Alive Again Read online

  Mr Khumalo turned to me. “You’re very quiet, Nandi. Did you know that Machel was also known to be a brilliant orator? You have something in common with him.”

  I looked away. I couldn’t tell anyone that I was silently wishing for the courage Samora Machel had. If I had just a bit of his courage, I would not be so afraid of the Bad Boys, and of my father’s words which so often echoed in my head.

  6

  Looking back, I should have seen the signs.

  But after Bheka’s visit I was an eagle again, free-floating in a blue sky shimmering with sunlight. I was especially happy because Bheka had said he would be visiting again, soon. Maybe my happiness was the reason I didn’t take heed. Why I didn’t see sinister warnings in the real world, happening around me in the streets of KaNyamazane.

  Where I lived, life was – and still is – full of contrasts. You find grand brick houses alongside shacks of corrugated iron and cardboard, old gogos with blankets around their shoulders walking on the same streets as girls dressed in the latest fashions.

  My mother always said, “In KaNyamazane you find real, old-fashioned ubuntu. Neighbours share food in difficult times. Mothers look out for other people’s children as if they were their own. But you also find the dark side of people. Thieves, murderers, rapists …”

  Yes, I should have seen the signs.

  The first sign was so clear. In hindsight, that is. I was braiding Zanele Mabuza’s hair one Saturday morning. Zanele and her family lived next door to us. Her mother, Ant’LaMabuza, is my mother’s best friend. Every Sunday my mother and Ant’LaMabuza walked to church together, catching up on the latest news and gossip all the way. Behind them Zanele, my brothers and I always followed, dressed in our Sunday clothes.

  Zanele had an older brother I didn’t trust. He had left school early and he hung out with the Bad Boys – Ant’LaMabuza was very worried about him. I was relieved that he never went to church with us. He always looked at me as if I didn’t have clothes on.

  Usually she was very talkative, but that day when I was braiding her hair, Zanele seemed to be brooding about something. I wondered what was wrong, but I had a head filled with schoolwork and a heart filled with Bheka, so I wasn’t bothered about her silence.

  Suddenly she blurted out, “My brother says the Bad Boys like you.”

  Usually those words would have filled me with fear, but that day I just laughed.

  “They can like me all they want, I’m not interested in them. They run around KaNyamazane with nothing better to do than drink and get involved in bad things. I’m not their kind of girl. Anyway, I have a Special Boy whom I can trust.”

  “Please be careful,” she said. “Promise?”

  “Promise!” I said, planting a kiss on her cheek. “You’re very cute when you sound like my mother!” And then I shrugged it off. I was super-confident because life was good. Very good.

  The second sign was this:

  I was heading home from the taxi rank, walking in a crowd as I always tried to do. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the Bad Boys, one of the main Bad Boys, peering through the window of a shebeen. I knew that he and my father were sometimes seen together. The Bad Boys called my father “Old Man Dube”, and everyone knew this guy as Scar because of the wide scar on his face. They say he got it one night when he was attacked by three tsotsis with knives. He had fought them off single-handedly, and was left with a scar to remind him that he was one of the toughest Bad Boys in KaNyamazane.

  Some girls thought he was hot because he was tall and well built, he never lost a fight and he was a good soccer player. But there were also rumours that he was a hardened criminal.

  I glanced his way and to my horror he winked. Some girls in the group giggled, so I assumed he had winked at them. But for reasons I could not explain, I felt uneasy.

  That night there was a third sign. Just as I began sinking into sleep, I had a terrible vision. In the darkness behind my eyes I saw a flash of grey light, and in that dim light a male figure walked towards me. He had a knife in his hand.

  I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart racing. What did that mean? It took some time for my heartbeat to slow down again. Eventually I shrugged off the vision as a trick of my mind. Soon I was fast asleep, lulled into a feeling of safety by warm, fuzzy memories of Bheka.

  If only I had taken note.

