Vain (13 page)

My breath rushed in and out of me in heady anger. “All the same,” I gritted. “I’d appreciate it if you got off your self-righteous pedestal and came back down to earth. I’m here to work. So let’s work.”

That’s the moment I realized that my attitude about feeling like being sent to Masego was the most unfair punishment in the world had disappeared the second I’d laid eyes on
Mandisa. It surprised me, shocked me, to be honest, but that didn’t mean I was going to enjoy my work at Masego. It only meant that while I was there, I wouldn’t feel as if a gross injustice had been performed against me. All I had to do was remind myself of Mandisa’s story.

CHAPTER
NINE

“Come with me,” a pissed-off Dingane ordered. He led me to his side of the hut and I followed him inside.
His bed looked plain and barely able to contain him, but his walls were covered in an eclectic assortment of belongings from pictures the children had drawn him to an acoustic guitar.
He slid a large tub out from underneath his bed and grabbed a stack of papers I’d seen in the back of the jeep when he’d picked me up from the airport.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Worksheets. Any time I’m in town, I try to get as many as possible.”
We walked to the classrooms and my heart started to beat erratically. I was nervous, really nervous. I wondered if the kids would see right through me, if they knew what a fraud I really was, that I had no business helping them, as I was the worst person I knew.

The door opened and I saw twenty smiling faces, happy and giggling. They
fell quiet as soon as Dingane and I entered the room. I gulped. Audibly.

“St
udents, you’ve met Miss Price—”

“Sophie,” I interrup
ted. “They can call me Sophie.”

Dingane
narrowed his eyes at me for interrupting but continued, “You may call her Miss Price. Should we try to speak English today? To make her more comfortable?” he asked them kindly.
Oh, I see,
I thought
. They get Dr. Jekyll and I get Mr. Hyde.

“Yes, Mr. Aberde
en!” they all chimed in wildly.

“Good. I’ve brought the new worksheets from town and I’d like to start on these first. Oliver?” he asked a little boy in the front row.
The boy got up quickly and began passing the worksheets around.

Dingane
closed the distance between us and I couldn’t help how much more nervous his proximity made me. Tried as I did, I could not get over how attractive I found him. “Think you can handle math?” he asked.

“I’ll try my best,” I sneered.

“Are you capable?” he asked again.

“Excuse me, but I attended the most elite prep school in my area and I graduated with honors, not that that’s any of your business. So, yes, I believe I am
capable
of handling third-grade math.”

“Fine.
All I want you to do is circle the desks and make sure they’re grasping the lesson.”

“I’ll
try, your majesty.” And that earned me an eye roll that simultaneously made me want to slap him and kiss him.

“Today we’ll continue with equations and variables.” I turned, expecting them all to groan and whine the way my classrooms back home would
, but I looked at the little faces and saw nothing but excited anticipation.

They
like
learning
.

I listened as
Dingane taught them how to solve for “x” in a simple variable and tried so hard not to let myself get distracted by his hands as they moved fluidly over the chalkboard. When the lesson was over, he and I both awkwardly danced around the other in attempt to avoid being near each other as we circled the desks. I’d barely avoided him when I noticed a little girl twirling her pencil in her hand and blankly staring at her desk.

I bent and sat on my heels next to her. “What’s wrong?” I asked too harshly. I cleared my throat. “What’s wrong?” I asked as sweetly as I could.

“I do not understand,” she stated clearly, no emotion in her voice.

“Here,” I said leaning over her a little, “let’s try together then.”

She scooted nearer to her paper and readied her pencil. “Okay,” I continued, “the equation reads, solve for ‘r’ when three times ‘r’ is twenty-four. Let’s imagine ‘r’ is a number. What number multiplied by three will get you twenty-four?”

I could hear her saying her times tables under her breath and when she got to her answer, she blurted, “Eight!”

“Very good,” I told her. “I wanted this to be simple for you to understand. Do you understand what they were trying to get from you now?”

“Yes, Sophie,” she said, making my heart race at the mention of my name.

“O-Okay,” I stumbled out, swallowing hard. “Now that we know what they were trying to get from us, let’s apply Dingane’s method. Shall we?”

“Yes.”

“If we know that three multiplied by eight yields us twenty-four, then twenty-four
divided
by three gets us eight or twenty-four
divided
by eight gets us three, right?”

“Yes.”

“And if three multiplied by ‘r’ is twenty-four, then we can take three from this side of the equation and divide twenty-four by it and that will yield us ‘r.’ What would we do if there was a division sign on this side of the equation?” I asked, pointing to the left side of the equation.

“We would multiply the number by the answer to get our variable.”

“Oh my word, you’re a genius!” I told her, squeezing her hand.

She beamed at me. “I understand now.”

“I’m so happy!” I told her and I was. Happy. Truly. “What’s your name?”

