Fuzzie was playing “All Things Bright and Beautiful” on the upright piano, using the damper pedal for dramatic effect, and thumping loudly. Usually, we would make the sign for the organ grinder behind her back, but today we were not doing so; from the corners of our eyes we were watching Miss G’s entrance.
She strode down the aisle, her long arms swinging martially at her sides. Her sable eyes blazed, and she held her head high, tipped by her aquiline nose. Like the prow of a ship she dipped and rose proudly over the waves. Her tanned skin glowed. She stirred us with the rustle of her impeccably starched jumpsuit and the triumphant creak of her highly polished boots. She was no longer scratching with the tips of her blunt fingers, and we stopped scratching, too. She had regained her exciting air of recklessness.
The rest of the staff filed in at a distance from her, as usual. They came in pairs, hands folded and heads bowed demurely, in belted cotton dresses of pale pastel colors: mauve, light blue, and beige; Mrs. Willis wore gray, as if to match her skin, discolored from smoking too many cigarettes.
The teachers slipped silently into their places in the chapel pews and sank with a sigh of soft dresses onto their knees,, burying their pale faces in their arms or hiding them in their hands. Miss G sat on the other side of the aisle from them, head back, one leg crossed over the other, one arm dangling irreverently over the back of the pew.
What happened to Fiamma in chapel
We heard a great clatter at the back of the church, and the whole school turned around with a rustle of starched white Sunday dresses, sounding like a wave breaking on the shore. “I heard her swear under her breath, saying something in Italian that sounded like a curse,” Fuzzie told us afterward. Fiamma was at the back door of the chapel, looking very pale, pumping her inhaler for breath and, when she had regained it, crossing herself, as she deep-curtsied in the aisle.
We had just sat down after singing to Fuzzie’s accompaniment when Fiamma came in and knocked a heavy hymnbook onto the floor from the table that stood between the two back doors.
She slid into the last pew and sat beside Di, who rose to her full height and moved further along so that Fiamma would be sitting at the end of the pew, beside Ann. We turned around to catch a glimpse of Fiamma as she sat down, an expression of defiance on her face.
She said nothing to Ann, who moved slightly away from her as well, sliding onto the blue kneeler for the prayer.
While we sang “Ride On! Ride On in Majesty,” Fiamma grew increasingly pale, and even Ann’s sallow skin looked rosy beside hers. Then we heard a dull thud, as Fiamma slumped forward in the pew and her head struck the wood. She had never fainted before – never made herself faint for Miss G the way we all had done – but she fainted that Sunday morning. Perhaps she did not make herself faint for Miss G at all; perhaps she just fainted.
Miss Nieven, who was at that moment climbing the steps to take up her high position in the granite pulpit for her sermon, glanced back on hearing the thud, clasping her ivory-backed prayerbook to her flat spinster breast, as if she would rush down from the stone steps to assist the Princess. But we heard the squelch of Miss G’s crepe soled boots as she strode fast along the blue-carpeted aisle to rescue Fiamma. Miss G stood over Fiamma possessively and glared about with a look which was both menacing and aghast.
It was Fiamma whom Miss G rescued on the Sunday Fiamma disappeared.
Our hearts fluttered, as we watched Miss G making Fiamma put her head down between her knees and then leading her down the aisle, her head drooping limply onto Miss G’s shoulder, feeling Miss G’s breath on her cheek, the soft swell of her boosie, we could see. We saw the light streaming in aslant through the narrow stained-glass window: red and blue and yellow, like a rainbow.
Miss G led Fiamma out into the cool of the garden, and Fiamma sat on the white washed wall under the loquat tree in her white Sunday dress and undid the mother-of-pearl button at her neck, we all imagined, a we stood to say the Nicene Creed. I believe in God the Father, and God the son, we intoned, thinking of Miss G sitting on the wall beside Fiamma and smoking a cigarette, holding it under her hand, so Miss Nieven would not notice if she came upon her suddenly. When Miss G told Fiamma to, she must have taken off her panama hat and set it down on the wall. Fiamma must have leaned her head against Miss G’s shoulder. It was Fiamma who got to sit there under the cool dark leaves of the loquat tree an feel the breeze lift the hem of her tunic very gently and watch Miss G blow smoke rings, until she asked if Fiamma felt all right now, in her deep hoarse man’s voice.
