Big Ups! NO Two

by Haden, Ros;

  Tebogo smiled at her.

  After dinner they played Scrabble until Tebogo had beaten them all three times in a row. Tebogo wasn’t keeping track of time, but eventually she looked at the clock and saw it was already past ten. “Oh! I need to go.”

  Monica got up to walk Tebogo home, but her mother put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll give you a lift,” she said.

  They drove quietly, the bag of food sitting between them. Monica’s mother broke the silence when they pulled up to Tebogo’s house. “If you need anything, anything at all, you come to us. We’ll always have space for you in our house.”

  When Tebogo got out of the car she thought she saw Monica’s mother crying.

  Tebogo quickly slipped into the house and was relieved to see her mother had not yet returned. She got out of her clothes, put on her nightgown and lay down on her mat in the corner of the sitting room. She was happy. She loved being with Monica’s family. She fell asleep smiling.

  A few hours later she heard her mother fumbling with the lock. Someone was with her, a man. Tebogo stayed very still, hoping they’d think she was sleeping.

  “Hey, baby, get it open. I can’t wait much longer,” the man said.

  Tebogo’s mother said, “Shhh … there’s a kid. We need to get in the bedroom first.”

  Tebogo could hear that they were drunk. Her mother turned on the overhead light. Then Tebogo remembered the bag of food Monica’s mother gave her. It was on the table. She hoped so badly her mother wouldn’t see it. She had meant to hide it so she would have food for the rest of the weekend.

  She opened her eyes a little and saw the man pushing her mother onto the sofa, his hands on her big breasts, kneading them like dough. But then her mother saw the bag. “What’s that?” she slurred.

  She opened it and started eating Monica’s mother’s cake. Tebogo was not sure what came over her but suddenly she shouted: “Leave that. It’s mine!”

  Her mother and the man looked at her, where she now sat up on her mat. Tebogo’s mother came toward her, knocking her leg on the table. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is my house! My house! Do you hear me? I own everything in this house – even you!”

  She pulled Tebogo from the mat and slapped her hard across the face. Tebogo fell to the floor and her mother lunged towards her. The man, much older than her mother Tebogo could see now, grabbed her. “Leave the kid alone. She didn’t mean anything,” he said.

  Her mother struggled for a bit but then gave in. “Go and wait for me in the bedroom. I’ll clean the mess up and be there just now,” he said, smiling at Tebogo.

  Tebogo was surprised her mother did as she was told. Once her mother was in her bedroom with the door closed, Tebogo grabbed up all of the food and pushed it back in the bag then hid it under her blankets. “Thanks, mister,” she said.

  “No problem. What’s your name?” he said, sitting on the mat next to her.

  “Tebogo.”

  He leaned towards her, and to her shock, pushed his hand under her nightgown. Tebogo stayed still, still as stone, and wished she could disappear. He reached his long fingers into her panties and she closed her eyes and tried to be anywhere else but where she was.

  “When are you coming to bed, baby?” Tebogo’s mother shouted from the bedroom.

  “Just now,” the man said. He got up, smiling at Tebogo. He put his finger in front of his lips and said to her: “Shhh! Our little secret, Tebby. Neh?”

  Tebogo waited in her blankets. She could hear the man and her mother but pretended she couldn’t. She tried to think about Monica’s house and her family but they seemed far, far away. Nothing as nice and good as the night she spent with them could exist in this terrible house.

  She hid under her blankets and waited. After some time she heard them moving around. “I need to get to work,” the man said.

  “I’ll see you later then,” Tebogo’s mother replied.

  They walked to the door and after Tebogo heard him leave, she got up.

  “Go back to sleep,” her mother ordered, heading for the bedroom.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Now? It’ll wait until morning.”

  “No, it won’t. Your boyfriend touched me.”

  “Touched you? What are you on about?”

  Tebogo stood up now. She stood tall and straight. She would tell. “He reached under my nightgown and in my panties and touched me. He told me I mustn’t tell. But I’m telling.”

