Summary
Mandisa begins the chapter by describing Amy and Mxolisi on the morning of the murder. Amy wakes in a sun-washed room. It is the day before she is to finally return home. Mandisa wonders at what was going through Amy's head on the last morning of her life: "What hopes did she harbor in her breast for the day just born! What, for the homing morrow!" (19). She gets a phone call, which lightens her mood, and she falls back onto the bed to hum a song. She slowly decides to shower: "Body, tall and strong, every sinew and limb fully awake, alive, tingling, she steps out of the big, white bathtub" (8). Mandisa takes care to describe the girl as leisurely beginning her day, happy, alive, and bathed in sunlight. She makes herself a large breakfast. She spends some time writing in her journal before she leaves for school.
Mxolisi is late to wake at home, but Mandisa is on her way out to work already. She has attempted to wake all her children, but they are slow to rise. Her daughter Siziwe, the youngest, is the first she tries. She then goes to the boys who live in their own hokkie in the property. She describes Mxolisi as a young person who hasn't quite got life figured out: "He will readily acknowledge his inability to get up in the morning, but sees no cause and effect, no link, between that daily difficulty and the hours he keeps" (9). Siziwe and Lunga, her second-oldest, begin breakfast while she makes her way out of the house. Mxolisi walks in and asks for money for eggs, which Mandisa refuses. He complains of a lack of breakfast options, but Mandisa points him towards the bread and fruit. She pushes down any guilt about not being able to offer anything else: "What would happen if I stayed home doing all the things a mother's supposed to do?" (10). She yells out a string of commands as she leaves the house, although she knows that they won't be honored: "A mere formality, a charade, something nobody ever heeds. The children do pretty much as they please" (10).
It is clear that as Mandisa tells Amy's story, she fills in the pieces she knows with imagination. She wonders at the details of Amy's timeline: "Is the car radio on or does she put in a cassette, play a song that brings to mind her young man so far away?" (10) Although she stops asking questions, Mandisa continues wondering at Amy's next activities. "Traffic is light as she leaves Mowbray. So is her heart" (10). She is sad about saying goodbye. It is a busy day for Amy, and as more and more people approach to say goodbye, she gets sadder and sadder about ending her time in South Africa.
Mandisa brings us back to the township. The day is a school day, but she knows that her children will not be going to school: "This burdensome knowledge I carry with me as a tortoise carries her shell" (11). Schoolchildren have been called out of school by the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), who have ordered the children to stand in solidarity with teachers on strike. The school children eagerly respond, and it has created a dangerous situation in the township. Although they think they are fighting for good, Mandisa condemns them: "They have no idea how hard life is; and if they're not careful, they'll end up in the kitchens and gardens of white homes... just like us, their mothers and fathers" (11). Mandisa regrets sending Mxolisi to get circumcised in December, noting that even though it is a symbol of entering adulthood, he hasn't matured any since then. Maxolisi leaves the house and meets up with a large group of friends. She describes how the boy is swallowed up by the crowd and becomes indistinguishable from the other school children.
This interweaving of their two stories continues throughout the chapter. Amy has a goodbye lunch with her friends from school. She promises her friend to drive her home, in honor of her last day. We see more evidence of how good a friend Amy was, and her companion's pain at saying goodbye to her is clear. Mandisa writes that Amy was "full of enthusiasm and eager to learn: the Xhosa language, the African dances, and the ways of the people here" (14). Amy was everything that she should have been as a visitor from the United States. On his end, Mxolisi and his friends get turned away from the church, where they go in search of a meeting place. We are introduced to the character Reverend Mananga, who offers the church for a meeting the next morning. The crowd ambles away and begins to chant: Siyanqoba! We overcome!" (14). The group splits in two, and then again and again: "To facilitate mobility the amoeba divided itself" (14). They come across a burning bus, a politically-charged act probably initiated by other school children. They callously laugh about the dire fate of the bus driver. The police arrive, and scatter the boys even more.
