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He is mimicking Sedibe, our next-door neighbour, throwing his hands in the air and putting them on his head, bending and shaking like Sedibe does when he talks about the eleven grandchildren he gained with freedom and how he has to feed them from his pension money.

“Freedom is a big curse because all people are now equal, which means that children are equal to their parents. Freedom, what have you brought us?”

When he is bored Khutso likes to sit with Sedibe on a makeshift bench under the half-dead avocado tree outside his house. He will buy a litre of soft drink and they will sit there, drinking together, Khutso asking him an avalanche of questions about this and that. Khutso will listen to him very carefully so that afterwards he can imitate him, making me die with laughter as he mimics even Sedibe's body movements.

“Do you think that I will grow as old as you are now?” Khutso asked him once.

Sedibe looked at Khutso and touched his soft skin before touching his own wrinkled face.

“Young Khutso, nobody wants to get old, just as nobody asks to be born or to die. You just wake up one day and realise: Oh! I came this far! You never know, young Khutso, but because you are all living in freedom, and are free to do anything, the risks I faced when I was young are not the same as the risks that you are facing now. Let's hope you do get old, young Khutso, and be old Khutso, but I don't think you will complete three times my fingers.”

Then a tear pushed its way out of his eye and Khutso looked the other way, smiling and rubbing Sedibe's back with his hand.

“The truth is, young Khutso, that I am going to bury you all and there will be nobody left to bury me.”

Later that day Khutso told me what Sedibe had said, and although it was not in any way a funny story, I could not help but laugh – Khutso's impression was just so good.

One day Khutso asked Sedibe if he had any friends.

“Oh, young Khutso! My only friend, one and only friend, die beste vriendin wat ek het, sy kan nie met my praat nie. She cannot even talk to me. I ... I devoted my life to her. Every day since nineteen fifty-nine I invested all my energies in one goal – making her a happy woman. We were the best of friends. We were a great team and then with this freedom she just became my best enemy.”

He stood up and walked slowly towards his property's old gate that is denied retirement.

“I don't have power or sight any more.” He began to cry. “Tears are the first thing that come these days. Being old and useless, all that I am left with are tears, tears and more tears. When a young girl wearing trousers comes into my family, into my family that I have been building for more than fifty years, and wants to run my family her way, because she has a degree from a university, what is that? Is that democracy?”

He opened the gate and looked around. Everything outside the gate frightened him, yet everything inside the gate was eating him alive. He took a few deep breaths, then went back inside.

By the time Khutso finished his story, I was laughing hard.

“Why are you laughing, Mokgethi? This is not funny, not funny at all.”

I tried to hold myself together but then he started to laugh too and we both died laughing.

“It isn't funny, Mokgethi. It is not funny at all to laugh at old miseries. I hope when you get old that children laugh at you too.”

“Apartheid has ended. Children can say and do whatever shit they want. This freedom is a worse curse.”

He intends it as a joke.

“Khutso, I am not in the mood today.”

He tries to capture my anger and mimic it.

“Khutso, I am not in the mood today.”

I push past him and go straight to my bedroom. He follows me.

“You are not the usual Mokgethi, my sister. What is wrong with you?”

He is my brother and because he is my brother he immediately notices that he is looking at a Mokgethi that he does not know.

For the first time in my life I do not know what to say to him. I try to put on a smile but he knows me too well.

“Mokgethi, are you sick?”

He hands me my phone that I had left on the kitchen table when I went out to meet Thabakgolo.

“Some boyfriend of yours named Kevin, talking like this is his world, called while you were out. So did Tshego, Mamafa, Lebo and a dozen other wannabe boyfriends who didn't want to say who they were. And, sorry, but I called my girlfriends as well.”

This is the part where I usually chase him around the house, pretending to be angry. I will pinch him a couple of times and tell him to never play with my phone again, ever, while he taunts me, telling me that he will use it whether I like it or not.

Yesterday, after I had pinched him, he stood on the sofa, bouncing up and down – he knew that I was going to shout at him for doing that but he didn't care – and started singing “I'll Stand by You” in the way that only he can.

I'll stand by you

I'll stand by you

Because you are my sister

I'll stand by you

Because you, you are the only one that I have

When you think you got nobody

I'll, I'll, I'll stand by you

He had his hands over each other on his chest, his head going from side to side.

And when ...

When the entire world closes you out

When all your boyfriends do not call any more

When all your friends are gone

I'll stand by you

I'll stand by you

Because you are my sister

He took his hands from his chest and bowed to the left, then to the right. Watching him, I laughed so hard that I woke my grandmother up and she came to see what all the noise was about.

“What is wrong, Mokgethi?” Khutso asks.

I wish that he would sing “I'll Stand by You” again.

“Go to the kitchen and boil water. I want to wash.”

Usually he wouldn't do this without having to be begged first or bribed but today he doesn't even say a word, just goes to do as I ask. Sitting down on my bed I put my hands over my face until he brings me water to wash with.

I wash and get into some clean clothes, then I take the clothes I was wearing and put them in a plastic bag. Khutso knocks on my door as I am tying the bag closed, very tightly, and comes into my room.

“Mokgethi. What is wrong with you?” he asks for the third time.

“Go to sleep, Khutso.”

“What is wrong? Mokgethi.” This time there are tears in his voice and I start crying at the sound. “Mokgethi, what is wrong? You can tell me.”

“I was having sex. Somebody forced me to have sex with him.”

