Correction
by Jen Ross
Art by Shu Tu
Her feet salted with sand, Amahle snakes her way through the sweaty crowd, following her friends through a maze of what are by now thousands of bodies bumping and grinding to the latest dancehall jams. On the rugged shores of Camps Bay Beach behind her, soundless waves crash against the giant rocks—drowned out by the booming speakers.
Not normally allowed out so late, Amahle had begged her granny to let her accompany her two best friends to the beach music festival—her first. Mbali’s dad had agreed to drive the 16-year-old trio the 1.5-hour round trip there and back from their home in Mitchell’s Plain, one of the biggest townships in Cape Town, South Africa. Amahle had promised they would be home before midnight and, to her surprise, her granny had given in to her puppy-dog pleading.
“I’ll be back to pick you girls up right here at 11 o’clock sharp. Don’t make me wait!” Mbali’s dad had warned the girls, after dropping them off at the main entrance.
“Don’t worry Mr. Ngcuka,” Amahle and Keisha had chimed, as angelically as they could.
Now, revelling in her newfound freedom, Amahle throws her arms up and cranes her neck at the seagulls circling the crystalline stars above. The chill ocean breeze twirls the kinky bits of hair that are too short for her high ponytail. With the pounding base reverberating deep in her chest, she takes a deep breath to savour the moment.
The girls’ first stop is the sandpit bar, where they stock up on soda, which Keisha and Mbali sneak over to the portable bathrooms to spike it with the rum they’ve concealed in a metal water bottle. Giggling loudly, as if already drunk, they take turns taking swigs. Amahle gulps down a sip, to make her friends happy, but the burning sensation as it goes down makes her choke half of it up.
“Ugh! How do you drink this kak?” she asks her friends with an eyeroll, wiping her mouth and pushing the plastic cup dismissively back towards Keisha. “No more for me! That stuff gets you go all out of control! Besides, my father would kill me if he smelled it on my breath when I get home.”
“Suit yourself—that just means more for us!” says Keisha, happily drinking it down.
Making their way into the thick of the throng, Keisha carves out a spot for them to dance, contorting her waist and proudly showing off her big round butt, the bottom of which is slightly exposed in the jean shorts she’s cut extra short in behind. Mbali—who isn’t as curvy or as pretty but a much better dancer than Keisha—flicks her braids and sways seductively while she scopes out the guys around them.
Amahle herself is clad in comfy black shorts and a shimmery crop-top that accentuates her breasts. As she scans the crowd, someone instantly catches her eye a few metres away. Strobe lights illuminate the girl’s coffee-coloured skin and bounce over thick, curled lashes that fan her fiery eyes. Skinny jeans encase her muscular thighs and the girl’s perky nipples look ready to poke through her loose floral-print blouse. Amahle catches herself staring at the girl, who laughs flirtatiously and dances with contagious excitement. A few minutes later, the girl’s sensuous amber eyes finally meet Amahle’s. Embarrassed, Amahle looks away so the girl won’t be offended that another girl is staring at her. But when her gaze shifts back a few seconds later, she catches a glimpse of the girl’s perfect ivory teeth as her luscious lips part into a smile. Could she be smiling at her?
Heart leaping into her throat, Amahle swallows hard and darts her eyes over towards her friends, to check if they’ve noticed their exchange, but they’re caught up in staring games of their own. Amahle wills herself to stop looking in the girl’s direction again but soon finds her eyes drawn almost magnetically back towards the girl, who has all the right moves. The pair lock sights again through the crowd. This time, the girl smiles, licks her upper teeth and winks coyly. Amahle feels a surge of excitement and a tingling feeling creeps up her thighs. She wants that girl, she realizes—and maybe, just maybe, the girl wants her too. It’s unthinkable, yet possible.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a group of guys who approach and begin rubbing up behind her friends, complimenting and goading them on as they dance. Keisha laps it up while Mbali plays it cool and acts disinterested. Amahle can’t see the guy moving in behind her, but she can smell his rancid body odour as his sweat-drenched body nears and his groin is suddenly grinding into her butt. The hard bulge in his pants hardens with each gyration. Repulsed and annoyed, Amahle shifts sideways and moves in to whisper to Keisha, trying to avoid him, so he won’t get offended.