On the front steps
On the afternoon Fiamma disappeared we were told to gather on the front steps of the Dutch-gabled school building. We milled around on the red, polished front steps where the two friable sandstone lions stood, and still stand, like sentinels.
Our heads throbbed, and we were nauseated. The twins threw up in the hydrangeas, then sprawled on the steps, their knees apart, wiping the spittle from their wide mouths and holding their flat foreheads in their hands. The sickly scent hung in the heavy air.
The sun disappeared behind clouds, but it was still hot. The oak trees dipped down, dark and heavy. There was a whine of mosquitoes, and from time to time a hand slapped against and arm or a leg, catching a slow one. We waited to line up, grumbling about having to go off on a walk in the early afternoon, rather than being allowed to plunge into the cool of the pool, just because of reports of a thundershower and the other teachers’ fears of lightning. Usually, Miss G would shield us from their fears, but not today. Perhaps it was Miss G herself who had suggested this walk.
No one knew why we were kept waiting so long in the heat before starting on the walk. Perhaps, had we left sooner, nothing more would have occurred.
Preparations for a walk
Even with the cloud cover it was getting hotter by the minute. We sweated in our earth-colored tunics, our heavy lace-up shoes. We were trying to shake off the aftereffects of the midnight feast: the sardines floating in oil, the peaches swimming in syrup, the spiked pineapple juice. We were thinking of Fiamma fainting in chapel.
Meg said her mother had often fainted when she was preggie. One time Meg saw her mother fall down from the table where she was turning around, having a hem pinned up. Perhaps that was Fiamma’s problem, Meg lisped. Ann told her not to be so dumb: Fiamma had not even got the curse, so how could she possible be preggie?
Fuzzie said, “Maybe, if you do it with another woman in the dark, you can get preggie.” Ann told her not to be so absurd, that you needed a man, obviously.
“Well, she could have been more of a sport and waited a couple of weeks before taking her turn to faint; she was just showing off, again,” Di said, scornfully.
“And did you see how she upset Miss G?” Mary added.
Fiamma at last sauntered up and sprawled alone in silence in the shadows of the lions on the last step of the Dutch-gabled building. She sat, tracing letters in the dust with the end of a stick and then erasing them with her lace-up shoe. No one sat near her. Ann remained perched on the step above Sheila and began reading The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Gaskell in a small, blue, leather-backed volume Sheila had lent her.
We grew silent when Miss G approached.
Miss G and Fiamma
We turned quiet as Miss G came striding through a side door in her usual uniform of crepe-soled boots and khaki jumpsuit. She stood before us; she looked up the stairs. Her clothes were as neat as ever, her boots as highly lacquered, but, for the first time, Miss G’s eyes were shaded form the glare and from us by small, round, wire-rimmed sunglasses. The glasses glinted at us ominously in the glare. She asked us what we were waiting for, kingdom come? Why had we not lined up by now? She told us to hurry up and get lined up two by two. We could see she was in an anxious mood.
Miss G strode over to Fiamma and bent toward her and asked her something, probably if she was feeling better. Fiamma slumped sulkily in the shadows. She traced letters in the sand, her head slightly to one side, her skin so white and her hair so pale she looked almost as though she did not exist. She did not bother to look up. We heard her say quite clearly in her bored, truculent tone that she was suffering from pains. Miss G bent her head down further and whispered something softly. She must have told her to hush.
There was a pause, a moment of silence. We all looked at one another, raised our eyebrows, goggled our eyes. Miss G crouched down beside Fiamma; she put her arm around her shoulder, and shispered in her ear. We could see there was more than longing in Miss G’s eyes now; there was fear. Cajoling, we could see, Miss G was cajoling; she was making promises. She was placating. She was making jokes. She was trying to make Fiamma smile.
But Fiamma did not smile. She did not even pay attention to Miss G. Fiamma was enjoying her moment of power, we were sure. Instead the same distant look came over her face as it had the first time we had seen her in the dormitory. She seemed to look through Miss G, as though she did not recognize her, or as though she were not there, as though Fiamma were staring at the hydrangea bushes behind her where the Trevelyan twins had vomited.
Fiamma flicked her pale plait back from her shoulder and looked around distractedly. She rose and walked away from Miss G slowly in her careless way and went toward Ann, but Ann already had a partner. Ann was standing next to Mary Skeen, so Fiamma was obliged to follow along at the end of the line, alone.
The walk itself
There was nothing but heat
And above, the white sky.
We did not know whom we would meet
Or where Fiamma was to lie.
