Blonde Roots Read Free Page A

Duddingley who went off on the back of a cart and came back in her own carriage. Like her I’d be apprenticed for seven years; then I’d run my own business. First I had to persuade Pa to persuade Percy to let me go. I knew Pa would scoff at the idea of one of his silly daughters becoming a proper businesswoman.
    It didn’t put me off.
    The debt would take many years to pay off but eventually I’d be rich enough to settle it myself.
    I had it all sorted.
    As you do, when you’re ten.
    The cabbage came up with a huge clump of sod attached.
    I did a cartwheel, singing out, “Wey, hey, hey, the cat and fiddle and the cow jumped over the moon.”
    Oh, so it really sodding worked then, didn’t it?
     
     
    MEMORIES WOULD NOT GET ME to the station on time.
    I flew out of Bwana’s office like a leopard on kola nuts and rushed across the compound, the largest in the city. Across the freshly sprinkled, squeaky-green lawn, past the rockery studded with cacti, past the wide-hipped, big-mama palms of the pineapple grove, past the orange and pink slides and roundabouts of the adventure playground, past the saccharine scent of the mangosteen, pawpaw and vanilla trees, past the open-air swimming pool with mosquitoes buzzing over its stagnant surface, past the camel paddocks, and behind all that, finally, to the secreted slave quarters, which had been considerately built next to the sewage dump and pigs’ pen.
    There I entered the tiny hut I shared with my roommates: Yomisi and Sitembile.
    Yomisi was in her thirties, like me. Only she’d been born Gertraude Shultz on a wheat farm in Bavaria. Aged eighteen she was kidnapped by slave catchers as she made her way back from church one chilly Sunday morning, foolishly taking the shortcut across the graveyard. She eventually ended up in Londolo, sleeping side by side with yours truly. It was an unlikely bonding: I was the optimist, she the pessimist. I clutched my return ticket to my chest, always dreaming of escape; she’d ripped hers to shreds the very first time she was gang-raped by her three kidnappers shortly after capture.
    She’d been hell-bent on revenge ever since.
    Yomisi was Bwana’s cook. Steel-thin, green-eyed, heavy-lidded, she was forced to wear an iron muzzle in the kitchen to prevent her eating on the job. It encaged her face in metal bands that clamped a perforated plate over her mouth. A lock secured this contraption at the back.
    Her lips cracked. Her mouth dehydrated. Her tongue swelled. Her gums bled.
    Even when the muzzle was removed at night she spoke through gritted teeth.
    Sometimes Bwana vomited the night away or one of his children ran a fever. The runs were commonplace. Bwana’s regular hallucinations bordered on insanity, and the entire family frequently broke out in rashes so unbearable they could be seen clawing off layers of skin in a communal frenzy.
    All fingers pointed to the juju of Bwana’ s business enemies, none at the passive, sticklike cook.
    Crushed glass.
    Rotten meat disguised by strong herbs and spices.
    Fungi.
    Plants she would not name.
    It was the only thing that gave her pleasure.
    My second roommate was the cheery young Sitembile, who was in her early twenties. She liked to remind us lesser mortals that she was born Princess Olivia de Champfleur-Saxe-Coburg-Grimaldi-Bourbon-Orleans-Hapsburg in a palace in the ancient land of Monaco. Taken hostage in a war with the French, she was sold into captivity when her father, the king, wouldn’t pay for the release of a girl child when he already had five sons in line to inherit the crown.
    Sitembile held the honored position of household toilet cleaner, emptying approximately fifty toilet pots each morning, before spending the rest of the day scooping out the bog holes and hosing them down with lime disinfectant to deter bugs and flies.
    When time allowed, and it rarely did, she sat on our stoop, chattering away, embarking on a conversation in her head, letting the listener in halfway