This Book Betrays My Brother

by Kagiso Lesego Molope

Basi stared at the ground for a very long time. When he finally looked up he said, “It just . . . It got out of hand. It wasn’t . . . ” He bit his lip and blinked a few times. “You’re not taught to read women’s minds. You’re taught that they want whatever you want.”

  Would you call that an admission of guilt?

  We were both still for a while. We listened to the breeze brushing against the leaves and the faint sound of music coming from inside the car.

  “Basi—” I started after a while.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said sternly. With finality. “I would never, never . . . even as a young man . . . She was my girlfriend and . . . She knew . . . she exp—” He pressed his palm against his forehead and wiped off the beads of sweat that had accumulated around his hairline.

  “Basi—”

  “Enough, Naledi.” He shut his eyes as if willing away a thought, or a memory. “I don’t want to bring it up again.” He slowly walked away from me.

  I wanted to say: It doesn’t feel like a long time ago to her, or to me.

  But he was gone. And so was another piece of what my brother and I used to have.

  ***

  It was only hours after that, when I emerged cold and wrinkled from another bath, that I started to feel something close to pity for my brother. I remembered the way he had looked at the ground, the way he had said, “It was a long time ago.” The look of wanting to extinguish a burning memory.

  I thought: That’s the difference between Basi and anyone else. He knows. He knows it was wrong and I am willing to say that when he’s alone, he calls it what it is, gives it its proper name. “Rape,” not “a misunderstanding.” Maybe after a glass of wine or a good laugh with Kgosi the thought creeps away, but he knows. He knows the difference.

  ***

  A few days after Basi had left in such a hurry that night long ago, Mama sat me down and told me exactly what was going to happen: Basi was going to finish high school at a private boys’ school in Cape Town, an even more prestigious and exclusive one than his old school. He was going to be away from home for the remainder of the year, and when we wanted to see him, we would go to him.

  “It’s very expensive, but he’s had a tough time and deserves it,” she told me, her sideways glare spelling out my betrayal.

  We didn’t talk about what I had said or who I had said it to. We just went on pretending that nothing had happened. My parents took me to school every day the way they had always done, and I went to the shop and did my job. I studied very hard as it was the one obvious thing I could do to apologize to my family, and by the end of matric my marks were impressive.

  My parents “made it all go away,” as they put it.

  “No one will be asking questions or looking for Basi,” Papa told me. “And I don’t want us, as a family, making life any harder than it already is.”

  Basi lived well in Cape Town, seemed to forget everything except his friends, especially Kgosi. Kgosi went to join him at varsity, where they shared a room and then a flat. Now they live across the street from each other and are in love with professional women who went to the same kinds of schools that Basi and I went to, just in different cities.

  He’s fine, my brother. He’s doing better than anyone else I know.

  I don’t know much about Moipone because I hardly ever saw her again. She stopped coming to the shop; she changed to a high school a lot farther away.

  I stopped speaking to Ole after Basi left. She was right in saying that Moipone needed someone to believe her. My words were as close as she could get to an admission by my brother, so she took that to the police. That didn’t do anything for her in the end though.

  In the days following my brother’s departure there was just one conversation with Ole—no, it was a confrontation—in which she raged on about the injustice of it.

  “Him with his lion shirt and his Nike tekkies! I knew he was up to something that day! I knew he didn’t want me to come up to diEx with you . . . I knew . . . ”

  I walked away from her when her rising voice started attracting attention in the middle of the street.

  It didn’t matter, though. It didn’t make people think less of Basi. Most of the girls just wanted to know why he had transferred to Cape Town.

  “It’s a better school for getting into varsity,” was our family’s rehearsed answer and the one I gave everyone, including my friends Limakatso and Kelelo.

  I missed my brother sorely. I would go into his room and just sit on his bed, looking around at his things, now neatly arranged around the bed and on the dressing table. His clothes had been scattered on the bed and the floor until Mama had made a trip down to Cape Town—her second in the first month.

  And in those first few weeks after he left I was more heartbroken about not seeing my brother than I was about what had happened to Moipone. I felt paralyzing guilt, especially when my parents looked at me a certain way, or those days when Mama would openly weep for her son, who had “unnecessarily missed his formal” and who “never did anything wrong.” I hated Ole and didn’t want to have anything to do with her; I didn’t speak to her for the remainder of our time in high school, which was four years. I wasn’t sorry that we went to different universities—she stayed near home while I went to Durban, halfway between my parents and my brother. I didn’t see Ole when I came home for the holidays, although I did see Basi. We didn’t ever mention why he had left.

