CHAPTER THREE

MY FEET AND ANKLES ACHED; we must have been walking for some time. I found myself slowing down.

“Camellia, we’re going to be late!”

My name, then, was to be Camellia in this new place. Why, of course! Grandma’s favorite flower! Just as I had been Jasmine—my mother’s favorite flower—in Australia.

I knew her immediately, this girl hurrying beside me: there was something about the feel of her, more than anything physical, as she looked so different from the Grandma I knew. Something dramatic must happen to the way people look once they move into that shady time-world of being old. As beautiful, dynamic, and alive as Grandma in Australia was, I had to search the face of this pretty young girl—thin as a rake and with a mop of curly, dark hair—to find her. Yes, there was that spark in her eyes, which revealed delight in the world, but also something wary.

And here I was, in faraway South Africa, very likely somewhere near the tiny town of Koppies—a one-horse town, as she’d always described it—where Grandma had grown up.

She was not, of course, yet Grandma, but Darlene. I picked up my pace to match hers, stumbling on the loose stones of the unpaved road. All around us, stretching endlessly, were bleached fields, dotted here and there with enormous haystacks. The mud-hut village was behind us, and I could see another up ahead on the horizon. The sky showed the cautious light of a new day and, already, it was hot. The cotton jacket I was wearing—faded blue, slightly too large—felt uncomfortably heavy.

We hurried along in silence, drawing closer to what had looked like an old barn but that I saw, as we approached, was a schoolhouse standing in a field and encircled by wire-mesh fencing. To keep out animals, I imagined—sheep, goats, maybe donkeys.

Behind the schoolhouse was a tar macadam yard on which the remains of a white diamond were still visible, though the paint was old and peeling and in certain places altogether gone. Clusters of children of all ages gathered in front of the schoolhouse on the patchy, yellowed grass, some crouching over marbles, others playing a game with a ball and stick, and a number just milling about. We slowed to an amble as we entered through the gate.

I glanced at Darlene and saw that her jaw was clamped tight. She seemed to have suddenly grown an inch or two—her neck elongated and back held very straight. She did not approach any of the little groupings and greeted no one. As we passed among the other children, I saw heads turning our way; their faces held unpleasant, sneering expressions. There was a look to those kids, especially the boys, I’d not seen before: angry, hungry, abandoned.

When we were halfway to the steps of the schoolhouse, a boy of about fifteen made a beeline for us. He was gangly and tall, with sandy hair and freckles, and a grim, fierce expression. When he was almost upon us, Darlene reached into her satchel and drew something out. As he passed us, Darlene casually, surreptitiously, handed him whatever she’d taken from her satchel.

“What is it—?” I said, my voice heavy with a South African accent.

“Ssshh,” Darlene said. “I’ll tell you later.”

After that, I followed Darlene’s example; I stopped stealing glances around me and instead looked straight ahead.

Inside, the schoolhouse was larger than it appeared from outside. It consisted of four comfortably sized rooms, two on each side of a wide bare hallway lined with old wooden cubbies in ramshackle condition. Darlene paused by one: the shelf and hook were missing, and the wood on the sides was split. She removed a notebook from her satchel and placed the bag on the floor of the cubby. Then, she took off her jacket, folded it neatly, and laid it on top of the bag. I did the same—finding I had a similar notebook—placing first my satchel and then my folded jacket into the adjoining cubby.

The hallway was buzzing with movement and noise as children hurried here and there. An earsplitting bell clanged and everybody, suddenly silent, filed into their classrooms.

Darlene slid into the bench of a desk in the back row. I slid in beside her. A few minutes later, an older man with a military bearing strode into the room. Tall and powerfully built, he had pure white hair that was slicked to his head with oil. His gray eyes glinted with malice.

A hushed fear filled the room. Not one rustle, not a murmur or whisper or cough: all eyes were directed at the schoolmaster.

“Open your books,” he said. “History, page ninety-eight.”

There was a flurry of turning pages.

“First, an announcement. The troops of the Third Reich are battling the Communists on the Eastern Front. We send a prayer for their victory. We pray for the slaughter of all enemies of the Third Reich.”

The man was speaking an ugly, guttural language I’d never heard before that sounded a little like German. I realized it must be Afrikaans; I knew from my grandmother that this is what white people of Dutch descent spoke in South Africa, and that all her schooling had been in this language. Darlene and I had been speaking English; Grandma had told me she’d spoken English at home, as Jewish people did. Oddly, I understood every word the teacher said and, looking down at the textbook in front of me, I discovered I could also effortlessly read the strange-looking words.

The lesson was about the Boer War. We began to read aloud, together. Many of the students stumbled over words; some seemed barely literate. Sitting in front of me was a scruffy boy with greasy hair whose neck was caked with dirt; he seemed only to be moving his mouth, rather than actually enunciating words. We were reading about the brave Boer soldiers and how they marched toward victory. I didn’t know anything about the Boer War; the textbook copy, though, sounded like propaganda.

After four pages of laborious group reading, the teacher abruptly called for a stop. He then launched on a summary of what we had just read, embellishing even further on the just cause of the Boer freedom fighters.

But then, he broke off, mid-sentence. I looked up to see that he was glaring at Darlene, who was studiously focused on her book.

“Is there a reason you’re staring off into space, Darlene?” the master said. “Are my words, in your view, not worth attending to?”

“But sir,” Darlene said, “I was following the story in the book.”

“Don’t answer back, rude child!”

The master raised his hand. Everything suddenly altered, as if transformed to slow motion. Something gray and oblong flew through the air toward Darlene. I heard a thud and turned to see Darlene’s skin, just below the hairline, split open, then watched as a trickle of blood made its way down her forehead and settled in her right eyebrow.

“I’m listening, sir,” Darlene said. “I heard every word.”

She sat immobile, stifling the instinct, I imagined, to reach up and touch the fresh wound on her forehead.

“Well then, might I trouble you to return my blackboard duster?” the master said with mock courtesy. I dared not look about me; I did, though, hear several semi-suppressed snickers escape from the mouths of other children.

Darlene bent to the floor to retrieve the blackboard eraser, then stood and walked toward the teacher with that same stiff-necked dignity I’d observed earlier. She handed back the offending object. The teacher made a sudden movement with his hand toward Darlene’s head. I thought he was going to cuff her on the ear and I let out a little involuntary gasp. He didn’t hit her, though; he only grabbed her arm and drew her close. He leaned down and whispered something loudly in Darlene’s ear. I saw her face redden.

The teacher turned and looked at me. “And if Miss Camellia has anything to say, she can stand up and bestow her intelligent remarks on the classroom.”

The master made no attempt to mask the scorn in his voice. He reached for a long wooden ruler that was lying on his desk and tapped it gently on his palm.

“Is that what you wish to do?” he said, glaring at me. “Come to the aid of a Jew?”

I looked from the teacher to Darlene, whose dark eyes seemed frozen, but also fearless. I could feel her willing me to remain silent, willing me not to bring down on myself the same fury we’d all just witnessed being directed at her.

The Nazis will be defeated! I wanted to yell. Three months from now, Hitler will put a bullet in his head and the utter madness will come to an end! I felt myself adding something else, for myself—that it would never be over, that humanity could never recover from such evil. Instead, I simply said: “No, sir. I have nothing to say.”

I did not, though, hide the hatred in my eyes, the way Darlene had clearly learned to do. The master seemed to notice this. I saw a flicker of spite in his face; slowly, he crossed the classroom to where I was sitting. He stood by my desk for a moment, tapping the ruler against his palm.

“Hands out straight,” he said. I lay my hands flat against the desk. He raised the ruler and brought it down hard across the knuckles of both my hands, once, twice, three times.

“Next time, you will keep your gasps to yourself.”

I placed my hands under the desk and nursed my smarting fingers.

The lesson continued for what seemed an age, if you can call the tedium of reciting dull facts and copying out pages of propaganda from a textbook a lesson. I followed the instructions automatically, as Darlene seemed to do, marveling every now and then at my fluency in this strange language. I watched with amazement as the words flowed from my pencil across the lines of the page.

The raucous clang of the bell split the silence. The teacher announced recess.

Everyone rose. My hands still burned and ached and my knees trembled so badly, I could hardly stand. Somehow, I managed to keep my balance and file out with the rest of the class.

Inside, I was jangling with questions. I bit my lip to stop myself blurting them all out in a mad rush. Darlene grabbed something from her satchel as we passed the makeshift lockers, and then made her way out the back entrance of the school, heading toward the far corner of the school yard.

I took Darlene’s hand.

“Are you all right?” I asked, looking at her forehead, where the blood had dried.

Darlene gave a curt little nod.

“Can I help you wash up?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Let it stay,” she said. “How are your hands? Hope he didn’t give you the burn whack.”

“Not too bad,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

We sat beneath a tree of a kind I’d not seen before. It had a skinny trunk and gnarled branches that stretched crookedly skyward, here and there sprouting sparse bunches of misshapen brownish-green leaves.

