This Book Betrays My Brother

by Kagiso Lesego Molope

  Basi came back to sit down.

  I wanted to say: You knew her better than “only a little bit.” But what strange and disconcerting territory I was finding myself in! Questioning my brother? Not supporting him in front of our parents? It seemed absurd. And when all was said and done, it was true that Basi had never really spoken to me about Moipone, wasn’t it? I hardly knew how “serious” their relationship was.

  Instead, I tried, I really tried. I tried so hard to find alternate ways to view that scene.

  And I didn’t say anything. It made sense, in those days.

  “A woman is questioning your character as a man,” said Papa. “She’s challenging you and questioning who you are—who everyone,” his hand swept across the room, “everyone, thinks you are.”

  We all listened quietly as if he was not only addressing Basi, but all of us, as a family. As if he was saying that the integrity of our family was being questioned. Certainly, Basi alone represented our family. He was the son. The bearer of the torch that was our family name. He alone would carry it into another generation, while I was bound to drop it like a careless child with buttery hands. It had always seemed to me to be an accusation that Basi would marry someone while I would get married.

  My father could speak with such self-assured authority. Finally he leaned forward, pressed his elbows against his thighs, and pointed at Basi.

  “Don’t walk out of the room. Think about how you’re going to handle this. Think about how, as a man, you’re going to handle it.”

  Basi stood still, straightened up and looked my father in the eye. Nodding slowly he said, “I’ll handle it.”

  This speech—along with many other things, of course—would haunt me for years and years to come. I would think back to it and cringe because if there was anything Basi didn’t do, it was handle the accusations.

  “OK. OK!” Mama was suddenly cheered up. “Look. You have a dance coming up. Let’s not let this ruin the dance. Are you taking Dineo?”

  Of course not, I thought.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I gasped and Mama glared at me. “Who else would he take, Naledi? What other girl would be worthy?”

  There wasn’t really an answer to that.

  ***

  So, of course, that Friday in my room I knew what Ole was on about. I suspected she already knew my deepest, darkest secret.

  She leaned against the wall beside the window and let her hand hang out, another freshly lit cigarette between her fingers. She stared straight ahead and I was grateful she was not still glaring at me.

  I went to put on a CD. Toni Braxton’s low voice emerged like a slow, seductive moan, matching the softening light of the late afternoon.

  Ole said, “OK. Tell me something else then.”

  I put on a pair of white shoes with very small heels—the highest Mama would let me wear. I looked at the shoes in the mirror, trying to decide if they went well with a black skirt that I had just pulled on under a blue dress.

  Ole took her time.

  “Tell me why you think your brother has stopped speaking to Moipone,” she eventually said.

  “I didn’t know—”

  “You were in the car on Monday. Tell me why you think he did that. Twice now I’ve seen him leave her house in a rush.”

  Now it made sense why Basi had been so late to the shop and why he and Papa had had a fight. He must have had an inkling that Moipone was not going to be quiet about what had happened.

  “I don’t know.”

  Ole remained calm and didn’t turn to look at me.

  “You don’t know,” she said like she was carefully calculating her next move. Then she took a long puff of her cigarette.

  “Nope!” I blurted, a pitiful attempt at sounding nonchalant.

  This time she did look at me, even if it was only her head that turned.

  Feeling my hands shake, I pressed them to my lower back and continued, “Maybe it’s about the dance? I don’t know. Maybe they had a fight? Who knows? Who knows what happens between two people. They say: Taba ke tsa babedi. We—you and I—can’t really know, can we?”

  I had put on and taken off three different pairs of shoes by the time I stopped talking. Now I tried to take in deep breaths through my nose. Ole stood in the same position, looking slightly stunned, her mouth open and the cigarette burning away between her fingers. Her eyes went up and down from my face to my now-bare feet as if she were deciding how to meet my challenge. She must have known that I had every intention of acting obtuse.

  “Eish!” she exclaimed suddenly, flicking the bud, which had started to burn all the way to her fingers. She sucked them and looked me in the eye. “You know what I think? I think we can know. I think sometimes taba ke tsa babedi, that’s true, but not always. I think when one of the two people tells you something happened, and you know that that something is wrong, especially . . . ” She was moving closer to me. “Especially if the person telling you is a girl who says a guy did something awful to her, and that that something is illegal . . . ” She paused, letting me take in the word. “Then I’d have to say that’s when ditaba stop being tsa babedi.” She sucked in some air through her teeth and kept her eyes on me.

  My heart felt like it would burst through my chest, like I was drowning. I could see the water now, clear above me, blurring the ceiling and softening the light above.

  Ole came very close to me, close enough to put both hands on my shoulders. So close that I inhaled her cigarette breath when she spoke.

  “Do you know what I’m saying? What I’m talking about?”

  I hesitated too long, and time seemed to come to a standstill as the two of us locked eyes, each waiting for the other to speak. Finally I looked down at my bare feet.

  Ole made a sharp turn towards the window again, where she stood with her back to me.