“Help me shake this guy,” she says, between gritted teeth, but Keisha grimaces to show she can’t hear her over the booming bass.
Meanwhile, the guy doesn’t seem to take the hint and follows Amahle, led by his hips. She moves to the other side of their small dance circle, this time glancing over at the girl she’s been eyeing, in the hopes she won’t get the impression that she’s interested in this guy. But the girl isn’t looking her way now.
The guy clasps his hands on either side of Amahle’s waist, as if to steady her for his gyrations. Amahle promptly removes them, gently, in another attempt to shake him diplomatically. After several failed attempts at nonverbal cues, Amahle finally turns around and shakes her head while simultaneously waving her finger at him and mouthing the word ‘no’. Pretending not to notice, the guy keeps dancing—which pisses her right off. She stops dancing.
“What’s wrong, you don’t like men?” the guy asks defensively, as his friends start pointing and laughing at him mockingly.
“How could you tell?” Amahle blurts out sarcastically, instantly regretting the cloaked confession. She’s never outed herself before. Not even her friends know. Will he take it for sarcasm or for the truth that it is? She watches his expression nervously, praying he won’t take her literally. Finally, he darts her a dirty look, sucks his teeth and throws his arms up in defeat before disappearing back into the sweaty masses.
Relieved, Amahle glances over in the direction of the girl, who looks as though she has been watching the scene unfold. She feigns an exaggerated giggle, lifts an eyebrow and gives Amahle a playful thumbs-up. This time, Amahle smiles back at her.
As the night wears on, Amahle can’t seem to stop staring at the girl and finds herself subtly move her friends over to dance closer to her. Then, as their eyes collide again, the girl winks, shifts her eyes and cocks her head to the left, as if motioning for Amahle to follow her in that direction.
After a half-swallowed giggle, Amahle tells Mbali she’s going to the bathroom and disappears into the crowd, pursuing the enigmatic girl past the stage, towards a dark spot behind the port-o-potties, where half a dozen couples are already kissing and passionately entwined.
For a moment, Amahle looses sight of the girl, until she feels her soft, small hand reach out for hers.
“This way,” the girl purrs, leading her into a corner between two imposing boulders.
Amahle fidgets nervously with her hair. She’s only ever fantasized about girls but has never kissed, let alone been intimate, with one.
The girl leans in against Amahle, wrapping one hand around her waist and gently cupping the back of her head with the other. Her touch sends Amahle’s senses into overdrive. Then, she closes her eyes, purses her lips and goes in for the kiss. Amahle sighs approvingly and the girl hugs her in closer, arching her back over the uneven boulders.
Amahle savours everything about this kiss, which is so different in every way from the two she’d awkwardly exchanged with boys: The softness of this girl’s lips, the timid tenderness of her touch, the cotton-candy flavour of her lip gloss.
“Am I your first?” the girl whispers into her ear after some time, sending tingles down her spine. Amahle smiles and nods shyly.
Having no idea how long they had locked lips, she remembers that she needs to get back to her friends before they start to worry about her.
“Do you mind if I go and check in with my friends for a little?”
The girl nods understandingly, then winks and tells Amahle: “Come and find me again before the end of the night.”
Body sizzling and mind racing, Amahle heads back to look for her friends, not noticing when she brushes past the guy who’d been rubbing up against her earlier on the dancefloor. But she can’t find her friends anywhere. She checks her mobile phone and discovers a missed call from Mbali. When she tries calling her back, she doesn’t pick up. A few minutes later, a text message appears: “My dad’s here! It’s 11! Where are you?”
Amahle pauses. Could two hours have gone by already? She isn’t ready to go but she’d promised her grandmother Mbali’s dad would drive her home. But she also doesn’t want to leave without at least getting the girl’s phone number.
