A Short Story | Zanele is a high school senior in Windhoek
Zanele was standing at the school’s tuck-shop waiting her turn to buy a break time burger. I could see that she was distraught even before asking. She kept swinging her head back and forth as if trying to shake out a bad thought, a queer but telling habit she had.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked when I got within earshot of her.
“Yeah I’m alright,” she replied.
Right. I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Of all the girls in our friend group, she was least close to me. So of course, she wouldn’t tell me what bothered her. I debated pressing her to tell me what the matter was, but eventually, I decided to just wait to hear it all as she told the others over at our break time hangout spot.
“The line is really long today,” she said. Wrong. The line was not long. I had seen far worse and she had too. Today was slightly below average actually. Why did she say that? To fill the silence?
She bought herself a chicken burger and a cooldrink and I got myself a packet of 30g chutney chips. As we were walking to our sitting spot, she asked me what topic I had chosen for my English essay. She had asked me that question the previous day already, but I told her again and asked her what hers was.
“I’m writing on capital punishment or maybe…” she trailed off into silence without finishing her sentence. Then again, she began swinging her head back and forth. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
Most of the other girls were already halfway through their burgers when we got to them. Some had already finished and were beginning to scratch through their unfinished math and physics homework.
Zanele sat down on one end of girls and I walked over to the other. I took out my chips and began eating them one by one, slowly, hoping this time I’ll hit the 20 minutes mark before I finish the packet. 20 minutes to feel full.
Zanele didn’t start eating her food immediately. She sat quietly for a while staring at grade 9 kids playing rugby on the field across our sitting spot. Then she stood up suddenly saying, “Jesus! I had a crazy weekend, yoh!”
“Oh yeah, you drunk texted me Saturday night. Do you even remember?” Tuhafeni said, looking up from her math book and laughing.
“Really?” Zanele asked, looking not too surprised. “I was at London until six in the morning bruh!” She was referring to a nightclub on what was dubbed the “rich side” of the city. “You know, it was Diego’s 18th birthday party. And those guys don’t play around with their parties, man!”
“Oh man! I wanted to go! But my mom left me with Herlee this weekend,” Laura said. She was the smart but fun friend in the group and her mom had just had a baby a couple of months ago. Not the same father as her.
“At least you went to Antonio’s 21st, Laura. Some of us are missing everything here. I haven’t been to a party since January,” Tuhafeni replied.
“Yeah, that one was at another level! Zanele, yoh, remember that one?” Laura had that smile of good reminiscence on her face.
“Yeah…” Zanele replied. Trailing off into thought like she had done with me a few minutes ago.
“Did you call Antonio’s brother by the way?” Laura asked, turning to Zanele. Laura stopped smiling when she saw Zanele’s worried look.
Then again, Zanele snapped out of it and went back to her cheery demeanor, “That one felt too good, man!” She laughed. “Like I was in heaven!”
“Hahaha! Zanele, you like those things too much!” Laura replied, with her classic nervous laughter.
Thinking back to a month ago when the girls were having a similar conversation, I wondered if “it felt good” meant what I thought it meant. And what Zanele said next confirmed my suspicions.
“But I’m scared, bruh! I didn’t get my period yet.” Zanele said.
“So that’s what she’s worried about.” I thought. It wasn’t the first time that Zanele was battling a panic attack because of a late period. It wasn’t the first time that she had reason to worry about having a growing fetus in there instead of just messed up hormones. And in the previous times, it wasn’t Antonio’s brother’s possible offspring.
“How late?” Laura asked, still looking worried for her friend.
“My last one started when we wrote that math achievement text last month. And that was the 15 March, no?” Zanele asked, opening her fingers to count.
“Yeah. So your next one was supposed to be on the 12th. It’s 18 March now already,” Laura was better at math.
