When the Ground Is Hard

by Malla Nunn

  “Hey . . . Hey, Adele.”

  Beatrice, who hid from the Elephant with us, pops her head through the doorway. Like all the pretties’ pets, Beatrice is a junior girl and she is beautiful. She has long dark hair and bright-blue eyes. She has two other pets with her . . . Ramona and Leah, I think.

  “Adele,” she says. “Tell them I was inside the room. Tell them that I didn’t cry or run away or nothing.”

  I say, “Beatrice was inside the room. She didn’t cry or run away or nothing.”

  “Trus faith?” the one that I think is Ramona says.

  “Trus faith,” I say, and Ramona’s eyes bug out. Trus faith is a sacred vow among Keziah students; it means “I am telling the truth, and may God strike me dead if what I say is a lie.” Nobody knows who made up the words or why we keep using them, but they are the academy’s ultimate test of fidelity.

  “Don’t take our word for it,” Lottie says. “Come inside and ask Lorraine’s ghost. Maybe she’ll jump out of the wall and take you to the other side. That’s what you think will happen, isn’t it?”

  The girls nod, and Beatrice steps in first, because she’s been here before. She throws the other pets a scornful glance and challenges them to match her bravery. They stay put. She walks to the window and rests her arms along the wooden sill, the queen of the room.

  “See?” she says. “Easy.”

  Shamed by Beatrice’s courage, Ramona and Leah inch inside. They stop, and start again and clutch each other’s hands. Their terror is adorable, and I can’t help but smile. Lottie has never had pets. Pets are expensive but well worth the extra food it takes to reward them. If you ask, a pet will go out to the laundry room when it’s dark and you’re too scared to go out yourself.

  “Come on,” Beatrice prods. “You’re walking like old ladies.”

  Ramona and Leah screw up their courage and stride into the middle of the room. Small sounds come through the window. The distant scrape of a hoe in the kitchen gardens and the call of a dove in the grapefruit tree. Lottie says, “Shh . . . listen. I think I hear something.”

  The girls tense, and Lottie slams the book in her hands closed. Bam. The girls jump, and Beatrice screams. Lottie laughs at the sounds they make, but her laughter makes the girls scream even more. They think it’s Lorraine’s ghost, delighted at having three fresh girls to eat for supper. Leah spins in terrified circles, and Ramona looks like she might pee or puke or both. Beatrice makes a high-pitched squeak that travels out of the window and across the dirt yard to Mrs. Thomas’s house.

  “Shh . . . wait, wait, wait.” I try to hush them. “Lottie is joking. It’s nothing. There’s nothing here.”

  “I saw Lorraine.” Ramona hiccups. “Right there in that corner. She’s got red eyes.”

  “And red teeth,” Leah adds. If Mrs. Thomas comes to investigate, she will blame Lottie and me for corrupting young minds. Talking to the dead is an offense against the one true God, and we will be punished. We might even, Lord take this cup from me, be sent to Mr. Vincent’s office for a lecture and a public caning at assembly.

  Lottie also understands where her innocent joke might lead, and shows the girls the book.

  “See.” She opens the cover and shuts it gently. “It was me. I made the sound.”

  The girls jump and cry harder. I scramble under my cot, pull out my suitcase, and grab the package of shortbread biscuits. Technically, feeding other people’s pets is wrong, but I have no choice.

  “Here. Look what I’ve got.” I rip the package open, and the smell of sugar and butter immediately gets their attention, but Ramona and Leah hesitate, as if this is somehow a trick to poison them. I ram a biscuit into my mouth and make exaggerated mmm sounds. Then I give one to Lottie, who joins in the mmm chorus. She rolls her eyes in delight, and the girls giggle.

  “One each,” I say, and hand them out. Beatrice takes a shortbread finger, sits on the edge of my cot, and chews. Ramona and Leah perch on the end of Lottie’s bed and take small, luxurious bites, to extend the time that it takes to finish their biscuits. Rich or poor—and pets are chosen for looks and temperament, not family money—a love of shortbread makes their fear evaporate. The silence is lovely, and I relax. Things could have ended badly, but they didn’t: instead, we are five girls eating biscuits together in a haunted room.

