by Malla Nunn
I’d love to know the secret word that Lottie left off the end of her sentence, but now is not the time to push. The two of us speaking honestly to each other is wonder enough. I give her Jane Eyre and say, “Your turn.”
Lottie licks her lips and clears her throat. Reading aloud in class is indeed excruciating. Mistakes aren’t allowed. Mispronunciations are greeted with the whack of a ruler across your palm if the teacher is being kind, and a rap across the knuckles with the metal edge if the teacher is not.
“Go slow,” I say. “We’ve got plenty of time till lights-out.”
“Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.” Lottie begins reading where I left off, and I am Jane Eyre and I am also Adele Joubert, a mixed-race student at Keziah Christian Academy in the British protectorate of Swaziland, where lightning strikes outside the windows and wind tugs at the red flowers of the Christ-thorns. I am here, and I am there—balanced between two worlds.
It’s wonderful.
I forget that the Lord giveth and . . .
15
The Lord Taketh Away
A bell rings from far off, and the sound grows louder as another bell near the dining hall dings. Outside the high window that faces Mrs. Thomas’s house, a third bell joins the chorus. Footsteps hurry across the dirt yard. The dormitory door flies open and hits the inside wall, and bang . . . I am 100 percent back in Swaziland.
“Fire,” Mrs. Thomas shrieks. “Fire!”
Lottie drops Jane Eyre on top of my pillow and jumps up to open the wardrobe. She pulls my sweater from the hanger and throws it across the room.
“Put it on.”
“But fire is hot,” I say even as I shove my arms into the sleeves and do up the buttons with shaking hands. Alarm bells ring from every corner of the school grounds. Lottie shrugs on her thin sweater and drags me into the hall, where dozens of frightened girls gather. Mrs. Thomas stands in the doorway and rings the alarm bell for all she’s worth. Her arm shakes from the weight of swinging an actual brass bell with the word alarm written across the handle in blue pen.
“Where’s the fire?” Brenda, the student with the nasal voice, yells over Mrs. Thomas’s clanging. Everyone knows that Brenda has a brother with a limp, and that it’s her job to take care of him in a flood or, like now, in a fire.
“In the bush near the sports field,” Mrs. Thomas says. “Everyone pair up. We’ll collect branches on the way.”
I inch closer to Lottie. I make her mine, because fire doesn’t care if your father owns the hypermarket on Louw Street or if he lives with his other family in Johannesburg. It eats what it can and spits out rich and poor children just the same. Lottie is used to fighting, so I’ll stick with her. She leans closer and whispers in my ear, “Ask her for machetes to cut the branches.”
I hesitate, and Lottie pokes me in the side. “Please, Mrs. Thomas,” I yelp. “Can we have machetes to cut the branches?”
“Good thinking, Adele.” Mrs. Thomas unhooks a key from the chain she wears around her waist and gives it to me. “Hurry now. Meet us at the sports field.”
I run outside with Lottie and unlock the equipment shed. Again, she let me do the talking. If she’d asked, Mrs. Thomas would have turned her down, because who knows what a poor girl with a machete might do. We grab two pangas, what the natives call the long cutting knives with stout wooden handles, and I make sure to lock the door behind us. I push the key into my sock for safekeeping, and we hurry to the sports field at the far end of the school grounds.
A funnel of black smoke reaches into the sky at the bottom of the dirt road that leads past the classrooms, the staff houses, and the boys’ dormitory. Lightning forks through the low clouds, and the air crackles with the sound of burning brush and the shrieks of panicked birds. Senior boys run from late study hall, and we run with them, our pangas held stiff against our thighs so we don’t accidentally slice off an arm or a leg if we trip.
Students swarm the sports field. Smoke billows from a hundred yards into the bush on the opposite side of the field from the boys’ dorms. The air vibrates with sound: adults yell, the fire crackles, a distant alarm bell rings. The little ones are mute as they watch the seniors and staff assemble. Mrs. Vincent drives the school pickup truck onto the field with her hand pressed to the horn. Mr. Vincent jumps out and blows his emergency whistle. We can see, back in the bush, the fire start to climb up the trees. Suddenly, three antelope run out of the scrub and bolt past us. The senior teachers blow their whistles in short, shrill blasts, and a nervous silence settles over the crowd. It is important that we follow instructions and do as we’re told. Our lives depend on obedience now more than ever.
