her eyes on a boy at school named Mwaba. The only person she told about it was her best friend, Mutale, who was still in the dark when it came to desire. The girls were both in grade seven, but Mutale was two years younger. Sylvia had started school late, Mutale early – the reverse was true of their periods. Mutale was bright, smugly uncontested at the top of the class, and she looked the part: wiry, bespectacled, supremely indifferent as to the state of her hair. Sylvia, by contrast, was highly conscious of her appearance, though she couldn’t afford to improve her clothes or hair. Aunty Cookie’s patronage – the ‘Mummy’ act was only for Mr Mwape’s visits – was strictly limited to food, shelter and school supplies. The muddled mass of students found Mutale too smart, Sylvia too poor; the girls talked to each other because no one else wanted to talk to either of them.
The day love’s lightning struck Sylvia, the girls were sitting under the veranda outside a classroom during their ten-minute tuck-shop break. They ostensibly wore the same uniform: blue dresses, white knee socks, and black mules chalked with dust from the schoolyard stones. But if you zoomed in, you’d see that Mutale’s shoes were Bata-bought, real leather with sturdy binding; Sylvia’s were salaula, secondhand (or secondfoot), battered about the toes. Mutale’s socks were grooved fields of pristine white; Sylvia’s were grey, dimpled with stitches where she’d mended holes. Mutale’s dress was starched to paper-doll starkness; the seams on Sylvia’s sprouted threads like weeds from cracked pavement. To wit, Mutale Phiri lived in a three-bathroom house in Ibex Hill, with a gardener who watered the grass three times a week; Sylvia Mwamba lived in the Indeco Flats, where the plumbing often took sick days.
Sylvia sat with a bag of crisps in her lap, listening to her friend. Mutale generally gravitated towards two topics: her plans to become a nurse, and her new baby brother, whose bodily secretions were making her reconsider her choice of career. Today, she was expressing her wonder and disgust that an infant’s poo smelled so much like whatever it had eaten. Sylvia knew the only way to make someone listen to your shit was to listen to their shit – or their baby brother’s. But Mutale, mashed popcorn spilling onto her lips, was still going on about soggy nappies and a rainbow of poo and Sylvia hadn’t even managed a preview of her own news. She had actually spoken to a boy! And he had spoken back! Her stomach dove every time she thought about it. Sylvia looked down at the tomato crisps Mutale had bought for her at the tuck shop. Sunlight bounced off the shiny red packet, casting a pinkish smudge on her socks.
‘…just makes you think,’ Mutale was shaking her head. ‘How can I even be a mother when—’
The bell rang. Mutale finally noticed the dismal impatience in Sylvia’s face.
‘Pass me a note in fourth?’ she offered.
* * *
Sylvia composed the note during third – physical education. For the fifth day in a row, she would not be allowed to participate because she did not have a proper PE uniform. Sylvia was too ashamed to tell her aunty she needed new shorts – her period had leaked last month, sealing the fate of the old ones, which were already thin as paper and torn in places. The PE teacher didn’t even bother telling Sylvia off this time, silently directing her with a pointed finger to the side of the court. Sylvia sat on the ground, tucking her skirt between her thighs to cover her panties. She watched the netball game – shouts hitting the air, hands hitting the ball, bodies hitting each other – paying special attention to a bosomy girl named Nancy, her rival in romance.
Sylvia pulled her geography notebook out of her bag. The handwriting under each dated entry always started off fine, then gradually keeled forward, slanted flat, then straggled below the lines – she often fell asleep during class. Perched on her sentences like leggy red insects were the teacher’s excitable marks, all exclaiming what Sylvia already knew: that she did not care for geography. She tore out a page from the back of the notebook to write the note:
Hi. Am feeling confused I dont no whats going on with me but am going a bit insaaaane. I wish I could freese the world jast to think. In the morning HE toked to