We followed Miss G down the driveway in silence. The sun had softened the recently tarred surface, and our heavy lace-up shoes pressed into it. We smelled the tar, as we walked, two-by-two, through the iron gates and across the veld. We stumbled on in our dark brown tunics. We were lost out there. There was nothing to see except dull fields and a sky, scattered with an occasional cloud, black-bellied and bulbous, and in the distance a shimmer of heat.
The light, the odors, the fatigue, the nausea, the memories of the night before – flashes of white flesh in the moonlight, Miss G standing with the scarf like a halter around Fiamma’s neck, made it hard for us to think straight. Occasionally, one of us dropped down into the long grass and wriggled forward in the dust on our stomach and elbows, playing Red Indians, as we had done as small children. The twins and Mary started to play horsie, but Miss G soon put a stop to childish games. Fiamma dragged her feet at the end of the line. She looked sullen, with her pouting mouth.
Miss G suddenly burst into song. She had a sweet Welsh voice that her strong appearance belied. As she sang, she swung her arms. She recovered more and more of the bounce in her step as we went along, going farther and farther from the school into the wilderness. She strode on beside us, hatless, slim, and strong. She looked brave and beautiful. Behind her dark head the sky seemed whiter. We took it all in: the vast sky, the gray branches of a dead tree, the silver wattle leaves scintillant in the valley, the low, blue hills crouched menacingly in the distance.
We, too, swung our arms, as we attempted to march as straight as she, picking up our step. We sang lustily, tears in our eyes, moved by the sound of her alto voice and by the words of the hymn, which was her, and therefore our, favorite hymn. She lifted her head, and her voice rang out to the horizon:
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O Clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.
Even Meg Donovan sang our Protestant hymn, as we strode across the dry veld. The only one not singing was Fiamma. She was dragging her feet in silence, flicking her long plait back from her face. She looked sulky and disconsolate. She pumped her inhaler, breathing loudly and coughing her shallow cough. She was not sweating like the rest of us, and her face was pale.
Miss G glanced back at her from time to time, and when she did so, we could see the dark turmoil in her face. She interrupted her singing to encourage Fiamma onward.
“Why do you want to go so far in this beastly heat?” Fiamma asked in a loud voice. But Miss G pressed forward, as though there were some urgent purpose to our march.
When we looked back we could see Fiamma receding slowly, dissolving in the haze of heat and dust. She was farther and farther behind. We realized she must have stopped dead in her tracks. Miss G halted the march.
Her face was as somber as the clouds above us. We watched her stride back to Fiamma, a frail, flickering figure in the heat, standing in the dusty tracks, her head hanging on her chest. We could see from the way Fiamma waved her slender arms and hands about that she was objecting to going further. Miss G was exhorting Fiamma onward. We stood in a silent crescent, watching the drama unfold, waiting. We saw Miss G put her hand to her wire-rimmed glasses to slide them down her nose, we presumed, to make Fiamma look her in the eye. They returned to us together.
When we approached the shade trees along the banks of the river, we broke ranks before being told to do so. We rushed impulsively toward the water, pulling off our shoes, tucking p our tunics, and scrambling down the bank. We waded in; we splashed one another’s hot faces; we skipped over the burning stones. Fuzzie slipped and fell in the gray mud and had to be helped to her feet.
We watched Fiamma stroll off downstream. No one followed. From a distance we saw her bend over, staring at her reflection in the water. It appeared that she was trying to splash some of the cool water up between her legs.
What we remember most clearly about that afternoon
The heat and the mosquitoes and the flies. The flies were black and iridescent green and numberless. They alighted on our sweating flesh; they tickled; they gorged; they bit.
The stench of the latrines.
The disk of the sun, a dull silver. The stifling air in the valley. The hot air seemed white.
The afternoon wore on, hazy and dreadful with damp heat. The air was as heavy as steam on our faces. It was too hot to climb up the bank again. We all stayed down at the edge of the water, our heads pounding with the sun, the aftereffects of the alcohol, the lack of sleep. Our mouths were dry; our temples pulsed. Mosquitoes buzzed around our ankles and our calves. We kept moving slowly, driven onward by the heat, the mosquitoes, the flies, the dullness of the long Sunday afternoon. We all sauntered along the bank chewing on pieces of grass, arms thrown loosely around one another’s waists or shoulders, smacking at mosquitoes, wiping the sweat from our brows, our shadows mingling.
