Sugar Town Queens Read online

  5

  The Amanda Bollard Institute is six stories of brick and glass surrounded by a garden of aloes that blend together to make a living palette of reds, grays, and greens. It’s beautiful. Nothing like it exists in Sugar Town. The word institute makes me wonder. An institute is for research and learning. An institute is where you go when that lump that you found growing on your chest gets bigger and only a specialist doctor can fix it. When Annalisa or I get sick, we line up outside the Sugar Town clinic and wait for hours to see a nurse, or if God is good, a volunteer doctor who wants an adventure.

  There is no line outside the Bollard building, nor are there crying children with chapped lips strapped to their mother’s backs. This institute is for rich people, and we are not rich. Annalisa calls our secondhand clothing “vintage,” but that doesn’t change the fact that we keep our long-term savings in a coin jar. Why has Mother come to this place? Unless . . .

  Is Annalisa sick? Is she dying? Is her being here somehow my fault? My heart skips a beat, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. The one thing that scares me more than having to take care of Annalisa and her problems is losing her. I will not survive on my own in Sugar Town.

  Stop. Lil Bit’s imaginary voice cuts through the panic rising in my chest. Take a breath and blow it out again, the way I showed you.

  After Reverend Bhengu skipped town with his pregnant, underage girlfriend, Lil Bit had panic attacks that left her curled into a ball and gasping for air. After the first attack in the schoolyard, we moved to the far side of the parsley tree, under the shadow of Nelson’s smile, where she felt safe. It was there that she taught herself how to “self-calm,” a technique that she found inside Peace Within, a self-help book that she shoplifted from Crystals and Candles, a hippie shop in Glenwood. I needed help, she said. So I helped myself.

  I take a long, deep breath. Cars drive past on the road. Then I hear a minivan door sliding open and footsteps on the pavement.

  “Thanks. You got me here in record time.” Annalisa’s voice drifts down the block to where I stand, tucked between two buildings. She’s arrived. When I left her sleeping this morning, I wasn’t sure that she’d keep the date written on the paper. And, much as I’d like to run to her, I hold still and wait for her to get ahead. As far as she knows, I’m helping Lil Bit weed her mother’s garden. On the first day of the holidays! It’s funny what some parents will believe if it makes them feel good about their children.

  I pop my head out from the nook where I’m hiding and watch Annalisa cross the road. She lives in a township, but you’d never guess it from the confident way she moves through the world. The tall buildings and upmarket shops do not faze her. She grew up surrounded by beautiful things, I think. Her elegant accent is 100 percent real, not put-on like some people in the township think.

  She double-checks the address on the paper that I slipped back into her bag yesterday afternoon and stops to take a deep breath of her own. This is her first time here, too, but there’s no way to tell how she feels about it. She turns into a small side street that leads to the rear of the Amanda Bollard Institute. Following her is the only way to find out what’s going on.

  A gap in the traffic opens up, and I cross the road with my heart hammering inside my chest and my mouth bone-dry. Annalisa has disappeared into the building, and it takes a moment for me to gather the courage to follow. My feet step one in front of the other, heavy and slow, like I’m walking through a river of honey.

  A car horn brings me out of my thoughts. In the lane and inches from my right hip is a sleek black sports car with stylish cat-eye headlights. It is gorgeous. Even growling slowly next to me it sounds as if it’s going a hundred miles an hour.

  The driver flicks his suntanned hand to get me out of the way. I turn to the side to make room for the car, and I catch a glimpse of him: a silver-haired man with a hard, serious face behind the steering wheel. He wears sunglasses, but my instincts tell me his eyes aren’t friendly, either. A shiver runs down my spine as the car accelerates past me onto the main road. If I never see that white man again, it will be too soon.

  A few steps ahead of me is the entrance to an underground parking lot with a security gate and two black guards on duty. The smaller of the guards comes out to meet me with a clipboard tucked under his arm.

  “Name?” he asks, and my mouth freezes. Amandla Harden is not on the list. I know that for sure. Mother isn’t in the parking area or waiting by the elevator behind the guard’s station. I take the risk that her name is on the list.