  Tebogo wasn’t prepared for the hard slap. First one, and then another. “You’re a filthy child! A filthy liar!”

  “I’m telling the truth.” Tebogo didn’t care any more. Her mother could beat her, she could kill her if she wanted, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what happened to her any more.

  “No! Jocks is a good man, he would never do that. You must have told him to do it to you. I won’t have it! Jocks is moving in and I won’t have a filthy girl like you living here with us and messing up everything. Get out! Get out now!”

  Tebogo grabbed what she could of her clothes, her school uniform, her books, and wrapped them in her blankets. Her mother grabbed a kitchen knife and was pacing back and forth like a mad person. “Get out! Get out of my house! Filthy, filthy girl!”

  Tebogo wouldn’t wait for her to use the knife. She walked out of the door into the cool night. She heard the lock click behind her and the chain slide into place.

  Tebogo wandered the dark city streets with her blankets. She found an open storeroom at the edge of the park near the centre of the city. She went inside and closed the door behind her. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She decided to wait in the storeroom until the sun came up.

  She fell into a restless sleep, but was woken up when she heard the door open. “Hey! What are you doing in here? You can’t sleep in here. This is city property.”

  Tebogo looked up at the tall man standing over her. He wore overalls with ‘City Council’ printed on them. She stood up, gathering her blankets together. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where to go.”

  “You better clear out of here quick or I’ll call the police.”

  Tebogo walked into the icy cold morning. The sun was barely up, just a thin strip of light in the east. She walked, carrying her blankets, up the road towards a hotel. She found a broken suitcase, with some wheels, in the rubbish tip behind it. She put her blankets in the case and tied it shut with a long piece of plastic. It was easier to move around with the suitcase.

  Tebogo spent Saturday and Sunday roaming the streets of the city, pulling her suitcase behind her. She ate the rest of the food Monica’s mother had given her. At night she tried to sleep in corners where she thought no one would find her, but they always did. Two older boys who tried to steal her suitcase. A policewoman who told her if she kept idling about she’d put her in a cell. An old man who said he had a nice warm bed she could sleep in at his house. But he spoke in a voice just like her mother’s boyfriend so she got up and ran. She spent most of the two days running away from people.

  But there was one thing she knew – come Monday she would be in school. School was what would save her, what would make her future something to be happy about. It was the only thought she clung to.

  Monday morning early she pulled her suitcase into the filling-station bathroom. She washed herself with the soap from the dispenser and put on her school uniform. She wasn’t sure what she would do with the suitcase while she was at school, but she thought she might hide it somewhere nearby. She couldn’t bear to let Monica know what had happened.

  She came out of the bathroom and thought she heard her name: “Tebogo!”

  She looked in that direction and saw Mma Mogomotsi at the garage. “Tebogo! Let me give you a lift to school.”

  She climbed into Mma Mogomotsi’s car with her suitcase. She was embarrassed about it but said nothing.
Mma Mogomotsi said nothing either and Tebogo was thankful for that. They drove in silence. At the school, Mma Mogomotsi parked her car. Tebogo started getting out and Mma Mogomotsi stopped her.

  “I need to help you,” she said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. You need to let people help you, Tebogo. I spoke to Monica’s mother. She was worried about you. We went to your house and your mother said she wouldn’t have you there. My God, Tebogo, what have you been going through?”

  Tebogo saw tears in Mma Mogomotsi’s eyes. “Don’t cry; it’s not so bad,” Tebogo said. “I’ve managed.”

  “Will you go and live with Monica’s family?” Mma Mogomotsi asked the question as if she would die if Tebogo said no. “If you do that, I’ll at least feel better. Feel that I helped you in some way.”

  Tebogo nodded. She knew she would be safe at Monica’s. She knew that it really was going to be better. And that it was safe to dream about a future again.

  Discussion questions

  •Why do you think Tebogo was reluctant to take help from people?

  •Tebogo was lucky she had a friend like Monica. What do you think might have happened to her if she did not have anyone to support her like this?

