stood and waded through it as if in a dream, tugged outside into the yard by the sight of her own silvered feet. A breeze passed and she shivered and looked up. There was a woman’s body swinging before her.
No. It was just an empty dress. The washing was still on the line overnight because, as Matha’s father often reminded them, Bernadetta was a terrible housewife. Matha heard her mother laugh again. Then she saw her, silhouetted on the other side of the hanging wash with another woman. Chitenge wrappers had turned their legs into tree trunks. Chitambalas peaked their heads with leafy ears. The wind blew against the wash. Their shadows wriggled and writhed.
‘If they think that they can lead a donkey to a muddy pool and make it drink, they are doubly wrong!’ Matha’s mother was saying. ‘They simply cannot go on beating people. Arresting them, imprisoning them without trial!’ Her voice splintered with rage.
‘That is correct.’ Matha was surprised to hear a deep voice coming from the other woman. ‘Banning the African Congress cannot stop the people from rising!’
The moonbright clothes flapped. Their shadows weaved and nodded.
‘Bernadetta,’ the booming voice went on, ‘are you ready to join this fight for freedom? Can you commit the way I have committed, even disguising myself to work underground?’
‘Yes, Ba Nkoloso.’
Matha covered her gasp with her hand. But why was he dressed as a woman?
‘Only the beaten body makes its cries heard,’ said Ba Nkoloso. ‘It is time to stage our rebellion.’
* * *
There was trouble in Luwingu. Fires were burning. Riots were raging. The mission school felt the tremors too. Students sang protest songs at break, pretending they were just games. Mr Chiliboy taught Antigone in the upper school. News of Ba Nkoloso’s subversions flickered along the rows of Matha’s grade four classroom like chitemene, which was itself the spark of the trouble. Chief Shimumbi had sent orders to burn the crops for cultivation. Ba Nkoloso had told the people to refuse. Chief Shimumbi had sent his kapasus to set fire to them anyway and called for the insurrectionist to be arrested.
The next morning, after Mass, the other students clustered around Nkoloso’s son in the open courtyard outside the chapel as he recounted what had happened next.
‘My father started walking towards the police and colonials and the kapasus. He said, “Then hangcuff me!”’ The boy stretched his arms forward in pantomime. ‘My father was ready! For the hangcuffing. But then,’ he paused, a natural dramatist, ‘the cloud came! The people said ati why should this man, my father,’ he put his palm to his heart with an earnest frown, ‘why should he be hangcuffed? And not the chief! Eh? And so then from there, it was rioting—’
‘Who was rioting?’ Matha stepped forward. Her mother had come home late last night, her voice and skin and clothing all dirty and scratched. Had she been in that crowd?
‘Ah-ah! It was all of the people,’ Nkoloso’s son scowled, displeased at the interruption.
Matha nodded, tugging at her tight collar. The boy stared at her.
‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What is your name?’
‘Matthew,’ Matha said, lowering the pitch of her voice.
The other boys glanced warily at each other. No one had let the new student in on Matha’s secret or their arrangement with her. He was too closely connected to the mission – his aunt, Sister Ernestina, was married to a teacher.
‘Matthew?’ he murmured suspiciously. ‘I know you from somewhere.’
‘Iwe, tell us what happened next,’ another boy spoke up. ‘Who threw the first stone?’
Matha scurried away from the courtyard, searching the grounds for her mother. They did not usually speak at school for fear of discovery. But Matha desperately wanted to set eyes on her. Last night, Matha’s mother had come home and lain down on her mat without even washing the soot from her face. The usual back-and-forth between Matha’s parents had been fearfully one-sided. Her father had run out of breath trying to fill the silence. He had shouted and cajoled and threatened to beat the words out of his wife, raising his fist over her only to lower it slowly under her mute animal glare…
There she was. Bernadetta Mwamba, disguised in her plain smock and bare feet. She was stooped over a patch of the garden with a girl, their hands busy in the soil. The girl picking vegetables looked up, sensing Matha’s eyes. It was Nkuka, also in a smock. She had just turned ten. She raised her hand in