Mimi and Bibi

Mimi first met Bibi on the beach at Uvongo. She was lolling in the shallows, rolling with the water as the tide pushed out. Her eyes were closed and her hair mingled with the sand and seaweed as it floated away from her head. 
“Daphne?” ventured Mimi as a wave lifted Bibi and carried her out on to the sand. She blinked her eyes and squinted up to the blur above her while the rest of her body remained limp as though waiting for the next wave to carry her back into the sea. She reminded Mimi of a beached shark she had once seen; its eyes had the same blinking expectation.
“Go away, I don’t want to be found yet.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m dead, can’t you see?”
Mimi had seen pretend dead before; her sister, Katoo, was a past master at faking death as a game to trigger caring or guilt. But this was intriguingly different; the girl below her seemed to take a morbid satisfaction in the charade. Mimi knelt down, steadying herself against the next rush of water.
“How long are you going to be dead for? Your brother sent me to find you. They’re waiting for you on the rocks.”
Slowly Bibi brought her limp body to life. Mimi took in the sallow, round face, the ample lips over buckteeth, the snub nose and the narrowed eyes. The girl before her gave a condescending little smile.
“Oh, you must be the ‘friend’ they wanted me to meet. The dominee’s daughter?” she said dismissively.
The irony in her voice surprised Mimi; she had never met anyone who did not want to be her friend. She had never had to work for a friendship. Friends came to her, not she to them. According to the briefing she had been given this girl, practically an orphan, should be grateful to have her attention. The thought of the word ‘orphan’ softened her reply:
“You don’t have to be friends to be friendly, you know.”
Bibi was now upright, covered in sand and blinking furiously. Mimi noticed her top-heavy body and wondered what it must be like to be so well endowed.
“I know. I’m just a bit moody, that’s all.”
“I’m moody too. I’m the dominee’s moody daughter.”
“I like temperamental better than moody. Every artist has the right to be temperamental.”
“And are you an artist?”
“Yes, I paint.”
The confidence of this statement seemed to restore vitality to the limp body of moments before.
“And I play the piano, and the organ,” ventured Mimi tentatively.
“So I heard,” said Bibi dismissively, “that’s merely a performing art, you know. You don’t need originality and creativity to perform. Plastic art, now that’s a whole different story.”

They did not see each other again until beginning of the school year in mid- January. It was the beginning of the two-year course that led to matriculation. At her brother’s request Bibi was placed in Mimi’s class. They were still Therese and Daphne then. Together they went to the Afrikaans, English where they competed for the almost unattainable A. They struggled together in Maths – a mandatory subject for university entry – consoling each other with the argument that they were at a double disadvantage being both female and artistic. They wallowed in the superiority of the small select group of Latin pupils; patricians versus the plebs who studied German, also in order to go to university. They braved the same Biology course where they would learn more than they wanted about primitive life forms while hoping to be scientifically informed about human reproduction. Daphne, being a painter, naturally took Art. She presented her portfolio of portraits and abstract pieces and was welcomed with open arms by the same teacher who turned Therese away some years before. Due to a decision by the Transvaal Department of Education, which mandated needlework for girls from the age of nine, Therese’s aspirations to become a painter herself died a natural death. The closest she ever came to Art was making a colour wheel in embroidery thread and meticulously following the charts for counted cross-stitch embroidery. In the 50’s creativity was not a quality encouraged by the curriculum of the Transvaal Department of Education.
So, with Art not an option, Therese tried History. She was hoping for some European and modern history though her sisters had told her that much time was spent on once again rehashing the Great Trek and the Boer War. The history teacher was nicknamed ‘Kees’ – a word normally used to refer to a baboon. He lounged in the chair behind his desk, his paunch pushing at the buttons behind his loosely knotted tie. On the desk was a stack of Xeroxed papers, a foot and a half high. Kees extended his cane over the pile of papers with a sarcastic smile:
“Now listen carefully! Whack! I’m only going to say this once. Whack! This is what you will do for the next two years Whack! Memorize this pile Whack!  I’m not going to teach you Whack Whack! You’re going to memorize! Whack, Whack, Whack!”
Therese took one look and ran to see if she could change from History to Domestic Science.