“I just hooked up with someone! Just let me get digits. I’ll be there in five,” Amahle texts.
Gripped by the urgency of finding the girl, Amahle heads back to the spot where they’d first spotted each other while dancing. No sign of her. She checks the bar and the bathrooms before returning to the dark spot where they shared their sultry first kiss. Nothing.
Then, just as Amahle turns to head back, her body is thrust briskly back into the shadows. But this time, it isn’t the girl. Thick black fingers encircle Amahle’s wrists and haul them over her head, like human handcuffs, while another hand swoops in from behind, smothering her startled scream.
“So, you do not like boys?” a hoarse male voice intones. “Well I will give you a taste of what you are missing. I will cure your backward ways!”
Freezing as she catches a whiff of the man’s familiar pungent body odour, Amahle holds her breath while he presses his erect penis against the back of her thighs. He laughs before yanking her panties and elastic waistband shorts down to her knees in one fell swoop.
Kick him! Punch and fight back the way your older brother taught you to, Amahle tells herself. But her body is so paralyzed by fear that she can’t even move. She breathlessly mouths: “No!” as the guy violently rams himself between her legs, missing either crevasse entirely the first time. Amahle crumples onto her hands and knees, wincing as he hurls in again, forcing the tight opening of her vagina.
“A virgin!” he crows malevolently. “Even better!”
As the guy proceeds to rave her, thrusting in and out so hard Amahle fears he might rip her apart, her thoughts somehow return to a childhood memory. An innocent six-year-old with pink bobbles hanging from her braids, Amahle was hiding under her uncle Thabo’s chair while playing hide-and-seek with her cousins. While her uncle nonchalantly carried on a conversation with her aunt across the room, he’d reached under the chair to tickle her. But his fingers had wandered, slowly inching under her skirt and reaching in to fondle her between the legs. In this vivid flashback, Amahle remembered how she had stopped breathing entirely because she was so petrified and unsure of what to do when her uncle Thabo tried to stick a finger inside her. He would surely have succeeded had it not been for her cousins discovering her hiding spot. Amahle had feared and hated men after that incident and had avoided returning to that house.
Now, a man was abusing her again and she found herself immobilized much as she had then. She could only pray that Mbali, Keisha, the girl she’d kissed, or some random bystander would emerge from the shadows and save her.
As the man’s sweat drips into the small of her back and the pain pulsates through her body, intensifying with the force of every horrifying thrust, she makes an effort to stop clenching her muscles, hoping it will make the agony more bearable. A few seconds later, the man pauses and a sticky liquid oozes out of him and onto her butt as he pulls out.
Is it finally over?
The man lets out a loud grunt and zips up his jeans before pushing a sandaled foot into the back of Amahle’s head and grinding her face mercilessly into the sand.
“Now that should correct you!” he spits out vehemently, before disappearing into the night.
Lying there with her face peppered in sand and her body writhing, it takes several minutes for Amahle just to get her bearings. When she remembers that her friends were waiting for her and she has no idea how much time has gone by, she feels around for her purse in the darkness, finding it and rummaging around for her phone. There are a dozen text messages and missed calls from Mbali and Keisha.
The last message reads: “Hope your hook-up is worth it. My dad won’t wait any longer. We’re leaving. Hope you brought bus money.”
Amahle sinks into the sand, closing her eyes and trying to wrap her head around what has just happened. She feels dirty, hurt, and ashamed. And she has no idea how she’s going to get home now. Finally, she prods herself up, pulls on her shorts and staggers towards the stage area.
Legs wobbling, she makes her way towards the entrance. At this point, finding the girl is the last thing on her mind. All she wants is to go home and have a shower and be swallowed by a sinkhole.
She finds her way to the nearest bus stop, almost in a trance. The ride home is a blur as she unwittingly replays the events of the night over and over again in her mind—the elation of her first romantic foray with a girl eclipsed by her terrifying attack.
