Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (12 page)

“We eat with our forks here, please, dear, or we don't eat at all. We're not savages, are we, now?” said the woman. She looked more closely at Will. “Are you new, dear? What's your name? We haven't seen you before, have we?”

Will's ball of rice had dropped from her fingers. She tried to cover it with her arm as she said, “Will. I'm Will,
ja
. I—”

“Oh, dear! Get a cloth and wipe that up, Will. And I'd like you to wash your hands and face, please, before you come back.”

Will turned away from the snortings and spittings of laughter as she pushed back her chair.

“My God! Did you
smell
her?” Will did smell, she knew—of woodsmoke and Kezia and grass. Her boot connected with the girl's chair leg as she passed, but then her chest burned and flushed with shame and she latched her fingers into a knot so they couldn't strike out. Will only fought her equals.

“Like a savage. Do you think she bites?”

“Is
that
the new girl? I thought it was the cleaner's daughter.”

“Looks like she belongs in a
zoo
.”

“I thought Samantha was exaggerating!”

“I
told
you so!” That was Samantha.

“Did you see her shoes?”

“Is she wearing
shorts
? In winter?”

“Did you see what she was eating? Four chocolate puddings. She'll get fatter than Sofia.”

“And did you see her
hair
? She could have a nest of rats in there.”

“Bet she doesn't wash.”

“Bet she's got
nits
.” Will tried to run, but her laces were tangled and she tripped.

“What's wrong with her?”

“Do you think she's mad?”

“Do you think she's dangerous?”

“Hold your breath. She's coming.” One made gagging noises.

Will couldn't bear it. She put her hands over her ears and hurtled down along the last tables of girls and out into the playground.

It was drizzling and deserted, and the asphalt was cruel and icy when she sat on it. She struggled to force back the embarrassment, but it insisted on rising up from her chest and out through her eyes. The captain had insisted on forks, but her father had not. Tears worked their way into her mouth, and she sniffed. The teacher had been wrong to talk about savages: Simon and Lazarus never used forks, and neither did Shumba or Kezia or Will.

The rain fell more heavily. Will crouched, African style, with her back against the wall and her chin on her knees, breathing quick, shallow breaths. Her chest felt hollow, and she had never been this kind of frightened before—shocked and shy and bewildered. This was not the marvelous-mad-adrenaline fear of snakes, or the rollicking fear of an unruly horse. It was something else.

Will wasn't sure how long she squatted there, alone in the
wet. She could feel she was on the brink of falling into miserable sleep in the rain, when an alarm sounded, high and shrill across the playground. Like a cat Will was up, ready to run if the alarm meant fire or raiders or flood. The bell kept ringing. Oddly, there were no screams.

A girl appeared, one of the twins Will had seen at the other end of the table. She stared at Will's dripping taut face. “Hello. You're Will, aren't you?”

“
Ja
.” Will pulled herself to her feet.

“Hi. My name's Hannah. They said I had to fetch you for math. The bell's just gone.”

“Oh.” Will unclenched her fists.
“Oh.”
There were purple ridges along her palms where her nails had bitten her skin.

Hannah appeared to be embarrassed about something. “Will? I don't want to be rude—but, did you know you've got stew in your hair?”

“Oh.
Ja
. I did.” Will lied. She put her hands to her face, but she was drenched and shivering, and her fingers were numb, and she could have had a three-course meal on her head and not have felt it. Will smiled, a little, at the thought, and the girl must have thought it was aimed at her, because she smiled back, showing metal on her teeth.

“Are you going to wash it out?”

“
Ja
, of course. I
do
wash. Sometimes. But there's not time now, is there?”

“No, I suppose not. Wait a second, though. Hold still.” Will saw the girl was taking out a brush from her backpack, and without thinking, Will backed away and let out a little cry. She couldn't bear strange hands now.

Hannah looked astonished. “I wasn't going to hurt you!” She turned and headed toward the classrooms.

Will had no idea what to do. She said, “Oh. I— Wait—I didn't mean . . .”

Hannah didn't turn round. “Come on. It's fine. If you want to be called a savage, that's not my business.”

In the classroom Will was given a desk with a fake wood top, a plastic pen, and a book. The teacher sat at the head of the room. If, Will thought, she could spend the day reading, not talking to anyone, it wouldn't be so heart-numbingly bad. With rising hope, she opened the book.

It was a mess of numbers.

Will said several forbidden words under her breath. “Oh,
penga
.”

The girl next to her was staring. “Did you say something?”

“Nothing. I— No, nothing.”

“Really?” The girl turned round in her desk to make
expressive faces at the girls behind. “Right. We're not really supposed to talk, you know.”

Will could add and subtract, and she knew, in theory, about multiplying. But there were letters here, mixed up with the numbers; it made no sense. She forced herself not to panic. She rubbed the paper between her fingers. It didn't become clearer. She scratched it with her thumbnail. She smelled it. It was still incomprehensible.

According to the name at the top of her worksheet, the girl next to her was called Joanna. She had red hair and very small eyes. She looked over Will's arm at her blank page and laughed.

Will said, “What?” She allowed herself to half-smile. “
Ja
? What's so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“You! You can't do basic algebra.”

“Oh.”
Will sat on her hands. “Is this algebra?”

“Very
basic
algebra. We don't do proper algebra until year nine. Can't you even do long division?”

Will said nothing; she fought hard not to jab her pen into Joanna's face.

Joanna said, “Do you know quadratic equations? I do.”

“What're they?”

