left it at the base of the tree when I’d climbed up earlier.
“Where’s my case?”
Morrie smirked. “Well, since you like mysteries so much and rate your Secret Seven so highly, why don’t you figure it out?”
I cast my eyes around, knowing Morrie was lazy and wouldn’t have carried my heavy bag too far. I spotted a dark shape in the nearby bushes, but instead of rushing straight for it, I pretended to follow footprints in the dust that served as clues. Morrie’s face fell when the “footprints” led me to the hiding place. “Mystery solved,” I shouted.
“Okay, that one was easy. That doesn’t make you a real detective.” Morrie had been really snarky lately, probably because I reneged on the ten kisses deal.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but when last did you sneak into a car without the people inside knowing you were there? And when last did you see all kinds of stuff you weren’t meant to see when you were doing surveillance? At least I have some chutzpah!”
“That hardly counts. All you did was schlep with. You didn’t exactly solve the mystery of where Nomsa is!”
“But I saw that man, Shakes, threatening that girl, and that’s more than Beauty knows because she thinks he’s with Nomsa.”
“And yet you haven’t even told her about it, so how is that helpful?”
“You know why I can’t tell her! I wasn’t supposed to be there and I’ll get in trouble!” That was the official excuse I was giving, but my real reason for not telling Beauty was that menacing man, Shakes. I was scared of what he might do to her if she found out the girl, Phumla, had lied, and if she went back there asking questions again.
“Have you even remembered where you know that girl from?”
“No, but I will.” The knowledge flitted like a moth around my mind; it was always just out of reach. The smell of sweat and smoke came to me whenever I thought of her, but I still wasn’t able to connect that to a specific memory.
“Just admit it. Your surveillance didn’t turn up anything useful at all. Ergo, you’re not a real detective.”
“‘Ergo’? You can’t just make words up.”
“It’s a real word.”
“No, it’s not. It’s ‘ogre’ spelled backwards. Stop reading that stupid Lord of the Rings book. It’s making you see those ugly ogre things everywhere.”
“They’re not ogres, they’re orcs.”
“Orcs shmorcs. You’re just cross because I still prefer the Secret Seven books to the Hardy Boys who are stupid, by the way.”
“Firstly, ‘shmorcs’? What are ‘shmorcs’? Talk about making words up! Then, that book was a gift and you didn’t even kiss me to say thank you for it.”
“Aha! I knew it. I knew you were cross about the kiss.”
“Ten kisses actually.”
“Only nine to go,” I corrected him.
“What?”
“Never mind.” I wasn’t about to tell him about the kiss I gave him when he was sleeping.
“Anyway,” Morrie said, “that’s beside the point. I bet you couldn’t even solve a real mystery.”
“What kind of real mystery?”
“Like . . . like if something really valuable goes missing.”
“Bet I can,” I said.
“Bet you can’t.”
Forty-six
ROBIN
8 MAY 1977
Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
Edith carried her suitcase into the room and my stomach knotted. I knew that her coming-home ritual included taking off her jewelry and putting it all away, before unpacking and then drawing a bath. I hovered outside her door.
Please be distracted and don’t go to your jewelry box.
I started biting my nails as I tried to make out what she was doing.
Any hope I’d harbored was shattered when her cupboard door opened and the familiar tinkling strains of “Greensleeves” filled the air. The tune had always struck me as being very melancholy, but now it sounded ominous, and I rushed into the room in a desperate attempt to divert her.
“How was your trip, Edith? Did you see any famous people this time?”
Edith turned slowly and her face was a mask of disbelief. I swallowed hard.
There will be hell to pay! I’m going to be skinned alive.
“Robin?”
“Yes?”
“Have you been playing with my jewelry box?”
The moment of truth had come, and I knew if I answered honestly, I’d be in big trouble. Edith’s jewelry was off-limits at all times; I wasn’t even allowed to play with it when she was there. But, technically, it wasn’t me who’d gone into it and taken stuff so I wouldn’t really be lying.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I haven’t!”
She studied my face and I willed myself not to flush. Edith walked to the bed and sat down, patting the empty space next to her. “Come here and sit down.”
“Why? I’m actually quite busy—”
“Robin.”
I groaned. “Fine.” I dragged my feet over the short distance and then flopped down next to her. “What is it?”
“This is very important, okay? I need you to be completely honest with me. Tell the truth even if it’s unpleasant.”
I wanted to point out her hypocrisy and give examples of the many times she’d lied to me, but I knew that would just make me look guiltier, so I just nodded.
“Did you take any of my jewelry?”
I knew I couldn’t hesitate. I had to maintain eye contact and answer immediately. “No.”
“You’re sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Yes.” She was interrogating the wrong suspect and asking the wrong questions. She would make a terrible detective.