  7

  The last day of term before the mid-year holidays was a Friday, and I rushed home after school, eager as anything to show my mother my report with all its A symbols. I ran into the kitchen, where my mother was stirring a pot of sishebo, the tiny room filled with appetising aromas. At the top of my voice I announced my grades, waving my report in the air.

  But I hadn’t seen my father sitting in the lounge next to the kitchen, on my mother’s favourite kiaat-wood chair. He had come home from Tzaneen for the weekend, unexpectedly.

  My mother quickly, silently put her finger to her lips, but it was too late.

  Roused by my voice, my father stumbled into the kitchen. Drunk again, I thought, seeing his cruel smile. He reeked of a familiar, sour smell that mingled with the sickeningly sweet smell of dagga. He had to hold on to the kitchen table to keep himself from falling flat on his face.

  “Your mother thinks education is the only way to make it in life!” he shouted. “She wants my children to think they are better than I am! But look, I have a good job, and you and your brothers are never hungry.” He grabbed my report and threw it to the floor.

  I didn’t say a word. I had learnt to be quiet when he was in this state, so I lowered my eyes.

  My mother thrust a wooden spoon into my hands.

  “Stir the sishebo while I cook the samp,” she said, trying to sound perfectly normal.

  But I could hear the anger and fear in her voice.

  I began to stir, my hands shaking.

  “That’s right, Nandi,” my father said, “stir the food like a good girl. Women belong in the kitchen.” He staggered to my side and put his hand on my shoulder as if I were his best friend.

  I wanted to slap his hand off my shoulder, shout out my anger. But I bit on my lip. I knew if I said anything the trouble would start.

  So I stirred the sishebo in silence, my stomach beginning to ache.

  “A girl is made to please her man and bear children. And cook and keep the house clean. You are mad if you think you will be a lawyer one day. I’ll make sure you get married long before your matric year. D’you hear me?” He put his big, stinking hand under my chin and forced me to look into his bloodshot eyes. “Eh?”

  I nodded. And then my father said something he had never said before. He had often threatened that he would make sure I was married before matric, but he had never said this before:

  “You’re a pretty girl. Almost sixteen. The boys at the shebeen say they would like to get under your school dress. You’ll get pregnant long before matric. Don’t think I haven’t seen how you look at the boys. How you dress up for them, tease them. Forget about being a lawyer. Pretty flirts get babies.” His crooked smile burst into a wide, wet, laughing mouth and his spit sprayed into my face.

  I wanted to vomit on the kitchen floor.

  “No!” I screamed, wiping his spit off my cheek.

  In one movement my mother was by my side and, small and short as she was, she took hold of my father, shoved him into the lounge and pushed him onto the couch. I was terrified he would get up and beat us all up, and so I shouted to my brothers, who were playing in the yard, to stay outside.

  But to my utter relief my father was so drunk that he just lay on the couch laughing and spluttering before he fell asleep, snoring loudly. My mother used the opportunity to get supper done quickly so my brothers and I could finish eating and then go to our rooms.

  I picked up my report from the floor and went to bed. My stomach ache got worse. All I could think of were my father’s threats about the boys at the shebeen. I knew my father. He always meant exactly what he said, just as he had w
hen he threatened to make my mother pregnant.

  I thought of the Bad Boys drinking in the shebeen with the older men, talking about women, talking dirty about girls.

  Talking about me.

  Talking about me to my father!

  And my father talking along with them, discussing me as if I was a cow for sale.

  My father was not a father. He was a traitor.

  My father was drunk all weekend. He was more abusive than ever, and called my mother names I had never heard him call her before. Several times he reminded me that I should not think I was better than he was, just because I got As and he never even finished primary school.

  On Sunday after church, I overheard a whispered conversation between my mother and Ant’LaMabuza in the kitchen. Ant’LaMabuza said that her son was spending a lot of time with the infamous Scar and my father. The previous night she had seen the three of them staggering down the road from the shebeen, arm in arm like old friends, laughing at the top of their voices so that all the dogs in the neighbourhood started to bark.