  “I was supposed to meet my mother, Annalisa Harden, but my, uh . . .” What could hold up a respectable girl from a respectable suburb on a Saturday morning? Swimming? Horseback riding? Target practice? I tell a lie with a splash of truth. “My art class finished late and I missed my bus.”

  The guard double-checks the list while I wait. I’m torn between wanting to get inside the building and running home. How Lil Bit manages to stay cool while shoplifting is beyond me.

  “Look. See her face?” the bigger guard, tall and broad across the shoulders, says to his companion in Zulu. “That one belongs to the queen. Let her in.”

  “Eish!” The small guard makes a surprised sound and says in Zulu, “You are right, my friend. Imagine that. A house sparrow among the white seagulls.”

  Okay. Now I am officially confused. Who is the queen and what do house sparrows and seagulls have to do with anything?

  “Sixth floor. Room 605.” The big guard walks me to the elevator and pushes the up button. Despite his intimidating size and shaved head, his manner is gentle, a rare thing in a powerfully built older man. That white driver in his fancy car could take lessons in good manners from this low-paid guard in a green uniform. I shrug the tension from my shoulders and wait. Elevators, in my limited experience, are a hit-and-miss affair. Some creak and jolt. Others move so slowly that taking the stairs is a better option. This one arrives quickly and silently. The doors glide open smoothly. Goodness was correct about one thing: this building was built right.

  “Please tell the madam that Cyril sends his regards.” Cyril, the big guard, holds the doors open with a bright smile, and I can’t help but check over my shoulder to see if there is someone else standing behind me. The lift is empty. The smile was meant for me, a stranger.

  “I’ll pass your message on to the madam,” I say as the doors close and the lift shoots upward. Inside, the elevator has smooth stainless-steel walls and a single glass panel with the image of a mopani tree etched onto it in silver. The tree branches spread out over a hill, inviting tired travelers to come and rest in the shade awhile. The image serves no function, but it holds my attention. It is art for art’s sake. A silky electronic tone chimes, and the elevator doors open onto a hallway that smells of fresh flowers and antiseptic.

  The white corridor is eerily quiet, unlike the Sugar Town Clinic, which rings with crying babies and old aunties complaining about the pain in their hips and knees. The Amanda Bollard Institute is posh compared to the clinic, but it is still a place for sick people and all their hopes and fears.

  A second wave of panic swells inside me, and I beat it down. Live in the light of the truth or stay blind in the darkness, Lil Bit said biblically. That’s the choice I have to make. If Annalisa is sick, I want to know about it. If she’s dying, I want to be present for every crazy minute of the time we have left together.

  An arrow painted on the wall points the way to rooms 600 to 615. I follow the arrow. The hush gives way to a nurses’ station. A skinny Indian nurse looks up and then goes back to her computer screen. I follow the arrow around a corner. A little farther and I see a large door in the quietest part of the hallway. It’s hard to knock on 605 without knowing what’s waiting on the other side, but I raise my fist and rap my knuckles gently against the wood. The sound is loud in the empty space.

  “Come in,” a woman answers in a crisp voice that reminds me of An
nalisa. I turn the handle and step into a bright room filled with fresh flowers. White roses bloom next to a flat-screen television. Red proteas decorate a glass table. Sunflowers glow yellow in the sunlight that breaks through the open curtains.

  My eyes adjust to the bright and dark areas of the room, which is huge. On the right side and away from the window is a hospital bed, and sitting on the bed is a gray-haired old lady wearing a blue Japanese robe. Blood roars in my ears. The woman is a stranger, but the shape of her face, the wide set of her mouth, and the sharp angles of her cheekbones are achingly familiar. She is future me, hooked up to machines and decades older.

  And she’s white.

  * * *

  * * *

  My mouth opens and closes, like a fish on land. The woman’s mouth does the same, both of us lost for words. I close my eyes and open them wide again to make sure that I’m seeing straight. The woman is clear and in focus. She is real and she is right across the room from me.