“What did you give that boy this morning?” I asked. “When you took something from your satchel, before we went into the school house?”

“Oh. Just a sandwich. I give him one every day. Schmaltz and salami on rye.”

“Why on earth? He didn’t exactly look like a friend of yours.”

“Protection. That way, no one will beat me up. They hate us Jews, but they like our sandwiches.”

Darlene opened her hand. She was holding something wrapped in a piece of wax paper. She withdrew two sugar cookies, handed one to me and took the other for herself, and then carefully folded the paper and put it back into her pocket.

“Joel gave me an extra one for you,” she said. I didn’t know who Joel was, but I had the feeling I’d find out later.

“Please thank him for me,” I said. At the sight of the cookie, my mouth watered. Once again, I realized how hungry I was. The opportunities for eating on this strange journey of mine were few and far between.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” I asked. “Having to give that awful boy your sandwich every day?”

“I’d rather go hungry than get beaten up,” Darlene said, taking a tiny bite of her cookie. “Besides, he needs it more than I do.”

“Is he very poor?”

“He’s from the St. Augustine Orphanage. A lot of the kids here are,” she said, gesturing toward the playground where the groups had gathered again to resume their games of earlier. “Most of their parents are in the army, up north.”

“Up north?”

“Algeria and Egypt, mostly. But you know this as well as I do, Camellia.” Darlene gave me a hazy look. “It’s true, they’re just awful, but you only have to look at them to see how unhappy they are. There’s no one to take care of them. They pretty much raise themselves.”

Darlene’s gaze drifted across the school yard. I turned to see what she was looking at. On the far side of the yard, beyond the wire fencing, was a group of dark-skinned children—barefoot, ranging in age from tiny infants, held in the arms of the older children, to about twelve or thirteen. Each child was wearing either pants or a shirt, but not both; bony legs or thin chests showed below or above the faded scrap each wore. Flies swarmed around their noses and eyes. Some of the children held onto the wire, pressing their faces right up against it.

“It’s all relative, though, isn’t it,” Darlene was saying. “The St. Augustine children at least get the chance to go to school. To use the Whites Only entrances and facilities. To eat most of the time, even if they don’t love the food.”

Darlene had stopped nibbling at her cookie. She glanced at my own cookie, which I’d not yet bitten. I passed the cookie back to her and she rose, walked to the far end of the yard, and passed both cookies through the fence. She paused there, talked, for a moment, to the children on the other side.

As she walked back toward me, Darlene discreetly brushed her hand across her eyes.

Hunger gnawed at my stomach. I pushed it from my mind.

Darlene was back. She sat down beside me on the hard dirt.

“I was wondering,” I said. “What did the teacher whisper into your ear?”

“Oh, nothing much. The usual.”

“What’s the usual?”

“That Hitler will win. That he’ll make good on his promise to rid Europe of the Jews. That then it will be our turn here, in South Africa.”

“Oh,” I said, not knowing how to respond.

“Mr. Van Graan hates Jews, like pretty much everyone here,” Darlene said, pronouncing his name with the same heavy Afrikaans accent the teacher had. “You sort of get used to being hated.”

I saw in Darlene’s face that same peculiar look I’d seen on Talia’s face back—well, back whenever that was in Australia (years ahead, though for me, it was some kind of yesterday).

“But why am I telling you this?” she said. “You know about it just as well as I do!”

The sudden clanging of the bell saved me from having to respond. We both jumped up and hurried back to the schoolhouse.

The rest of the day passed in a fog of tedium. School for me had always been exciting and fun; the drudgery in that hot, dusty, horrible schoolroom, half a world and more than half a century away from the home I knew, bore no resemblance to education as I knew it.

When the school bell finally clanged, signaling the end of the day, I felt immense relief. I followed Darlene out of the classroom. We grabbed our jackets and satchels and then bolted from the school-house, tearing across the yard. We didn’t stop running for about a half mile, by my calculation. It was only then, having slowed to a normal walking pace, that the discomforts assailing me rushed full force into my awareness. My feet ached in their tight boots; I could feel angry blisters blooming at every point where my skin came into contact with the leather. In my stomach, the fiercest hunger I’d ever known sent a wave of nausea through my body that found its way to my head as a pounding headache. And the heat! It bore down on my uncovered head like a vise. I looked over at Darlene. Surely, she was also suffering in the same miserable way. And the wound on her forehead, on top of everything!

She didn’t complain, though. She was walking calmly beside me, a faint smile on her lips.

“Do you hear that lovely warbling?” she asked. “Red-breasted robins! Don’t you adore them?”

I was awed by how Darlene was able to muster cheerfulness after the hellish day she’d had.

We walked for a time in silence. The dry landscape was becoming familiar. Here we were again passing the mud huts of the African village, some distance from the road; the burning sun turned their straw roofs to gold.

“I’m going to leave this place, as soon as I can,” Darlene said.

“Koppies?” I asked. “The Orange Free State?”

“South Africa. The whole country, it’s rotten. Rotten to the core.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“It depends on my husband. On where his career will take us.”

I gave a little laugh. “Do you already know who your husband is going to be?” I asked.

She looked impatient. “Well no, not exactly. But the day I finish high school—three years and forty-three days from today—I will take the train to Johannesburg where I will live with my brother and attend the college for nursery school teachers. It shouldn’t take more than a few months to meet my future husband.”

“Oh, really?”

“Johannesburg is full of nice Jewish boys looking for nice Jewish girls. They want someone who is pretty and sweet, and who is clever at all the things they need to be clever at. It would be a bonus for me to have a certificate in teaching. That will make me a better mother.

“All the most intelligent men go overseas to study, especially the doctors. I imagine it will be England, though we might end up in America! I’m not too concerned about where. But we’ll go. And, I’ll make certain that we never come back!”

Darlene could not have known just how close to the letter her plan would work out. How she’d meet my grandfather, Jack, a medical student, at a Jewish singles dance. How two weeks later, she would open the door of her older brother’s house where she was living to see Jack snazzily dressed, holding a bouquet of roses and looking nervous but happy, knowing that he intended to propose to Darlene that evening, over dinner. How she would, in fact, travel across the world, but to Australia, where she’d build a new life, far from her detested homeland.

We came to a crossroads, which appeared to be the tiny heart of the town. On one corner was a petrol station, on another, a ramshackle building with a faded sign declaring it to be the Koppies Poskantoor, which I knew from my sudden proficiency in Afrikaans meant Post Office. Diagonally across were a clothing store, its window boasting three mannequins dressed in farming clothes, and another store bearing the sign Deegwinkel—Pastry Shop. We crossed the road; Darlene paused before the window of the pastry shop and looked longingly at a plateful of napoleons.

“Don’t they look delicious?” Darlene said. “I’ve always wanted to try one. But I’ve never had more than five cents of my own. That was a present from my brother Barry, when he came home from army training.”

My heart flew out to Darlene; I was filled with a burning desire to help her. To put things right. I could hardly believe that, with all the hardship she clearly faced, this girl would one day become my lively, talented, and supremely capable Grandma. I thought for a moment about the lifetime of struggle and striving that lay between this lonely girl—who many years from now would give birth to my mother—and the grandmother I knew.

Those napoleons did, indeed, look delicious, so creamy and flakey. We hadn’t eaten all day, and had walked miles and miles, and now my stomach growled angrily. I would have given a good deal for one of those pastries. The thick layer of yellow custard made my mouth water.

I leaned over to Darlene. “One day,” I said, “I’ll buy you a great big plateful of napoleons. I promise.”

Darlene nodded almost imperceptibly. I saw that she was biting her lip. She reached over and took my hand and together, we walked away.

“You know, we had a traveling salesman with us for two weeks,” Darlene said. “Now that everyone but my brother Harold has moved out, my mother rents an extra room whenever she can. Well, this man was a prince! Mr. Krige. I’ll never forget him as long as I live. He gave me the most beautiful present—a china tea set. I’ll show it to you when we get back home. We can have a tea party with my dolls!”

By the time we turned into the front yard of Darlene’s house I was limping—and so thirsty, I’d have lapped at a pig’s trough, had one appeared.

The house was a rambling old farmhouse in a state of disrepair. The red roof tiles were missing in patches; in one section, the brick was crumbling, and there were cracked or missing windowpanes. The damage seemed confined to one side. I imagined the family lived only in the well-maintained section.

Darlene took off at a sprint. “Come on!” she said, running around to the back of the house. I limped behind, following her into the kitchen in time to see her greeting a tall, middle-aged black man, a beatific look on her face.

“Look, Joel. Camellia’s here! She’s my cousin’s cousin—all the way from Durban. She’s going to sleep over. Isn’t that glorious?”

Joel had kind, far-seeing eyes. When he greeted me, he seemed to be looking right into my face but also somehow gazing at a distant horizon.

“Hello, Miss Camellia,” he said. His voice was as warm and rich as his eyes.

