The Monster's Daughter by Michelle Pretorius Page A

trunk crouched two brown children, a boy and a girl, maybe six or seven years old. They both had sullen dark eyes, the boy’s hair cropped close to his head, the girl’s tied with a white bow. They both wore pants with suspenders andshirts made from meal sacks, patched in various places. Tessa immediately felt envious. Their clothes were much better for running around in than a stupid dress. The boy held one index finger to his mouth, pointing into the distance with the other. Tessa turned her head, clamping both hands over her mouth when she saw what he was pointing at.
    A leopard moved languidly through the underbrush ahead, swaying gracefully with each step. It seemed to float from tree to tree, its lower body disappearing in the tall grass. Tessa wondered at its thick muscled neck and legs, its big head, the way its spotted hide glistened in the afternoon sun. She had never seen anything as beautiful before in her life. For a moment the beast looked right at her. Tessa felt her heart skip a beat, time disappearing until the two of them were the only living things in the world. She ached to know the creature, feel what it was feeling, live inside its skin, if only for a moment. As fast as it appeared, the mirage disappeared into the underbrush.
    â€œIt’s watching us,” the boy said. “They do that before they jump you.”
    The girl’s eyes grew wide. “What do we do, hey Poena?”
    â€œWe move slow, Grietjie. No running, hear? Otherwise it will chase us.”
    Tessa pulled herself up. “It doesn’t matter. It’s gone now.”
    â€œWhat do you know?” Grietjie’s chin jutted out defiantly. A knowing glance passed between the siblings.
    Their hostility confused Tessa. “Can’t you see?” She pointed in the distance. “It crossed to the other side of the mountain.”
    â€œYou’re lying,” Poena said. “Nobody can see that far.”
    â€œ
Ja
, nobody,” Grietjie echoed, her nostrils flaring. “Besides, we go to school, you don’t, so we’re smarter.”
    Tessa had asked Andrew if she could go to the farm school down the road, but he said she wasn’t old enough. Tessa was almost nine, but her body was short and pudgy. She had watched the coloured women with their babies from afar, had noticed the babies growing older, growing bigger. Every time she asked Andrew or Sarah why her body didn’t change the same way, they answered that she was growing exactly the way God wanted her to. Tessa wondered why God didn’t just make everybody the same. This would solve so many problems.
    The two siblings turned in unison and retreated with comical slowness, their walk exaggerated into huge steps, their faces knotted in concentration.
    â€œCan I come with you?” Tessa called after them.
    â€œYou go to your own house,” Grietjie fired snippily. “You
mos
live in the big house with the
baas
and that
meit
that thinks she’s so grand.”
    â€œ
Ma
doesn’t think that.”
    â€œYou think she’s your
ma
?” Grietjie looked at her brother and rolled her eyes. She put her hands in her sides, her body issuing a challenge. “You’re thick, hey. She’s a black.”
    Tessa felt a pang. She had a memory, the first one, of a woman with blond hair and sad eyes. But Sarah had raised her, loved her. “Come home with me, then,” Tessa said. She desperately wanted Poena and Grietjie to like her, to meet Sarah and see that she was good.
    â€œMy
pa
will
bliksem
us if we set foot in the
baas
’s house,” Poena said.
    â€œWhy?”
    Poena’s eyes narrowed. “You just don’t. We live in our house and the
baas
lives in his. White people eat with white people. Coloured people eat with coloured people. That’s how it works.”
    Grietjie’s face scrunched into a scowl. “My
pa
said there’s something wrong with you. That we should stay