  “Come closer,” she says. “Let’s take a good look at each other.”

  I walk in a trance and stop halfway to the bed. The woman holds out her hands, but I stay where I am. Girls from my neighborhood do not run into the arms of strangers.

  She drops her hands into her lap. “Do you know who I am, Amandla?”

  My name, coming from her mouth, sounds delicate and rare somehow. Amandla is the Zulu word for power, but the way she says it, it’s more like the name of a rare bird or a flower. No one in her world is called Amandla. I take three steps closer to the bed, pulled by an invisible thread.

  “I’m your grandmother,” she says when I stay quiet. “The other grandchildren call me Mayme, but you can call me anything. Granny. Amanda. Whatever you like.”

  Annalisa told me I was named after the kindest woman she ever knew. An angel married to a gargoyle who keeps her locked in a stone fortress by the ocean. I thought it was a made-up story, but now I’m not so sure. Amanda . . . Amandla . . . There’s a connection.

  I’m frozen. Delighted. Afraid. I don’t believe her. Then I do. Then I know in my bones that this old lady is my grandmother.

  A sudden new feeling wells up inside me. I am furious.

  What the hell, brah? There are other grandchildren and another family that lives somewhere in rich-white-people land? My mother told me nothing. Nothing. Nothing to prepare me for this. Annalisa’s family. My family. And I never knew.

  I think of all that I’ve missed. Birthday parties. Family dinners. Lazy Sunday walks that lead aunts and cousins back to the same house. A long wooden table with a seat reserved just for me. The stuff of my dreams.

  “You must have a million questions,” Mayme says. “Ask me whatever you like, and I’ll try to answer.”

  I do have questions. Maybe not a million, but a few. I’ve been kept in the dark for fifteen years, and screaming questions at an old lady in a hospital bed is not the proper way to get information. I stop and I breathe. Mayme tilts her head and patiently waits for me to say something. The silence between us grows. It’s awkward, but I don’t know where to start. Then I clear my throat and decide to start easy and build up to the hard questions.

  “How many cousins do I—”

  The bathroom door opens and glass shatters on the tiled floor.

  “Amandla!” It’s Annalisa’s voice. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe. You have to leave. Right now.”

  Her hands twitch by her side, and her body vibrates with fear. Of what, I cannot imagine. “Everything is all right.” I talk her down. “See? It’s just Mayme and me, and we’re both fine.”

  Annalisa steps over the broken vase and the pink lilies scattered across the bathroom tiles. She rushes across the room and grabs my arm, hard. She tugs, red-faced and panicked. I dig in my heels. “You don’t understand. You have to leave right now.”

  “I just got here.”

  “There’s no time to explain. He can’t know that you’re here. If he comes back—” She frowns, and the blood drains from her face. “You followed me . . . Did he see you come in?”

  “Who?” I ask, more frustrated than angry. I’ve seen Annalisa face down rude men with an icy glare. Whoever she is talking about has turned her inside out.

  “My father,” she says.

  “I don’t know your father. What does he look like?”

  “Silver hair. Suntanned,” Mayme says. “You might have seen him in the parking garage.”

  Silver-haired and suntanned. I think of the white man who beeped at me in the laneway.

  “I saw him and he saw me,” I say, and Annalisa’s fingers dig into my arm, deep enough to leave a bruise. I peel her fingers open. “Listen to me.” I keep my voice low, afraid of sending her into a panic. “He drove past me, but he didn’t see me. Not really. I was just in his way. I was nobody. He won’t come back because he’s already forgotten about the brown girl in the driveway.”

  It’s a strange thing to say about the man who, it turns out, is my grandfather, but it makes Annalisa laugh. I don’t see the funny side. Annalisa and I are always the outsiders—why do we have to be? Wouldn’t it be lovely, just once, to live in the warm heart of things? To be part of a family?

  “Everyone relax. Amandla, come. Sit by me.” Mayme pats a spot on the side of her bed, which is wider than my single cot. This time I make it all the way across the room, though I remain standing. “I’ll order tea. Everything is better with tea and cake, don’t you think?”