  Two shadows fall across the concrete floor. I look up, and my good feelings evaporate. Sandi Cardoza and Delia stand in the doorway with their arms crossed and judgment written on their faces. They are furious that I’ve stolen their pets and fed them. I brush crumbs from my skirt and say in a brusque voice, “See? No ghosts. Now off you go.”

  Delia huffs, and Sandi pulls Beatrice’s braids when the pets bolt through the door and hurry to the pretties’ room. Lottie pretends to read her book while I make a show of memorizing John 12:46. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. I already know the words by heart, but I need a wall to hide behind while Delia and Sandi Cardoza stare at us.

  Peaches sticks her head between the other two and makes a clicking sound with her tongue. Then she shakes her head the way native women do when they simply do not have the words to describe the terrible tragedy they have witnessed with their own eyes. The tongue click and head shake are usually reserved for car accidents and natural disasters, but in Peaches’s mind, what I’ve done is equally as tragic. I am a pet stealer and a breaker of the rules. I have accidentally declared war on them.

  After an eternity of cold stares, they turn and walk away. I shiver. Once I was their friend. Then I was nothing. Stealing their pets was the last straw. Now I am their enemy.

  11

  Under-War

  “Where is it?”

  The next morning, Lottie checks the bottom of our shared wardrobe, the top two drawers of the dresser, and the sides of her mattress. She kneels and sweeps her hand under her cot, her breath coming in small hard gasps. Nothing. It’s no use. The dry pair of underwear that hangs over the metal rail at the end of her cot, waiting to be exchanged for the freshly washed pair, is gone.

  “Maybe it’s under mine.” I crouch and search the dark space between the iron bedsprings and the floor. My suitcase, filled with canned treasures, is pushed into a back corner. The reason that it’s hidden so far from the light embarrasses me. Lottie has never touched my clothes or used my hairbrush on the sly or begged for a can of condensed milk. The incident with the impago box? Well, I may have been wrong there . . .

  “Nothing.” I sit up and chew the inside of my cheek. Lottie takes care of what she has. Every piece of clothing is precious, and this morning, when the bell rang and we rushed to the washroom line, her dry underwear was right where it ought to be. She didn’t move it and I didn’t move it and a nervous feeling grows in my stomach.

  “They’re gone.” Bright color stings Lottie’s cheeks. “Gone.”

  “Wait. Maybe they blew out.” I scramble to the window and peek into the Christ-thorns, hoping for a miracle. Bees work the red flowers, but there’s no underwear hanging from the spikes or lying in the dirt. I turn to tell Lottie the bad news and notice a black scuff mark on the spotless floor. Shoe polish. Not from my shoes, which I polish on Saturday afternoons. And not from Lottie’s shoes, which she wipes with a wet rag, because, as far as I can tell, she has no shoe polish at all. The bad feeling in my stomach sharpens.

  “It was them,” Lottie says. “They stole the second pair.”

  “Who?” I ask, even though I already know.

  “Delia and the others.” Lottie paces the room with her wet underwear bunched in her fist. “They’re paying us back for what happened yesterday.”

  I want to deny it, but what she says makes sense. Never let a slight go unpunished. That’s another Keziah rule, and as far as Delia and company are concerned, we tried to steal their pets and we must be taught a lesson.

 
Lottie strides to the door with knotted shoulders and narrowed eyes. She’s a fighter, and a good one. No doubt she’d win a fight against any one of the pretties, and maybe even against all four of them—she’s that good—but what happens after?

  “Wait.” I block the door. “Let’s think for a minute.”

  “Why?” she says. “You know they did it.”

  “Yes, but . . .” I get my scrambled thoughts in a row. “We have no proof that they were in the room, and Mrs. Thomas will blame us for the fight, no matter what happens. She’s in a mean mood today, and she’ll give us detention for the rest of term and ten cuts each for ruining her morning.”

  “Dinah Washington,” Lottie says with a nod.

