The engine noise grows louder, and I catch sight of the “white” bus. The bus is actually blue with a silver grille covered with dead insects, but the people inside it are white, so that makes it a white bus. If the people inside it were black, it would be a native bus.

The bus is packed with white South African children on their way to an outdoor “Praise Jesus camp” somewhere near Hlatikulu. They come through Keziah in the late afternoon on the first Friday of the January term, every year, sure as rain. We know the blue bus by sight and try to avoid being near when it cuts through school. Everyone on the blue bus thinks that mixed people are inferior, but the road that runs through Keziah is smoother than the main road, so the driver makes a detour to use it.

The bus slows and rumbles over the cattle grid. The gears shift lower, and the wheels make a mess of our smooth brushstrokes. Now we’ll have to start all over again or risk getting more work tomorrow. I step back and bump against the fence that guards Mrs. Vincent’s rose garden. We should move farther away from the bus. Mother says that poor white people are the most dangerous. Some of them have less money than we do, and they hate us for it. From the moment we slide into the world with our mixed blood and mixed features, we live below them, no matter how stupid or hopeless they are.

The bus draws level with us. An ugly boy with freckled skin sticks his head out of an open window. “Hey, monkeys,” he yells. “Stay in the bush where you belong!”

“Go climb a tree.” A pale girl with messy red hair joins in. “Where are your bananas, crinkle-heads?”

“Oh ha ha ha.” The boy imitates a monkey, leans out of the window, and spits. A wet glob hits my cheek, and I squeal as if I’ve been slapped across the face. I wipe away the spit with the back of my hand, which trembles. My reaction makes the boy laugh, and I shrink. This is my fault. I asked for it. We should have run away while we had the chance.

“Yeah . . . good aim.” Lottie grabs a stone and clenches it in her fist. “But you’ll die ugly, bum-face.”

The boy’s cheeks flame. He is shocked that a brown girl, that any girl with color, would insult him out loud and in public. His cheeks puff with another mouthful of spit, and Lottie raises her arm. She flicks her wrist, and the stone whistles through the air, hits the boy above the eyebrow, and splits the skin. Blood leaks from the cut.