  My mother said my father was a bad influence on the younger boys. And there was something else that worried her.

  “I know him. He’s up to something,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on it, but ever since Friday night there’s been something strange about his behaviour.”

  I heard the fear in her voice.

  Ant’LaMabuza urged my mother to get a restraining order from the court against him, but my mother said he would kill us all if she did that. He had often threatened her with his gun. And she knew as much as I did that he always meant what he said.

  Besides, she needed his money for the household. He didn’t pay for school, but he gave her money for food, clothes, electricity and visits to the clinic when we were sick. And he took some pride in the fact that the money always came on time.

  “That’s his good side,” said my mother stoically.

  He may have had his good side, but we were all relieved when he left for Tzaneen early on Monday morning.

  That afternoon, my mother came home early from work. It was her monthly half-day. As soon as she got home she suggested that I bake a cake – we all needed something to cheer us up after the terrible weekend. But when she searched the kitchen cupboard, she realised she had run out of flour.

  “The sun is still shining, Ma. I’ll ask Zanele to run with me to the spaza. She has a new CD I want to listen to, so I might spend some time at her house when we get back,” I said.

  But next door all was quiet. No one answered when I knocked. Impatient to get the flour, I broke my mother’s rule for the first time in my life and walked to the shop. Alone.

  I am not someone who wastes time. I get things done. But that afternoon the flour was out of stock and so the shopkeeper had to send his little son to run to another shop to get some. I waited, chatting to friends who popped into the shop with its smell of soap, fish and cigarette smoke.

  By the time the little boy returned with my flour, it was almost dark. But somehow that evening I had no fear of the Bad Boys. Maybe my head was in the clouds because Bheka had phoned me that morning. Talking to him had made me forget about the dark cloud which had hung over our home all weekend.

  Happily thinking about the cake we were about to bake, and about my chat with Bheka, I walked home, humming a new tune our choir teacher had taught us …

  And then, the surprise, the shock of someone grabbing me from behind.

  “Who is this?” I asked, thinking it was one of my friends playing a trick on me.

  But a friend doesn’t hurt you. A friend doesn’t hold a knife to your throat. Friends don’t blow their rancid breath into your face and warn you to be absolutely quiet – or else.

  Friends don’t overwhelm you, drag you into thick bush behind a deserted shop. A friend doesn’t shove a piece of filthy cloth into your mouth, push you down onto the ground and tear at your clothes.

  A friend doesn’t force your legs apart with his knee and …

  8

  Much later, after Dr Malan had stitched me up (a wound bigger than the one between my legs; a wound as big as my entire body), I lay on the white hospital bed as if I were dead, my eyes closed.

  My mother, who had not left the side of my bed, said, “They’ve caught him, Nandi.”

  But I didn’t stir. I didn’t even open my eyes.

  Because in the darkness behind my eyes flashed scenes from a horror movie.

  Zanele beating her way through the bushes, bending down in the grass, arms out, helping me up. “I saw who it was. It was Scar, Nandi. I saw him clearly! Running, still pulling up his pants!”

  Footsteps approaching fast. A man I recognised from church urging Zanele to hurry to the police to make a statement. Ant’LaMabuza, who had been walking with Zanele, calling out, “I’ve sent for your mother!”

  And then my mother. A cry in the dark as she ran towards me. My mother holding me in her arms, weeping, blaming herself.

  A drive in a taxi, blood on my skirt, the police station, the bored face of the constable at reception, the kind female officer in the trauma room.

  Making a statement, my teeth chattering so much that I struggled to speak. Hands shaking so I could hardly write my own name.

  I vomited outside the police station. And then the taxi which took us to hospital stopped twice so that I could retch by the side of the road. Unbearable pain; I felt torn apart.

  Everyone in the taxi was silent. Sympathy on the faces of the women. An old woman telling my mother that she had been through the same ordeal a month before. Another saying the police had no time for rape victims.

