The walk toward the river with Roop by my side and a fishing pole in my hand only heightened my sense of well-being. I loved the outdoors. Today, the bright slant of sunlight, the raucous zaaak of a lilac-breasted roller, the shush of grass against my ankles—everything I saw, heard, and felt proclaimed life an excellent business.
We headed for a new fishing spot upstream from our previous encounter with the crocodile. To my great surprise, Zola was there at the edge of the river, sitting on a slab of rock. A fat leadwood tree jittery with vervet monkeys obscured most of her. She looked to be contemplating a flotilla of leaves that twirled in the river’s slow current. Her lovely profile caught a shaft of light that accented her cheekbones and the shine of her hair. I slowed my footsteps, taken in by the serenity of the setting and my sister’s tranquil beauty. Was this where she came to relax and get away from her domestic duties—from Baba, Hannie, and me?
Roop had spotted her too. I heard his sudden intake of breath. We stopped, sharing a moment of uncertainty. I felt torn between preserving Zola’s solitude and calling her attention to the novelty of meeting this way, at the river. Finally, I stepped forward, stirring the vervets as I drew past the tree. Someone was sitting beside her. I blinked in disbelief.
10
I REALLY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. I had been a fool not to figure out that Zola’s secret boyfriend was Skinner. In retrospect, all the clues had been there. His flirtation with every skirt that came along meant nothing next to his lifelong interest in my sister. She was beautiful, womanly, and ripe for plucking by a big, bad boy who could bring excitement to her life—a boy who also happened to be movie-star handsome and a formidable, if villainous, force in the tiny world of our village.
It revolted me to think how Skinner must be savoring his conquest. Zola was more than desirable and capable. She was an almost mystically aloof figure who had left school and the fantasies of a dozen boys to disappear into domesticity under the protection of our father. She was the daughter of a mother who had died due to Skinner’s own recklessness, the niece of a man he had tried to rob, the sister of an adversary who loathed and barfed on him. She was a prize he could use to piss off quite a few people.
I stood next to Roop, breathing hard, winded by outrage. Skinner sat with one arm slung casually, possessively, across Zola’s slender shoulders. A cigarette dangled from his lower lip. Now I knew why Captain Biggie had met her at the tavern—through Skinner, of course. Who else would have taken her there? Even at a distance, I could see the smug expression on his face and, worse, the lucky bean seed bracelet circling his wrist—at least eight or ten strands, as wide as a cuff.
“Let’s go,” Roop said, side-valving to direct his voice at me. Both of us had suffered abuse at the hands of Skinner. I suspected Roop hated him as much as I did. “We could take him if we wanted. We could crush that moron. But let’s go.”
Zola must have heard Roop’s voice because she turned and saw us. Her startled expression gave way to a look that resembled a spear in full flight. She fixed her eyes on me in a highly communicative stare that said, Be afraid. Be very afraid. He could crush you.
Roop missed the telepathic vector. Under Zola’s liquid gaze, his good sense fled. He moved toward her, ignoring Skinner. His voice came out soft. “Hello, Zola. Is this guy bothering you?”
Skinner swiveled his head, flexing thick, muscular cords in his neck. Ashes dropped down the front of his shirt. “Well, look who’s here.” He tossed the cigarette into the river. “Nobbskull.” Like a cat, he rose to his feet in one fluid motion. His eyes cut back and forth between Roop and me. The lines of his body—the cocked hip, the rounded shoulders—broadcast an infuriating insolence. “Zola’s off duty, Bonesy. You’ll have to go home and wipe your own bottom.”
I dropped the fishing pole and lunged at him. Roop took Zola’s hand and pulled her out of the way.
My fist glanced off Skinner’s cheek. A dreadful sneer distorted his features. His eyes took on a nasty gleam. Instead of backing away, he thrust out his jaw, pointing at the annoying dimple in his chin. “Bring it on, Bonehead.”
Like a dope, I fell for it. My fury coalesced into a single point of molten hatred for that cocky face.
We were the same height now, but I was woefully outclassed in the art of the fistfight. I swiped and punched the air while Skinner danced and bobbed out of reach, smirking, taunting, playing with me. I heard Zola beg me to stop, but I was too far gone, too consumed by rage and frustration, and too close to tears to regain control.