  Well, yes, though I am more interested in the fact that tea is being ordered and delivered to a hospital room. Maybe that’s how it’s done in city hospitals.

  “Tea would be nice.” Annalisa retreats to the bathroom and bends down to gather the spray of pink lilies scattered across the tiles. “I’ll clear this up.”

  I go to help, but Mayme takes my hand. “Stay,” she says. “I’ll get proper help to clean up the mess.”

  Proper is one of Annalisa’s favorite words. Proper tea is made with tea leaves and not with tea bags. Proper beds are made with “hospital corners” that keep the sheets tucked tightly to the mattress, like they are on Mayme’s bed—here in this hospital. Annalisa is religious about keeping our room clean and in order. She grew up in a house where everything was proper. I’ve always wondered where she learned to sweep, scrub, and make our beds so well. I imagine her as a little girl, following the maid around the rooms of a large house and making a game out of helping her to make the beds properly.

  “What do you know about our family?” Mayme asks after ordering tea and cleaners via the telephone on her bedside table. As easy as that.

  “Not much. When I ask Annalisa where she’s from, she says, ‘Close but a million miles away.’ I used to think she was hiding something, but there are times when I think she doesn’t remember where she came from herself.”

  Mayme nods, familiar with the sudden headaches that strike Annalisa when she tries to remember the past. I throw Mother a quick look, nervous about where this conversation might lead, and find her standing by the window with a bruised lily in her hand. She’s caught in a moment, suspended in time. A thought strikes me. If Mayme is aware of Annalisa’s fragile state of mind, then surely she must be aware that we live in a settlement that’s stuck between endless cane fields and a shipping-container graveyard.

  “Have you been to Sugar Town?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know how we live.”

  “Is that why you came here today, Amandla? To ask for money?” Mayme asks, and I flush hot. The money question comes out of nowhere. It makes me angry enough to spit. An old white lady thinks a township girl is out to rob her.

  Tell me something new, brah.

  “Listen, Granny . . .” I lean in close, angry. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, so let me lay things out. I’m not here for you. I tracked Annalisa to this hospital becaus
e I thought she was sick. And why would I ask a stranger for money? I don’t beg.”

  “Good for you.” Mayme’s face relaxes. “What’s my name, Amandla?”

  I blink, confused.

  “Amanda. You just told me.”

  “My full name.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Harden is my maiden name. I have a married name, too. Do you know what it is?” Jesus, help me, what does this woman want from me? Harden is Annalisa’s surname and mine also. Yes, me sharing my grandmother’s maiden name is odd, but how would I know how that came about?

  “We only just met,” I say, frustrated. “How would I know your proper surname?”

  Mayme laughs. That drip bag attached to her arm must be filled with intense meds. Morphine or another mood lifter. Mrs. M would know exactly, but I can only guess. Two soft knocks come from the other side of the door.

  “Tea, madam,” a woman’s voice calls out. “May we come in?”

  “Of course,” Mayme answers, and two older black ladies in blue uniforms wheel a tea trolley into the room. Two more women, young and dressed in green uniforms, step around them and clean away the broken glass and flowers from the bathroom. The proper cleaners Mayme ordered. In minutes, the mess is gone and the women have vanished as if nothing had broken at all.

  “Where would you like the trolley, Mrs. Bollard?” the older of the tea ladies asks in a deferential tone. That’s when it clicks. The answer to Grandma’s question comes to me in a flash. Mayme Amanda is the “queen” that Cyril, the parking guard, said I belonged to.

  “You’re the Amanda on the front of the building. Amanda Bollard.”

  “Correct!” Mayme says, and the older tea lady purses her lips to hear a girl address an elder by her first name. It’s not done. Normally, this is where I’d apologize to “Auntie” for offending, but I am still trying to digest the fact that my grandmother’s name is slapped across the entrance of a brand-new multistory hospital. Not a wing or a floor. The entire building.