daughter going shopping with three black women?”
“I wish he would object,” Sara said. “I have a few choice words for him that have had nearly twenty years to simmer at the back of my mind!”
Frannie laughed. “Now, watch yourself. You may be talking about my future boyfriend if his daughter has anything to do with it.”
“I’ll pray for you, girl.”
“Don’t pray too hard. I’ve seen him around. He’s got a nice tush. You know I go for big guys.”
“He’s six-four, Frannie, more than a foot taller than you. Isn’t that too big?”
“Oh, please, I once dated a guy who was six-seven. He could almost put me in his pocket. But it was nice while it lasted.”
“What was nice about it?”
“Do I have to tell you about the main advantage of dating a tall guy?”
Sara actually blushed. “No, don’t say it.”
Of course, Frannie had to say it now. “It sort of leaned to the left and, girl, I had to go around the corner to get on it.”
“You ought to quit!” Sara cried, laughing. Knowing Frannie’s history with men she was happy that Frannie could still joke about sex.
“Well, lately, all I’ve got is a few good memories,” Frannie said wistfully.
Later, back at the house, the three housemates, Sara, Frannie and Elizabeth, had breakfast together. Elizabeth had slept in while Sara and Frannie had their morning jog. When they returned, they heard her in her bedroom’s shower. Sara and Frannie went to their rooms and showered and dressed, too. By the time Elizabeth came downstairs Sara had prepared their breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham and toast.
Frannie was pouring coffee in mugs at their place settings when Elizabeth came into the kitchen and gave them a timid, “Good morning.”
Elizabeth was twenty-two, had light brown skin and dark brown eyes. She wore her natural black hair in a short afro. Although Elizabeth was a genuinely shy and modest young lady, she was under the organization’s protection because she had led a walkout of nearly five hundred gold miners in Johannesburg. Since apartheid had been abolished working conditions had improved for blacks; however, there were still some throwbacks to a colonial system that in many aspects resembled slavery.
The government passed laws to protect workers, but the gold-mining companies failed to comply. A group of miners, led by Elizabeth’s father, Edward, wrote down and presented to their bosses their grievances which included the need for better pay, health insurance, an on-site infirmary and more frequent water breaks.
Two days later, Edward Mbeki was gunned down while walking home from work.
The police never found his killer. A week after that, Elizabeth, who was in medical school in Johannesburg at the time, led a march through the city in protest of her father’s death and called for an investigation of the company that he had worked for.
She and several others were arrested.
A group of American human rights lawyers got her released the next day. A few days later, Elizabeth convinced the gold miners at her father’s company to walk out of work and stay away for twenty-four hours. The company owners went ballistic and hired toughs to beat up several of the workers.
An enterprising reporter for a Soweto newspaper actually caught one of the company’s thugs beating up a worker on video. It was shown on every television station in South Africa. Shortly after that, the company came under investigation, and was forced to comply with everything that Edward Mbeki had asked for before his assassination.
However, it wasn’t over for Elizabeth. Her family’s house mysteriously caught fire and her mother and younger sister perished in the flames. She began receiving death threats. Her college friends tried to help by concealing her in their homes. They tried to raise her spirits, but she became despondent, and contemplated suicide. That was when a black woman with a tattoo of crossed spears on her upper arm came to her and told her she was taking her to America where she would be among friends and she could continue her education.
Elizabeth told the woman she wanted to die. She had no family anymore, only distant relatives whom she didn’t know well. “I promise you,” said the woman. “Where you’re going you will form a new family, and when you continue your work, you will find a new purpose. Your family will not have died in vain. You will live on and grow strong, Elizabeth. The name Mbeki will live on because of you.”
She had been living in Sara’s home now, for four weeks. She was still kind of shy around Sara and Frannie, but she had come to trust them.
Sara gauged her success by the number of smiles on Elizabeth’s face each day. She knew that from personal experience, the only thing that could vanquish suicidal thoughts was a reason to live, a purpose. That’s why she’d recently written Eunice and told her that the organization needed to find Elizabeth a job at a local hospital, preferably a job in which she would be working with children. Elizabeth was going to become a pediatrician before her life had been turned upside down.
That morning, when Sara checked her mail on the organization’s site, she had found a message from Eunice saying that everything had been arranged: Elizabeth’s new identity papers were ready, and she would begin work as a nurse’s aide the following Monday. Eunice also added that it was taking longer than she had anticipated, but she had it on good authority that in a couple of months, Elizabeth would be admitted to the University of California College of Medicine on full scholarship.
Sara had the pleasure of relating all of that to Elizabeth over breakfast this morning. The expression of pure joy on Elizabeth’s face made Sara tear up. Elizabeth immediately leaned forward and grasped Sara’s hands in her small ones. “Don’t cry, Miss Sara, you and Frannie have brought me back to life these past few weeks. Last night, I didn’t dream about the fire. It was the first time I didn’t dream about it. Instead, I dreamed my family and I were having dinner together on a Sunday, and we were all happy to be together like it was when I would return home from being at school for a long period of time. We all held hands and Father said the prayer. Then Mother served us all, herself last, as she always used to. Finally, Father looked us all in our faces and said, ‘This is heaven to me.’ Then, I woke up with such a warm feeling inside. I know, now, that they want me to go on. They want me to live well so that one day, hopefully when I’m old and worn out, I’ll join them in Heaven.”
Frannie got up to get paper towels for herself and Sara. Handing Sara hers, then sitting back down, she said, “How would you like to go shopping with us after work? Melissa Sutherland’s turning sixteen, and we’re going to help her celebrate.”
“I would love it,” said Elizabeth, her eyes shining with pleasure.
Jason got a rude awakening that day. He and Claude were in the southern vineyard pruning the vines when Claude, working several feet ahead of him due to the slowness with which Jason worked, uttered an expletive.
Jason looked in Claude’s direction. He didn’t think in all the years he’d known Claude Ledoux, that he’d ever heard him swear. Squinting against the bright sunshine, in spite of wearing shades, Jason said, “What’s the matter?”
Sweat rolled down the sides of his face. It was seventy degrees today. Nice