“Give it up, Bonesy. Don’t waste your breath on that turd,” Roop urged from somewhere behind me.
At least I think that’s what he said. My heart was hammering. Blood roared in my ears. The edges of my vision clouded. I punched and swung like a dervish, lost my balance, braced for a blow that never came, regained my footing, and swung again. I was breathing hard, sweating profusely. Skinner looked as fresh as a boyfriend out on a date, which he was. The red slash of his extra-wide lucky bean seed bracelet infuriated me even further, like a cape before a bull. I had never felt such hatred—or felt so utterly useless and miserable. I was beginning to wish Skinner would knock me unconscious and be done with it.
He didn’t knock me out, but he finished me off just the same. After dodging another futile jab, he grabbed me by the upper arms, pinning them to my side, and half-walked, half-dragged me to the river’s edge. “You need to cool off,” he said and threw me in.
I let myself sink in the cold, tea-colored water. A long, silvery fish slanted past. Bludgeoned by shame, impotence, and my sister’s devastating betrayal, I felt too crushed to care about the wildlife stirring around me. It didn’t matter that Zola knew little or nothing of my bitter history with Skinner. The fact that she would align herself with such a lowlife, a delinquent boy-man who reeked of ill will, shocked me to the core. As I floated, weightless, it came to me like a wet slap—I hardly knew her.
When I surfaced, I felt glad that Skinner had pitched me into the river because no one could see my humiliating tears. Roop had waded into the shallows in case I needed saving, even though he was a terrible swimmer who didn’t like to get his face wet. He wagged his fishing pole in my direction, ready to pull me out. In spite of everything, I almost smiled.
I waved Roop off and stayed in the deep channel, treading water, letting my thumping pulse settle. I was in no hurry to revisit the scene of my disgrace while Skinner and Zola stood on the bank, watching me. His arm was around her again. He wore a preening, self-satisfied smirk that made me want to smack him—as if I could. Zola apparently still had the decency to care whether I drowned. But she must have decided I was going to be okay because with an almost indiscernible nod in my direction, she let her wretched boyfriend steer her away from the water’s edge. Shoulder-to-shoulder, she and Skinner disappeared from view.
After a minute or two, I swam toward shore, slowed by dejection and the drag of my drenched shorts and T-shirt. Roop had retreated to higher ground and slumped on the rock where Zola and Skinner had sat. I noticed a vulture perched on a branch, patient as an undertaker. I wondered whether its sights were fixed on me.
I made it to the boggy shallows and was squelching through mud when the monkeys erupted in a fit of frantic screeching. A pair of Egyptian geese shot skyward. In my haste to scramble up the riverbank, away from whatever alarmed them, I fell on my belly and skidded back down. Mud slid up my shorts and T-shirt and into my mouth and nostrils. I grabbed a gnarly, half-soaked root and tried to pull myself up, but my hand slipped on a jelly of frog spawn. When I finally found my footing, the mud sucked the shoes off my feet.
Roop was ignoring my sorry struggle. Up on the rock he had stiffened to full alert and appeared fixated on the river behind me. I didn’t waste a moment looking back. With a rising sense of threat, I threw myself onto dry land, falling forward, facedown. Without delay I crawled, crab-like, away from whatever Roop saw in the water.
When I stopped for a breath, I was caked in dirt and as sodden, slimy, and shoeless as a creature at the dawn of evolution.
“Look,” Roop said, pointing.
A mokoro carrying two men I didn’t recognize glided into view. From his higher vantage point, Roop had spotted the dugout canoe some distance away. Now the poler standing in the stern ceased poling, and both men turned their heads to stare at us. As they drifted closer, they didn’t say hello or lift a hand in greeting. Their steely expressions defied interpretation.
I supposed a mokoro behind me in the water had been less dangerous than a gap-jawed river creature, but the men riding in it didn’t look much friendlier. While Roop and I watched, they used low voices to exchange a few words, which I couldn’t make out. Between them were a brown tarp and two paddles for use in deeper water. I wondered whether they planned on coming ashore.
