Broken Memory by Elisabeth Combres

Author:Elisabeth Combres
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd.
Published: 2011-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

17.

“This boy is fragile,” Mukecuru said when Emma told her what had happened. “Take care with him, Emma,” she warned.

Emma didn’t understand. She thought the old woman was being unkind to Ndoli, just like the whole world was against him, she told herself bitterly. It wasn’t fair. He was a victim himself. He was doing the best he could.

But Mukecuru’s words would come back to her a few months later. She would understand what she meant then.

18.

Emma and Ndoli met each other often after the gacaca. She told him about the gossip at the market, and he reported on what was happening at school — both passing on news about what was going on in their separate worlds. She would put down the women who had made fun of them. He told her about the funny, cruel and often disappointing things that went on at school.

Emma liked one of his stories in particular. It was about a girl at school who had fought to join the boys’ soccer game at recess, even though they didn’t want her to, and she ended up playing so well that she caught the attention of the coach of a girls’ team.

Emma often asked Ndoli about this girl. She became sort of an imaginary friend, the kind you secretly admire and who makes you want to do better yourself.

“I would like to be like her,” she confessed one day. “But I could never do that.”

“How do you know? You’ve never set foot in a school,” Ndoli replied, a little annoyed. He had exaggerated the accomplishments of this girl to a certain degree, and Emma’s huge interest in her was starting to irritate him.

That evening, Emma thought about what Ndoli had said. She hadn’t paid much attention at the time, in spite of his unusually gruff tone. But now, stretched out under the big tree, she dared to dream.

How did she really know what she could or could not do? She began to imagine a life for herself as a daring schoolgirl caught up in a thousand and one activities, in a recess without end.

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