Lottie turns bright red, and I forget that this is meant to be our big moment of revenge. This is where Delia and the others realize that their plan to get back at us for stealing their pets has failed. We’ve won.

Except . . .

“Well?” Mrs. Thomas spits the word out, and it’s lucky that she’s only lost one husband, because losing just the one man has turned her sour. “How did your mother pay for those?”

“My mother got my cousin to get them from the hypermarket in Manzini, and that’s all I know,” Lottie says. “You could telephone my mother and ask about the money, but we don’t have a phone. Or you could call McNichols’s general store and they’ll get a boy to run over to our hut, and, if she’s home, he’ll ask my mother about where she got the money.”

Mrs. Thomas grits her teeth at Lottie’s subtle challenge. Long-distance calls are expensive and for serious, serious business, and what reason would Mrs. Thomas give Mr. Vincent for making the call? Checking up on who paid for underwear is a silly reason, and plus, she’d have to talk about girls’ delicates in front of a white man . . . something she’d never do. Mrs. Thomas moves to her next victim.

Lottie drops her skirt, and I rock from one foot to the other, a nervous habit. I think of Mother feeding sunshine down the telephone line so Father will come back to us, and the scratch of steel wool on the stovetop at midnight, her hair ironed straight to please him. I think of the throaty sound of her laughter when he says anything remotely funny. If Lottie wants her children to have new clothes and clean shoes and six pairs of underwear, she will have to learn how to please others. She must remain soft and smiling on the outside, no matter what’s going on inside her. She will have to be less like Lottie and more like Mother, who was also poor and picked on at school.

I imagine Lottie, older and in high-heeled shoes, hurrying to a public phone box at the end of a dirt road, and my heart hurts.

12

Moonlight Shadows

Luke 3:22. And the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

I tick Luke 3:22 off my “to memorize” list and move on to the next Bible verse.

1 Corinthians 6:19. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you . . .