“Rhandzu—”
My face feels swollen with hot blood, and I don’t know what to say.
“Why didn’t I know? I should have. You were the ringleader, says Jodie,” Rhandzu adds, her voice flat – dead.
“Jodie?” I recover slightly. “You don’t need to listen to her, babe. I told you, she’s jealous.”
“I wouldn’t have listened to her. I called her a liar when she said she had seen you and your friends picking on my brother.” Rhandzu flings out a hand. “But guess what, Zwelo? Those two girls from the group you were in when I started here? Unathi and Gabile? They backed her up, said they knew about it all the time.”
“Please, Rhandzu.” I hear how thick my voice sounds, how guilty I must be coming across. “You’ve got to listen to me—”
“I suppose being with me was your way of carrying on the fun you had with Nkokone?” Now she hurls the words at me, flat voice gone.
“No!” I’m frantic. “I didn’t … I’d never—”
“Setting me up, making a fool of me, the moegoe from Limpopo.” Bitter words, full of hurt.
Words that hurt me too. I hear them, and the red feeling swells up the way it has always done when the sore place opens up in my chest.
“If that’s what you think, then get this, moegoe.” I’ve raised my voice to its battering loudest. “Your pathetic brother was asking for it, and in the end he couldn’t take it, the coward, little lamthuthu, loser boy. He invited it all, nê, Wandile?”
But when I look round for his support, Wandile isn’t there. Then I catch sight of him. I can see only his head and shoulders, because he’s in the middle of a group of learners walking away towards the classrooms.
I turn back to Rhandzu.
“I hate you, Zwelo,” she says.
And now she’s another person walking away from me. Leaving me alone.
The red feeling stays with me. At home, they’re afraid of me, my stepmother and the kids.
When I get going with Dlani, his hands twitch and his eyes jump and circle around, looking past me, searching for a way of escape. He reminds me of Nkokone, so I hit him.
“You miserable people look even more miserable than usual,” Pa accuses us when he gets home. “Is no one pleased to see me home?”
I take a breath, ready to say sorry and put myself a safe distance away.
Then, I don’t know what happens, but Rhandzu’s voice is in my head, saying something about … then you’ve got some idea what my brother went through …
I say, “No Pa, we’re not pleased.”
He lumbers towards me, raising his arm. “You disrespect me like that? Asking for a lesson? Fine, I’ll give it to you.”
I tense, ready for a blow, but my right arm does its own thing, rising, and my hand closes on his arm.
“No,” I shout. “No more.”
He stares at me. I know he feels my boxer’s strength.
Pa looks away from my face. That’s when I know that, for the first time, he’s afraid of me.
“I’m tired,” he whines, starting to lower his arm as I loosen my hold on it.
I stare hard at him, letting him see I know.
I should be hyper after my triumph, but there are too many ugly thoughts and feelings boiling inside me these days. My heart is broken. All I can think about is Rhandzu.
Tell us what you think: Will standing up to his father change anything for Zwelo?