I BELIEVE I ONCE ADORED my brother, Tsakane. I’d like to believe that he loved me. However, every single day, I have carried a weight of steel on my back. A ball of guilt in my gut. A coalesced mass of rage on my tongue. Knowing that I contain within me blood of filth. That perhaps I played a role in all of this. That I too turned up the heat, stirred the pot and just watched.
This is why I am here, in Honeydew, miles from home in Katlehong where I grew up – I am here to right my wrong.
It’s around 3 p.m., Saturday. I smell chicken faeces and the rancid smell of a dead mouse. The man sitting next to me has thin smoke coiling from his darkened lips. He mumbles, “Tsaya, baby girl,” offering me his smoke. He looks like a perfect Lepantsula, with the red Nike cap on his head, his white Amakipkip T-shirt and white All-Star sneakers.
I open my hand to take it, but I change my mind. “No, thanks,” I say, avoiding eye contact.
My hands are sweating and my thighs vibrate with anxiety. I look around. There are cigarette butts, beer-bottle caps, scattered rocks and burnt matches at my feet. Three girls dressed in ripped jeans, just like me, sit together on a giant black rock, sharing a blunt. Behind them, a weathered brick wall adjoins a rusty wire fence, as if the people who built the wall ran out of bricks.
When we arrived at this dump earlier today, my friend Sephetha and I first sat for a while in his Toyota Tazz. I watched him as he rolled a blunt and sealed it with the tip of his tongue. I knew Sephetha from Wits: “Just a boy from eKasi trying out this school thing,” he’d said to me when we met.
He offered me a third cup of Amarula. Since my nerves were biting every piece of my flesh like hungry hawks feasting on dead meat, I grasped the plastic cup and took a sip.
He said, “Let me see that picture of Tebogo again.”
I took my phone from the white handbag that sat on my lap and handed it to him.
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-one. She would have been twenty-five today.”
“A damn shame. She didn’t have to die like that.”
“I know.” Untying my dreadlocks and putting my palms to my face, I whispered, “She wasn’t the first person in my life to die on my watch, njalo nje. My mother passed on when I was ten, from a car accident. See, she had bipolar disorder, and one morning she just woke up, packed up our clothes and said we should run away.”
“You were in the car too?”
“Yes.”
“That’s terrible, Tsietsi, I am so sorry. But it wasn’t your fault.”
I seized the phone and looked at Tebogo’s face on the screen. “Except this? This was my fault. I really hope my brother will be here.”
Tsakane was released a month ago, after four years in prison. He was meant to serve ten.
“He will be here, relax,” Sephetha assured me, rubbing my back. “I heard he’s been hanging out here every weekend. He’s staying with some chick in the other block.” He placed his sneakers on the dashboard. “I’m not surprised he got out. There is no justice here. Not in this country.”
Someone honked their car-horn repeatedly behind us. Sephetha stuck his head out the window: “Hey wena lekaka, you are making noise!” The man in the other car yelled something back at him. Sephetha jumped out of the car. “Then why couldn’t you just tell me nicely that I should move? You don’t own this spot!” I heard them arguing: “Don’t point your finger at me … I will kill you … don’t ever disrespect …”
Fortunately, the other guy had a friend with him, and he intervened before things could get physical.
The place is packed now. Six people have joined us. Some others who arrived a few minutes ago are drinking further away from the brick-wire fence.
One of the girls on the rock, the one facing me, is strikingly dark-skinned; her face glows. Her box braids seem tranquil on her shoulders, which support them like the elegant base of a water fountain. She has small lips, which are highlighted with blood-red lipstick. She almost resembles the supermodel Duckie Thot. Not a common beauty, not that filtered prettiness plastered on the covers of True Love. No, this beauty is genuine.
She is nothing like her though – Tebogo. Tebogo was a tomboy. She had caramel skin, full lips and a tall, thick figure. I remember her eyes were big and round with bags under them, too heavy for her small face. She was three years older than me, and was my opposite – she was talkative and opinionated. We balanced each other that way.
I remember in primary school, she’d come to my classroom and we’d cut small pieces of paper, wet them with our lips and spit them at my classmates’ faces. Sometimes, it would land right inside their mouths. I imagined doing that to Tebogo at times, whenever she opened her mouth.
I stare at the girl and she stares back. I escape her piercing eyes and look at the abandoned building on my left. The building has no roof, no doors and no windows. The white paint is worn and covered with amateur blue and yellow drawings, as if toddlers were trying to write on the walls. I can see empty beer cans and a single mattress inside the building, and two rats scuttling in a corner. I think to myself, if this was an American show, we’d all be white teenagers claiming to be goths, and this dump would be the cemetery. I’d like to leave, but I can’t. I have to see Tsakane.
“Why not?” the man sitting next to me asks, still holding out his weed.
“I don’t smoke,” I lie, folding my arms across my bosom as if I’m shivering with cold.
“What?”
“I said I don’t smoke.”
“Then ufunani lapha?” For some reason, he’s suddenly angry with me.
