Page 103 - The Mending Season

At that moment I got my period and cramps at the same time. Mmamane Mabatho once told me that she had a friend who was so shocked when she heard about a death in the family that she got her period even though it was not due for another two weeks. So many questions were running through my mind, I could hardly focus on one at a time.Would they be forced to close the school?Would they ask all the Black girls to leave?Would there be reporters at the school when we arrived,asking me what I had heard?There had been nothing in the paper about what Beth hadactually said to me, and that bothered me more than anything else. Mmamane Malesedi looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. She was correct: it wasn’t right to tell only part ofthe story. I knew it wasn’t fair.The driver joined the conversation. “That child’s mother probably has ajob, like the rest ofus. She has to ask her White people for time off. What’s she going to say? What’s going to be her reason?”“Ee. Yes. You’ll probably find that the White girl’s mother doesn’t work and the husband is self-employed. Of course they’ve had time to go to the school.”wAg,”the passenger with the newspaper folded it and put it on her lap. “Mathata”Problems.“I suspect the White girl said or did something they don’t want the papers to know about.”“But why would they go to the paper if they didn’t want the truth to be known?”“Because they won’t print a Black girl’s story. Her mother can’t go to the paper and the school is sympathetic to the White girl - she is the one who was hurt,”concluded the eld­ erly woman before we got off at the taxi rank. Had it been polite for me to speak to a group of adults, I would have said103