She absentmindedly spits out bits of sand as she rubs the bump that has formed on the back of her head, remembering the force of the man’s shoe kicking her face into the sand.
An hour and 40 minutes later, the rickety bus pulls into the desolate Mitchell’s Plain bus station. One of the biggest townships in Cape Town, her neighbourhood was ghettoized as a ‘coloured’ neighbourhood in the 1950s. It wasn’t the worst in Cape Flats, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of place where women should be walking around alone at night.
After glancing at her phone, Amahle is shocked to discover that its already past 2 a.m. Paranoia takes hold. What if another attacker is lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on her? Endless scenarios flood her mind along the seemingly eternal three blocks home. As she bolts down the well-lit streets, she slows down and heaves a sigh of relief as she passes Gatsby Den, the tuck shop on the corner. She squeezes through the bent wire fence and slinks slowly across the tiny yard to her pastel green home, quietly unlocking the front door and tiptoeing in so as not to wake her father or granny. She’s way past curfew but somehow, miraculously, no one has stayed up waiting for her.
Painfully realizing that she can’t shower without the water heater waking everyone, Amahle washes up as best she can by cupping her hands under the faucet. She retreats into the safety of her bedroom, shared with her younger sister, who is deep in sleep. She collapses onto her unmade bed, sinking into the lumpy mattress and pulling the sheet up over her head.
Amahle tosses and turns for hours but sleep proves elusive. Should she tell her friends? Her father? Is there any way she could confess the rape without mentioning that the guy had done it to ‘correct’ her sexual orientation?
Should she even go to the police? Their headquarters were just five or six blocks away, but what would she tell them? She didn’t know the guy’s name and he had been behind her almost the entire time so she wasn’t even sure she could describe or identify him if she saw him again. What about going to the hospital? It was just across the street from the police station. Amid her shock over the attack, she hadn’t even stopped to consider another dreadful prospect—that she could get pregnant. Or even worse: that her attacker could have HIV.
The thought is horrifying and as she ruminates about it sweat starts to build on her brow. Then, as the glow of dawn starts peaking out from behind the corners of the blinds, Amahle dresses and scribbles a note for her father, which she places on the kitchen table: I know I got home late last night. I am sorry. Now I need to step out early. I’ll be home later to explain.
As Amahle barrels down the sleepy streets towards the hospital, she can’t stop thinking about the prospect of HIV. She’d learned all about the virus in sex education class in her first year of high school. She knew it was transmitted through blood, needles and sexual intercourse. If untreated, the virus could bring on the killer disease, AIDS.
Her teacher had asked five students to stand up in front of the class, then explained that one in five people are currently carrying the virus.
“Do not be fooled! You cannot tell if a person is infected just by looking at them,” her teacher had warned the class.
So that meant there was also a one-in-five chance her attacker could have HIV.
Breathless in her anxiety, Amahle practically barges through the emergency room doors.
“What is your emergency,” the intake nurse behind the thick plexiglass window asks calmly, looking her up and down her for any injuries.
As a dozen other people in the waiting room look over inquisitively to hear her reply, a wave of shame overcomes her. After a long pause, Amahle inches closer to the plexiglass and lowers her voice to a whisper. “I ... was att-… attacked … well … r- raped.”
The nurse’s expression softens into a comprehensive frown. She nods and asks Amahle to sit in the waiting room. “It will not be long for you dear,” she reassures her.
Minutes later, Amahle is ushered to a room where a female doctor with salt-and-pepper streaked hair, who looks roughly her granny’s age, is waiting.
“I understand that you were sexually assaulted; is that right?” the doctor asks, her tone cautious and unassuming.
“Yes… A few hours ago.”
“How many hours was that, exactly?”
“I’m not sure… maybe 8 or 9,” Amahle stammers, after a long pause—the numbers whirling in her head from her exhaustion.
