What was it about her? I wondered.
Basi had been going out with a very pretty girl called Dineo on and off for the previous four years. Whenever they were on, they fell into a pattern: he was always unsure of how long it would last and made little effort to make it last, while she phoned our house all the time wanting to know where he was. Eventually one or the other would get tired of playing their role and they would break up. She was a snob and the kind of girl everyone envied because she was spoiled by her parents and was quite beautiful. My mother liked her very, very much. She invited her to our house a few times, which was unusual because they were hardly looking at marriage. But my mother liked things that made her seem more bourgeois and closer to town. She called it being “modern.” She would say, “People should phone and not just drop in. It’s more modern,” or, “Why is she breastfeeding her child instead of just giving her the bottle? It’s not modern,” or even, “Send a card to invite people to the party—don’t go to their house and ask them in person. Be modern, Nedi.”
So she was more than happy with the choice of Dineo, whose parents were lawyers and lived in Waterkloof. Dineo’s mother, Tilly, was a friend of my mother’s and they spent many hours on the phone talking about what they called their children’s love story.
“Wooooo!” she’d exclaim whenever Dineo and Basi were going out again. “You know, Basi and Dineo—those two understand each other. Lovers’ spat or not. They sort it out.” Then she would giggle with heaps of satisfaction.
For his part, Basi never spoke of Dineo as his girlfriend. He seemed to like being around her. He seemed to like her when he was with her, but he didn’t give the impression that he thought of her much when she was gone. On Dineo’s visits to our house, in those times when our parents were not home, Basi and Dineo would disappear into his room for what often felt like an entire afternoon. I had come to expect this. They didn’t go to the back room where Basi and I often sat and listened to music, or where he would take his friends when they were visiting.
The most Basi would say about Dineo was, “She’s . . . open-minded,” and, “I like that in a girl.”
I only vaguely knew what he meant. Mainly it made me want to be the kind of girl who had qualities that made boys say, “I like that in a girl.”
Dineo went to North Girls’ High, our sister school, the same one as Ole’s. We just called their school North and ours South. Whenever Dineo saw me at a hockey match or a swimming gala, she would call me over to stand with her and her group of friends, grilling me on what my brother had been doing lately.
Basi never asked about her or what she was doing. Instead he’d laugh, all impressed with the attention she was giving him. “She’s hot,” he’d say. He said that a lot.
But Moipone? Not even “hot.” No mention of her after I met her that first time. He said nothing at all. It was almost as if I had imagined her coming to our house and seeing the nervous and excited look on his face.
“He’s kind of . . . I don’t know,” I told my friends. “I think he’s going out with someone but I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” Kelelo asked.
I thought about it for a moment. If Basi was going out with Moipone but hadn’t said anything about it to me, then maybe he wanted to keep it a secret. Maybe they had just met and he didn’t want to spoil it, or maybe, just maybe—this made me feel hopeful—maybe Moipone was actually Kgosi’s girlfriend. But that didn’t make sense. As soon as I thought it, I knew to let it drop.
I said, before we walked into our class, “No, no. Something is definitely going on with him and someone. He just hasn’t told me about it.”
“But he tells you everything!” Limakatso said, her eyes wide with disbelief.
My heart sank.
“Ja. I know. He’ll tell me soon.” I tried to look nonchalant.
“So . . . you don’t think my sister should ask?”
“All right, girls!” Mrs Andries’s voice bellowed from behind us, a file tucked under her arm and her hands clapping impatiently. “Lunch is over. Be quiet please!”
“I don’t know,” I whispered as we hurried along. “Yes. Maybe. Probably.”
***
On the days when our driver picked us up from school instead of one of our parents, Basi would run into his room, change out of his uniform and then start walking down the hill. Sometimes he would ask the driver to drive him down to Kasi. But when one of our parents fetched us, they would drive us straight from school to the supermarket, giving him no time to see his friends that day—although sometimes Papa paid Kgosi to work at the shop, and they would see each other that way.
That Monday afternoon I stood outside the school, waiting for one of my parents’ cars to arrive. Limakatso and Kelelo had already left, and since the crowds of waiting girls were quickly dispersing, I was getting impatient. When Mama finally arrived, she already had Basi in the front seat and I quickly hopped in the back.
I sensed right away that something was going on because they both looked more cheerful than usual.
Basi turned to me, big grin on his face, and said, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“Your brother is going national!” Mama exclaimed with quick, unrestrained excitement.
“What?!”
“It’s not certain,” Basi said, putting up his hand. But his own voice rose a little bit when he added, “The coach said I’m on the list.”
“The list? What list?” I couldn’t control my own overwhelming excitement.
“The list of blokes who are now being looked at—” He slowed himself down, his hand moving up and down as if inserting tangible pauses. He took a deep breath and pushed out his chest, a gesture that made him look very measured. “Who are. Being looked at. For the provincial team.”
If I had to give a list of things most important to Basi at that time, it would look like this:
Friends/family
Rugby
School
“Oh. My. Gosh!” I almost jumped out of my seat. “My own brother is a rugby star!”
“No, no.” He was pushing the air with his hand again. “We have to wait and see.”
