The woman understood him. She took out a packet of thin brown cigarettes and gave them to Mbe, who immediately had one lit for him. Then he asked her who she was, what her name was and where she was from. I was hovering in a group with the other children, as curious as they were, and I heard her say that her name was Brenda and that she had come to help us. Then Mbe shouted out — and he had a strong voice although he was nearly blind — that all women and children should leave at once. He wanted to listen to what Brenda had to say in the company of wise men alone.
The women did as he asked but hesitantly and with grumbles. Afterwards, when Brenda was resting in one of Mbe’s huts, my father came back and whispered things to my mother for a long time. Mazda seemed restless. It was as if he knew that their conversation had to do with him. We became quiet and fearful when we heard them quarrelling. I still remember all that was said.
‘You cannot know who she is.’
My mother was the one who said that, and her voice was filled with a despair I had never heard there before.
‘Mbe says we can trust her. A woman with blue hair is special.’
‘How can he know she has blue hair? He’s blind.’
‘Don’t shout. We told him about it so he can see what he cannot see.’
‘Maybe she eats children.’
This remark I remember especially well. Mazda stiffened and was so afraid that he bit my hand.
Tea-Bag held out her hand. Humlin saw the scars from a bite on her wrist.
It hurt so much I hit him. He curled up in the sand with his head buried in his hands. Shortly afterwards my father came over and said that Mazda had to go with him. Brenda was gathering children from the poverty-stricken villages so that they could go with her to the city and go to school. She paid in cash — father had seen the money himself. What he had first assumed was a drum strapped to her waist had turned out to be a crocodile skin filled with money. After Mazda went to the city he would be able to send money home each month. After going to school he would be able to get a job so good that no one in the family would ever need to worry again about rains that didn’t come and rivers that dried up.
Tea-Bag stopped her storytelling abruptly, got up and left the kitchen. It was as if she was running from the shadows of her parents’ house, Humlin thought. He followed her out into the living room, but when he saw that she had gone to the bathroom he returned to wait for her in the kitchen. After a while Tea-Bag came back.
‘Why do you follow me?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You were following me when you went to that church in the Valley of the Dogs and you were following me just now when I went to the bathroom.’
Humlin shook his head, but felt as if he had been found out.
‘The Valley of the Dogs?’
‘That’s where the church is.’
‘Why do you call it the Valley of the Dogs?’