Joanna smirked. Will did not roll up her exercise book and force it up Joanna's nose. She whispered instead, soft, behind her hair: “Truth, hey, dear heart, and courage.” It did not work.

“Oh, God!” said Joanna. “You needn't cry. Just because you don't even know your times tables.”

“I'm not crying,” Will said, “and
ja
, I
do
, actually.” It was a lie. Could other people tell if you were lying? “I
do
know my times tables.”

But in fact, as the day went on, it became obvious to Will that she knew nothing. At every lesson they made her sit at the front, in the middle of the row—“Just until you settle in, Wilhelmina”—and the girl they had forced to sit next to her would edge away and make expressive faces at her friends and then sigh and say, “Miss Smith!” or “Mrs. Robinson!” or “Miss Macintosh! Will can't do the work.”

In that gray blur of a first day, Will learned many things. She discovered that times tables had nothing to do with time, nor, in fact, with tables; that history was not (as Lazarus had said, and she'd believed him) a thousand stories building up into the colossal, strange, heart-stoppingly beautiful tower of the present; that knowing about cows and snake bites and birth and umbilical cords was irrelevant in science class. She learned also that her shorts were wrong and she had gypsy
hair and she wasn't funny, wasn't clever, and looked like a mad tramp in her thick socks and muddy boots.

They happened upon Will after dinner, her crouching on a toilet lid and eating a hot chicken breast with her fingers. Samantha called the others, Joanna and Louisa and Bex, to watch. They were pretty even when they jeered.

“I hate them,” whispered Will. The hair on her arms stood up when they came near.

I
T WAS TERRIBLE TOO AT
night.

Miss Blake, the headmistress, escorted Will to her bedroom personally that first day—an honor, though Will didn't know it. Mrs. Robinson walked on her other side, like a prison guard, Will told herself.

“This will be your room, Will; and that's your bed.” Miss Blake had dark hair and lips the color of a flame lily. She was the only colorful thing in the room, Will thought. “You should be pretty comfortable, I hope, once you get used to the detergent smell. I don't suppose you had Persil in Africa. Beds are like shoes, Will. They need wearing in.”

Will wasn't listening; she was looking. The room was tiny and dark. There were burglar bars on the window.
Somewhere above her head, Mrs. Robinson was saying something about lights-out at nine and not wasting water. The room smelled foul—of eggs and feet and the eternal indoors. It was the smell of
English
. She edged to the window and looked out. There was a parking lot, a potato chip bag, and a very flat pigeon. Two of the three beds were surrounded by photographs of men and women and blond girls torn from magazines. Will touched a photo. They all had careful smiles and odd, fake-looking skin.

“Wilhelmina! Please don't touch other people's belongings.” Mrs. Robinson's voice was sharp. “We need to have rules, Wilhelmina, and respect for others is one of the most important. Come here and unpack. I see you're nice and snug in the corner.”

The third bed had her suitcase on it, and a bedspread that was probably meant to be a calming shade of nothing. It was the color of a rat's tail.

Miss Blake smiled from the doorway. “You'll share this with Samantha and Louisa; Mrs. Robinson thought, as you met them first, that would be easiest. Take your time unpacking. There's no hurry.”

“Ja.”

“And you must tell us if there's anything you need. We're delighted to have you, Will.”

Will tried to reply, but by the time she had untangled her brain enough to talk, Miss Blake was gone. Desperate, Will caught Mrs. Robinson by the sleeve as she went out. “Please, ma'am . . .”

“Yes, Wilhelmina? You know, you don't need to say ‘ma'am.' Call me Mrs. Robinson.”

“It's just . . . they promised, at the farm,
ja
? That I'd be able to sleep where I liked. Outside, Cynthia Vincy said. She
promised
. I'll . . . I can't . . .” To her fury Will found she hadn't words. The room was so small; and with those windows, it was a cage. It would be like sleeping in a nightmare. “Can I have a bed by myself? Outside? I could make a tent? Please? Or even I could sleep in a tree, with my blankets? Please? I won't sleep in this room.”

“Wilhelmina! Please, my dear, have a little sense!” Will watched, desperate, as Mrs. Robinson's glasses misted with amusement.

“Please.”

“Can you hear that, Wilhelmina? It's hailing.”

“I wouldn't care,
ja
. I could buy an umbrella.”

Mrs. Robinson laughed. Her laugh, Will thought, was extraordinary. It involved none of her facial muscles. “I'm afraid that's just not practical, my sweet.” She paused in the doorway. “This is England, my dear! This is the land of common sense.”

Will had nightmares that first night. Samantha and Louisa took from under their pillows cotton suits patterned with rosebuds. Will watched from her corner, fascinated.

Until Samantha said, “What are you staring at? Don't you have pajamas?”

“Pajamas?” Will stopped with her T-shirt half over her head.

“What do you sleep in in Africa?” said Louisa.

“In—in my underpants.” Will could feel her face flaming.

“That's disgusting.” That was Samantha.

“Yeah. That's
disgusting
, Will.” That was Louisa, Samantha's echo.

“You can't sleep in your underpants here. It's against the rules.”

“Is it? Are you sure?” Will couldn't remember it being on the list stuck to the door.

“I
said
it is, didn't I? You can't sleep like that, all right? You don't want me to have to put glue on your flannel.”

Will said nothing. Every finger and every muscle was trembling with exhaustion. She put back on her damp socks, her too-small sweater. She laced up her boots and lay stock-still on the bed.

“Is she wearing her
boots
?”

“D'you think she's contagious? Can you
catch
madness?”