Father smiles at her comical expression, the way it distorts her features without touching her natural beauty. Whoever picks combinations of skin color, eye color, and body shape got Mother just right. She is mixed-race, like us, with golden-brown skin, flashing green eyes, and pleasing curves.

I go to the kitchen to get the beer. The maid is in the backyard, hanging up my blue-checkered school uniform and the knee-high white socks that go with it. Keeping white socks white in the blooming dust and the red earth of Keziah Christian Academy is almost impossible. I plunge my hand into the icebox, and the shock of the cold bottle against my palm shifts my thoughts from the dying days of the school break. Bowls of stiff porridge and stale toast will come around soon enough.

I shake off my bad feelings about returning to school. He is here and sulking is forbidden. When he is here, we are happy. When he is here, we are grateful and well-behaved so he’ll have a good reason to come back and visit us again. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, Mother says, and don’t believe what people tell you, miss. Misery might love company, but misery has to learn to shut up and take care of itself.

I pop the cap from the beer with a metal opener, and white foam rims the lip. I step into the lounge room, and I remember to smile.

2

And the First Shall Be Last

We are late. Of all the times and places to be late, the Manzini bus station is the worst. Men drag goats through the maze of buses while women hold live chickens with their feet tied together. The women push through the crowd while the chickens flap and squawk. Children and women sell roasted corn, boiled peanuts, and bags of deep-fried fat cakes to passengers about to board the smoky buses, from pans they carry awkwardly in their arms. Passengers also buy pineapples, mangoes, and bananas from woven baskets carried on sellers’ heads. Pickup trucks reverse out of narrow spaces, with their horns blaring, their worn tires flattened by the weight of the passengers packed shoulder to shoulder in their open beds.

Dust is everywhere. The purple heads of the bougainvillea strangle the chain-link fence outside of B&B Farm Supplies: YOU NEED IT. WE GOT IT. Red dirt weighs the flowers down. A million motes suspended in the air catch the early-morning sun.

Animals bleat, children cry, and bus-ticket sellers call out their destinations in singsong voices. “Quick, quick time to Johannesburg. No stopping. Best seat for you, Mama.” “Smooth ride to Durban by Hlatikulu, Golela, and Jozini. Brothers, sisters . . . all welcome.”