Weekends after payday, Ma and Pa do a serious shopping trip, either to Hazyview or else Mbombela. This month it’s Mbombela, and they say why don’t I go with them? Usually I love going down there, not least for the way seeing UMP keeps me motivated. The buildings look so great there on the hillside, and I imagine myself attending lectures, or outside, monitoring the rows of vegetables down below – learning agriculture.
But now? Will I be able to face studying there? Better if I go somewhere no-one knows me.
“Not this time,” I excuse myself from the trip. “I need to study.”
“You’re a good daughter, my child,” Pa says. “You make me proud.”
How much longer will he be proud? Oh God!
It’s true I should be studying, but after they leave I catch a lift to Sabie with one of our Simile neighbours. I often do this on Saturday mornings, but for the first time I’m nervous, wondering if the old man knows about the photo.
I go floppy with relief when he starts on one of his usual stories about the old days when he worked on a forestry plantation.
He parks near Market Square, and I walk over to my favourite place, this second-hand book shop with its awesome fantasy section.
Study isn’t going to take my mind off what’s been happening at school. I need a whole new world to escape into, just for a few hours.
When I walk into the shop, I notice someone standing in front of the South African interest shelves next to the counter. Her back view is familiar, and for a few seconds I’m ready to rush away again. Then I realise it’s that quiet girl, Masana. I’m safe. She’s not likely to come at me with any of the things other people have been saying.
Anyway, maybe she won’t even see me. I hurry along to the fantasy section from where I can’t see her and she won’t see me if she turns round. Except –
“Lamulile?”
I’ve been so lost dipping into books, trying to decide on one, that I haven’t heard Masana starting to leave the shop and then pausing at the end of the short aisle between the rows of shelves.
“Yebo,” I greet.
It’s quiet in the shop, only us two, the owner and one other customer. Masana comes up to me, her face serious.
“I just want to say, I know what you’re going through, Lamulile.” She speaks very quietly.
“You do?” Then I get it. “You sent me that note?”
“Yes.”
“Well, thanks.” I blow out a big breath. “I just wish I could … I don’t know, escape from everything. Go somewhere no-one knows me.”
“No, don’t make my mistake. Don’t act too soon.” She hesitates, then carries on. “Something of the same sort happened to me, back there in Bushbuckridge. My parents and I thought I should hide somewhere; that’s how come I’m living here with my grandmother. But now … now I think I should have stayed and faced what was happening, and maybe even have found a way to stop it.”
“And you think that’s what I should do?”
“Yes.”
***
Tell us: Is Masana right, and why, or why not?