Daphne had a low opinion of those who took Domestic Science; it was almost as bad as Typing, Shorthand and Accountancy. According to her Domestic Science was for the shallow souls of clay who had no other ambition than to become bovine housewives. Bovine was one of Daphne’s favourite English adjectives. She injected it into her otherwise fairly pure Afrikaans at every opportunity, an arrow of disapproval and condemnation shot to wound if not to kill. Therese was not so easily insulted; suddenly a fighting spirit emerged from behind the meek mannered mask she usually wore.
“Look at me, Daphne! Do I look like I’m chewing a cud? I’m not shallow nor am I stupid. And I know you think I’m just a ‘performing’ artist. But I am not going to sit and watch Kees for two years lounge behind his desk waiting to pounce and punish anyone and everyone for imperfect memorizations. I have seen sadists like Kees before. They are only too happy to apply corporal punishment to make up for their inability to teach. Look at the good teachers; they don’t have to punish all the time. Look at Tannie Lita in Domestic Science. She can’t make a proper omelette but she can tell you about Europe while you’re cooking and sewing. I’ll learn a whole lot more from her. Who wants to get an A for reciting the names of warriors and the dates of wars anyway?  I’m a Libra. I like peace and harmony.“
Whether it was the force of the tirade or the discovery that they were both Libras, Therese never knew, but she noticed Daphne softening. Judgement made way for acceptance. Soon she was invited to come over on a Saturday afternoon. Daphne’s brother had an ultra modern stereo player and there were some of her sister Elaine’s LP’s she wanted Mimi to listen to. She also offered to show Therese the modern art books Elaine had allowed her to bring. Elaine lived in Johannesburg and was often referred to as an authority on music, art, and fashion. She was a city sophisticate and her opinion superseded those of all country bumpkins.
Therese pedalled past the cemetery, looking the other way when she came to the corner where the suicides were buried together, facing West - Never shall they see the rising sun, nor will they rise to meet the Lord at the last trumpet – past the prison where the inmates, already in a living hell, were weeding the prison garden. She thought of Mother’s nervously cautious look when she gave permission for the afternoon’s visit. Was it the mention of the art books? Mother’s own art books had the pages with nudes pasted together except for the Michelangelo pictures from the Sistine Chapel, which was biblically correct. No, it couldn’t be the art books; she made a point of leaving out the ‘modern’ when she mentioned them. Perhaps it was the reference to the sister in Johannesburg? There was a pursing of the lips when she told Mother about the sister’s records. Therese was a close student of Mother’s signals; this was an essential skill in a society where children are seen and not heard. Mother had vetted her friendships before: she had to give up funny, daredevil Trudie when it was discovered that there were only six months between the date of her parents’ wedding and that of her birth. She was told never again to invite Annemarie from the other side of the tracks after mother overheard her telling Mimi a dirty story she had read in Keur – a tabloid magazine on Mother’s blacklist. André Ravensworth swore at Therese’s birthday party and would never be invited again. And Miriam, the maid Elisabet’s, daughter was never allowed to spend another school holiday after reading and singing too much with Therese instead of polishing the silver and learning to iron.
Mother felt no need to justify this screening of friends but did explain that as a child she was not even allowed to play with the white farm manager’s children let alone those of the black labourers. Her family had upheld high social standards for centuries: first as the respected descendants of the famous soldier and explorer Olof Bergh with his noble Swedish blood and, more recently, as namesakes of the influential Parliamentarian for Clanwilliam. Therese wondered why Father always looked down whenever mother made these claims. Over time she learnt how to weigh people so that they would fit Mother’s description of ‘our kind’. She had also learnt how to leave out details in order to make a new friend fit.
But Daphne came with good credentials: her brother’s position in the community and his role as deacon of the church automatically passed her as ‘one of us’. Mother did make some vague references to Daphne’s sadness after the recent death of her mother but Therese took that to mean that she should make a special effort to be kind.

The flat was quiet when Therese arrived. Daphne’s brother and his wife had gone to play tennis and the girls would have the place to themselves. Therese was allowed to pick the first record. The only title she recognized among an array of unfamiliar artists was ‘Highlights from La Bohème’.
“My cousin Etienne has the entire opera on three records. I’ve listened through the whole thing with him twice already,” she said claiming high ground.
“Elaine and her husband regularly go to the opera in Johannesburg. They bought this after they saw La Bohème last year. Which is your favourite aria?”
