Page 43 - The Mending Season

that everyone was holding up their hands to the prefects. A girl was cutting her nails as she was descending the stairs.“Laeticia, please cut them near a rubbish bin. Quiet, please!” commanded another prefect, an Indian girl with a lot of curly hair, the only prefect besides Anita who was not White.Oh, I thought, they re inspecting our nails. They looked at me as ifI had “new”written in red ink across my forehead. All the prefects smiled politely, the way White people smiled at you when you met at the robot or standing in line to buy something: the not-meant-for-anyone-in-particular kind of smile.I held up my fingers, and one ofthe prefects looked at them intently, but with deliberate distance between us. I thought she would touch my hands and hold them closer to her face to make the task easier, but she only smiled politely and ges­ tured to me to keep walking.“Your nails should not be longer than your fingertips,” she said to the students walking up the stairs. “I shouldn’t see them from where I am standing. And your dresses should not be more than an inch above your knees.”Up the stairs ahead of me, Anita was measuring girls’ dresses with a ruler. I looked down at my dress, the hem cov­ ering my knees, and wished it was an inch or two shorter. Mmamane Malesedi had insisted that we buy a dress that long because the nuns preferred it that way. I thought it just highlighted the fact that I was new. M y uniform was crisp and did not look worn like everyone else’s.I walked to the bathroom, noting that there was no stench that turned me back on my heels like at Ithuteng. Inside the stall, I used the belt to pull up the dress so that my knees showed. Then I pulled down the bulging waistline so that it covered the belt and looked like I was wearing a shirt on top of a skirt. I hoped it looked decent enough. The mirror said it was fine. The large curls in my hair were still more or less in place43