“Precious doesn’t come to visit anymore,” Sarie griped after I’d shared my news. “Not since her daughter moved from KwaZulu to be with her. Precious expected great things from her but . . .” She sighed heavily and lowered her voice. “It wasn’t to be. No one can break your heart like your own children.” She was clearly hinting at some scandal that I refused to be drawn into.

We’d both known Precious since she was orphaned at seven months. Ruth and I were ten when Precious came to live with Sarie and Stompie, who were distant relatives who’d agreed to take her in. It wasn’t just out of benevolence; extra hands were always needed on a farm and a little girl would grow into a kitchen maid.

The baby’s presence gave Ruth and me something new to bicker over since, of course, it never occurred to us to share her. Ruth almost always won the fights to play with Precious, which bothered me at first, until I realized the reality of a baby wasn’t nearly as appealing as the idea of it. Somehow, this never deterred Ruth, who, even though she normally had a short attention span, would spend hours dressing the baby up in outfits Ma had knitted for our dolls. Not even the baby’s vomiting and pooping could put my sister off.

While my interest in Precious waned early on, it was rekindled when she turned three and started following me around, parroting everything I said. She soaked up the world around her, becoming bloated with knowledge like a little intellectual tick, and the more conversant Precious became, the quicker Ruth lost interest in her and the more engaged I found myself becoming.

Precious was a quick and eager learner, remembering words I taught her like Jesus, Bible, Lord, and savior. It was this zealousness for religion that made Ma tolerate her; Precious would otherwise have been relegated to the kitchen since Ma discouraged any kind of relationship with a black person, be it a child or otherwise.

This casual sense of racism—an innate belief that as whites, we were far superior to blacks—appeared to be the only thing Ruth had ever inherited from Ma. While Ruth liked the infant Precious (squealing that black babies were the cutest), she never engaged with any of the other black people on the farm beyond issuing instructions, and certainly never fostered any kind of friendship with them.