Summary

Chapter 15 opens as Beauty sits inside a church that has been decimated by police fire during the continuing conflict. She marvels at how the white government could be so cruel as to shoot people in a place of worship. She wonders how the apartheid government can claim to be a religious government when they could inflict such atrocities. Beauty looks at a painting of the Black Madonna which depicts a black Virgin Mary holding a black baby Jesus. She thinks about how if Jesus were black, surely he would not have allowed the children of Africa to suffer as they have.

A woman interrupts Beauty’s thoughts and she asks Beauty if her child was one of the injured. Beauty tells her she does not know since Nomsa is still missing. The woman tells Beauty to go to the house of Nothando Ndlovo...