Sugar Town Queens Read online

  “Oh.” Delia pulls a face and makes a soft sound of apology. “Sorry, hey. Sandi got here before you. There’s no room left.”

  Liar. Delia’s not sorry at all. She is glad to turn me away in front of a busload of our schoolmates. She is the most popular girl in my year. She is the girl who all the other girls want to be friends with, and till now, she was my friend. Tears well up in my eyes, but I can’t speak, because the tears are in my throat too.

  “This is Sandi Cardoza.” The name is velvet in Delia’s mouth. “Sandi’s parents met and married in Mozambique. They moved to Swaziland just before Christmas. Sandi’s mother is Lolly Andrews, from the Andrews family that owns the Heavenly Rest Funeral Home in Manzini, and her father, Mr. Cardoza, owns the hypermarket on Louw Street. You know it?”

  I fake a smile. “I’ve heard of it,” I say.

  A vast understatement. The hypermarket is the newest and the nicest place to shop in Swaziland. It has all the latest fashions from South Africa and an actual makeup booth. It is the place to be seen spending money. No wonder Delia is lit up. The daughter of a Portuguese businessman and a mixed-race woman whose family owns a funeral home is a big catch. Together, she and Sandi will be the queens of the school.

  I’ve been dropped for a rich girl with a silver necklace and bag of peppermint chews in her impago box. I blush with shame at being left standing in the aisle, and I turn away to hide my face.

  * * *

  • • •

  I hurry past the first nine rows of students, whose “sometimes fathers” and “always here fathers” have paid their school fees in advance. They wear neat, freshly ironed clothing. Their suitcases are packed with new school uniforms and new school shoes with fresh laces. They have clean faces and nails. They are top-shelf, and the lump in my throat makes it hard to swallow. It’s not fair. I am one of them. My “sometimes father” is a white engineer. My fees are paid in full, and my skin smells of Pond’s cold cream and lavender soap.

  It doesn’t matter. The first-class seats are gone. No one offers to move to the back. Why would they? Giving up their prime position would be the same as admitting they are inferior. I move into second class.

  Here, students with “sometimes fathers” and “always here fathers” wear a mix of hand-me-downs and new clothing of varying quality and age. Their school fees are paid in installments or whenever money becomes available. They are the middle shelf, and right now I’d give up the best food in my impago box to take a seat among them.

  Claire Naidoo, a half-Indian girl with long black hair that is the envy of every student with kink or hard-to-comb curl, shrugs to say, Sorry. I feel bad for you, but I’m keeping my place. Other students stare at their hands, their feet, their knees. Anywhere but at me. They are embarrassed for me. Mortified by my public dumping and free-falling status.

  I reach the third-class seats, where the bottom-shelf students sit with jutting elbows and sprawled limbs. Between them, they have a mix of “always here fathers,” “sometimes fathers,” and “many fathers” who pay the school fees whenever and however they can: a pocketful of spare change, a wagonload of chopped wood for the school cooking fires, jars of homemade jam for the kitchen, and loaves of corn bread steamed in corn leaves for the teachers’ morning tea.

  Third-class parents have no money. If they have jobs, the jobs don’t pay well enough to afford the full school fees. Some have no jobs. Mr. Vincent and his wife raise money from overseas to help pay for the poor students’ fees. I count five students wearing old school uniforms, and others with holes in their shirts and patched-up shorts. When we get to the academy, the missionaries will pick items out of the donations box for the poor students to wear on the weekends, when our uniforms are being washed.

  There are two vacant seats in third class, both equally bad. One is next to Matthew with the lazy eye, who says dirty things to girls. Definitely not. My thighs will be bruised blue by his filthy fingers, and my ears contaminated by sly suggestions that involve physical acts that I’ve never heard of and don’t understand.

  “Psst . . . Adele.” Lazy-Eye Matthew winks his good eye. “Come, girl. You and I can be friends.”

  Never! Never!

  The other free seat is next to Lottie Diamond, who is half-Jewish, quarter-Scottish, and the rest pure Zulu. Lottie is light-skinned, with blue eyes and brown wavy hair that is hacked short—no doubt to help pick out the lice that live there. And even though she turned out very nearly white, she lives in a tin shack on the edge of a native reserve outside Siteki and spends her holidays washing laundry in the river and mixing with the native Swazis.

  Lottie is exactly the kind of girl that Mother, because of her own impoverished background, wants me to be polite to. On the other hand, Delia is the top-shelf girl that Mother, because of her impoverished background, wants me to be fast friends with. I’m supposed to be an improved version of Mother: kind to the poor students but accepted by the sorts of snotty girls who once spurned her.

  “Over here, Adele,” Lazy-Eye Matthew whispers in a hoarse voice. “Come by me, Adele. Adele . . .”

  The Bartholomew twins, dressed in matching blue pinafores, snort with laughter at Matthew’s raspy voice. Lottie Diamond shuffles over an inch, a small gesture that invites me to sit down—or to keep standing in the aisle—while Lazy-Eye Matthew croaks my name like a bullfrog looking for a mate. I slide into the seat next to Lottie. I am humiliated and furious at being dumped in front of forty witnesses. I hate Delia, and yet I want to be back by her side, where I’m supposed to be. My bottom lip trembles, and tears sting my eyes.

  No, I can’t.