“Ok, then we are still in time to do damage control. I am going to perform something we call a ‘rape kit’ on you. It will enable you to press charges, if you choose to go that route,” the doctor says, rolling out a large white sheet of paper on the examination bed and patting it as a sign for Amahle to sit.
“This may be uncomfortable—maybe even painful at times,” she warns. “Let me know if it does. I will be as gentle as possible.”
After Amahle lies down, the doctor carefully inserts a long cotton swab into her vagina then rolls it over a glass slide. She circles another swab around her genitals and smears it on a different glass slide. Then she rakes a fine-tooth comb through Amahle’s pubic hair.
“I am searching for hair samples from your assailant,” the doctor explains.
After placing a few suspect hairs in a soft paper envelope, she asks Amahle if she can pull out at least 20 of her own, right from the root, for comparison.
The doctor then draws several syringes full of blood and checks for skin beneath her nails. But Amahle is a biter so her nails are dreadfully short—and she didn’t get close enough to scratch him.
“Are those the clothes that you were wearing?” the doctor asks, pointing to the crumpled pile on the chair next to her.
Appauled at the suggestion that she could possibly still be wearing those filthy clothes, Amahle’s face mangles into a disgusted look. “No, I changed my clothes as soon as I got home of course!”
“Oh, I see. Do you think you could bring me the clothes you were wearing when it happened? Maybe later today? You see, we might be able to retrieve some DNA from your attacker from them.”
Amahle nods.
After the long evidence collection procedure, she is given a pregnancy test.
“Negative!” the doctor confirms a few minutes later, “although it is still too early to know for sure, so you will have to take the morning-after pill just to be on the safe side.”
Although she had managed to stay surprisingly unemotional, by now, the enormity of what has happened begins to sink in, and tears begin slowly streaming from her eyes. Amahle pops two tiny white pills into her mouth and pockets a pack with a few more.
“Could I have HIV?” she finally musters the courage to ask.
Crumpling her chin, the doctor hesitates, then says: “It is also too soon to know for sure if you have been infected. So, I am afraid you will need to take preventive medication called anti-retrovirals. They are the same drugs we give to people who have HIV. You must take them every day for four weeks. Then you will need to come back for more testing, and counselling, in about six weeks’ time.”
Reeling from all the information, the lack of sleep and the recurring visions of her attack, Amahle gets dressed in a daze, her mind retreating back to a time when she was four years old and her mother was still alive. They were having a tickle fight in the shade of the drooping roots of a banyan tree. What she wouldn’t give to return to the folds of her mother’s embrace in that safe place of happiness and childhood innocence. How she wishes her mother were still alive, to confide in.
Before leaving the hospital, the doctor takes Amahle by the hand and looks her in the eyes: “I know it is a lot to digest. You are dealing with trauma, pain and fear. But please do think about pressing charges. So many girls do not, and then those bastards get away with it!”
The words linger with Amahle long after she leaves the hospital. She wonders if the doctor herself might have been raped once too. Determined to get back home to talk to her father, Amahle dismisses the idea. She doesn’t have time to think about legal steps now.
As she passes the peach-orange house where her grandmother’s best friend lived, a few blocks away, she remembers that the old woman lost all four of her children to AIDS and had been left to single-handedly raise her seven grandchildren.
Amahle thinks back to her First-Grade teacher, Ms. Phumzile, who had died half-way through the school year after developing tuberculosis—an HIV-related complication. And then there was her uncle Ethan, who had been beaten to death around the time Amahle was born, when the disease was still shrouded in so much fear and stigma. AIDS had even claimed her former next-door neighbours on the left, a husband-and-wife, both within the space of a year.
So many people lived with the virus or the disease in silence. There didn’t seem to be a family she knew or a block in her neighbourhood that was unscathed.
The doctor’s words echo in her mind as Amahle imagines different scenarios. If her attacker did have HIV, what would happen if the ARVs don’t work to protect her? If she were to die, then her attacker would literally get away with murder. Amahle was just a block away from home when this realization stopped her in her tracks. She couldn’t let that guy do this to another girl! Although she desperately wanted to be back home, she realized that she had to follow the doctor’s advice. Making an abrupt about-face, she high-tailed it back towards the police station.