I was hit with an aroma so enticing, I almost cried out with joy.

“You girls must be hungry,” Joel said. “I have your dinner ready early.”

The spring suddenly back in my feet, I followed Darlene to the kitchen sink, where we washed our faces and scrubbed our hands with a coarse bar of soap. The dust from our long walk home had entered my pores and seemed stubbornly determined to stay there. I did the best I could, and when I was finished, I almost bounded over to the wooden table and sat down before one of the steaming bowls Joel had set there.

“Mealie pap and chicken casserole!” Darlene said, tucking in.

“And a custard trifle for dessert,” Joel said.

I dug in, too. The stew was pungent and extremely flavorful. It sat in its thick gravy on top of a mound of steaming cornmeal that had been cooked up into a chewy porridge.

I couldn’t remember when a meal had tasted so good. I swallowed the last mouthful, trying to stem the disappointment I felt at the sight of the empty bowl—I was still so hungry, as if I hadn’t eaten at all! But then, Joel appeared beside me with the pot and ladled another helping of the mealie pap. A moment later, he returned with some more stew. I ate more slowly, this time, relishing each mouthful.

Joel went into the laundry room off the kitchen and as we ate, I could hear the sound of water filling a trough, followed by great swooshings. I pictured Joel at work, perhaps washing the family’s linens.

Once the large meal had given chase to my ravenous hunger, I was able to pay attention to the room, which was spacious and had a certain rough elegance. Across from us stood an enormous glass-fronted cabinet containing an assortment of dishes and glassware. Beside this was an ancient pot-bellied stove, which gave off intense heat. On the floor beside the stove was a straw mat, rolled and tied loosely with twine, along with a large metal bowl. I brightened at the thought that Darlene perhaps had a dog.

“Do you have a dog, then?” I asked.

Darlene shook her head. “I wish we did, but no.”

She followed my querying gaze to where the mat and bowl sat on the floor by the stove. Her face dropped and when she spoke her voice cracked with pain.

“That’s Joel’s mat. He sleeps there, during the week. The bowl is his toilet. On weekends, he goes home to his village. It’s not that far—an hour and a half by foot.”

Her words fell like soft blows to my ears. I thought about the gentle, dignified man in the back room, from which I could still hear those loud swishing sounds and felt a cold rage rising within as I imagined him settling at night on the hard floor while his “masters” slumbered comfortably in their beds.

“That’s just awful!”

Darlene nodded, then looked away.

I saw again that photograph we’d looked at in the Belle Meade Plantation gift shop, heard Mama’s heavy words, Built on the backs of slaves. What country was free of horrors? Was there no society on earth where justice and kindness truly reigned? Even this sorry farmhouse, in the middle of a nowhere that included vile, bigoted teachers who threw chalkboard erasers at children’s heads, was built on the backs of servitude—on the very back of the kindly man who seemed like a father to Darlene, and yet bore the title of servant. The rude word ricocheted in my mind. I recalled the faces of the children in scraps of clothing, pressed up against the wire fencing around the school yard. Layer upon layer of cruelty—I didn’t know what to do with all the feelings that surged violently within.

Just then, a familiar chime rang out, and I almost jumped out of my skin. Grandma’s clock! The clock given to her mother—my great-grandmother—on the occasion of her marriage! The very same clock I had awoken to—gosh, an age ago—in Melbourne. The clock had been given to Darlene’s mother, Sarah, as a wedding present; much later, Darlene would bring it to Australia. Perhaps one day, I thought, I would pack it into a velvet box and take it with me to New York. It gave me goose bumps to think about this clock, chiming up through the decades, marking the hours, days, weeks, years, of so many lives that came into being and then drifted away.

“The chimes startled me,” I said.

“I love that clock,” Darlene said. I wanted to say I love it, too! However, I kept silent, aware of the eerie secrecy I felt bound to regarding the truth of who I was and where I came from. But looking at Darlene, I realized something else: that I was also in some way discovering new truths, laying claim to something lost.

At that moment, Joel returned, carrying a large earthenware dish. “Here’s the trifle.”

Darlene jumped up. “I can serve it up.”

“Thank you, Do-Do,” Joel said, and returned to the laundry room.

The trifle was heavenly: layers of pound cake, strawberries, and thick yellow custard, topped with heavy clotted cream. We each ate a large serving while drinking several cups of steaming brewed tea, to which we added frothy milk and lumps of brown sugar.

When we finished, we took our plates to the sink, then grabbed our satchels and passed through a long hallway to Darlene’s room. She hung her school bag on a hook, removed her shoes, and placed them neatly by the foot of her bed. I did the same.

“Here,” Darlene said, reaching under her bed excitedly and retrieving a sizable wooden box. Her fingers were shaking with anticipation. Only now did I notice that the nail on her right pinky finger was very long and sharpened to a point.

“Why do you have such a long pointy nail, and only the one?” I asked.

“Oh, that!” She laughed. “That’s my weapon.”

“Your weapon?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “But look, have you ever seen such a lovely tea set?”

The box opened on two impressive brass hinges to reveal the tea set Darlene had told me about; each item was nestled in its own special section lined with velvet. The miniature dishes were made of real bone china, decorated with an elaborate pattern: rose clusters, joined by lengths of twirled vine with delicate green leaves. Darlene removed each piece, one by one, and arranged them carefully on the table beside her bed.

“Let’s prepare a tea party for my dolls.”

I cast a glance around, looking for her collection of dolls, sighting only a crew of rough-hewn creatures fashioned from mango pits sitting squatly on the chest of drawers. This, along with a tiny wardrobe and Darlene’s bed, completed the furnishings of the room.

Darlene gathered her mango-pit dolls. “The Smithson family is coming to visit the Harrisons for tea!”

Just as I was beginning to wonder why a girl of fourteen would still be interested in playing with a tea set and dolls—and mango pits, at that—Darlene’s game took an interesting turn.

“The Smithsons are a family of famous anthropologists. They’ve spent years in Mexico, studying the Indigenous people, who the Smithsons have discovered are incredibly kind. They adore children. They carry their babies in slings on their backs—the mother or the aunt or sister, it doesn’t matter. Children are never left alone and as a result, they are never sad and almost never cry. Even the Smithson children have been involved in the family research. They know how to speak the native languages and they talk and play with the Indigenous children.

“The Harrisons are art historians. They know the history of European Art backward and forward. Their children have little reproductions of the world’s most famous paintings all over their bedroom walls. At night, before they go to sleep, they recite the names of important painters, starting with Cranach and ending with Picasso.”

Darlene’s cheeks were flushed with pleasure. For a moment, I thought she’d forgotten me, but then she turned and clasped my hand.

“Come on, Camellia. You can help me figure out what they’re going to talk about over tea. Maybe the Smithsons will tell the Harrisons all about the art of the Mexicans: their pottery and beautiful embroidery. Or perhaps—”

Darlene froze mid-sentence. While she was chattering away, she’d carefully placed the china pieces on the wooden table by her bed, except for one plate, which remained in its felt-lined partition. I was startled by the sudden change that came over her. The look in her eyes—terrified and fearsome, both.

“What have we here?” I heard someone say. I turned to see a handsome fellow of sixteen or seventeen leaning against the door jamb.

“Two little girls, playing with dolls and a tea set. Wouldn’t you say you’re a mite old for such babyish games?”

It was impossible not to note the malice in the boy’s face.

“Hey girls, want to see what dear old Mr. Krige gave your brother Harold, here?” He gave an oddly impersonal smirk.

“A wonderful new baseball. All the way from America. Ever seen a baseball, girl? They’re hard. Really hard.”

A flurry beside me told me that Darlene had sprung to action. She was trying to gather up the pieces of her tea set, having realized her brother’s intention. In her panic she fumbled, though in any case I imagine she would have failed. The boy was simply too quick. Besides, he had the advantage of a predator who has cornered its prey.

The ball whooshed by my head. Darlene snatched her hand out of harm’s way at the very moment the ball smashed into the china. A delicate tinkling followed the crash, as shards flew from the table onto the ground. Not a single piece remained intact. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Darlene’s hand steal toward the felt-lined box on the ground and stealthily remove the single remaining plate. She was able to slip it under her skirt without her brother seeing.

“St-r-iiike!” He called out.

Harold crossed the room to retrieve the ball then walked back to the doorway. He stood for a moment, looking over at where his sister sat ramrod straight on the floor, then he disappeared.

A moment later, Joel appeared at the door. He surveyed the mess, then looked sympathetically at Darlene.

“Let me clean this up for you, Do-Do,” he said.

Another tread approached. A heavy-set woman, whose dark brown hair was streaked with gray, appeared in the doorway.

“And what may I ask is going on here?” she asked, in a surprisingly husky voice.

She crossed the room and pulled Darlene up by the arm from where she knelt over the shattered fragments that minutes before had been her new tea set.

“What a clumsy girl,” she said. “You don’t deserve nice things.”

Only now did she seem to notice me.