With a great thrust of wings, the vulture in the tree took off, circled the river, and flew away. The steersman ignored it, keeping his eyes trained on Roop and me. His face was a mask. Without a word or a gesture, he planted the pole in the shallows and pushed off. In a moment, the mokoro had vanished.
“Cheerful guys,” Roop said, his voice as flat and expressionless as the faces of the two men.
I tipped my head sideways to drain water and muck from my ear. “Sorry about fishing; I’m done for today. You go ahead.” I hoped he would stay. For Roop, fishing cured almost everything, maybe even the heartbreak of seeing Zola with Skinner.
He shrugged. To my relief, he said nothing about my sister and Skinner, my humiliating defeat, or the disgusting state of my slimed and oozing person. I knew heartache when I saw it, but I felt powerless to comfort him. When he picked up his fishing pole and turned toward the river, I retrieved my shoes and quietly left.
I made my way home, dripping and filthy, hoping to see no one, especially Mima. She could handle grime, but could she face a boyfriend so soured and beaten and now so closely linked via Zola to a psycho like Skinner? It occurred to me that Mima herself might have had to fend off our village’s number one predator. She was far too fresh and pretty to have escaped the attentions of a shameless boy-man on the prowl.
As I neared home, one thought cheered me a little: when he found out Zola was seeing Skinner, Baba was going to throw a fit. My father knew a lazy, worthless lowlife when he saw one. He wasn’t blind to Skinner’s bullying or his seedy reputation in the village. Stash had told my father about the attempted theft at the workshop. Baba would straighten out Zola. I knew that for sure. Maybe he would give Skinner a good going-over too. I paused to wipe some grit out of my eyes. Physical harm was wishful thinking—Baba wasn’t a fighter—but I enjoyed the prospect of my father laying into Skinner with a barrage of choice, red-hot words.
I had almost reached our yard when I spotted Zola and Skinner walking on the path ahead, tight as ticks. I ducked behind a tree. One encounter with those two was more than enough.
While I spied on them, a crushing realization took shape. They were walking away from our house—my house. She took him there? The notion that Skinner might have stepped across the threshold of my home, touched things I used every day, maybe even looked at my calendar from Ruby’s Amazing Safaris, outraged me almost as much as his attachment to my sister. How could Zola be so unthinking? So heartless and unaware of boundaries? Even though they couldn’t have stayed long, my disappointment in her was devastatingly complete.
I rubbed my drying, itchy scalp. A long scratch on my arm was raw and bleeding. My head throbbed. But what I felt most was the sharp, almost unbearable sting of betrayal. Only the notion of support from Baba brought me a measure of comfort. Just wait until our father hears about this.
I watched the two of them make their way down the lane. Skinner hooked one finger inside the back of Zola’s belt, too lazy to hold up his own arm. When they were gone, I picked my way toward our porch and through the door, keeping a sharp lookout for missing objects Skinner might have pocketed. My nose ran with muddy snot. My wet clothes had begun to chafe. My bare feet felt the punishment of countless small rocks and prickles. A day that had started so well had turned painful and joyless. And the worst was yet to come.
I found Baba sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee. A newspaper lay open on the table in front of him. With some relief, I gathered from his calm demeanor that Zola and her hideous boyfriend had bypassed the house.
“Hi,” he said, eyeing me up and down. “I hear Skinner threw you in the river.”
I looked at him. “What? Who told you?”
“Zola.” He took a sip from the coffee mug.
“She was here?” I could barely push out the words. “With him?”
He placed the mug carefully on the table, taking his time. Then he nodded. “You just missed them.” He paused. “Probably a good thing.”
“A good thing?” My words came out leaden with incredulity. “There is nothing good about this. Even the idea of Skinner in our house makes me sick, almost as sick as the thought of him with Zola.”
“This is her house too. Their relationship is not your business.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What?”
“Sit down.”
I fell into the chair opposite him, stunned.
“Zola is twenty-one years old. She’s more than capable of making her own decisions. You and I must respect her, even if we don’t agree.” He wore a look of weary resignation that incensed me. I wanted to grip his shoulders and shake them.
“Skinner is pond scum, and you know it.” I didn’t care that I sounded as petulant as a schoolboy.