“Oh, come on! It’s a given. You haven’t lost a match!” Here I started counting with my fingers. “Your performance has been consistent. And, oh my gosh! You are the team captain. Hello!”
“Heh-heh!” My mother squealed as she drove down the highway back to our home. “Let’s celebrate!”
“Ma, there’s nothing to celebrate yet. Let’s wait. Two weeks.” He clasped his hands and I could see—I could really feel—how much he wanted this for himself; how much all three of us wanted it for ourselves. The star and the glory.
“Ngwanake!” Mama said with emphasis, her voice sounding as if she was choking back tears. She said it with that blend of pride and overwhelmed gratitude we knew so well. “You’re on your way . . . I mean, look: the national team only has one Black player! One! With so many of you playing in schools, it’s shocking. But . . . you could be . . . ”
“Mama,” Basi reached his hand out to her shoulder, “First, Chester Williams is Coloured. Second . . . let’s wait. Let’s wait. Two weeks.” And then he said in a whisper to himself, “Two weeks.”
Mama sped up to overtake the white bakkie in front of us. As she did, I locked eyes with the man sitting at the back, who smiled and squinted against the wind and the sun. He waved at me and when I raised my hand it was the man sitting next to a dog in front who saw my wave.
Mama clicked her tongue with disapproval.
“You know!” I said.
Mama let out a soft laugh and murmured, “And I know, oh, a change is goin’ come.”
Swept up by the mood, Basi switched on the radio and put in a new CD. We sat back in our seats and listened happily to En Vogue sing “Yesterday,” each of us with the quiet assurance t
hat Basi’s world was growing bigger, coupled with the immense pride that came with that thought.
We hardly said anything else to each other on the long drive home on the highway. We just sat and watched the world go by. My usual relief and calm set in as soon as I saw Silver City. A taxi stopped abruptly in front of us and Mama clicked her tongue. We were almost hit by a PUTCO bus at the first four-way stop, and we almost hit a young girl running carelessly across the road.
“We have a lot of pricing to do today so everyone is very busy. We may have to close the shop late. Get to work as soon as possible.”
I liked working at the shop. For a long time when we were younger it had seemed like the centre of the location, and for just as long it had felt like the centre of our world. It had always felt larger than any of us—it being the place where our father went daily, where he spent evenings and weekends and what felt like every waking moment of his life. There were family holidays that he missed because he was at the shop.
A lot had happened there. When it first opened it seemed like everyone in Kasi moved in unison towards it. I remember in the mid-1980s, when I was only a few years old, people standing on its stoep, giving shoppers pamphlets about rallies. There were dance competitions. OMO and Surf promotions happened there. My father’s spacious office often served as a last-minute venue for location meetings, and had even been a voters’ education station in the year before the 1994 election, when both our parents arranged classes for people who had little understanding of voting.
But our shop’s biggest claim to fame was that Brenda Fassie had once bought a pack of cigarettes there when she drove through Kasi. I hadn’t seen her and neither had my parents—it was apparently on a day when Papa had been buying stock in town—but Basi swears that it’s true, so it must be.
The big sign, painted with red against a white background, said: Tshwene’s General Store. Tshwene being my father’s family totem animal, of course, as well as his first name; also our grandfather’s name and my brother’s middle name. Everyone called the shop ko Tshwene, and before there was any other option for buying groceries, just shoppong.
As we drove in that day the usual group of young men were loitering on the front stoep, calling over every girl who walked by and hissing at the ones who ignored them. I had seen them make girls cry. They would curse a girl, or reveal some deeply personal and shaming gossip about her, and she would burst into tears as soon as she was out of their sight.
The shop was also a place where lovers met. When a girl and her lover could not meet anywhere else, they could be seen around the corner of the building kissing or talking with their arms around each other. The shop was where you heard things about people that you were not supposed to, where girls could be in love away from the disapproving eyes of their parents, and where boys could show off their girls. Ole had even told me that she had seen some people do a lot more than kiss and hold hands behind the shop, on the days when my father was not there.
“Steamy windows,” she had said, making us both giggle.
I was very curious about that. When my father was not there, I spent much of my time at the shop making excuses to go out to the back, hoping to catch a glimpse of a couple in a car with steamy windows. Aus’ Johanna had finally said, “They won’t do anything when you’re here.”
“But Papa’s not here. Mama’s not here,” I’d pointed out.
“No, but you are. They’re not afraid of Basi, but they think you’ll tell your parents.”
“Me?” I was offended.
“Yes,” she said, raising one eyebrow and looking straight into my eyes. “You. You talk.”
To console me, Basi later explained that it wasn’t that they feared I would run to tell my parents. It was that everyone saw me as being so afraid of my parents that if either one of them asked, I would be honest.
“I don’t tell on you,” I’d protested.
“No,” he’d laughed. “But I’m your brother. That’s different.”
So I never saw anything.
***
As we walked in that day, a young man who was about two years older than Basi, a fat boy called Five Bop, because he was always penniless and asking friends for five bop to buy something, was calling over a girl with a short denim skirt, a red blouse, and short heels. “Ee, baby! I just want to hold your hand!”