“You should be ashamed, in front of your friend. No supper for either of you. Clean this up, then straight to bed.”

She let go of Darlene’s arm, which glowed pink from where her mother had gripped her. Darlene’s face had turned stony. She uttered not a word in her defense, but simply set about carefully picking up the shards from the floor.

Darlene’s mother walked briskly from the room. For someone of her heft, she moved with surprising grace.

Joel and I both knelt down to help Darlene clean up the broken pieces.

“I’ll fetch the broom and dustpan,” Joel said. He disappeared and returned carrying the broom and pan. When we’d finished cleaning it all up, Darlene sat down on the bed; she was biting her lip, struggling to hold back tears. Joel again approached her but stopped a small distance away, as if deliberately positioning himself just out of arm’s reach. He stroked one of his own arms with the flat of his other hand, as if he meant to be stroking Darlene’s but was making do with his own. He uttered something in a loud whisper in a language I did not understand—Zulu, perhaps?—then repeated the phrase twice more.

Darlene nodded, returning Joel’s intense gaze. He leaned down and whispered something to her, then left, carrying the broom and dustpan full of broken china pieces.

Darlene rose. “I’m sorry about all of that,” she said, giving a weak smile. “Joel just reminded me that tonight is Mother’s bridge game. She lives for bridge. That’s a lucky thing, or I’d be more skin and bones than I am. Joel always sneaks me food when I’m punished. Usually, it’s just a piece of bread and a hard-boiled egg, something Joel can hide in his pocket. But on bridge nights, I can sit in the kitchen and eat a proper supper. She doesn’t leave until nine o’clock, though, so we have a few hours to wait. It’s a good thing Joel gave us our dinner early.”

We opened our satchels, took out our books, and set about doing our homework. The work came easily; I had a strange knowledge of what I was doing, even though I had been in class only the one day.

We labored through several columns of sums. Then, we filled three pages with text we had to copy from a geography book. There was an essay question, too, and it was only halfway through regurgitating the information recited earlier by the teacher about the Boer War that I realized I was writing in Afrikaans!

I looked up from my work.

“The Afrikaners hate the English, don’t they?”

Darlene looked up from her notebook, wearing the same quizzical-patient expression of earlier.

“Of course. The Afrikaners hate everybody except for themselves. And the Nazis, who in their view, have the right idea about things. Why do you ask?”

“I guess I just wanted to be sure,” I said, fearing that in my ignorance of local realities, I’d given myself away.

I wondered about this odd feeling I’d had now several times since finding myself on this journey. This fear of giving myself away. Was I afraid that Darlene would discover I was from another time and place? And what if she did? Or did I fear something else; that Darlene would discover I was not who I thought I was?

I put down my pencil.

“Darlene, why didn’t you tell your mother the truth? That we weren’t being careless. That Harold deliberately smashed your tea set.”

“She’d never believe me.”

“Why not?”

Darlene also put down her pencil. Again, that patient look in her face.

“Harold is my mother’s favorite. When my father was alive, they would fight about him. They each had different favorites; my father’s favorite was Barry. If my father hit Harold, my mother would hit Barry. My father would do the same—threaten to beat Harold if she struck Barry. In a way it was lucky for me, being no one’s favorite. Mostly, they just ignored me.

“But if I ever say anything against Harold, she’d take notice. I’ve learned to keep as quiet as I can—and stay out of her way.”

From the kitchen, we heard the sound of boisterous laughter: Harold and his mother, enjoying the supper from which we’d been banished. It was a couple of hours since we’d eaten Joel’s hearty meal, and as I’d eaten so little for days, my stomach was already rumbling again.

Darlene looked down at her nail “weapon.”

“Once, when Harold was hitting me, I tore a strip of skin from his cheek with this.”

“Weren’t you afraid he’d tell your mother?”

Darlene shook her head. “He’d never admit he’d been hurt by a girl, let alone by me.”

We turned again to our work. Through the window, I could see the light fading. In the distance, small rain clouds gathered, further blotting out what remained of the day.

After a time, Darlene put her notebook and pencils back in her satchel and I did the same.

“She’ll be gone, by now,” she said. “My mother.”

“And Harold?”

“Oh, he’ll be in town with his friends. He never stays in after supper.”

We made our way to the kitchen where Joel had set two places on the counter by the sink. We sat side by side on wooden stools and Joel placed before us each a boiled egg in a wooden eggcup, two thick slices of brown bread slathered with butter, and a bowl of steamed vegetables. After finishing the first egg, we each ate a second.

When we’d polished everything off, Joel pointed to a plate on a shelf by the stove that was covered with a cloth napkin. “I saved you some cake,” he said.

It was dark brown honey cake. It went wonderfully with the cup of milk Darlene poured for each of us from a jug.

Darlene smiled warmly at Joel and said goodnight. I was struck by the way they communicated; it occurred to me now that there was never any physical contact between them. I recalled the way Joel had stroked his own arm after the tea set had been destroyed, as if comforting Darlene by proxy, and how he later caressed her with his eyes, as if enfolding her in a protective embrace.

I also said goodnight and Darlene and I made our way to the bathroom where we washed our faces and hands in the cracked porcelain sink. She shook some white powder onto a toothbrush with raggedy, worn bristles and scrubbed at her teeth. There was another toothbrush by the sink; I assumed it was mine. I also sprinkled some of the powder on the brush. It tasted soapy and left an unpleasant, filmy feel in my mouth.

“Why don’t you ever hug Joel?”

Darlene turned to me, her face hung with surprise.

“You know perfectly well why,” she said.

“Actually, I don’t.”

Darlene’s eyes wavered and when she next spoke, her voice sounded odd and far away.

“Because it’s against the law for a black man to touch a white girl. He would lose his job. Maybe even be sent to prison.”

“Yes, of course. I know that,” I said, overcome with confusion.

“Then why did you ask?”

I paused, aware of a peculiar shiver traveling the length of my spine, and then, unable to come up with a suitable answer, simply said what I felt. “I don’t know.”

Darlene nodded, something curiously knowing in her eyes, as if this was a satisfying answer—the answer, in fact, she’d been expecting.

Back in her room, Darlene took something from the back of her top drawer and handed it to me—a solid little chunk wrapped in aluminum foil. I opened it to find six squares of milk chocolate.

“I was saving this for a special moment. And now, here it is!” she said.

I broke the joined pieces into two even sections and handed one to Darlene. I bit off one of the squares and let it melt on my tongue and Darlene did the same, folding the piece of foil and replacing it in her top drawer. She seemed to save everything.

When we’d finished eating the chocolate, Darlene changed into a nightdress, offering me a simple cotton shift. She insisted on making up the cot that was to be my bed. She took great care with the sheet and blanket, smoothing them until they were tight as a drum, then gave me her one feather pillow, on top of which she placed a lace doily she’d crocheted herself. It was clear that Darlene owned very little: a single dress hung in the wooden armoire, alongside two carefully pressed blouses and an old blue cardigan, all of which looked like hand-me-downs. Her tiny chest of drawers seemed to hold equally few items.

I slipped in between the sheets of the cot and lay down on my side. Darlene retrieved something from between her mattress and the wooden bed frame—an envelope. She kneeled down by the bed, closed her eyes, then put the envelope to her lips. She seemed to be muttering a prayer. When she had finished, she rose.

“What’s that?” I asked, nodding toward the envelope.

“It’s a letter my mother got from her brother and his family in Lithuania, more than two years ago. It was the last time we heard from them. They asked us to pray for them.”

“What happened to them?”

For a moment, Darlene’s face went blank. She sat on the end of my cot, then opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper. She spread it open and began reading—in yet another new language, which I think was Yiddish. Miraculously, again, I understood every word.

Dearest Sarah,

You can’t imagine what’s happening here. We scarcely believe it ourselves. Nazi soldiers are everywhere. People are being taken away. They just disappear—we hear terrible things about shootings in the forest. We have to leave our house, it is being taken, like the property of all Jews. We do not know where we will go. We will bring Chaya’s mother, who is eighty-three. How on earth will she survive?

We don’t know what to do with Latka, our dog. He’s been a member of our family for five years. Lord knows how, but we’ve managed to keep him fed in these dreadful times—bits of fat and bone—though he is very thin.

I do not know if this letter will reach you. I will try to give it to the postal clerk. We were friends, once.

Pray for us. Think of us.

In love, sadness—Dear God, in fear—

Your loving brother Josef, and Chaya, and the children

Darlene refolded the paper and put it back into the envelope. “We’ve not heard from them since.”

Sarah’s voice had gone flat. The name Josef rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. My mother had told me stories about her relatives, but they jumbled together; having grown up without extended family, they seemed more like storybook characters than real people.

“We know what the Nazis are doing to Jews over there,” she said. “We heard about it on the radio broadcast. Some American journalists were trapped in the region when the US entered the war—they were exchanged for Germans who’d been in America. They wrote about what they had seen; one said there was an ‘open hunt’ on the Jews. Hundreds, thousands at a time. Rounded up and shot into pits.”

