Page 20 - The Mending Season

Malebone held my hand and gently pulled me down so that I sat next to her. She put her arm around me and I laid my head against her breast, finally sitting still.They started telling me the details. From what they had been reading in the newspapers, it seemed wise to send me to a White school. Historically, White universities were the best and they mostly took students from White schools, not the Black schools. I would go to school in a taxi with Mmamane Malesedi every morning because she worked near the con­ vent. I would have to take a taxi home with other girls after school. They laid down the rules, “Do your homework, do exceptionally well in school, no boys, no fighting, and don’t act like Black people do when they have nice things. Dont ruin it.”And then I got the warnings, “Ifyou misbehave, you’ll be expelled. Nuns dont take nonsense and neither do we. This is a girls’ school but you’ll see boys at the brother-schools. Ifyou play around with boys, you’ll get in trouble and you’ll be in trouble with us. If you don’t do well, you’ll never go to uni­ versity and you’ll never have anything ofyour own.”Then the final, most startling instruction, if it can be called an instruction, “We’re Catholic.”“You were born Catholic and you were raised Catholic,” Mmamane Malebone said.Mmamane Malesedi countered, “No, she doesn’t have to have been born Catholic: we converted.”They went back and forth and Mmamane Malesedi came up with the answers like a queen on her throne.“Yes, we converted.”“From what?”“Why?”“From being Lutheran, because we believe in the teachingsofthe Catholic Church.” “Why?”“Will they really ask her this?”20