Vain (The Seven Deadly, #1)(27)
“We thought it was because she was recovering from the loss of her arm but later discovered it is because she misses her mother.”
“What happened to her mother?” I asked, exponentially afraid to hear his answer.
His eyes met mine for the first time that morning and his lips tightened, his shoulders shrugged in answer and my stomach fell to my feet.
“We supplement milk with all sorts of proteins and vitamins, but she’s still not gaining weight the way we need her to.”
Dingane turned from me and spotted a child who needed help. I have no idea how he saw but he did. He stood and helped a little boy who couldn’t reach his chair to sit with only one leg. I watched him. He didn’t put the boy in the chair like I assumed he would but helped him discover how to do it on his own.
“What happened to them?” I asked Dingane when he sat down again.
“There is an incredibly evil man named Joseph Kony who roams south Sudan and northern Uganda in search of children to create his child army called the LRA or Lord’s Resistance Army. He invades innocent villages, takes young women for obvious reasons, attempts to kidnap their children. If the children refuse to come with him, they chop off a limb to prevent them from being able to grow into a useful soldier that can oppose him later. He kills their parents and we’re sent the orphans who survive, broken and damaged and all alone.”
I swallowed down the lump that had grown in my throat. “Why does he do it?”
“I don’t think he even knows. He claims to fight for peace and security in Uganda as well as for the impoverished. These are his proclamations, but he just works for the devil, in my opinion. He is the ultimate in evil.”
I examined the tiny faces that surrounded me and felt so incredibly sad for them and their fates. I wanted to respond to everything Dingane had revealed to me, but I couldn’t. There was nothing to say.
After breakfast, Dingane told me I needed to follow him.
“The children usually retrieve their school things right now. Karina, Kate and I teach them from eight to two in the afternoon while Charles and occasionally I make repairs or preparations for the day’s activities. Wednesdays, I’m in charge of doing some sort of outdoor activity with them during school hours. Unfortunately, you’ve been assigned to me at Karina’s insistence, so you’ll be accompanying me all day every day.”
“Yes, so unfortunate,” I spit back sarcastically.
Dingane stopped short between the baobab tree and our huts. “I don’t like you. Is this such a surprise?”
“Frankly, yes, it is,” I told him candidly. “You don’t know me.”
“Ah, but you see, I do. I know you quite well. I know you’re here because you were caught with cocaine twice. I recognized immediately the type of person you were before you even arrived.”
“I was caught with cocaine. I admit it, freely. I’m not proud of it, God knows, but I also knew coming in here everyone would be aware of why I was forced to be here—”
“Forced,” he repeated, stopping me midsentence and closing in narrowly.
“Another reason why I’d be just as satisfied if you hopped right back on that plane. Every single soul here is present because they want to be. You’re only serving a sentence.”
My breath rushed in and out of me in heady anger. “All the same,” I gritted. “I’d appreciate it if you got off your self-righteous pedestal and came back down to earth. I’m here to work. So let’s work.”
That’s the moment I realized that my attitude about feeling like being sent to Masego was the most unfair punishment in the world had disappeared the second I’d laid eyes on Mandisa. It surprised me, shocked me, to be honest, but that didn’t mean I was going to enjoy my work at Masego. It only meant that while I was there, I wouldn’t feel as if a gross injustice had been performed against me. All I had to do was remind myself of Mandisa’s story.
CHAPTER NINE
“Come with me,” a pissed-off Dingane ordered. He led me to his side of the hut and I followed him inside.
His bed looked plain and barely able to contain him, but his walls were covered in an eclectic assortment of belongings from pictures the children had drawn him to an acoustic guitar.
He slid a large tub out from underneath his bed and grabbed a stack of papers I’d seen in the back of the jeep when he’d picked me up from the airport.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Worksheets. Any time I’m in town, I try to get as many as possible.”
We walked to the classrooms and my heart started to beat erratically. I was nervous, really nervous. I wondered if the kids would see right through me, if they knew what a fraud I really was, that I had no business helping them, as I was the worst person I knew.
The door opened and I saw twenty smiling faces, happy and giggling. They fell quiet as soon as Dingane and I entered the room. I gulped. Audibly.
“Students, you’ve met Miss Price—”
“Sophie,” I interrupted. “They can call me Sophie.”
Dingane narrowed his eyes at me for interrupting but continued, “You may call her Miss Price. Should we try to speak English today? To make her more comfortable?” he asked them kindly.
Oh, I see, I thought. They get Dr. Jekyll and I get Mr. Hyde.