“I don’t want to have a baby!” Zanele said, running her hand through her hair. She took off her blazer and put it where she had been sitting a while ago. She kept staring at the blazer as she stood back up and folded her arms. Then again, moving suddenly, she opened her arms and started adjusting her the pantyhose under her skirt, “What if I’m pregnant? He was cute, but no bruh! I must at least finish grade 12 first.” I always liked that Zanele managed to make jokes no matter how stressed she was.
“Do you want me to call LS?” Laura asked. I knew what LS meant from previous similar conversations. It stood for Life Saver. Laura apparently knew a girl at a different high school, St. Paul’s, who could hook her up with some pills. Pills that are apparently meant as hormone therapy for menopausal women, but would do the job in making people like Zanele bleed out whatever unwanted thing was growing inside them.
“I don’t have 500 bucks though. That’s the thing.” Zanele picked up her blazer again and put it back on, deciding, I guess, that it was cold again.
“You can tell her you’ll pay later,” Laura said, wrapping her unfinished burger and putting it in her pocket.
“Will she agree though. You know, how she is,” Zanele replied. Laura nodded as if knowing what Zanele meant. “Antonio’s brother must pay, bruh! It’s even his child.”
“It’s that or child support for 18 years,” Laura laughed nervously then fell silent again.
“Guys, I’m scared though. I’m thinking of selling my phone,” Zanele said, swinging her head, again, as if trying to shake away a thought. “But what will I tell my mom? I’ve lost three phones already.”
“Zanele, your period is late sometimes though. Maybe it will come,” Tuhafeni said. I noticed that she had stopped doing her homework completely to listen to Zanele’s story. What would her excuse be to Ms. Van Zyl this time? She had plenty of creative excuses though so nothing to worry about.
The bell rang. I finished the last two chips in my packet, glad that I had managed to make them hold out this time, and left for class.
During the remainder of my classes, I didn’t think much about Zanele. I was consumed with trying to pay attention to the teachers despite my rumbling stomach and planning what to have to for lunch and how much water to have with it to make sure I would be full.
When the final school bell rang, I walked to where I usually waited for the bus after school, and I found Laura and Zanele talking near the spot. I walked up to them, but as soon as I got close, they fell silent, as if they didn’t want me to hear whatever they had been talking about. It always annoyed me when they did this. I already heard everything at break time. What more could they want to hide from me?
“Nelu! You’re too holy, man.” Zanele said after some awkward seconds of silence. I laughed in response. I was too hungry and tired to give anything more. “One day maybe I’ll be like you, so I can go to heaven too,” she continued. “Ai, but I can’t man. Not have the vitamin D again? It feels too good inside!” Laura laughed loudly at this holding Zanele’s shoulder in the process. I laughed along nervously. The bus came soon afterwards, saving me from the conversation, which admittedly, did make me feel a little uncomfortable.
On the bus, the feeling of discomfort lingered with me for a while. It wasn’t just because they were talking about… bed activities. It was also because they always treated me like I was an outgroup, too “holy” and uncool for them. Why did they always think I judged them? “She will probably end up like her mother and have an oops baby.” I thought as I stared out the window. “How hard can it be to just not sleep around with random guys all the time?” Outside the bus window, I saw a house with a huge glass door. And I remembered the idiom I had learned earlier in my English class, “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” Miss Bynard said it meant that we shouldn’t judge each other. Wait a minute, wasn’t I judging Zanele just now?
Feeling too tired and hungry to pursue this moral dilemma, I pulled out my phone and began looking through my WhatsApp statuses. Cher, a Kiwi friend of mine who was part of my Singh Sisters chatgroup, had posted a status. It was a picture of her in a bikini near a pool.
Cher always posted partially naked pictures on her status. A few months prior she told all the Singh Sisters that she had lost her virginity for a guy at the club. And after that, she kept bragging about her sexcapades on the group as if she thought she deserved praise for “hooking up with a cute guy” for the 500th time. She wasn’t like Zanele who had a little bit of shame. “Why does she think she’s all that just for sleeping with a bunch of guys?” I thought. Then my eye caught the reflection of the sun on a window pane. “Glass houses.”