Students form into ranks. Gordon Number One and two other boys help Mrs. Vincent roll water barrels from the back of the pickup truck and store them against the walls of the little-boys’ dorm in case the fire jumps to the buildings.
“Quick.” Lottie pulls me from the field to a stand of trees to our right. She hacks at a branch and cleaves it straight from the trunk. “Cut off the branches with green leaves and make a pile.”
I lift my panga and bring the blade down onto a branch. My muscles quiver when the metal meets the wood, and it takes me five blows to cut the branch loose. I move to the next branch and the next till I’m wet under my arms and shaking.
“Give the branches to the senior boys,” Lottie says, and keeps cutting. I drag the branches onto the field, where Mr. Vincent and Mr. Moses, the dorm master, organize the students into firefighting units.
Mrs. Button, who lives behind the mechanic’s workshop, says that in England, fires are put out by specially trained firemen who drive big red trucks with powerful hoses, and ladders that reach to the tops of buildings. In Swaziland, we have water barrels and students armed with wet flour sacks and green tree branches.
“Four lines,” Mr. Vincent says. “Boys in the front two rows, and girls in the back two.”
I dump the branches near a stack of wet flour sacks, and the senior boys grab whatever is closest. The piles disappear, and I run into the trees to collect more. Lottie has a stack ready, and I run a relay between the field and the trees till each of the boys in the front line has a branch or a dripping flour sack to beat down the flames. Lottie and me stab our panga blades into the ground so they are ready for quick use, if the need arises.
“Shoulder-to-shoulder. Keep close together,” Mr. Moses tells the firefighters. “If it gets too hot . . . back out. I don’t want no dead heroes tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” the boys reply.
Mr. Vincent, Mr. Moses, and the front-line boys move toward the fire in the bush. Burned leaves float to the ground at my feet. Flames wink deep in the bush, and my heart drums inside my chest when the second row of boys fades into the shadow of the forest.
“Here.” Lottie hands me a crooked branch, and we join the end of the girls’ line. “With luck, we’ll get to go in next,” she says.
“With luck?” I say. What an odd phrase to use, and her with a fresh list of Oxford Dictionary definitions to draw on. “You’d rather be with the boys than here where it’s safe?”
She shrugs her bony shoulders. “It’s better than waiting.”
Behind us, the junior boys and girls form a human cordon around the little-boys’ dormitory. Each of them holds a wooden bucket, which Mrs. Vincent fills with water siphoned from the ten-gallon drums. I pray that the big boys and the male teachers keep the fire well away from the dry field and the tiny bodies standing in defense.
Brenda with the nasal voice goes over to Mrs. Vincent and whispers in her ear. Mrs. Vincent nods, and Brenda pulls her lame brother, Leon, from the junior line. He fights her. He kicks and bites. She grabs his ear and twists.
“Please, let me,” he begs. “Let me stay.”
“I promised Pa.” Brenda pulls him to the road, and his pleas grow faint the farther away he gets from da
nger.
“Poor thing,” Lottie says, and strangely, I understand what she means. Leon wants to be part of the fight. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else either. The school generator turns on, and light from the boys’ dormitories floods the sports field. Mrs. Thomas shifts her weight from one foot to the other and makes soft clucking noises that are meant to soothe us, but they only heighten our fear. If the grown-ups are afraid of the fire, how are we meant to be brave?
We wait for what seems like hours while the boys tackle the flames out of our sight. More lightning bolts pierce the sky, and I swap my branch from one hand to the other, agitated and bored.
Mr. Vincent stumbles out of the bush with wild hair and a red face. He blows his whistle to get our attention. “The main blaze is under control, but we need to put out the spot fires.” His voice is hoarse from shouting orders. “Bring the water buckets!”