  “Do you know what a guy once told me?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “One day,” she said, “I was just walking to the shop. It was a really nice, warm day and I was excited about going to a Boxing Day picnic. I was going to the shop—your shop—to buy more bread and cooldrinks. Hm!” She shook her head. “So I was just walking along happily, when one of those guys—you know the ones who sit there on the shop stoep all day doing nothing—well, he said something. For everyone to hear. And it was a bit of a surprise because normally those guys don’t whistle at me like they do with other girls. And this time there was no one I knew sitting there. So one of them said, ‘Eish, this one just needs to be raped. That will fix her.’ ”

  We both took in the silence in the room as Toni finished a song.

  “I nearly ran. But I didn’t. I told myself: Don’t show them you’re scared. That’s when they’ll come after you.”

  I sank into a chair and looked at Ole’s back. Her pants were baggy the way she liked them, her shoes and shirt were men’s and so was her hat. It wasn’t a stretch at all for me to picture what she was saying. I could see it. I could see the group of boys sitting in the entrance to the shop calling out to girls—every girl who walked by—saying, “Eish, baby, I like your butt,” or, “Come to my house and let someone touch those dikolamolora for a while.” And if they got a glare instead of a smile: “Eish, you’re actually really ugly and I was just calling you to make you feel better,” or even worse, “Ah, come on. Next week you’ll be begging me to touch you! Sies!”

  So, yes, I could picture Ole walking by and hearing that.

  But my brother is not one of those guys.

  As I watched her standing there, still as a stick, I realized for a moment, and perhaps for the very first time, how terrifying it must be to be her, walking around Kasi every day. I couldn’t imagine being her, with the knowledge of unidentified dead bodies and Vera-the-Ghost and hearing people’s contempt for her spoken out loud. And it was really shameful, I suddenly fe
lt, that having been such close friends for most of our lives, I was only now thinking about it.

  As if she had just read my thoughts, Ole turned around but her eyes wandered slowly around the room unsure what to fix themselves on. I saw that they were clouded with tears, which I would never see spilling because Ole never let anyone make her cry.

  “You live in cars,” she said, her voice soft and measured. “You go from your parents’ car to your parents’ house with its high walls and security gates. You don’t know anything.” This last bit she said with unveiled resentment.

  “But those guys . . . Ole, those guys are horrible. But they’re not like my brother.” I sounded a bit like my mother, separating us from them.

  Seeing Ole’s reaction, I immediately regretted not keeping quiet.

  “They’re exactly like him,” she hissed. “Didn’t he grow up here? Aren’t they his friends? Doesn’t he say they’re his brothers? Doesn’t he spend as much time as he can down there? What makes him special?”

  I sobbed. I threw myself on my bed, right into the heap of clothes. I took a pillow and put it on top of my head and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

  “You saw them go into the room together, right?” She pulled the pillow off my head.

  I sobbed.

  “You saw them. You know. You know what you saw.”

  I don’t know how she knew, and I didn’t think about what it meant. I was just terrified of what people would think of Basi.

  Her voice was merciless above my head. She didn’t seem to care, or even notice, that I was crying.

  “You don’t know the things that have happened to me,” she hissed again. “You don’t know.”

  For a while there was nothing but the sound of my sobbing.

  Finally, she spoke more calmly. “Sorry,” she started. “You know, the best thing is just for someone to say that it’s true. When something like this happens, the girl just wants someone to say it’s true. To believe her. Nedi . . . ,” she started in her best conspiratorial tone. “If you tell me that it’s true and I tell Moipone that you said so, I think . . . I just think that she would feel better. I think just knowing that someone believes her would really, really help.”

  I stopped crying and sat up. Ole walked around my bed and took a tissue from my red tissue box. Slowly she walked back and sat at the edge of the bed, handing me the tissue. When she looked at me I noticed that her eyes had softened.

  “I could tell her that you said it was true. Only her mother believes her now. No one else. Do you know that Aus’ Nono said she was lying? So many people . . . so many people have told her that Basi would never hurt anyone.” Ole paused, then added, “I saw Moipone’s mother cry.”

  I felt overwhelming pity.

  “No one believes her. Remember Aus’ Joyce from our street? When Moipone walked past her house yesterday, Aus’ Joyce yelled, ‘You should feel lucky! Raped by Basimane? You should have said thank you.’ ”

  I thought of Moipone walking to school, her heart heavy, her thoughts scattered with the fear of what might happen next—and then hearing that.

  “It’s funny—all these people always loved Moipone. But no one gets more love than Basi, nè? I mean, you know that. You live with him. You know that.”

  I felt an unbearable mix of fury towards Ole, and anger fused with love and a sense of duty towards my brother.

  “Everyone makes mistakes—” I started.

  Ole sat still, nodded like she was interested in every word that I had to say.

  I continued, between sobs, “It was only one time. Probably a misunderstanding. I’m sure . . . I’m sure he’s very sorry because . . . That’s not who he is, the type of person who would do that. I’m sure it’s not what he meant . . . A mistake . . . ” I felt more and more hopeless as my voice trailed off.

  Ole nodded and I felt we were in agreement, at least, about it being unlike Basi. That it was out of character.

  “That will make her feel so much better,” was the last thing Ole said that day.