  Ole was out of my life until about a year ago when I saw her at a cafeteria at Wits, where I’m now studying African literature and she’s lecturing in Political Science. We greeted each other very politely and carried on as if we were new friends getting to know each other—cautious, but willing.

  It’s true that I’d like to know more about how Moipone is, but I can’t ask anyone. No one really knows much about her.

  The only time that Ole and I ever mentioned the past was when she said, “Whatever happened to Kitsano?”

  I don’t know. I had stood him up and was too young and too inept at handling relationships to phone him. I heard he had waited for me at the formal and that he was upset to hear our family had had a “sudden crisis,” as I told my friends. The fact is that my interest in boys and relationships had gone from exciting to . . . well, confusing, at best.

  For years before going to varsity I avoided boys. I started wearing jeans and put away the short skirts and the sexy blouses. I started thinking really seriously about never kissing another boy, just in case we had a . . . “misunderstanding.” You know, just in case we were not on the same page about things. Because I reckoned if something did happen, I may not be in a good position to warrant support.

  Being a girl.

  And being the girl who betrayed her brother.

  When I saw Moipone that day, when she looked up and saw me staring at her scar, she said, “I wish him a lot of bad luck.” She said it very calmly, very matter-of-factly, and then she walked away.

  The difference between my brother and me is that being special helps you pick and choose between what matters and what doesn’t and, sometimes, what’s real and what isn’t. I think he has chosen to tuck away that chapter of his life in some safe, dark place and has refused to visit it.

  For Moipone, I think, there’s never been that choice.

  For me there’s never been that choice.

  What would it be like to be that adored and that revered? To have people say you’re next to holy, so you can decide for yourself if you’re angry or not? Guilty or not?

  I’ve always sensed a connection to Moipone, a feeling that we belong in the same corner of the room, or something like that. Perhaps it comes from being aware of the loss of dignity and sense of safety that she endured. I remember always the feeling of being afraid of my brother after I had witnessed the rape, the confusion and utter devastation I felt when I thought of him. I’ve understood that she mu
st have felt all that and worse. And when he managed to fly away from it, come away unscathed, everyone said she was a tainted liar.

  “Who is she to be raped by Basi?” someone had said. Feeling, I think, that it would be an honour, not an absolute violation. “Why would someone like him need to find someone like her for sex? He could have had anyone.” Seeing Moipone—and not the rape—as being beneath Basi.

  My mother and aunts tell me that my loyalty should only be to family. Yet their loyalty is only to my brother. No one imagines that I was scarred by what I knew. Never mind that Moipone’s life was devastated by what happened to her.

  “She’s not your mother’s child, that girl,” they’ve told me when I’ve dared to bring up the possibility that Moipone may not have been lying. “Protect your own,” they insist.

  I know that Basi and I share something Moipone will never understand, but all these years I’ve known that Moipone and I share something that Basi will never understand. There are different types of family in the world. Are we sisters? I think so. We move like impalas among hunting lions. Moipone knows it, so does Ole, and so do I.

  Basi is a man, and that’s good enough, but he’s also more than that. He’s the boy—the much-loved and adored boy—with luck and looks and brains. He manages to fend off misfortune (and his own struggles are, of course, not minor) with the ease of wiping dust off a shiny shoe. In many ways, as much as possible, he will always be cocooned in the loyalty of his parents, his friends, and the women who love him, whatever he does. I know they can’t protect him from a lot of what he experiences in his world. I know that. I understand that he’s not living in a world he can trust either. But I also know that my mother and his friends see him as infinitely faultless. Who hasn’t heard of my brother or someone like him?

  After my parents had swiftly sent him away, Mama told me, “He’s going to be what the gods intended him to be. He can go anywhere he wants to go, be whoever he wants to be.” Her arm swept across the room, her bangles chiming softly. “Anything he wants.”

  Her eyes looked at me steadily as she declared with unwavering confidence, “He can be the president, if he wants to be.”

  You know she’s right.