I do not know why I tell him this, but I feel relieved.

“He forced me to have sex with him.”

“Thabakgolo?”

I don't know what to say to that.

“I saw you in his car.”

I nod my head and he gives me a hug, holding me as tightly as he can as tears drop out of my eyes.

“A day is coming when I will make him pay. He thinks because he has money he can do what he likes to people.”

Wiping away my tears, he looks me in the eyes.

“Mokgethi, stop crying. You do not tell anybody about this. Okay? If you accuse him, he'll buy the docket and everybody will be looking at you, pointing fingers at you. But don't worry because he is going to pay a heavy price.”

“Just leave him, Khutso.”

“No. No way. He has caused me great pain.”

He is crying.

“You will only get into trouble.”

“I am going to hit him like Bin Laden hit the Americans and he will never know who hit him.”

He wipes away his tears and gives me another hug.

“Just stop crying, Mokgethi. Stop crying and try not to think about it. I am coming to sleep with you tonight so you do not have nightmares.”

He switches off the television and the lights and tucks himself into bed with me, putting one arm over my shoulder.

There is nothing more to say and oddly enough it helps to have him next to me because I can't move freely; I am trapped in one position and for some reason this calms me. My mind stops thinking about the things that had happened earlier in the day and starts thinking about Khutso and his unusual ways; this little boy next to me and all the funny things that he does. I smile. I think about our father, about what I imagine our mother must have been like and, for a moment, a brief moment, I forget that I was just raped.

“Khutso.”

He is quiet.

“Khutso.”

He doesn't respond as I move his arm; he is dead asleep.

As I climb out of bed it all comes back into my mind, everything that happened with Thabakgolo. I take out my poetry book and begin to write out my mind.

I knew it all along, since I was eleven. Ever since that age I have been running, ducking, hiding and looking behind me to avoid this situation. It had to happen, yes, but I wanted it to happen after I turned twenty-one and never like this. I am only seventeen and Thabakgolo raped me.

This morning I was very sure of the Mokgethi that I was but that was this morning. I am not that Mokgethi any more and I can never be her again. This is what scares me the most, that after today I am not going to be a me that I understand. What am I going to be?

Thabakgolo is thirty-nine and I am seventeen. Does he care? He told me that he loves me but I know that love is not sex. Today I was raped and I cannot do anything about it. I cannot go to the police because they will call him before opening a case against him. And even if they do not call him, which they will, I do not believe that my case would see a courtroom; it will disappear into thin air and I will be left to be victimised by my community.

Cry, little girls of my beloved country, the Bonolos, the Pheladis, the Lebos and the Dineos that have to live, are living, in communities full of men who prey on us every day. We have come to accept that there will never be an end to this. We have come to love it because there is nothing we can do about it but extract some joy out of it. The community will victimise us, no matter the reality of the situation. Look at what happened to Little Bonolo. Even if you did not do anything, the community will still victimise you, calling you names – sefebe, skhenkhe, legolopina, ngwababane, ngwadla – that the English language has no equivalent for (“bitch” and “whore” do not even come close).

I am crying for help but where am I expecting this help to come from? Who is it I expect to come and help us? I know that there is no woman who can help us. Even if there is one, she will be between men and if she even suggests any action, they will look at her with manly eyes because they are the ones doing this to us. Yes, this woman feels my pain because she has been me – there is a man in her life who once did this to her – but the men she is between have done this to me. How can I expect a man to come and help me if he is the one doing this to me? The people who lead us are these men, the people who write the law are these men, the people who administer justice are these men, and the people who police us are these men. How can they put him in prison? How can they write a law against him? How can they find not in his favour? How can they not protect him? Because he is them.

I wipe away my tears because I have just discovered that this is a very old, very big subjugation. And though we pretend to breathe, we are not breathing. I heard it on television first: “The struggle has changed its face.” But this struggle has not changed its face. This struggle's face is the same as it ever was because it lacks a woman to lead it. However, now, I am taking centre stage and after I die no woman will ever suffer as I have.

There is a single line at the bottom of the page. It is still the only piece that I have of this poem. I cross it through with a straight line and instead write it at the top of the page. Because it cannot be a conclusion; it is and can only be an introduction to another life ...

I now pronounce myself deflowered

End

Synopsis

Mokgethi is not your average teenage girl. Mokgethi dreams of going to Oxford. To study Actuarial Science. But her grandmother and aunt have other ideas, and with no one to fight her corner, except for her younger brother Khutso, Mokgethi is forced to realise that her dreams may well turn out to be just that. Dreams.

About the Author

KGEBETLI MOELE was born in Polokwane and raised on a family farm. His first novel,
Room 207
, was published to great critical acclaim in 2006. It went on to win the Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English Literature and the University of Johannesburg Debut Fiction Prize (both in 2007).
The Book of the Dead
, Kgebetli's uncompromising follow-up to
Room 207
, was published in 2009 and was awarded the K Sello Duiker Memorial Award in 2010. His work has been translated into French and Italian.

Kgebetli lives in Tshwane.

Kwela Books,

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Copyright © 2013 KKL Moele

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Cover design by Michiel Botha

E-book design by Full Circle

Available in print:

First edition, first impression 2013

ISBN: 978-0-7957-0494-9

Epub edition:

First edition 2013

ISBN: 978-0-7957-0495-6 (epub)

Mobi edition:

First edition 2013

ISBN: 978-0-7957-0622-6 (mobi)