“Okay. Will you call Beauty for me?”
“Beauty?”
“Yes. And then go to the lounge and close this door.”
“But why—”
“Please just do as I say for once.”
I considered blabbing and confessing our sins right there. Surely anything would be better than dragging out the torture of the punishment that would surely follow.
“Now, Robin!”
I peeped at Edith before dashing out the door. She looked stricken.
My thoughts raced as I tried to figure out how to buy more time. Morrie had taken the jewels two days before, leaving a ransom note
on my bed with clues directing me to where he’d hidden them. I realized now that showing him the jewelry box had been a big mistake, and I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t goaded me by telling me he knew the combination to his father’s safe, and that Edith obviously didn’t trust me if she wouldn’t tell me where the box was. He’d been setting me up and I stupidly fell for it, leading him straight to Edith’s most precious possessions.
I’d tried for two days to solve the clues, but either Morrie was a terrible clue-writer or the Secret Seven were better at solving mysteries than I was. My pleas to him the night before to just give me the jewelry before Edith came home were met with, “Only if you admit that Enid Blyton writes stupid girly stories that don’t teach you to solve mysteries at all. And that the Hardy Boys and The Lord of the Rings are way better.” Of course, I couldn’t admit that.
He then smiled slyly, running his hand through his thick mop of hair. “Okay, I’ll enter into negotiations with you. I’ll give the jewelry back if you give me the ten kisses you owe me. Right now.”
“No way!” And so the jewels remained missing.
I found Beauty in the kitchen, standing at the counter surrounded by ingredients. An iced chocolate cake was pushed to the side to make space for Beauty to work. I squealed, briefly forgetting my troubles, as I ran to it intending to scrape some of the icing off with my finger.
Beauty swatted my hand away and laughed. “Leave it. We will have it later.”
Cakes weren’t regular fare in our flat, mostly because Edith was always on a diet for the weigh-ins she had at work. The last cake I’d had was at my party. “Why are we having cake?”
“Because it is my birthday today.”
My spirits fell. I knew what it was like to have everyone forget your birthday. “Is it really? How old are you?”
“Fifty.”
“Wow, that’s really, really old. Happy birthday, Beauty!” I felt bad that I didn’t have a gift or anything to give her, especially considering the thoughtful gifts she’d given me for Christmas and my birthday. I decided I’d make a gift for her later. “Uthini ‘happy birthday’ ngesiXhosa? I asked, wanting to know how to wish her in Xhosa.
Beauty smiled. “Your Xhosa is coming along nicely. You say, Min'emnandi yokuzalwa.”
“Min'emnandi yokuzalwa!” I repeated and hugged her.
“Thank you,” Beauty said, returning to a page of a cookbook and slowly running her index finger along the page. It looked like a recipe for a roast chicken with crunchy golden potatoes. My stomach rumbled. It was going to be a wonderful dinner.
“Robin!” Edith called from the bedroom, and I remembered what I’d come to the kitchen for.
“Beauty, Edith wants you.”
“Tell her I am busy with this recipe.”
“Yes, but she wants you. Now.”
Beauty slid the book away and stood up, heading to Edith’s room. I tried to follow her in so I could tell Edith about Beauty’s birthday, but Edith blocked my way and again instructed me to go to the lounge. I hated being left out of things and she knew that. I shot her a dark look. “But, I wanted to tell you it’s—”
“Just go!”
I stomped out again and came to a halt just outside the door and held my breath.
“Not outside the door, Robin! Go to your room.”
“It’s not actually a room, you know. If you’re going to send me to my room, I will need an actual door and my own walls and not just a partition.”
“Just go!”
I huffed in an injured tone and went to the lounge where I stepped behind the partition and fell onto my bed. When I was sure Edith hadn’t followed me out and I’d heard her bedroom door close, I quietly tiptoed back and lowered my ear to the keyhole.
“It is good to have you home again, Edith. I am preparing a special—”
“Beauty, I’m only going to ask you this once and I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you know what happened to my jewelry?”
“What jewelry are you talking about?”
“My two rings, the one with the sapphire and the one with the emerald. And my diamond earrings and my jade necklace. Where are they?”
“What do the rings look like, Edith?”
“I told you, the sapphire ring and the emerald one.”
“The blue and the green rings?”
“Yes.”
“I have seen you wearing them, but I do not know where they are now. Where did you put them?”
“I put them where I always put them when I go away.” Edith’s voice had risen and it bordered on shouting. “I put them here in my jewelry box. But as you can see, they’re gone. I want to know where they are.”
“I do not know where they are, Edith. I have not seen them since you were gone. Did you not take them with you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Edith shouted. “What have you done with my jewelry, Beauty?”
“You think that I have stolen your jewelry?”
