As the young wife, I did not have a wallet or a purse. Dubula had promised to buy me things out of his. My clothes were kept with his in a trunk under his bed.

On the fourteenth of January he opened the trunk to look for his clothes. I had forgotten he had the know-how to do things for himself. Before this he had always ordered me to fetch and iron his clothes for him. Many times he changed his mind about what he wanted to wear and made me iron other clothes.

He pulled out one of his blue overalls.

My pink clinic card that I had hidden in the trunk fell on the floor. I grew cold.

Yintoni le, what is this?” he asked me.

Dubula picked it up. He glared at the card. “Uthini lombhalo, ngubani lobebhala apha, what does this writing say? Who wrote on the card?” He looked up at me and down to the pink card again. “Ngubani lo betyikitya apha, who signed here?” he demanded to know.

He ran out the door. Before I could catch my breath he was back with one of his younger sisters. She read the pink card loud:

“Date, twelve January twenty eleven. Injection, Nur-Isterate. Return, 5 March twenty eleven.” She stopped and looked up at me saying, “Uyacwangcisa bhuti, she is on contraceptives.”

Enkosi dadethu ungakhululeka, you can go now,” he said quietly. She walked out of the door, too quickly.

He lifted me up and threw me onto the bed. He took off his leather belt. I got up to undress. He hit me and I fell back on the bed. I realised that he was not going to rape me this time.

“I will stop, I promise!” I screamed.

Punches and kicks landed on my body. I was bleeding from my nose. My bottom lip was cut open. I cried and cried until I had no voice.

I woke up again late in the evening. Dubula had been shaking me to wake me up. Every inch of my body ached. He showed me to a basin of water.

“Hurry up!” he shouted.

I turned. It shocked me to look at his naked body. I was scared to look at the body of such a grown man. He put the basin by the door and pulled me to the bed.

After he raped me he told me not to waste his time like that. I promised him I would never do that again. I tore up the clinic card in front of him. I don’t remember when he fell asleep that night. I must have dozed off before him.

“Get up and do your chores,” he said to me early in the morning. I wanted to, in the fear that he might hit me again. But when I tried to get up, I just could not. My lips felt heavy. I picked up a small mirror next to the bed. What I saw in the mirror was a tomato smashed against the wall. I touched my face, thinking it was not me.

So when he asked me to get up I said, “No, I cannot”. When he got ready to hit me again, I said, “Find a quick way to kill me.”

“That is not what I want!” he shouted.

“That is what you are doing. It is just that you are doing it slowly and painfully,” I told him and turned to face the wall. I closed my eyes.

I heard a knock on the door and his mother shouted from outside, “Uphi umakoti ngalentsasa, where is the new wife this morning?”

He opened the door and told her that I would be a minute. He pulled the blankets from me and lifted me off the bed. He put my clothes on me and shoved me to the door. I got out the door and sat down immediately, right on the stoep.

His mother looked at me once. Without asking him any questions she told him that I needed to go to the clinic.

“Just make sure she does not go alone!” he shouted from inside the rondavel.

She covered my face with a doek and accompanied me to the clinic. The woman said to be ‘mother-in-law’ spoke no word on the way. She asked no questions.

At the clinic that day, when the shocked nurse saw my battered face and body she was ready to listen. In the consultation room she wanted to know all that had happened. She went outside to the waiting area to ask ‘mother-in-law’ to please be patient as they needed time to examine the possible fracture on my right jaw. “She will also need six stitches for the wound in her left cheek,” I heard the nurse say.

She came back inside. As I sat in her room she called the police from her cellphone.

When the police came, Dubula’s mother gave a loud performance when they wanted to put her in the back of the van. She told them she would walk home. The police officers would not take any of her nonsense. They shoved her into the van and sped off to the home where I had been kept.

When we got to the homestead, Dubula came towards the police van. I pointed to him as the rapist. As the man who assaulted me.

Dubula tried to strike up a conversation with the police officers. Clearly, to him, he had done nothing wrong. He was not expecting to be arrested.

When the white policeman, who could speak isiXhosa fluently, read him his rights, he interrupted him. “You know nothing about my culture,” he said. He went on to tell the policemen of other men in the village who had taken wives successfully.

The black police officer responded, saying ukuthwala was done properly in the past. Today people had added criminal ways to it. Rape and brutality towards young girls was not part of it at all.

I decided not to press charges against my mother. My mind was made up not to ever see her again. But I wished I could speak to my father more.

From the police station I was taken to social workers in Alice. One of the female social workers offered to take me into her home until a proper home could be found for me.

I tried to phone Bhekifa but his phone was dead.

*****

I had to forget my old life. But my old life had not forgotten me. I lived in the social worker’s house for a month before one day, in the shop where I now worked part-time, I heard a voice I recognised. It was Zukile. He was standing in the doorway.

“How did you find me?” I asked, not believing that it was really him. He looked different. He wasn’t the vivacious, happy-go-lucky Zukile I knew. He appeared nervous and on edge. Had my parents sent him?

“The letter you wrote…” he said in a low voice. Then I noticed that he was holding the folded letter I had written to him. I had sent it to the secretary at his school. I knew she would give it to him. I could not send it to my home because if Mother read it she would burn it.

“Do you work here?” Zukile asked, looking around the small General Dealer.

“Yes my brother, I work here now. I work and read a lot when I am in the social worker’s house,” I said to him. “I am trying to move forward and to forget the terrible thing that happened to me.”

“I told Mama and Tata that Dubula has been arrested,” Zukile said quietly.

“You should not have my brother. What did they say?”

“Mama just looked at me. And then, she said you are embarrassing the family.”

“And Tata? What did Tata have to say?”

“Tata says he is sorry.”

“Tell Tata I am sorry too. I now have a disease which I must learn to live with for the rest of my life.”

The truth was, I longed to see Tata again, but I couldn’t go home, as my mother would be there. I never wanted to see her again. Maybe I would see Tata at the case hearing in court in September.

*****

Dubula was guilty. They found him guilty of rape and assault, and I hoped he would get a long time in jail. I prayed that he would never see the sunshine again, him and the men who kidnapped me at the river too.

But Mother – she was also guilty. Guilty of burning my dreams and stripping me of my childhood. For that I will never talk to her again.

And Bhekifa? I hadn’t forgotten him. How could I? I would see him again, but not until I was ready. It would take time before I could trust anyone.

Lucky for me, he gave me that time. It was the most precious gift of all.

***

Tell us what you think: What is your opinion of this story? Do you think this happens in real life? Why is time the most precious gift that Bhekifa can give Bukiwe?