The Old Drift - Namwali Serpell Page 0,131

still licking but nothing was happening. The mystery was revealed, the thing was dead. What else was there to see? They got up and strolled off, already knocking about for other ways to pass the afternoon. Jumani offered Isa a hand up but she shook her head. Awed, resolved to maintain her dignity and her difference from the boys, Isa stayed with Cassava and the dead pup. She was so absorbed in that hypnotic tongue rocking the corpse back and forth that she didn’t notice the girl until she spoke.

‘He et all the bebbies?’ the girl asked, then answered herself. ‘Eh-eh, he et them.’

Isa looked around and saw nothing. Laughter fell from the sky. Isa looked up. Ba Simon’s daughter was sitting in a wide crook of the tree, head hanging to one side as she smirked down. Chanda was nine, close enough to Isa’s age, but they weren’t allowed to play together because of an unspoken agreement between Ba Simon and Isa’s mother. Once, when they were much younger, the two girls had been caught making mud pies together. They had been so thoroughly scolded by their respective parents that even to look at each other felt like reaching a hand towards an open flame. Isa’s entrance into the Italian School had made their mutual avoidance easier, as had her innate preference for adult conversation and her recently acquired but deeply held feelings about the stained men’s t-shirt that Chanda wore as a dress every day.

Isa glared at Chanda’s laughing face.

‘He ate what? But anyway, it’s obviously a she,’ she said.

Chanda descended expertly from the tree, flashing a pair of baggy pink panties on the way down. Isa concluded that Chanda had been secretly climbing the guava tree during school hours and that she had stolen the panties off the clothes line. Chanda lowered herself to the ground.

‘His stomach has been velly low,’ she said. ‘And then pa yesterday? He was just crying-crying the ho day. Manje ona, just look. He is eating the bebbie.’

Isa was horrified, then dubious. ‘How do you know?’

Chanda, standing with her feet apart and her hands on her haunches in imitation of Ba Enela, nodded knowingly. ‘Oh-oh? You don’t believe. Just watch.’

Cassava’s licking tongue had not changed its rhythm, but her teeth seemed to have moved closer to the dead-eyed skull. Isa shuddered and scrambled to her feet. Mustering all her courage, she stretched out her bare foot and kicked the dead puppy as hard as she could away from Cassava. It tumbled away into the dust, a guava leaf trailing it like an extra tail. Cassava growled ominously.

‘Did she do that yesterday too?’ Isa demanded, reaching behind her for Chanda’s hand.

Chanda was silent. Cassava began scudding her distended torso across the ground towards the puppy. Isa glanced at Chanda’s face, which, in reflecting her own fear, terrified her further. Cassava wheezed and growled at the same time. Her thin legs twitched.

‘Let’s go,’ Isa said breathlessly.

And they did, their hands still clasped, Cassava baying behind them.

* * *

Isa felt buoyed by running, like it had released something in her. She let her legs go as fast as they wanted, relishing the pounding of her feet on the dusty path towards the servants’ quarters. It had been a long time since she had visited this concrete building at the bottom of the garden. When Isa was a very little girl, like Emma, there had been an emergency. Her father had drunk too much gin from his bleary glass and tumbled to the ground, his football stein clutched unbroken in his hand. There hadn’t been anyone to take care of Isa while her mother veiled up and drove the Colonel to the hospital. So Isa had gone home with Ba Simon for supper.

Instead of spaghetti con carne, they had eaten nshima and delele, the slimy okra dish that always reminded her of the shimmery snail trails on the garden wall. Ba Simon had been as kind and as chatty as usual, but the servants’ quarters had been dark and cold and oddly empty, his wife and daughter hidden away despite having cooked the meal. Isa had been relieved to hear the soft shuffle of her mother’s hairs on the floor later that night…

Isa stopped with a cry – she had stepped on a sharp rock. Her halt jolted Chanda, who was still holding her hand. Isa let go and lifted her foot to examine the sole. It wasn’t bleeding but there was a purple dot

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