Tshepo
Year: 1998
“TSHEPO. TSHEPO, YOUR BATH IS READY!”
Tshepo stirs on her bed. She sucks her thumb and hugs her pink covers.
“Tshepo, it’s time!” Her mother opens her bedroom door.
“Mom ...”
“You don’t want to go to school? Come!”
“One more minute.”
“Tshepo, no. Remember when I warned you last night that you should go to bed early? Now look.”
Bonolo looks at her daughter’s hair. She just plaited the girl’s hair a week ago, now it’s a mess. She knows she’ll be receiving a letter from her class teacher. The first time she got one, Tshepo came home with it folded in her backpack. It said, “Dear Miss Molomo, please comb Tshepo’s hair. It looks untidy and unkempt, which is against the school’s hygiene policy – Mrs van der Walt.”
So instead of sending her six-year-old to school with an afro again, Bonolo plaited her hair into zigzag cornrows. Tshepo had sobbed thin tears and fidgeted on her chair, and kept saying she had to pee, while Bonolo, irked, attempted to use the comb.
After that night, whenever Tshepo’s hair gets undone, Bonolo sneaks into her bedroom and quietly braids her hair while she sleeps.
“Tshepo, did you take off your doek last night?”
“Doeks are for grannies, mom.”
She laughs, “But it keeps your hair tidy. Now look at it.” She shakes her head, “Go, I’ll find you in the bathroom. We’re late.”
The little girl runs to the bathroom and Bonolo starts doing her bed. That’s when she sees it. She smells the sheets to make sure it’s really urine. Tshepo doesn’t wet the bed, she thinks, surprised. The last time, she was two years old. Bonolo removes the sheets and dumps them in the washing machine.
“Mom!”
“I’m coming!”
In the bathroom, Tshepo’s already brushing her teeth.
“No, no, no … you didn’t bath.”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did!”
“Come, back in the water.”
Tshepo reluctantly climbs into the tub and sits. Bonolo looks at her daughter’s angry face and smiles. She’s so cute when she’s mad, she thinks. Then she remembers the wet sheets. She spreads soap on her daughter’s back. “Do you like the kids in your class?”
Tshepo shrugs. “I guess ...”
“Your teacher? Mrs van der Walt?”
“She’s okay.”
“Your friends?”
“I like them too.” She looks up at Bonolo. “But there is a girl who picks on me.”
“What? What girl?”
“I tell Mrs van der Walt. She tells her to stop.”
“She doesn’t hit you, does she?”
“No ...”
“I need to talk to your teacher about this girl if she continues bothering you.”
Bonolo waits until the bath is almost finished before she says, “Tshepo, you wet the bed last night. Did you drink too much water before going to sleep, honey?”
Tshepo doesn’t answer. She plays with the water in the tub.
“Tshepo.”
“Mom ...”
“Did you wet the bed?”
She nods.
“But you know you could have peed in your pottie or in the loo ... you know that. What’s wrong, baby?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. It just happened. I didn’t mean to.” She looks down.
Bonolo sighs. “It’s fine. It’s okay, okay?”
Tshepo nods again, still seeming ashamed.
“Now, what do you say: tomorrow, Daddy takes you to the salon to plait your hair?”
“But you do my hair.”
“I know. But I won’t be here tonight. I’ll be studying on campus; you’ll be with Daddy at his house.”
She’d prefer to spend time with her daughter than send her to her father, who might not even bother to be there. Bonolo knows that by sending Tshepo to her father, she’s actually sending her to his new wife.
“You’re going to school at night?” Tshepo asks.
“Yes.” Bonolo lifts Tshepo out of the tub and wraps her in a towel. “Look how clean you look. My beautiful flower.”
Later, after school, Tshepo will come home with a letter that reads: “Dear Miss Molomo. Please, this is the last letter I am writing regarding your daughter’s hair. I suggest that you cut it or relax it. It is untidy and unkempt. This is against the school’s hygiene policy – Mrs van der Walt.”