  GLOSSARY

  akere (Setswana) isn’t it true

  A se toro! (Setswana) It’s not a dream.

  aus’ (Setswana) short for “ausi,” sister

  Aus’ o pila, waitse? (Setswana) Sister, you are beautiful, you know?

  ayeye (Setswana) you’re in trouble

  bathong (Setswana) people (an exclamation of exasperation)

  bogobe (Setswana) porridge

  bop (slang) refers to cents, counted in tens (5 bop is 50 cents)

  cherrie (slang) girlfriend

  deurmekaar (Afrikaans) confused

  Di a bowa! (Setswana) It’s busy!

  diketo (Setswana) game of throwing stones

  dikolamolora (Setswana) the first showing of breasts at puberty

  ditori (Setswana) stories, often used to mean “lies”

  dula (Setswana) sit

  ee (Setswana) yes

  Eeeh! Bana! (Setswana) Hey! Kids!

  eeng (Setswana) yes

  e fedile (Setswana) it is finished

  etla (Setswana) come

  ’fana (isiZulu) short for “umfana,” young boy

  haai (Setswana) no

  Hao! (Setswana) Oh!

  haua (Setswana) no

  hee-lee-lee (Setswana) the sound of ululating

  heh (Setswana) hey

  Iyo! Tshabang! Shianang! (Setswana) Hey! Run away! Run!

  jo (slang) my friend

  ka nnete (Setswana) it’s true

  Ke eng? (Setswana) What is it?

  kepisi (Setswana) cap

  Khante? (Setswana) And so?

  khati (Setswana) skipping rope, where two people hold the ends

  ko (Setswana) in

  ko motseng (Setswana) in the village

  ko Tshwene (Setswana) Tshwene’s shop

  Lege ba re eng. (Setswana) No matter what they say.

  legusha (Setswana) an outdoor jumping game

  lekeisheneng (Setswana) location/township

  letagwa (Setswana) drunkard

  Makhoa (Setswana) Whites

  mara (Setswana) but

  MK (isiXhosa/isiZulu) short for Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”)

  Mma ngwana o tshwara thipa mo bogaleng. (Setswana) A mother holds the sharp end of the knife.

  mo khoneng (Setswana) on the corner

  mo phasiching (Setswana) on the passage

  motse (Setswana) village

  mxm (Setswana) clicking of the tongue, used disapprovingly

  nama (Setswana) meat

  nè (Afrikaans) not so?

  ngwanake (Setswana) my child

  ngwanyana (Setswana) girl

  O itshware pila. (Setswana) Behave yourself.

  O kae? (Setswana) How are you?

  O sa wara. O sa lela. (Setswana) Don’t worry. Don’t cry.

  O tlha kae? (Setswana) Where have you come from?

  O tsamae pila. (Setswana) Go well.

  ou (Afrikaans) old

  Re tla re eng? (Setswana) What can we say?

  scafteen (slang) lunch box

  sephatlho/diphatlho (Setswana) quarter loaf/loaves of bread with stuffing inside (bunny chow)

  seshabo (Setswana) vegetables

  setswadi (Setswana) parent

  shoppong (Setswana) the shop

  Sies! (Afrikaans) Sis!

  Taba ke tsa babedi. (Setswana) News/an affair is between two people.

  Tjerr! (Setswana) an expression of irritation

  Tjo! (Setswana) Wow!

  tshwene (Setswana) monkey

  tu (Setswana) please

  umfazi (isiZulu) woman

  waitse (Setswana) you know

  wena (Setswana) (and) you

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I wouldn’t have had the courage to write this book without the bravery and inspiration of some of the most dedicated and committed women I know in South Africa: I thank Pumla Dineo Gqola and Gail Smith, for important conversations that offered a lot of insight. Thank you to the many nurses, mothers and other women who work against violence against women, and who took the time to speak to me a few years ago. Thank you to Bra Zakes, who has been very patient and generous and always takes time to answer a frantic email. I’m also grateful to my dear friends Anyes Babillon and Martin Reesink for being kind and generous enough to read and offer very helpful suggestions. Thank you also to Charlotte and Max for continuing to listen to my endless chatter about my work, and for the title suggestions.

  I’m also very grateful for the love and support of my dear beloved friend Jude Dibia, and my beloved Rima Vesely-Flad, whose love spans many years and is always close.

  Finally I’m most thankful for the ever-present love of my children, Motsumi and Siamela, who give me a new story to tell every day.

  KAGISO LESEGO MOLOPE was born and educated in South Africa. Her first novel, Dancing in the Dust (Mawenzi House) was on the IBBY Honour List for 2006. Her second novel, The Mending Season, was chosen to be on the school curriculum in South Africa. This Book Betrays My Brother was awarded the Percy Fitzpatrick Prize by the English Academy of Southern Africa, where it was first published. She lives in Ottawa.

 

 

 
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