Amahle had never stepped foot in a police station before and it was far from the chaotic mess of ringing phones and mountains of paperwork she’d seen in movies. The entirely male squad of a dozen or so officers looked almost disinterested at their desks, some cracking jokes while others ate their lunch. No one looked up or came to greet her when she walked up to the front desk.
“Excuse me,” Amahle managed, trying to wave to a young officer sitting nearby. “I’m here to report an attack.”
A few of the other officers look up from their desks momentarily, soon returning their gazes to whatever it is they were doing.
After a short wait, the young officer signals to another, who picks up a notepad and motions for Amahle to follow him. He is courteous but as he nears a small empty room and cocks his head for her to enter, she notices that her palms start to feel clammy and sweat starts to form on her brow. She looks around in the hopes that someone else will be joining them. The officer motions for her to enter, again. She does so reluctantly, swallowing hard as he shuts the door behind her.
“I will take your statement about the attack you experienced,” he says, as he sits behind a desk, his eyes fixed on his notepad. “It is important that you provide as many details as possible.”
Stirring uncomfortably in a hard metal chair, Amahle begins.
“I was at the beach music festival with my friends and this guy started whining up on me, but I didn’t like him so I told him … to go away,” she says hesitantly, looking towards the officer’s eyes, which are fixed on his notepad. “Then, a while later, he came up behind me…”
“How many minutes or hours would you say is ‘a while later’?” the officer asks. Amahle notices the distractingly large gap between his front teeth.
“Um, I’m not sure. Maybe an hour.”
“OK, so he came up behind you… where were you exactly?” prods the officer.
“I was looking for my friends in a dark area near the bathrooms.”
“Why weren’t you with your friends?” he asks, an eyebrow raised almost suspiciously.
“I had gone to the bathroom alone earlier and then I was trying to find them but they weren’t in the same place as when I left.”
“Your friends move fast,” the officer commented sarcastically, his eyes fixed on his notepad. “Continue…”
Flustered, Amahle feels her hands shaking and pushes them beneath the desk and fixes her gaze on them, as she describes the attack in as much detail as she can remember.
“Can you describe the assailant?” the officer asks, once she has finished.
“He was behind me, and it was dark, and I could not really see him well.”
“Then how do you know it was the same young man as before?”
“His voice… and… his smell,” Amahle says, hesitantly.
“His smell?” the officer asks, eyebrows perked.
“He had a very strong body odor that I noticed while he was trying to dance with me. I could tell it was him as soon as he came up from behind.”
The officer wrinkles his forehead as he scribbles the detail down. Then he puts down his notepad and looks Amahle squarely in the face.
“I am going to be honest with you. It will be difficult for us to catch this person with so little to go on. Think hard. Think back to anything else you can recall about the attack—what the guy said to you, what he was wearing… Even the tiniest comment might give us a lead.”
Amahle thinks back, then hesitates, trying to gauge how the officer will react before blurting out: “He said he wanted to ‘cure’ me.”
“Cure you? For what?” the officer asks, seemingly dumbfounded.
“Because I told him I like girls to get him to leave me alone earlier,” Amahle says, stirring uncomfortably.
The officer wrinkles his face again, and, after an awkward pause, he asks: “Well, is it true? Are you a lesbian?”
“Does that matter?” Amahle retorts, shocked at the question. She starts sensing that she might be seen in a less favourable light or taken less seriously if the answer is yes, so she decides to leave it unanswered.
Widening his eyes, the officer looks back down at his notepad and finishes his report. He thanks her for stopping by and tells her they will be in touch if they make any progress.
The walk home feels eternal as Amahle ruminates over what to do and what to tell her father. But despite all her planning, as soon as she sees his face – which is brimming with concern rather than anger – she tells him everything. Even about the girl…
He takes the news in with a straight face and glassy eyes, hearing her out without peppering her with questions or judgments. After a long silence, he pummels his fist into a wall in the kitchen, leaving a dent that would later remind Amahle of that day every time she sat down to a meal.