Rosina
Year: 2007
Today is Friday, so I’m going for a sleepover at my best friend’s Tshepo’s house in town. Mama’s doing night shift at the hospital, and she’ll only come back this morning after I’ve already left for school. I don’t see her often. When I have something important to say to her her, I tell the housekeeper, who often fixes the problem for me. Like last week Saturday, I woke up with a big ugly pimple in the middle of my forehead. When I pressed it lightly, I felt my entire face go hot. Aunty Mmamogo, the housekeeper, told me to put Colgate toothpaste on it and let it dry. Two days later, the pimple was gone.
After a hot shower, I blow-dry my hair and straighten it. I initially had an afro because my school doesn’t allow girls to plait their hair, but I got rid of it. That’s because, on my first day at school last year, Ms Peters, the life orientation teacher, came to my desk and asked me, “Rosa, what is that on your head?”
Blood rushed to my fingertips and I ran my left palm over my hair. When I couldn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, I replied, “I don’t know, Ms Peters, what is it?”
She said, “Girl, there is a bird’s-nest in that bush of yours.” My classmates laughed at me until their stomachs hurt. I stared at my desk and sucked back the tears. When I got home, Mama relaxed my hair with Dark & Lovely and tied it into a ponytail, because Ms Peters reported my afro as “destructive” to the principal.
I don’t like her. She is mean and a clean freak. Her allocated classroom is the shiniest out of the entire school. And she constantly complains about the weather, how it’s “hot as a devil’s hole”, regardless of the air conditioner in the classroom; and how, when she was still living with her mother in England, she didn’t have to agonise about sweating like a pig.
After my shower I turn on the morning news on SABC 3. Mr Millsteed, my accounting teacher, might ask us a question in class. I don’t want to look like a fool if he points at me, and he often does. “Rosa, how much is the rand worth to the dollar today?” He asked me this in our second accounting lesson. I wanted to correct him – my name is not Rosa, but Rosina. Except everyone in class knew he was talking to me, and he wasn’t the first white teacher to mispronounce my name, so I didn’t. It’s who I am now; even Mama sometimes calls me Rosa.
I didn’t know the answer to Mr Millsteed’s question. Standing there behind my desk as they all stared at me, I felt my face go soggy when I got it wrong.
I grab the lunch box Aunty Mmamogo’s prepared for me and head for the door.
Aunty Mmamogo is a rigid old woman. She’s been working for Mama since I was three years old, and until she dies on us, Mama will never let her go. She comes from Thlala Mpsa, some village in Limpopo.
Yesterday, Mama said I should take Afrikaans as my home language at school. Aunty Mmamogo disagrees. She did not say this out loud. She said it with her face, like she always does when she doesn’t agree with Mama. She frowned with the left corner of her wrinkled lips and sighed. When Mama was not in the room, she asked me, “Don’t they teach you SeTswana at your school?”
“No, they don’t. It’s a white school ... they don’t teach Black people’s languages.”
My classmates speak English. In fact, if Mr Millsteed catches you using any South African language other than English and Afrikaans, he pinches your ears and makes you stand in front of the class on one leg. He did that to my classmate Zoe.
Zoe is Zulu. She, Tshepo and I are the only Black girls in my grade. Just like I hate Ms Peters, I hate Zoe. She is two-faced. When she’s with her white friends at school, she makes fun of me and calls me “Black Mambazo”. But when we’re alone on the way home after school, she says nice things. She even tries talking to me in Zulu, although I’ve told her a million times that I don’t understand it. One morning in class, she came in and sat on top of me. When I pushed her off my lap, she jumped and said, “Oops, I didn’t see you.” Just because my skin is darker than hers. I didn’t think her “joke” was funny; I mean, I am a Black girl … what am I supposed to look like?
I wait at the gate for my transport. Two girls from a local school walk past, carrying their suitcases. They don’t say hello, even though they pass right in front of me, and I don’t greet them either. This is why Mama doesn’t want me to be friends with them – she says they’re jealous because I go to a white school. Instead, I stay indoors after school and do my homework.
