Matron inspects the junior girls for dirty fingernails, dirty necks, clean shoes, and clean underwear. Mrs. Thomas does the same, and I see from her thin mouth and glassy eyes that her sad mood has gone and that this morning she is ready to be cruel. She makes a show of inspecting Delia’s shoes for dust, but we all know that she won’t punish any of the girls whose parents might withdraw them from Keziah and send them to boarding school in South Africa. Sweat breaks out on my top lip when she cuts through the lines and comes straight for me. Since my demotion, I don’t know where I stand in the order of things.

“Hands,” she snaps.

I hold them out. She checks my fingernails and the grooves of my knuckles. This morning, I washed extra hard to get any trace of the native medicine off my skin, so I know I’m clean. She doesn’t ask to see my underwear, which, in any case, is new and trimmed with lace. Mrs. Thomas moves on to Lottie.

“Skirt up.”

Lottie lifts her uniform to show her underwear. The rest of us keep our eyes to the front, but some girls titter at the thought of what Lottie wears under her uniform.

“Make sure you have a fresh pair on tomorrow,” Mrs. Thomas says, and moves to the next girl, this time to check behind her ears. We are checked at random, but the poor girls get extra attention because they are in imminent danger of falling into bad habits. Lottie is inspected three or four times a week. This is how we start each day, scrubbed clean and closer to God.

The view from the middle row is different from where I’d normally stand in the front row. Sandi Cardoza’s braids shine with Vaseline, and a red ribbon trails down her back. Delia whispers something to her, and together they laugh.

I have to get back into the group today . . . before my being out of it becomes permanent. My reintroduction has to be natural, a return to the way things ought to be.

The Elephant claps her hands to get our attention, and her wig wiggles. It’s funny, but no one laughs. “To breakfast. Nice and quiet.”

“Yes, Matron.” We turn and march to a long brick building that houses the kitchen and dining hall. A typical Keziah breakfast waits for us inside: bowls of stiff porridge, mugs of sweet tea, and slices of white bread with jam.

We keep to the middle of the dirt road. A dust cloud trails behind us, and the sky above us is an endless stretch of blue. We march past neat garden beds and small lawns trimmed with machetes. Behind the orchards and on the other side of a low wire fence are tall trees and a thick stand of wild bananas that grows down to the river’s edge.