She couldn’t be sure if it was because he’d just learned that his daughter had been raped, or that she was a lesbian.
Shu Tu, Trust
Amahle can’t bring herself to tell her grandmother what happened, but she confides about the rape to Mbali and Keisha, who apologize profusely for having abandoned her at the festival. She doesn’t mention her kiss with the girl though, as she isn’t quite sure how they would react.
Mbali offers to accompany her to get an HIV test. But Amahle tells her she’s already been to the hospital.
Funny, Amahle thinks, that she imagines her friends will be more accepting of the fact that she could potentially have a deadly, infectious disease than of her being a lesbian. She would be an innocent victim of HIV, after all, whereas liking girls would be seen as her choice – and a bad one.
Over the next six weeks, Amahle obsesses about the virus, envisioning tiny purple molecules slowly propagating in her veins. She scrutinizes any minor ache or sneeze, fearing it is a potential sign that she was infected.
Back at the hospital for her follow-up testing, Amahle feels pangs of fear as the nurse draws her blood. She even wonders if it doesn’t look darker than before.
When she returns a few days later, to learn that her tests have come back negative, Amahle hugs the nurse and shed tears of joy, and relief.
“This is good news, yes, but please try not to get too excited yet,” the nurse cautions, “because the virus could manifest itself later. You will need to be tested again in a few months.”
Leaving the hospital feeling that a huge weight has been lifted, Amahle’s thoughts turn to the police. She’d heard nothing from them since reporting the attack. Perhaps she’d been naïve to think they’d be able to catch him.
She has a nagging feeling over the coming days that she needs to do something more. She starts feeling an overwhelming need to warn other girls out there about guys like the one who attacked her, or what they could to do if it ever happened. But how?
In an effort to help Amahle engage her creativity and get her mind off the attack, Keisha convinces her friend to join after-school theatre classes. With her bellowing voice and natural expressiveness, Amahle finds she has a natural knack for acting, and takes up the lessons with interest.
Her counsellor at the hospital, a psychiatrist who she had continued seeing since the attack, encourages her: “Theatrical expression is the perfect conduit for venting your emotions and harnessing your creative juices,” she tells Amahle. “See where it takes you.”
A few months later, the theatre troop holds its first on-stage performance and Amahle revels in the limelight. The following season, she earns the lead role in a passionate interpretation of Ophelia.
Although she enjoys the classics, Amahle is even more captivated when the theatre classes shift gear, and students are assigned to write and produce their own plays about issues closer to home. Amahle teams up with Keisha and three other girls.
As they huddle to discuss potential story-lines, Keisha gives Amahle a strange look and whispers: “It might be best not to suggest one about rape.”
Amahle shoots her a confused look, but before she can respond, another one of the girls pipes up.
“Why don’t we do a play about rape and HIV?”
The suggestion comes from Rethabile, a hefty 17-year-old with short hair and a lisp.
Keisha and Amahle stare at each other in confusion. Had she read their minds?
“I don’t know, that can be such a dark and difficult subject,” ventures Keisha, hesitantly.
“But it affects so many girls here in South Africa!” Rethabile insists. “My older sister was raped three years ago and she got HIV. Just because something is difficult, doesn’t mean we should avoid talking about it!”
“I totally agree,” bursts in Amahle. Then, lowering her head, she utters “I was raped too.”
The girls exchange awkward glances in silence. No one looks particularly surprised. They confide that they all have friends or family members who’ve been raped or abused, and take turns sharing stories.
They ask Amahle if she’s scared about HIV.
“Well, I consider myself lucky because I had the willpower to go to the hospital right away and they gave me preventive anti-retrovirals. And so far, I have tested negative for HIV. But I do still live in fear that the virus could appear later on.”
