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Mokgethi

When I discovered myself I was opening a door – maybe I was four, maybe not – and the other person said:

“Mokgethi.”

Then I said:

“Ha!”

That was it, me, and to this very day Mokgethi is the name that they are calling me with. I found myself being Mokgethi and I had to discover and make this Mokgethi out of what they named Mokgethi. I tried very hard to make a Mokgethi that I, as Mokgethi, would love, a Mokgethi that I was happy and comfortable with.

I was born in 1996 on the 19th of August at 12:03 pm exactly. If you are clever enough you can calculate that this means that sometime during the third week of November the previous year, my dad and my late mother were enjoying the windiness of late autumn and I was what they achieved.

I am her first-born but I am not sure if I am his first-born, just as I am not sure if I just happened or if they were planning to have me.

There is not much that I can say about my parents. Everything I know of them comes from a few black-and-white photos that don’t tell me much, though I have spent too much time wishing that they could talk to me, so that I could understand them, my parents, and feel their love.

At times I wish I could ask them why they gave me the name Mokgethi – one’s name makes one; it connects and influences the character – as there is nobody else I can ask who knows and will tell the honest truth.

In this picture my mother is nestled deep in the arms of my father. For a long time I wasn’t sure that he was my father, even though my grandmother said that he was, but now I do believe her. My mother is resting in his arms as if nothing matters. It is as if she has reached the realm of the gods, totally and completely, like she has lost all sense of herself, and that is why I am here, and my brother Khutso is here, and between us is a gap of only twenty months.

My mother is no more; she left us, passed away when I was just four years old. She had a BA in social work from the University of the North. I was born exactly four months after she graduated; her degree certificate hangs on the back of my bedroom door. I don’t know who put it there but it has been there since I came into my consciousness. At times I thought that this degree was my inheritance, all that she left me. Long time ago, when I was still small, naive, I used to think that when I was older I would just take it and it would be mine.

When she met her death my mother was working as a social worker in Lebowakgomo. They say that my mother was a queen; she was beautiful:

“Hauw! Mokgethi, you are the daughter of the late MmaKhutso; you are trying but she was the most beautiful of creations.”

Then they tell that my mother was a bookworm and she loved reading romantic novels, and that she was the most fashionable woman in the whole township back then. There is a photo where she is wearing huge goggles and some seventies or eighties fashion; she looks like something from a Leon Schuster film, but I am told that it was the “in thing” in those times.

Although no one has ever really told me straight, I know that when she passed away we were living as a family. They – my parents – were married legally, though without the knowledge of their families. The law back then didn’t allow an unmarried woman to occupy a government position, so my parents got married without telling their families because they were protecting my mother against the law. When they came to explain to their families, well, maybe my maternal family didn’t want to understand their reasons why and just because my mother was educated they thought somehow ...

I cannot say what happened but I know that my parents continued living together and we – Khutso and I – were there, living with them. My paternal family tried to bring the families together and pay lobola, but my maternal family asked how my paternal family proposed to negotiate the marriage of people who were already married. My paternal family thought that the issue would eventually work itself out but it never did.

My brother, Khutso, had just turned two and I was nearing my fourth birthday when, one Saturday morning, it happened. We were playing with our father as our mother was in bed. She sent us out to buy her some headache tablets. When we came back, she was no more.

We have been living with our maternal family ever since. My dad has been living somewhere else – not that he hates us, but my grandmother, my uncle and my aunt do not allow him to see us for some reason that I do not know. They don’t want to tell me yet or maybe I will never know, but I do know that he is paying maintenance. I know this because a few years ago my grandmother took us to a local social worker to claim orphan welfare grants. The social worker asked why we needed the grants as we were receiving maintenance every month from our father. My grandmother tried to deny this, but the social worker told her exactly how much money our father was contributing every month. At this, my grandmother got very angry and stayed angry until she went to sleep. The next day she pretended that nothing ever happened.

Maybe they are afraid that he will take us away from them?

Probably he has another wife and kids.

Somehow I do not wish this statement to be true. It is something I hope to be false.

Mamafa told me that my father is a magistrate in Polokwane. I cannot say how exactly I felt when he told me this, but I was overwhelmed, a bit like my mother in this photo.

