I cower between the bed and the wall. I try to piece my skirt together, cover my skin. Try to dress myself into the shape of a young woman, not a butchered animal.

“Thank you, buti,” I hear in the passage. Thank you? I am surprised to hear this from the fat mouth of the beast, observing the human rules of politeness.

As David comes back in I rise up to my knees, grab the broken glass on the window frame. I am not alive. I don’t feel any pain but I find a raw, desperate voice inside me. This time I find words. “Help meeeee!”

David swears, “Fucking shut up!”

He lifts me up by my armpits, drags me backwards. He finds strength in his smoke-stained, toxic body, drags me across the threshold into the room next door. He drops me on the concrete floor; locks the ‘bedroom’ door.

The floor in this room is painted light pink. The walls are lemon. More ice cream colours.

Piggy pink. Blood watered by tears.

David locks the ‘office’ door, slams out to the passage. His footsteps take him away, down the draughty corridor. I lie on the peeling pink floor. The sting in my fingers teases my brain, tries to creep into my senses. I stare at the lifted skin. I pick out a glass splinter. I look up at the photo of me smiling inside our shack. I notice my sister’s college trophy, the handle just visible in the picture.

I don’t know that Babalwa. I have forgotten who she is.

But the hope in the photo girl’s eyes, the uncertain light pulls me up. She is a happy twin, not me, but she draws me like a magnet. I touch the mouse, leave a blood smear. I wipe my hand on my striped shirt. I click on the Skype icon. I type my sister’s Skype name. Xola Busi 27.

Xola took me to work to show me the beauty of it. “It is free, Babalwa. Watch.”

She skyped her boss, Kanelo, across the internet shack. He laughed, “Hey this is not exactly the other side of the planet.” But he clicked on the green phone icon to show me. Xola’s face came up on the screen. “Hey, sisi.”

But she doesn’t answer now. She must be home.

What was Kanelo’s name? Think, Babalwa! Think!

I type, Kanelo Cybershack. Was that his domain?

The blood drips again on the mouse. I wipe it.

The skype phone rings like thick, liquid bubbles. I slide down the volume button. The ringing stops suddenly. Kanelo’s face appears, shining from the grease of what must have been a long, hot day. I pull my shirt over my breasts.

“Kanelo. I…”

My voice breaks, wants to fall like the weight of water, pour out of the door, but I clear my throat. “I’ve been raped.”

Kanelo’s face pulls tight with shock.

“Joubert Street. Brixton. The building … red brick.”

His voice is high pitched, too taut. “What number?”

I shrug. “Maybe sixth floor.”

My voice is dripping inside me, no longer able to create decibels.

“Come on Babalwa, what else?” He sounds desperate. “What is it near?” He shouts now. “What is opposite?!”

I hear footsteps coming fast, the sound of David’s angry march back to my prison.

I grab the laptop, climb on the ugly chair. I raise the lap top high above my head. I stretch the cord to the end of its length, face the screen through the thin, high window in the wall. My arms shake as I aim the eye of the tiny camera through the burglar bars towards where the loving mother must be. Is she lit by bright streetlights?

“Do you see?” I want to ask Kanelo, but I have only time to drop to the desk, click the red button. Exit Skype.

I slump back on the ground. The mouse slides off the desk, dangles down. I turn away from it, innocent, just as David storms in with a roll of packing tape and a sheet of black plastic.

“What did you do to the computer?” he shouts.

I arrange my face into a look of surprise. “Why?”

He rages, “It’s facing the other way!”

“You pushed me into it,” I say, as if disinterested.

He glares at the mouse hanging down. “You used it you bitch!”

I laugh. It has the sound of the girl I heard earlier. A hoarse, bitter sound. “I’ve never touched one in my life.”

David believes me.

He throws open the bedroom door, gets to work sealing the opening of the smashed window. He tapes a flag of black plastic carefully to the frame. He spits words as he works, aims them over his shoulder at me. “I had to give the client a discount. The money’ll cover the broken window if you’re lucky. But you owe me, baby. The bus ticket, the cash Liwa gave you. You’re gonna work and work, do you hear me? Pay for your food. Pay for your roof. If you fight, your price comes down. Then you work more.”

He smoothes the tape with his flat hand. His voice gets syrupy. “I’ll bring you something to make it easy. Some nice sweeties.”

“I don’t want your ‘sweeties’.”

“You don’t?”

I shake my head.

He drops the tape, leaves it dangling. He pulls a gun from his pocket. “Well, then…”

He aims at my face. The barrel of his gun grows twice as big as my eyes.

I shrink back. He has no need to finish his sentence. He slowly slips the gun into the belt of his pants. He returns to the black plastic, tears off the tape with his teeth. Sticks it.

I flinch from him as he walks towards me.

***

Tell us: What are ‘sweeties’ really? Why would David like Babalwa to use ‘sweeties’?