“I have two: ‘They call me Mimi’ and ‘Your little hand is frozen’ This should be good. I love Gigli and Victoria de los Angeles.“
She pronounced the names as instructed by Etienne and the announcer on her favourite radio request program. The tenor was not giggly nor was the soprano a city in California.
Daphne put the record on and they both settle down: Therese with her hardanger embroidery and Daphne with her sketchbook. She had set out a still life of fruit on the coffee table in front of her. Quietly they sat, busying their hands, while the melodrama of the music wrung their hearts and the voices of Victoria and Beniamino spun a cocoon of companionship around them.
When the second side finished they sat in silence, contemplating the sad fate of Mimi. Then Daphne moved over to the sofa with a heavy coffee table book.
“Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, “ announced Daphne in, what sounded to her friend, like perfect French.
“Elaine taught me,” she said proudly and to drive the point home she carefully read the titles of the paintings:
“Monsieur Boileau, Au Moulin de la Galette, Au Moulin Rouge, Femme à sa Toilette, Aristide Bruant….. ” she read with self-conscious nasality, every diphthong an silent ending in carefully in place.
Therese scanned the images with Mother in mind. There was not too much nudity but the general feeling of loose living among the bar-flies and the can-can dancers would confirm Mother’s opinion of the French in general and French artists in particular. She only tolerated the playing of the Minute Waltz because it was a piano exam piece prescribed by the University of South Africa. Dissolute, immoral, and depraved were the adjectives that dismissed the entire body of French artistic endeavour. Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert escaped this judgement because they were German, Grieg was allowed because Norway is a good Lutheran country, and Bach was a Lutheran. And Liszt? Well, just the spelling of his name told you he was a freethinker. Therese dreamt of a world where art and beauty existed independently of the morals of their creators, where composition took precedence over subject.
“Toulouse Lautrec was a real bohemian,” continued Daphne with relish, “he lived in Monmartre even though he was a nobleman. He knew all the artists of the time and his best friends were prostitutes!”
She spoke of him as though he were a glamorous, close friend.
“You can read all about it in this book, look, Moulin Rouge by Pierre Lamure. Elaine lent it to me. Would you like to borrow it?”
Therese tried to hide her hesitation; refusing would not only dampen her friend’s enthusiasm but would imply criticism or moral judgement. More than that, it would probably slow the pace of their fast developing friendship. To prove her commitment she accepted the book but knew that Toulouse-Lautrec would have to be kept under wraps, away from Mother’s scrutiny.
More French things followed: slowly they worked their way through a plate of chocolate éclairs while listening to Édith Piaf. La Vie en Rose blended with crème chantilly as Milord matched the unique texture of choux pastry while Padam Padam put the chocolate on the top.
Sensuality satisfied, Daphne put on the last offering of the afternoon. She watched her friend’s face light up with surprise as the voice of Paul Robeson sang of faraway rivers in distant lands. Rivers, known only from the atlas and the Stephen Foster Songbook. The Volga from behind the iron curtain, the Mississippi, the Shenandoah and Suwannee wide and deep like the velvet voice. But besides rivers there is also Trees, one of Mother’s favourite songs.
“Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree”, quoted Therese as the song ended.
“That is my mother’s favourite. You should hear her play and sing.”
Suddenly Daphne’s face crumpled.
‘Listen, I don’t want to hear about mothers and I don’t want to talk about mothers!”
She was on the verge of tears. Therese furiously looked for something to divert her and prevent the imminent collapse. She grabbed the Rooi Rose from the coffee table and, to her relief saw images of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. It was an article on Brigitte Bardot. This should cheer Daphne up.
“Look, BB in Paris. Here she is in Monmartre. Isn’t she glamorous?”
To her relief, Daphne smiled and leaned closer to look at the pictures. From between the beehive and the cleavage, the ample lips of the actress beamed back. Daphne adjusted her own lips and bosom and pushed her own mini beehive a little higher.
“ I like her. We’re both D cups. Do you think I look like her?”
“A little,” lied Therese, anxious to maintain her friend’s recovered mood, “I know, I’ll call you Bibi.”
“And I’ll call you Mimi. Then we can pretend to be French.”
And to confirm the renaming they played Piaf again. They sang along at full throttle though they only understood the homophones. Still, the charm of the language was not in its meaning but in the exotic ambiance into which it allowed them to escape.
Moulin Rouge was carefully secreted with mothballs in the bottom drawer under the red raglan she had made the year before. Mother never inspected that drawer. It was the drawer where Leen’s mulberry-stained school shirt went undetected for two years.