Annoyed that this moral dilemma kept haunting me, I decided to put my phone away and take a nap for the rest of the bus ride home.
The bus usually dropped me about a mile away from home and I would take a connecting taxi for the rest of the way. This time, after getting off the bus, I decided I would buy a protein bar for lunch before going to look for the cab.
In the snack aisle of the grocery shop, I looked at all the protein bars and thought back to the number on my scale that morning. I had lost another kilogram. Seeing 47.5 on the display gave me this euphoric joy that was almost sinister, “Yes, I’m getting thinner. I’m getting cleaner. Free.”
I read through all the labels on the protein bars and decided to go with the one having the least calories. “Maybe next week I’ll be down another kilogram,” I thought. And I imagined that euphoric joy filling me again.
At the cashiers, I stood behind two girls wearing uniforms I recognized from a high school at the city center. “Did you hear that Marga got skinny?” one of them said.
“Yeah, she got lost so much weight. Apparently, she’s drinking just one cup of hot chocolate a day and going to the gym for hours every day.” The other one replied.
“I think she has anor…”
“No, no, no!”
I ran back to the snacks aisle before she could finish that horrid a-word. My heart started pounding. I despised that word.
“No, I don’t have that!” I thought as I tried to mindlessly touch random chocolate bars to seem normal. “No, those girls who have that are way skinnier than me. I’m going to be skinny just like them too,” then again that sinister euphoria began to fill my heart. Yes, I was going to get thin and free just like…
Then I remembered what my dad had said a few months ago about taking me to the doctor. And how the doctor was going to force me to eat. “No, no! I won’t get skinny like them because I don’t have that. See, I’ll eat enough. No need to force anything.” I started reaching for another bar like the one I had picked so I could double the calories and be in a safer zone. Then my mind went back to that the break time where Tuhafeni said I was “fully packed” referring to the way my hips filled my skirt. I threw both bars back on the shelf, went to get a diet iced tea instead and paid for that. That would be my lunch. And I will get thin and free and clean and pretty…
In the taxi on the way home, there was a Stop Smoking ad at the back of the front seat with the 12 steps summarized on it. “Admit you have a problem” was number one.
I thought of the thing I did not want to admit even to myself. Then I remembered that Russell Brand had said in an interview that it – the eating problem – was part of the addiction spectrum. “You have to surrender. Know that you have become powerless in the face of your addiction.” He had said.
“Step 12: Help those who have similar problems” I read.
I took my phone out again to avoid the line of thoughts I was beginning to have. And as I was polishing my fingerprints off the screen before turning it on, I saw the reflection of the sun on it. “Glass houses. Zanele… What if she feels like me? Powerless. Compulsions she cannot control to go with those guys…”
Although I hadn’t expressed it in words to myself, deep down I knew the skeleton in my closet was getting bigger and bigger. I knew those numbers on the scale were dropping way too quickly for safety. And I knew I couldn’t stop on my own. “I’m scared.” That’s what Zanele had said at break time. I was scared too.
Would those 12 steps work the other way around?
I had some money I had saved up. “I will give her the 500 she needs.” I decided.
The next morning, as soon as I walked off the school bus, I saw the girls on a bench near one of the classes. I walked up to them with one of my hands in my blazer pocket, stroking the 500 I planned to give Zanele. When I got to the girls and realized she hadn’t arrived yet. I sat down quietly after greeting the others and started practicing what to say to her.
A few minutes later, she leaped out of her mom’s sedan and ran over to us.
“Guys! I’m safe,” she shouted running up to us, wearing a smile. And when she was close enough, “I got my period!” she clarified in a whisper.
She glanced at everyone excitedly, got to me and cast her eyes downwards as if ashamed, and kept on smiling at everyone else.
She continued to explain to the other girls how relieved she was. I wanted to say something. That I’m happy for her too. That I don’t judge her. That I know. But I didn’t.
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