  “That’s right. Two nights in a row.”

  If you have the right key, Mrs. Thomas’s moods are easy to unlock. After lights-out, we lie awake in the dark and listen to the music coming from her house across the yard. “At Last” by Etta James means that she’s in a sad, soft-crying mood that leaves her tired and not much caring about who does what to whom in the dormitory. Or why. Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” is the soundtrack to a bleak moodiness that makes her snappish and quick with the switch. Dinah two nights in a row means “Do not test me.”

  “We’ll get Delia and the others back,” I promise. “But not this morning. We wait for Etta James, and then we do it.”

  Lottie slumps onto her cot with the wad of wet underwear clutched in her hands. “Fight or no fight, it doesn’t matter,” she says. “Mrs. Thomas will check under my skirt at morning inspection, and she’ll see that I’m wearing the same underwear as yesterday. I’ll get detention, and Delia and the others will make sure that everyone knows that I wear the same pair every day.”

  Once the underwear story gets out, teasing Lottie will become the school sport. Undies, whether they are old, new, lace or plain, are a juicy topic, and Lottie will be poked fun at for a very long time. Little ones will snicker and point. Bold boys will lift her skirt when nobody is watching and make rude comments about what they see. Mrs. Thomas and the Elephant will seize the opportunity to lecture the morning assembly on cleanliness and how being poor is no excuse for being dirty. We will all know who they are talking about. Lottie’s life will be hell. If anyone can take it, though, she can. I wish I was as strong as her.

  The thing is, though, right now, sitting across from her, Lottie doesn’t look tough at all. She is deathly pale, fidgeting with her fingers and frowning. She knows what will happen later this morning, and it pains her. So she sits and builds her wall higher; she cements the bricks closer and digs the moat deeper. Being impenetrable takes work. It takes effort. And the wall that shields her from the cruelty of boarding school children is not a birthright given by fairies or God above. It is earned. Lottie builds her wall one stone at a time. Time and time again.

  Seeing her naked would be less of a shock than seeing her stripped of her defenses. For the first time, I notice her slight body and bowed shoulders, the glimpse of scalp through her cropped short hair and how she is smaller than I imagined her, and how, for some reason, seeing her prepare for certain hurt and ridicule makes me sad. And it makes me mad: mad enough to do a mad, crazy thing.

  I rip the third drawer open and fish out a pair of blue undies with a white bow at the front. Mother bought them from the hypermarket on Louw Street, which makes them the perfect pushback against Delia and her girls. They probably own underwear just like this.

  “If Matron asks, they’re from the new hypermarket. The one that Sandi Cardoza’s father owns.” I drop the underwear into Lottie’s lap and pull on my uniform. Delia will know that the undies belong to me, but right now, I don’t care.

  “You’re sure?” Lottie touches the cotton the same way that Mother skims her fingers over jacket sleeves and dress skirts to judge the quality of the material when we are out shopping.

  “Keep them.”

  I have six pairs, one for each day of the school week and one for Sunday when I do my laundry. Now I’ll have to wash a pair midweek so I have something to wear on Sunday, but it will be worth it to see the expressions on the pretties’ faces when their scheme fails.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Scram,” I tell the Bartholomew twins, who stick their tongues out at me and move to another row for the morning inspection. I claim the spot next to Lottie: the first time that I’ve deliberately put myself anywhere near her in public. This morning is different: I need to be close so I can see everything. Delia, Sandi Cardoza, Peaches, and Natalie throw furtive glances over their shoulders, and their lips curl in cat smiles. The joke’s on them. At Keziah, you stick up for yourself and your friends. No one else. My underwear wasn’t stolen and Lottie isn’t really my friend, so there’s no reason for me to get between the pretties and their revenge. Except . . . Lottie stood up for me when Darnell yelled for me to go away. She pulled me through the window when the Elephant came hunting and she didn’t beat me for playing with her dreidel. Delia and the others think they’ve won the first battle in the war against Lottie but the war is actually against Lottie and me, and I cannot wait to see the change in their expressions when they realize that we have one up on them.