On Sunday afternoon when she was supposed to read uplifting devotional material, she took Pierre Lamure to bed. Words had never had such a titillating effect on her: exotic she understood, erotic she had never experienced. And when her super- sensitive conscience sent guilt to deal with her arousal she pushed it away in the name of Art. But she knew that book had filled her excited heart with the cobwebs of impure thoughts.
For weeks she avoided a face-to-face goodbye with Mother in the morning. This was the ritual she had known ever since she started school at six:  with four questions Mother determined the physical and moral fitness to face the day. ‘Are your nails clean?’ and ‘Have you cleaned your teeth?’ were the easiest; it was just a matter of doing. ‘Do you have a clean hanky?’ was a little trickier if you were in a habit of losing hankies or not washing them regularly. But the fourth question was the trickiest of all: it required direct eye contact – looking in through the windows of the soul – matched by an unambiguous answer. ‘Is your little heart pure?’ As long as the memories of Moulin Rouge lingered, she knew she could not fool Mother with a wavering ‘yes’ that meant ‘no’. So, in order to avoid confession and confrontation, she ran, shouting:
“ ‘Bye, Ma. Sorry I’m late!”
She also avoided telling Bibi about the sensual effect of the book by musing over the art and speculating on poor deformed Henri’s sadness and madness.

When Bibi returned after the first long weekend, her mood was different. The French pretensions had made way for talk about meditation and self-discovery. Elaine was a member of a group that studied the works and techniques of Paul Brunton.  On the Saturday Daphne had been allowed to join a training session devoted to meditation. She could think or talk of little else.
“Our adept is Michael who has studied with the Guru himself. An adept is like a leader or teacher. The Guru is Paul Brunton – guru is Indian for teacher. He studied in India, you know with some very spiritually advanced yogis, people who can stand on one leg for years and people who can levitate and have out of body experiences. The really advanced can do astral travelling and have spiritual contact with the Grand Masters. It is also possible to make contact with people you knew in another life.”
Mimi had to concentrate; the exotic vocabulary was as unfamiliar to her ears as were the concepts.
“And what does this Michael do in the meetings?”
“He leads us in meditation and discussions of Paul Brunton’s work. It’s all there in Discover Yourself.”
“It sounds like a prayer meeting.”
Bibi snorted.
“It’s not a bit like a prayer meeting! Meditation is not a conversation with the conventional God you pray to; meditation is getting in touch with the God within yourself. It is finding the Overself.”
Discover Yourself was, predictably, not in the school library so Mimi went to the town library. She knew her way this establishment well; ever since she learnt to read she had been making regular trips on behalf of herself and her mother. She worked her way from the Afrikaans and English Children’s section with amusing folk and morality tales to boarding school stories in Juvenile. She devoured the adventures of Trompie and Saartjie along with those of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Next came the romances, also read by Mother who kept a list of approved authors.
Mimi had seldom visited Literature, having no guide to titles or authors and having been warned off the genre by a school librarian: ‘Stay away from those highbrow books. They’ll only confuse you.’ And the odd times she did venture to browse she had to confess the English was difficult, almost incomprehensible without a dictionary.
The index cards pointed her to several Paul Bruntons in Non- Fiction-Philosophy. She had never been to that section before. Philosophy for a girl? What would Father say? He found her once examining the books in his study and sent her away with a flea in her ear. But pleasing Bibi was more important than minding Father. She grabbed Discover Yourself and quickly went to check it out before she changed her mind. The librarian looked at the title, looked at Mimi, raised an eyebrow but stamped the book and released it with a reminder that it was due back in a week. Fortunately she was not a parishioner or a prompt ‘phone call may have condemned Discover Yourself to the same fate as the Barbara Cartlands that had to be returned immediately.
A quick examination of the table of contents reassured Mimi that this was not a book to feel guilty about; it even looked like a Christian book with its mention of the Kingdom of Heaven, The Seven Beatitudes, the Gospel According to St John and The Mystery of Jesus. She skipped the introduction and went straight to Chapter II. What is God? It was like reading poetry; one did not expect to understand every word. Hidden meaning lurked behind every obscure reference, bedazzling Mimi. Self, Light and Power gained the same authority as God by virtue of the capitals assigned to them.