  21

  ON THE EVENING OF THE DANCE, the last evening that my brother would be home, I remember him coming to my room and standing at my door.

  “You look stunning, Nedi.”

  I had decided on the black skirt and the white flowy top. Kitsano had phoned me a few minutes earlier and said, “I have a red rose and a white rose but I didn’t know which one you’d like better.”

  I had started to regain my excitement about the dance, thinking things were about to take a turn for the better.

  “Thanks,” I told Basi, who looked handsome in his black pants, an unbuttoned white shirt and a pair of brand-new shiny black shoes. He leaned casually against the door frame and crossed his feet, ever suave and self-assured, like a movie star in a leading role.

  “Are you OK?” I asked him, putting on my lipstick in front of the mirror.

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s going to be great. We can just forget everything and enjoy the night.”

  Without looking at him I brushed on some blush and tried to sound casual when I said, “You’re happy to be going with Dineo?”

  Too quickly, Basi said, “Yep. She’s fun.” He looked at his watch. “Oops! We should start moving.”

  Everything’s going to be fine, I kept saying to myself, despite the dread I felt in the pit of my stomach.

  My brother held out his elbow for me and I tucked in my hand as we walked to meet our parents in the kitchen.

  ***

  Mama was taking yet another “last” picture of us when Five Bop rang our intercom.

  In a moment he was in our kitchen, breathlessly explaining that Moipone and her mother had gone to the police only a few minutes before. When he was finished talking he sat himself on the wooden kitchen chairs our mother had gone to Cape Town to buy. For a moment it occurred to me that I had never seen Five sitting in our house before—but there he was, taking a sip of water from one of our expensive imported glasses.

  But Basi, Mama, and Papa were suddenly rushing around between Basi’s room and the car.

  “You can buy more when you get there!” Mama was yelling.

  In the midst of the chaos, Five’s comment sounded rather casual to my ears.

  “Ole claims you told her it was true. Can you believe that?” His contempt for Ole was barely veiled.

  There was a pause before, one by one, the members of my family turned to look at me. I heard nothing but water bubbles.

  When I finally managed to speak, I said, “I just said I saw Moipone . . . that she was here and she was . . . she was . . . uh . . . ”

  “She was what, Naledi?!” My mother slapped her thigh impatiently.

  “She was . . . Her blouse was torn.”

  They all stared at me for what felt like an interminable amount of time.

  Then Papa yelled, “We don’t have time to waste!” and they all scrambled around me. I reached for the chair, feeling that I may be about to fall to the spinning floor.

  In a minute they were in the car and Five and I were standing outside watching with stunned expressions as the three of them rolled over the pebbles towards the gates, which were slowly opening.

  About a metre away from us, the car came to a standstill.

  Mama rolled down the window and glared at me.

  “You shame us.”

  To my absolute shock, Basi then rolled down the window and yelled, “I’ll phone you, OK? It’s OK, Nedi!”

  On the street the sound of the car quickly faded away.

  Five shook his head. “You didn’t say anything, akere?”

  I hung my head and cried.

  Five said, “Tsk, tsk. Naledi, it’s a rough world for a Black man. He only has family to count on.”

  I felt pathetic, wiping my face and looking at Five, hoping he’d say something c
omforting.

  Then he said, “Basi would never—”

  I shook my head vigorously and cut him off.

  “I know. He wouldn’t.”

  That was the last time I would see my brother for a very long time.

  22

  “DO YOU REMEMBER, a long time ago, there was a body found in the woods?” Aus’ Johanna roused me out of my daydreaming. I had been sitting on a high chair at the counter on a very slow afternoon, waiting for customers.

  The mood around our house had made the shop the best place to be and since my brother had gone, I was at the shop every chance I could get.

  Aus’ Johanna was dusting and repositioning stock on the shelves, and I had been eyeing a magazine without picking it up. I was constantly finding myself drifting away with my thoughts, unable to remember what I had just heard or what I was supposed to be doing at school and at home. So when Aus’ Johanna spoke, I nearly jumped off the chair.

  “Yes!” I almost yelled. “Yes, I remember the body. I still think about it.” I was nodding away, rubbing my eyes, my head racing back to all the bits and pieces I remembered about the body.

  “So you know, the other day, I’m telling my brother about how I used to have this skirt. This really beautiful little skirt that I miss and how I liked wearing it with these shoes.” Aus’ Johanna liked to start right at the beginning and tell elaborate stories.

  I sat back and settled in to hear it.

  “So.” She smoothed the back of her skirt, all ladylike, and sat down in the chair facing me. She licked her lips and shook her head before she continued, and I wondered how her lipstick stayed so perfect for such a long time. “Heh! So he says, ‘Heh wena, Jo, I remember that dress. Didn’t you wear it for Kemang’s twenty-first?’”

  Aus’ Johanna looked at me as if I was supposed to understand the significance of this but I only stared back curiously. She had lines crinkling her forehead but she smoothed them with both hands, delicately caressing the creases with her fingertips. She opened her eyes wide as if she were waking herself from a deep sleep or a wandering thought.