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looks like it’s ready to harvest.
    Despite the worry over the witch, my stomach clenches in excitement at the thought of seeing him. I’ll pass by slowly, just once, I tell myself. Maybe he’ll be outside so I can say hi.
    Seeing Little Man will make me feel better, I realize, even as I think, Gogo would kill me if she knew about this.
    When I reach Little Man’s gate, his dogs run out, howling in greeting. The gate swings open and Little Man strolls out, whistling, winking at me like he knows I’m coming by to see him.

    Anyway, I’ve gotten my wish and my heart leaps so far, it might as well have taken a fast airplane flight all the way to Zimbabwe.
    While I’m trying to snatch it back from wherever it went, Little Man says, “Hey wena Khosi, what are you doing here?”
    â€œI was just passing by,” I gasp.
    â€œWhere were you going?”
    Now I have to find an excuse. I never pass by his house except with my family on our way to church. “I was just at Thandi’s,” I say, pointing in the direction of her house. But of course, my house is in the wrong direction to come this way. He’s going to know I wandered by this way just to see him. Oh, my God, how embarrassing.
    I’m getting hot and itchy. I’m hoping he’ll ignore the fact that I wouldn’t normally pass his house. I point to the wrapped newspaper full of Mama’s muthi . “I’m just out getting some few small things for my gogo .”
    â€œThat’s cool,” he says. “ My gogo sends me to the sangoma’s house to get muthi, too.”
    We’re silent while I think of something to say. At school, my other friends help carry the conversation so there are no awkward silences.
    I ask the first thing that comes to mind. “Have you ever gone to a sangoma when you were sick?”
    He shakes his head no. His tightly coiled dreads reach to his shoulders and swing with the movement of his head. I like them. No, I love them.
    â€œWe go to the doctor if we’re sick,” he says. “That sangoma medicine, it’s all superstition and lies.”
    All those warm fuzzy feelings I have for him dry up in defensiveness. I don’t want to argue with him, but I can’t keep my mouth shut. “These herbs really help my grandmother with her arthritis.”
    â€œI bet doctors have some medicine for your gogo’s arthritis that will help her a lot more than a bunch of old herbs.”
    â€œBut herbs are natural, not like the medicine you get from doctors,” I protest.
    â€œDo you really believe in all that ancestor stuff?” Little Man asks.
    â€œYou don’t?”
    He shrugs. “I don’t know what I think.”

    â€œI believe in it.” I lower my voice, as though Gogo and Mama are listening in, even though they’re nowhere around. Since Mama doesn’t believe in things like that and Gogo does, I can’t talk about it without offending somebody.
    â€œReally? Why?”
    â€œI’ve seen some things. And at the end of the day, I couldn’t explain them.”
    â€œLike what?” he asks.
    I think about everything that has happened in the last two days—the witch who told me she was coming for me and nothing could stop her, the drunken man who changed into a crocodile and then back into a man right before my very eyes. Did I just dream his sudden transformation? And that’s another thing—the dreams I’ve been having, dreams so real it feels like I exist in two worlds at the same time.
    But I don’t know how to tell these stories to anybody else without sounding crazy. So I just shake my head.
    â€œI thought you loved science,” Little Man says. “Aren’t you making the highest marks in biology?”
    I nod. “I think it’s interesting to learn about the human body. I like learning about diseases and how people cure them.”
    I don’t really know how to