I knew that before the Nazis came up with their more efficient methods—gas chambers and crematoriums—they had the Jews dig the pits themselves and enlisted local collaborators to help with the shooting. My heart pounded in my throat. I tried to stifle the terrifying images that leapt into my mind’s eye, flowing from the words—an ‘open hunt’ on the Jews—

Darlene returned to her bed and slipped the envelope back beneath her mattress.

“I said a little prayer for you, too, Camellia,” Darlene said in a small voice.

“Oh?”

“I prayed that you would find what you are looking for.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Thank you,” I finally uttered. And then, “Good night.”

“Good night. And Camellia—” She took in a sharp breath. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I lay back and looked up at the ceiling, thinking about how very far away I was from my own world. The cracks on the ceiling arranged themselves into animals and clouds. If Billy were here, I’d snuggle him into my arms and spin the characters that were appearing on the ceiling into a story to help him settle to sleep. How was he getting along without me? Surely all of them were sick with worry. What must they be thinking?

Darlene’s breath slowed to the rhythm of sleep. I rolled over to see that she was curled into a ball, the sheet pulled tightly around her. I thought again with sadness about what a lonely, sad girl she was—and yet so giving and warm, and tilted toward joy.

I tossed and turned for some time; sleep would not come. My limbs were so restless—I had to get up and walk around. Quietly, I stepped from the bed, tiptoed past Darlene and then carefully opened the door.

In the hallway, I squinted into the near darkness and took a few steps. I trained my ears on the stillness and realized I could hear a faint crackling. Out through the window, a handful of stars sent haloes of light into the night sky. I stood still and listened; it was as if the crackling were coming from the stars.

A beam of light at the end of the hallway spilled from a slightly open door onto the floorboards. On cat’s feet, I made my way down the corridor and came to a halt outside the door. The crackling was coming from within the room; it was a radio, the volume turned down low.

I flattened my back against the wall beside the door jamb. Carefully, I leaned around to peer in through the crack in the door. I found myself looking into the bedroom of Darlene’s mother, back from her bridge game. She was seated at a small dressing table, leaning over something spread out before her. It looked like a map; yes, she was studying a map. Now I could hear the voice of a newscaster talking about the battles being waged in the various theaters of war, rattling off victories and defeats. A small lamp burned on the shelf above the dressing table; in its weak illumination, Darlene’s mother, pencil in hand, was making marks upon a map. A trail of tears glistened from her eye to her chin.

The newscaster barked his news—of deaths and danger and city upon city destroyed by bombs—and Darlene’s mother continued to put marks upon her map, the tears streaming down her face. Quietly, I turned and walked back down the corridor to Darlene’s room and crawled into bed.

Sleep engulfed me—the kind that is exhausted and blank, no dreams, no experience of any kind. And then, breaking through the emptiness was the awareness of a sharp prodding at my shoulder. I shook the dreamless sleep from my head and opened my eyes to see Darlene sitting at the end of my cot. A very bright half-moon filled the room with light and lent an eerie glow to everything.

“Camellia, I’m sorry to wake you, but I have something I must ask you.”

I sat up; even in the heart of the night, the heat was oppressive. I could feel a layer of sweat covering my entire body.

“This is going to sound odd, but I sort of jolted awake with this feeling that I don’t know where you’ve come from.”

“I beg your pardon?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

Sleep hung fuzzily around me. Moonlight washed the floorboards white, hazing everything to immovable, ghostlike precision—the folds of Darlene’s blanket like carved marble, impossibly rendered, the dresser turned to mottled salt, and Darlene herself a china doll with perfectly painted features and glossy, lifelike hair.

“It’s funny—I know certain things about you. That you are my cousin Gloria’s cousin from Durban, and that you’re staying here because Gloria has the measles. But they’re just facts—not things I understand, if you know what I mean. I’m confused. I’ve known you such a short time. So how come I feel I know you deep down? And how did Mr. Van Graan know your name? It doesn’t make any sense!”

Darlene had clearly intuited something of the truth of my strange circumstances; perhaps it had come to her while she slept. I yearned to blurt everything out. To tell her about my ill mother in New York—Darlene’s own future daughter! To tell her about the extraordinary trapdoor in time I had tripped upon. How maybe this time travel had something to do with my own mother’s sadness and hope. I had an even stronger urge to tell Darlene how her life would unfold—that her dreams would sustain her and carry her halfway around the globe into a wonderful life, far away from this backward, bigoted place.

And yet I felt a compulsion—as if it were a command from on high—not to reveal these truths; I had the distinct feeling that to do so would be to disrupt history. How could I tell Darlene that in the future, she would be my grandmother? If I revealed her destiny—the reality of how her life did, in fact, unfold—would I not be opening the possibility of changing history? I would be changing the unknowable unfolding of the future into the undoable, fixed facts of the past, and I sensed that to do this would involve a serious danger of cosmic proportions. Darlene might find herself tempted to live things differently; she might not marry Grandpa Jack. My mother might not be born. Which would mean I would not be born—and not be here to alter things in the first place! Yes, that’s what must have happened in Australia, on my last adventure with Talia! It was when I blurted out the truth—that were I to tell my mother anything, I’d be telling her, Talia, not my classmate but my future mother!—that the earth tipped over and the world fell away. That’s how I lost them—Talia and Grandpa Jack. It had been a terrible mistake, allowing my fear and loneliness to get the better of me. But how was I to know what was right, here, and what constituted a mistake? Without any clear rules, no guidance of any kind?

My head reeled. But I did sense one thing, deep in my gut: I could not tell Darlene the truth.

I could, however, tell her how I felt.

Darlene was looking down at her lap. “You think I’ve gone crazy,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just that every now and then, since we were walking to school yesterday, I find myself feeling puzzled and wondering—”

“Yes?”

“Well, wondering, who are you?”

That question again. Talia had asked me the same thing, an eternity away, in Australia. Darlene was regarding me with deep and slightly baffled eyes.

“I’m just a fourteen-year-old girl in search of something,” I said.

Darlene seemed to be waiting for more.

“It’s like there are shadowy worlds behind my life—worlds I know nothing about,” I said. “Well, not in their details. But I do know what these worlds feel like. It’s funny, but I feel like in a way, they are part of me—that they define who I am in some important way. And yet—and yet—”

Darlene gave a slow nod.

“I think I know what you mean,” she said.

“You do?”

“I feel that way sometimes. Mostly when I play the piano or sing. Or sometimes when I listen to music.”

She turned away, as if overcome with shyness.

“What’s it like for you?” I asked.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” she said. Her voice was hesitant, and yet there was something bold and strong in it, something I’d not heard before. “I don’t know, maybe you’ll understand it—”

“Give it a try,” I said.

“It feels like music is—I don’t know, a person. Someone powerful—like an emperor or empress, maybe even a god. This—let’s call it a deity—breathes its life into the composer, and then, as I work through the piece and finally gain some mastery over it, I take up this same life-force. It becomes me and I become it. I feel frightened, but I also feel more alive—and less alone. Maybe not even alone at all!”

Darlene was suddenly glowing with light; her shyness had evaporated, her voice was strong and clear.

“And when I listen to a wonderful piece of music on the gramophone, it’s a bit like what you’re talking about. Like another world opens up right in front of me—” She gestured in front of her, cupping the moonlit air in her hand. “And all I have to do is close my eyes and tip myself into it. And there I am, far away from everything I know—from my family, from Koppies, from this place. But I’m also closer than ever to—” Darlene took in a little gulp of air and I saw that her eyes and her lips were trembling.

“To what?” I asked, my own voice trembling.

She closed her hand gently and placed it over her own breastbone.

“I don’t know, to here.”

I remembered something my mother once talked about. She often sat on my bed at night and told me wonderful things she had learned. Now, I recounted to Darlene the story of Plato’s Cave. The most famous of the early Greek philosophers, Plato had the idea that the world we lived in was really like a cave, and that the reality we knew was no more than the glimmering on the cave wall of images from another reality that we could never actually know. It intrigued me, though I couldn’t say I fully understood what Plato was trying to say.

Talking to Darlene, I glimpsed what this might mean. I had stepped outside the cave of my own world to discover other realities that all along had been glimmering within my own reality—my mother’s life, as she’d lived it, and now also my grandmother’s. Reflections of other distant, shadowy worlds that were in fact part of the world I’d taken to be my own.

Darlene gazed right into me with her illuminated eyes, but also through me to a distant, unimaginable world that was wholly her own.

“I know just what you mean,” she said. “I think I’ve felt the same way myself, though I’d never have been able to put it into words.”

Darlene shook her head, the same way Talia had shaken hers in a similar moment between us.

“But look, there’s something else—” Her voice was suddenly urgent. Only now did I notice that she was fully dressed.

“Darlene. Why are you dressed?” The chimes of the clock rang out. One. Two. “It’s two o’clock in the morning!”