  About the author

  Lauri Kubuitsile is a full-time writer living in Botswana. She has published three children’s books, two detective novellas and three collections of short stories for children co-written with two other Batswana writers. She has published three romance novels with Sapphire Press: Kwaito Love, Can He Be The One? and Mr Not Quite Good Enough.

  Kubuitsile was the 2007 winner of the BTA/Anglo Platinum Short Story Contest and the recipient of the Botswana Ministry of Youth and Culture’s Orange Boswerere Award for Creative Writing in the same year.

  In 2009 she won the Baobab Literary Prize (USA) in the junior category and in 2010 in the senior category. She was on the shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize.

  Advice for young writers

  You need to stick with it. I know many writers who are better than me who’ve had little success because they gave up. You need to stick with it and keep learning and improving. That’s the key.

  7

  BONA FIDES

  Julie Barker

  I live in Alex. We call it Gomorrah. It’s a place that never sleeps. Cops, nurses, and lovers live here, amakwerekwere, and the unemployed brothers of mothers. Me, I’m a bona fide resident, born and bred. The only other place I could live – is space.

  Gomorrah used to be a dark city. No lights and no law. I was a kid then. Too young to remember the hostels burning and the men with pangas slashing cops. Now we’re fancy; with our RDP houses and the Gautrain. It’s gold and silver. Every 20 minutes it pulls into Marlboro Station, just across the highway from my house in Extension 8.

  My mother, Mbali, wakes up every morning and waters her vegetable patch. It’s not so cool, your mother ploughing land right there in front of your house. Even worse, she sings while she’s doing it. I swear she makes me feel rural all over again (not that I ever was).

  While I eat my Weet-bix I hear Mrs Malinga shouting from inside her toilet while she looks at us through her window. “Mbali, you bring the rats, man. That red lettuce thingy stuff is no good.”

  My mother shouts back, “You have no respect, you old goat. I’m feeding the starving. Saving the dispossessed.”

  S’bu pitches up. We walk to the taxi rank every morning to go to our school near Sandton. S’bu is skinny, so skinny that when he stands sideways in a crowd you could miss him. S’bu shows me his new telescope. He’s taking it to school today to show kids how to use it. It’s an Orion Space-Probe, electric blue.

  “Dude, I saw Saturn’s rings last night.”

  “No way.”

  S’bu nudges me. “Any time you want to come round. Any time, chommie.” He’s a real friend.

  We get to school on time. Just.

  S’bu’s packing his telescope away when Alison rocks up, her ponytail swinging from side to side. “Look, the darkies didn’t ‘miss the bus’ today. Run out of relatives who’ve died?”

  “At least we have relatives,” I snap.

  Alison curls her lip. “Smart, cappuccino. Must be your white genes talking.”

  S’bu scowls.

  Mrs Liebenberg walks down the corridor before I can say another word. Alison smiles at me, and walks off. One day I’m going to rip that ponytail off her head, I warn S’bu. He laughs, uneasily.

  We have Science first period. S’bu talks about his telescope. Not everyone thinks it’s as cool as I do. They have no idea. After Science, school moves from one 30-minute period of boredom to the next.

  S’bu and I are walking home from the taxi rank, when it all starts going wrong. We’re walking past the Kings movies when suddenly Beno appears, big, mean and flashy.

  “Eita, squeeza,” Beno sneers.

  I’m scared, like deep down. S’bu is just scared up front.

  “Please, Beno, man … We’re just walking home.”

  Beno smiles, like a snake opening its mouth. It looks pink and pretty inside. But you can see the venom sacs are full. He puts a heavy arm on my shoulder. “Ebony and Ivory, you want to go out with me sometime?”

  Then he pulls me right up against him, I can smell his breath. It’s not pretty. S’bu panics.

  “Please.”

  Beno smiles right against my face. “Any donations welcome.”

  S’bu begins to quiver. “But Beno, me an Dudu, we got no money.”