And while she was reading about how ‘God, the Sun, and Light are synonymous’ she came upon the unforgettable passage that flew in the face of what she was supposed to believe but confirmed everything she already knew:
‘And if you ask how God, then a single unit in existence, created light, how could he have created it except out of Himself, out of His Own Being, as a spider spins a web out of his own body? The web is not different from the spider’s body; it is really part of it. And so God created light out of His own Being, which means that Light is none other than God, the being of God. Light is God.’
She stepped into favourite her place between dream and reality as she recalled the daddy longlegs that lived in her room at the seaside once. She let it wander where it would and spin where it wanted. She watched the web in the rays of the early morning sun: such delicacy, such fragility and yet such a confident structure. These were not the dusty cobwebs of white lies and small misdemeanours she swept from the corners of her heart in preparation for Pentecost every year. No, this was creation in its purest form; so beautiful it made her want to cry. Once she found the spider next to her pillow on waking. She left it undisturbed and settled in next to it that night. She would confess only to herself that she told that spider about her love for the shimmering patterns of light on water, the dancing reflections of light on the underside of rocks and the pulse of the quicksilver ocean.
Bibi was not interested in God as a spider, nor did she want to discuss the chapters on the Beatitudes or the Gospel according to St John.
“We can skip that,” she said bossily, “we’ve had enough Bible study. And it never brought us close to astral travelling.”
To achieve this advanced stage of the process was obviously Bibi’s aim. Together they tried to meditate – think of nothing as Bibi called it. But if indeed the adept, Michael, had taught breathing techniques or handed out mantras, Bibi had missed those. Paul Brunton’s vague instructions on the correct room decorations and music to get in the mood was of little use. After several sessions of trying to think of nothing together Bibi decided it was best done alone. Mimi went back to prayer but Bibi triumphantly declared just before Pentecost that she had had an out of body experience

Catechism classes brought an end to the regular Saturday get-togethers. Mimi was looking forward to the formal study of the doctrine of the Church, Father’s preferred branch of the Dutch Reformed Church, the only Church if you knew what was good for you. The classes were optional and Bibi opted out, a fact, which miffed Father. Bibi obviously did not know what was good for her. What Father did not know was that Elaine had heard from France that God was dead and told Bibi. It killed the God within, it destroyed the Overself and thinking of nothing was replaced by thinking of suicide. Mimi could not escape the intense break-time and after-school discussions on the pro and cons of suicide. Was it cowardly or courageous? Which was the best method? And wasn’t getting rid of the body the ideal way to astral travelling? It was definitely not the right time for Bibi to study the Heidelberg Catechism and the doctrine of Pre-destination. She hinted heavily that Mimi was a hypocrite for attending the classes herself. But Mimi had been a dutiful daughter longer than she had been Bibi’s friend. Besides, she hoped that the classes would give her ammunition against Bibi’s confused conversations and the spider dreams that frequently woke her and set her thinking.
And there was the outfit to consider. Confirmation was not only a religious rite of passage; it was a social coming of age. For months Mimi had been looking at magazines to see what the stars were wearing. Then she set about putting the outfit together: the white stiletto heel shoes with matching bag and gloves, the burnt orange linen for the pencil dress with a blouson back and a instep corset to mold her rear and hold up her fine hemmed stockings. The little clip-on hat was made of feathers just a shade darker than the linen. It would perfectly offset her modest beehive and chignon. She bought her first lipstick – pearly orange mousse - and a compact – natural glow -with her own money. Eye make-up and rouge were out of the question since Father had made it clear to all that those belonged in dens of iniquity and not at the confirmation ceremony.
So, with the costume all set, she began learning her lines. Right from the beginning the Heidelberg Catechism makes it very clear that the individual is conceived and born in sin and at the mercy of God who held sway over His whole creation. He is almighty with the power to judge and condemn to eternal damnation believers and non-believers alike. The sinner had no chance. Unless, unless he played by the rules of the – added almost as a footnote- the wise and loving God. To Mimi, who had already spent ten years of her life going to church twice on a Sunday, attending Sunday school and Christian Youth meetings, this God was not unfamiliar. Nor was the psychology of grinding down the individual in order to create a fertile field of gratitude for being uplifted, pouring gallons of bitter guilt in order to make the small cup of forgiveness seem sweet. Placed in such a position of emotional vulnerability, it seemed idiotic for the sinner not to adopt the Faith.
