The Flower Plantation by Nora Anne Brown

beach. Most Tuesdays, when Mother was having coffee, I'd sit next to her and read African Butterflies , hoping she'd share her cake. But that day she wanted to be alone, so I decided to sit by the pool instead. I knew there'd be cake for Christmas, so I didn't mind.
    I walked round the side of the pool with Romeo, looking for a shady place to sit away from the watchful eyes of the tall thin women on the pool loungers, in their brightly coloured swimsuits smelling of talcum powder.
    At the far side of the pool – where nobody could see me – I sat down under a palm tree with Romeo and opened my book. I was reading about the development of chrysalides when a white man, in shorts, socks, garters and sandals approached with one of the ladies in the swimsuits. She wore so much make-up I couldn't say how old she was, but her bottom was as big and firm as a melon, and she wore her hair like a pineapple on top of her head.
    The man patted the lady's bottom and kissed her cheek, which prompted a teasing laugh. They had a whispered conversation, then he reached into his back pocket and took out lots of money. He handed it to her. She counted it and put it in her handbag. I returned to my book.
    Later on, when a twinge of pain from my front tooth drew my attention away from my reading, I glanced up to see Sebazungu standing over the same lady. I wasn't surewhy he was talking to her when he should have been putting up the Christmas tree. What happened next surprised me. Sebazungu raised his voice at the lady and bent over her in the same way he did when one of the gardeners did something wrong. The lady didn't seem frightened like the gardeners: her eyes were so mean that I thought she might punch him. But instead of punching him she opened her handbag and gave him the money.
    Then Mr Umuhoza arrived and took Sebazungu into the bar, where the ladies couldn't see them but I could. I held my book up, pretending to read. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I could see that Mr Umuhoza was angry. He kept pointing at the lady's money, which was really the white man's, and which Sebazungu held on to tightly.
    I glanced over at Mother to gauge her reaction, but she was tapping her watch face and looking at me, which meant it was time to go.
    * * *
    â€œJust a quick trip to Goma,” said Mother as we left the hotel car park. Mother had sent Simon to the market for supplies; Sebazungu was still with Mr Umuhoza. There was something different about her voice: it didn't sound the way it usually did after coffee and cake; it was tight.
    At the border to Zaire I waited in the jeep with the dogs. It was as hot as Fabrice's stove. I kept Mother in view via the side mirror. She forced her way through a crowd of people huddled around the two-roomed customs building who were waving passports and other bits of paper. She went into the first of the rooms, where there was an officer with a big buffalo chest sitting behind a desk. Mother pulled a bottle from her bag and handed it to him alongside her paperwork, which he stamped without even looking at her passport. She came back to the pickup, turned the key, tutted when the engine didn't start immediately, then backed out towards the city.
    I hated Goma. It was dirty and smelly, busy and loud. Everything looked as if it had been drawn in charcoal and then smudged out. Grey potholed roads, volcanic ash and hardened lava made it look like a giant scar on the face of a dead man. It gave me the creeps.
    â€œWe'll just pop in on Mr Patel,” said Mother. Mr Patel was the dentist. We never popped in on Mr Patel. We only ever went for a reason.
    Running my tongue round my mouth I thought about the day my first tooth had come out over a year ago. Since that day I'd lost many more, some to jam sandwiches, others to absent-minded twisting – but all had been replaced with big teeth pushing through. My big front tooth, unlike the others, had come through crookedand brown. It hurt when I ate