  I feel the ground hit my back. S’bu helps me up while Beno grabs S’bu’s bag. Some of Beno’s guys have arrived. They’ve had one too many quarts. They mutter and swear. Who even knows what they’re saying. Then S’bu’s world almost ends. Beno finds his telescope.

  “How much at the pawn shop, gents?” He waves it around. The sun bounces off the electric blue, making it sparkle. S’bu looks like he’s going to grab it any minute.

  “What’s this?” Beno’s guys don’t know what it is so they don’t know how much they’ll get for it. S’bu tries to grab it but misses and falls. Now both of us look like moegoes. I’m not having a good day. I get up.

  “Let him have it,” I tell S’bu. But it’s the wrong thing to tell the guy who wants to be the world’s second most renowned African astronomer.

  “Give it back now,” S’bu shouts. “You stupid illiterate.”

  Beno chucks the telescope on the ground. He grabs S’bu and throws him on the ground too. He slams his foot on S’bu’s face. “You soeking with the wrong man …”

  “Leave him alone,” I shout.

  “You shuddap, half-breed,” snarls Beno.

  I grab the telescope, “Let’s go, S’bu.”

  S’bu struggles to break free from Beno’s super-shiny pointy shoe. Beno’s guys laugh. I hear something weird in the distance. People singing. It gets louder. I stand there. Beno looks past me and S’bu rolls from underneath his foot. As S’bu scrambles for his bag, the crowd gets close. They’re singing:

  “Give us houses now. Give us houses now, like Madiba promised.”

  I know some of them. They live in the prefab houses just past Fourth Street, waiting for their new ones to be built. Some of them have been waiting for five years. S’bu and I start to run. But the crowd is all around us now. We’re swept up with them. We can’t break free. I don’t mind. Anything for a party. S’bu holds his telescope tight and begins to toyi-toyi too.

  Then I hear a terrible sound. My mother’s voice shouting above the crowd. “Dudu, S’bu, come here.”

  I pretend I don’t hear her, pretend I don’t see her. It’s been a bad day, and I don’t want it getting any worse. We move further down Fourth Street, getting closer to Stjwetla, the shacks on the edge of the Jukskei. My mother is lost in the crowd when Beno is thrown closer to me aga
in.

  Beno takes over the chanting:

  Fix housing delivery now.

  Fix housing delivery now.

  Corrupt officials out now.

  Corrupt officials out now.

  All bona fides deserve houses.

  All bona fides deserve houses.

  Beno’s into it now, toyi-toying like a veteran.

  No homes for amakwerekwere.

  No homes for amakwerekwere.

  Kill amakwerekwere.

  Kill, kill, kill …

  It’s then that Beno grabs me. He drags me into the crowd. People press against me. Some grab at me. Some push me. Some people shout at Beno to leave me alone.

  Then I hear my mother scream my name like a funeral prayer.

  Suddenly the crowd separates and I’m thrown into an empty circle. I hit the ground hard, for the second time in one day. I curse Beno. I sit up. There is a weird and sudden silence. The crowd breathes like a single person. My skin begins to crawl. I stand up.

  “Hey, Beno, you moegoe. Why you throw me around like that?”

  “You see this girl? You see this pale-face girl with a German father? How come this girl lives in Extension 8 in her smart new house?”

  The crowd begins to rumble.

  “Leave her alone, Beno,” says a man.

  “No, let Beno speak,” says another woman.

  “It’s not her fault,” says the same man.

  “No, it’s her mother’s fault,” says another man.

  “I deserve to live there. My mother’s lived here her whole life,” my voice is shaky and weak.

  “Why don’t you voetsak back to Germany?” snarls Beno.

  “Voetsak, German. We don’t want Nazis here.”

  You can call me anything. I’ve been called names my whole life. I’m used to it. For some I’m not black enough. For others not white enough. I’m a split personality. So what? Who cares? I will be whoever you want me to be. But I’m not a Nazi. Rage doesn’t come often to me. But when it does …