Aunty Mmamogo thinks staying indoors will make me go mad. She says I should go outside and play mogusha with other girls in the street. When she caught me talking loudly to myself in the bathroom, or like the other day when she found me laughing at the jokes in DRUM magazine, she said, “Le lengwe la matsatsi o tlo go tsenwa.”
Mama says there were two other housekeepers before Aunty Mmamogo. The first one was hired right after I was born. The woman pocketed coins she found lying around the house while she was cleaning. She also used to bring her four kids when Mama wasn’t around, giving them food from the house. Mama fired her after she stole Omo. The second housekeeper was hired when I turned two. She didn’t clean. Mama would come back from work and find the house as she left it. Unlike those two, Aunty Mmamogo is not a thief or lazy.
I always tell Aunty that I don’t care what she says. That I like it indoors because no one calls me a snob or Black Mambazo to my face when I’m in my mother’s house. But Aunty sometimes sends me to buy her vetkoeks at the tuck shop, just to get me out of the house.
I notice the way people look at me. Like I’m an alien, something they’re seeing for the first time. They nudge each other as I pass by. One time, just after I’d passed this group of girls sitting on a lawn, they laughed out loud, like they were being tickled on their necks.
It’s Zoe who sees it first. I’m on my way to my classroom after lunch break when it happens. It’s as humiliating as I’ve always imagined it, many nights in my bed.
“Rosa, you have a beetroot stain on your buttocks,” she sniggers.
We both know it’s not beetroot; it is my very first period. I glance at my grey school skirt and my nightmare has begun. It’s as messy as soiled white sheets.
Tshepo quickly covers my skirt with her jersey. Tshepo’s had her first period already. We were playing netball at the school sportsgrounds when it happened. She whispered to me that she thought she’d peed on herself, as she often does when I sleep over at her house. I told her to feel in her underwear, that maybe it was just sweat. When she did, there was dark red fluid on her hand. “You’re menstruating,” I whispered, as if it was a dirty word.
I know I can rely on Tshepo; she’s more experienced than me. She even has a boyfriend who is doing Grade Nine, while I’ve never even touched a boy’s lips.
When Tshepo and I get to the school’s restroom, she says, “You got your first period! Congratulations.” Grinning at me.
I want to slap her across her cheek. “Congratulations?”
“Ja, you’re a woman now.”
No, I want to slap her on both cheeks. “I’m fourteen, I’m not a woman.”
“But this makes you a woman. Didn’t you hear Ms Lavender say we become women when we get our period? Do you feel any pain in your stomach?”
“No I don’t, and Ms Lavender is stupid,” I mutter.
That’s what we call Ms Peters, Ms Lavender, because she mostly wears lavender-coloured clothes and always smells of lavender. She doesn’t like the nickname, but we’re so used to it that students sometimes forget themselves and call her Ms Lavender in her presence.
“Do you have it?” I whisper.
Lucky for me, Tshepo just finished her cycle two days ago; she has an extra pad in her backpack. “It’s already wet, it won’t stick,” she says, standing over me like a nurse inspecting a patient. “You should change.”
“Duh, I don’t have other underwear with me.”
“You can wear mine, I don’t mind.”
“What? That’s weird. What will people say?”
“It’s called underwear for a reason.” She shakes her head with irritation. She lifts her skirt and undresses without debating the matter further, then hands me her purple panty. “We’ll buy new ones at Pep after school.”
I remove the stained underwear and throw it into the trash. Then I ask her the question that’s been on my mind since this morning. “Do you think I should take Afrikaans as my home language?”
She looks at me, confused. “Huh?”
“Mama said it would be good for me in the future if I’m fluent in Afrikaans.”
She quietly positions the pad and pulls the panty up to my waist. Speaking of Mama, I know she’ll act weird if she finds out I’m menstruating. Once, about four years ago, we were sitting together on the couch watching TV; there was a commercial for Always pads. Mama awkwardly said to me, her voice almost breaking, “Do you want me to buy you those sweets when I come from work?” – pointing at the pads on the screen. I didn’t know whether to laugh or take her seriously. I mean, I knew they were pads for menstruation, not candy.
