Page 63 - The Mending Season

“Hi,”they all responded. I imagined saying “hi”to a woman my mothers age in the township and heard my mothers scornful voice in my head, “Thats not how you speak to adults.”The rules were different in this world.“Patricia? Hows your mom?” She spoke in English, with an accent that closely resembled mine except that she sounded like she was trying to make it sound more like her daughters. I knew right then that they only spoke English at home.“She’s fine,”Trish said quite pleasantly, concealing the bit­ terness she had expressed earlier.“Still at the hospital?”“Yes,”Trish answered.“Well, tell her I said hello. Bye, girls.” She walked back toher car without hurrying, not like a woman who had left a door open and had seven other cars waiting behind her. I noticed that no one, not even Sister Agnes the driveway policeman, said anything to her.“She used to be a nurse before her husband got rich. She worked with my mom,”Trish explained to me in Setswarla.I started to walk towards our class, the bag and lunch box in my hands.“You should drop them on the ground, you’re not her servant,” Vies said. Everyone was making a case against me carrying KB’s things for her. When the bell rang, I walked over and put them on KB’s desk without saying a word to her. She said “thank you” but her face was saying, “Oh, I forgot I had that.”For the next few days I felt like I was playing a netball game with my new friendships, careful not to make any mistakes or let the ball fall. I was determined not to be an outcast like my fam­ ily was at home, so I was constantly running between KB and the other girls. I was excited to have KB pay attention to me, but I did not want to alienate the other girls. They obviously saw KB as a snob and felt her contempt towards them. She acted like she63