Page 26 - The Mending Season

fortably, silently, in the seats ahead of us. I never did under­ stand what they thought we would do to them. If we were going to poison them with witchcraft, it wouldn’t be in a taxi, would it? It was funny to see them trying not to touch our money as they passed it forward to the driver. I could imagine them washing the paranoia off their hands with soap when they got home.At a store I had never been to before, I tried on my new school uniform - a blue dress with a white collar and white trim at the hem of the short sleeves. There were other girls there, White girls, trying on the same uniform. The women who worked at the shop chatted with my aunts about when I would be starting at the White school. One of them had worked with Mmamane Malebone at a shoe store before and was asking her how her job compared to the one they used to have - they had lost their jobs after the shoe store had moved to a different town. Mmamane Malesedi told the saleswomen that I was going to be part of the second year of Black girls ever to be in “the multiracial”.“Shes very excited,” I heard Mmamane Malesedi say from the fitting room. “When we told her, she started jumping up and down on the bed.”“It’s a Catholic school, isn’t it?” the saleswoman asked the aunts.“Yes, we’re Catholic,” said Mmamane Malebone.“Hmmm, aowayI heard on the radio that Maroma are the first ones to open their doors to Blacks,”the saleswoman said. “The Romans are good people,”Mmamane Malebone said. I walked out just in time to see Mmamane Malesedi shoot hera look that said, “You don’t have to go that far.”Another woman who worked in the store came over. All of them pulled at my hem, had me try on different belts andbrought me shoes to try, all the while talking to each other about how I would probably not be speaking Setswana any26