“Not that one,” Leleti says. “That one is God’s child.”

“What did she give you?”

“Groceries. Have I not always told you that the Lord provides?”

As the laneway narrows, Zodwa is forced to trail a few steps behind her mother. She wants to remark that it was the white woman who provided and not God, which makes it charity rather than a blessing, but that is a sacrilege her mother would never allow.

Zodwa’s curiosity about the woman may not be sated but at least her hunger will soon be.

Praise God.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ruth

5 May 1994

Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

Dee walks into the lounge and eyes the cardboard box next to me. “What are you doing?”

“Packing up ahead of selling the farm. What does it look like?”

“You’re wasting your time. I’m on my way to a lawyer now to revoke the power of attorney. We won’t be selling.”

I ignore her and just keep on sorting through Ma’s giant kist of mementos.

“Ruth, did you hear me?”

I hum a few bars from Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” but, of course, Dee doesn’t get the reference. She’s never had any use for music unless it was the background to some Bible verse wrapped up as a hymn.

“Ruth? I’m talking to you. Could you please listen?”

I open a photograph album and turn the pages. “Do you know,” I muse, “there was a time when I really wanted to hear from you. All those times I wrote to you telling you how much we needed you, how much I needed you . . . pouring my heart out, begging you to come home and help me . . . But you were silent then, sending a very clear message of how little we meant to you, and now after all this time I find I don’t much care what you have to say anymore.”

“The farm was left to both of us,” Dee insists stubbornly, though she has the grace not to meet my eye.

“Then all the debt was left to both of us as well. Except, again, where were you for that? Not here. Not paying the bills. Not pouring money into the farm just to keep it afloat. Not paying Sarie and Stompie a monthly salary to take care of the property.”

“I’ll pay you back for all of that.”

“With what?” I laugh. “Look at you. You look like a homeless person. All you have in the world is a rucksack filled with shitty, threadbare clothes. You’re like those squatters at the camp down the road. Trying to claim something that isn’t yours.”

“I have savings, Ruth, and the farm is half mine.”

I shrug.

My indifference seems to be what sets her off. “And at least I wasn’t taking off my clothes, parading around like a whore for money. At least I was earning it the hard way.”