Free Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward

said.
    —Janine Lewis, senior editor, the
Whaler

    It was time to go back; Nadine knew it in her bones. She told herself it was an important story—she had to see the TRC, to write about Evelina’s hearing. But there was more: a part of Nadine was still stuck in South Africa, still living the night she had betrayed Maxim. Nadine picked up the phone. A ticket from Nantucket Memorial Airport to Cape Town, South Africa, cost $2,301. She could leave in the morning. Nadine put the ticket on her MasterCard and began to pack, her chamomile tea growing cold on the kitchen table.

Thirteen

    N adine met Maxim on her first day in the Nutthall Road house. After she dropped her backpack in what would be her bedroom, Nadine sat at the kitchen table and shared an afternoon beer with George. George was writing all day, but his words, he said, weren’t adding up to much of a novel. He was clearly jealous of Maxim, whose photographs were selling well. Maxim, George told Nadine, worked his ass off, driving his car into the townships and documenting the bloody battles there. Blacks were attacking blacks, blacks were attacking whites, and Maxim was making a name for himself, signing with a prestigious agency and garnering paid assignments for newspapers and magazines. George looked wistful as he described his successful roommate.
    “And Thola?” asked Nadine. “How did the two of you meet?”
    George grinned. “It’s a long story.”
    The beer was cold in Nadine’s mouth. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in a week. “So go on and tell it,” she said, relaxing into her chair.
    “I was ten years old when I first saw her,” said George. “Her leotard was the color of orange sherbet.”
    “Very dramatic,” said Nadine. “I’m guessing you’ve told this story before?”
    “Be quiet, you,” said George.
    The program was called Dance for All, and it was one of the few ways a child could get out of the townships. “They hold auditions every year,” said George. “Kids come barefoot, hungry, whatever. Kevin Holderman, Thola’s teacher, he chooses the ones with talent, and he trains them. One of Thola’s classmates is in the London Ballet.”
    “Fantastic,” said Nadine, smelling a lifestyles feature.
    “So Thola came to San Francisco,” said George.
    “In an orange leotard,” said Nadine.
    “My mother took me to the ballet,” said George, ignoring Nadine. “I fell in love with her by the end of the first dance. That night, I lay under my Batman bedspread and dreamed she was in the top bunk. In the morning, I begged my mother to find her and invite her to lunch.”
    “What’s your mother like?”
    “Rich, confused, beautiful. Anyway, she found out that Tholakele was staying in the Stanford dorms. She thought my crush on a little African girl was adorable, at first.”
    “Is she still alive?”
    “What? Who?”
    “Your mother,” said Nadine.
    “Of course she is,” said George. “Will you zip it and listen?”
             
    T hola arrived late. She wore a starched dress and plastic jelly sandals. She told George her teachers had made her wear the stupid dress. She much preferred jeans, she said, and she was going to be a Freedom Fighter.
    Ten-year-old George fidgeted behind his plate of turkey sandwiches. Thola hadn’t turned out to be the quiet ballerina he had imagined. He wasn’t sure what a Freedom Fighter was, and he didn’t know what to say. His strategy of impressing Thola with his collection of butterfly wings seemed increasingly ill conceived.
    “These little sandwiches are fab,” said Thola, who had put away four already and was slathering mayonnaise on a fifth. George watched the way expressions came and went quickly on her face: enthusiasm, anger, delight. She took a bite and sat back in her chair, one arm across her chest and the other holding her food aloft. “So, George,” said Thola, “I hear you love me.”
    George’s heart hammered in his chest. This was not going according to plan.