I watch her shadow as she stalks across the courtyard, her heels stabbing the sand. She avoids the patch of the principal’s Ireland and steps up into the open door of his office. He’s either on the phone or about to be, his big hand reaching for it. Who he talked to we never knew, although he always seemed to be ordering supplies and books we never saw.
I’m doing a reading-comprehension drill. I have just read them a story about a mischievous boy named Tom and his wily teacher, Sir Joseph Blinks. Now the question is: Why does Sir Blinks mistrust Tom?
I stand near my open classroom door. I hear her ask for construction paper. I look back at my class. Most have their heads down and are doing their best to write something, except for Rubrecht Kanhala, who knows I’m only trying to run out the clock before third-period break. He’s thumping the end of his nose with a pencil. Sir Blinks doesn’t know shit.
I step out and wander halfway up the porchway and listen.
“You need to fill out a requisition form.”
“Give me a form, then.”
“The forms are finished.”
A long silence. Outside Pohamba’s class a boy whacks two erasers together and gags on the chalky smoke.
The principal is sitting. Mavala is standing. His finger is poised in mid-dial of the rotary. She watches his face. If only she’d slacken a little, this young sister of his wife, and behave more like a woman is supposed to. He could make things easier for her. She need not acknowledge his authority—of course she needn’t go that far—but for God’s sake, won’t she look at his existence as flesh, as a man with hands and blood and cock and need and eyes?
I don’t have to see any of this—it’s all there in the silence. Power is easily spent—you can always get more later—but as far as she’s concerned, he can keep it and play with it. He sees this, and it only makes him sweat watching her. Her: Go ahead. Cower beneath me with your principal stomach, your principal key chain, your principal phone in your hand. She doesn’t leave, only stands there, in her sleeveless blouse, with her bare shoulders. Stands there like a taunt. A few minutes more she’s in that office. Maybe she’s going too far—stepping on him too much, too easily, too early. She hasn’t been back a month. There’s no more talk of construction paper or forms.
She leaves empty-handed and heads back across the courtyard—this time she tromps straight across Ireland—toward her class, which is waiting silently (itself a miracle at Goas). She’ll ask Obadiah for some construction paper. No, a better idea. She’ll take her boys to the veld and let them draw on the rocks like Bushmen. A few minutes later, I watch them file out, her ducklings, two by two.