Saturdays passed with the Lord’s Prayer, the Credo, an exploration of the sacraments and an explanation of the doctrine of Pre-destination. During the examination of the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not make unto the any grave image’ gave Father the opportunity, in the true spirit of Calvin, to drive home the point that no Roman Catholic on earth had a snowball’s hope in hell ever to get to heaven. Father asked the questions, the candidates regurgitated memorized answers. It took only one bold boy to question the Immaculate Conception to show the rest that trick questions were out.
“If you want to argue with the Holy Word of God, my boy, you might as well leave. Confirmation is for the faithful. If you don’t have faith, you cannot expect to be accepted into the fold. You will stay after class to discuss this with me.”
Mimi was glad she had not volunteered Paul Brunton’s explanation that the Immaculate Conception was a way of explaining to the simple-minded followers of Christ that he really came from another planet.
Then came the afternoon when only a third of the class showed up. The rest had taken it upon them selves, without informing Father, to go to the cinema across the street instead. Elvis Presley was playing in Jail House Rock. That Sunday Father’s fury prompted one of his most memorable hellfire and damnation sermons. He raved against the corrupting influences of the modern world – rock and roll was the music of the Devil and Elvis was his agent. And those who had dared to choose intercourse with the devil instead of coming to Catechism were now at the gates of hell. Mimi looked at the culprits, mostly boarders, seated in neat rows on the balcony and imagined them writhing like Michelangelo’s damned. Elvis only got Father started. ‘The devil is everywhere: in the dance halls and brothels of London, Paris and New York, in Rome and Russia. And now his message had reached our own town, stirring up lascivious thoughts, encouraging irresponsible behaviour. What next? Perhaps communist propaganda, aided and abetted by the agents of the Vatican, will persuade people to abandon their God given right to Separate Development and give the country away to the heathen. Chaos is upon us if we, Christian soldiers of a chosen people, don’t stand up, stand up for Jesus and resist the devil and all his agents….’
The week before the Catechism exam Mimi hardly slept. Every night the spider dreams became tangled in blasphemous ruminations on the death of God. She went to school in a daze, stumbling over recitations, incapable of doing math or translating Caesar and burning a lentil soup. Her Biology sketchbook was her only comfort as she sat for hours enhancing the cross-sections of cells with a million dots.
Mother heard her messy arpeggios and the apparent pleasure she took in shaking the house with Khachaturian’s dissonant Dance. She knew something was wrong and told Father. She was called to the study. The same study where she sometimes secretly read the newspaper, the same study where she had been allowed to sleep when Leen was crying too much. But who can sleep with the creepy eyes of Christ on the Saint Veronica’s handkerchief opening and closing? Even if one knew it was only a trick, an optical illusion achieved by blending so many colours. No, those ghostly eyes triggered the guilt about every white lie, every hidden book, every dirty thought, every unkind deed. And, now, as she stood on the lion skin before father’s desk those eyes accused her of apostasy.
“Mother says something’s wrong?”
She started crying. And then came out with it.
“I can’t go through with the Confirmation. Pa.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure I can promise all that. I’m not sure I believe. I’m not sure who God is. Perhaps he is inside each of us. Perhaps he is like a spider spinning his web of light throughout the universe. Or perhaps God is dead?”
Father looked as she imagined Michelangelo’s God might have been, insulted.
“Who put those ideas in your head? What have you been reading? It’s Daphne, isn’t it? Her brother is very worried about her. But you are not Daphne, you are not in mourning for your mother, you have no excuse. You are my daughter. What will people say if you don’t do through with the Confirmation? The whole town will know you made a fool of me and they’ll laugh behind my back. Now you forget all this nonsense, wear your nice new clothes, do your duty and we’ll all be happy.”
‘Don’t you care about my immortal soul?’ she cried inside.
“And one more thing. No more Daphne. She has gone too far. Your friendship is over. I will tell her brother to tell her the same.”
He was used to being obeyed. She was at his mercy, dependant on him for food and shelter. Her only option was to pretend and go through the motions on her stilettos, hobbled to the Heidelberg Catechism.
The next day she avoided Bibi at assembly but came face to face with her in the bathroom. Her heart pounded and her mouth went dry when she saw her face in the mirror. Through her thick glasses Bibi gave her a stare reserved for backstabbers.
“Et tu, Brute,” she accused, turned, and walked away.