Page 126 - The Mending Season

There is a lot I have spent the past few years trying to for­ get. Sometimes when private schools come together, I see KB and some of her friends and we both look away and pretend not to see each other. I would just as soon forget the Tshidi who so desperately wanted to be liked by someone like her - I look for friends in different places these days. I've learnt to identify people I can depend on when things fall apart.I've held on to some ofwho I was then - I don't think I would have been made a prefect if I wasn't still pretending to be Catholic. My aunts have not set foot in church since my first year at Ascension and I only go to Mass at school, but as far as everyone knows, I'm Catholic - it counts for a lot here. Sometimes the nuns make comments like, “It’s not the Catholic girls who have no respect for our school - its the other girls.”I still hate to be an outsider. But I dont watch my neigh­ bours’ lives from the lemon tree or anywhere else now. When I pass people, I politely greet and chat with them for a minute or two. I still know all the gossip, the difference is that now I know it from talking to people and asking questions. The aunts still stay within the boundaries of our home, but people look at them differently. Our house is known as Gabo Tshidiso - Tshidisos home - instead ofKo Baloing,.The incident on the netball court is told sometimes to new students like it is an urban legend, a story that happened in the distant past. No one attaches names to it. It is only about “these two girls, one Black and one White”.Those ofus who were there cringe as we hear the many different versions of it circulating in the playground. We like to pretend that it really was many, many years ago.Just last week, I was walking behind two girls who were leaving netball practice. One ofthem said, “You know, I heard that years ago (she put an emphasis on “years”) these two girls got suspended . . . ” I listened to her tell the story with so many126