There’s this young man looking at me and smiling when I get to the Community Centre. He has a laptop bag hanging from one shoulder, and he’s leaning against the outside wall like he’s enjoying the shade there and waiting for time to pass.

I give him one of my looks. He shouldn’t be smiling at me. He should be shaking. I mean, this is me, scary Nomi Phala, spiked and studded to let you know to back off. I’m also wearing my short boots with the pointed toes capped with some sort of metal – the ones that I had to have the moment I pulled them out of the pile of used clothing this woman was selling near the spyzozo place. When I saw they were my size, I knew I was meant to have them. They’re boots for hurting people – before they can hurt me.

“What are you looking at?” I use my broken glass voice.

“The sweetest sight I’ve seen all day,” he drawls.

I take a quick look over my shoulder to see if there’s someone behind me. No, he means me.

“Kwaa!” I let my voice go from scratchy to biting. “There must be something wrong with your eyes. Or, if it’s your ambition to be a comedian, then you’re at the wrong place.”

He laughs and – this is crazy – but it’s like the sound touches me. All over. My skin gets a strange shivery feeling.

If it wasn’t for his smile, his laugh, he’d come across totally nkalakatha . He’s wearing the clothes, he’s got the haircut.

I don’t usually let anyone get to me, so I don’t know how come I break my stride. All right, the truth is, I hesitate, just when I should be stomping past him. How humiliating is that?

Then I do something even worse. I drop one of the drawings I’ve brought for my session with Mama Thlapi. Useless me.

The paper is so light-weight, it drifts away from me, closer to him.

“Got it!” He leans over and catches it, and I see how easily he moves, no fat or too much muscle to slow him down.

He looks down at the page full of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of lines I’ve drawn with the red and black ballpoint pens I bought for these stupid drawings. Mama Thlapi said I should try them. That’s after I laughed at her first even stupider idea of having me write down what I was feeling about things.

“Give it to me!” I reach for the drawing.

“Yoyoyoyoyo!” He keeps hold of the sheet of paper. “This is one angry picture. Who did it?”

“Me – so be afraid.”

I snatch the paper away from him, and because he’s still holding it, it tears and he’s left with a corner of it. I have time to notice the old scar across his knuckles, like someone once slashed at him with a knife when he had his fist clenched.

Then I march into the Community Centre. I hate the idea that a stranger has looked into my mind. That’s what it feels like, having him see one of my drawings, because – I admit it – they come from my messed up mind. I drag my pens over my sheets of paper the way I used to scratch and cut at my skin.

It was because of the scratching that Moya pushed me into coming to see this woman here at the Community Centre. I guess you could call Moya my only friend, but she was a serious pain when she was missioning to find me free counselling.

Mama Thlapi is already in the corner of the main hall with its circle of plastic chairs ready for some sort of group therapy thing she does. I told her no way was I sharing anything in front of a group of strangers. I hoped that would make her wash her hands of me, but she just said she’d see me privately.

OK, people come in and out of the hall, and there’s always this group of gogos knitting beanies for charity in another corner, but no-one takes any notice of her and me.

“You don’t want to be here, do you, Nomi?” she says when I shove my drawings at her and thump down into a chair.

“The Thursday night kick-boxing classes they have here would be more use to me than this,” I tell her. “That is supposing I could ever get time off from wiping grease off tables.”

“You won’t always be working there.” She has this irritatingly calm voice. “Babili is serious about letting you work for her on the money side.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why would she give a job to a nobody like me?”

Babili is a friend of Mama Thlapi’s, and one of those success stories, having started out doing neighbours’ hair in her parents’ yard. Now she has people working for her all over Soweto, like even in Maponya Mall, and there’s talk about her opening a salon in Jozi.

“Because she’s a decent human being,” Mama Thlapi answers my question.

“Decent and human shouldn’t be in the same sentence.” I screw up my mouth, and then I twitch one shoulder. “Anyway, don’t forget she’ll only take me on if I can find some way to get myself skilled at using Excel and all that sort of stuff. And didn’t you eventually agree with me that it’s too late for me to go back to school and make it work? And there’s no way I can pay for a course.”

“I have good news.” It’s so typical of this woman to come in with something positive every time I say anything negative. “I’ve found a student who will give you a crash course in Excel – for free – twice a week. It’s on days when he doesn’t have lectures.”

“And why would he do that?”

“You’ll have to ask him. He lives over in Klipspruit, but he’s happy to bring his laptop here and get you started – beginning today. He should be here in about twenty minutes.” She checks the time on her phone and then starts looking through my drawings. “How would you describe these, Nomi?”

My mind goes back to Scarfist and what he said.

“Angry.”

“Have you ever wondered if your anger might really be fear?” she asks.

“Crap. I’m not afraid of anyone.”

Except that maybe I am, only no-one is allowed to know that. Anyway, I am also angry, still so angry with myself, two or three years after I let it happen. I know the things people call me; not so very different from the things I call myself.

The same words my aunt and great-aunt used when it happened.

The rest of our session consists of Mama Thlapi asking me how I feel about things and me trying not to answer her, or else only giving smart-mouth answers to prove that her questions aren’t getting to me.

Then she looks up towards the entrance behind me. She smiles.

“Ah. Here’s our student volunteer. You found your way all right?”

“No problem. Got here early. I’ve been waiting outside.”

It’s a familiar voice. I don’t turn my head, but I lift my chin, like I’m getting ready for a fight.

“Come and meet Nomi Phala,” Mama Thlapi says. “Nomi, this is Sello Mthombeni, who is going to show you how to use Excel. I’ll leave it to the two of you to discuss which days you’re going to meet.”

I stand up and turn round. My ears got it right. It’s Scarfist from outside. He laughs, and that shivery thing happens to my skin again.

“We’ve already met,” he says. “Sort of. In passing.”

***

Tell us what you think: Why is Nomi so aggressive towards Sello and Mama Thlapi? What will it take to get through the barrier she puts between herself and other people?