Unexpectedly, the order switches, and we see our second snippet of Mxolisi's life. The boys continue chanting as they reencounter another faction of the group that had been able to loot the burning bus. They share their looted meat as they continue to split off from each other and make their way home. Amy and her friends enter the car and get ready to leave. They leave the campus and grow hushed as they take in the scene from the townships. The snippets are shortening as they approach each other, and also, therefore, the murder in time. Mxolisi's group keep splitting until only a few are left, waiting for the bus. He is one of them. Amy's car enters the township, and she's approaching the street corner that Mxolisi waits at. Amy and her friends sing "We have overcome" in order to wade through the awkwardness and tears of saying goodbye.
Finally, they meet. The chapter ends just moments before the murder. Mxolisi's crowd has quickly noticed the car, and it is causing them to quickly reassemble. Mandisa leaves the chapter at a terrifying place, as we are given an image of their positions as if from above: "The car is small. The crowd totally eclipsing it is wild and thunderous, chanting and screaming, fists stabbing the air. Fist raised toward the blue, unsmiling heavens" (18).
Analysis
In this chapter, Amy and Mxolisi follow parallel timelines as they do their morning routine. Although this chapter is mostly action, we can learn a lot about the characters by seeing what they choose to do. Amy wakes up in her room at the university. Mxolisi wakes up at home and does not intend to go to school. Amy has a large breakfast: "cold-milk cereal... black coffee, piping hot... a slice of whole wheat bread. Toasted. Butter and a dash of Marmite... a think slice of cheese" (8). Mxolisi, by contrast, spends his morning complaining at the lack of options for breakfast at home. This continues through their morning, as they gather with friends and then split off into smaller groups, until their fateful meeting.
One important parallel between the group is the element of chanting/singing. Both groups independently sing "We overcome" at some point in the morning: Mxolisi and his friends when they agree to meet the next day instead and begin to split apart, and Amy and her friends as they approach the township in their car. This parallel is an important narrative device that positions Amy and Mxolisi on the same team for the only time in the novel. In this chapter, we get to know Amy, and she is painted as a good and generous person with a lot of friends. Her original intention to work for democracy actually puts her on the same team as the young activists, as they are united in fighting against the oppressive authoritarian government.
Magona utilizes a lot of foreshadowing in this chapter. As readers, we already know what will happen when the two meet. Still, the world of the characters reacts to the magnetic and inevitable future. As Amy's friends ask her all about her trip home, Amy feels exhausted and sad about leaving. "...many people want to talk about her trip back home. If only they knew. If only they knew" (10). Later, Amy's intuition pipes up once again, and causes her to momentarily regret her decision to drop off her friends: "She knows she should not be doing this... not with all the packing she still has to do" (13).
The structure of this section is an effective dramatic technique. The way Mandisa breaks up the action with alternating segments that start long and progressively get shorter helps build anticipation in the reader. As the time remaining until Amy's murder shortens, so does our time left with the protagonists. Every time we are sent back to Mxolisi and his friends, we hope they are not approaching Amy's car, even as we know they are. By the end of the chapter, we only get glimpses of each, like flashing between scenes in an action movie, or like glimpses through the windows on a train.
Finally, Magona utilizes some key imagery in this section. When Mxolisi first meets up with his friends, she describes how the group swallows him up, and he becomes indistinguishable from his friends: "Although they are not wearing their school uniform, the clothes they have on are so similar in color, cut, and the way they hang on their long, lithe and careless frames that the boys appear as though they are wearing a uniform of sorts" (12). Later on, she calls this group a "gigantic, many-limbed millipede" (12). Mxolisi's assimilation is important here, as it emphasizes that he was one of many boys in exactly the same situation as him, choosing to do the same things as him. Right before Amy and Mxolisi meet, she describes a burning car on the street: "a big van was doing a slow-motion dance to the shimmering rhythms of the orange and red flames caressing it" (15). The beautiful picture of this burning car is very significant to the chapter. The burning in slow motion is a metaphor for the slow burn of hatred that fills the hearts of the militant school children. It also offers a backdrop for the inevitable meeting between Mxolisi and Amy.
