The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner

with a pencil. Sir Blinks doesn’t know shit.
    I step out and wander halfway up the porchway and listen.
    “You need to fill out a requisition form.”
    “Give me a form, then.”
    “The forms are finished.”
    A long silence. Outside Pohamba’s class a boy whacks two erasers together and gags on the chalky smoke.
    The principal is sitting. Mavala is standing. His finger is poised in mid-dial of the rotary. She watches his face. If only
     she’d slacken a little, this young sister of his wife, and behave more like a woman is supposed to. He could make things easier
     for her. She need not acknowledge his authority—of course she needn’t go that far—but for God’s sake, won’t she look at his
     existence as flesh, as a man with hands and blood and cock and need and eyes?
    I don’t have to see any of this—it’s all there in the silence. Power is easily spent—you can always get more later—but as
     far as she’s concerned, he can keep it and play with it. He sees this, and it only makes him sweat watching her. Her: Go ahead.
     Cower beneath me with your principal stomach, your principal key chain, your principal phone in your hand. She doesn’t leave,
     only stands there, in her sleeveless blouse, with her bare shoulders. Stands there like a taunt. A few minutes more she’s
     in that office. Maybe she’s going too far—stepping on him too much, too easily, too early. She hasn’t been back a month. There’s
     no more talk of construction paper or forms.
    She leaves empty-handed and heads back across the courtyard—this time she tromps straight across Ireland—toward her class,
     which is waiting silently (itself a miracle at Goas). She’ll ask Obadiah for some construction paper. No, a better idea. She’ll
     take her boys to the veld and let them draw on the rocks like Bushmen. A few minutes later, I watch them file out, her ducklings,
     two by two.

36
COFFEE FIRE
    W hat does she want, then?”
    “Not to be a teacher, obviously.”
    “Who wants to be a teacher?”
    “Not me.”
    “You degrade the profession. Shame —”
    “Well, she was probably expecting more. Look at Libertine Amathila. Now she’s Minister of Health. Didn’t they name a boulevard
     after her in Otjiwarongo?”
    “But Libertine Amathila’s a doctor. SWAPO sent her abroad to study. Easy to come back to the country a hero when you’re a
     doctor.”
    “And now she’s got her own avenue!”
    “Boulevard!”
    “Yes, even better!”
    “Miss Tuyeni says one day she just left and crossed the border. They didn’t hear from her for two years. They thought she
     was dead.”
    “How old?”
    “Seventeen or so. The mother nearly died of grief over it.”
    “How did she come to teaching if she hates it so much?”
    “She taught school up in the camp.”
    “Teacher and a soldier?”
    “Yes.”
    “Not the only one.”
    “Who else?”
    “I’d rather not boast.”
    “Well, it’s understandable.”
    “What is?”
    “To want more after something like that. After committing so much to the cause, wouldn’t you expect —”
    “What? More than Goas? Everybody deserves —”
    “Always more. Why can’t anyone ever —”
    “And the kid?”
    “Ah, yes—the child.”
    “That child’s demonic.”
    “Shush—that’s a beautiful lamb.”

37
ANTOINETTE
    J ust past noon and the boy is, at last, sleeping beneath the kitchen table.
Difficult,
the girl said, as if the child was a problem to solve. Now she understands. There’s some rage within him—his little fists
     are constant. Unless, like now, he’s sleeping, his anger gone. As if sleep possesses us, infuses us with a goodness that isn’t
     really us. She peeks at the boy, at his tiny unclenched hands, at his dirty elbows, at his stomach rising and falling. Or
     what if it is us? What if asleep is the only time we are true? If so, who are we when we’re awake?
    She takes Obadiah’s glasses out of her apron. Often he declares them lost and she finds them at