“Well, it was here when I left and now it’s gone. Has there been a robbery you forgot to mention to me?”
“No, there was no robbery.”
“Then I’m forced to reach the only logical conclusion, Beauty. You are stealing from me.”
There was a long silence before Beauty replied. “Have you asked Robin if she has seen the jewelry?”
“Yes, I did and she said she didn’t touch it. She knows she’s not allowed to. I can’t believe you would steal from me, Beauty. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
“Edith, I—”
“You don’t have permission to call me Edith anymore. That offer was extended in friendship. Friends do not steal from friends.”
“Madam,” Beauty said, making the word pregnant with contempt, “I did not steal from you. I have never stolen anything from anyone in my whole life. I am not a tsotsi.”
“I pay you a fortune compared to the other maids—”
“That is because I am not a maid, madam.”
“If you needed money, all you had to do was ask me and I would have—”
“The only money I need is the money I work for. I did not steal from you. That is the last time I will tell you that.”
“I can see this is pointless, Beauty. If you would just be honest with me, I could consider forgiving you, but it’s the lying I can’t stand.”
“You want to forgive me?” Beauty sounded incredulous.
“I know you think you have me hostage because of how much I need you, but I absolutely won’t harbor a traitor and a thief. You have left me no choice but to fire you. I think it’s best that you leave immediately. The only thing stopping me from going to the police is your relationship with Maggie and how highly she regards you, and how much Robin cares for you.”
The door was wrenched open and I hopped aside as Beauty stormed out. She walked a few paces before she stopped. She didn’t turn around; she just stood there with her back to me, waiting. I wanted to apologize to her and tell her the truth, which I was sure she suspected anyway, but the words stubbornly refused to come.
Beauty waited another moment and when I didn’t speak, her squared shoulders drooped slightly. Her bearing was no longer righteously angry but injured. I was the reason that the proud woman standing before me looked broken.
“Beauty,” I said, and she twitched in response. When I didn’t say anything more, the words crumbling to dust in my mouth, she continued to the kitchen where her packed bag was already waiting in anticipation of Edith’s arrival.
I heard Beauty close the recipe book and pack away the ingredients that had been laid out on the counter. When the sound of opening and closing doors finally stopped, I stepped out from where I’d been standing immobile outside Edith’s door and saw Beauty lift up her bag and head for the door. It was the simple act of her raising a hand to her face that broke my silen
ce.
I knew the language of sorrow, my body had spoken it many times, and I knew how shamed she was by the tears she did not want to cry. It didn’t matter that the difference in our skin color separated us more than the span of the forty years that stretched out between us, I recognized myself in Beauty; I was like her and she was like me. We were so very different and yet we were exactly the same, and it was in her tears that I recognized our shared humanity.
I didn’t have the words then to articulate what I was feeling, but on some level I’d understood that tears are neither black nor white; they are the quicksilver of our emotional turmoil and their salt flavors our pain equally. It was this sense of kinship that finally jolted me from my inertia.
“Edith!” I called, the words torn from my chest. “Beauty didn’t steal your jewelry! I did! And also it’s Beauty’s birthday today. She’s fifty!”
I ran to Beauty then and wrapped my arms around her waist. “Ndicela uxolo. Ndiyakuthanda. Ungandishiyi,” I said, struggling with the clicks and twists of the language. I am sorry. I love you. Do not leave me.
Some good-byes are as gentle and inevitable as sunset, while some blindside you like a collision you didn’t see coming. Some good-byes are schoolyard bullies you are powerless to stop, while others punctuate the end of a relationship because you decided: enough. Some are heartbreaking, leaving you a little more damaged than you were before, while others set you free.
I would go on to experience all of them during the course of my life, but on that day in May in 1977 when I was just ten years old, I’d had enough of good-byes. And so I confessed everything and threw myself at their mercy.
Beauty forgave me more quickly than I deserved, probably because she sensed how damaged I was and how much I needed her absolution. Morrie, upon realizing the repercussions of his actions and how close Beauty had come to being fired, issued an immediate and sincere apology to both women, handing the jewelry back before dragging his feet home to accept his punishment from his parents. Beauty forgave him swiftly too.
It would take many weeks, however, before she forgave Edith, or at least until she stopped calling her “madam” in that pointed way, but Edith accepted her punishment graciously. She threw a belated surprise birthday party for Beauty a month later and invited Morrie, his parents, Maggie and Victor to join us in the celebration. She was so desperate for Beauty’s forgiveness that she even invited Wilhelmina. Edith wasn’t a good cook and so the food was terrible and the cake flopped, but no one said anything about it. Edith didn’t comment either when Wilhelmina went out to her bakkie to fetch the backup cake she’d baked just in case.
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