The girl said something I didn’t hear, but which was clearly hostile because Five Bop retorted, “Haai, man! You’re not even pretty. I was doing you a favour. Mxm!”
Mama said, light-heartedly, “Five Bop, wash my car and have a job. Leave the girls alone.”
Five Bop stood at attention, took off his hat and smiled politely at my mother.
“Eeng, Aus’ Dimpho, I’ll wash it,” he said.
Sometimes our parents paid Five Bop and other loitering young men to do odd jobs around the shop, like carrying in boxes of stock, fixing a faulty fridge, taking out the rubbish, or cleaning around the place.
“Heita, Five,” Basi said with his easy laugh and went to shake his hand. As soon as Mama had walked through the door, Five Bop pulled Basi over and whispered in his ear, but not so softly that I didn’t hear.
“Give me a cigarette, ’fana,” he said.
Basi smiled broadly and said, “Sure, Five. Sure, sure,” and then he strolled inside and back out again, handing Five Bop a cigarette concealed under a handshake.
In the shop, the workers smiled and greeted us cheerfully. Aus’ Johanna behind the counter waved at me, four of her right-hand fingers adorned with slim gold rings. Her hair always looked perfect: silky and shiny and brushed back. She wore a black-and-white dress—the colours Mama required the workers to wear so that, she said, they looked neat and tidy. Mama had also read somewhere that it builds teamwork to have workers wear a uniform. Papa had refused, so they had agreed on everyone wearing their own clothes, but in just those two colours.
Behind her and to the right, Bra Sticks stood at the second till and yelled out, “Eeeh! Bana!” when he saw us. He was a tall, skinny man who was endlessly cheerful and greeted us the same way every day.
Basi and I, as always, went right to work while someone made us something to eat. Basi sat behind the till and I stood behind the front counter and waited to serve people. I pulled whatever item the customer asked for from the shelves behind me and handed them over to the person before they went to Basi to pay at the till. Aus’ Johanna, as always, started with the gossip as we worked. When Aus’ Johanna was not on duty, it was Aus’ Dolly—so-called because she had very light skin and very fine hair. She was also as quiet as a doll, so I preferred Aus’ Johanna.
I remember feeling light and happy that day, watching Basi tell Papa at the till about the rugby, and seeing Papa laugh, clap his hands, and pat Basi affectionately on the back. Craven Week, then SA Schools, quite possibly. I laughed as I watched.
“Heh!” Papa yelled uncharacteristically at everyone. “Listen to this—” he was starting to say, but Basi stopped him with a bit of embarrassment.
“Papa, wait two weeks.”
“Ho-right,” Papa conceded. “Ho-right, ho-right.”
Shoppers and workers who had stopped to listen went back to their work.
“Ke eng?” Aus’ Johanna asked me, eyes wide open while she held a box of snuff in her hand and kept a customer waiting.
“Rugby,” I said.
“Rugby?” She waved me away. “Oh-ho.” She put the snuff in front of the customer. Nothing could make her care about rugby. “Why don’t you play soccer at your schools?”
She tended to say “your schools” with such scorn that it made me laugh with embarrassment.
A little while later, Basi and I sat eating in the kitchen at the back while someone took over our work.
“Why didn’t you want Papa to tell people?” I said in English.
“Two weeks,” he said, in
between bites. “I don’t want anyone announcing it before it happens.”
He was speaking Setswana—Basi hardly spoke a word of English when we were in Kasi. It was a matter of principle for him and he always winced with shame whenever I did. At home it was fine, but not down there. Never in front of other people. He was downright apologetic about going to the kinds of schools that we went to. And if it had ever been in him to be so impolite, then he would have told me to stop. He only switched languages and hoped that I would too, which I did.
But then he moved his chair closer and looked about to make sure no one was within earshot.
“I’m leaving early today,” he told me. “Tell Papa I had to go see Kgosi. He’s hurt himself in a soccer match at school.”
“He has?” I raised my hand to cover the sight of the delicious pap and vleis in my mouth.
“No. But just say that.” He seemed very anxious and hurried, constantly glancing up at the kitchen clock on the wall
behind me.
I was annoyed. I liked talking to him about the goings-on at the shop. Plus, neither of us ever left the shop before the end of the day unless we had a lot of homework. Basi tended to do his homework in one sitting and not bother doing it bit by bit through the week. So really, if anyone ever left early, it tended to be me.
“Are you going to see that girl?” I whispered in irritation.
He raised his eyebrows at my tone.
“Moipone,” I said in an even lower whisper.
Basi gave me a distant smile as if he were already gone. “Just say that. OK?”
I nodded.
He looked down thoughtfully at his clothes, and then seemed to get himself sorted as he stood up and put away his plate, wiping his mouth with a serviette before throwing it in the rubbish.
“Five!” he yelled at Five Bop, who was putting away car-wash cloths at the opposite end of the shop. “Did you tell Kgosi I was coming to see him?”
“Sure, jo,” Five said without missing a beat.
“Ma!” Basi yelled to our mother, who was in the office sorting out papers. “I’ll be back soon. I have to see Kgosi—he’s hurt.”
This Book Betrays My Brother Page 6