“I am
Namono.”

“It’s so nice to meet you,
Namono.”

She surprised me by throwing her arms around my neck. A swelling sensation invaded my heart and I’d no idea what it was but it was a good hurt, a hurt that felt worthwhile. I smiled at myself before looking up.
Dingane stood at the far corner of the classroom, peering my direction, but I couldn’t read his expression. My face flamed a bright red and I turned slightly into Namono to hide my reaction. Although I could no longer see him, his eyes still felt heavy on my head and shoulders. What I wouldn’t have given to read his thoughts in that moment.

The rest of the morning was full of math, math and more
math. At lunch, I waited in line a few children down from Dingane. Namono held my hand while the other children bombarded me with questions.

“Where do you come from?” a little boy asked.

“California. Do you know where that is?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, squinting his eyes as if he could imagine it.

“That’s okay. I’ll show you when we return to the classroom.” He was satisfied with that answer.

“Do you have a mother and father?” another little boy asked.

“I do.” I looked up and noticed Dingane had tilted his head, listening in.

“What are they like?” he continued, while the others’ eyes were rapt with attention.

“They are nice,” I lied.

“Are you married?” a little girl chimed in.

“I am not,” I chuckled.

“
Dingane is not married either,” she added for good measure.

I almost fell over in laughter when
Dingane’s shoulders tensed.

“He isn’t?” I asked.
“Why not?” Dingane stopped breathing altogether and I stifled the snort threatening to escape.

“He says he will never marry,” one little girl answered.

“Never marry. How interesting. Do you think it is because no girl will have him?” I teased.

He turned around then and shot me a look to kill
, but I just shrugged my shoulders in question.

“No,” she answered, “he is handsome enough.”
No kidding, kid.
“I think it is because he doesn’t think he deserves to marry.”

“All right, that’s enough!”
Dingane said, parting through the line of children before us like he was Moses and they were the Red Sea. “I have to talk to Miss Price. Excuse us.”
He grabbed my arm.

“He likes Sophie,” the little boy who had asked where I was from proclaimed, making me want to squeal in happiness at
Dingane’s obvious want to squirm.

I looked up at him as he led me away
, but he refused to acknowledge me.

“He does? I
do not think so,” Namono added.

“Yes, he stared at her in class all morning.”
My mouth gaped open at Dingane and he closed his eyes tightly before focusing them on me.

“I did n
ot stare at you,” he whispered.

“When I said I thought her the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, I asked if he agreed and he nodded his head yes,” the little boy added for confirmation.
Dingane led me to the front of the line. “Two, Katie,” he asked and she handed over two plates of rice and beans. I took one and he forced me to a table by the door.
We sat down and I just stared at him as he began to eat.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I told him, digging in myself.

“I was not staring at you,” he told his plate.
I leaned over. “Did you hear that, Dingane’s lunch? He was not staring at you.”
He looked up at me crossly. “I was not staring at
you
.”

“I never said you were.”

“I was merely explaining that Henry was exaggerating. I did not stare at you.”

“Okay,” I stated, implying in my tone that he had done just that.

“I didn’t. I-I wasn’t.”

“I believe you,” I told him.

“I may have looked at you a few times to make sure you were doing your job.”

“Oh, I see then.”

“But I certainly wasn’t
staring
.”

“We’ve established that you were not staring.”

He breathed deeply a few times, his eyes burning into mine. “Good.”

He’d definitely been staring. The butterflies in my stomach fluttered and flew.

When lunch was over, I circled the children’s desks while
Dingane taught penmanship, which was both in English and what I’d learned was Bantu. He then taught geography, where I got a chance to show Henry and all the children where California was, science, and we ended the day with an hour of reading then discussing what they’d read.

All in all, I was impressed with the day’s activities and knew those kids were actually learning valuable lessons they could take and create lives with. After school was out, all the kids congregated in the courtyard under the
baobab tree and played football with a ball that had almost completely deflated. My heart hurt a little when I saw that. I saw a flock of girls building little dolls out of straw. They had obviously zero interest in playing soccer and that made me laugh.

Dingane
caught my attention and pointed away from the children. “Kate, Joseph and Ruth will watch them before dinner. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Our day has only begun,” he explained.

“Who are the others I saw this morning around Masego?” I asked as
Dingane took me outside the fenced property.

“You’ve met Kate. Joseph does maintenance and guards at night occasionally when it’s needed. Ruth heads the kitchen and she and Mercy, who only works part-time, care for the laundry
, which is quite a task. Ruth is married to Solomon, who does maintenance and helps guard as well. They have two kids, Sharon and Isaac. They have their own home just off property.”

Dingane
stopped and cupped his hand over his eyes to see farther toward a grove of trees. “No, we’ll have to get my jeep,” he told me.

I followed him to his jeep and hopped in. “What are we doing?”