“I can’t live here anymore. I’ve decided to—to—to run away!” she said. “I thought—well, I thought you might want to come with me.”

I sat up in the bed. “Where will you go?” I asked.

“To Joel’s. He’ll help me figure out what to do. Maybe he’ll even take me in himself.”

“But isn’t Joel here?”

“No. He had word yesterday afternoon that his grandson is ill. Joel’s daughter, the boy’s mother, is a servant in Johannesburg. My mother told him he could go last night, after we went to bed; she gave him tomorrow—I mean today—off to take care of his grandson until his daughter can get back.”

“But Darlene. Do you really think this is sensible?”

“I don’t care what’s sensible and what isn’t! I’m going—whether you come with me or not.”

“Very well, then,” I said. I was beginning to trust in the mysterious logic of this adventure; I had no place here other than with Darlene, no choice other than to go wherever she went. I threw aside the sheet, removed the cotton shift I was wearing and quickly got into my clothes. It was with some dismay that I looked at the ill-fitting, uncomfortable boots I’d had to suffer all of yesterday.

“Do you have any sticking plaster?” I asked. “I have awful blisters.”

Darlene opened her top drawer, where she seemed to keep what few treasures she had and removed a small cardboard box. She carefully removed its contents—only three plasters remained—and handed them to me.

“Thank you,” I said, and put them on the worst of the blisters. I stepped into the offending boots and laced them up.

Outside, the mild night air held a remnant of the day’s heat. The semi-darkness made my senses keener. I breathed in the unusual, pleasing scents of dry grass and unfamiliar trees and trained my ears on the rustle of leaves, the scuttling of night creatures, the soft whooshing of insects in their hectic swoopings.

Darlene broke into a run and I found myself racing beside her across the dry grass on the slope behind her house. We reached a low wooden fence and Darlene helped me over before climbing over herself. We had no trouble seeing in the light of the moon; it bleached the landscape to shades of glowing gray. My legs felt strong and energized, though we ran for some time, and I could hear my breath coming in short bursts. It was a comfortable flight; I gave myself over to the smells and sounds, to the unearthly light and exhilarating feeling of speed.

After a time, we slowed to a brisk walking pace. We passed by fields and here and there, modest brick or wooden homes, sometimes in clusters and sometimes alone. We came to a small cemetery. Darlene turned toward the rusted gate and reached for the latch.

“This is one of my special places,” she said, swinging the gate open. “I come here to think. It’s especially perfect at night.”

The cemetery was surrounded by open fields; in the far distance, almost at the horizon, I could just make out a small village of mud huts, much like the one I’d seen on our walk to and from school, though it looked to be a good deal larger. The same baked dirt walls, empty holes for windows, and heavy thatched-straw roofs. Darlene followed the direction of my gaze.

“That’s Joel’s village. We’ll go there just now. First, I want you to see the Jewish graveyard.”

We walked through the gate and Darlene latched it again after us.

“There aren’t many Jewish families left in Koppies. There used to be more. And there are quite a lot of Jews in Vereeniging.”

Darlene leaned down to the ground and hunted around. She found what she was looking for: two small, smooth stones. She handed one to me.

“Come,” she said, and I followed her to a small granite headstone. There could not have been more than a hundred graves in all.

Darlene knelt and placed the stone on the granite and then gestured that I do the same with mine. As I leaned over to place my stone beside hers, I read the name and dates engraved in the tombstone.

Rose Selda Shapiro.

February 26, 1928–December 10th, 1928.

Below this were several rows of Hebrew lettering I could not decipher. I wondered whether the writing was Hebrew or Yiddish, then felt a pang of sadness that I didn’t know the difference.

“My baby sister,” Darlene said. “She’d have been my older sister, of course, had she lived. Maybe it’s because she died as a baby that I think of her as little.”

She knelt on the ground before the grave.

“I like to come and visit her. Nobody else does, as far as I can tell.”

Carefully, Darlene pulled at some scraggly weeds that were growing around the edge of the grave.

“I feel like if I don’t come, she’ll be lonely. All she has is me.”

“Doesn’t your mother come? Or your older brothers?”

Darlene shook her head.

“No one wants to remember her. But no one seems able to forget about her, either. I feel like she fills up our home like a ghost. Don’t you feel it?”

I imagined Darlene was talking about the heavy, cold atmosphere of her home: the anger her mother seemed to push before her, like a black cloud.

“It’s because of how she died,” Darlene said. In the moonlight, I could see that Darlene’s jaw was clamped tight. “It was my mother’s fault.”

Darlene had no idea that I knew the story—of what had happened to Rose. She herself—not as Darlene, but as Grandma—had told me in her elegant home in Australia, far away from here in place and time. She could not know that she had given me Rose’s little pink booties, crocheted by her own mother so many years ago.

A chill ran up my spine; I reached into the pocket of my jacket, trembling with anticipation. The woolen booties were there, having survived another enormous tumble through time, having survived the storm and the changes of clothing and the running from here to there. I let my hand close around the soft yarn, held the booties tight.

“Rose was allergic to cow’s milk … well, it’s a long story, but all you need to know is that my mother ended up giving her cow’s milk on a train journey. The milk had gone bad, which made it even worse. Rose died, and my mother never forgave herself. She’s never said that in so many words, but daughters know their mothers.”

Darlene turned to look at me, her face filled with pain.

“She has no idea that I know these things. My mother, I mean. But I do.”

She reached up and touched the place on the side of her forehead where the wound from her tussle with the blackboard eraser was beginning to scab over. I recognized the gesture—Grandma had touched that place on her forehead in that very same way, that night we sat together in her house in a future far distant from this bright, moonlit night.

“It’s all inside of me. Right here.” Darlene placed her fist on her chest.

How could I not think of that oppressive darkness that sometimes smothered me? That felt as if it belonged—I don’t know, to someone else?

We sat in silence. Something passed between us—something delicate and yet vivid, like a moth with somber markings, making its way in the dark.

Darlene rose and together, we made our way to the gate.

Back on the dirt pathway skirting the field, our feet again flew across the ground—that wonderful, effortless gliding that left me feeling lighthearted and free.

The wide horizon and open fields and huge bowl of sky above me spread out in all directions for what seemed an eternity. As we walked, I realized the village was farther away than it had looked from the cemetery. The feeling of light-heartedness and ease slipped away and I became aware once more of my aching feet and the places on my heel and toes where the ill-fitting shoes painfully rubbed. I looked across to Darlene, walking beside me, her face determined and grim. Her feet must have ached, too; her shoes seemed as badly fitting as my own. I had the feeling that Darlene was used to all kinds of difficulties and discomforts, and to suffering in silence—and alone.

Finally, we turned onto a small dirt roadway and found ourselves among the thatched-roofed mud huts we’d seen from afar. The pleasant, earthy smell of baked dirt and reedy straw mingled with an assortment of animal scents—chickens, perhaps, and pigs—along with the smoky aroma of spent ash. Cooking odors hung in the air: savory meat and the husky sweetness of cooked cornmeal.

Darlene made her way deftly down one pathway and up another. No one was about, but I was aware of the heavy feel of countless sleeping people. Finally, we reached a large hut at the end of a row. Darlene came to a halt. She rapped gently on the rough wooden door in what seemed like a signal: two slow, hard raps followed by three quick, light ones.

Moments later, the door opened to reveal Joel, dressed in a robe made of colorful fabric of the kind I had seen in Brooklyn many years ahead in the future.

“Dear Lord mercy, Do-Do. What in heaven’s name are you doing here?” he asked, casting furtive glances up and down the pathway.

By way of answer, Darlene flung herself into Joel’s arms. For a moment, Joel looked alarmed.

“Do-Do, Do-Do,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “Come in, before anyone sees you.”

Not once had Darlene cried or expressed any real anger in the long day I’d known her, despite the many affronts and disappointments. On each occasion, she had gritted her teeth, seeming, in fact, to grit her entire being, a steely look fixed in her eyes.

Now, enfolded in Joel’s arms, she wept.

“Come, come,” he said, guiding her into the hut. I followed, closing the door behind me.

Inside, it was so dim I could make out only vague charcoal shadows, nothing but the suggestion of things. Joel stood and held Darlene, who continued her silent crying, her thin shoulders heaving pitifully. He stroked her hair, whispering in Zulu.

After some minutes, Darlene’s tears were spent. She withdrew from Joel’s arms and when she turned to me, I saw that her face was puffy and red. She reached into her pocket, drew out her frayed handkerchief, and discreetly blew her nose.

“Let me heat up some milk,” Joel said. “How you managed to make it here all by yourselves, I’ll never know.”

Joel lit a candle and the inside of the hut sprang to view: a simple, bare room with clay walls and a dirt floor, swept clean. Joel crossed to the far corner, where I saw that a wood-burning stove was built into the hard-baked wall. He lit the tinder that was under a black pot then took a jug from the shelf and poured in some milk.