  “Girls.” The Elephant claps her hands three times to get our attention. “Eyes to the front, and hands out.”

  We stick our hands in front of us with the palms down, ready for fingernail inspection. Mrs. Thomas works her way from the front row to the back, on the lookout for dirt between the fingers and blue smudges of ink along the sides of the little finger. Girls flip their hands over to show their palms and flip them back again when Mrs. Thomas nods the all clear.

  As usual, Delia and the other girls get only a passing glance. Mrs. Thomas reaches us. I hold my hands out and get a brusque nod. Lottie does the same, but Mrs. Thomas, as usual, lingers.

  “Skirt,” Mrs. Thomas says, and Delia elbows Sandi Cardoza to pay attention. Peaches and Natalie snicker in anticipation. Lottie lifts her hem. The boys are all the way on the other side of the school grounds, so showing your delicates is not a sin. Mrs. Thomas blinks in surprise and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop from giggling.

  “Where did you get those?” Mrs. Thomas demands.

  “My mother got my cousin to get them from the hypermarket in Manzini.” Lottie stares straight ahead.

  “The hypermarket?” Mrs. Thomas snorts with disbelief. “Did one of her boyfriends give her the money?”

  Lottie turns bright red, and I forget that this is meant to be our big moment of revenge. This is where Delia and the others realize that their plan to get back at us for stealing their pets has failed. We’ve won.

  Except . . .

  “Well?” Mrs. Thomas spits the word out, and it’s lucky that she’s only lost one husband, because losing just the one man has turned her sour. “How did your mother pay for those?”

  “My mother got my cousin to get them from the hypermarket in Manzini, and that’s all I know,” Lottie says. “You could telephone my mother and ask about the money, but we don’t have a phone. Or you could call McNichols’s general store and they’ll get a boy to run over to our hut, and, if she’s home, he’ll ask my mother about where she got the money.”

  Mrs. Thomas grits her teeth at Lottie’s subtle challenge. Long-distance calls are expensive and for serious, serious business, and what reason would Mrs. Thomas give Mr. Vincent for making the call? Checking up on who paid for underwear is a silly reason, and plus, she’d have to talk about girls’ delicates in front of a white man . . . something she’d never do. Mrs. Thomas moves to her next victim.

  Lottie drops her skirt, and I rock from one foot to the other, a nervous habit. I think of Mother feeding sunshine down the telephone line so Father will come back to us, and the scratch of steel wool on the stovetop at midnight, her hair ironed straight to please him. I think of the throaty sound of her laughter w
hen he says anything remotely funny. If Lottie wants her children to have new clothes and clean shoes and six pairs of underwear, she will have to learn how to please others. She must remain soft and smiling on the outside, no matter what’s going on inside her. She will have to be less like Lottie and more like Mother, who was also poor and picked on at school.

  I imagine Lottie, older and in high-heeled shoes, hurrying to a public phone box at the end of a dirt road, and my heart hurts.

  12

  Moonlight Shadows

  Luke 3:22. And the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

  I tick Luke 3:22 off my “to memorize” list and move on to the next Bible verse.

  1 Corinthians 6:19. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you . . .

  The words vanish from my mind, and I stare at the ceiling in the dark. My heart beats fast. I’d rather be reading Jane Eyre, but I need to memorize a minimum of ten verses to make it into the finals of the Scripture competition. My mind is too busy to focus on Bible verses, though. I’m worried about Jane Eyre going to Lowood Institution. That Mr. Brocklehurst who runs the school? He has it out for her. I can tell. He’ll make her life difficult—just you wait and see. Jane is jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  On top of Jane, I’m also worried about myself. Knowing where I stand with Delia and the others gives me a surprising feeling of relief. But it’s also frightening. I’m not sure what comes next or whom I should make friends with. Loners do not do well at Keziah.

  Lottie’s bedsprings creak, and her bare feet slap the floor. She waits a minute to make sure that I’m asleep and then creeps to the window. What she does after Mrs. Thomas locks us in the dormitory is none of my business, but I have to ask: