stars. With the band and whatnot.’
Godfrey harrumphed. ‘Asking to make a little money is only fair after five years!’
‘He says we have disrespected him and traded glories for pittances. He’s angry about the Just Rockets. Ati he didn’t teach us to defy gravity so we could dance for imperialist tourists.’
‘Ah-ah, but he is the one who taught us how to perform tricks for bazungu!’
‘Oh, mind you, he now says the space stuff was serious! Can you believe?’
‘Ha?’
‘Yes! Ati it was our true mission all along. The man has truly lost his mind.’
‘So now we were really-truly going to the abysses of outer space?’ Godfrey grinned. ‘Not secretly rescuing our nation from’ – he imitated Ba Nkoloso’s voice and diction – ‘bondage and the pangs of misery and the eternal tantalising agony of slavery, serfdom, servitude, imperialism and fascist colonialism?!’
They laughed together, their shoulders bouncing off each other. Godfrey sighed to a stop.
‘Where will you go now, Matha?’ he slurred, leaning back against the tree, his eyes sliding shut.
‘Mars?’ she chuckled wryly and took a bigger swig of their Mosi.
But hearing Ba Nkoloso’s scolding come out of her own mouth had only made her feel worse. Why had he shamed her for love? And why had Godfrey not said ‘where will we go?’ just now? It was a sad scene altogether. Matha cheered herself up with busyness. She paid the drinks bill, bundled the two former astronauts into the back seat of Reuben’s car, and slid into the driver’s seat. As she drove down the dirt road away from the shebeen, laughter began to wriggle in Matha’s belly. Blundering in and out of the ditches like this reminded her of the good old days, rolling down hills in drums for anti-gravity training. She looked in the rearview mirror to say so, but the men were both asleep, Reuben snoring like a warthog, Godfrey’s silver cape making him look like a big robot baby.
* * *
By her own lights, Nkuka was the only Mwamba who had made something of herself. After their mother had died in prison, and Matha had run away, their father had moved to his younger sister’s farm outside Kasama. By then, more schools were opening their doors to the female sex, and the neighbours were sending their daughters to be educated. Mulenga was clearly a lost cause. So Mr Mwamba sent Nkuka in her brother’s place.
Each morning at dawn, Nkuka walked two miles to the new Kasama Girls Secondary School. Nkuka was not as clever as her sister, and she was older than the other students, and there was one term when she had to drop out for lack of funds for the uniform and exercise books. But although Nkuka still despised Ba Nkoloso for ruining her family, her old tutor had taught Nkuka an important lesson at his Roadside Academy. He had shown her how to think like a muzungu.
When they put the 1965 Standard Exam in front of Nkuka, with diagrams and questions that made you choose from a list, she heard his voice clearly in her head. If you can see the tree, you can go to the tree. Here to there. If this, then that, and the same with the other. Nkuka found that she could pierce the clutter on the page and see the patterns beneath it. She was one of only three girls at Kasama Girls who passed that year.
Nkuka was eighteen years old by then. She had grown into her timidity, learned to infuse it with energy so that her shyness became coyness, her silence a kind of grace. And she knew how to present herself, how to keep her clothes clean and her hair and skin oiled. Her civics teacher began to take an interest in her. Mr Mwape was in his twenties, a thin, snivelling man who wore two oversized suits on alternating days and had bald patches in his afro like a diseased plant. One day after school, Nkuka brought him finkubala as a snack and asked if he needed any help. Soon, she was cooking his lunch and washing his two suits for him.
Mr Mwape convinced the headmaster to hire her for part-time domestic work, and her father to let her move from her aunt’s farm to the dilapidated quarters behind the school. Nkuka shared it with four girls, but she had her own tiny room, which Mr Mwape could now visit. She accepted his overtures, canny enough to keep it quiet and to keep it going,