never outrun a witch. All she needs to do is hop on her baboon and come racing after me. So I keep my pace slow and deliberate, like I’m not afraid of anything.
Zi is like a tiny bolt of lightning, bristling energy as she skips ahead of me down the dirt road, whirling back and forth from house to house, going right up to each fence. Dogs bound out, hurtling toward her, barking furiously.
“Khosi! Khosi! They’re coming to get me!” she screeches as they slam against the fence, the thin wire trembling under their weight. Zi throws her arms around me, thrilled with terror, her black eyes happyscared as she looks up at me.
The people smile indulgently at us as we pass.
“What will you do if one of these dogs escapes?” I ask, scolding her a little. Because Mama is gone throughout the week, and because Gogo is so old, I can’t help but be Zi’s second mother. Besides, it takes my mind off everything else. “What if it comes running out and tries to bite you?”
“Then I’ll make friends with it,” she says.
I laugh. That is exactly what Zi would do too. She makes friends with everybody and everything. When Zi settles down and stays beside me, clinging to my hand, I ask her something that’s bothering me. “Zi, do you think I look like Babamkhulu?”
“How do I know? I’ve never met Babamkhulu,” she says.
“You’ve seen his picture on the mantel.”
She screws up her little face as if she’s trying to remember. “You look like Khosi,” she decides. “Babamkhulu looks like you!”
Maybe I should have known better than to ask a little girl to reassure me that I’m beautiful.
We reach the tuck shop, a small shack built in front of the owner’s house and stocked with small items—biscuits, bread, milk, oranges, cool drinks. When I see the man sitting on a red bucket in front of the shop, tipped back and leaning against its tin wall, looking as though he’s been enjoying too much beer at Mama Thambo’s shebeen, I look around to see if other people are nearby. But the street is empty.
It’s true, drunk men are everywhere in Imbali. You can’t avoid them but you must steer away from them as best you can. When men are drunk, evil enters them and who knows what they will do?
His eyes are just tiny slits in his swollen face and he slurs his words as he looks at me. He looks like he’s in his late forties. “Girl,” he says, “you are toooo much beautiful.”
My heart beats just a little bit faster.
“Thank you, Baba,” I murmur, calling him “father” to emphasize his age, to remind him how young I am. Anyway, what does he care that I’m only fourteen? Lots of fourteen-year-old girls in Imbali go out with men his age. Even my friend Thandi dates older men.
Zi stands close behind me as I step up to the little window and ask the man for some bread, a box of milk, and Coca-Cola.
The man in the tuck shop looks me up and down. “He’s right,” he says. “You’re becoming a beautiful young woman.”
I know why they’re noticing me. Lately my entire body is rebelling against clothes. I’m finally becoming a woman and it’s obvious I’ll be curvy, like Mama. If only I had Mama’s small nose and big eyes! Oh, Babamkhulu, I think, why was I born the same day you died? Couldn’t you have waited and passed your spirit into one of your other descendants?
I pass my money through the hole in the wire netting, taking my things and turning away.
“Why don’t you sit with me for awhile? Lapha!” The drunk man pats a stone step next to his bucket. He tilts forward, expectant, and almost falls off.
“Gogo’s expecting me home,” I lie, juggling the milk, bread, and Coca-Cola in my arms. I glance down the empty street towards our house, calculating how long it will be before Gogo and Mama will be home. If he were so bold as to follow us, I’d still have to wait some few hours before they returned.
“Your grandmother will wait. I’m sure she is a patient woman.”
“No, Gogo expects me home now now.” I tilt my head at Zi. “Besides, she’s only five. She can’t walk home by herself.”
“She can stay.” He grins, showing off his front teeth, yellowed and bleeding at the gums. His dry mouth makes a soft sound, pah pah, as he smacks his lips together. “But it’s you I want to know better.”
“No no no, my friend, leave her alone,” the tuck shop owner says. “She’s just a child. Let her grow a bit more, eh, Ndoda?”
“What are you talking about?” He’s so drunk, he can’t even stop squinting as he looks at me, greed pooling in his dark eyes. “She’s young and look at her—hey hey! So fat!” He leers at me. “She’s probably a virgin.”
These older men are always obsessed with virginity. A virgin can’t spread the disease of these days. But a virgin isn’t protected from HIV—she can get it from one of these old men, if they are already infected. That’s why I’m always telling Thandi to be careful with the men she dates.
“Sis, man, you’re pathetic,” the tuck shop owner says, turning away and going back inside his house.
Left alone with the drunk man, I look up and down the street again. It’s still quiet, but now one or two young men are loitering at the end of the street, smoking cigarettes and glancing our way. They will not offer to help. No.
“Come on, Zi, let’s run.” I grab her hand, peeking back at the man, and at the red bucket, tilted forward like it’s about to topple. “Quick quick.”
But the drunk man is fast, whipping his hand out, grasping my leg, pulling me toward him, whirling me around, his fingers streaking across my thighs, his swollen eyes bugging out as I fall towards him. The milk tumbles in the dust at his feet.
“Ouch!” I screech.
“Come on, girl, give me some sugar,” he whispers, one hand gripping me, the other crawling up my leg, fingers like little spiders.
I try to wrench my leg free but he has a strong grip, that man, and even as I jerk away, he rears back and I stumble towards him. A flash of blue from his shirt as I crash beside him in the dirt. A sudden stinging pain as the ground peels away layers of skin. My lips kiss the earth and I roll away, scrambling through the dust, tasting rust, smelling the metallic scent of blood.
“Khosi!” Zi shrieks.
On my hands and knees, I look at the drunken man, my vision blurring. His features haze over until they resemble a crocodile’s, with a long snout and big hungry teeth.
The crocodile opens its mouth, ready to swallow me.
“Hey, man! Leave her alone!”
I glance up and see Little Man Ncobo standing between me and my attacker. A flash and the crocodile is gone, the drunk man glaring at me through Little Man’s legs. He creeps back to his bucket, spit and vomit drooling out of his mouth onto the dirt.
What just happened? Did I imagine that man turning