Across from the stove, on a large woven mat, five little children lay sleeping, all lined up neatly together. I watched the slow rise and fall of their chests. In the far corner was a wooden table with four chairs.

“How is your grandson?” Darlene asked Joel.

“His fever broke an hour ago,” Joel said, nodding in the direction of the sleeping children. “Now, he’s cool and sleeping with his cousins.”

The children cuddled together, an arm curled here and there in embrace.

We sat at the table and Joel brought us each a mug of milk and a cornmeal biscuit. The milk was frothy and slightly sweet, the biscuit dense and delicious.

“Now, Do-Do,” Joel said, “tell me what this is about.”

Darlene’s face took on a pointy look of determination. “I woke up feeling I just couldn’t stand to live there anymore. I’ve felt this way before but somehow—” Now she glanced over at me. “I don’t know. It just seemed different this time. Like I wanted to do something about it. Maybe because Camellia is with me—I had the courage to leave them, once and for all.”

Darlene looked from Joel to me and then back again to Joel. Her lips trembled. “So, I decided to run away.”

“You decided to run away,” Joel said.

“Yes,” Darlene said, trying to muster the steeliness that she seemed suddenly to have lost.

“Do-Do, you know you can’t stay here.”

“But Joel, you’re my family!” Darlene glanced over to the children asleep on the mat. A fresh tear formed at the corner of her eye and slipped down her cheek. “Why can’t you be my grandfather, too?”

Joel’s face was kindly and sad. He shook his head.

“I can’t take you from your own people,” he said. “You belong with them. Besides, you know very well it would be impossible, even if I wanted to keep you here.”

He pointed first to his own face and then to Darlene’s. “Black. White,” he said.

Darlene nodded.

“It’s against the law. I’d be put in jail. Then where would they be?” Joel glanced over to his sleeping grandchildren. “They are my responsibility.”

When he uttered the word responsibility, he drew out each syllable, making the word sound velvety with love.

Darlene looked down at her shoes. “Am I not your responsibility, too?”

“You are. But I can best help you in your own home.”

Darlene said nothing; she only continued to look down at the ground.

“Your mother can be harsh,” Joel said. “It is true. But she’s not a bad woman.”

Darlene’s eyes burned. “Well, she’s not very nice. Not to me.”

“Perhaps not. But she loves you in her way. And she is your mother.”

“I wish she weren’t.” Darlene’s voice was rock-hard. “But she is. What point is there in wishing the impossible? It’s like a bird wishing it were a snake.”

Joel looked down at his own arm and then held it up. In the flickering candlelight, I could see his roughened palm.

“Do you think I wish I were born white? That my children and grandchildren were born white? In a country where you know what it means to be born black—could such a thought not have crossed my mind? I am a man, like any other. A man who wanted his children to have opportunities and hope. A man who wishes more than a man can wish anything that his grandchildren might live a life of dignity.”

Joel’s rich voice made the word dignity sound like the most beautiful word in the English language—which perhaps, after all, it was.

“What choice do I have?” Now, he pointed to his chest. “I am who I am. I was given this life, in this body, in this time, in this place. What can I do but make the best of where I landed?”

Darlene’s expression had softened; she listened as if in a trance.

“And you, Darlene, were given to this life in your body, your time, your place. You cannot change the family you were given into. It is up to you to make the best of what life has handed you. To make the best of who you are.”

Joel rose from the wooden stool and motioned for us, also, to rise. We stepped out into the night. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier concern, as if something of greater importance had overtaken the worry that we might be seen. The bright half-moon hung above the village, a thick crescent of otherworldliness, smiling sideways at our earthly plights. We walked away from the other huts, veering off the dirt pathway and out into an open field. I drank in the cool country air. The field inclined; on the downward slope, we came to a halt.

“Look,” Joel said, and he pointed to the horizon. “Do you see that?”

I squinted into the distance; there, a shimmering stroke on the landscape in the far distance.

“Bloedrivier,” Joel said.

I understood the Afrikaans at once: Blood River. But what did Joel mean?

“You know the story, from school,” he said.

Darlene nodded; she turned to me as if intuiting that I had no idea what Joel was talking about. And there it was again—that now-familiar, inscrutable look in Darlene’s face.

“Camellia, Joel is talking about the Voortrekkers, the pioneers who crossed the veldt in their wagons. They fought back when they were attacked by Zulu warriors. It was suicide—five hundred Boers against more than five thousand Zulus. But they won—such slaughter, the blood of the Zulus turned the river red.”

Now, Joel spoke. “My great-great-great-grandfather was taken from his mother’s arms soon after his birth by one of those Boers. Raised as a slave in their household. They say he was a sweet boy, a cheerful boy. His master favored him. He was already a young man when the master decided to join the wagon Voortrekkers and cross into the veldt to escape from the British.”

“The British,” Darlene said, as if for my benefit, “who ruled over the Boers.”

Joel picked up the thread of his story. “The Afrikaners were the only family my great-great-great-grandfather had ever known. Yes, they were his masters and he was a slave. But that was his life.

“When the Zulus attacked, I imagine he didn’t think about it. He did what his brave, loyal heart told him to do. He fought for the people he called his own—his Boer masters. He fought bravely against the Zulu warriors that were attacking the wagon trains. He was defending his master and his own livelihood. Those were his loyalties.”

Joel gazed off into the distance. The moon was losing the power of its glow in the glaze of early daylight, spreading across the sky.

“This is the story my mother told me when I was a child, younger than you,” he said, turning to face Darlene. “I often used to think about that ancestor of mine, when I was a boy. I would see him sitting on the banks of the river, after the battle was over, his spear in his hand. I would picture this brave warrior crying into the river of blood.”

“Joel, that’s awful!” Darlene said, looking at Joel in horror. “Why are you telling us this?”

Joel continued to look off at the horizon. “Camellia asked about the river.”

“Did she? I don’t remember her asking.”

“She may not have voiced the words, but I felt the question.” As he said this, Joel placed his hand on his heart. Then, he turned to me, with eyes I recognized. My heart was thumping so loudly in my chest, the others must surely have heard it. Jimmy! That’s where I’d seen the look in Joel’s eyes!

“Your friend. She’s very interested in rivers, I think,” Joel said. “Water. The source. We all come from the sea, isn’t that so?

“We must travel the river we’re thrown into. Every river has its story. Their sources reach far, far away—and their destinations, well, those are the greatest mysteries of all.”

Joel was trying to tell me something, I could feel it: to communicate an important secret. But I couldn’t grab hold of it. It seemed to slip right through my fingers like—well, like water.

“We do not choose the river we are thrown into. All we can do is ride the current as best we can.”

Joel shook his head slowly. “Do-Do, the older I grow, the less I understand about the heart of man. But I do know this. You cannot run away.”

I felt so confused. I did not understand why Joel had told us that terrible story about his ancestor. What was he trying to say? I could see that Darlene, too, was struggling to make sense of what Joel was telling us.

“You must know your own river if you are to rise above its currents and swim your way home. Running away from your family, from the truth of who you are, is not the way.”

Joel hunkered on the ground in front of us, his eyes deep pools of their own.

“I’ve lived with my great-great-great-grandfather all my life; he is here, in my own mind and heart.” Joel pointed gently first to his temple, then to his chest. “He did not choose the circumstances of his birth any more than I did. His fate was a terrible one—far worse than either mine, or yours, Darlene. Nothing can change where you come from. But you can find a way to ride the river away: to travel upon it toward a place that feels more right for you.

“Miss Camellia, tell Miss Darlene to see reason.”

“I can’t go back,” Darlene said, through silent tears.

“Joel’s right,” I said. “You can leave this place—when you’re older, old enough to make your own life.”

Suddenly, there before my eyes: an image of Grandma sitting in her beautifully appointed study, half a world away in Melbourne, Australia, a place my young companion Darlene could hardly have imagined. “Running away now—well, I can’t see how that is going to help things.”

“Your mother is surely very worried about you,” Joel said. “You must go.”

Joel walked us back to the dirt road leading away from the village and gave Darlene a tentative, brief hug. In her face, I saw wonder—to be finally experiencing the gift of his embrace. He turned to me, an enigmatic look in his face, and gave a brief, acknowledging nod.

“I’ll see you on Friday,” Joel said. “Now, Do-Do, be a good girl until then.”

We turned and began the long walk back to Darlene’s farmhouse. My strength had returned and I pushed ahead, trying to ignore the unplastered places on my feet where the skin burned against the tough leather. We walked almost the whole way in silence.

By the time we limped into Darlene’s yard, our legs aching and fresh blisters on our feet, the day had arrived and the household was beginning to stir. A thin spiral of smoke coiled up from the chimney and disappeared into the pale sky. We entered through the front door and hurried to the bathroom, where we washed our hands and faces, brushed our teeth, and tugged combs through our hair. Then, we rushed to Darlene’s bedroom and changed into our school clothes.

