“But how?” I stare at Masana. “How can I face it, let alone stop what’s happening? It’s out there, the photo. Everyone knows, and even if Twitter and Facebook would remove it if I reported it … social media is forever. Someone will have taken a screenshot. There’ll always be someone who remembers – and people have long memories for anything sordid.”
“I know.” There’s understanding in the way Masana looks at me. “I keep thinking there must be something girls like us can do to … I’m not sure, to make people see how stupid and disgusting they’re being.”
“People don’t change easily.” I feel so hopeless. “Not their minds, not their ways.”
“Truth, so the only other thing we can do is refuse to let them break us. We have to, like, take care of ourselves and live our best lives, and to hell with them. If it wasn’t that another school change would mess up my matric, I’d go back to Bush now and show them. I made one mistake, like you did, but we shouldn’t have to pay for the rest of our lives.”
“I hear what you’re saying, and I’ve learned from my mistake, but I’ll still always be that girl – the one in the photo. It won’t go away, and I don’t know if I’m brave enough to go on facing the … the mockery and innuendo and open insults, day after day after day.”
“You’re letting them matter too much, the people who are doing that,” Masana says, but gently, so I can’t resent the criticism. “I know it’s hard not to let them get to you, make you feel like – like nothing. But we have a value beyond our mistakes, if you get what I mean.”
“Sort of.” I look at her and smile. “I hear you and I’m wanting to punch the air and shout speak it, sister and amen. But the reality isn’t so easy.”
“Difficult doesn’t mean impossible.”
“Wow.” I shake my head. “You’re so quiet at school, I never guessed you had all this in you. You planning to be a motivational speaker or something?”
“A lawyer,” she says with a small smile. “And no-one is going to stop me, especially not the people back in Bush who’ve seen my nude shots … Yes, it was more than just one photo in my case. But I’m bigger than a few photos.”
“That’s a bit like something Ramano said to me,” I tell her, remembering how he said I was more than a photo. “Listen Masana, thanks for caring enough to talk to me. You’re sort of inspiring, but trying not to let things matter? I’m not very good at that. I get angry or cry, too easily. But I think you’ve given me the courage to do one thing I’ve been chickening out of. I need to tell my mother what’s been happening.”
***
Tell us: How do you think Lamulile’s mother will react when she hears about the photo?