  A whisper about HIV. Pregnancy.

  And the horror movie continued.

  Nightmarish hospital scenes. An HIV test to prove I was negative when the act took place. A Hepatitis B vaccination. A morning-after pill that almost stuck in my throat. Antiretrovirals. Medication to treat sexually transmitted diseases: “Just as a precaution,” they said … But all I wanted, craved, was to get rid of the stench, the filth that clung to me. Please, nurse, let me take off my blood-stained clothes that smell of sweat and body fluids not my own. Please let this throwaway thing scrub off her shame, her guilt …

  More images.

  Dr Malan’s kind face and warm, caring hands. His comforting voice, a nurse, lights, the humiliation of being investigated, samples taken, the smell of disinfectant, stitches, the pain. The piercing, unending pain …

  Lying like death on that white hospital bed, dressed in a white hospital tunic, I only once opened my eyes. That was when Maryke appeared with a bunch of yellow roses. She bent over me, stroking my face.

  Arranging the roses in a vase, she whispered, her voice trembling, “The colour of friendship, Nandi.”

  I clung to her hand. “Maryke, don’t tell Bheka. Promise me you won’t tell him. He will never love me ever again.”

  And then I sank into darkness. A cold, silent darkness in which nothing moved. Of course I was sedated, but that darkness was not induced by Dr Malan’s injection. It was not the darkness of sleep.

  It was the darkness of death.

  An urgent wish to die.

  I was discharged from hospital the next day.

  I went home with antiretrovirals, medication for STIs, flowers, chocolates, gifts and notes from school friends. There was also a letter from the whole Dare To Be Different Club, and one from Mr Khumalo: “Never forget who you are, Nandi, and that I am proud of you and believe in you,” he wrote.

  But nothing, not even the words of my favourite teacher, could light up the darkness that had seeped into every cell of my body.

  My mother took a week off work. She was relieved that my father was still in Tzaneen. The last thing she wanted was to have him around.

  But there were things to do. Like identify the monster who had destroyed my life. How will I ever forget that sickening moment when he loomed like an apparition behind the one-way glass and I had to confirm it was him, Scar. All he had was
a scar on his cheek; I was scarred for life.

  Things to do. Like go back to the police to give the detective, Mr Booyens, a detailed description of what had happened.

  “As painful as this is, Nandi, it is very, very important that you remember everything just as it happened,” he said, trying to persuade and comfort me. “Every little bit of information will help strengthen your case.”

  “I don’t want to remember!” I cried out.

  “Try to remember. I need the time of day, where it happened, the clothes the perpetrator wore … Every little bit of information, please.” His voice sounded weary. “We really want to put this brute behind bars.”

  I struggled with the details.

  My mother sat beside me, encouraging me to help the detective so that he could help me. So I steeled myself, and told him everything, as much as I could remember, while wishing we could go home so I could curl up on my bed and fall into the hole of darkness where nothing mattered any more.

  The darkness that numbed me inside and out.

  Do you know what your lips feel like after a visit to the dentist, when you’ve had an injection in your mouth? That is how I felt. Only I did not just have numb lips: I was numb all over.

  In my shadow world – my previous life a distant memory – nothing could make me happy. And nothing could make me sad. I didn’t even respond when my mother said the rapist had been denied bail. He was in jail and I was safe, she said, hoping that would cheer me up.

  But I just didn’t care.

  To this day I remember very little of those first hours and days. They are a blur. I have vague memories of visits by a rape counsellor, who spoke to me while I lay in bed, on my side, knees pulled up, blanket over my head. I recall struggling to eat … the antiretroviral medication making me nauseous … having diarrhoea … my mouth feeling dry … my head throbbing.

  I also have vague flashes of my mother’s voice, calling, consoling, comforting. Of Maryke and Zanele sitting on my bed, worried looks on their faces. Of Ant’LaMabuza at my side, praying softly. And distant memories of my brothers bringing me special treats, their faces frozen with fright.