Carl Senna's List: African Literature

SOMETHING BORROWED
SWEET CHARITY
by Zadie Smith
OCTOBER 11, 2010
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KEYWORDS
Charity; Loans; Friends; Money; Violas; Repayment; Single Mothers
met Christine at a bus stop. We both carried violas. Not just nerds but black nerds, female viola-playing black nerds. Christine was at least discreet: wasp-waisted Nigerian form neat in sensible skirt suits. I had less instinct for self-preservation. One red shoe, one white, a red shirt, a white skirt, and a red-and-white tartan beret. For this ensemble I took abuse from four Jamaican girls in the back seat who found everything I did and wore and said offensive to reason:
“BUT WHERE’D YOU GET THEM SHOES DOUGH?”
“They’re two pairs. One from each.”
“TWO PAIRS? THEY AIN’T PAIRS!”
“They’re almost identical. It was cheap—a charity shop.”
“BUT DID YOU WASH THEM DOUGH? OI I’M ARKSING YOU AQUESTION. OH MY DAYS SHE AIN’T EVEN WASHED THEM!”
One day, my skirt, for which I was too fat, freed itself from its safety pin and fell round my ankles, revealing my brother’s boxers. Christine did me a great charity: she sat down beside me and began a conversation, as if I were a normal human being.
A funny sort of friendship—conducted mainly on the bus or in the viola section of the Brent Youth Orchestra, which consisted of just us two. We should have been insufferable; actually, only I was insufferable. Christine was principled and hardworking, determined to break what politicians call “a cycle of urban underachievement.” Her situation was more precarious than mine; she was correspondingly less reckless. She did not spend the summer of 1992 smoking weed, practicing a signature inspired by Elizabeth I. She was always reminding me of our black-nerd goals. We would not get pregnant, we would pass our exams, we would attend university. Admire the music of Mary J. Blige but try not to live the life of Mary J. Blige.
We did our exams. We went to university. Christine fell pregnant. But she had her baby and carried on: finished her degre