“One bucket each, girls.” Mrs. Thomas is calm now that the fire is beaten. “Careful. And no spilling.”
“Finally,” Lottie whispers. “A little fire is better than none.”
A third-class girl offers Lottie her bucket.
“Adele and Lottie,” Mrs. Thomas says. “Take the pangas back to the shed and return the key to me, please.”
“But . . .” Lottie is outraged. I am outraged. We’ve been dismissed from the best part of the crisis, and tomorrow the others will tell us what we missed in full detail. Tall trees alight . . . A burned snake curled around a rock . . . Towers of flame and smoke, and the smell of sweaty boys. Where were you? Oh, that’s right, you missed it.
“Now,” Mrs. Thomas snaps. “No arguments.”
16
Fire, Fire, Burning Bright
Light from the boys’ dormitory fades, and the road ahead is dark. We drag our branches with us so we’ll be ready to fight the fire the moment that we get back. Butcher, a Rhodesian ridgeback who killed five chickens last term and almost cost the night watchman his arm, barks in Mrs. McDonald’s yard. Butcher is cracked in the head, but Mrs. McDonald doesn’t have the heart to put him down, so she keeps him chained to a metal spike under the mango trees. I’m sure that Lottie thinks chaining an animal is cruel and that Mrs. McDonald is wrong to do it.
“I wish Butcher would shut up,” I say. The staff houses on either side of us make black shapes against the night. “The generator is on. How come there’s no lights?”
“Nobody’s home to turn the light switches on. Everyone’s at the fire.” Lottie is sullen. “Everyone but us.”
“It’s all right. We’ll go when we get back from the shed.” I loop my arm through hers to let her know that she’s not alone in her disappointment. We’re more than just roommates. We shared our dreams for the future and read Jane Eyre together and we might even be friends, though neither one of us would say it out loud. Friendship with Lottie Diamond seemed impossible at the beginning of term but now, well, here we are, arm in arm, and not one part of me is shocked by how easily we fit. Strange thumping sounds break through my thoughts and I go still.
“Hear that?” My heart leaps into my throat.
“No,” Lottie says.
“Shh . . . listen.” Another thump comes from our left. Butcher goes berserk. His metal chain rakes across the dirt as he chases whatever’s back there. I grip the wooden handle of my panga and squeeze Lottie’s arm. The ground shakes, and a vervet monkey leaps over the front fence of Mrs. McDonald’s house and runs across the road with a baby on its back. A troop of monkeys follows, and their howls make the skin on my neck prickle. They disappear into the vacant land between the big-boys’ dorm and the woodworking shed, and the monkey run happened so fast that I wonder if I dreamed it, except that Butcher is mad with barking and Lottie is wide-eyed.
“See that?” she says. “Something scared them. We should go look.”
“No.” I grind my feet into the ground. “We have to take the pangas to the shed and join the others.”
“Fine.” Lottie pulls away from me. “When you get back to the sports field, tell Mrs. Thomas that you lost me. I’m going to see what made those monkeys run.”
She hurries toward the classrooms and doesn’t look back.
I look toward the faraway shed. Then I look at her vanishing in the dark. I chase after her. “Wait for me!”
I’d rather follow her into the darkness than walk alone on a deserted road where nobody can hear me scream if Butcher gets free.
* * *
• • •
We move between the school buildings in the direction we think the monkeys came from. It’s dark, and all we can hear is the sound of our shoes on the gravel path and Butcher’s distant barking.
“Look,” Lottie says suddenly, and points toward an orange glow coming from behind the school shop, where the neat school grounds meet the bush. We run toward the glow and turn the corner.
The bush behind the school shop is ablaze. A lightning bolt must have hit here while we were on the sports field. Fire starts to climb the trees, and the embers float down and spark on the tall grass. Lizards and black beetles run between our legs and over our feet to get away. That’s what we should do. Run. Run for help. Run for water. Run for our lives. The fire is big, and we are two girls with green branches and pangas.
