he was about to lose a sale.
The girl turned and spat, ‘You can wait if you want my money, idjot!’ Her hand slapped the air and rose vertical.
Shocked and pleased by the girl’s rudeness, Sylvia smiled in solidarity. The girl smiled back, the kind of almost-smile that made you want to finish it for her, with a joke or a compliment or the tip of your finger if need be.
‘I need to resurrect mine,’ the girl said, raising her chitenge so that her foot emerged from its shadow. Her toenails were indeed a mess, the remnants of polish like the jagged outlines on the maps Sylvia had once gazed at blankly in geography class. But Sylvia was more struck by the fact that the girl was not wearing a skirt under the chitenge she had just lifted. She was so scandalised by that flash of smooth dark thigh that she almost didn’t hear the girl’s request.
‘Borrow me your polish?’
Sylvia nodded and jumped up. The decision was simple, quick, and entirely obscure to her. She ran over to the Indeco Flats, wriggled between the locked gates, jogged up the outdoor stairs, pulled her key from the knot in her chitenge, and unlocked the door. She quickly found the polish – the rich colour of the darkest menstrual blood – in her stash of Aunty’s old bottles, locked up again and ran back to the kantemba, smacking the thick glass bottle against her palm along the way, hoping the dregs weren’t too dry.
The chimanga boy was back to droning his prices at passersby and at first Sylvia thought the girl had already gone. But no, there she was, hunched slightly, biting into the scorched maize inside the newspaper cone, wincing at its heat. Sylvia, a little out of breath, handed over the polish. The girl swallowed her mouthful, wiped her hand on her chitenge and took it. She held it up to the light, then picked up the plastic bag at her feet and sauntered off, patapatas flapping.
‘Ta muchly! Ciao!’ she sang.
I’ll never see that polish again, Sylvia was thinking when the girl looked back over her shoulder with her incomplete smile: ‘See you,’ she called. ‘And it’s Loveness, by the way.’
* * *
Sylvia never invited Loveness inside the Indeco Flats. Once, when Sylvia was eight years old, she had stayed out after sunset, playing with the neighbourhood kids around a street light outside. Under its orange glow, Sylvia had put her hands on the other girls’ shoulders and circled her little hips, chanting: two-by-two-cata-pilla-by-two! Aunty had discovered her there, snatched her up by her collar and walloped her buttocks. Not for dancing like a grown woman, but for consorting with the poor. Sylvia made sure to keep her new friendship confined to Loveness’s abode.
This was an old security hut behind the Indeco Flats – a kind of open-air brick closet. Loveness had cleverly constructed a roof by lashing old plastic bottles together and weighing them down with stones. The light that came through that roof was murky, but sometimes spun with rainbows and when it rained, it sounded like you were inside a giant silimba. Loveness kept an mbaula outside, where she fried vitumbua to sell. She told Sylvia she had chosen this place after running away from her uncle’s house.
‘I just left,’ Loveness said with a toss of her plaits, which she had been on her way to get done when she met Sylvia – the bulging bag had been full of wig. ‘I got tired of that man making moves. Anyway, he was too big for me. Ouch!’ Loveness giggled. ‘Pass the ciggies?’
Sylvia handed over the box of Pall Malls. Loveness lit one, inhaled, then blew out a steady stream of smoke. She offered it to Sylvia, who declined.
‘You know, in this life’ – Loveness sucked musingly on the cigarette – ‘all you really need is love.’
Sylvia nodded, wondering whether to tell her about Mr Mwape or Mwaba or Francis.
‘That’s why I changed my name.’ Loveness tilted her head and smiled as she sang it out: ‘Loveness!’ She always pitched her voice higher when she said it. ‘Doesn’t it suit?’
Sylvia nodded again, looking at the cigarette. She had never seen a girl smoke. Impulsively, she plucked it from between Loveness’s fingers and sucked on it softly – puff puff puff like a toy train.
‘No,’ said Loveness, plucking it back. ‘Hold the smoke in your mouth, then breathe it in.’
She demonstrated, then placed the filter between Sylvia’s lips. Sylvia