I set to work on the desk. Rolled the maps and dropped them into long cardboard tubes. The compass I placed inside its soft pouch. Underneath a bundle of papers lay the magnifying glass. I picked it up and held it out in front of me. A ring of shimmering light appeared, dancing upon the wall. I turned to it. Just as soon as I did it shifted to the ceiling. And next to the floor. For a few moments I fancied it was a spirit’s shadow. Then I realised that the movements echoed mine. A cloud passed over the sun, and suddenly it was gone. I gasped with disappointment, but only for a moment. The sun reappeared and so did the shining, dancing creature.
I begged Mr Blue not to forget me. I begged him to send for me as soon as he could. Mr Blue murmured, of course he would. But Small Boy’s face told me something different. I watched them leave. I went back into the hut and sat alone on the cold floor.
In the distance, like the humming of bees, I could hear the mine machinery. I wondered who the next master would be and whether he would be as good to me as Mr Blue. I decided to wait and see.
In the meantime I unwrapped the magnifying glass from the corner of my lappa and held it up high, where it caught the light and began to dance for me across the naked walls.
9 Serah, 1956: Red Shoes
Well, there was this one white woman. I mean she was our teacher, she was married to the District Commissioner. I think she taught, you know, just to keep herself occupied. There wasn’t much to do except run the house. A lot of those types did not bring their wives, or the wives didn’t want to come, or if they did they lost their minds and had to be sent home. That happened.
Once when I was growing up a District Commissioner was invited to attend a palava of the chiefs. It was a grand affair, the chiefs travelled in from miles. Some important land matter was to be discussed that required the Commissioner’s approval. This man decided to bring his wife along, as a diversion for her — she was recently arrived in the country. At that time I was a young initiate, and our dancing opened the proceedings.
The men talked for hours. You know how it goes. And while they did so, I watched the woman. She sat with her hands on her lap, head to one side. Her glance flew from face to face, settling on each for a moment, like a bird flitting through the trees. From her expression you would imagine she was paying a great deal of attention, though it must have been entirely unintelligible. Even the chiefs were using interpreters between themselves. The time passed slowly. But the woman’s face did not redden in the heat. Rather it grew pale. She was swallowing, swallowing all the time, looking in her husband’s direction. He had his back turned to her, listening closely to the words his Court Messenger was whispering in his ear. He couldn’t see her. I saw her eyelids flutter like a fledgling’s wings, her eyeballs rolled back as though she was trying to see the inside of her own head.
Gbap! She fell off her chair.
Well, there was silence at that. Then the chiefs, the pa’m’sum, everybody hurried over. The chiefs began waving their fly swats around her. The woman lashed out at them. I could hear her screaming. The more they tried to help her, the more she sobbed and backed away, holding her handbag out in front of her. In the end her husband managed to calm her and lead her away, his arm around her shoulders. The whole palava had to be called off and reconvened at another time. Later the Court Messenger came to explain the woman was suffering from malaria. But those close enough to see what had happened said she had made up her mind that we were all cannibals. Every one of us. And that the chiefs, in their garbled tongue, were really discussing the best way to kill her.
Our teacher, Mrs Silk, was not this sort. Not at all. For a start there was the way she looked at you, straight in the eye. And she would ask you to look her in the face too, when you spoke. It got me into trouble with my grandmother, who slapped me for being so bold. But when you talked to Mrs Silk and saw the way she looked at you and smiled and nodded. Well, it made you feel good in yourself. Like you were saying something interesting. So I learned to look down at my grandmother’s feet, and up into Mrs Silk’s eyes.
Every morning Mrs Silk arrived at the school in her husband’s car. And every morning we gathered at the windows to watch. Mrs Silk sat in her seat, making no move to get out. Her husband would climb down and walk all the way around the front of the car to open her door. And then he kissed her.
Kissed her!
On the lips!
Just like that!
In front of us all!
We’d whoop and duck down out of sight quickly, before they looked up.
What did we think? We thought: what shameless people are these? Such behaviour in public! But secretly I had another thought, and I think some of the other girls did, too. How this man must love his wife to allow himself to act that way. Yes, Mrs Silk was very lucky. Oh, and I prayed one day I would have a husband to love me like that, too.
We used to powder our faces with chalk dust. To dampen the shine. We smuggled in hot-combs and ironed each other’s hair in the dormitory at night. I wonder the teachers never seemed to ask themselves how we had curly hair one day and straight hair the next.
Hannah Williams. Now she was the first one to own a pair of shoes. Brought them back after she went to stay in the city with her Creole father, who had a job in the Government offices. I had never owned a pair in my life. And I didn’t know anybody who did, although my grandmother embroidered slippers for women who were getting married. So frail, with soles made of canvas. By the end of the day they were spoiled.
Everybody wanted to walk in Hannah’s shoes. Come evening she would take them out and let us take turns up and down between the bunks. One girl walked like a duck. Another fell flat on her face. Everybody cheered the ones who walked well. My turn came early on, because I was in Hannah’s group of friends. I slipped the shoes on.
La i la!
It felt as though I was stuck ankle deep in river mud. I couldn’t flex my feet. It was as though a great weight rested upon each one. I could barely lift them off the ground and put them back down. Still, when everybody cheered, I tell you, I was grinning like a fool.
The dormitory had a wooden floor. Hannah’s shoes made a slapping sound. In the corridors of the school Mrs Silk’s heels tapped out her progress to the classroom door. You could hear her swivel where the corridor divided. Kop, kap. Swivel. Kop, kap. One day I crossed the compound in Hannah’s shoes and walked with them down the school corridor to see if I could make the same noise, but I could not. Hannah was upset with me for wearing her new shoes out of doors.
I yearned for a pair of shoes of my own. By this time I was staying with my grandmother in town during the school holidays, in the house we had once thought of as the house of treats. Well, I begged her. I volunteered for every errand and every chore and when I was finished, I invented new ones. I whitewashed the stones at the perimeter of our property. I even soaped and rinsed the nanny goat. No thanks. None at all, my efforts went unacknowledged. Then one day, when I was on the brink of giving up: ‘Wash your face and oil your legs,’ she said. ‘Makone. We’re going to town.’
There were two shoe stores, two styles of shoes for girls. There was Bata Shoe Store on the main road near the police station. Further down the street, beyond the general store with the poster for Blue Band margarine was the shop selling Clarks shoes. I knew what I wanted. I wanted Clarks shoes. The styles were close, but Clarks were butter coloured and soft as skin. Bata shoes were made of an inferior leather, dark and stiff. Hannah Williams had Clarks shoes.