“Fast, Adele!” Lottie beats the flames back with her branch. “Before the shop burns down. And then the classrooms. Now. Now.”
I run toward the fire instead of away from it, because Mother says that only cowards run away from trouble. I run toward the fire instead of away from it because the school shop food is precious. It is the grease that makes the wheels of student life go round.
I beat back the flames with my branch. Sparks rise. Smoke stings my eyes, and the roar of the fire is terrifying. Lottie yells something at me in Zulu, but I don’t speak or understand Zulu.
“Umuntu omkhulu!” Lottie takes up the native chant that the senior boys and the bus driver used to pull the crashed blue sedan from the lip of the mountain.
I know what to say. “Siza naye!"
Together, we chant, “Umuntu omkhulu! Siza naye! Umuntu omkhulu! Siza naye!”
We speak it, and we become one body, one mind, one purpose.
The spirits of our African ancestors—whom we refuse to talk about and never acknowledge in public, because our black blood is shameful and ignored—these sleeping spirits find a home in us. Our mixed blood does not matter: Portuguese, Zulu, French, Scottish, Jewish, and English, the percentage of white blood to black. In the face of the fire, we are Swazi.
Hot cinders burn through the sleeves of my wool sweater and leave small blisters. I’m glad Lottie made me put it on or the cinders would have hit my bare skin and the burns would have been far worse. I grit my teeth against the pain and fight on. Lottie is relentless. Her strength and determination are double mine, and I will only stop when she stops. I will only give up when she does, and not before. Not one second before.
A loud crack makes me look up. Flames and sparks spit into the air. A burning branch breaks free from a tree and falls toward me. Hot wind tears through my hair, and a scream freezes in my throat. I have to move, jump, run—but my feet won’t budge. The flames are beautiful as the branch falls toward me.
I hope that Mother knows I did my best.
* * *
• • •
“Adele! Adele!”
Lottie’s voice breaks the spell of the flames, and I step back in time to avoid being scorched. My shoulder slams into the school shop wall as the branch lands a foot to my left. Fires lick at the grass. I can feel the heat on my ankles, and the storage shed key that I slipped into my sock burns. The branch is too near me, too near the buildings. Suddenly, the branch pops, and flying embers billow out and up, and some of them land on Lottie’s skirt. Without thinking, I throw myself against her to smother the sparks before they become a flame. My weight throws us both off ba
lance, and we hit the ground hard. Lottie groans, but a hurt spine is nothing compared to being roasted alive. I quickly check her skirt to make sure the embers are dead, and feel the hot breath of the fire on my back. The blisters on my arm throb a warning. Lottie saved me and I saved her, and now we have to save the shop from catching alight.
“Get your branch,” Lottie says, and grabs hers.
We struggle to our feet, weary but determined to defend the blue buildings and the branching jacarandas that shade them from the bright summer sun. We lift our branches and slam them down in unison. Up and down, a hundred times and more. Together, we fight the flames till the tree branch smolders and the blackened grass on the edge of the bush blows a thick gray smoke that stings our eyes. The wind holds its breath long enough for us to move into the bush and kill the last of the flames.
When we’re done, we slump against the shop wall and breathe. Just breathe. The hot bricks warm our backs, and a sliver of moon peeks through the smoke haze. Our fingers refuse to let go of our branches even though we have nothing left to give. We are empty.
“You come back right now!” Brenda, the final-year girl with the nasal voice calls from the other side of the shop. “When I find you, you’re in for it. You hear me, Leon?”
Her brother fast-limps around the corner and stops when he sees the smoke and the black trees. Red coals blink in the burned grass, and we need water to finish the job properly. “Ohhh, my goodness,” Leon says with wide eyes.
Lottie sits with her knees tucked close to her body, and her shoulders shake like when you’re in chapel and have to hold in a laugh or else get the cane for disrespecting the Word. Only Lottie’s not laughing. She’s crying. Tears stream down her face, and her bottom lip is caught between her teeth to stop her from making a sound. She’s trying to hide her sorrow but the fire has burned down the internal wall that she’s built inside her.