Free Untitled by Kgebetli Moele

fighting over Shatale. I am not Shatale’s girlfriend!”
    I ran out of steam, but she was still looking at me as if she did not believe a word I was saying.
    â€œMokgethi, my child, just stop it. This is not like you.”
    I looked at her, wishing that I could disappear into the ground.
    â€œStop this nonsense, Mokgethi.”
    The thing I hate most about Mamafa is that he is always right about things. I took his advice after this confrontation – I held my tongue and pretended that I didn’t care what they said about me. Not caring worked. They slowly shut up. But the pretence of not caring about what people said behind my back ate at me – I couldn’t sleep without having to battle with it.
    In the end it was Shatale who rescued me. When he said those words to me, he relieved me of my burden. I didn’t care what anyone was saying any more – I knew the truth. They could say Mokgethi was once one of Shatale’s girlfriends, I could never erase that “fact” from my life, but I didn’t have to make it the truth.
    This is the problem with my community. I am just a young girl. I did not go to Shatale and say to him, “I want to have sex with you.” I never did that. You can say that Lebo provoked him but Lebo is also just a young girl and Shatale should have reprimanded and punished her for doing what she did. Community, please stop turning a blind eye and blaming us, because even though I will grow up there will forever be a Mokgethi and a Lebo doing Grade Twelve and nothing will ever change if you keep running away from it.
    There was only one teacher who spoke to me about this Mokgethi-Lebo-Shatale saga – Miss Kgopa. She called me into her office and told me that she had been hearing things about me and Shatale:
    â€œAre they true, Mokgethi?”
    â€œNo, they are not true. It is just that ...”
    She believed me even though she didn’t know me and we had never talked outside the classroom.
    â€œDid he ever say anything to you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œMokgethi, I believe you and I believe in you. I believe that you are the one that I will point to when I am old, I believe that I will say to my grandchildren, ‘I used to teach that woman. I taught that woman.’ And I will say it proudly. But I also worry because I know that it is very easy to mess things up, it is very easy to end up like the many there are that make me very shameful of my work. Please do not mess up, my girl. I believe in you too fiercely to see you end up like all the others.”
    She smiled and I smiled back.
    â€œI am finished.”
    Miss Kgopa then apparently approached Shatale and they talked. After that he never again said anything to me about anything that didn’t concern my schoolwork, but Miss Kgopa’s relationship with Shatale suffered and it was rumoured that he wanted her out of his school.
    Except for Miss Kgopa, the community and its leaders have never confronted Shatale. They know what he is doing to us, all the young girls, but they still speak to him, they still wave back at him when he hoots as he passes them in his car. They only talk behind his back. They never tell him what they know to his face and make him shameful for his acts. And yet they, this community, made Mokgethi shameful for things that I had not even done.
    But this is the curse of Teyageneng; in this community nobody respects anybody. My community is a community in shambles; there is nothing holding it together. This community will only show you care if they are going to gain something from it.
    There is nothing happening in this community; we are like a commercial farm here for the purposes of making ... Well, put it this way – this year I have only seen people canvassing for votes. The resource centre that used to act as a library is closed and only termites are reading the books, absolutely no recreational activity is going on and the few recreational