She takes a sip of hot, sweet rooibos from her enameled tin mug and smiles, thinking back to how horrified she’d been when she arrived at this place to do her apprenticeship, all those years ago. She’d been brought up in a nice house in northern Johannesburg, been sent to the best schools, and dropped out of varsity to end up on the floor of a glorified shack. “You’re remembering too,” Ma Retabile says with a wheezy chuckle. “I felt like an alien when I first came.” “I remember. You couldn’t even speak Siswati properly!” Lesedi grins. “You were such a whitey.” “It’s not so easy to tell the difference anymore,” says Lesedi with a smile. “It’s the new South Africa, remember.” “Ayeye,” Ma Retabile says, “I am a dying breed.” She crosses one leg over the other with a slight jingle of beads and shells, and Lesedi marvels at the state of the soles of the older woman’s feet. Even the cracks have cracks. “You could do with a pedicure, you know that, Ma?”