I am still young, very young, this I know, but my maternal family treats me like I am an infant. No one tells me anything and I have had to learn a lot of things on my own. They are very secretive, even about things that affect my life.

“You are going to a private school.”

I got very excited, went to private school for three years and had the best time.

“You are not going to private school next year. You will be going to the local high school.”

I got disappointed but what could I do? I went to a public school to do Grade Eleven and came to accept this hell of a school as my own.

“You are going to live with your aunt.”

I went and lived with my aunt, though I did not want to. Then some boy came to the house looking for me and after that she got fed up of living with me and chased me back to my grandmother’s.

My aunt Sarah gave me three hundred rand every month from Grade Eight. She stopped when I stopped going to private school without giving a reason why.

At the private school they were paying four thousand rand tuition per month. Though nobody ever told me who was paying for this, my cousins – Aunt Sarah’s daughter and all three of Aunt Shirley’s children – were going to private schools as well, so I didn’t think it strange. They are still in private schools, even though Aunt Shirley is not working this year as she is going to university. Aunt Shirley is building a house as well and after I left the private school she took my bank card without giving any reason. The few times that I dared to ask about it she got angry, saying that I didn’t need it.

“But it is my bank account,” I protested.

“Mokgethi, you are not working and you do not have money in it. Do not start to irritate me.”

Everything came to a head after the meeting we had with the social worker. My grandmother gets angry when she feels I want to know about something that she thinks I should not know about.

I told Mamafa my troubles only as a supportive friend, but he said that we were going to know the truth somehow. He asked my dad’s name, giving me some comfort by saying that he will find him for me. This was on a Sunday afternoon and I cannot say how but on Monday he tells me that he has his numbers.

“Sorry, sir, what I am about to tell you may come as a surprise. Please, do not think anything other than that I am trying to help a friend of mine.”

He was talking to my father over the phone. Then he gave him my numbers.

About the bank card: Mamafa called the lost card number and they blocked it. He told me that the operator had told him that some money had been withdrawn from the account a few hours before he’d called. He then said that we should wait until whoever was using the card came to tell me that it had been swallowed by the teller machine. Mamafa expected that this wouldn’t take too long and it didn’t. Three days later Aunt Shirley called me. She was trying very hard to be humble, but I could tell that behind the humbleness and sweet begging voice she was as angry as hell. Maybe she had gone inside the bank to complain and had been reminded that she was not Mokgethi.

At the bank they told me that the account had about two thousand rand in it and from the statements it was obvious that seven thousand was being transferred into it on the last working day of every month. Of that, one thousand four hundred rand was then transferred into two different accounts and the rest was used by the holder. Before I left the bank I was tempted to ask who the two account holders were and where the money came from but my heart told me to just shut up and take the card.

The next day Aunt Shirley came personally to pick up the card. She was the sweetest person on earth that day, smiling at everyone, and for the first time I noticed that she was a beautiful woman. She left me wondering if even inside monsters there is a degree of sweetness and care.

Mamafa couldn’t understand why I gave the card to Aunt Shirley, but that’s what I did. I had my own plan of action – I was going to find out where the money was coming from, who it was for and whose accounts the one thousand four hundred rand was being transferred into.

“When?” Mamafa asked.

“When the time is right.”

My father called me soon after that and for the first time in all my conscious life I had a conversation with my own dad. He gave me his brother’s numbers and said that if I needed anything I should call him. Though I was not that happy with the set-up there was nothing I could do about it.

Mamafa justified the rabbit’s habits, talking like he knew everything:

“Well, Mokgethi, the reasons are clear to me. It’s because your father has a wife and kids and somehow he forgot to tell your beautiful stepmother that you are breathing too. And after how many years? You just do not know how people handle things and your father is a magistrate and has to live a clean life so he can end up as a high court judge.”

“Why cannot he just tell her about us? We are his children.”

“Maybe he has too much to lose by revealing you.”

“What would he have to lose?”

“We will understand with time.”

I was still puzzled and in some darkness.

“Maf?”

“Mokgethi, what did you expect? To pack your bags and just go live with your father? That can never be. Just be happy that you know your father and I believe he is equally thrilled to know you.”