When Tshepo is done, she finally responds. “I think you should stick with English.”
“Why?”
“Where will Afrikaans take you?” she says, as if it’s the most obvious and rhetorical question ever.
It feels like I have a pillow between my legs. I lift my feet to test if the pad won’t fall on the floor like a rotten mango dropping off a tree. I imagine Zoe pointing and laughing at me.
A brunette girl with freckles all over her cheeks looks at us strangely as we scuttle out of the toilet stall. “What were you two doing in there?”
“What do you think people do in the toilet?” asks Tshepo.
Embarrassed, the girl calls us “Hotnots” – and runs.
Tshepo screams in fury, her collar bones poking out of her white shirt. “I know you, and I’m going to whip your freckled butt when I see you again, jou moerskont!”
“We’re not even coloured,” I mutter in defence. “Tshepo, does it always feel this way?”
“How?”
“Like I’m carrying a sponge in my panty?”
She laughs. “Yes, it does. But you’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t think I will. It’s so uncomfortable.”
She puts her arm around my shoulders as we stroll back to class. “When we get to my house for the sleepover, I will throw you a bedroom period party, all red everything … my mom did that for me when I got my first period. I’m going to change my blue bedsheets and duvet cover to red, and I’ll borrow my little brother’s red fluorescent lights. Girl, it’s going to be popping.” She winks.
Thanks to Zoe, when I enter the classroom, everyone looks at me with “We know you got you period” eyes. I wish her nothing but misery from now on. I hope a drunk bus driver runs her over.
Lisakhanya
Year: 2018
You arrive at the address they emailed you two days before. It is 09:50 you’re right on time for the 10:00 a.m. interview. This will be your first interview after graduating with a master’s in psychology. Your whole body would like to remain seated in your cousin’s Honda and not go inside. Your cousin says, “Good luck, babe,” kissing you on the cheek. Should you say to her, “Rosina, let’s turn around, I don’t want to go in there”? But you shake the thought away. Because you are an adult now; you need a job.
You set your two feet on the pavement. A security guard gives you a paper to sign before you can go inside the building.
It’s intimidating. Even the friendly brunette at reception scares you. “Hello, my name is Lisakhanya Dladla, I’m here for a job interview.”
The brunette looks at the book in front of her. “Oh, Liza, your name is right here on top,” she says, smiling brightly. You know she’s supposed to do that. She’s supposed to be nice to you, even when she doesn’t like your face, because this is her job; but it still makes you feel better. “Let me quickly call Charlotte ...” She mutters something into the telephone, then says, “Okay, Liza, you can go left down the corridor and take a seat. They’ll call you when they’re ready for you, okay?”
You nod. “Thank you so much.”
After a while, a short-haired blonde woman comes and holds out her hand to you. “Hello, Liza, I’m Charlotte, it’s nice to meet you. Dr Goosen is ready for you in his office.”
You follow her, looking around. Everyone who works here seems to be white, except for one Black girl sitting at a desk in the corridor. You keep walking behind Charlotte in your nude heels, making sure you don’t trip. She ushers you into a glass office.
The man sitting behind the desk stands and shakes your hand, introducing himself. Dr Goosen looks much shorter than his picture on LinkedIn. He says you may sit down. You do as you’re told, switching off your phone and putting your handbag on the floor next to your seat. The table between you makes him look even shorter. “I hope you didn’t get lost.”
“My cousin stays not too far from here; she drove me. We almost got lost but we made it eventually.” You let out a forced laugh. Your cheeks begin to quake with nerves.
“What’s your home language?”
“Zulu,” you respond, leaning forward to adjust your blouse, which is tucked into your skirt and feels too tight at your waist. You stop when you realise this might be making you seem nervous.
“Well, as you know, we’re looking for an intern whom we would like to train for a period of a year.”