Keisha stays silent but seems to have a newfound respect for her friend, who has dared to share her story and be brave enough to be willing to do so on a public stage.
“Why don’t we act out your story Amahle?” one of the girls suggests.
“No, that would be too hard for me to relive,” admits Amahle. “I would prefer not to play the victim. Why don’t we interpret Rethabile’s sister’s story instead? Since she actually got HIV...”
Keisha volunteers herself for the lead role, and the planning begins. The girls agree that they want to send a number of messages through their performance: what warning signs to look out for in an attacker, ways to say ‘no’ or how to seek help to prevent an attack, what to do after a rape, and the importance of not making fun of, or stigmatizing, people living with HIV.
The rehearsals are strangely cathartic for Amahle, empowering her in a way she had not anticipated.
Shu Tu, Appropriate
After two months of grilling and emotional rehearsals, the five girls are ready to perform their play during a special assembly to be held at their high school. All four groups in the theatre troupe chose to interpret social justice issues they’ve experienced personally, or seen people grappling with in their communities.
The first group, composed of five boys, tackles racism from the Apartheid era until the present. The second focuses their performance on dating, teen pregnancy and dropping out of school, while the third addresses crime and poverty. Amahle’s is the final group to take the stage.
Swallowing hard as she walks out towards the imposing wooden lectern, Amahle stands before a hushed crowd with some 500 students. Holding her hand against her heart to calm her nerves, and for dramatic effect, she composes herself with a solemn look, and begins narrating:
“Some organizations believe a rape occurs as often as once every minute in our country. Most of those who are raped are girls younger than 18. Sometimes much younger. Some are lesbians, who men mistakenly think they can ‘correct’ with rape.”
A few kids giggle at the mention of the word ‘lesbians’, making Amahle wince immediately, and worry about whether her secret will be out now because she’s brought it up. While they were writing the play, the girls knew many students would assume they’d been raped. Amahle didn’t care if they did, since no one would be likely to tease her about that. But now, on-stage, she finds herself suddenly afraid for them to know about her sexual orientation. But there’s no use thinking about that now. She continues:
“Many times, these girls are scared and they do not get the medical help they need, risking pregnancy and HIV.
Many times, they do not go to the police. Based on those that ARE reported to police, a rape happens every 13 minutes, on average.
Every 13 minutes… Just think about that…
For the next 13 minutes, what we will present on this stage could actually be happening somewhere. Maybe it’s even happened to you…
Please pay attention, so you can stop this from happening. Or at least so you will know what to do—or what NOT to do—if it ever does…”
The silence grows heavy and Amahle can sense the mood in the room shifting as she walks off-stage and the curtains give way to the opening act. Thirteen minutes to impact…
As the girls act out the first rape scene, Keisha’s powerful scream, rolling eyes and masterfully pained expression seem to strike a nerve with the audience. Throughout the ensuing hospital tableau, the students watch, some gripping one another, some squirming uncomfortably, others squinting. But no one laughs or makes jokes, as Keisha had predicted they might.
A second rape scene depicting Rethamile’s sister’s story is used to illustrate how not to react. It garners a number of groans and jeers from girls in the crowd, who start urging the main character to go to the hospital or the police. Their reaction is exactly what the girls were hoping for. They’ve reached their audience, and the girls in particular are engaged.
As the curtains close, the students burst into applause, whistling and releasing loud ululations. Some even look teary-eyed. The teachers rise from their seats to initiate a standing ovation. The reception is unlike anything Amahle has ever seen at her school, or anywhere else for that matter. The actors jump for joy and embrace each other backstage.
“That was amazing!” gushes Amahle’s older brother, who is waiting for her after the assembly. “You’ve got to put this online!” He spends most of his spare time online and has used his mobile phone to record the performance.
The suggestion gets Amahle thinking. It comes to her almost as an epiphany that this is how she could use her experience to do something positive. By raising awareness and helping other girls protect themselves—through theatre and videos and any other means possible—she could turn what happened to her into something even more powerful than a kick in the face.