“She’s with me,” says Sephetha, coming back from the corrugated-iron toilet. I gasp in relief.
“This is you?”
“Yes, she’s with me.”
“You brought a snob eKasi?”
“She’s not a snob. She’s just hotter than your girlfriend.” They both laugh. I do not.
“Voetsek ...” The man grabs his Heineken bottle from the ground and leaves.
“Are you okay?” Sephetha asks me, taking a seat on a camp chair. His breath reeks of alcohol.
I want to scream, No, take me home! But instead I say, “Yes, ndi grand.”
The pretty girl sitting on the rock smiles and winks at me. She angles her head, studying me. “Is your girlfriend always this shy?” she asks.
“No, she doesn’t know you guys, and she’s not my girl.”
“You wish she was.”
Sephetha laughs, and furtively nods. I pretend not to listen while they talk about me.
“I can tell she wants to leave.” The girl’s impaling eyes are back on me. She releases smoke off her painted lips. “I know you. I’ve seen you before.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“I know you, babe. I’ve seen you at LGBTQ parties. Weren’t you Tebogo’s girlfriend? The lesbian who threw herself out of a window?”
I do not respond. Instead, I stand up abruptly, because my brother, Tsakane, has just arrived.
The day our mother was buried, Tsakane took bottles of mayonnaise from the kitchen cabinets and shattered them on our tarred road. We both knew our lives would never be the same again – we were orphans. After her burial, I continued going to school, but Tsakane didn’t. He took it upon himself to work. He became not only my brother but my guardian.
As a child, I wanted dreadlocks – the ones Lucky Dube had. The ones that sway when you bop your head to Together As One. I’d watch Tsakane dancing with his every time we played loud reggae music in our two-bedroom house under the asbestos roof, pouring sweat like Bazalwane at a Soweto Gospel Choir concert. We were both terrible dancers but we didn’t care. This was when DVD players were booming on our township streets. We needed the neighbours to hear the roaring sound coming out of those speakers.
The day he bought it, as he unloaded it from a taxi, small boys playing football on our street chanted at Tsakane: “DVD, DVD, DVD!” They patted his back as if he was Siphiwe Tshabalala just after scoring a World Cup opening goal.
I begged Tsakane to do my hair like his. He refused, saying girls shouldn’t have dreadlocks. So when I saw a girl at my primary school with locks, I knew I had to befriend her so she could take me wherever she did her hair. She said, “No need, I can do it.” A bar of Sunlight soap and a Coca-Cola can proved that she could. Tebogo and I were close from then. Today, my dreadlocks hang down to my belt.
When I was twelve years old and Tsakane seventeen, he came to pick me up at school to take me shopping. He said some drunkard dropped one thousand rand on his way home from collecting his monthly government pension. He bought me all sorts of stuff. I was ecstatic, like a toddler in a toy shop.
It turned out my munificent brother had stolen the money from his friend’s mother’s purse. Next thing I knew, Tsakane and his group of friends were stealing flat-screen TVs in our neighbourhood and selling dagga. From then onwards, my brother lived a criminal life.
But it wasn’t until I found Tebogo in her flat, hysterical, that I took my brother’s behaviour seriously. I was eighteen years old then.
Like when a sangoma has thrown her bones on the mat, Tsakane’s secret life had started to unfold right in front of me when a woman and her five-year-old daughter came to our house. Before Tsakane chased them away with a stick, the woman confronted him. She said that Tsakane had molested her daughter. When she bathed her, the little girl didn’t want her mother to touch her private parts because they hurt. She described a burning pain, like methylated spirits on skin. Dikgomo, our next-door neighbour, followed. Then it was Shelby from my school. Both said Tsakane had raped them.
As the news spread like a dark cloud, my seventh-grade teacher, with grave concern written all over her yellow face and eyeglasses too hefty for her tiny nose, questioned me. “Has he … has he touched you?” she asked, stuttering with nerves.
I felt my face go pale with embarrassment. I said no. I couldn’t recall such an incident. The truth was, Tsakane had never abused me.
Surprisingly, my brother wasn’t arrested. The magistrate said there was not enough evidence to charge him.
Everything led to the night I went to Tebogo’s flat. Her face was covered with tears and her voice was strangely hoarse. Something had shifted inside of her that day; she wasn’t the same.
“What did you say to Tsakane?” she asked me. She wiped the tears from her face and stared at me unblinkingly. I was being attacked. This had never happened between us before.
I said, “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Tsietsi! They took turns –” She almost choked before she could finish her sentence.
“What? What happened?”
She looked up at the ceiling. “They took turns with me. All five of them took turns, raping me!”
I covered my mouth. I knew what she was going to say, but I still asked, my stomach swirling. “Who?”
“Tsakane and his friends. I am a lesbian who doesn’t behave herself, they kept saying that. When they were all satisfied, Tsakane said I should stay away from you. You told him about us!”
“Tebogo, I didn’t. I didn’t tell him anything, I swear.”
She spat on my forehead and screamed, “How many girls, Tsietsi? How many girls should your brother and his thugs molest before you believe he’s a rapist?”