You nod.
“You have a master’s degree, right?”
“I do.”
“Here on your CV you say you speak Setswana, isiZulu, English, Sepedi, Tshivenda, isiXhosa, Ndebele and siSwati.” He smiles. “Is there a chance you speak Afrikaans?”
You open your mouth. “I did learn Afrikaans for a little bit at school, but I can’t say I’m fluent in it.”
“Where did you go to school?”
At this point, you decide you don’t like him. You listed your school and university on your CV, which he has right there in his hand.
“I studied at Fort Hare and I –”
“Your high school, ma’am. I want the name of the high school you went to.”
“I went to Khayelitsha Secondary School.”
“I see.” He shifts in his chair and rubs his lips. “Do you have a car?”
“No, I don’t. Though I do have a driver’s licence.”
“Alright ...” He looks at your CV again.
Do you have a car? With what money? You feel sad. This is not the type of interview you’d prepared for. Your friends and the internet had told you to expect, “Tell me about yourself”, “What are your weaknesses?”, “What are your strengths?”, “Why should we hire you?” But here you’re being asked if you own a flipping car.
Dr Goosen says, “You seem like an intelligent lady, with all the accolades on your CV. Nonetheless, I’m still going to interview five other candidates.” He pauses. “I have to be honest with you, I am a bit sceptical ... you might not fit in here.” He’s looking at your head. Your rough dreadlocks and non-Afrikaans-speaking tongue won’t fit here, is what he means to say. “But I like you, Lisakhanya.”
No he doesn’t.
“I’m curious; for your master’s thesis, what was the title?”
“Uhm, my topic was enuresis. Mostly focused on childhood trauma and its effect on adulthood enuresis; how childhood trauma can affect an adult’s emotional and psychological state, and how bed-wetting itself can affect an adult even when they did not experience it as a child.”
“That’s very interesting. What were your findings?”
“Well, bullying, poor parenting, and a child exposed to a new, unfamiliar environment seemed to be major influences.”
He grins. “I really like you. I’ll contact your references if needed to verify the information you’ve given me.” He moves his head forward. “In the meantime, I’ll ask Charlotte to introduce you to my small staff team. Would you like that?”
“That would be fine with me.”
That was quick.
You believe Charlotte has just introduced the lady at the next desk as “Sheree”, but you’re uncertain because it also sounded like “Sherlene” or “Charlize”. The other one, with his desk facing the corridor, is said to be “Mark”, but it might be “Marco” or “Mack”. This uncertainty continues with her six other colleagues, until you’re introduced to the Black girl, who doesn’t really smile like the rest. You still smile at her, though; more than the others, you want her to like you.
“Hi, I’m Zodwa – but you can call me Zoe.”
So this is the last intern, who started two months ago. You wonder if she speaks Afrikaans fluently, if she owns a car.
You are astonished by your tongue when it says, “Nice to meet you, Zoe. I’m Lisakhanya … but you can call me Liza.”
Your cousin is waiting for you in the parking lot. “How did it go?”
“Not what I expected, but I think it went well,” you say. “He even introduced me to his staff; that’s a good sign, right?”
“He?”
“Yes, the boss man.”
“How were they? His employees?”
“Hmm, I couldn’t help but notice that they were all white, except for the coconut.”
She laughs, “Coconut?”
“You should have seen her, with her stupid weave and ridiculous accent. I’m sure she licks all their butts.”
“Oh my God, cuz, always political about everything.”
“I know I’m right. It’s a freak show in there, and they kept calling me ‘Liza’ … since when has my name ever been ‘Liza’?”
Rosina laughs again. “Back in high school my teachers called me ‘Rosa’. I know how annoying that is.”
“Heh, they earn big bucks too; I could tell by their nice offices.”
“You’ll be earning too, when they hire you.”
“If they hire me.”
“You were top of your class. They’d be damn fools not to.”
A week later, Dr Goosen will call to let you know that they’ve picked someone else, but they’ll keep your CV on file.