Stones for My Father by Trilby Kent

news.
    “There are nurses inside,” he said. I noticed how the skin on his neck just beneath the bushman arrow had remained perfectly white, like an inverted shadow. Weeksout in the sun with few opportunities to wash meant that the rest of him had long since tanned a ruddy brown.
    “It’s the surgery,” whispered a woman with a face like a peach stone. Her belly was swollen high with child, but looking into those dead eyes I realized that the baby inside her was no better than a parasite, leeching its mother of precious strength. “All new inmates have to be vaccinated.”
    “My sons have never been vaccinated,” huffed Tant Minna, and we were instantly reminded of the fact that they weren’t there with us. “They’re perfectly healthy boys.” Her gruff tone belied the lost look in her eyes, although I knew she would never give the khakis the satisfaction of seeing her grief at being separated from her sons.
    “Don’t be stupid. You want them to catch measles, or smallpox? Children have died of dysentery, typhoid, and bronchitis this week alone. You take the medicine.” The woman grunted at Hansie. “I’d give him a few weeks at best.”
    “Mind yourself,” hissed Ma, lifting Hansie up into her arms and turning her back on the woman. As I watched her smooth his fine curls, I noticed that my mother’s hand was trembling.
    Some of the other children cried when the doctor jabbed the needle into their bony arms, but I refused to give him such satisfaction. To be fair, the doctor didn’t look as if he was enjoying the procedure: all those wailing babies, all those stony-faced mothers, and therelentless heat. But still, he was English: he didn’t have to be there. The second he pressed a ball of cotton wool to the spot where the needle had gone in, I snatched it from him and turned on my heel, holding my head high even as my arm began to throb.
    Within the hour, both Gert’s arm and mine had swollen to double the normal size. The soreness was too much for my brother, who began to gasp and gulp like an infant. I thumped him on his good arm and shot him a look.
    “Don’t be a baby, Gert. You want the others to think we’re soft?”
    “Your arm, Corlie —” He pointed. Like his, my arm blushed an angry scarlet, and the lump near my shoulder was turning as hard as a rock.
    “You don’t see me crying, do you? Or Hansie, for that matter.”
    We were classed as Undesirables. This meant that we hadn’t come to the camp voluntarily and that we had uncles who were still on commando. Families that came of their own accord, and whose men had surrendered — the
hensoppers
— were classed as Refugees. They got extra sugar and real milk and sometimes even the odd sweet potato, and they were put in furnished tents. As we wandered between the rows, we peered into each tent we passed. Some of them housed up to twelve people, while others had only three or four. Nearly every tent had a sick person in it. Some contained empty cots decorated with scrub flowers or bits of black cloth.
    Our family — Ma, my brothers, and I — was assignedto a tent where a family of five was already living. The tent smelled sour, and I had to hold my breath as we were shown to our cots. The woman who lived there was called Agnes Biljon, and although you could see that she was disappointed to have to share the space with newcomers, she did her best to make Ma feel welcome. She told us that she had three children, all girls, aged sixteen, fourteen, and seven. The youngest and the eldest were out collecting rations, while Agnes tended to the middle child, Antjie, who was ill.
    Only then did I notice the girl lying against the far side of the tent. Less a girl than a shadow, really: there was so little of her that you would have been forgiven for thinking there was nothing beneath the blankets. She was asleep, and with each breath a tired, wheezing sound escaped through the corners of her mouth. It was hard to say whether or not she was