“Zola’s not stupid. Let’s give her some space.”
“Space to have her life ruined? I don’t understand you, Baba.”
“Then you must try harder.”
* * *
Although my vacation still had a day to go, I got Stash to open the shop so I could return to work early. The workroom became a refuge once again—from Zola, who barely spoke to me, and from Baba, whose sanguine attitude toward the rot that had entered our lives confused and saddened me. Following the altercation at the river, I had made one fruitless attempt to change Zola’s mind about Skinner. Now I was keeping my distance from all of them.
“My life is just as important and considered as yours,” Zola had said, after I suggested she was wasting hers. “Don’t you ever forget it.”
Important and considered? Her pathetic effort to become a person of some account by associating with our village’s leading delinquent upset me more than I could say. I had woefully misjudged Baba and now Zola too. The apparent ease with which Skinner had exploited my sister’s neediness upended my long-held beliefs about her intelligence and strength of character. I had never felt so let-down.
“You could go back to school,” I had argued. “You could sell your bead jewelry. Teach beading. Help at Hannie’s school. There are many ways to find meaning and worth.”
“Yes, and I’ve found one, Bonesy. So stop preaching and leave me alone.”
When Stash heard about the discord in my household, he joined me in the shop. “Work can be therapeutic,” he said kindly. “The shop needs a day for maintenance and repairs. You can start by sorting the scrap wood into piles. Then sweep the floor.”
While I got busy, Stash inspected the tools, and we fell into our familiar, comforting roles as apprentice and teacher. “Woodworking is mostly about cutting,” he reminded me, frowning at the jagged edge of a jigsaw. “When it comes to cutting, friction is the enemy. Dull, dirty tools create friction—drag, vibration, heat. All of those affect the quality of the cut.”
We spent the rest of the morning vanquishing our enemy, friction. Stash showed me how to use a solvent to clean built-up pitch and resin from the cutting blades and taught me techniques for sharpening chisels. When we had restored the cutting equipment to peak condition, I lubricated the movin
g parts on the power tools. I felt calmer, more removed from Zola and her miserable boyfriend with every passing hour. I polished the screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, and clamps until they shone, then hung each one on its peg in descending order of size. I was rubbing the workbench with mineral oil when Aunt Letty arrived with coffee and a plate of sandwiches.
“Hello, Bonesy.”
“Hi. How did you know I was about to drop from hunger?”
“Aren’t you always, dear?” She set the tray on a stool and looked around with her hands on her ample hips. “This shop is cleaner than my kitchen.”
“We’re out of mineral oil,” I said, turning the bottle upside down.
“I’ll put it on my list for Swale’s.” She made no effort to suppress her smile. “Kate and Mima showed me the new display area. They’re smitten with it—and you.”
My face warmed. “Have they stocked the shelves?”
She nodded. “With everything for cleaning and the garden. Very convenient.”
At the end of the day, I headed straight for the grocery store, as eager to see Mima and the new display as I was uneager to go home. As usual, Mima was there alone, straightening up before closing. When I stepped through the door, she took my hand and led me to the back, pointing at an arrow-shaped sign that read “House and Garden.” A fresh carpet and some plants helped define the new area. Orderly rows of brightly labeled jars, cans, and boxes filled the shelves. The pegboard supported a tidy, parallel lineup of brushes, brooms, and mops.
“See? Everything fits perfectly.” Using the little spade of her fingers, she moved an item a fraction of an inch. The smile on her face was sweet and uncomplicated. Pleasure in the meticulous geometry of the display was another thing we shared. I kissed her then and there, standing next to the Omo, the Happy Suds, the plant food, and the snail bait.
Later, on my way home, I realized how much better I felt after a day in the shop with Stash and an evening with Mima. Work and Mima had become the cornerstones of my life. I tried not to ruin my improved mood by thinking too much about my sister and Skinner. What did Skinner know about work? Or love, for that matter? All the lucky bean seeds in Africa couldn’t redeem Zola’s appalling boyfriend. She would come to rue her choice—of that I was sure. But I was beginning to accept the unpleasant truth that she needed to discover her mistake on her own, without help from me.
The Story of Bones Page 11