By the time we entered the kitchen, Darlene’s mother was serving up bowls of porridge, apparently unaware that we’d been absent and not worried at all.

“I’ve saved the cream,” she said in her husky voice. She seemed less grim than she’d been the previous day.

Darlene seemed excited at the sight of the thick cream sitting in a green bowl beside the porridge; it was clearly a special treat.

“Thank you, Mother,” she said.

“There’s a second bowl for each of you, if you’d like.”

I followed Darlene’s lead, sprinkling sticky brown sugar onto the oatmeal and watching it darken and melt before scooping a ladleful of cream into the bowl. Hungrily, we ate. The cream was delicious, like nothing I’d ever tasted before—silky smooth with a hint of natural sweetness. I’d have loved that second bowl, but we didn’t seem to have time. We took our empty bowls to the sink, picked up the sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and retrieved our satchels from where we’d left them by the door.

“Do well in school,” Darlene’s mother said.

“Thank you for breakfast,” I said. Darlene’s mother eyed me and gave me a nod. For the first time, I noted a look of vague curiosity in her face.

We raced out the back door and began the trek to the schoolhouse. The morning cool remained and yet I found myself feeling hot, as if the sun were already high in the sky. I reached a palm to my face and was surprised to find my cheeks burning.

“I expect you’re looking forward to going home,” Darlene said, throwing me a sideways glance.

Of course, I was looking forward to going home, though not to any home that Darlene could have imagined. I wondered, though, which home she meant. At the thought, I found myself feeling faint. My feet suddenly felt extremely heavy and I had to slow down. Darlene adjusted her pace to mine.

We came to the crossroads of the town, but instead of continuing on ahead toward the schoolhouse, Darlene turned left.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

“But what about school?”

“Everyone needs a day off, now and then,” Darlene said, a mischievous look in her eye.

A rooster crowed in the distance, way behind schedule. We were approaching a cornfield, dense with growth. The plants, which were about our own height, waved and rustled in the breeze. Skirting around the edge of the corn, we came to a hill. Darlene raced to the top; I followed as best I could, willing my heavy feet to speed up. What was wrong with me? I felt I was moving through molasses. I shimmied down the other side of the hill, coming to a stop by an unusually wide and gracious tree where Darlene stood smiling.

“I wanted to show you my favorite tree!” she said, grabbing hold of a sturdy, low-lying branch that stretched out almost horizontally from the thick trunk. “It has the most beautiful flowers in the spring. You must come back and see them—every bloom is perfect!”

Darlene’s voice was so full of feeling I thought she was going to cry. She climbed to a branch halfway up and sat in the comfortable-looking V where the branch joined the trunk.

“Come on! It’s stronger than it looks.” She encircled the trunk with her arm and kissed the tree’s rough bark.

Taking hold of the lowest branch, I gingerly hoisted myself up. I was not in the habit of climbing trees, being a Brooklyn girl. The awful pounding started up in my head; I did my best to ignore it. A few minutes later, I was up there with Darlene. I lodged myself in a second V made by another branch to the side of where Darlene was sitting.

“I’ve never had anyone else here with me,” Darlene said, her eyes shining. “This has always been my own special place. Now it can be ours.”

She reached into the pocket of her pinafore and drew something out.

“Here,” she said, “I want you to have this.”

Darlene placed something into my hand. I looked down to see the little china plate from her precious tea set: the sole surviving piece. The china felt smooth in my palm; I looked, for a moment, at the border of tiny painted roses.

“I told you that no one had ever given me such a beautiful present. When I opened the box, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

I recalled the horror in Darlene’s face when her brother had destroyed her treasure. Now, she was smiling.

“I’ve never had a friend my own age before. Having you is much more special even than the tea set.”

I didn’t know how to thank Darlene. The words got caught somewhere in my chest. As we smiled at each other, I noticed, for the first time here in South Africa, Grandma’s distinctive dimple just beneath the corner of her mouth, off to the side. Her face froze in that expression and made me want to weep. The branches were waving around her in the rising breeze, and now, from the corner of my eye, in ghostly negative, the outline of a rough cabin with a brick chimney shimmered within and beyond the leaves. I turned to see another image, the interior of a vast paneled room with tall doors, elaborate ceiling moldings, and high windows, also transparent, laid over the sky and the trees, shimmering all around us. I recognized the double exposure photographic images at once—we’d seen them in the gift shop at the Belle Meade Mansion, a world away. Before I knew Mama was ill. Before the storms had whisked me away from everything I knew and loved.

Now, instead of the cabin slave quarters and the elegant room inside Belle Meade, I saw Joel’s hut, with his grandchildren cuddling together in sleep on the floor, superimposed onto the outline of Darlene’s schoolhouse, her classmates scowling in the school yard, and pressed up against the chain link fence, the faces of the village children.

Darlene was smiling, still, and she reached out her hand.

“I’m just so happy you’re here,” she said.

“I’ve come from very far away,” I said, tears springing to my eyes, as self-pity gushed through me.

“Well, not so very far,” Darlene said, squeezing my hand.

I shook my head.

“What?” Darlene asked.

“It’s just—well, there are things I can’t tell you,” I said, the tears now falling freely from my eyes. “You see, I’m actually lost. And I’m so afraid—afraid that I’ll never find my way—”

Darlene’s smile fell. Her eyes were hard nubs of determination.

“I have a theory,” she said. “Everyone feels that way. Well, anyone who has any heart and soul. If your eyes are open just a little bit, you have to see that human beings are just about the most awful species on the planet. I’d take the tigers and panthers and lions any day. Joel says you get one life and you don’t choose which one you get given. But that doesn’t mean you can’t—”

“You can’t what?”

“Do the best you can with it.”

Her words held little comfort. I hung my head. A pang of anger spiked my heart and then fanned out and filled me. The world seemed such an awful place; you just had to touch the surface of it to feel the layers of suffering and injustice that went down, down, all the way down.

Yet here was Darlene, who had every reason in the world to feel angry and hard done by, her face alive with gratitude and joy! A little slug of shame crawled through me. Who was I to feel helpless? To give into self-pity? To allow anger to close me up and shut me down?

Darlene smiled again, the dimple popping back into place at an angle below the corner of her mouth.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s remember this moment—let’s remember it always! And make a promise! That in twenty years’ time—no, let’s make it longer! I don’t know, forty years! Wherever we are in the world, let’s write to each other! We can celebrate everything we’ve done in our lives. All the places we’ve visited. We’ll have families of our own! And I’m going to travel all over—really see the world! And—”

My mind clicked with numbers. Forty years from now, Darlene would be fifty-four. She’d be a mother and a grandmother. In fact, that very year would be the year I was born. The year she became the grandmother of me.

“No, we won’t write to each other!” I said, the feel of this perfect alignment of numbers like a plump little treasure in my hand. “We’ll be together! I know it!” I remembered my mother telling me that one of the most precious experiences of her life was having her mother—Darlene, the skinny girl with the curly, dark hair sitting here in the tree with me—coming to spend a month with us soon after I was born.

“Grandma adored you from the moment she set eyes on you,” Mama had said, showing me a photograph of me, a squishy newborn, lying on a mat with Grandma, whose arm was curled around me, her face glowing with the same expression of wonder and joy as I saw now in my friend Darlene’s face!

“We’ll be together, I know it,” I said, smiling at Darlene through my tears. “I can see us, there, on the mat—”

The most perfect thought had formed in my mind like a crystal, shiny and delicate and rock hard, and I was about to say something else, but the words were whisked from my lungs with the sudden crash of wind as an awful vise grip seized my already aching head. My hands flew to my temples, just as I felt the great push from behind and found myself tumbling forward, somersaulting widely, a much greater distance than surely existed between the tree and the dry yellow grass.

The new day, which I’d been so enjoying, with its deepening blue sky and fresh country air, was suddenly eclipsed by a growling thundercloud. The thunderclap that followed slammed against my ears; I thrust the little plate Darlene had given me into my pocket and clamped my hands over my ears, though they were little protection against the sound’s tremendous force. I closed my eyes, gave myself over to the tumbling, aware of tears welling behind my closed eyelids. I tried to keep Darlene’s smiling face in my mind’s eye, wondering what was happening back there for her. Wondering if she knew she had just lost forever her new—her one and only—friend.

Well, not forever, I suppose. If you could call the future, when I would come to her as her granddaughter, some kind of antidote for forever.

Is this why I’d always felt a special bond with Grandma—I wondered as the storm raged around me—because I’d known her in the past? Of course, this thought made no sense. How could I have known her before I was born—before my own mother was born?

My thoughts scrambled with the great cracking open of time. There was now only the heaving and spinning and pressure of darkness. I waited for the voice of my mother to pierce the terrifying blackness so that I’d know she was watching over me, so that I’d know she was showing me the way. But nothing came—no word, no feeling of care and embrace.

A great, aching loneliness welled up inside. I clenched my fists and prayed. Please, dear God. Help me find home.