“Tebogo …”
“I’ll do your rapist brother a favour. I don’t want to see you ever again. Get out!” She shoved me out of her flat and shut the door in my face.
I scratched my skin that night until I bled.
Two months later, after my brother and his entourage were arrested for gang rape, Tebogo jumped. One thing the girl sitting on the rock got wrong: it wasn’t a window, it was a rooftop.
It’s true what they say about prison food. Tsakane looks like a fat kid bloated with Cadbury chocolate. He’s cut off his dreadlocks and is now a fat, bald man.
At first he doesn’t see me. He’s smoking a cigarette with these three other men I’ve never met. He’s wearing black baggy clothes and black sneakers, attempting to be invisible.
“Tsakane,” I say beside him.
He’s startled; he clearly wasn’t expecting to see his sister this soon. Before he can ask what I’m doing here, I pull him aside, pick a rock and sit on it.
I stare at the ground. There are ants attached to one another in single file next to the stone I’m sitting on, as if they’re queueing to vote for the ant president. Tsakane takes a seat on a piece of pink granite on my right. He looks me over from head to toe. His face has peculiar bruise marks all over it. I realise that my brother is ugly.
“What are you doing here?” he finally asks.
“I came to see you.”
He shakes his head, rubbing his hands. “You never came to see me while I was in jail.” I don’t say anything. “I heard you went to university?”
“I did. I studied Law at Wits, on a full bursary.”
“Did you pass?”
I don’t answer right away, because I’ve just recalled how he used to spoil me with his dirty money whenever I did well at school. One time, when I was fourteen, he bought me Carvela shoes; nearly every teenager in my township owned a pair. “I’m graduating next year.”
He smiles at me, exposing a gold tooth. “That’s good. Mama would be –”
“Don’t fucking talk about her,” I mutter, pressing my lips together. “Mama would be disgusted with you. She would despise the kind of human you’ve decided to be – a thief and a serial rapist.” My throat is now dry and my lips itch. He doesn’t say anything back. “Did you hear what happened to her?”
“Who?”
“Tebogo, the person that finally put you behind bars. Tsakane, you killed her.”
He crosses two fingers in the air. “I have never killed anyone in my life. That girl committed suicide.”
“That girl? Tsakane! You knew her, and you ruined her life.”
He notices the tears at the corners of my lips, which I suck back. He glances at his mucky shoes and gabbles: “I didn’t want a lesbian whore as a sister. The last time I checked, our mother and our father, who left us when you were just a baby, gave birth to a girl. You should be glad we didn’t kill her. She was shameful, and she was leading you there.”
“Tsakane! She was my best friend. She loved me. She was the love of my life.”
“What do you know about love, Tsietsi?” he says, glaring at me. His cheeks seem about to burst. “What do you know, huh? You spoilt brat. When we had no relatives to give a shit about us. When we didn’t have lunch for school – not even cooking oil at the house, not even a pinch of salt – I was the one who bought the food. The one who paid for everything, for you! I was the one who loved you.”
“O reng, entlik? You became a rapist because you were hungry?” That’s when he stands up. “Tsakane, sit down. We haven’t seen each other in four years. Sit down and hear me out.”
I notice Sephetha is no longer sitting with the others. He’s standing by the abandoned building, watching me and Tsakane.
Opening his arms wide like the wrongly crucified Jesus, Tsakane asks, “What do you want me to say?”
I remember once walking into our house and finding Mama lying on the kitchen floor, her arms bruised, and Tsakane shouting like a madman. I look at the ground and ask, “Did you beat Mama?”
“What?”
“Don’t lie, please. Mama always had bruises on her body. Back then I didn’t understand, but now I do. Tsakane, she was sick and you took advantage of that!” I look him in the eye. “Why are you so angry? What makes you this person? You have taken so much from me. I knew you would take Tebogo away from me too if you found out about us. But I want you to understand this, no matter how hard it is for you to comprehend: even when she isn’t here with me, I am still gay and I do not care if you accept it or not.”
I am amazed at how unshaken I am by him. However, my eyelids are twitching, desperately wanting to discharge an ocean. He is quiet again.
“After Tebogo’s death, while you were in prison getting fat, I was depressed. I almost overdosed on pills to end the pain and guilt. She blamed me. I blamed myself too. But you know what stopped me from killing myself? This very moment, when I can let you know that you have no family after today. I came here to unload this baggage that I’ve carried all these years. I want nothing to do with you. Even if you grow old, and don’t die soon in a dump like this, you will never find peace, I assure you that.” I taste the bitterness of my tongue. “I have no worries about where you’ll end up, because it will be hell.”
He curses, pointing his finger at me. “You are an ungrateful child. Who do you think you are? Everything you are right now is because of me!”
I shake my head. “No. That is not the truth. I am everything I am because of me. You did absolutely nothing for the person I am today. If you had, I would have turned out just like you – a nobody.”
Sephetha is suddenly standing beside me, giving me a signal that it’s time to go. I rise and dust the dirt off my jeans. I had hoped to find something I could treasure within Tsakane. There was nothing.