  If I cry, the others will call me Waterfall or Sprung-a-Leak, or any other clever thing that comes into their heads, for the rest of the term. I will be an easy target for jokes, and the teasing will never get old. Lottie stares out the dusty window and ignores my red face and wet lashes.

  I grab the chance to hunch over and slot my impago box between my feet. I stay hunched and press my eyes against my skirt until the cotton absorbs my tears. My stomach aches. Everything inside me hurts. I replay the last five minutes in my mind, hoping to find that my demotion to third class is the result of a terrible misunderstanding. No. The truth is simple. Delia dumped me.

  I should have seen it coming. Delia wants the best of everything: the prettiest dresses, the best gossip, the most popular friends. Sandi’s rich Portuguese father loved her mother enough to take her to church and make promises in front of God while my father, well, he only made promises to Mother. Mother says, Hold your head up high, Adele. I’m as good as any church wife, but the married women and their baptized children know they are superior. Their names are written in the official marriage registers and in the Great Book of Life on God’s bedside table. If properly married women are diamonds, then the unmarried “little wives” and their unbaptized children are tin.

  Delia has traded me for a diamond.

  Now I’m stuck next to a girl from the bush, who spits and swears and fights with boys and girls. Lottie wins all her fights, but still . . . it’s not nice.

  “Hey.” A finger taps my shoulder, and I glare at Lottie from my tucked-over position. She points out of the window and ignores my sharp expression, which says, We are not friends. We will never be friends. Our being next to each other is a horrible mistake. A catastrophe. It means nothing in the long run. She taps the window again, insistent.

  I sit up and lean across her to squint into the swirling dust of the Manzini bus station. Mother and Rian stand on the dirt footpath, their bodies backlit by the strengthening sun. They seem unreal. Phantoms from the life that I’m about to leave behind for too many months to count. The thought of leaving suddenly terrifies me. I don’t want to go back to boarding school, where I’ll be alone and have to hunt down new friends. And there’s a small chance that no one will even have me now that I’ve been dumped by the top girls. I want to get off t
he bus and lug my suitcase across the fields until I’m safe at home again.

  “Wait . . .” Mother pulls a book from her bag and runs to the window. She reaches up on tiptoes to give it to me. “Daddy forgot this in his car. It’s for you. All the way from Johannesburg.”

  I grab the book through the open window and glance at the title: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The book is thick, which is good. Thick books take longer to read. Thick books soak up the time between study hall and dinner and help to make the long Sunday afternoon hours fly by. Books are better than gossip, though Delia doesn’t think so.

  Mother says, “Be good, Adele.”

  I force a smile and say, “Of course.”

  I am always good—polite to teachers, reserved with the other students, and all “hallelujah, praise his name” in chapel. That’s why what just happened to me is so unfair. If there was a God, I’d be at the front of the bus, where I belong. Mother is right. God is too busy to notice the hurts of a bunch of mixed-race people in a little landlocked African country. The real gods, she says, are the white men in England who draw lines on maps and write the laws that say go here, but don’t go there.

  Rian steps closer. He understands everything that just happened to me. He sees it in my face and hears it in Delia’s distant giggles and in the way that no one on the bus will look at me.

  “Don’t worry, Adele,” he says. “She’s not worth it.”

  “Thanks,” I say quietly.

  Mother blows me a kiss as the Ocean Current lurches from the stand and joins a line of buses snaking their way to the main road. I crane my neck out of to the window to keep her and Rian in my sight for as long as possible. They grow small in the distance. The Ocean Current turns onto the road heading south, and Rian and Mother are swallowed by the surge of disembarking passengers and pickup trucks.

  “Bet that feels nice, hey, Lottie?” Lazy-Eye Matthew snickers. “Take a mouthful while she’s there.”

  I realize that I am leaned across Lottie with my breasts pressed close to her face. We’re not touching, but you know what it looks like. Lottie stares out of the window at the native women cutting grass in the fields and ignores Matthew. She doesn’t even blush at his words. It’s like there’s a wall around her that cannot be breached by bad words or rough hands.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the following people who make my work possible. Mark Lazarus, my husband and first reader: you elevate my stories and my life with humor and love. My children, Elijah and Sisana—you are the sun in my sky. Pat and Courtney Nunn (mummy and daddy); my sisters, Jan and Penny; and my brother, Byron, for undying support. Dr. Gerald Lazarus and Dr. Audrey Jakubowski-Lazarus for years of care and guidance.

  I also send my gratitude to Catherine Drayton at InkWell Management for using her agent magic to make my work stronger and find it a wonderful home. That home is with Stacey Barney at Putnam, who provided brilliant insights along with a powerful commitment to amplifying the voices of black and brown girls everywhere. Mayebuye Africa!

  Lastly, I thank my readers for walking side by side with me into new cultures and exotic lands. You are brave and beautiful.

  About the Author

  Malla Nunn was born and raised in Swaziland. Her adult crime books have earned her two Edgar nominations and a RUSA Award for Best Mystery Novel. Her first young adult novel, When the Ground is Hard, won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and the Josette Frank Award for Children's Literature.

  After earning a master's degree in Theatre Studies, she dabbled in acting in New York City, worked as a cocktail waitress, a nanny, a bookseller, and on film sets, but never at the same time. She also made short films and an award-winning documentary, Servant of the Ancestors, before surrendering to her passion: writing books.

  She married in a traditional Swazi ceremony. Her bride price was eighteen cows.

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