I stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by rolls of used manila paper and boxes of notebooks. I unspooled the toilet paper and laid a wad of it across the rust-coloured stains inside my panties, pulling them up until the toilet paper rubbed at my private parts. When I walked out, Mr B asked if I was okay, and when I lingered, he put his hand on my back and led me to the door. 

Outside, my friends had laughed and clapped their hands over their mouths , making suggestive sounds at the idea of me and Mr. B. Ordinarily I would have scolded them, but something unknown, lying dormant inside of me, awakened and stopped me from quashing my friends’ chatter. With the memory of Mr. B’s hand still fresh on my shoulder I threw my head back, knowingly, as they begged me for details, my laughter all the confirmation needed. But that was not the story I told Tshiamo and Mpho.

“If I lie may lightning strike me,” I said instead, in the oaths of all our childhoods, and I thought of my grandmother Botlhogile, whose name I carried.

“Okay, okay,” Mpho said. “We believe you. No need to go all bundus on us.”

After, I refused to go anywhere. Not to the shops after school, not to the memorial gardens between classes or to the phone booth after supper. I stayed in our room, in bed, and pulled the covers over my head.

On the evening of the disco, the clouds gathered above the city, teasing us with the promise of rain. The darkening rain clouds made me miss my father. He would be excited were he in the city: he would tilt his head and study the sky as if, by looking at the clouds, he might move them into offering up their precious drops. We could speculate about when the ploughing season would begin, about how much maize and sweet reed he would save up for me. 

I gathered my coins and walked to the school gate. Everything looked just the same, but even I could feel the excitement in the air. I waited while three Form Five girls finished their urgent whispering into the phone. When they left, I dropped my coins in. My mother picked up.

“Hello,” she said. She sounded the way she always sounded: tired. I remembered the beginning of the year, in my room in Slaughter, when she had held my hands in hers and prayed, when she had pulled me into her arms.

“Hello,” my mother said again. I watched the darkening clouds and tried not to breath.

“Heelang,” Mama said.” A o motho? Or is it a ghost that has called?”

“Dumelang,” I said.

“Sadi,” she said. “Oh, Sadinyana.”

“Mama,” I said. “I wanted to speak to Papa.”