Dear Diary
May 1968

I saw Jim today and told him the truth. Tfo be honest, I don’t see how it could have gone any worse. First, he went white and said, “My dad will kill me.” then he went red and shouted, “How could you have been so stupid? I can’t let you ruin my life like this.”

Oh, Diary. It hurt to hear him say it, but everyone knows it is the girl’s responsibility to ensure that the boy doesn’t Go tfoo far. We all know that boys can’t control themselves the way we can. It is up to us to put the brakes on and to make sure that nothing gets out of hand.

I know I have been bad and that I deserve everything that is happening to me. I just wish I didn’t feel so alone. It is exactly like they warned us in Sunday School. Bad girls truly know what it is like to be excluded from God’s grace.

tfo continue, Diary, I apologised to Jim for letting this happen, but then do you know what he said? He said the baby couldn’t be his! He said I must have been “sleeping around” and that this must be another boy’s baby! He said his father warned him that girls often try to trick boys in this way.

Can you believe it? I told him it wasn’t true. I reminded him that it was my first time, and I told him that was the only time I’ve ever g.a.tf.w. And he said, aha! It couldn’t have been my first time because everyone knows you can’t get PG on your first time.

I told him I’d looked it up in the reference section of the library and apparently that wasn’t true. He told me I was lying.

And then, dear Diary, I am sorry to say I lost my temper a little bit. I really shouldn’t have. I know it was wrong, but I was terribly upset. I said it didn’t matter who was wrong or right. Tfhe baby was there now – or it would be in a few months – and we needed to decide what we were going to do.

He looked at me for a long moment, and, oh Diary, I really thought he was going to say he was sorry and of course we would have to get married. For A moment, I thought he was going to propose to me and all my dreams would come true.

How happy we would have been together. I would have been a good wife to him.

But instead he said this baby had nothing to do with him and that I’d never be able to prove it was his. Oh, Diary! It WAS so hurtful. But I said I was sorry and that I didn’t mean to ruin his life. I said I knew he had a great future ahead of him. And then I’m sorry to say, I ran away crying. I thought he would come after me, but he didn’t.

What am I going to do, dear Diary? I can’t tell Mother and father about this. I just can’t. Maybe if Jim had agreed to marry me we could have gone to them together, but not now, not like this!

Oh, whatever am I going to do?

Love,
Amelia

***

“Can I just say one thing?” Lael asks as we finish reading the entry together in class the next day. We’re supposed to be in Bio, but the teacher is absent so we’re having a free.

“What?”

“Who on earth is turning these pages over for us? I mean, think about it, this diary is kept behind glass. It should be open on one page for display purposes and stay on that page. But every time we go and look, it’s open on another page. And not just any page – the very next page.”

“It’s only happened twice,” I point out. “I don’t think we can start talking about ‘every time’ yet. Maybe it was the wind that blew the page over. Who knows?”

“Wind that just happened to get into a locked display cabinet? I don’t think so.”

“Then maybe it was one of the cleaners, or whoever keeps the key to that cabinet.”

“Aha!” Lael lifts her finger like she’s Sherlock Holmes. “The cleaners don’t have the key. I asked them. That cab- inet is supposed to be opened twice a year – once when the Gumede Shield gets taken out and moved to Gumede House, and again when it gets moved back to Sisulu House after six months. And that’s it.”

“Well, what do you think is happening then?”

Lael looks like someone who has a theory she can’t wait to share. “I think it’s Jim Grey!” she says excitedly.

“Babes…”

“No, listen. I think he’s turning the pages over for us to read because that diary contains the secret of how he died.”

“Oh, my word. You have officially lost it.”

“Have I?” She flings her arms wide. (Why are all Drama students like this? Seriously, why?)

“Think about what he did last term – warning you about Zach, helping us to steal the Gumede Shield. This is typical of his MO.”

I crack up laughing. “MO! You actually think you’re in an episode of The Wire, don’t you?”
“You’re the one who’s seen him, not me. Wouldn’t this be typical of him? To guide us toward the truth even when he’s not showing himself to you anymore?”

“No,” I say frankly. “It wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was the vainest guy you ever met. Totally full of himself. You could see he was one of those guys who thought a girl should count herself lucky if he even looked at her, never mind talked to her. That’s just how he was – Mr Conceited. And this diary really doesn’t show him in a good light at all. In fact, it makes him look like a total creep.”

Lael drops the dramatic act and thinks about this for a while.

“So, we’ve decided that the Jim in the diary is definitely Jim Grey? I thought you weren’t too sure.”

“I’m getting more and more convinced.”

“Then maybe it’s just our modern-day perspective that makes us think he was wrong. Maybe that was typical boy behaviour back in the 1960s. I mean, obviously we think it’s despicable, but that’s our opinion, not his.”

I’m pretty sure there would have been people in the 1960s who would also consider his behaviour despicable, but I see what she means.

“The Jim I knew was nice to me in his own way,” I say. “And he helped me see what an abusive situation I was getting into with Zach Morris. I didn’t even realise how Zach was gaslighting me until Jim intervened. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. But if this is the same Jim, I don’t like the way he acted when he was alive. Maybe something happened to change him.”

“I blame his father,” says Lael. “From Amelia’s diary, it sounds as though he really worshipped his dad. But that man seems to have been a toxic influence on him.”

“What I want to know is how Amelia could have been such a doormat. Blaming herself for the whole thing.

Apologising to him. Letting him accuse her of sleeping with other guys. Why didn’t she tell him to shove it?”

“It was a different time. Fifty-something years ago. That’s like half a century. In fact, it’s exactly half a century.”

“Weren’t they in the middle of a sexual revolution in the Sixties?”

“Not in South Africa. It was all apartheid and Chris- tian National Education in those days.” Lael flings her arms wide again.

“This was mostly farmland around here. Brentwood was a small school in the middle of nowhere.”

“I guess you’re right.” I lower my voice and look around to make sure no one is paying attention to our conversation. Most people are catching up on homework or scrolling through their phones.

The teacher is marking some papers – probably our History essays, actually. “I just hope Nosipho is having a better time telling Themba than Amelia had telling Jim.”

***