
The story of a young black man Chapter 12
Leeto: The story of a young black man
Payback is a b****
Chapter 12
“And the undisputed tag team of Hebron Tech
is, The Tripartite Alliance”, Molefi ‘Splash’ Makgobo said as we entered the
class. Many learners laughed with the others applauding for our taking the
stand against the school bullies. Instead of letting all this attention get
into our heads, we just ignored it—we were all excited that we were not
expelled for a serious school misconduct such as fighting. Ofentse Motshweneng,
also well-known by his street name, Batista, and his friends were feared by the
whole high school. They bullied learners so much that they literally defined
the term school bully. Batista and his friends had done it all, from robbing
other younger and weaker learners of their monies and valuables to beating
other learners up for even looking at one of their girlfriends, let alone
talking to them.
What we had done was a miracle; we had proved
to the whole school that we were anything but afraid of Batista and his crew.
Of course we did not expect the whole thing between us to be ended by one
stupid grown-ups’ meeting with the headmaster. These guys were capable of
worse; they could follow us home if they wanted to and just as we’re half way
between our houses and school, they could beat us up. “If that ever happens,
we’ll cross the bridge when we reach it; I am not going to worry myself about
that now”, I thought to myself. “So, tell me boys”, Splash asked us, “what’s
your crew’s name called?” Tshepang looked at him and said, “Didn’t you already
call us by a new name or something earlier? What was it? Oh, I remember now,
you called us The Tripartite Alliance. But isn’t that name taken already
by the alliance between the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP in our country’s
politics?”
Splash, who seemed clueless of what Tshepang
was talking about, turned his attention onto Samson. “You know champ”, he said
to Samson, “you truly upheld the name of your counterpart in the bible very
high, hey. You do know that there was a Samson in the bible, who was also a
bad-ass like you?” Samson said nothing and just ignored him. I didn’t blame him
though, if there was one person who contributed to the fight taking place, it
was Splash. Splash had been the bearer of threats from Batista to Samson; who
knows, maybe whenever he went back Batista, he made stories up about Samson’s
willingness to take on Batista in a fight. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say
Splash was trying to cook up another fight between us and Batista that
afternoon.
When he realised that he was getting nowhere
with Samson and Tshepang, Splash turned his attention to me. “You know Journey
Man”, he said to me, “the whole school thinks that you guys were just lucky as
you stood no fighting chance against Batista and his friends”. Splash seemed to
have an immediate nickname to anyone he met. My name, Leeto, means ‘journey’ in
all the Sotho languages and as such, I had already been given a nickname—Journey
Man—by him. I didn’t want to give Splash the same courtesy that Samson and
Tshepang had given him of ignoring him or simply being rude towards him, I
wanted to teach him a lesson he would never forget so that he never has to
start a fight between other learners ever again for his self-amusement. “Tell
me Splash”, I said to him, “before I tell you anything, please confirm to
Samson and Tshepang what you had told me last weekend; they seem to think that
I made that story up”.
“What are you talking about now, Journey
Man?” Splash asked me. “I told them that story about how you got your very
first wet dream”. I said this so loud that I got 100% of the class’s attention.
“So, in your wonderful dream”, I continued, “What kind of panties was Masego
wearing?” Of course I was lying; Splash had never told me anything about a wet
dream of his. Masega was the fattest girl in our class, wearing a good size 44
in jeans. “What!” a girl’s voice said in shock from the front of the class. It
was Masego Kutumela, the subject of my fictitious story, my lie. Splash let out
a silly laugh, out of humiliation and said, “Ha, ha, ha, very funny, man”. “Oh, I remember”, Tshepang said, who had also
joined-in the joke, “he said she was a maroon set of matching bra and panties”.
The whole class burst out laughing; Splash on the other hand was trying to
defend himself however it was a little ‘too little, too late’ at that stage.
“How dare you dream about me, boy”, the chubby Masego asked, furious as I had
never seen her before. Splash defended himself by denying the whole thing
however Masego was too angry to listen to him. “After school, you better run,
boy”, Masego warned, “because if I ever catch you, you’ll be sorry you ever
dreamt of me in the first place”. “Guys”, Splash pleaded with us one more time,
“Would you tell Mrs Fat Albert here that you made up the story now and that
she’s not my type”. Since we wanted to get back at him by teaching him a
lesson, none of us either gave Splash that satisfaction. As Ma’am Sefate
entered the class for her first period of the day, Masego whispered in Splash’s
ear and said, “I will be fucking you up this ‘after school’, pervert! You
better start running”.
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