agree,’ Teacher said. ‘He should go looking for work tomorrow.’
Karabo smiled to herself. She wished she were as clever as Teacher. He had this way of disarming an opponent with a few well-chosen words that made them feel utterly incompetent. Not for the first time, her mother had nothing to say.
They passed a Land Rover heading the other way and they all turned their heads to stare at it. The driver, a white man, waved at them but none of them waved back.
‘Bill Harrison,’ Teacher declared and Karabo thought she detected a hint of bitterness in his voice. She glanced up at the rear-view mirror, hoping to catch Teacher’s eyes but he did not look her way.
‘I hear he’s emigrating,’ Precious said. ‘To Australia.’
Teacher was driving faster than before. The engine let out a high-pitched whine and the frame of the car rattled in protest.
‘And yet he’s still here,’ Teacher said. ‘He’s been emigrating for years.’
This time it was her mother’s eyes Karabo caught in the rear-view mirror. Something passed between them but she did not know what it was.
Everyone in Mthatha knew Bill Harrison. He was a quiet man with spindly legs and lank blond hair that had long retreated from a large, speckled forehead. He looked more like a tame accountant than a successful farmer. There was a time when it seemed as if every other person in Mthatha worked for the Harrisons. It was rumoured that Bill Harrison preferred women as his farm workers for the men were often turned away.
The Harrisons’ farm was not far from the Bentils’ house. In fact Karabo’s mother had worked there too for a while. She’d helped to look after the house many years ago when Mrs Harrison had fallen ill.
‘Maybe he hasn’t got his papers yet,’ Precious said.
Teacher discounted that suggestion with a harsh grunt.
‘It doesn’t take that long to get Australian papers. I could do it in three months and I’m not even white.’
‘I hear the black people in Australia have a hard time,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve seen pictures of them and some of them are very dark. As dark as …’
She stopped herself and looked away from Teacher. They drove the rest of the way to the church in silence.
The Latter Day Church of Holy Fire was an outwardly nondescript building made of galvanised metal roofing sheets. It used to be a warehouse and in summer the smell of chemicals seeped from the walls and made the congregation even more light-headed than Pastor Adebayor’s sermons did. It was full today, with more than two hundred people jammed into the wooden pews. The Bentils were lucky to find a space at the back, where they squeezed in between a woman with two babies on her knees and a man who was already asleep.
It wasn’t only Pastor Adebayor Karabo looked forward to seeing on Sundays. She hoped Inspector Thulisane from the Mthatha police station would be there too. With his slim-cut jackets and mirrored glasses, Inspector Thulisane could have been a model in a men’s fashion magazine. Or an actor in an American crime drama. Slick American crime dramas didn’t translate easily to Mthatha but somehow Inspector Thulisane pulled it off.
Inspector Thulisane served as an usher in the church. At collection time he carried the velvet pouch from pew to pew. He always assigned himself to the side of the aisle where Karabo was sitting. She thought that was rather cute.
That morning, when Inspector Thulisane came up and handed Karabo the pouch, his jacket fell open, revealing the polished black butt of a gun. Hawu! Karabo was so alarmed she almost let the pouch fall to the floor. Since when were guns allowed in church? She glanced at her parents to see if they’d seen the gun but their eyes were closed and their hands were raised to the ceiling in the exact pose Ma’ama disapproved of.
Karabo scrabbled in her pocket for the five rand coin she’d brought with her. As she dropped it into the pouch, she looked up and Inspector Thulisane’s eyes met hers. She saw an almost desperate pleading in them. It was the same look she’d seen on the odd-job man’s face that morning. She drew a sharp breath, not knowing whether to be furious with Inspector Thulisane or sad. Men had the strangest ways of signalling that they wanted to fuck.
CHAPTER 8
Precious had come to believe that marriage was rather like an iceberg. For when a marriage falls apart, large chunks of it topple into an icy sea without making a sound. Nowadays when she and Teacher went to bed, they did so without speaking. Precious stayed cocooned on her side of the bed and her husband on his. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for her to roll over and hold him but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it. They both stared into the darkness and pretended to be asleep.
There seemed to be more and more things Teacher reproached Precious for. He rolled his eyes when she couldn’t do sums in her head. That hurt her terribly, especially when she remembered how patient he’d been all those years ago when she’d been in his class. She didn’t dress well enough for him anymore. He said the uniform she wore to church on Sundays made her look like an old matron. And on the rare occasions they went out together he walked a few steps ahead of her, as if he didn’t want anyone to know she was his wife. Teacher was falling out of love and Precious did not know how to catch him.
She was at her wit’s end when she decided to go and see Jabu, the diviner. She’d prayed to God about her marriage but sometimes Jesus could be slower to arrive than the municipal engineer. At least with igqirha, she put the money in his hand and for that reason she could hold him to account. What was more, Jabu’s house was only a short taxi ride away. He didn’t live in some indeterminate place with no address in a vast expanse of sky.
She dressed quickly and in her haste she almost stumbled over Karabo. Her daughter was sitting on the front step, tossing small stones at the empty space where Teacher usually parked his car. She looked up at her mother without much interest. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
Precious didn’t like Karabo’s forwardness. It was Teacher who had instilled that filthy habit in her. That was why she didn’t take Karabo to see uTata anymore. Since uMama had passed away, there was no reason to take Karabo anyway. uTata thought his grand-daughter was rude and why wouldn’t he, when Karabo had called him a drunken fool to his face? Precious had slapped Karabo hard for saying that. It was grief that led her father to drink but she didn’t expect Karabo to understand that. Perhaps Karabo called uTata names because she was mourning her grandmother as well. But if she was, that was a strange way to show it.
‘Oh, I just need to run an errand or two,’ Precious replied.
‘Can I come? I’ve nothing to do.’
‘Haven’t you any homework?’
‘I’ve done it.’
‘Surely you have a book to read?’
Karabo arched an eyebrow and looked at her mother as if to say, Really? The girl read almost as much as Teacher did. It often felt like a competition between the two of them, with Precious the odd one out.
Then Precious began to feel silly for casting about for reasons not to take Karabo with her. She was her daughter after all.
‘All right,’ she said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘You can come with me.’
Karabo sprang to her feet with an excited shriek. Standing, she was a head taller than her mother and Precious wondered for the thousandth time where her little girl had disappeared to.
‘But you must wear something decent,’ she said, looking disapprovingly at Karabo’s shorts and T-shirt. The T-shirt stopped well above the child’s belly button and her shorts started an equal distance below. ‘People will think we can’t afford to buy you clothes.’
Karabo bounded into the house and came back in the dress Ma’ama had sent her from Ghana. It was made of cotton with black and yellow markings, which Teacher said were symbols of prosperity and long life. Karabo had been overjoyed